See what I did there? I combined the word "asparagus" with the name "Gustav" to create a totally new word! It's like genetic engineering, only my grain hasn't become any more resilient.

Truth is I couldn't muster up anything a) better, while still remaining b) relevant to my topic, so I fell back on my old standby: when in doubt, sound like an idiot.

Anyway, it's nearly Friday, and that means I'm supposed to cook something I haven't cooked before. Well, the job hasn't paid in a while (which is just too cool), so I'm feeling cheap. Would I like a steak? Yes, I would like a steak; I have not eaten a steak in an amount of time which spans beyond the (admittedly feeble) reaches of my memory. But, being cheap, I'll have to settle with our good friend gallus gallus domesticus, the Land Tuna, the necessarily versatile chicken.

Also asparagus, which I had previously revealed to you by proxy of awful joke.

But in what way? In what way?

I am open to suggestions! Guide my trembling, idiot hands around sharp tools and hot surfaces; point my naive and wandering eyes at... chicken and asparagus, and also ancillary ingredients. Help me help you feed me.

Ah, I've still got "it." (Joke.)

No, I am clearly hell of out of practice. I haven't seriously tried to draw something since early high school, and I've never had good drawing "habits" of the sort I could fall back on in the first place (like reducing things to basic shapes and all that sort of nonsense... I'm a lousy drawer of action, baby).

Okay, so, as my first violently-shuddering baby steps back into the terrifying world of drawing, I've decided to try to do a little cartoon self-portrait of myself (just in case "self-portrait" didn't convey the subject). Now, I do understand that this could be interpreted as a rather self-aggrandizing move, but hear me out: I know what my face looks like, so I can actually focus on cartoonifying it rather than suffer the constant derailment I'd be subjected to by every little crag and jagged protrusion an unfamiliar face would present. So, my face it was.

That said, I found out I actually have no idea what I look like. Like, none. See, at best, I'm used to what I look like backwards, thanks to those lying bastard mirrors. Fixing this pretty much just involved flipping the hair and usually-cocked eyebrow, but a surprise it was nonetheless. And no sooner did I run headlong into clear that hurdle than I went about giving myself a Mexi-stache, a button nose, game-show-host hair, and a chin far too assertive to be realistic. Good thing I only use pen! (har) Finally, once I thought I got one at least halfway passable and decided to compare it to a photo, I couldn't tell if they were even remotely similar. It's like I'm blind (except that I can see).

So consider yourself warned: I may well have just drawn Jay Leno with a soul patch a hundred times and I would not know it.

Hopefully I'll be able to do a full cartoony body at some point, but that water's still well beyond my clearance level. For the time being, I'll stick to misrepresenting just my head.

I know what happened, but it seems more appropriate for me to be saying "I have no idea how this came to be."

I'd like to think I actually had a half-decent meal idea here. I wanted to do a sort of fancy spin on a fancy Southern take on a stir fry, fancily. I had some brown and wild rice just hanging out in the cupboard, so that went in with some chicken stock to ricify you know, cook. I had that stir-fry-cut chicken I mentioned this afternoon, which I thought I'd batter and fry up beforehand. After that, I planned to just stir fry the chicken and rice together with (I had no idea what else I was going to use, so I was just sort of waiting on divine inspiration).

The problem came up in the frying stage. See, I'm a bum deep fryer. If it's not a nacho chip and I'm not a sixteen-year-old employed by Taco Bell, it probably isn't going to turn out well; I always wind up burnt, at least slightly slicked, and with a load of clean up. On top of that, I can never tell when the stuff's done cooking. It was chicken in this case, so I really didn't want to pull it out when it looked properly browned just to find it was still semi-opaque and salmonella-y in the center. Hell, I don't even have a kitchen thermometer, so I always wind up frying too hot (this situation will be rectified in a few days, thankfully). Anyway, point is a third of the chicken burnt up like a champ.

So now I've got this chicken on my hands that I'd really rather not put back into a pan for a second frying, what with having been fried to within an inch of a second death and all. The rice is pretty much fine, but not strong enough on its own to constitute a side to some burnt nuggets (plus, that would suck). So I just dumped the better pieces of chicken in the pot with the rice and lidded that up while I went about trying to prepare a little gravy.

The gravy (broth, a bit of white zin, some Italian dressing, a slice of butter, herbs, flour) actually turned out pretty good, and its acidity (thank you vinegar and wine) masked some of the charred undertones in the chicken (I told you I killed the stuff). I just dumped it all in a bowl, and am presently picking at it. Not what I'd intended.

However, upon geting to this point, I think that gravy would do well as the stir fry sauce should I decide to attempt this one again. Maybe some fresh green beans and jalapeños fried up in it? I really dig a bit of jalapeño with chicken-and-rice dishes, so I just may. Suggestions? Although I'm sure I'd like it, it's a bit too close to my standard fare to be of much benefit to my palate.

(EDIT: Did I wind up eating that chicken raw? Find out that and so much more right here.)

I've fallen into a pattern that has me reserving Friday night for cooking something new and just generally relaxing (such is life on the bleeding edge),  but today I find myself out of stride. No soup supplies hanging out on the chest freezer, no ten different casserole recipes being cross-referenced, not even a taco kit taken down from the cupboard. No sir (or ma'am), all I've got is a pack of chicken breasts cut stir-fry style. That at least is nice, because damn do I hate preparing chicken (and that's an attitude I've copped without even dealing with more than untrimmed chest pieces).

What you ought to be taking away at this point is that I don't know what to eat tonight, aside from it being chicken. I did get a very nice lazy-Susan-of-spices for my birthday, which I intend to make some use of, but "chicken" and "spices" are more a direction than they are a route, so I'm still sitting on a stump poking at my kitchen compass, in a strictly metaphorical sense.

I mean, I suppose stir fry is a pretty obvious end point, what with it being written right on the chicken's packaging. I've got some fancy rice. Eh?

I don't know. It's not particularly important.

I had pretty good luck with casseroles two weeks back, fared well with the meat löf last week, and grains have always been kind to me, so I believe it is time I brave some uncharted waters. Waters where, as legend has it, Soup lives.

My grandma used to make a pretty mean beef barley, for which I found myself with a hankering earlier this week, so there my target lies. Now, I never actually saw her prepare the soup, so I've really got nothing to go on aside from a quarter-million potentially dicey recipes from http://www.allrecipes.com and my own blind thrashing-about in the kitchen culinary vision. I'm also without a stock pot which, by proxy of Good Eats, Alton Brown has made me think I require for anything large-in-quantity and primarily liquid. Could that be my undoing? It's anyone's guess at this point in the game.

But I will survive. If it turns out like beef mud, I've still got a ton of pasta that (I totally forgot) I made just last night, so starvation isn't in my immediate outlook. Not ruling it out over the remainder of my life (who knows?), but I'm not too worried about this weekend.

Anyway, I guess I ought to get to the shit-simmering.

I've got this mighty urge to get a bunch of pets for the sole reason of bestowing upon them unfortunate names. What names, you ask? I thought you'd never.

• Strategy, a Corgi (Welsh)
• Jarvis or Jeeves, an English Bulldog
• Agamemnon, a Guinea Pig
• Town Drunk or Village Idiot, a Dachsund or perhaps an English Sheepdog
• King Cobra, a playful Tabby or runty parakeet

The last two I'm particularly fond of. So much so, in fact, to actually be considering getting a pet after ditching this apartment for a proper house. But then I come to my senses and remember that I should never be trusted with the life of any creature, lest the original owner's looking for a slightly-more-humane alternative to euthanization.

Use this: http://www.pcdecrapifier.com

Why? Because the computer you just bought at the store is already bogged down by a bunch of useless crap totally useless crap before you ever even get a chance to turn it on and make the situation even worse yourself. (That's a joke. I know not everybody has commited their lives to making their computers bad places to be.) Anyway, this will strip out all the things you'll never even know you had, and wouldn't dream of wasting your time getting pissed at in the first place even if you did.

Seriously, for a lot of folks this will be like a computing rebirth. Don't think your brand new big-buck PC is performing like its specs say it should? You're probably right. Decrapify it.

Well, it's 11:30 at night, and I am in my bed, lights out, trying to write this. I don't particularly know why it's so difficult for me to keep up a blog, but a quick glance at my posting history will confirm that this go-round's been no better than the last.

Perhaps it's because I'm such a private person. That, and I don't particularly think anything that I, or most folks, have to say is actually worth the few bytes it wastes on a server somewhere. I have no facts to share, no little solution to enlighten some frustrated Googler.

But I'm in the technology business, dammit, and that means I can't care about privacy. Not my own, anyway.

So here I am, trying to force one out. Why? Because I decided that would be a thing that I do this year. The fact that I brushed off three I'll-do-it-tomorrow's for this should hopefully be a good sign, but I suppose we'll see.

Anyway, my actual point: my New Year's Resolutions. The fact that I actually call them "resolutions" should not fool you into believing that they are things about which I am resolute, things that I am resolved to accomplish. No, rather they're the same things I always want to do, but just plain don't. Yeah, I'm definitely on the busy side, but I'm even moreso lazy, which keeps personal progress far and away from actually doing any progressing.

So then, without further ado, here are things I'd like to accomplish this year, in no particular order:

• Maintain this blog. Yes indeed, that's actually the bulk of the reason why I forced myself to write tonight -- because I couldn't bear the thought of writing a blog about resolutions that include writing the blog being pushed off until some other day.
• Purchase a new WRX or GTI. Now, I hate (hate) when folks do the "I really want this or this other vastly dissimilar thing" thing, especially with cars, but consider: I deeply respect (read: love) both these vehicles, but they represent two very different things for me. The WRX is my past, my slightly over-the-top teenage dream car. The GTI is my future, my sensible but enjoyable working-professional-mobile. I will have one or the other and be pleased as punch either way, and I will do so within the year (hopefully within the half-year).
• Gain 20 pounds. I'm lazy, but my metabolism kicks ass and I often forget to eat, so I'm plenty thin. Unfortunately, I'm also built like an eighth-grader, a byproduct of a sedentary desk life. (I love what I do, but all it's doing for my body is collapsing the ol' carpal tunnel.) So I'm after twenty pounds of brand new muscles. That really only makes me about average when all's said and done, but I've always liked normal. Shouldn't really be difficult so long as I can keep myself motivated. But you know, in retrospect, I watched  like ten seasons of Friends over the course of 2009, and I could have easily just sat there doing curls or something at the same time. Shame on me.
• Fully record three songs. For shit's sake, I've got so many parts of songs all over the place, you'd think I'd be able to just string a few end-on-end and check this from the list. But no, I want these to be full-on, recorded-with-the-intent-of-finishing-a-song songs, rather than the extra-elaborate 40-second demos I usually cough up. I'm not saying I want to finish the album, just something to show for a decade of serious music-making.
• Get a house? Probably a pipe dream, but it was so real last year (I literally had to give up while I had offers in because my job collapsed) that it's hard not to think of doing it again soon. It's thrilling, and I loved the prospect of having something totally my own that I could devalue on my own terms use my hands to improve. I come from a whole family of carpenters, so I guess it's a sort of innate torch-carrying desire that puts me in that kick. Either way, my rommate and I probably won't be renewing the lease on the apartment again, so I may look into a rental. And why a house? Because I love instruments and cars, and this downstairs-neighbor/work-free-garage life is stifling both those things for me. I want drums, dammit, because I have never encountered anything that I can do so wholly without thinking and not make a fool out of myself. So, that said...
• Drums. We're talkin' like 7-piece maple-shell jazz fusion kit with a Pork Pie snare and Sabian AAXs all around. Glitter silver, man. Seriously. I would drive my WRX (that I own) back to the house (that I also own), write a quick day's-summary blog (in keeping with how good I'd gotten at maintaining the blog), and drum out (on my brand new sparkly silver set) some of my own songs (already recorded at that point, natch) with my newly-muscled arms (as might Hercules). It would be the coolest. And also probably totally unlikely, considering that's the sum of all things that I could possibly hope to happen in a single year, but still awesome. This, do note, is totally dependent upon buying a house actually happening.

And that's pretty much it. This year could wind up pretty expensive, but there's no point in working if you aren't putting those earnings to use.

And that's that. I blogged.