Jeff Mach's Blog, page 27

Being Told To Go To Hell

So, for the record, this is what happens when enough people tell me to go to Hell:

Most people are quite unaware of the workings of Magic. (For example, I recently ran into someone who said she constantly put ‘love and light’ out into the Universe. Now, putting enough Light into the world will start erasing shadows. And since it’s a human doing it, this light will have an affinity for human shadows. If this person truly keeps up said practice on a daily basis, I’d estimate that she erases about three shadows a year. Once your shadow is erased, of course, your soul is destroyed, and you become a monstrous creature, caring not whether you destroy friend or foe, so long as you destroy. Good going, ‘lightworker’!)

But, in brief, one of the core things we know about Magic is that it works through Consensus Reality. That’s just a neat-sounding phrase for the idea that it’s easier for us to believe in something that everyone else believes.

Many people believe in Hell.

Few people believe you’ll go there if someone else says you should.

But the actuality is different:

Very few people go to Hell.

But many people are absolutely determined to simulate the Hell-experience as broadly and immediately as possible by making the World both actually worse than it really is, AND seen as far worse than it actually is.

These people usually succeed.

We can go to Hell.

But just to visit them.

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Eaten By Bears

Once upon a time there was a beautiful fairy princess who was eaten by bears.

This caused the bears no end of trouble. First off, bears are vegetarian (and fruitarian) and are not, in general, carnivores. (Can we agree that Kodiak bears are just not normally found in the pseudo-European settings of most fairytales?)

Secondly, of course, the only reason that the bears were not immediately hunted to extinction was that both faeries and humans are so bloodthirsty that, as both sides hurried to destroy the chewer-of-royalty, they ended up in a horrible bloody war which left them too busy to do anything for a good five or six years, although the Humans eventually made up for it by making all bears extinct, in addition to every other kind of animal whose name started with a “B”, or any other letter of the alphabet.

Third, princesses give you a terrible stomach-ache. I should know. (Don’t believe me? Feel free to find out for yourself; but I warn you in advance, you won’t be able to eat anything other than dry toast for like three days thereafter.)

And fourth, the narrator was definitely going somewhere with all this. Possibly the Princess was supposed to learn a valuable lesson. Or, if this were a modern fairy tale, we readers would find out that bears aren’t scary, they’re actually our friends. (A message which is only coincidentally sponsored by the Ursine Council To Prove That Bears Totally, Really Don’t Steal Your Picnic Baskets, Or Your Car, Probably).

Unfortunately, the narrator’s boss, who is the semi-mythical godlike figure behind this keyboard –

(well, godlike to the poor, helpless beings in this story; all-too-human, otherwise)

– just doesn’t like princesses OR bears. Or Faeries. Or humans. Or readers.

It was, in short, terrible for all involved, and everyone, especially you, lived unhappily ever after. Sorry about that.

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Nursery Rhymes: A Jumble

Mary, Mary, quite contrary
Had a wife and couldn’t keep her
Along came a spider,
To catch the fly.
The clock struck one,
Hickory, dickory, dock.

Along came a spider
(Quite contrary);
Now Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep
(I don’t know why she swallowed the fly.)
One struck the clock,
Hickory, dickory, dock.

Along came a spider,
had a wife and couldn’t keep her,
Sailed off in a wooden shoe,
But for want of a nail, the shoe was lost,
and the old lady who lived in the shoe
swallowed the spider;
perhaps she’ll die.

There was a boy who cried “Wolf”,
when he should have cried “Spider”.
“Who’ll dig his grave?”
All the King’s horses,
and all the King’s men.

(She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
That’s the way the money goes.
You are what you eat.
(Should have stuck with the fly.)

round and round the mulberry bush,
the mice ran up the clock,
London Bridge is falling down,
and the number of circles will be nine.

I don’t know why
she swallowed the fly,
chaos shall reign,
“Wolf!” cried the boy.

 

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Mother Sarah

Mother Sarah tossed restlessly in her grave, and for the 2,873rd time, regretted a significant and ever-growing list of life choices.

Really, any path which led to a long-fleshless pile of bones tossing about restlessly despite lack of bone, muscle, cartilage, or any actual desire for movement was probably, in at least a few major ways, likely to have been a flawed path.. She sighed, very deeply, an action which felt mildly cathartic and largely disturbing, as she had neither lips nor tongue to form sounds, no chest muscles to force air towards her face, and, for many long years, hadn’t even had air in the coffin.

One particularly clever theorist had suggested that the dead, if cogent in any form, would be emotionless due to a lack of the chemicals which stir, alter, form, and shape what one might consider to be the base of feelings.. She had particularly liked this idea, and felt a mild distress that it was wrong, a distress which looped itself around by the essentially eternal act of being a feeling about the misfortune of the existence of feelings.. It was a mind trap, of sorts.. Mother Sarah had hated them as a novitiate, despised them as a priestess, and never given in to them even in those strange, despairing-but-curious last few days before death from her wounds.

If, at the thought of dusty, broken bones holding the unwilling consciousness of a once-living human, one notes a pang of drumming disquiet in the viscera, one is not blamed.. In fact, if one6 feels just a touch of the disquietingly corporeal touch of cosmic horror, etching itself lightly into the stress patterns of the spinal column, crawling languid, insectile, a disease-bearing arthropod burrowing unerringly into certain parts of your brain which were never intended to be alight with thought except in the case of mind-threatening injury–

–one ought be ashamed.. It turns out that persistent consciousness, post-unmortality, is a gift from (who else?) the benevolent Gods, themselves.

How in the world (pardon: how in the unworld, that spiritual plane which is most easily defined in mortal terms by being the place where all things of flesh and mattter are not)–however in the nonworld might the Gods be expected to provide the end-user with an optimal experience of afterlife without being able to monitor every aspect of what the living self might have desired?

One might be dead; but to the Gods, death hardly invalidates your agreement to the Terms of Service.. The Gods, kindly, powerful, wise, and doing their best with the finest minds they’re able to consume, have a moral and practical responsibility to provide the material world with a vital experience curated to the desires of those who dwell within.. If that requires harnessing the remarkable ability of the consciousness, properly stimulated, to respond as if it were represented by a living body and not a pile of calcite matter or, in certain cases, dust—then surely no-one who wishes good for humanity might object.

The spirit is allowed, encouraged, no, actually, empowered to wander the Metaverse.. With sufficient focus, the inconvenient post-human in its place of easeless rest essentially has, by design, a connection with the former flesh which is unhealthy.. Magic has trouble reaching the soul, the Gods have trouble giving the remnant consciousness the appropriate stimuli, and relatives weep over someone who is (though they do not know it) still essentially there, thus wasting grief on someone who has perversely chosen to remain tied to the unpleasantness of the embodied experience when given ever opportunity to float, dream-style, through worlds which are far better, if, technically, so layered in assorted beautiful semi-replicas of truth that they are, if one must be vulgar about it, lies.

Mother Sarah suffered needlessly.. But the Gods would help her.. Every day, particularly when her spirit—that is, both her morale, and her postmortal conscious presence—was it its lowest point, they offered her kindly advice as to how to exist in a world where she would not be frustrated or paine by something as flawed and unpleasant as that which, objectively speaking, one might consider real.

Surely, when one is dead, one ought to be allowed to dream that one is in heaven, rather than making a conscious effort to remember that one is actually a pile of skeletal remains trapped forever in a box.

Who would sacrifice the freedom of infinite fantasy for the terrors of truth?

No-one, eventually.. It didn’t make any sense.. And, indeed, that was all the Gods asked: that she participate in the enthralling fantasies of the spirit world, instead of locking herself into the ugliness of a real world which would, in time, be wholly eradicated anyway.

At least Mother Sarah would suffer for her perversity.. Though the Gods, respectful of privacy, did not track which souls refused their gifts, they knew, statistically, that Reality could be eradicated with enough civic-minded community spirit.. The fleshly world in which they, as spiritual beings, had no true power, could be erased by those temporarily trapped in skin, until it became unimportant, and the Gods could then give all mortals all the things they truly wanted.

It saddened the Gods that some questioned their benevolence; but deviance can be weeded out of the gene pool through sufficient incentive and/or spells of death, fear, and plague.

Mother Sarah suffered; but eventually, she would break, everyone would break, and even the ugly fleshly world would know Godlike harmony.

One might even pray that it would happen soon, but one ought not; the Gods are not selfish enough to listen to individual prayers when they can listen to the general noises made by multitudes; and they are too wise to really hear multitudes, when they might better inflict their own wisdom on others.

Thus was the World fated to become a heavenly place.. Let’s hope not to hear from Mother Sarah again; by the time one next thinks of her story, let’s hope she’s been joyously enveloped into the wholeness of eternal Truth, and no more need suffer the inconvenience of that most sadistic of human inventions: reality.

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Building A Better Runesword

The great dark Runesword cried out, once again, screaming, without words, in the language of corrupted souls, for blood; and, once again, Alice told it to piss up a rope, threw it in a corner, and went to brew a proper cup of tea.

Of all the cursedly enchanted souls, in every Universe perceptible by eye or mind or sorcery, the most terrible and most deadly is known by all to be a living being—in fact, a demon—which some mighty but desperate sorcerer summoned to this plane in the form of a weapon, knowing that it would impart to the blade an unholy force, but at a price most terrible: for this demon existed to drink blood and souls, and south hearts and vital essence from friend and foe alike.

And if there’s one thing that’s really, really likely about something everyone knows, it’s that everyone is incredibly wrong.

It doesn’t take a particularly puissant mage to bring a demon to this part of the Somewhereverse. Demons want to come here; convincing a malevolent supernatural entity to visit us is about as difficult as convincing someone to take an all-expenses-paid vacation to somewhere with free alcohol, great weather, attractive and erotically compatible beings of deeply miniaturized morals and lenient personal policies on the need for undergarments, and plenty of easily-accessible Potions Of Forgetting What Happened Last Night. It does take powerful human intervention (advertent or otherwise) to actually open a gate, but that’s because Those who control dimensions of that sort don’t usually let anyone out, for approximately the same reason that very few human jobs offer 52-week vacations every year.

No, acquiring a demon is relatively easy. (It’s the 6 that’s difficult, which explains so much about that which is loose in the world. Controlling the demon is…complicated, particularly depending on how you define “control”. Acquiring a supernatural entity which sucks human souls: relatively easy. Acquiring a supernatural entity which sucks only the souls of people you don’t like…

That’s impossible. Or nearly so. It could be done if you don’t like anybody, including yourself…but that story’s never told, since that dimension is now so empty that it gives even the Eternal Void the creeps.

A truly powerful demon doesn’t just want blood and souls. A truly powerful demon, like any sentient being, wants everything.

Alice that the way to make a Runesword sufficient for her needs was to take a being which wanted to devour all of existence and make it so hungry for the specific havoc you desired that it sublimated, nay, wholly repurposed its entire will to focus on your own goal.

If, at first, this seems unethical, consider that torturing a being whose own existence is fueled by the torture of others would, theoretically, be an act of the highest morality.

Then consider what kind of ethical framework goes around tormenting thinking creatures and then complimenting itself on its good behavior. If you’re a human, this is normal. If you’re a demon, you find this repulsive. Demons, after all, are liars, frauds, cheats, and deceivers—but not hypocrites.

(Besides, in the end, it is easy to decide the morality involved in the creation of any weapon: whoever’s weapon strikes the culminating blow is clearly the one who was right. Books which assert this truth are called histories; books which disagree are generally called “kindling”.)

The actual mystical acts involved cannot be adequately translated into symbols which will fit inside a narrative, unless one’s goal is to create a narrative with a disturbing tendency to consume the reader in a manner which is not, in any way, metaphorical.

The psychological techniques were perfectly simple in and of themselves, although, although putting together Alice’s chosen ingredients, and containing them sufficiently to allow for measured utilization, took a certain amount of risk and skill.

You see, Alice did not summon a demon; she summoned six.

Five of them were food.

It’s entirely possible that they were, comparatively speaking, the lucky ones.

This may not have been strictly necessary; but one ought not question Alice’s judgment unless one is willing to repeat her actions, and that particular course is not, necessarily, the wisest of paths. Let us simply note that if anyone had explained to Alice the existence of the term “overkill”, she would have been certain that it had no practical application in the art of demonology.

For the sake of the squeamish, none of whom are advised to go near this narrative in the first place, there will be no recording of the specifics of the year during which Alice forged her chosen tool for developing interpersonal nonexistence. We’ll simply note that Alice began by giving her chosen subject some of many, many things it desired, including blood. Then, over time, she began exsanguinating its diet. Pointedly so. She noted, aloud and frequently, about the abundance and bounty which would be permitted the captive unhuman, of everything except blood.

It would take a perverse, contrary, self-attacking mind which, when given almost everything, would begin to crave the one thing it was denied.

In short, it would take a mind so inclined towards torture that it would lash out at everything in reach.

And the shortest distance between the self and the nearest potential victim is, as always, the self.

“BLOOD!” screamed the sword.

Alice brought it riches.

“SOULS!” screamed the sword.

Alice gave it power.

“PAIN!” screamed the sword.

“Soon,” replied Alice.

Alice was not, even then, unskilled in the ways of either physical and psychic combat. She did not always use them. Your life is an irreplaceable resource; risking it is not an optimal gambit. But sometimes, you have no other pieces you can move.

There was a certain organization, trained to immunity from sorcerous influence, immensely strong in body and mind. They numbered thirteen individuals, each one a being of strength and influence.

They did not know of Alice; she was a nobody. But Alice went and dwelt near a certain village which had been destroyed by that organization as a by-product of one of their projects. She made it very known that she was an advocate of that organization, that she would apply to join, that their goals were here own.

They had already moved on, and took no notice of her. But a certain youth of the former village could not help but notice Alice’s unmodest dwelling, which she had, rather rudely, placed in the very center of what used to be the town square, and which she had, in a rather unkind decorating choice, covered with some of the symbols used by the aforementioned order.

The youth was destined for greatness. So said the stars, and so said the wise and hooded figure who knocked upon his door one day and told him that the nearby witch has no powers during an eclipse, and there happened to be an eclipse tomorrow, and would he like a key to her manse?

The next night, there was a battle during which the youth did not precisely defeat the witch, but he did cause her to fly away, surely driven by a combination of her cowardice and his own prowess. She even dropped her sword, which was obviously an object of vast capability.

A week later, the entire Order had been eradicated. But presumably the youth had been tainted beyond redemption by their foulness, for he apparently ended the struggle by making sure the corruption was gone forever, through the heroic act of—somehow–tearing out his own throat with his blade. He had left a note, which was an unusual mark of education; he had widely believed to be illiterate, but, then again, people’d thought he stood no chance against the Order; obviously, there was more to the fellow than met the eye. His short, simple note explained why, having taken his revenge, he had to end the final vestige of his enemy, which might live on in him; and he asked only one thing, that he be buried along with his heroic blade.

So he was.

The hero would be remembered forever, and not the least by the hooded figure who visited his grave, faithfully, once a month for two years.

Those who saw this act of devotion sometimes fancied they heard a voice—the wind, presumably—whispering, “Blood?”

Some even imagined they heard the hooded figure say, “Not yet.”

Perhaps a decade later, the tomb was robbed. By then, most people had forgotten its inhabitant; such is the nature of gratitude.

Throughout Alice’s life, spellmakers would attempt to replicate the fury of Alice’s blade, and some would come close. And many would try to reproduce whatever spell of loyalty she had created, for everyone else who wielded such an instrument died, and it was generally agreed that they had, somehow, hacked themselves to pieces. Only Alice seemed immune, and no-one could tell what miagc she might have used.

The sword might have told them. If it had not been locked away, starving, in a very deep cell indeed, fed, perhaps, the life fluid of a mouse once or twice a year. And if it could say anything other than one single, whispered, raspy word:

“Blood?”

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The Pen Is Mightier Than The Swarm

(A very very short story.)

WRITERS: If you believe your pen is a light in the darkness, check to see if your quill is on fire.

READERS: Buy more books.

NON-READERS: Buy more books and give them to readers, then blackmail them when those books are banned.

TO CENSORS: Buy more books, it’s going to be a cold winter.

TO BOOKS: I’m sorry for writing this, but if you’re going to keep me up all night, you’re going to have to get ready for the consequences.

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Dungeon Doggerel: The Revenge

At some point, I decided to name my infrequent collections of barely-acceptable fantasy poetry “Dungeon Doggerel”, an idea that must have seemed witty to me at some point in time. Now I’m stuck with it. If there’s any joy or truth in the world, this will not end up in a book some day.

Hint: Have you SEEN the world lately?

~ ~ ~

Each Halloween, I hold hope faint
That we’ll dress as something we ain’t.
As the Moon rises, my hopes fall:
We’re still all monsters, one and all.

~ ~ ~

The Rum is gone, and with it go
Our hopes and dreams. It’s always so.
Pirates may steal your gold and liquor;
But they just do what life does (only quicker).

~ ~ ~

Note thou this alcoholian curse:
never drink and write fantasy verse.
For if you do, you’ll find your corks
Are no defense when you’re attacked by Orcs.

~ ~ ~

Now my rhymes are done, and thou
Are free to go somewhere else, somehow
But click as thou wilt, thou wilt yet find:
Ridiculous words stick long in the mind.

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Dulca NonDomestica: Because Everything Tastes Better In Latin

(Yes, it’s one of our recipes.)

 

“I will NOT serve…breakfast. I won’t be up that early.”

~a certain fallen Angel

 

Dark Powers help us, you’ve been invited to tea, and you don’t want to inflict another soggy finger sandwich on the world, because you don’t want the world to start getting used to suffering before you have time to bring your Planetbusting Agony Ray properly into orbit. Very well!

 

Have no dread: present this old Roman dish (maybe toothpicked over squares of Stinging Nettle Cheddar) and you will be the most envied, as well as the prettiest of all. Kallisti!

 

We Villainpunks often admire the ancient Romans, perhaps because both cultures have the same philosophy: If you say it with enough authority, and say it in Latin, people will give you respect.  Or, as the aforementioned Romans often remarked:

 

“Illiud Latine dici non potest.”

 

Yield: 4 servings

Skill Level: 1

 

12 pitted dates

 

1/4 cup chopped, toasted pine nuts

 

1 tsp, cinnamon

 

1 tsp, nutmeg

 

5 tablespoons port wine. (Alternately, if you like your dessert very, very sweet, you could use an Eiswein. They’re quite a lot more expensive than cooking-level port, but they’re absolutely delicious, and besides, as is well known, everything sounds more sinister in German.)

 

1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper (optional)

 

1/4 cup honey

 

DIRECTIONS:

 

Stuff dates with chopped nuts: the nuts are inserted into the space left by the pit.

 

Place dates in a small pan. Sprinkle with pepper if desired. I mean, it’s your pan; who’s going to object?

 

Stir the cinnamon and nutmeg into the wine.

 

Add wine, and then drizzle honey over dates. Cook over medium heat until the skins begin to peel off the fruit.

 

Transfer dates to a serving dish, and allow cooling slightly before serving.

 

Note: It’s rumoured that this recipe also works with our Spiced Brandy instead of wine, for that charming overwhelming superabundance of flavors. Ourselves, we’ve never dared to try it. If you give it a shot, do let us know how it works out? Assuming you survive and such.

You could also, for a real kick of sophisticated but approachable sweetness, use Goblin Alchemy Mead. We certainly do.

 

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The Profitability of Dragon Minds

Dragons may read minds, but they don’t do anything with that except try to help you.

Yes, Dragons have the power to change your minds. It’s part of how they have the power to anticipate your wants and needs: sometimes a certain creation of desire gets involved.

But Dragons only read your mind for your own good.

And Dragons only change your mind in ways you want.

Or ways you WILL want, eventually.

At any rate, Dragon Brains have all the interesting stuff, and your friends are there.

Do you want to miss out?

In the folklore of ancient times, like, say, fifteen years ago, Dragons are large magical creatures whose lust for treasure and perpetual brandy-flembeux breath are things of legend. They have always been mysterious to humans, which is hardly unexpected when you figure that we’re dealing with creatures several orders of magnitude older, incomprehensibly smarter, and not terribly inclined to share their personal lives with primates.

But ideas tend to perspire through the assorted walls of assorted worlds, and while it can’t be said exactly what led them to be inspired, a whole generation of humanfolk began to get glimpses of the rare, thunderous lizards. In fact, it started to be more than just glimpses. Dragons bled out of myth, through legend, and into consensus reality.

Everyone knew that thoughts exist somewhere in the semi-definable plane between magick and understanding.

What if we could amplify thought, all thought, such that not only mages and sorcerous beings could access the ability to reach a large audience, but that it was, in fact, available to all?

(Or a Chosen “all”–but hey, the Chosen have always been, definitionally, special in this Universe.)

What if everyone could be Chosen?

Or ALMOST-everyone?

Everyone but those of whom the Dragons disapproved; but the Dragons were altruistic. They never referenced their own Treasure even once, no matter how large a part that played in their own decisions.

Why aren’t you letting Dragons into a portion of your mind?

What is it that you’re hiding?

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Low Carb Savory Tuna Tea-Cakes with Roasted Red Pepper-Chive Aioli

Recipe by Jeff Mach; Adapted LOW CARB RECIPE by “The Recipe for You”

We sometimes note a certain confusion over the concept of “Tea-time”, in that, for some benighted reason, many seem to believe that this implies a portion of the day wherein one drinks the boiled leaves of certain herbs.  In point of fact, there are many different kinds of “tea”. (See Simon & Garfunkel’s “A Simple Desultory Phillipic”.)  For example, when we say it’s “time to take a spot of tea”, we probably mean “Earl Grey and crumpets”.  If, however, one mentions a “knife and fork tea”, one can presume one is in for what the Continentals might call a meal. Or, as we Dark Lords say, “Never bow your head to say Grace, because the Hobbits will make off with your elevenses.”

 

I feel compelled to return to the dashing Captain Nemo. Did you see that 1950s version of “20,000 leagues under the Sea” wherein, for reasons explicable only to the authors of said film, the brilliant scientific mind behind a submarine that was literally centuries ahead of its time made the ridiculous and unhelpful choice, for essentially unexplained reasons, to attempt to imitate non-seafood using only the flesh of underwater beasts, resulting primarily in food that looked like ordinary food but tasted disturbingly like fish?  If you’re like us, you wonder: “What in the world were they thinking?” Let this be a lesson: many an anti-Hero has found a certain lack of motivation about the world when even world dominion appears likely to bring about a lifetime of elegantly-plated but generally boring meals.

 

The treasures of the sea are vast and myriad, and certainly Villains have a long history of enjoying many of the fruits of the Sea, although we still wonder about the wisdom of attempting to win a naval battle with sea monsters; wouldn’t you be better off avoiding the whole damn battle and simple becoming rich from the sashimi?

 

Because we’re nerds, we keep asking: “Why in the world would Captain Nemo attempt to emulate the land that he hated, instead of making brilliant and sumptuous repasts from the bounty which quite literally surrounded him?”

 

He wouldn’t. He would totally do cool things with fish. And so we borrowed this recipe from him in an effort to set the record straight.

 

NOTE: If you are not of a culture which takes tea on a regular basis, you could serve these with coffee, instead. That’s not fatal. On the other hand, unless you are in relatively cosmopolitan company, we suggest renaming this dish; or, at least, we advise against calling the product of this particular recipe ‘tea-cakes’. Have you SEEN the expression on someone’s face when they’re expecting a sweet and get a rich, meaty, somewhat salty taste? ISN’T IT HILARIOUS?

….erm, we mean, ah, “THAT WOULD BE VERY, VERY WRONG. SHAME ON YOU, YOU MONSTER.”

Yield: 24 cakes

Skill Level: 2

 

Cakes:

12 ounces albacore tuna

1/4 cup finely diced celery

1/4 cup minced fresh chives

1/4 cup avocado mayonnaise

1 large egg

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

1/4 teaspoon Kumana Avocado Hot Sauce

1 1/2 cups finely ground pork rinds

¼ tsp garlic powder

¼ tsp onion powder

¼ tsp ground oregano 

Pinch of ground black pepper to taste

Pinch of sea salt to taste

Roasted Pepper-Chive Aioli:

⅓ cup Avocado mayonnaise

¼ cup canned roasted red peppers, chopped and drained

1 tablespoon fresh chives, minced

2 teaspoons lemon juice

1 teaspoon minced garlic

 

DIRECTIONS:

 

For Pork rind bread crumbs, combine pork rinds, garlic powder, onion powder, ground oregano, pinch of salt and black pepper and mix in a small bowl. Set aside. Do not eat it all before you can actually apply it to the rest of the disk.

For Cakes : In a large bowl, combine remaining ingredients and mix well but gently. Add ½ cup of the pork rinds mixture in the mix and mix again gently to incorporate.

Put the remaining 1 cup of pork rinds in a shallow bowl. Shape tuna mixture into 24 cakes, each about 2 inches wide and 1/2 inch thick. 

Turn each cake in the remaining pork rind mixture  to coat on all sides, pressing gently to make pork rind mixture to adhere.

Place cakes slightly apart in an oiled 12- by 17-inch baking pan.

Bake in a 475° regular or convection oven until golden brown, 15 to 18 minutes. With a spatula, transfer crab cakes to a platter. 

Roasted Pepper-Chive Aioli: In a blender, mix avo.mayonnaise, roasted red peppers, chives, lemon juice, and minced garlic until smooth. Spoon a dollop onto each cake.

Garnish platter with fresh chives. Serve hot.  Beware of sharks. 

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