Inside Joke for People Who Bought Book

I am getting more emails about Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook. I can’t get it through my head that people take this book seriously as a cookbook, because I wrote it to make readers laugh, but the recipes do work, and people seem to like them. This guy actually took the time to make the hash brown casserole! This one takes WORK.

I don’t name people who email me when I mention what they say, unless I’m sure they want to be named or won’t care. Here it is:

I cooked up the hashbrown casserole tonight. It was awesome. I needed to cook the bacon to get the grease, and I believe throwing bacon out is a felony (well, it should be), so I crumbled it up and sprinkled it between the layers of hashbrowns. You, sir, are a genius.

It warms my heart to read things like that. I hope people are cooking this stuff all over the US. But not too often. I need them alive so they can buy my next book.

More

I just got another one. I guess it will sound silly, considering the type of writing I do, but I can identify with this one on a special level.

I just got your book Monday and read it when I got home. The chapter written in Christopher Walken’s voice creeped me out, but then just looking at him creeps me out. I read the entire thing before bed. To say I loved it is damning it with faint praise. I loved the recipe for biscuits and I can’t wait to try them but I do have an addition. My mom used to make biscuits with ‘cracklin’s’. Cracklin’s were the left over little bits from rendering lard. She would get fat from the butcher (for some reason it was ground or she ground it, I don’t remember) and render the lard then take the little bits out and cook them a little more to brown up. She would make the biscuits and I don’t remember if she mixed the cracklin’s in or put them on top, but whichever way she did it she would take the biscuits and put them in bacon grease and turn them over so there was bacon grease top and bottom, then bake. When I was about eight or nine she started making Bisquik biscuits and never again did I have an honest-to-goodness biscuit with cracklin’s. Your book has inspired me to attempt to make them myself. Now to track down some place to buy hog fat.

As I have often said, one reason I started improving my cooking skills in the Nineties is that my mother had died, and I didn’t get to see my grandmother in Kentucky very often, and there were foods I missed. A lot of the things I put in the book are things I used to eat at their tables. Cornbread. Biscuits and gravy. Bean soup with ham hocks. I put chicken and dumplings in the original book.

In a less important way, I also missed decent pizza, which used to be all over North Miami when I was a kid, so I learned how to make better pizza than I had back then.

If you’re in the situation I was in, do yourself a favor, pick a few dishes you miss, and figure out how to make them. You’ll get it right eventually. I can tell you from experience, it’s like having an heirloom nobody can take away from you. And if you have kids, you can share it and pass it on to them, and they’ll know a little bit about what your life was like when you were growing up.

Gun on Way

I’m starting to get into the general period when my new used Smith & Wesson 27-2 should arrive. It’s killing me. Jim really did me a service, locating this thing. I don’t ordinarily buy holsters for my guns, except for a pocket holster for the Glock 26. Man, I love having that thing with me when I run errands. I feel like I should get a holster for the 27-2. Just because it would be cool.

I always want more guns. It’s a sickness. But I realize you have to space purchases out, because if you don’t, you end up with a whole bunch of guns you don’t know very well. I bought two 1911s very close together, and that worked out okay, but you can definitely overdo it.

I think a Colt King Cobra would be a great thing to have. Seems like kind of a ghetto/trailer park gun. Good quality, but a little rough. How can you not love a gun with a ridiculous thing like “KING COBRA” stamped on the barrel? You can tell the people at Colt wanted people to shoot it while drinking King Cobra Malt Liquor.

The Python sounds disappointing because of the weak guts and frame. Part of the fun of having guns is that they will often be among the best-engineered, most well-made items you own. Can you say that about a .357 that only shoots .38 Specials? I dunno. Maybe it’s so much fun to shoot with .38s, you don’t miss real ammunition.

The 27-2 is supposed to be heavier than my 686+, which is not a wimpy piece. I don’t think I’ll have to baby it.

A Ruger would be nice. I don’t know if you have to go old when you buy a Ruger. The older Smiths are better, and there aren’t any new double-action Colts.

Liberals misunderstand the gun-collecting urge. Which makes sense, because they misunderstand nearly everything. It’s not that you want to stockpile weapons so you can fulfill a warped tough-guy image and kill your neighbors and have a standoff with the FBI. It’s just that guns are fun to collect. Like…let me think of something liberals enjoy collecting. I know! STDs! No, wait. Welfare checks. No, wait. Fatherless babies. No, still not right. Yanni CDs? Well, you get the idea.

TC forwarded a funny story. Georgia is a conservative state, but Atlanta is a liberal city. It’s like a boil on an otherwise healthy body. A Georgia lawmaker got a law passed, allowing permit holders to carry guns on public transportation, in restaurants that serve alcohol, and in parks. And he is planning to take his gun to the airport, presumably relying on the public transportation clause. The Atlanta authorities say they’ll arrest him in spite of the law.

This should be fun.

I don’t want to reflexively back the legislator. I know 911 has made airport administrators and the admittedly hysterically anti-gun FAA crazy, and I would not want to make their jobs harder. Of course, the thing is, guns inside airports aren’t the biggest terrorism worry. Guns on planes…that’s the real problem. And I think it would be impossible for a crazed Muslim to use a gun inside an airport to get on a plane. He’d have fifty red dots on him in five minutes. And the presence of hidden civilian weapons would be a real deterrent. Imagine how your heart would leap if you got a chance to splatter a jihadi’s brains in an airport. I know it’s awful, but the satisfaction would be beyond description. I’m sure they realize many of us feel that way.

I tend to think guns in airports are a good idea, and that they’ll make airports much scarier for Muslim terrorists. Maybe I’m wrong.

Civilian guns make crime a very risky business, and criminals find them discouraging and upsetting. That’s what they tell us, and for once, they’re right.

I get more excited about concealed carry every day, and not solely because I carry. I love knowing that every time I’m in a public place where a moron is likely to show up and cause a problem, there are a few weapons around me, in the hands of people the criminals and I can’t identify in advance. I love knowing that criminals know it, too. It’s like being surrounded by invisible angels.

Concealed carry means hope. Gun bans mean surrender and helplessness.

I would like to see the Atlanta authorities publicly humiliated and spanked over their efforts to nullify the state law. I am a bad person. I am working on that.

Pump Fixed?

The saga of the pool pump continues. If this were The Lord of the Rings, right about now, I would be having my finger bitten off by a guy in a diaper.

People were telling me to use various types of unions and whatever to put the pipes together. Instead, I put a female threaded deal on one end, and I screwed a male threaded deal into the pump on the other end. I got a 90-degree elbow and put a short piece of pipe in it. I cemented a threaded male fitting on the pipe. I screwed this mess into the female threaded thing. Then I stuck a short piece of pipe in the male threaded fitting going into the pump, and I cemented the elbow to it. Now if I have a problem, I can cut out the elbow in about one minute and unscrew the other pieces.

Someone told me to use pipe dope instead of Teflon tape. My God, I can’t believe the difference. Why would anyone use tape if they had pipe dope? When you apply this crap, you can plainly see it’s going to lubricate the threads, prevent seizing, permit a tighter joint, and form a better seal. Am I wrong? and it’s easier to handle. Teflon tape folds and twists, and it’s a pain to cut, especially when you have one hand occupied.

I am fairly sure this will work, and if it doesn’t, for three dollars, I bought enough parts to do it all over again.

I saw an incredibly cool coping-saw kind of thing in the pipe aisle at Home Depot, and naturally, I was drawn to it. But I figured I would check the other saws in the tool area. I decided to get a ten-dollar Stanley saw with an ergonomic handle. You put a hacksaw bit in the handle, and the part that sticks out is what you saw with. It’s for tight places. I now think it may have been a dumb buy, since the blade is unsupported. It came with a second blade, sort of like a keyhole saw, but it was worthless for PVC. I got my hacksaw from the garage and went through the pipes in about thirty seconds each.

I have the pump-base concept figured out. The pump sits on a plastic mount that detaches. I’ll take the mount off, build a wooden form of the correct height, and pour concrent into it. I’ll use the mount as a jig to set lag shields into the wet concrete, with bolts already in them. If I put them in with no bolts, they won’t be expanded, and it will be impossible to drive bolts into them when the concrete dries. If it turns out the holes are too big and the shields slip, I have some concrete patching stuff that looks just like concrete. I’ll squirt some in the holes, put the shields in, and start over.

This sure beats waiting for an incompetent pool guy to show up, put the wrong pump in at an inflated price, and do everything badly. The way they always have in the past. The last pump wasn’t grounded. Nice.

I guess PVC is okay, if you’re willing to plan well. The trouble starts when you put things together without considering the hell you may be creating for the next person to work on the system.

More

It works. It really works. I turned it on, and nothing bad happened.

Surely I am hallucinating.

Bullet Choices

Mike swears that the next time I see him, he’ll have a firearm to bring to the range. Me, I put the odds at 30%. I truly thought I was attention-deficient until I started helping Mike shop for a pistol. Then I realized some people were out of my league. “What do you think about Glocks?” “The guy at the store wants to sell me a Taurus.” “Maybe I should get a frame for my Dan Wesson barrels.” Arggh. When did that start? Like two months ago?

I hope he’s for real this time. Mike has his own health-care staffing company, and I want to see him get rich, mainly so instead of waffling around like this, he’ll have the money to buy every gun he likes and get it over with.

I haven’t loaded any rounds for the 9mm yet. When I bought bullets for the .38 Super, I picked a size I also liked for the 9mm. Then I started reading about polygonal barrels. My bullets are hard, but they’re cast. No jackets. The Glock has a polygonal barrel, and some people believe you should not fire cast bullets through that type of rifling.

A normal barrel has raised ridges of metal inside it, spiraling from one end to the other. The bullets are gripped and turned by the ridges as they move. The inside of polygonal barrel is shaped like a polygon, in cross section. Also spiraled. Imagine the shape you would get if you put a hex nut in a soft tube and twisted it as you pulled it through. Sort of like that, except that I chose a hex nut as an example because it was familiar, not because barrels actually have six flat sides inside them. Wikipedia shows an eight-sided barrel as an illustration.

I don’t understand what goes on in a polygonal barrel that would make cast bullets a problem, but the theory is that lead will build up and obstruct things. In Glocks, like my 9mm and .40 caliber, the lead may build up in a way that prevents the shells from entering the chamber all the way, and then they may not be supported fully when they go off, and your gun explodes. This is known as “the Glock Kaboom.” It’s somewhat upsetting, as it instantly ruins your gun, and it may injure you. You can buy an aftermarket barrel to get around it.

There are those who say no polygonal barrel should be used with cast bullets. Others point out that some gunmakers who use polygonal barrels don’t advise against cast bullets. They say Glocks have a problem and other guns don’t, because of the way the chamber meets the barrel. And a lot of people shoot the brand of bullets I bought–Laser-Cast–with no problem.

So here I am with a pile of 9mm bullets I got at a good price. And I don’t know if I can use them. Something to think about, if you have Glocks and you reload.

Midway is having a pretty decent sale on jacketed bullets, so it’s possible to buy those and save the cast bullets for the .38 Super.

I’m surprised Glock hasn’t fixed the kaboom problem. If the theory about the chamber is right, and other manufacturers aren’t having the problem, it should be simple to remedy. And it harms the guns’ reputation. Imagine relying on a Glock to defend your life, while wondering if it was going to blow up in your hand. I’ll bet that’s extremely unlikely, since an intelligent person in a self-defense situation would probably use quality jacketed ammunition from a reputable manufacturer. But you still have to wonder.

I’m not sure what diameter bullets to get. I assume anything labeled 9mm will be fine, but there are choices within a range of three thousandths or so. Guess I’ll figure it out. I would hate to make reloads that degrade the accuracy of the Glock 26, which is usually a tack-driver.

More Free Food for Yours Truly

Got some nice emails about Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man – The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook. Here’s part of one:

I thought I was gonna die reading your Angela Ashes passage. Seriously. Certainly not appropriate for a Sunday, but then, I’m iconoclastic like that lately.

And then the Christopher Walken and Tom Cruise, and, and, and.

Please write more. I know that I will be hooting and hollering and thinking and amassing recipes, if there’s another cook book, while I read your books. I can’t think of many authors who accomplish that result. The “big name” humorists aren’t literally funny, nor are they consistent, that I can see anymore.

I can’t ask for a nicer response than that. Although this comes close:

Just got your new book a few days ago and made champagne chicken tonight. Man, I can’t believe how good it is. It’s like sex on a plate. I’m probably too lazy to make anything else in the book, but I had to make something. It’s an obligation. I didn’t want the book to end up like another investment that ends up never used, like a Bowflex.

Someone got the writing, and someone else gets the food. Maybe I didn’t waste my time!

Fausta and her family invited me to dinner AGAIN tonight. And I was the worst guest imaginable. We started talking about bloggers and blogging, and we got carried away, I kept talking and talking, and eventually they had to tase me to make me leave.

It was sort of like reading this blog, only there was no way to close the browser window.

I really enjoyed myself, even if I bored everyone else to death.

Again, the comparison to this blog is unavoidable.

Thanks for the emails.

You Think You Have Enemies?

I continue to work on the New Testament today, in The Complete Jewish Bible, with accompanying commentary. I just got up to the stoning of Stephen. I don’t like calling him “Saint Stephen,” because I think the whole “saint” thing is a bad mistake. Anyway, my father (who claims to be a Druid) says I was named after various Stephens in his family. My mother told me the Bible’s Stephen was the inspiration. I suppose it’s flattering to be named after a martyr, but the choice doesn’t scream “good luck.”

I almost wish they had gone with “v” instead of “ph.” As I have noted before, one constant reminder that people are becoming more and more ignorant is that increasingly, people pronounce my name “Stephan” and even argue with me about it. It’s terrible, seeing what liberals have done to education. How can you make it to the age of ten without noticing all the famous Stephens? And what does this say about people’s knowledge of the Bible? I guess I’ll worry even more when people lose the ability to pronounce “Moses” and “Jesus.” If you’re young, you may think Americans have always been stupid, but that’s not true. I remember a time when a lot of us were not total ignoramuses.

I learned interesting stuff about stoning. Somewhere the Talmud describes it. The defendant was taken to a place from which the fall was twice the height of a man, and then he was shoved off. If he landed face-down, they turned him over. Then the first witness dropped a big rock on his chest. After that, the stoning was carried out by others present, I think. So it wasn’t a Life of Brian affair, where women in false beards threw pebbles.

I had always assumed that one virtue of stoning was that no single individual bore the responsibility. But if a witness has to be the first to harm the defendant, that’s not true. It makes a lot of sense to force a witness to drop the first rock. It would tend to discourage lying cowards who are willing to accuse but prefer that dupes do the dirty work. In other words, it might make the bearing of false witness less likely.

A peculiar thing about stoning is that the Jews have been reluctant to do it. For example, I have been told they didn’t obey the order to stone homosexuals. One of the commandments says your eye is not to pity those who are to be stoned; you’re supposed to do what the written law says. I don’t know how they came to the conclusion that it wasn’t necessary to go through with stonings. I haven’t read the Talmud. I know they didn’t make the decision lightly. Jewish law, like civil law, should never be taken at face value.

The Muslims, of course, see it differently. Stonings, beheadings, mutilation without anaesthetic…Muslims are very sincere and fastidious about observing their obligation to do these things.

I also learned that a man named Daniel Zion saved most of Bulgaria’s Jews from Hitler. He was a Messianic Jew, too. He was a religious scholar and a rabbi before he decided Jesus was the Messiah. In fact he was the chief rabbi of Bulgaria, and he retained that position even after confessing his faith to another rabbi. He never considered himself “Christian,” however. I guess he’s a thorn in the side of those who say no Jew with a religious education can go Messianic. Anyway, he helped about 45,000 people escape the camps, so he must have been quite a man. I found a page about him. I can’t vouch for it, but I have no reason to think it’s not factually correct.

He ran a synagogue in Israel after the war, but his status was not recognized by Israel’s rabbinical court, which took away his credentials.

Interesting man. Flogged by the Nazis for his Jewishess. Stripped of the title “rabbi” by a Jewish court, for his belief in Jesus. They gave it to him coming and going.

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.