Newsletter -- Can I Unsubscribe?

Can I unsubscribe? Is that what you're asking? I thought so. You asked me a question, so I'll ask you a question as well. If you wanted to unsubscribe, why did you subscribe in the first place? Are you just so casual about declaring to the world that you don't know your own mind? And that you're such a fickle person as to not know what you wanted in the first place. You're all up in my face with umbrage over unsubscribing when perhaps I should be up in your face about why you originally subscribed. I remember seeing your subscription come in, and I recall saying, wrongly, it now seems, "There's a person I can depend on..."

Of course I'd rather you didn't unsubscribe. One, if you didn't know your mind originally, perhaps you're going against your ultimate will now. And you'll turn around in a few weeks -- months, tops -- and beg to be resubscribed. I wish I had a nickel for every person I've known who's done things like that. "He loves me, he loves me not." What's clear about most of these characters is that they're blown about by the wind. It's cool to subscribe to this guy's newsletter .... Then suddenly it's not .... With the tide turning once again, and everyone wants on board. Try, just try, not to follow the crowd.

At this point, though, we're not going by what I want. God forbid I might know best. Hell no, that can't be possible, can it? It's like I'm building a house with rotten lumber. What kind of house will I have? This piece decides it doesn't want to be part of the house. I wake up and the roof says it's had enough. I can only hope the basement sticks it out or the whole thing's lost! Isn't that something, that a basement, the lowest part of the house, has such power? You'd think, the basement, how humble, how untidy; there's bugs and spider webs and dust and dark corners down there; that's where we keep the sump pump. Stop to think, maybe it's your one subscription that's holding up the entire newsletter.

But no one stops to think. Because people are off in their own selfish little world, apparently capable of putting 2 and 2 together, but on closer examination all you get's a blank stare. Or a selfish, baby-like sniffling and whimpering and tantrums; the one thing they're good at is throwing tantrums! Bringing the whole house to a standstill while we get them cleaned up, or whatever the problem is. "Hush little baby, don't say a word ... if you wanna unsubscribe, it's no skin off my ass ... much!" Or is it? You unsubscribe and I might suddenly become sullen and develop writer's block, and next thing you know there's not a newsletter in sight! I've seen it happen.

Sometimes I wish -- yes, I wish -- I could be the linchpin like that for some guy's whole enterprise. Because the way it is for me, I'm always thinking, "No one's depending on me." When there actually could be a guy, or a show, or a production out there tottering on its last legs, with my allegiance, my willingness to stand with them being decisive. Well, don't get your hopes up. I'm not publishing my stats -- I keep all that top secret from my cutthroat competition -- but I can assure you, I've still got strength, top to bottom. And if you unsubscribe that's what you're going to miss.

I had a few of my more fickle subscribers (in the past) acting like I was Svengali, trying to keep a grip on them out of some funky ulterior motive, not just the good of the newsletter. To whom I say, Don't flatter yourself! Look, be realistic, my readership is worldwide, with barely any of them being local people. If they were local and I was Svengali, that'd be different. I'd be at their house, or them at mine, leading them by a chain in their nose, or simply by the power of my personality. My deep-set hypnotic eyes. My mystical hand pointing the way to a subterranean boudoir with all the fixins'. Or pulling a rope and having a servant subdue you. That never happens, at least not as often as you'd think.

The biggest reason it doesn't happen -- and, yes, I have appetites like everyone -- is my life is complicated enough without having to worry that people will have some reason to come back on me, or blackmail me. The cops show up, I don't want them finding anything, and they won't. "What's that black light and all the swirling colors in your garage?" "It's nothing, and I don't think your warrant mentions the garage. But if you must know, that's a party for happy subscribers to my newsletter, and if you'll pass me that bathrobe, I'm expected to join them momentarily, if you're finished searching the house."

Yes, I want subscribers simply for the good of the newsletter and my other enterprises, the blog, etc. I'll probably get a lot of good when I go to newsletter conventions and we're comparing subscriptions. It'll be a downer if I have to continually revise my figures -- I'm very precise -- based on the latest number of unsubscribers. No one wants to be a laughingstock at conventions, certainly I don't want that.

OK, look at it this way, I haven't even yet opened this current incarnation of the newsletter to subscribers. So why are you so concerned about being able to unsubscribe? If you feel you will be unsubscribing, you can see I have a little coupon you can cut out. When the time comes, if you just fill that out -- and make sure you don't submit a duplicate coupon, because I'll only accept originals -- I'll see that you are justly taken care of.

Why Are Chefs So Horrible?

Today we're spewing venom in the general direction of chefs. For the most part, everyone's enemy. While not as bad as sex offenders, pit bulls, and jake brakes, depending on how the case is presented, still they're pretty bad. As in horrendous.

Chefs are well known as the prima donnas of the food industry. I haven't looked at the rankings in a while, but I'd say chefs still have to be Number 1, then butchers Number 2, deli guys Number 3, and bakers at number 4. I notice bakeries take a lot of vacations, which is probably why they rank lower than deli guys and butchers. Another thing that helps bakers is they often work behind the scenes and let high school kids man the store.

Of course we all justify ourselves, so naturally chefs don't see it this way. Their contention is they're professional and you're not. But their professional status is generally unnoticed, since they're right there in the kitchen with the underlings. This is part of the chef's problem. A lot of underlings are just schmucks hired off the street this afternoon. They just got off a merchant marine ship and still stink of the sea. Other professions aren't like that. When you go to the dentist, you're not sitting there with merchant marines administering the Novocaine. Dentists know their stuff. Or you go to a mechanic for repairs. The guys working there know where the oil goes, the tires, the brakes, everything.

The chefs come up with their own food combinations and they know more about it than you. Which is true. If I came up with a more or less random slate of bad choices, naturally I'm going to know more about it than others. Just like I know more about lots of things that are personal to me, my bad teeth, weird hair, and the dizzy spells I get when I lie on my right side.

With chefs, I've been slightly guilty of interfering a time or two. Like the time a new chef came to town and wouldn't allow 1000 Island dressing in his kitchen. No sir! I told the waitress to tell him that it's a very popular flavor. But to no avail. But then, since a lot of people in town started griping -- including influential Chamber of Commerce members, even one from my own family, guess what ... Suddenly regular food started showing up on the menu, stuff common folk eat, including 1000 Island dressing. Before that, everything had some kind of weird horseradish sauce on it.

I would've loved to have been a fly on the wall during his consult with the boss. "I am the professional chef!" he shouts. "Yeah, well, I am the professional boss, and if you don't want to be doing your chefing in a hobo jungle somewhere, turning out mulligan stew even the hobos wouldn't eat -- with horseradish sauce -- keep it up, idiot! I say we're getting new food or we're getting a new chef! Capiche?" The chef is steaming, simmering, and boiling, and before long he's well done and about had it. He blows his stack, his hat is now 6 foot tall, and pieces of him are everywhere. And there I am, a fly on the wall, splattered, a real mess. But I'd do it again in a heartbeat -- what a show!

I never actually spoke with the chef in question. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever spoke to a chef anywhere. They're kind of standoffish. Maybe they don't want to come out and get their hands dirty so they won't contaminate the food, or they think they're just so much better than everyone else; maybe doctors feel that way. Doctors and chefs are the two careers whose practitioners appear and disappear, never to be seen outside in regular life. I remember having doubts about my own doctor even being a doctor, because I saw him once in a public park. Next time I was in he showed me his certificates and confessed he'd slipped up.

Would I want to be a chef? Not really. You make a masterpiece and it's literally crap in the morning. It's too fleeting. Then, I don't really like the stuff chefs always come up with, a million ways of glazing a dozen green beans. They have them on the plate, angled out like some kind of green Japanese porcupine, it's ridiculous. Or meat that's so small you couldn't bait a hook with it, and that's your entree. That and the green beans and a dessert to match, always small and in the center of a plate with lots of wasted space. "The presentation is the thing!" is their mantra, which doesn't mean that much to customers used to eating out of a paper sack behind a steering wheel.

I'm not sophisticated like that. I basically eat to give me enough oomph to make it to the next meal. Save the shenanigans and nervous breakdowns when I don't like it. Chefs might not be so miserable if they just made what we wanted, then received our worthless praise: "Really good, Pepe."

Just this past Sunday, to end today's entree, I was at a restaurant for the first time. I'm ensconced in my seat before I notice a giant white hat in the kitchen. At this point, with my tea already on the table, there's no proper escape.

I thought of going for the hamburger since it'd be crystal clear I was getting something else I wanted, french fries. But no, I went with the blackened catfish filet that came with a fancy salad. I asked the server if I could substitute fries. I told her I thought I saw a "No substitutes" sign on the door. She said, "Ooooooo," then indicated the chef wouldn't like it, but in the true spirit of a fighter said she'd run it by him and get it accomplished.

OK, then a guy brings out my fish and there was the salad! The chef was testing me, obviously! "Try to substitute in my kitchen, will you, you bastard!" I told the guy I had asked for fries. He went back into the trenches and somehow escaped with fries, telling me I wouldn't be charged for the salad.

I ate most of the salad -- meh -- then the fries weren't even that good. Gnarly. The blackened fish, maybe the chef learned about blackening fish in school, was also nothing I liked, and catfish is my fave fish. I have autographed pinups of catfish on my wall.

But this chef is the professional! That he can ruin even catfish proves he's good.

Hair In The Bathtub Drain

I stand amazed in the presence of a hair clog, and wonder how it could ever be, eight to ten hairs and a tub backed up, threatening to run over. You're that close to catastrophe, simply because water can't find a way around a few pestilent hairs!

Hair in the drain, that's all it takes. You could build a dam out of hair and get just as good results. Beavers could skip the gnawing of trees and just lay in some hair. Lay in a few hairs in a random pattern and the water will stand forever!

You couldn't do it with rocks. If you put rocks in the tub, the water would still find a way around them, and down the drain it'd go. Or anything else except hair. Paper, bricks, even a nuclear bomb. You can't plug a bathtub with a nuclear bomb. It can't be done. Only hair. Hair and nothing else.

Somehow hair, by its fineness, has an immediate ability to form a watertight seal, and stops water in its tracks from draining out. I had a hair clog in the tub. (This anecdote is based on a true story of what could conceivably happen.) It literally took two men, seasoned plumbers, working all night, and they couldn't break through or remove a measly ten hairs! And I thought it'd be cheaper to pay by the hair and not the hour! Boy, was I wrong!

Some of the memorable hair blocks that I've seen, other than that one, and they run the gamut, would be:

1) Fairly good flow -- Only a single hair
2) Moderate flow -- A couple more hairs
3) Impeded flow -- Five to six hairs
4) Essentially blocked -- Seven to eight hairs
5) Completely blocked -- Nine still drains after some hours, 10 is hopeless. Anything greater, the hopelessness simply intensifies.

What can we do about it? There's nothing we can do. It's going to happen. Alternately, we could clean the drain after every use. And if everyone could somehow stop losing hair all the time, that would be the perfect solution.

Here's how I've found it's best to clean a hair clog: If you can get a good hold on it, it's easier to pull out. But pulling one or two hairs at a time is time consuming as well as frustrating. The best method is whatever takes the least amount of time and effort, like most things.

The Abomination Called Bagpipes

I was downtown tonight, I thought for a pleasant time. But then out of the blue, without any warning, suddenly I heard the sickening sound of bagpipes in the area. Which, had I known that would happen, I never would have left the house. How sickening!

I've never liked the squealing of bagpipes, like most people. It sounds like someone stepping on a cat's tail, if you can imagine a cat's painful squealing in slow motion and very prolonged. Whatever kind of apparatus they've got inside a bagpipe to make such a terrible sound, it is without question something infernal deriving from Hell itself. The instrument puts forth such a putrid sound, it immediately sickens most hearers. I've found that something about it connects in an archetypical way to the gag reflex, and, I don't know, maybe even incontinence or involuntary bowel movements, which might be why the players always wear kilts, for easier evacuation.

I know what everyone's going to say: We try to like bagpipes, we're not up in arms about them, because we want to honor other people's cultures, however foolish they might be. Well, I'm sorry, this is one I've tried to like, but I've found it's impossible. I'd rather have newborn twins crying loudly, one close to one ear and the second close to the other, and spitting up, than be anywhere within a mile of a set of bagpipes. If I could gather up the world's bagpipes -- seriously -- I'd burn them. Although I'll give you this, I would graciously put one of the instruments in a laboratory somewhere, frozen like dangerous viruses, so mankind would always have one sample, however locked away it was, for study by future generations were they to deem it necessary.

OK, I know I'm preaching to the choir, because we all -- most of us, of course excluding sadists and masochists -- hate the bagpipes. And yet -- and this is something I don't fully understand -- people do like the bagpipes on the song "Amazing Grace." Which might be why bagpipe players are always playing it, because they're trying to inspire an actual liking for the instrument, however impossible such an elusive dream has to be.

I would guess the reason people tolerate bagpipes on "Amazing Grace" is because you usually hear it at funerals and other serious commemorations. So it worms its way into people's psyches; they associate it with burying Grandpa and getting their inheritance. So they come to think, however subconsciously, that "Amazing Grace" means easy money. That's actually kind of how it is with me, too. I had a rich uncle. He died. They played "Amazing Grace" on the bagpipes at his funeral. I got an $800 inheritance, which I immediately gave to other anti-bagpipes agitators.

Of course the other side of this coin is the odd fact that "Amazing Grace" is one of our least favorite songs, again speaking for nearly everyone. Because they do play it at everyone's funeral. So it's come to represent death, the fear of death, the stench of death, etc. We want to avoid it at all costs. And if it weren't for the dream of inheritances, we'd rise up and ban both it and the bagpipes.

Frankly, I've never been much of a fan of the song, riches or not. It has the words in it, "That saved a wretch like me." That doesn't do much for my self-image, I don't know about you, but I'm not a wretch. I'm pretty darned good. But in a weird way it fits. If you hear a bagpipe guy playing it, he actually is a wretch! A normal musician would be playing a normal instrument, not this abomination.

So what are we left with? A crap instrument and a crap song, but, amazingly (no pun intended), both are more or less tolerated when they're together! Yet I'll insist on this truth: Get rid of the inheritances -- just try it -- everyone give your estate to charity, and the bagpipes would finally get what they deserve!