Is happiness a warm gun, or an electrified fence?

Sorry for the posting gap again. I've been debating whether or not to purchase a semi-automatic rifle, to protect my family from the roaming hordes that have begun terrorizing my neighborhood.

Let me take a step back.

I grew up in the suburbs (Glendale, WI, represent!). To me, people who looked their car and home doors were paranoid, or feral cityfolk. I thought you only had to worry about such things in places that also had sidewalks, and streetlights, and stoplights that kept working after 9 pm. Only suckers had to fence themselves off from their neighbors, was my firmly held 9-year-old belief.

Eventually, though, I moved to various cities, and learned the value of keeping my stuff safe. I also learned to never make eye contact on public transportation, to not flash your lights at a car without its lights on at night, never wear red or blue in public unless you want to be get wacked in a drive-by, and fuck the po-lice.

But for whatever reason, I thought Pittsburgh, specifically Squirrel Hill was different. It's the midwest! People are nice, obey speed limits, and are afraid of bridges and tunnels. Kids play ball in the street. People let you skip in line. Fathers will let you walk their young, nubile, naive daughter home at night, because you're such a nice-looking boy.

So I got sloppy. And I forgot the first rule of home safety - never expose bright shiny things to the seedy criminal element.

What I'm trying to say is, some fuckers stole our stroller.



It's not a TV. It's not a car. It's only the means by which I transport my child. No, these people aren't vile, scum of the earth. They are the lint from within my sweaty armpits. They are the goop from an infected ingrown toenail. They are weeping sores upon the testicles of society.

So what do I do? I'm locking everything up, tying everything down. I'm getting bulletproof glass for my car, and hidden machine guns in the headlights. I'm going to run an electric current through my grill so anyone who touches it gets 20,000 volts up the ass. I'm teaching child Kung-Fu, and giving Wife brass knuckles and a spiked bat. I'm having motion detectors put on my house, so anyone who approaches within 300 yards sets off piercing alarms and spotlights. I'm also training release the hounds with bees in their mouths so when they bark they spit bees at you (thanks, Homer, once again, for your brilliant insights).

So do I buy a gun, or what? Am I that guy? Do I have a rocking chair I can move to my porch and from which can eye suspiciously each and every passerby? Do I put my Glock in a locked case next to my bed, or get a thigh-holster and become a cowboy? Or one of those under-the-armpit bra-type thingies? Ankle holster? Attach it to an apparatus around my head? I need some good advice about joining the NRA.

Oh, and I have a kippah tan. That's right, because I'm bald, and whiter than Francis McKenzie Smithson, center for the Ku Klux Klan iter-racial basketball team (team name - the Alabama Pale Horses).

I punched myself in the self-respect

4/6 of the Fancy Family came to visit last week, to play with Child and take pictures of Child and look at Child and smile at Child and to carry Child around on a golden throne, fanning him with gigantic fern leaves. I have no idea how they got those things past security on the plane, but there they were.

Brother Z also brought with him a book. He finished it while he was in town, and since he laughed repeatedly while reading it, I thought it would be worthwhile to spend the 2 or 3 hours it would take me to read it.

I was wrong.

If you don't know who Tucker Max is, you're a better person for it. Not because he's a debauched individual with no morals whatsoever - those people are hilarious, and necessary for any decent party. No, it's because he's a terrible writer, and not funny at all. The parts of the book that made me laugh out loud were when he quoted his friends, who are evidently much funnier than he is, even with their crappy nicknames (Slingblade? Really? That had a shelf-life of about 3 minutes).

Max has a website, and a devoted fan following of date-rapists and people who are too stupid to get Bill Simmons jokes. I won't link to it here, because it's easy enough to find if you want to make yourself dumber, or if you want your girlfriend to dump you. Which hey, that's your call.

I guess the real concern is that I knew who Tucker Max was before I read the book. I knew what I was getting into. So why in G-d's name did I read it? I think less of myself now for having it in my house. I hid it from our babysitter last night, so she wouldn't think I hated women and minorities and myself. I refuse to let Wife read it - even the funny parts - because I want her to keep believing that men, for the most part, are decent, and not vile talking penises. Which they are, but most have a few more scruples about keeping it under wraps (no pun intended - my G-d, it's even got me making puns. I'm going to go stick forks in my eyes now).

Why did I read this book? Why haven't I burned it? Well, because it's not my book, and Brother Z may want it back. But I read it because...

Nope. I got nothing. I can't deny this concerns me. A little, but still.

Im'a need me a bonin knife

Did you know that this is the Year of the Turducken? How have we made it to May and I have not shared this with you?

So 2009 is the Year of the Turducken on the Midwestern Heart Disease Calendar. Just as last year was Year of the Baby - and so it was - this year shall be the one in which I make a chicken, wrapped in a duck, wrapped in a turkey.

Damn right.

Do I have sufficient culinary experience? Nay. Do I have the intestinal fortitude to try this at home?




Maybe not. But I'm committed. I even started the research.

First: I have to learn how to debone. For this, I evidently need a boning knife. According to the Meat Man, this is the best one. And you listen to the Meat Man. So I'll have to get that.

Then I need to practice deboning. At first, it will probably happen to quickly, and with minimal satisfaction. After months of trying, though, I may be able to hold off for more than - that's right, there was the obligatory deboning/boning joke. Haha, sex is funny.

But back to the Frankenstein of Poultry. 2 days! That's how long it takes to make. Because you need to build the thing, and then it needs to cook for like 9 hours. There is one bright spot, though: I thought I was going to have to learn to sew, and it turns out that's not the case. So hooray, I suppose.

Wife is a little skeeved out by my enthusiasm for the project, and swears she won't try it. This is kind of a problem: not that she would make all that big a dent, but with 2 lbs of chicken, 5 lbs of duck, and 12 lbs of turkey, not to mention stuffing, that's over 20 pounds of food right there. And I alone could only eat maybe 15 of that.

So if anyone wants to come to Pittsburgh, and eat the animal that by all rights should have been created by G-d in the first place, there will be a heaping pile of turducken for you, probably sometime in the fall. I'll be shooting for Memorial Day, but it's just not gonna happen. I don't even have a boning knife yet.

Who's really behind the Great Beef Raid of Aught 8?

By now you've all read about and digested the Agriprocessors raid. You know what it means for your local meat prices, for kosher meat processors in general. You may even have some thoughts of how it fits in with other immigration issues, and whether it matters that hiring illegal workers is standard practice in the meat packing industry.

But you don't know the real story. You haven't heard who dropped the dime on Agriprocessors, who set them up, who encouraged that nun to claim people were sexually harassed, all in the name of halting the production of sweet, sweet beef. And chicken, but those of us who wear the Fancy Pants (man, even I'm getting sick of the name) are less upset about the chicken. Because the secret, sinister cabal behind this whole mess is...bovine.

Yeah, I'm calling them out. You thought I forgot about them, didn't you? How could I forget my nemeses, comprised of an entire species? I don't want to go through the whole litany again - the stupidity, the whole tipping craze, the deliciousness - but cows are meant to be our food. And if we don't eat them, they'll start evolving. Once they start remembering how to turn it's only a matter of time before they figure out what we're doing. Then, a leader shall come, and it's tofu and wheat gluten forevermore.

And from this fiasco, it looks like they're finally wising up. Going after what is ostensibly and traditionally the most careful and ethical portion of the meat business is pure genius, because it then calls into question the rest of the meatpackers. This means they're organized, and thinking strategically. To anyone who loves their steak, this is a serious problem. We have to ask ourselves: how is this happening? Who is guiding the bovine insurgence? PETA can't even get out of its own way - although I will say their anti-fur ads with the naked ladies is compelling. It makes me want to be a naked lady who doesn't wear fur. Greenpeace is all about whales right now, so they're always at sea, away from fields and other places cows hang out. I don't know - bowling alleys? Is that a big bull market (I've tried pretty successfully to hold off on the puns. One won't kill you.)?

The liberal in me wants to blame this on Karl Rove. Partially because he's Satan's fat unathletic middle child, but also because he looks kind of like a Guernsey. But deep down, I know this can't be the case. All proud conservatives are carnivorous in keeping with Straussian philosophy. So I have to look at the blue states.

Massachusetts? No, not enough cows. Plus, even the cows have problems taking orders from someone with that crazy accent. And it won't be someone from Washington or Oregon, because marijuana and indie music combine to make a really effective bovine sedative. In fact, I hear some meat processors pump in the new Death Cab for Cutie album to make the slaughtering go more smoothly.

So California then. But who's got the stones, the sheer brazen audacity to turn on their own species? Who is so despicable, so fundamentally anti-human, that they would try so hard to take away our hamburgers, our milkshakes? Maybe this conspiracy goes higher than even I could imagine...

F**k you, Ralph Nader

Fuck you, Ralph Nader. I know I already said that in the title, but I'm saying it again. Here, once more - Fuck you, Ralph Nader.

Let it go, you consumer watchdog-humping bastard. These past 7 years of awful governing are your fault. Go back to insisting on safety standards for cars, and not ruining our country.

This is obviously not about 2004, or really any of your presidential runs except the big one. The one where there actually was a difference between Al Gore and President Cokehead Jesusfreak. The one where you decided that it was time for a 3rd party. And that, most of all, is what I blame you for, and why you can go get waterboarded in a secret American prison somewhere in Eastern Europe.

A 3rd party is a great idea. If it were legitimate, it would turn the system on its ear, and even if it doesn't provoke real debate on the issues, at least it gives a little more geometrical diversity to the conventional one-on-one of the Democrats v. the GOP.

And with your little stunt in 2000, you set it back 50 years. And you decide to come out now, when the two frontrunners both appeal to independents, and to many voters equally represent change and a new direction? Fuck you, you deadweight on the bloated corpse of democracy. Are your ideas original? No, they are not. Have you accomplished anything significant other than the resurrection of the Republican party? Again, no. Are you even going to get your name on all 50 ballots? Not if you don't have any money. And who's going to donate, Karl Rove?

Or maybe I'm looking at this wrong. Maybe your reemergence from under your slime-covered rock will remind people what happened last time you decided to get involved, and how badly that turned out for everyone. Your candidacy could actually be a boon, if this is your message:

"I'm running for president so you won't vote for me. I'm here to hark back to what happened in 2000, when I helped the Texan from Connecticut steal an election. So remember, voters, what that led to, and what the danger is of supporting me. I represent nothing other than a warning sign, a 'there but for the grace of G-d goeth the nation.' So support the cause, and don't vote for me. Because a vote for Ralph Nader is a vote for the status quo, it is a non-vote, it is time better spent emptying your mind with reality television and eating fast food. Thank you, and G-d bless America."

There. I almost convinced myself that his candidacy may actually benefit the country.
Almost.

Some thoughts while sitting in the hospital watching Child sleep

Of all the unnerving aspects of the birthing process - and there are so, so many - the one that tops the list, and was most unexpected, was the sheer volume of knowledge I got about my mother-in-law's pregnancys and subsequent biological quirks. For instance, did you know that, 30 years ago, they shaved the hair around the birthing area? I put it delicately because you're not old enough to understand, but ask your older brother, he'll be more than happy to explain it with charts and videos. Aren't you glad you know this?

Science lied to me once again. And all you people who mocked me for disbelieving the whole baby-hoohaa connection can suck a lemon. It turns out there is a different method for removing children from inside mothers - through the gut. What, is the real story not gruesome enough to release to the general public? Got to scare everyone with tall tales of pooping and baby-sized babies squeezing through hoo-haa-sized hoo-haas? I'll never believe anything science has to say, ever again. Which is why Child had his first pastrami sandwich tonight - because milk goes on cereal.

Also, hospital food isn't terrible. What was it, People Who Make Up Old Sayings, you didn't have time to try the vegetable soup? I wish everyone would stop lying to me.

I never knew that I would see literally dozens of men and women come into my room, brazenly whip out Wife's boob, and start massaging it, and I wouldn't punch any of them. She's like an exhibit in a museum, she is.

Hospital wifi is a revelation. How better to mess with your friend's heads than by e-mailing them while Wife recovers from delivery? The key, though, guys, is to wait for your wife to fall asleep. If she's awake, it will not end well for you.

Why aren't arms good enough anymore?

This is my last week before an impossibly loud midget who doesn't speak English will explode through the bottom of Wife and into my existence, preventing me from sleeping past 7 am for the next eighteen years. And even then, I'll be used to getting up so damn early - hell, I'll probably have a regular squash game with Conroy and Fitzpatrick down at the club at 6:30, Monday Wednesday and Thursday. Which is worse than you think, because Conroy cheats, and Fitzpatrick won't shut up about his lawn. So hoooray for that. 

Anyhoo, I've learned many things these past few months. The first thing I learned is that there is no stork - that story is complete crap. Or maybe I'm the stork...I'm not sure anymore. 

The most recent thing I've been taught is that there are dozens, nay, several billion different methods and apparati for carrying a baby. I thought the Swedes, with their Baby Bjorn (it's BJorn, dammit, not BYorn. ENGLISH, people!) were the pacesetters in this industry, but it turns out they're not so great, those gigantic, blond bastards. Aside for the standard B-Giorn there are pouches, and slings, and wheelbarrows that can be wrapped around you, and chairs that can be clamped, via titanium bolts, into your spine. Evidently one is supposed to have a variety to offer your child, because certainly a pygmy who can't see past its nose can determine that a sling is better for its itty bitty spine. And in its place I'm supposed to make a decision about this? I can't even decide if Fetus is a boy or girl. Sure, science tells me that the decision's already made, but it also says that it's natural for babies to pass through vaginas. Does that sound like the sort of thing right-thinking people accept? No, that sounds like some crazy witch-doctor shit. 

So we're copping out, Wife and I. We're getting the pu-pu platter (haha! Chinese food is funny!), and going with the Swedes, and the hippies, and the Japanese. Because nothing is too good for Fetus, except college.