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.

Why I'd be the best leader for Greenland

In all the hubbub over Georgia trying to convince Russia that no means no, a bunch of other states want to move out of Mom and Dad's basement, despite the free rent. Greenland's story is the most compelling to me.

First, you have the first public act of sarcasm in human history. I knew about the Vikings and their love of funny hats,



but who knew they were so edgy? Now they're like the Janeane Garofalo of ancient empires.

The one thing that connects these in utero nations is their need for a leader. Someone with the fiery charisma and wild-eyed antisocial nature to really bring their new independence into sharp relief. And that is why I think I'm the perfect new king - or prime minister, or premier, I'm not too choosy about titles - for Greenland.

Other candidates may have stronger backgrounds in diplomacy, or management. But what I bring to the prow of the Greenland schooner is iconoclasm.

You want crazy ideas? Deal with these: I don't think Cypress is a real country. I think Vladimir Putin, deep down, wishes he'd never abandoned his ballet lessons. I believe dragons are the solution to the world's dependency on oil. Bunny rabbits represent all that is evil and unholy. Penny loafers are ugly, but make excellent doorstops.

It's this sort of nowhere-near-center thinking that will make Greenland a power player in the 21st century. With my firm hand on Greenland's mane I shall lead its gallop past other upstarts like Venezuela, Gibbon, and Papua New Guinea. Who will know how to deal with our truth? Together, Greenland, we will captivate the imaginations of the 24-hour news networks, and the PR will be fantastic, and unending. Tourism will skyrocket with my creation of the "Snow-Shoveling Championships," to take place annually until all the snow melts.

But then we won't need the snow, because the natural beauty of our great nation will finally be laid bare before the lustful eyes of the other nations. The U.N. will clamor to move its office to our southern coast, if only to make vacationing more convenient. Decades away, you say? Not if we start burning coal right now. Aerosol sprays, bans on recycling, subsidies for the use of plastics - as your leader I will do everything in my power to expedite global warming.

And when the seas rise, and the sun beats down mercilessly on the middle of the planet (now extending into southern Canada and the Russian steppe), people will flock to Greenland, and we shall be the new Global Empire. All this is possible if you make me your president, or "Snowman on High," or whatever your CEO designation may be.

Sure, there's a constitution to draft, and wigs to wear, and a war of independence and all that to be accomplished. And what of a national anthem (I suggest "Don't Stop Believing," by Journey)? But I hate wigs, and my penmanship is dreadful. Let's let the pinhead beareaucrats handle the details. In the meantime I'll be telling Denmark to go fuck itself, and leading a pack of Greenlanders toward the harbor, where we'll dump box after box of danishes into the icy Atlantic ocean.

Danishes, by the way, are my least favorite pastry. They're sticky, and they often contain fruit, which has no business within a sugary treat. So nuts to them, and nuts to you, Denmark. Greenland forever!

Yes I am, and no, I have no idea

He was a great writer and all, but F. Scott Fitzgerald was a dick. Yeah, Zelda was mentally unbalanced when they met, but his behavior didn't help the situation. But give the man credit, he knew it. He said - and here I'm paraphrasing, if not wholly making it up - that in order to be great, a writer must be a bastard, selfish, and greedy. I don't know if that's the only way to do it, but of the many published writers I know (2? No, definitely at least 3) 14% are complete douchebags. So there's gotta be something to it, right?

Right now, in my e-possession, I have 40-odd stories in various stages of completion. I also have a large unwieldy, thing, codenamed "Olga," that at this point I am consciously avoiding. I also have a wife who is slowly going insane, as the weirdness of moving back in with her parents splits her brain in two. Then there is Child, who at 4 months doesn't need to demand my attention because he gets it anyway, being obviously the smartest, handsomest, and kindest soul ever to inhabit a onesie.

I need time for all that, plus keeping up with the politics thing, and the Jewness thing, and the experimenting with transvestism thing...there's a lot on my plate. So something has to go. And if you'll notice, there is one substantial portion of my focus, one particularly dear to at least two of my six (seven? Is it seven yet?) readers, that is missing. And that would be sports.

Starting today I am giving up my passionate devotion to all sports, except for football.

My first thought was equivocation: I could put this off a month, and wait to see how the Penguins do in their pursuit of the Stanley Cup, whether the Hornets can prove themselves to be a second generation Phoenix Suns, or whether the Celtics can give their fantastically non-clutch superstar Kevin Garnett the title he so achingly desires, or whether Lebron could really take a mediocre Cavs team, less impressive even than Jordan's Jordanaires, all the way to a championship. Then I thought of the Brewers, and all that young talent, and that it looked like maybe Ben Sheets would stick around for 200 innings, and they might give the Cardinals a run for their money, and that could take me all the way to August, when training camp starts for the NFL. Then I realized that this was the sort of thing I wanted to avoid if I was going to do this.

So. Since Friday I have not once logged on to ESPN.com, nor Kissing Suzy Kolber, nor Free Darko. I won't even link to those fantastic sources of information, for fear of getting sucked in once again. And I will continue not checking those websites - or any sports website - or watching games on TV, excepting, again, football, until one of two things occurs: either I publish a story in some obscure, online-only literary magazine with a readership of 12, who themselves were assigned to read it as a writing workshop experiment in awful internet writing, or I finish a draft of Olga.

To put the questions to the answers in the post's title: "Are you fucking serious?" and "Do you have any idea how long you think you can keep this up?"

I assume Brothers A and S will keep me updated somehow, and I am still getting ESPN the magazine, so it's not like I'm going to shack up in the cave next to Bin Laden. But no TrueHoop, no Deadspin, no WithLeather, no Sporting News. No NBA on TNT, no Versus, no ESPN. Don't think I'm not terrified. But it's either this or I get Wife another husband, and she's already had it with the one she's got, so she's not really inclined to get all Mormony.

As a last hurrah, though, here are some thoughts on the NBA playoffs and one or two on baseball, which, now that I don't live in Boston, I don't really have to care about.

- I hate his team, I hate his style, I hate his combover, but Greg Popovich is simply a great coach. He will do whatever it takes to win, even if it means taking the entire sport of basketball down into the Dungeon of Unwatchability, which is what we in the bizz like to call San Antonio. Tony Parker has gotten too good for a French guy married to Eva Longoria, and with all those titles there is no doubt that Tim Duncan is better than Kevin Garnett. This will bear out if they meet in the finals: Popovich will take Doc Rivers into the deep grasses and show him what it is to be a real coach of men.

- I don't know if you noticed, but Chris Paul? That guard on the Hornets (when did they leave Charlotte?) is pretty good. He can dribble, and he's got a bit of touch around the rim, and he can poke that ball away with those sticky fingers, and that 3-pointer looks near effortless, and he throws lobs like parabolic poetry, and his teeth are perfectly white and straight. I bet he's real good to his mama, too.

- Now that Barry Bonds is gone, and Julio Franco is retired, there's no reason to care about baseball. I can't even root for the Diamondbacks to keep up their hot streak because they're an expansion team, and have already won a championship, over the Yankees, no less. So baseball isn't such a loss.

- Oh, and Cedric Benson? Don't think there's not plenty of time between now and August for me to find you, and slice your Achilles tendons while you're not looking. The only compelling reason for me not to bother is that I don't have the time for Chicago to host a parade in my honor, and give me a key to the city.

Rollo Horschmeier - the Urbans are coming!

Good fellow citizens in capitalism,

There is a phenomenon that, until now, I have been able to ignore. What happened over the weekend in South Carolina is but the most recent example of a certain kind of individual gaining prominence in our good land. As a staunch supporter of small town squares, neighborhoods in which one may sound out one's children with sparklers and a slingshot and not have to worry whether anyone might put out an eye, and of course cotton candy, these Urbanites threaten everything that is good and right in this country. 

If you have not encountered these gritty, citified masses, then you have not had to deal with their coarse manner, their off-putting commitment to being different, both in appearance and philosophy. Consider some of their more disturbing character traits:

 - Their music is often driven, nay, possessed, by carnal rhythms, and chanted in tribal formulae that hypnotize naive women and cause them to perform garish gyrations. Nowhere may be heard a banjo, or even a ukulele. 

 - Their manner of dress is sloppy, and unoriginal. Our sporting shirts and khaki trousers have been transmogrified into baggy wastes of cloth. Alternatively, they may dress in suits that are too short, too tight, revealing all manner of private sinuosities. Soon no doubt we shall see some Urbanite wearing some horribly mangled priestly vestments, designed only to shock and titillate. 

 - They have an unnatural preference for public transportation. Who doesn't prefer the quiet moments behind the wheel of one's own automobile, free from the smells and pressures of other people's filthy bodies? One might be inclined to suggest the taxicab as a happy compromise between the Urbanites and the rest of us good Americans, but again, there is the stench of foreign breath, and unknown spices and flavors. Disgusting.

Obviously there are the standard aversions to hard work, self-determination, and ponies, but these need not be repeated. Simply put, the Urbanites want to be paid by the government to wear their baggy or tight clothes, play their basso profundo music, and take their trains to smoky clubs where seditious plots and revolutions are fomented. It is incumbent upon us, then, to push back with our pure, snowy might, and vote against the insurgents. As a proper corporate citizen, my vote can only be fore Governor Romney, in all his robotic glory. Programmed for right, with that dreamy grin and perfect hair, Mitt is my man. And he's also the man for our kind of America. A non-Urban America. 

To the booths, ladies and gentlemen, and then on to the malls, and the big box retailers, and to Wal-Mart! Onward, corporate soldiers!

Bad Penmanship Is a Sign of the Devil

The world today is fraught with danger. Some of these life-threatening life-threateners are visible to the naked eye: sociopathic clowns wielding chainsaws, vats of sulfuric acid surrounded by loose gunpowder, perhaps vampires.

I'm not afraid of these obviously sinister characters. What really scares me is the unknown. The indecipherable. Evil incoherent. Remember that little boy (and it's always a boy; girls are too careful to let their diabolic nature manifest itself in a random grammar quiz) who sat next to you in the third grade, who would sneak a nibble at his boogers when he thought no one was looking, but you always caught him? His handwriting was terrible. He never learned to write a proper cursive "z." Do you know what that lad does now?

He kills neighborhood pets, just for kicks.

But who knew to suspect little Roger? It took me twenty years to understand the threat, to comprehend the precarious limb upon which society is balanced. But I've seen it too many times to ignore it now. And that's why I'm going to become a Satanist.

I must concede, for the good of humankind, that my handwriting is nearly illegible. My 6's look like G's, my e's disappear, showing up randomly at the end of "the," and then only as a squiggle. My m's, n's and r's are indistinguishable. Often I have no idea what I've written as a reminder to myself: am I supposed to see the doctor, or wash the car? I have no understanding of my own mind. What evil lurks in my heart? The Shadow would know, if he could read chicken-scratch.

So I shall devote myself to the propagation of evil. I will trip old ladies as they cross the street, and beat up cub scouts. I must fulfill my destiny as revealed through my handwriting, a clear indication that my life is meant to do Lucifer's work. The very sight of my grocery lists will make grown men weep, and clergy hose themselves off with holy water. My personal checks, abominations every one, will be used to purchase diabolical utensils, like sporks, and pentagram branding irons.

No one may understand what I've written, but now the world can be sure that whatever appears on my stationery shall be missives from the depths of Hell. Or maybe just a to-do list. A vile, odious to-do list.