Bleg

FOB (Friend of the Blog) William, is having major surgery tomorrow and will likely spend his Thanksgiving in a hospital bed. Please send a prayer his way tomorrow, m’k? Thanks!

Rob, Don’t Eat It!

My apologies to Steve over at The Sneeze.

This is the week when Americans stuff themselves with all manner of gustatory delights. A traditional item found on our family sideboard at Thanksgiving is the venerable mincemeat pie. This is not really a dish common to people of our ancestry. Rather, its appearance on the Thanksgiving Day menu is due to the fact that my father loves the stuff. As does my oldest brother. In the entire family, they are the only ones I know of who enjoy mincemeat pie. And also because my father’s birthday is November 25th and it’s kind of a birthday treat.

Blah, blah, blah, get on with it, right?

So, every year I get the urge to try a piece. Every year the same thing happens…

Bleeeccchh!

How can something that smells so good, taste so bad? A typical list of ingredients—so they say—includes apples, cranberries, raisins, currants, candied orange peel, brown sugar, rum, brandy, butter, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, and cloves. Oh, and there’s probably nuts in there too. More traditional recipes also include suet. You read that right, suet. The stuff you put out for birds in the winter.

However, at our house, the mincemeat comes from a jar; a brown gelatinous mass, that glops into the pie shell inviting unappetizing comparisons. Still, it smells damn good while it’s baking. This year, I have determined to find out what it is about mincemeat that makes me cringe. The results of my research are shocking to say the least!

Continue reading “Rob, Don’t Eat It!”

C’mon Man!

No corner of American life is such a fertile field for the restless, little brains of consumer products marketeers to spin wildly out of control, than the kitchen. Thanks to them, we have Ginsu knives, Bread Buddies, egg peelers, crackers, and genies…Dr. Nick Riviera’s Juice Loosener, and on and on.

There’s a good reason why they sell these things in the middle of the night. Only the severe neurosis caused by sleep deprivation or insomnia can make a normal, rational human being buy this crap! Well, that and stupidity.

Now, just when you thought it was safe to go back in the kitchen junk drawer, comes this abomination…

Continue reading “C’mon Man!”

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!

To all of you who’ve purchased my book, a great, big, sloppy, wet Thank You! The Good Thief has moved up to 1,176,073 on Amazon! Or, as I prefer to think of it, The Good Thief has moved up 2,000,000 places on Amazon!

Now for a little bleg: If you haven’t already done so, go out to Amazon and write a review. I won’t die from the criticism, but please, be gentle!

 

Welcome to the 21st Century, Part Deux

Who would’ve thought this iPhone thing would open up a whole new level of self-discovery for me? It has, and I thought this was worth sharing with you…

I was talking with my buddy Jack about my grudging adoption of the ubiquitous iPhone. Jack has long owned and used Apple products—in fact his wife once worked for Apple—and is therefore thoroughly convinced of their virtues.

When I finally admitted that, yes, it is a superior device to my old Blackberry, he commented that he was going to start calling me Pepe le Pew. Puzzled, I asked him why. He replied that there are some people who are, and I’m paraphrasing here, “so mortally afraid of being one of the sheep, that they refuse to adopt the new, and clearly superior technology.” Pepe le Pew saw himself as a great Lothario, and “absolutely refused to admit he was a skunk.”

Continue reading “Welcome to the 21st Century, Part Deux”