There may come a time when I will be asked to organize and assemble a gorgeous, coffee-table sized cookbook brimming with romantically enhanced photos of Lavender-Lemon Cakes and Brie-Dotted Tuna Flank and Tarragon Goose Flatoose. But listen here - I think you will find my special cookbook twist both stirring and innovative. My “twist” is that, despite the beautiful and sundry photos, and despite the colorful recipe titles, EVERY SINGLE RECIPE in my cookbook will be the same old borscht recipe. Just ONE recipe! Do you see my genius? 250 full-color photos (none of borscht), 300 mouth-watering recipe titles, but 300 identical borscht recipes! All borscht! Picture this: you decide to bake my Asparagus Taffy Drops, and you assemble the ingredients on your countertop. But wait… something’s wr… you are NOT making Asparagus Taffy Drops, serves 12! You are making borscht, serves 6! Damn, are you mad? Fine by me! You can bitch into your bedding all night long! You can scrawl angry letters to Pope John Paul Jenkins! You can rail at the sky, rend your garment, and wear earth on your head! Oof - I make myself tired with this cookbook planning. I should have been an aviator, or a penny swindler, or a war-time nurse.

No Beard, No Problem. Beard? Now That's a Problem.

Beards are a shady area. When a man has a difficult time growing a consistent beard, the man should throw all effort to the wind and purchase a molded brown plastic sheath that fits around the ears and comes with removable and interchangeable plastic mustaches that hook into the nostrils. Why? One, the molded plastic sheath beard is overtly false, and as such, will not offend the suspicious and cruel people (I count myself among them) who questioned your weird, real beard and beard-related motives. Two, upon switching to False Beard, you will be known as a man with a fine and bold sense of humor. This sense of humor is unlikely to appeal to others, but they will recognize its existence, the way one recognizes the presence of Greenpeace canvassers without wishing to speak to them. Thirdly, while your weird patchy beard gained you credibility at such venues as the Renaissance Festival and the Metro Transit Station, your new False Beard will elicit a “distancing” reaction in the people who inhabit these magical worlds. Alternatively, it will elicit such awe in them that you will be as a god unto them, and as their god, you can order them to disband and disperse. Finally, in the off-season, your False Beard can be stored under the covers of the guest bed, thereby assuring a hilarious encounter with the in-laws, who should be staying at a hotel anyway. Done, and done.

My Plan for a Better Tomarrow

When President Grant awards us a land patent in the Dakota Territory, one of the first things we’re going to do is sell it to someone else. No way are we going to live in a sod house and get laughed at by Indians. Ooh, better idea. We will move west VERY BRIEFLY- just long enough to build a brewery and staff it with nondescript Swedes. Also, let’s build a livery stable, because why not? And let’s take all that money we make and invest in a chain of hair salons and “Old World charm” family-style eateries in and around Peoria. And I will take a larger cut of the profits, because so far, all of the good ideas have been mine.

We might as well throw up our hands and admit that we’d like nothing better than to haul our vulgar, claptrap adult past to the pit and ignite it all, perhaps, god willing, to the resounding thwap of celebratory musket fire. What, indeed, have we accomplished? Who, spotting us on the street, would hail us with words both complementary and salutatory? Why do dogs and summer brides avoid us? And where is our pink hot-water bottle, a thing of beauty and considerable heat? All is lost to us, lost in the fogs of antiquity, lost along with the Mean Notebook from junior high and the set of keys that vanished in a fugue of drunken snowdrift fumbling circa 1994.

We wouldn’t say that we were stricken stiff with surprise, or that we were caught off guard in a compromising position, but certainly we were troubled when we spotted the M*donna ads sprawled atop our blog page, sprawled like bucktoothed centerfolds on a Ferrari. It’s our own fault, of course, because we spoke her name above a whisper, and typed it most insouciantly, without qualifiers like “Holy Mary,” or “with Child,” or “Mother of God.” We aim to lose these ads if possible, and replace them with ads that delineate our ripping strength and supple milklines. Bring to us your laxative ads, your Carl Buddig Ham ads, your asbestos removal ads. Bring to us an ad that combines the lot, the Dr. Buddig Asbestos Laxative ad. And bring us a glass of water, for we are thirsty as a bitch.

Years ago, an earnest, bespectacled busboy described to us the (in his mind) amusing proclivities and mores of the medieval Japanese. How he had access to this information with a busboy’s salary and attention span, we will never know. He claimed that a dishonored man had many options when it came to suicide, but the method that most astounded our young scholar was the method wherein a man eats as much salt as he can stomach – and then eats more. Then he dies. We toasted this memory today over a cup of steaming San-J Traditional Japanese Mild Miso Soup, one serving of which contains 57% of our Recommended Daily Allowance of sodium.

Sage, seer, peach: Our honey-haired magnifico is 40.
The dejected, and those currently gathering no rosebuds, may find solace here.

You're Never Alone in This Crapshack

It has come to our attention, as things occasionally do, that unless we integrate links into our blog, we will remain on the outposts of civilization, far from the mod cons of Google and indoor plumbing. Who to link to? Why, let’s link to this dashing, dark Welshman. We’ve trained a glassy eye on him since February, and we assume he knows this, given our Goldilocks-caliber carelessness and our URL breadcrumb trail.

Just yesterday the postman secreted a bundle of mail at our stoop, and lying in its midst was a jewel of rare quality: The New Yorker Advertisement Issue. If you subscribe to, or are otherwise imposed upon by the New Yorker, you know that a regular issue is thin, stapled at the side. Special issues are wide, glued, with print on the spine – real keepers, don’t you know. The Advertisement Issue, as the name suggests, was fat with ads, including: a folded and (regrettably) empty milk carton (automobile ad), a personalizeable bumper sticker (credit card ad), 4 cardstock bits that, in a blaze of anticlimax, did nothing (mp3 player ad), and a pamphlet entitled ‘Life 101: A Modern Spin on Some Ancient Wisdom’ (insurance and financial services advert). By the time we’d stripped our New Yorker of these blessings, our magazine torn and thin, the bin bulging and the brow sweaty, we were ready for the bedtime floss and the nighty-night. It seemed unwise to bin Ancient Wisdom with such a wild indifference, so we paused to dip in to ‘Life 101’. It turns out that ‘Life 101’ lifts it’s weight from a “book” by a “Jesuit priest” in “1637.” As you know, few institutions can spin a Jesuit like an insurance company, so we have wisdom like “#2 – Make people depend on you” and “#16 – Never be upset” and “#74 -Leave something to wish for” and “#96 – Set difficult tasks for those under you”. Also good are "#32 – Get used to the failings of those around you” and “#36 – Do not take payment in politeness.” Eat your heart out, Mr. Deming. The Jesuit/Insurance Industrial Complex was way ahead of you.

We have noticed that our front teeth feel unusual. This discomfort has revived within us the old suspicion that our dentist plants ‘cavity seeds’ in our teeth when we submit to a cleaning. We want to trust our dentist. He has a firm handshake, after all, and the chirpy hygienists in his employ are ever-green and solid as a rock, year in and year out. Perhaps we are eating too many sweets. Perhaps the constant, surging wash of coffee and tea is bearing our enamel out to sea. Perhaps our riparian salad days are salad days indeed, and we are in our bitter dotage, forced inland to some filthy city flat near a root canal. Perhaps we will now drink an MGD and watch Elimidate.

Inaugural Address

Zoe, quit reading our blog. It's not about you. Everbody else: Welcome. However, in the secret deeps of our troubled heart we know that Zoe is still reading this. We're about to quit this weblog and restart our Old Life of sitting couchside, brooding in our blue military uniform with golden epaulettes and plumed hat. We chafe at the suggestion that we resume our old life, though Flag Day IS at our throats. What?

Pre-Inaugural Address

Soon you shall see what you should have seen all along, and so forth.