This is Breakfast

My cookbook got a link from Protein Wisdom today. Apparently a guy named Dan Collins is blogging over there. I haven’t kept up with Jeff’s business. Hope he’s writing books. Thanks, Dan. And I got a typically flattering link from Cold Fury. Thanks, sort of.

If you want proof that the book works, click the “Death by Fork” link to your left, and your modem will fry as about 10,000 entries spew out in your browsers. But here’s a little evidence that ought to be persuasive. This is breakfast.

I realize this is not a good thing for a fat person–or anyone–to eat for breakfast, but blueberries are only cheap for a short time, and damn it, I wanted cheesecake. It’s as good as it looks. Actually, it’s much better. That’s a big fork and a big saucer, and they make the slice look small. I used a 10″ pan, and that slice is about 2 1/2″ tall. It’s rich and sweet and cold and heavy, the way a cheesecake should be. Light, airy cheesecake is an abomination. I probably took in 800 calories when I ate that slice.

People are suggesting I put flexible unions on the pool pump. I appreciate that. Like I have said, no one in Miami can do anything right. The old pump was installed without unions, and every time it has needed work, PVC doodads have been spliced into the system, so it’s atrocious. I can see why the old timers used cast iron. This job would have been simple with iron pipes. I ought to splice them in now. Maybe I’ll do that. I am really tired of sawing, gluing, resawing, and regluing. And the PVC will be too short to put unions on, once I get done sawing.

A commenter who is apparently a contractor thinks I made a bad choice, doing the work myself. Well, I saved about $150 by bypassing the local blue collar genius who sells these pumps. I saved maybe a hundred bucks on labor. And so far I have spent a whopping $0 on PVC and materials. I had it all before I started. I estimate I will have to spend another five bucks to get the job done. It will be better than anything a professional has done here. In fact, it will solve leak problems a whole slew of greedy slackjaws caused. The only down side is that I have to spend some time working. Well, that’s the nature of life. If you want something, you work.

Some people think I do my own repairs because I’m cheap. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s called “responsibility.” And it’s only part of the reason. The biggest reason is that most tradesmen in Miami are chimpanzees. There is no union. There is no apprentice system. They cause problem after problem because they’re too unskilled or lazy to do things right, and I end up following behind them, doing the work they were supposed to do.

Very often, I am literally unable to find anyone to do a particular job right, at any price. In some parts of the country, you can still hire competent, honest people. Here, much of the time, it’s impossible.

And tradesmen charge too much. I know a plumber who wrote an estimate for three grand to remove forty feet of mostly above-ground cast iron drain pipe and replace it with PVC. Guess what the materials cost. If it’s more than a hundred dollars, I’ll kiss your rear end on national television. And it’s not skilled labor. Some plumbing takes training, but replacing drain lines is simple.

Here’s something tradesmen who aren’t busy enough should think about. Not everyone is supposed to be rich. If you didn’t complete your education and all you can do is lay bricks, you’re not supposed to have a six-figure income and a giant truck with six doors and a custom paint job. Once a homeowner has seen your three-thousand-dollar estimate for half a day’s unskilled work, learning how to do simple plumbing will not intimidate him. If you’re the homeowner, what’s the down side? You spend a hundred bucks on PVC (probably more like thirty), and maybe you spend fifty on a tool rental. So if you screw up, you’re out between $3000 and $3100. If you succeed, you’re out $100 or less. Someone help me understand why that’s not a good bet to make.

If you’re honest and competent and responsible, you’ll probably be busy every day, and you’ll be able to charge twice what the competition does. I haven’t met anyone who fits that description. Generally, my own work–with zero training and very little skill–is far better than what I get from professionals.

Northern Tool has a set of threading dies for $70. That is starting to sound like a very good deal. I have a dry cut saw. I have a vise. I don’t need a snapper. It will be easier to spend the money than suffer in the heat, scraping old PVC with sandpaper. Screw it. I’ll buy the tools. After that, I’ll make a pipe that screws into the pump. Then I’ll make one that screws into a threaded PVC fitting on the other side. I’ll join them to an elbow, after tightening the joints, with PVC cement. In the future, when a pump goes bad, I’ll cut out the elbow, unscrew the dead ends, throw them away, and make new parts in fifteen minutes. I don’t need this BS. I don’t need to spend my days waiting for boobs to show up and wreck things and leave me worse off than I was to begin with. Life is short. Let the plumbers starve. When I work, I do a good job, and I don’t cheat anyone. Why should I expect less from tradesmen?

If I were practicing law right now, I would get about three hundred dollars per hour. Plumbers often charge substantially more than that, when you break down their bills. That’s just stupid.

People have also suggested I cast a block for the pump to sit on, and that I put the bolts for the pump into the wet concrete. The problem I see here is that it will be impossible to take the bolts out and put new ones in. Someone else suggests casting lag shields in the block. But I don’t think they’ll have room to expand when I screw the bolts in. I think the best thing is to cast the block and use a hammer drill to make holes for the shields. It’s not a big deal. I have the drill, the bit, the shields, and the bolts. For that matter, I happen to have a bag of concrete. The only real work will be building the form. Lucky me; I have a table saw and a big piece of scrap wood.

Hey…I could weld a base up and bolt it to the floor. But it’s humid out there. Rust. Oh, well.

Anyway, I don’t regret cutting contractors out of my life whenever possible. It has been nothing but a blessing, and every one of you should be striving to do the same thing.

Why Cook It?

Just now, as I was eating raw cheesecake batter off a spatula, it occurred to me that cheesecake batter tastes a lot like Key lime pie. And the wheels started turning, and now I want to make a Key lime pie with cream cheese in it.

It won’t be an authentic Key lime pie. Those only contain condensed milk, juice, egg yolks, and maybe–if you’re kooky–some zest, salt, and/or vanilla. And real Conchs don’t cook their pies. Only pansies do that. Citrus juice kills salmonella. Look it up.

Conchs are people from the Keys.

I’m thinking I could make a mixture of sugar and cream cheese, and I could get it to the point where it’s as sweet as condensed milk, and I could substitute it for half of the condensed milk in the recipe.

While I was running errands, I did a victory tour at Barnes & Noble. They only had one copy of my book, so I did the natural thing.

Tonight the Marsala bottle caught my eye. Can you make a cheesecake that somehow includes Marsala? Cheesecake with zabaglione would be weird, but good. Shove some strawberries in it, and you’re ready to go.

Still Leaking

I’ll tell you what’s fun. Installing a new pool pump in a room with water on the floor, on a day when the temperature is 94 degrees and the humidity is at 65%. This is one of those jobs where you come in the house and drop your shirt on the floor, and it goes “FWOP.”

I had to take off my sunglasses, because every time I looked down, they filled with sweat.

I got the damn pump in, and I guess I didn’t screw the “in” fitting in hard enough. I was afraid I’d deform the threads. Now it leaks. And because it’s PVC, it can’t be backed out unless I saw up the pipes.

Other than that, it looks like a fine pump. I am going to have to build a platform for it. The old one was sitting on half a cinderblock, and it’s not high enough to reach the new pump. I pulled a Fred Sanford and stuffed boards under it, but that’s not going to work. Maybe the best thing would be to buy a bag of concrete with fiber in it, make a form, and cast a block for the pump to sit on. Easier than sawing up wood, and no rot. And I could drill into it and run bolts down from the pump base. I think it’s bad for the joints when the pump shifts during on/off moments. Bolts are probably a good idea.

Now…pity me…I have to get up and make cheesecake. And I forgot to buy sour cream.

You Take the Bad With the Good

Arrgh.

New pool pump. Guess who is about to install it? Here is some advice. Don’t even think about buying one of these at a bricks and mortar store. Store price? $379, plus tax. Internet? $239, plus very reasonable shipping.

I realize that local store owners have to make money, but it seems like anything related to a swimming pool automatically costs 50% more than it should, just as anything related to a boat or a pet bird costs more. The industry seems to attract small timers who don’t understand that quick nickels are better than slow dollars. I would have been thrilled to buy this locally, even at a small premium, but these people must be smoking crack, charging $379 without even checking to see what Ebay vendors charge.

Got a pool? Guess what? Your pump is probably too big. It turns out that 1.5″ pipe will only allow something like 44 gallons per minute. That usually means a pump with one horsepower or less. Yet many pool doofuses install giant pumps that suck huge amounts of electricity while laboring unsuccessfully to push water through undersized pipes. You waste electricity, and the pump wears out early.

More pool trivia: it’s probably cheaper to run a small pump all day than a big pump for eight hours. This is a very small pump, and I plan to run it 16 hours per day. It should do a better job than the old pump, for less money.

I’m getting incredible comments on the book. Thank you. This is exactly what I was hoping for, but it’s still an experience. I felt in my heart that this book was going to reach people, in a way that the others could not. That’s why I wanted to publish this one first. When you try to break into writing, you have to listen to marketing people and agents and experienced editors, and you can’t discount what they tell you. And in the end, you get to publish what they let you publish. Sometimes that’s a good thing. But I have had tremendous faith in Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook ever since the idea popped into my head. And I couldn’t get it to the market until I published those two other books.

It’s a miracle anyone bought the spam book. You have to wade through endless badly written 419 emails to get to the funny stuff. There was no way to avoid that; it’s the nature of the project. It’s worth it, if you’re a real reader. Most book buyers don’t fit that description. They want a quick scan and instant gratification. It’s not surprising that the caveman book was not a giant hit. The show that was supposed to put wind under its wings was killed by the thought police. And how many people just naturally gravitate to caveman books? Very few. This book, on the other hand, ought to have much more appeal. It’s easy to read, the recipes are actually good, and I think I did a creditable job with the humor.

People are putting up Amazon reviews and sending me emails. I am grateful for all of them. Don’t hesitate to ask for recipe clarification. It’s important to me that people succeed with this stuff. One of my pet peeves with professional cooks is that all they care about is making money; they don’t care whether the food they tell you how to prepare is any good. I care. I want people to cook this stuff and say, “Holy cow, this is unbelievable. That was eleven dollars and one cent well spent.” I don’t have a staff of underpaid minions writing my recipes for me. I don’t take credit for things written by faceless underlings, without checking to see if the recipes are good. Other cookbook writers and food personalities do those things as a matter of course. You can tell when you try their awful recipes.

Don’t forget, I have a P.O. box where you can send copies for autographing. With return postage and a suitable envelope, mind you. I plan to check the box once a week. I tried to get a post office box that was more convenient, but it was impossible. They have removed the parking lot at the Coconut Grove P.O. That means I have to cross US 1 and go through a bunch of lights and park in the hood, so I won’t be going every day.

You can send the other books if you want.

I’m going to try to get that cheesecake made today. I don’t see how I can survive without it.

Keep the comments and emails coming, and if you really want to help, email people and tell them about the book. This is the kind of book people like giving to fat men as a gift; you probably know someone who is perfectly suited to it.

Thanks again. I’m out.

Blogger in Town

I now have brownies in the oven. Fausta, of Fausta’s Blog, is in town, and she invited me to have dinner with her family. Fausta was kind enough to interview me last year for her Blogtalkradio podcast. We somehow managed to score over 700 listeners. I offered to bring brownies, and she accepted, and then it turned out she couldn’t eat the damned things. But her family will like them.

I doubt I’ll have any brownies. I rarely indulge. But I bought three pints of blueberries, and tomorrow there will be cheesecake. God help me. I could not stop myself.

I rented a new P.O. box, in case anyone wants to send me copies of Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook to autograph. SASE, please. Unless you want Marvin to have a new toy. I don’t really care which book you send. I’ll autograph the others, too. I have a feeling only one person will take me up on this, but so many people have asked, I had to give it a shot. Email me if you want the address.

The Post Office has a sign that says you can’t carry a weapon on the property. And that sign is way inside the building, so you have to be inside to see it. That’s government wisdom for you. It should say, “If you can read this, you have just committed a felony.”

I Want to Rub it in my Hair

I hate to write anything today, because a new blog entry will bump that magnificent cheesecake photo off the top of the page. Wait, I know how to avoid that.

A commenter says he prefers his food to be imperfect-looking, because it suggests it’s intended to be eaten. I sort of agree. I have never understood the “presentation” fetish. I can understand trying to make food look reasonably good, but as far as I’m concerned, all tasty food looks good.

I think food that is too perfect can be off-putting. Food is a lot like women. The most attractive women aren’t the perfect ones. The most attractive women have a lot of good features, plus one or two things that make them look “possible.” If a woman looks so great you know you have no shot, she tends to become invisible.

I now have three reviews up on Amazon, and I only had to write one of them. A reader named Jennifer put one up. Thanks, Jennifer! Nothing looks worse than a book with no reviews. My publisher is trying to get the old book removed, and they want to move the old reviews to the new book’s page. I hope they succeed.

I wish I had had time to fix all the problems with the book. The cornbread recipe is wrong. It says 2/3 of a cup of milk, and the actual figure is 1 1/2. Also, as I’ve said, there are some jokes that go over the top. Some people will think I’m a jerk, and it will be hard to blame them. Maybe I’ll eventually get an opportunity to make a few more edits.

Humor is like alcohol. When you’re a creative person and jokes are coming to you, it becomes intoxicating, and your judgment becomes impaired. If I were married, I could show my writing to my wife. Then if I found myself sleeping on the couch, I’d know I had to do some editing. But I’m on my own, so I make mistakes. That’s life.

One of the peculiar things about my sense of humor is that I often write things that don’t reflect my feelings at all. A lot of my jokes actually contradict what I feel. It’s hard to explain that to people who think every joke is based in real sentiment.

I want to thank Sondra. She always comes through for me. She’s putting up a free ad for my book.

Man, I need a cheesecake. That picture is killing me.

Get the Defibrillator

You know what season it is? CHEESECAKE SEASON. Blueberries are cheap right now, and I think it’s time for me to bake a blueberry cheesecake.

Here’s one I made last year. I wish I knew how to make them pretty.

I know you won’t believe me (except for Keith, who has had my recipe for a long time), but this is the best cheesecake imaginable. A big, heavy cheesecake with none of that bitter vegetable-grease aftertaste. You will weep with pleasure.

Assuming you buy my book. Otherwise, you’re screwed.

Works with any berry. Doesn’t have to be blueberry.

I Have a Million of These

Mr. Tool Idiot has struck again.

I had an electric leaf blower in the garage. It was always in the way. I had a Rubbermaid hook designed to hold up yard tools. I figured it was time to introduce them to each other. The hook wasn’t designed for this thing, but I found a way to make them work together, and I decided to put the hook about nine feet off the ground so I could reach up and hang the blower far out of my way.

No problem. I unfolded my ladder and set it up. I drilled a 1/4″ hole with my wonderful hammer drill. I inserted a plastic anchor and used my Panasonic impact driver to drive a screw into it. I marked the position for the other screw. I swung the hook out of the way. I drilled the hole, seated the anchor, and started driving the screw. And when it got down to the surface of the hook IT POPPED OFF NEARLY FLUSH WITH THE WALL.

Damn, Rubbermaid gave me crappy screws! I’ve never had a screw just pop off like that. A decent screw will strip before it will break. This one was almost like pot metal. And now I had half a millimeter of screw sticking out of the wall, with a plastic anchor preventing me from gripping it.

Vise-Grips were useless. I didn’t know what to do. Finally I remembered…the expensive propane torch one of you numbskulls tempted me into buying. I might be able to melt the anchor, exposing more of the screw, and then maybe I’d be able to get it out with Vise-Grips. And naturally, once I had this idea, I couldn’t find the damn torch. So I got up there and held a Bic lighter up to the screw. And believe it or not, it worked. I was able to grab the screw and back it out, and I replaced it with a better one.

I’m still mad. Things like this just shouldn’t happen.

I can’t remember who it was…that person who, knowing I have no willpower, told me I needed a propane torch. But I owe him. Otherwise I’d be out in the garage, sobbing.

While I was out there I noticed something horrible. A little oil where the T-bird sits. Just enough to be annoying. I hope to God it came out around the oil filter gasket. I can just hear the thief with his name on his shirt now. “That engine’s going to have to come out.”

Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook got a nice plug over at Dyspepsia Generation. Thanks for the help, Tim! Also, Emperor Misha sent me a ton of readers, even though I have neglected him shamefully. Thanks, Misha. Here’s Ellison’s take: PUTTING THE “DIE” IN “DIET.” Thanks, Ellison. And it goes without saying that Moxie gave me a free Blogad!

I don’t know who else is linking to me, but when I find out, I’ll mention it here.

The press release, oddly, seems to be having an effect. Ordinarily, you just assume it’s $80 down the toilet. But it’s bringing people to my other site, albeit in small numbers.

If any of you feel like putting up Amazon or Barnes & Noble reviews, I’ll be eternally grateful. Sparrow already put one up. Thank you, dear.

I can always use more links. People linked to me before the book was released, and that was very kind of them. But the links have a much bigger effect when folks know the book is already out.

And now it’s time for a break. Yesterday was Meat Day, and I completely ignored it. This is the day every week when I get my Winn-Dixie email ad.

Hmm…it’s pretty weak. They have ground chuck for $1.99 a pound, and turkey drumsticks at $1.39 a pound.

One of my favorite manly lunch items is a drumstick with stuffing. You salt and season a drumstick–poultry seasoning should be okay–and you pile stuffing next to it on some sort of baking pan. Then you roast it. The grease in the drumstick comes out and permeates the stuffing. I suppose there is no reason why you couldn’t use Stove Top if you were in a hurry. Turkey drumsticks are wonderful. When you hold one in your hand, you feel like Henry VIII.

They have whole chickens for 79¢ per pound. That’s a bright spot in a difficult meat week.

I’ve Been Dying to Say That

One of the first things I did today when I turned on the PC was to check and see if the Supreme Court had issued an opinion in the Heller case. We all knew the drama would end this morning. I had to wait a while, but they finally ruled.

People are excited because they killed the DC gun ban. I don’t know why that would be a big thrill at this point. We all expected that. And we knew the court was going to rule that the dishonest far-left “militia” argument was nonsense. So there’s no big news to report yet. We still have to root through the opinion to find out exactly how helpful it is. We knew the bums were going to lose, as Mr. Lebowski would put it. What we did not know was how badly they would lose.

I haven’t read the opinion yet. If Scalia was on his game, and he got his way, it will be a clear and decisive ruling that you have to have a damn good reason to screw with the availability and use of firearms. If not, expect a limited impact. It’s possible to get a favorable decision which doesn’t do you much good.

In the first Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court opinion, the unfortunate phrase “all deliberate speed” was used. The evils of segregation were to be remedied “with all deliberate speed.” Sounded like a victory. But for years after the decision, hostile courts seized on that phrase and essentially claimed it meant “slowly.” That’s an oversimplification, but that was how it shook out in practice. If Scalia left any wiggle room in the opinion, the bums will find it, and they’ll exploit it, and we’ll see more frivolous, overly broad gun bans.

All I know about the language of the opinion is that it contains this passage: “Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” Imagine what the bums will do with that, if it isn’t clarified. Their eagerness to exploit the phrase is revealed by the fact that this is the only phrase the liberal media is widely quoting today.

It’s a good day for right-thinking, law-abiding people who don’t have granola for brains. How good? We don’t know yet.

We can take solace in this fact. Today hippies everywhere are drinking their bathwater.

Oops. Oxymoron.

More

Here’s the holding, from the opinion. When a court issues an opinion, assuming the opinion was not written by Sandra Day O’Connor, the opinion will contain rules lower courts can apply. These rules are “holdings.” Scalia, brain that he is, laid out the court’s holding in this case in a prefatory section separate from the rest of the opinion.

Held:
1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. Pp. 2–53.
(a) The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms. Pp. 2–22.
(b) The prefatory clause comports with the Court’s interpretation of the operative clause. The “militia” comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. The Antifederalists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing army or a select militia to rule. The response was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved.
Pp. 22–28.
(c) The Court’s interpretation is confirmed by analogous armsbearing rights in state constitutions that preceded and immediately followed the Second Amendment. Pp. 28–30.
(d) The Second Amendment’s drafting history, while of dubious interpretive worth, reveals three state Second Amendment proposals that unequivocally referred to an individual right to bear arms. Pp. 30–32.
(e) Interpretation of the Second Amendment by scholars, courts and legislators, from immediately after its ratification through the late 19th century also supports the Court’s conclusion. Pp. 32–47.
(f) None of the Court’s precedents forecloses the Court’s interpretation. Neither United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553, nor Presser v. Illinois, 116 U. S. 252, 264–265, refutes the individual rights interpretation. United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174, does not limit the right to keep and bear arms to militia purposes, but rather limits the type of weapon to which the right applies to those used by the militia, i.e., those in common use for lawful purposes. Pp. 47–54.
2. Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or
laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. Pp. 54–56.
3. The handgun ban and the trigger-lock requirement (as applied to self-defense) violate the Second Amendment. The District’s total ban on handgun possession in the home amounts to a prohibition on an entire class of “arms” that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the lawful purpose of self-defense. Under any of the standards of scrutiny the Court has applied to enumerated constitutional rights, this prohibition—in the place where the importance of the lawful defense of self, family, and property is most acute—would fail constitutional muster. Similarly, the requirement that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock makes it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional. Because Heller conceded at oral argument that the D. C. licensing law is permissible if it is not enforced arbitrarily and capriciously, the Court assumes that a license will satisfy his prayer for relief and does not address the licensing requirement. Assuming he is not disqualified from exercising Second Amendment rights, the District must permit Heller to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home. Pp. 56–64.

Judging from this part of the opinion, it’s not too good. Clearly, states will conclude they don’t have to issue carry permits. And we can expect college students to remain prime targets for rapists and murderers, because the Supreme Court says it’s okay to ban guns in schools. The bit about unusual weapons means we can look forward to more “assault weapon” bans and restrictions on magazine capacities.

States can’t ban handguns, and they can’t make ridiculous laws making it impossible to use guns effectively in our homes. That’s all I see here. Whoopee. A few people in cities ruled by hippies will be able to buy guns, and the cities will be able to force them to get permits, and the Supreme Court has issued virtually no guidance as to how restrictive permit laws can be. So DC’s permit law will be crafted in a manner that will make it nearly impossible for anyone to qualify.

Seems to me like we got screwed.

I may be wrong because I haven’t read the whole opinion, but don’t expect me to read the entire 157-page mess. I am willing to let the wonks handle that.

More

Look at this: “Petitioners and today’s dissenting Justices believe that it protects only the right to possess and carry a firearm in connection with militia service.”

That should send chills down your spine. Look how close we came to losing the right to bear arms. If you’re one of the many idiots who do not understand that a vote for a liberal President is a vote for judges who will destroy your rights, you need to have your face rubbed in this sentence over and over. And if you’re stupid enough to stay home as a protest or vote for Bob Barr, helping Obama get elected, you deserve to live in North Korea. All four far-left judges wanted to repeal the Second Amendment, and the only thing that saved us was the presence of that perpetual embarrassment, Kennedy.

Had Al Gore won the 2000 election, we would not have Alito or Roberts, and the individual right to bear arms would no longer exist, and every one of us would be facing the possibility of total gun confiscation, with no constitutional remedy. We would have to rely on the good judgment of our state and local governments to protect us.

It Hurts to Sit on One

You truly will not believe this. It’s like something out of a Terry Gilliam movie. A major retail company has contacted me about selling my book. I can’t tell you what kind of company, but I can tell you that you will derive endless amusement from it, if it pans out. This is the craziest thing that has ever happened to me.

Details will follow, as I become aware of them.

More

Whoops. I may have my companies confused. This may be a different outfit with a similar name. Still, the potential for amusement is there.

Even More

I spoke too soon! I now think this is a scam. When you upload a press release on Prweb, which is what I used because I’m a low-budget operation, scammers will pick it up and offer you what they claim are amazing promotion deals.

Here’s what someone on a forum has to say about these people:

I received a call from someone at the ______ wanting to sell my product. They will develop marketing; the tv comercial and the internet ads to sell. But they want a substantial investment from me upfront for all of this and they will certianly make money as well on the mark up. Is this legit? Anyone out there heard of this Company?

When my press release went out, the first response I got was from some outfit claiming it could list my book on “THREE TOP LITERARY SITES.” Whatever that means. I have no idea what the pitch was. I deleted the emails immediately. I’m not stupid.

If you’re trying to get PR for a product or book or something, learn from my mistakes. PR people are not in the business of promotion. They are in the business of lining their pockets. That’s their primary goal. They’re in the business of ripping off gullible people who have dreams and need exposure. If they help you, great, but it’s incidental. Be extremely careful whom you trust. Big-time firms with proven reputations may do great work for you. And you’ll know they’re for real, because it will be hard to get them to accept you as a client. Other than that, steer clear.

The first and most important PR job a PR firm does is the job of selling itself to you. Think about that.

I’m virtually positive that the firm I hired last year shopped me around to a network of losers and cronies, for the purpose of helping them, not me. For example, they booked me on a podcast no one has ever heard of. They booked me on a show at 7:30 a.m. on a Sunday, claiming the host sold a lot of books. Come on. Who turns on the radio at 7:30 on a Sunday? Nobody. I might as well have been interviewed on Mars.

I found that I was able to get better PR on my own, free of charge, than these “professionals” got for me. I got interviews they couldn’t–or at least didn’t–get me. Easily. They claim a lot of well-known pundits as clients. All I can say is, famous people are suckers, too.

There is a simple way to determine whether someone who expresses interest in promoting your product is for real. If they want even a penny from you, up front, and you’ve never heard of them, they’re crooks or losers. Period.

The world is cruel to dreamers. I’m sure a lot of people borrow and beg to pay for worthless promotion. There is a special place in hell for someone who takes advantage of a person who is just starting out and who is desperate for help from any quarter.

Vasectomy Scheduled

I hate letting mechanics touch my car. Because I’m cheap? No. Well. Yes. But also because they’re crooks, and when you let them near your car to fix something cheap, like tires that need to be rotated, they will often sabotage something expensive so they can fix that, too. “Look, man, there’s a big slit on your sidewall, almost like some illiterate moron with his name on his shirt put it on a hoist and hit it with a box cutter. Better get you a set of new tires.”

If it were not for this, I would take Kim du Toit’s advice and pay the bastards to do maintenance. If a twenty-dollar job really were a twenty-dollar job, I’d have no problem paying to have it done. The problem is, half the time, a twenty-dollar job is a five-hundred-dollar job.

So anyway, I decided to rotate my tires. And what a nightmare it has been. Why is it that everything I try to do with tools is a CF the first time around?

I bought a low-profile jack and some chocks at Northern Tool. I even talked to T-bird owners and found out how low the pad had to be. Then I tried to put it under the car, and it wouldn’t fit. Why? The pad was fine, but the jack itself was too high. The jacking points on the front of the car are maybe 18″ in from the side of the car, so half of the jack has to go under there. And this car is REALLY low. I didn’t realize until I got down there and looked. It’s scary to stick your arm under there when it’s on a jack.

Great. I drove my ass to Northern Tool again and bought a chintzy jack with an even lower profile. The only one they sold which had any chance of fitting under the car. Then I came back and looked at my blog comments, and people were telling me something that should have been obvious: put boards under the tires to raise the car before jacking it.

ARRGH.

I kept the jack anyway, because 1. new tool! and 2. I didn’t want to “Fred Sanford” the job up any more than necessary.

Tonight I jacked the front right tire up; the jack cleared the body by about 1/8 of an inch. I couldn’t figure out what to put the jackstand under. You will love this. In the sweat and misery of the moment, I put it under the A-arm. There was nothing else down there to put it under. I then took off the tire, using my sweet Ebay impact wrench and ungodly huge compressor.

I jacked up the rear right tire, which was much easier. I took it off. No need for a jackstand; I was only going to be a minute, putting the front tire on the rear hub. I did that, and then I lowered the rear end.

I put the front tire on and tried to jack the car up so I could pull the jackstand out. And you know what happened. When the car went up, the suspension extended. So the A-arm was still resting on the stand. There was no way to pull it out. This was one of the many moments when I have wondered whether it was my civic duty to have myself sterilized.

I stood there and looked at it for quite a while. I didn’t want to use that tiny jack to lift the car until the suspension ran out of travel. Finally, I figured out what to do. I got my big jack and jacked up the A-arm until I could pull the jackstand out. Naturally, I had to remove the tire to do this. Then I put the tire back on, lowered the car, and did the other side. This time I used my brain and put the jackstand under the rear axle.

I love the impact wrench, but I can’t figure out how to use it to tighten lug nuts. It has no torque measurement. I use it to take the lug nuts off, and I use it to tighten them most of the way. But I had to use a tire iron to finish up. It turned out my torque wrench didn’t go high enough, so I overtightened the lug nuts a bit, applying pressure to the iron with my foot. I know what I weigh, and I know how long a tire iron is, so I know I was exceeding the required torque.

I’ll bet there’s some kind of doodad you put on a impact wrench that lets you set the torque. Life would be intolerable if there were not. I’ll also bet mechanics in garages rarely bother to apply the right torque. I’ll bet the average dork in a Goodyear store blasts the nuts on there really hard, to avoid exerting himself to check the torque.

I bought the big jack because I figured bigger was better, and also because I figured I might need it if I helped my dad with his vehicles. Now I have a jack which is totally useless for my own car. Score one for Dad.

Another amusing note: I bought a $20 rubber-covered jack pad for my big jack, from Eastwood. I didn’t want to mar up the frame of my car. I had to saw it down to size with a dry cut saw, and I treated the cut end with truck bed paint to prevent rust. And now it won’t fit the only jack I have which works on my car. After blowing $20, I realized there was an economical alternative. A WASHCLOTH. Man, I feel stupid. I folded a crappy washcloth and put it on the jack, and it worked fine.

I rotated those damn tires, though. I finally did it. After paying the thieves at Maroone Ford $17.95 to not do it and say they had.

That’s the tire-rotation story. I wish to God I knew someone I could trust to do it for twenty bucks.

How to Pimp, Painlessly

If you want to help my book, here’s what you do. Don’t buy fifty copies and lose your home. Just mention the book to other people. Maybe send an email to friends who might enjoy it. You can link to the Amazon page or this press release: CLICK.

Unfortunately, the Amazon page stinks. We’re trying to fix it. And we’re trying to get rid of the old book’s page and move the reviews to the new page.

Rank was 2324 last time I looked. Thanks again.

Here’s a question. Let’s say Home Depot has a product you want, and you go to the local store, and it costs X. Then you go online, and the same product is 0.9 times X. With free shipping. So you save, gas, time, shipping charges, and aggravation.

How does Home Depot expect to get people into its stores if they do that?

Thanks to You

I want to thank all the people who are placing orders for the Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook. You drove it from 400,000-something to 3330 on Amazon today. That doesn’t mean I’m getting rich, but it means people are buying. Thank you for supporting my work. I’m happy when people show up to read my work for nothing, so imagine how I feel when I see that people are willing to pay.

Even if the book does well, the rank will surely dip and rise a few times, so you can’t read too much into it.

I always feel like I haven’t done enough for my readers. There are things in the book I wish I had been able to rewrite. Always remember, I’m happy to clarify or correct anything you don’t understand.

I don’t know if I’ll get any support from bloggers on this book; they may feel like they already pushed it in 2004. Of course, that was a vastly inferior book. If enough people bug me, I’m willing to set up a PO box so you can send your copies to be signed. I did that last time, after being asked to, and only one person sent a book! I don’t care; I can blow another 68 bucks and see what happens.

The next month or so should tell the tale. If it sells, it sells. If not, I may have to quit writing and become a mediator. I don’t want to sue people any more; that’s the one thing I’m sure of. I have plenty of confidence in my product, but in this world, that’s not the only factor that determines whether writers succeed. Really bad writers do well, and good writers starve. You have to find a way to let enough people know about your book to create a groundswell.

I’ll try to make the next book cleaner and less mean. In the meantime, do me a favor and overlook the passages that bother you.

“What’s Your Hourly Rate on a Front-End Loader?”

Yesterday Sondra was saying mean things about her sister, who is supposedly enjoying the high life on welfare. I felt I had to comment. Here is the exchange:

Is your sister hot?

comment by Steve H. Graham on 06/24 at 04:29 PM

If you like your women 6’1” and 300 pounds.

comment by Headmistress Sondrak on 06/24 at 04:32 PM

Deuce…deuce and a quarter.

comment by Steve H. Graham on 06/24 at 04:37 PM

Hold on while I rent a pallet jack.

comment by Steve H. Graham on 06/24 at 04:45 PM

Anyway, Sondra apparently felt bad, because she put this recipe up for her sister to enjoy. CLICK.