Caustically Optimistic

user name: spritopias

I’ve forgotten my password to get into my manufacturer’s training website.  It’s very secure and I’d like to congratulate the jerk that locked it down like it is Fort Knox or Buckingham Palace.  The absurdity of this situation is that I don’t know the answer to my security question to get be back into the system.  My choices are: my favorite sports star, my favorite childhood television show, my favorite television show, my favorite cartoon character, the best man/maid of honor at my wedding or my pet’s name.  Let’s discuss how genius those questions are. 

I don’t watch television, I don’t have a favorite sports star because I don’t care enough to have one, I haven’t been married and I didn’t have a dog when I was hired.  I could make one up but will I remember that later?  Also, and this is more important, if I were a normal human being you’d know that it was the Golden Girls, Battlestar Galactica, Alex Rodriquez, Fry, Alex Vance, and Molly Ringworm.  It’s on my Facebook, we’d have talked about it around the water cooler, something…but probably not going to know my mother’s maiden name. 

 I mean, if you’ve been following along you know that I’d have put Beelzebub, Hapsburg, or something similar - but it’s unlikely that you’d guess what I put or care. 

 You’re also not going to break into the manufacturer’s training site and do my tests for me – not that I’d stop you or care.  I’m starting to think that I put Jay Z as my favorite sports star because he can make a Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can.  If you want to do my tests for me, I’d appreciate it because I have to know a bunch of things you won’t ask me when you come in to buy a car. 

 My favorite one, from another site completely, is, “Who did your best friend lose their virginity to?”  It really should be, “To whom did your best friend lose their virginity?”  Or, “What dirty whore gave it up to that scumbag you call a homie?”  Also, my best friend is a little more discrete and less indelicate about things like that.  So I remember how to get my password back I ended up answering, “Your Mom.” 

 I can’t decide what’s more offensive to me: the question or the bad grammar in which said question is posed. 

 My point is this: there are so many sites you have to have complicated passwords to and I honestly doubt anyone is so incredibly bored that they’re hacking into my life (my debit card excluded) and taking my tests for me.  I don’t know who people think I am or what their website is but I’d bet people don’t care enough to hack into my lameness. 

The tragedy is that beyond their incredible security hoops I can save my passwords and had a passive aggressive coworker not set my computer to not remember passwords or security protocols I wouldn’t have to bother with it, because really – how secure are you if you let me save the password in the first place? 

For the record, my mother’s made name is Mephistopheles – but the key is remembering that correct spelling.  

gremlins

We have a gremlin that lives in our kitchen.  He drinks all the iced tea except a drizzle in the bottom of the pitcher.  He eats all the pretzels except for a few crumbs and salt.  He eats all the pickles and leaves the jar in the fridge with just pieces of garlic rolling around in the brine.  He also snipes the good leftovers and doggy bags. 

Apparently, he has infiltrated Chaos Bean’s work place and is apparently a girl.  I’ve not been in a woman’s restroom in a while – one can never forget the Damen/Herren imbroglio of 1987 – and I was unaware that ‘emergency’ feminine hygiene products are stashed there. Apparently the gremlin menstruates often and heavily or is lining her nest with sanitary napkins because the disappearance of tampons is a serious problem. 

Chaos Bean made this announcement during dinner with friends and a former coworker, many of the women that were there commiserated that this wasn’t an uncommon problem and any woman who has had this tale of misfortune pointed it out that it has happened to their emergency stash in the workplace. 

I can’t imagine the fury this must inspire.  I lose my religion when someone takes pens and chocolates out of my desk (you have to bring your own) so I am pretty sure people would die if they took my tampons, if I indeed had them. 

I imagine that this is a lot worse than the toilet paper roll running out and needing someone to run and get you a roll.  I’ve been to that aisle in Target.  I know that I’m out of depth and there are so many choices that mathematically I’m destined to fail.  Left to my own devices I will get the wrong toilet paper, either confusing the brand or the texture – I’ve been to college and I’ve learned that you really can use any toilet paper.  However, I know the retribution that comes with presenting someone with the wrong paper.  I’d hate to do that with a tampon. 

We fear what we do not understand.  I understand toilet paper.  I don’t understand how or why my friend Elizabeth considers it gluttony to use more than three pieces at one time – for me it’s a delicate balance between not getting my hands dirty and not clogging up the toilet.  I have no idea what to do about the tampons and I’m pretty sure that I’d not only get the wrong kind, but I’d get the wrong kind in the most drastic and catastrophic way.  The kids would call it, “epically bad.”  I also cannot imagine being sequestered in the bathroom waiting for rescue from someone wholly ignorant of your plight.  This must be how the gremlins entertain themselves. 

This is analogous to the time I tried to make an analogy at work by saying, “it’s like when you’re reading French literature and someone compliments a lady on how well she has made her toilet…” to realize that I am the only person in the United States who reads Dumas because he likes it, and misses Gretchen.  Certainly this is absurd where I work since most of them cannot read or write. 

When someone steals from us we say, “they probably needed it more than I did.”  This is not true in the bathroom.  I can’t imagine the converse indignity of the poor young lady, trapped by the gremlins, trying to describe what they needed EXACTLY and well enough so that they might be saved from their plight.  I really have no idea how bad that would be; I only know the terror of being outside scribbling down all the adjectives and modifiers that would bring you the exact product you needed to secure your release because the wrong product has it’s own awful consequences. 

I am now compelled to stock up on toilet paper.  

Bland is Optional

Bland is Optional If you make airline reservations you can pick which type of meal you’d like, Kosher, Vegetarian, Hindu, or bland? Personally, I’m concerned that the food I ordered would be Sephardic and not my preference for Ashkenazi; it’s very difficult for a Lutheran to keep Kosher while flying from Louisville to Denver. I’m pretty sure that there is a food out there that everyone can agree upon and eat without offending their religious predilections because I’m pretty sure they don’t have a kosher galley on the plane anyway. I wasn’t aware that they had a name for the food served to the rest of the world had a name since the food I’ve eaten has always been bland. What in God’s name does your food taste like? 

It’s amazing what we’ll put up with on airplanes. In any other circumstances I’d have ripped the headphones off the person in the next seat who’s cuddling with/drooling on me and yelled, “If I wanted to hear the “n” word over and over again and graphic embellishments of sex acts that never happened I’d go back to teaching sixth grade!” I cannot imagine a circumstance where a complete stranger would use me as a pillow and drool on me and I hope there isn’t another one. 

I do enjoy the fact that people cannot use their mobile phones on the plane. During my lay-over I was at a charging station refueling my iPhone so I could play, “We Rule,” (I almost lost an onion crop) and a woman was on her yellular phone chortling on alternately to her son and husband about an accident the son had been involved in driving home from college where no one was deemed at fault and all were okay. Normally, I’d have moved away from her conversation but I decided that since I was tethered to the same small table she was that politeness dictated she move or pipe down. I did my best impression of my Aunt Stella, leveling the evil eye at her while adding in my own signature “this is going on the Internet” eavesdropping. 

The woman behind me is ignoring her kids as it is but I am sure I’d have eaten one of those children in retribution for hearing her prattling on into her yellular phone and the wee bag of peanuts we’re given before the bland kosher vegetarian tour de force coming from the galley. This I believe is one of the greatest insults or gags of our time. In a world where we’re so minutely sensitive to the feelings of others are presented with a tiny bag of peanuts while riding on airplanes, which could kill one in three American children. I find it hard to believe that the same airlines that make sure I have my kosher vegetarian Hindu breakfast wrap overlooked this. I also believe that, at thirty-two years old, I should not only care about greater problems in the world but also be allowed to have an entire can of Diet Coke. Apparently, that’s just asking too much and had I not gotten two traffic tickets this week I’d have referred this to my attorney. 

I’d have made my own big deal about this but I didn’t bring Chaos Bean with me – and to own the truth, she raises a ruckus better than anyone I know so I prefer to let her settle accounts – and I am flying to Texas and the last thing I need to do is to put on my Max hat and start the Wild Rumpus or incite a riot. My attorney is good, very good, but I don’t think he’s “started a imbroglio/brouhaha on an international flight,” good. 

Besides, I promised I would behave while in and en route to the only place on Earth and surrounding planets where guns more popular than the Beatles and Jesus Christ. I bet when she flies they take one look at Chaos Bean and think, “give her an entire Diet Coke, it’s not worth it.” I knew I should have brought her. I am sun-burnt, have an uncanny command of the English language with a distinct northern accent; they’d confuse me for a foreigner in a heartbeat and as soon as we cross over Louisiana I will be – at best I’d have been shoved in an overhead bin until we landed. 

Indeed, I tell you the truth, until Joe Biden gives us high-speed rail service across the Republic we’re at the mercy of the airlines. I would love nothing more than to take an adventure across America with Madame de Suburban Island drinking entire cans of Diet Coke and taking in the sights of our beautiful country. It would be like a black and white movie, as all adventures with the Madame de Suburban Island are; there might even be a murder for us to solve. Instead, if I am lucky, I get to peek out a tiny window at the tops of clouds at a world built for ants. I’d almost take that over our health care reforms but in my imagination I see myself dying of cancer and Madame leaning across the table in the café car telling me, “You’re an ass. You should have gone with Obamacare” 

I’m sure no politician but Joe Biden could save us because I’m sure that the flight attendants are so star-struck by anyone important or remotely powerful that they might encounter in first or business class that they’d give them an entire Diet Coke and perhaps a snack that wouldn’t rage through a fourth grade classroom like bubonic plague. I’m pretty sure that my friends who don’t agree with me on politics would agree on the point that an entire Diet Coke is a change we could all believe in. I’m in that tax bracket that sees a third of their income disappear and if I work really hard I can see more of it go away as well so even if you don’t get a whole Diet Coke I think I should my class should be as full as my tax bracket. If I’m in that forty-seven percent of Americans paying taxes I should get fifty-three percent of a can of Diet Coke. Don’t call that cockamamie; call it a start. My ideas are no less ridiculous than George W. Bush’s designs on invading the planet Mars. 

They’ve seen what we’ve done to our own planet, George, they’re not going to welcome us a liberators. 

Stay home. Instead, I remain here – faithfully yours – in mind-your-own-business class, cuddled up with someone who drools facing the ire of the guy with the lazy eye from the layover whispering to the woman with the yellular phone about what a jerk I am. I should just take a nap to dream of film noir cross-country trips with full glasses of Diet Coke.

[1] Valerie, see Madame Librarian for more information on the distinction between the Sephardim and Ashkenazi.  

by oneself

One of the questions posted to me when I had more opportunities to write and more stories to tell was if my stories were true – because they are too absurd to be true and these things cannot honestly be happening.  The other one questions if I am indeed as rude and uncouth as I present myself.  My stories are true and I am downplaying my unpleasantness.

I was at the local corporate pharmacy picking up something for my boss – something to fend off the malaise due jour so that I could remain on the floor while my counterpart was regaining his health.  While I was waiting for the clerk to bring what I needed from the stockroom I wandered the store and found myself in the aisle with the condoms.  I stopped to respond to a text message and an old lady lit into me for being a fornicator, etc, because I was buying birth control and was obviously having sex outside of marriage.  She was just working up a lather in her mouth when the clerk came, handed me the package, and asked if I needed anything else.  I did. 

I picked up a package of condoms, handed them to her and asked, “Do these come in a smaller size?  These are too big.”  She looked at me, obviously trying to suppress nervous laughter and I went on, “no one wants to make love to a loose plastic bag, is there something smaller?”  I can neither confirm nor deny that I made illustrating gestures to make my point clear. 

One cannot fornicate by oneself.  

shooting blanks

Valerie, you asked why I am not returning your calls.  I am not feeling well and cannot take a phone call. 

I’m having one of those weeks where I feel like Kevin from Home Alone – not the icky “I fathered Michael Jackson’s baby” feeling but the, “I think everyone is out to get me – even if I know that’s false, right???”  I hate feeling paranoid, I feel it lumps me in with the Wal Martians at those Tea Parties about the taxes in brackets they’re not a part of. 

I came to this realization at lunch.  On Saturdays our firm buys everyone lunch – we have it ordered in and we all eat the same thing.  It’s always garbage.  It’s also ordered by the office bully – and I’ll never understand how or why under performing people are always tolerated but those of who produce have to have lazy, fat-lards nipping at our heals.  I also don’t understand why, when we have pizza for lunch, we have to have several over-sized “gourmet” pizzas piled with low-grade meats and questionable vegetables but having a plain, cheese pizza is unthinkable.  I’m not asking for my own pizza or something special, I’m asking for something basic.

But there is a lot about human activity that I don’t understand.  I don’t understand how women can car around those enormous bags full of the detritus of the fall of humanity from Eden but somehow exclude their wallet and keys from the mix.  I would never stick my hand into someone’s bag – that’s rude, but I find women confusing in general but this whole shtick of carrying around a duffle bag with apparently nothing in it is mystifying.  My same lady-friends who send e-mails about how men are stupid will comment on this about, “not getting it,” but I always know where my iPhone, keys, and wallet are. 

I understand that when I was teenager people found it tacky that we wore out-sized clothing but apparently they’ve only run clothing for men once because ‘kids today’ seem to be all wearing jeans that don’t fit them but in a way that makes you wonder if they’ll ever be able to have children – and secretly hope they cannot.  It must be parenting because if your son were able to get himself out those nut-huggers, he’d be shooting blanks.  I had friends whose parents had to keep their sisters out of their clothing but I never dreamed I’d see the day when we’d be asking our sons, “Are you wearing your sisters pants?”  I will no longer be taking complaints about how much money my parents had to spend so I’d look like a hobo in high school. 

I am tired of looking out into the world and not understanding it, and I don’t understand why I want to understand it. Why would I want to understand Humans, Wal Martians, and the other inhabitants of the planet? 

Well, whatever, I out performed the office bully two to one last month and carried a quarter of all production on a staff of ten and I think I deserve my own damned plain cheese pizza. 

Yes, other readers, I do have these conversations with Valerie – well, before becoming consumed with worry about the contents of my belly button.  

Mc Rib

One of the things I loved about teaching directly under the sun in Phoenix was the ability to leave for lunch.  We would usually just go to Wendy’s, McDonald’s, and when the gods of cellulite smiled on us, Chino Bandito.  One of the things I don’t like about schlepping cars is all the eating we do. 

Now, we do eat better as we make more money than teachers.  Yes, Valerie, I come home and roll around in my money.  We eat well, but we eat a great deal and often.  I’m still a big fan of the fast food but my coworkers are not.  They want to keep the local restaurants open and vibrant. 

I was surprised the other day, when my friend Sara posted on her Facebook that she had a Mc Rib, when we were thrown into a frenzy to find them.  My coworkers love barbeque and are very discerning about what barbeque they eat.  I was shocked that they not only wanted to find as badly as I did, but also engaged in my practice of calling everyone and everywhere that might have the answer to my question.  We called every McDonald’s in our county, the close ones in surrounding counties in Kentucky and Indiana.  I also called a few in Cincinnati that were (falsely) reported to have them. 

I mean, really, it’s probably not even pork and I have no delusions that it is actually rib meat. 

We then sent juvenile text and Facebook messages to Sara about her Mc Rib eating self.  How dare she bring up yet another Mcdeficiency of Kentucky and high point of Nebraska?  I regret that because I hate to be the tool that is an Internet/Text Message tough guy.  I just want to have a Mc Rib.  Today at Qdoba, the tool at the counter was telling my mother and I about how they do things in Germany – without realizing that she’s German and I grew up there – all I could think about was, “Great, now he’s ruined my burrito by reminding me it isn’t a Mc Rib.” 

I felt like an oldster on the phone telling the one guy, Nick, that in my country when I was his age they had Mc Ribs all the time and it was as ordinary as a hamburger to see it there.  Nick promised that he’d call us as soon as they bring it back because it is apparently not a big mover here in Kentucky – the fattest state where they’ll eat just about anything and the highlight of their life is a horse race that, if it lasts two minutes, is a bad one.  I promised Nick that in return that I’d name my first son after him but Sarah asked me to stop doing that because the poor kid already has a name longer than most princes of minor principalities. 

Please feel free to mail me a Mc Rib.  Just don’t mail it to work, because while I will still eat it I wouldn’t want to have to share.  

$65.50

We now have a swear jar at work, if we say a bad word then money goes into the jar.  Our Boss thinks this will clean up our language. I work with an attorney who is taking a break from practicing law and we were tasked with developing the rules and payment schedules.  The system is byzantine and complicated and there have been, in the two days we’ve had it, at least twenty appeals.

Our boss’ tab is about $65.50. 

Before you comment that it is ridiculous that an adult would need a swear jar at work to curb their enthusiasm please consider the fact that we are a step below prostitution in the hierarchy of noble professions.  I call the system bzyantine, not just because I love anachronistic and antediluvian words, but also because I’ve drawn up rules and payment schedules around people I don’t like.  There are people who will pay dearly just for greeting me in the morning, at least until we have a meeting to formalize the rules, payment schedule, and appeals process. 

Before I downed about seven dollars into the jar myself, I agonized about how to use this jar to my advantage.  The first rule clearly indicates that the traditionally accepted four and five letter words couldn’t be used – even if they were found in scripture.  I did not get it included that replacements for those words when clearly intended to be replacements would count.  I did get included that hate speech toward demographic groups – even when one is a member of said group – included but I couldn’t get ‘assault on the English language’ included because only three of us are native speakers.  I am happy that I got unkind nicknames thrown in there because I am tired of anyone who isn’t my father calling me, “junior.”  Well, if you were Sean Connery I’d let you do it so I could pretend for a hot minute that I was Indiana Jones.

I was able to write in many things I wanted to stop at the office, but I am unable to get people to stop talking about their personal lives.  I have a coworker who is into something I find distasteful and I almost threw up in the trashcan today when our coworkers interrogated him about it.  Now, before you send me a barrage of comments about being a judgmental cracker, I know. I really don’t care about what you do in your personal life.  I sincerely do not care; don’t tell me about it – even if I do it my personal life.  I care if it presents a public health hazard or if it makes me heave into my own trashcan.  It’s the one time I miss working for my last principal: a woman who had an ironic detachment between her own foibles and her persecution of others – she’d have crucified the offending individual long ago.  This drek doesn't fly in an office full of women, it does in an office full of men (exception number four is that you can curse in a foreign language if you're the only one who understands what you're saying).

It’s also impossible to speak intelligently on the topic of Mazda or Honda’s engineering without using the word, “shit.”  I’m going to learn the Japanese word for “shit” so I can say that instead.  I’m sure no one will look it up when I say, “The Japanese word for this engineering is, ‘daiben,’ and the German word is, ‘überlegen.’”  In fact, I can think of nothing else I want to do all day beyond use the prefix über and curse in foreign languages – besides put in eight to sixteen hours of honest labor. Beyond the ability to earn a decent living I want to be able to curse in Japanese and add über to words higgledy-piggledy.  Bubbe always said if you didn’t have anything nice to say, say it in Yiddish.  Hondas are drek.    

It’s going to be überimpossible for us to clean our farkakt mouths if we keep building and discovering loopholes in the system.  Then again, if we didn’t, it wouldn’t be America.  

When in Rome

Valerie is back to work and that means that I am back to distracting her.  This may seem political at first, but rest assured, politics is way too boring. 

There is a lot of serious debate about what it means to be an American, and what you should do to be an American if you weren’t born here or if your ancestors didn’t walk here from Korea via the Bering Strait.  Much of this focuses on if people should learn to speak English – a fun debate to watch as the people who insist upon others learning the language butcher it.  I don’t want people to learn English for me because I will never talk to them anyway.  In fact, I prefer that they not learn English because then the barrier to being antisocial is theirs and not mine. 

What I would like people to change is the way they smell.  Of all the things people can do to make themselves more acceptable, in my opinion, is to wear deodorant.  I realize that in other countries this isn’t the norm and other cultures don’t put the emphasis on smelling pretty that Americans do.  However, we are not in those countries or living in those cultures – at least my nose isn’t living there.

When I lived outside of the United States I will own up to the fact that I continued to make sure I smelled clean before leaving the house but otherwise did my best to blend in with the local population or appear Canadian as much as possible.  I’m not ashamed of being an American but people have axes to grind with Americans but not Canadians.  No one has a problem with Canada, although they should. 

You’re supposed to do things to show respect to local sensibilities when you visit faraway places.  It annoys my nose that – while people expect this of Americans – they don’t do this in America.  There are so many things that can be done to bring people closer together but that will never happen when you smell like you haven’t bathed in months and used paprika to cover it up.  Besides, it won’t matter how well you speak English if I can’t get close enough to you to communicate with you without gagging. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.  When in America, do as the Americans do.  Daily, and with products for under the arms.  

 

Bachelor Pizza

Sunday is a “Stuff White People Like Dot Com” day for me.  I go to church, listen to NPR, go to brunch, and then do something in the afternoon that would be featured at Stuff White People Like.  One of the things that I listen to on NPR is Splendid Table which is probably named that because the website was free.  I imagine that goes into consideration for many people when naming things since Al Gore linked up the series of tubes we call the Internets.

For the uninitiated, Splendid Table is the radio show for people who love to eat.  You can read all about it other places but the radio host’s raspy voice inspires you to cook neat things and eat well.  Today was a peculiar Sunday because I went to church and left alone so I was listening to the host talk about cooking Mongolian rabbits while sitting in traffic eating Chicken McNuggets.

Another person who inspires me to cook is my friend Emily, author of the Singing Culinista.  One of her first entries was about making an Italian style pizza and I think you’ll enjoy reading it.  I decided to make pizza as well.  Before you read on, you should read her post and Valerie, make sure Tyler takes notes since it will be a while before I can teach him this in person.

 

Bachelor Pizza, a recipe for Tyler

Emily’s blog exists for Emily’s reasons and she explains that pretty well.  My blog exists to entertain people, mainly Valerie who is teaching partner from long ago, and to do a third task which is to educate her son, Tyler - crown prince of Coo-Coostan.  Ashley and I were anointed his aunt and uncle but since I am so far away I cannot teach him in person and must write.  This recipe is a recipe that Tyler should be able to cook – but my money is on the house burning down.  I say that as someone who loves you Tyler.  Please only do this if Kinley is there to supervise.  

Emily’s post begins with a martini and from the beginning we diverge.  I started mine with a good bottle of Samuel Adams.  I chose the Samuel Adams because there is history between Sam, Emily, and I – also Elizabeth.  We three used to vacation together before Elizabeth was married and I was stupid.  We’re hoping I un-stupid soon and can vacation again.  

 

The first thing that Emily did was make dough; I bought dough at the grocer.  At this point my partner in crime, Cindy, is probably having a fit.  Her pizza recipe involves a bottle of red wine and a telephone but the idea of the Pillsbury Doughboy kneading your Italian bread needs is a blasphemy that may drive her back to the rosary.  However, I don’t feel too bad considering the garbage her mother Nettie has feed me, sullying the good name of Italy. 

The next step in making a bachelor pizza is to spread some sauce onto the dough, unfortunately I couldn’t find any pizza sauce at the grocer and I didn't know if we  had any at home.  My father is trained as a chef and told met had he known I was going to do this would have made sauce or let me use a good can of it.  Instead of traditional sauce I used a jar or spaghetti sauce because it is tomato based but not ketchup.  I am not above using ketchup because I am a bachelor but I didn’t want Cindy to disown me.

Spreading the sauce around was a task to be done carefully because you want sauce over the whole thing but you don’t want it too think.  The other issue I had was that I intentionally picked a sauce with vegetables and garlic in it so I wanted to make sure there were chunks of vegetables all over the pan and not just in one location.  My father was pretty pissed that I used a jar that makes a decent back up when homemade sauce is time prohibitive. 

After that you need put on a good layer of mozzarella.  We had two varieties of mozzarella at home but since I was using dough from a can and spaghetti sauce I figured that some cheese in a bag would be just as well.  My parents – especially my father – have a bad habit of not using the American pronunciations of things AND using a fake accent when saying things like muzzarell.  I bought cheese because I didn’t want to have to ask where it was and then stab my father with a pen when I thought one of the Mario brothers had come in through the pipes. 

I’m not a huge fan of cheese so I spread it out in a thin, consistent layer.  I like mozzarella and it’s important to pizza but I’m not a fan of a pizza that’s mainly a piece of bread with melted cheese on top.  I’m also not a fan of a pizza so thick with toppings that you can’t appreciate the flavors of what you’ve put on it.  Getting the right amount of cheese on the pizza was very important to the success of the pizza. 

  Then I put pepperoni on.  Pepperoni pizza is one of my favorite kinds and I’ll confess an affinity for Pizza Hut’s because their pepperoni is crispy like bacon and not chewy.  My family has several different stories about why we converted from Judaism to Christianity but the version I made up in my head goes something along the lines of, “there is a lot of good Italian food that relies on pork products and/or mixing meats with dairy.”  Normally, I would have planned ahead and gone to the Italian deli for sausage or pepperoni but this was spur of the moment and I didn’t want to break up my bachelor theme by using good ingredients. 

Following along with the idea of this being a bachelor pizza I put a layer of pepperoni on the pizza covering it from one end to the other, not overlapping and un-stacked.  If I were making this pizza for friends or company I would have actually made some sausage, peppers, and onions in a frying pan, drained the grease, and used that as a topping.  That’s a bit cost prohibitive for me to make for myself, I can’t justify the expense or the time spent. 

The final step before putting the pizza in the oven is another layer of cheese.  I went light on the first layer of cheese so that I could put another layer of cheese on top without sacrificing the idea of crispy pepperoni.  Now, it is not going to end up as crispy as restaurant style pepperoni but if we went to the root of why that pepperoni is thin we’d probably discover that its sliced thin to save money and not to go for bacon-y goodness. 

Finally, you put it in the toaster oven.  We have been using a toaster oven because cooking is more energy efficient that way.  This would have been a disaster if my father hadn’t intervened because it was set to cook a frozen pizza – something that mystified us because Cindy’s mother hasn’t been there – and it would have cooked my pizza at a lower temperature but for a longer time. 

It was also fortuitous that my father was wandering back through the kitchen when my pizza was done because the timing suggested by the manufacturers didn’t include toaster oven directions meaning my pizza didn’t need to cook so long.  I was reading the labels on all the packages to ensure there were no corn-based products in the bachelor pizza.  My friend Casey cannot have anything corn or she’ll turn into a pillar of salt.  While that would keep the cows happy for a season or two it wouldn’t be that great for a friend. 

When your Dad uses his chef training (and his nose) to rescue your pizza you can be confident that it is ready.  Cut it into squares and serve with a cold beer, because that is how Lutherans do. It is also advisable to save your sister a piece or two – even though she’s protested this pizza being made – and clean the kitchen before your mother comes home.  This is a recipe that every man should know how to make in case there is some catastrophe like poor phone service which would prevent from calling out for pizza.  This is so easy even Tyler can do it, I did and so far no one has died. 

I know what you're thinking, Tyler.  "All pizza is bachelor pizza," which isn't false but this is pizza you would make with your own hands.  Speaking of your hands, I know where they've been and you should wash them before you do anything with food.  No one wants what you picked up at school or in all the other public places you go before you run into soap.  The beer is medicinal, it's a cure for craziness - a hereditary disease we get from our children.  

 

 

rules, regulations, and requirements

Everyone has rules they want everyone to follow and rules that they ignore because they think those rules are stupid.  Driving offers us a plethora of examples.  I think that using blinkers is more important than obeying the speed limit.  I don’t think that people aren’t handicapped should park in handicapped parking but the handicapped shouldn’t park in our spaces either.  I jaywalk like it’s my job on Dixie Highway no less but I’d like you to be ticketed when you do it – especially if you’re the [insert feminine hygiene product here] that stairs me down while doing it.  I’m a terrible driver so I’m not going to talk a great deal about how to move a car around.

The area where I am most concerned about rules, regulations, and my hypocritical application thereof would be in the writing, speaking, and presentation of the English language.  The English language follows Jesus, comes before the Republic, and ties my family and students in the order of things that I love with my whole heart.  Studies in the English Language was my favorite class at University and I would have taken Language and Linguistics but there was the small matter of a nervous breakdown and a larger matter of an oppositional/defiant disorder when in a formal learning setting with my debate coach who was the instructor. 

There are words I’d like you to stop using, “a lot,” and “got” are the ones that run to the front of my mind.  There are a multitude of better words to use when you’re describing the state of having heaps of stuff.  When I teach English I teach two lessons early in the year where we go over better methods to express one self than using those two words.  I lose my religion quickly when someone writes “a lot” as one word instead of two.  Consequently motherfucker is one word, not two and I’d rather have that dropped into conversations and formal writing than other words. 

Another rule I am a big fan of serial commas; you call them Oxford/Harvard Commas.  I have permission from Dr. Jewett to use them as well as Chaos Bean.  There are several authorities whom would argue against the use of the serial comma but the last time I was told not Dr. Jewett referred to the rule as “Canadian” which probably meant “normative in Canada” but I took with the pejorative Midwestern, “not quite Minnesotan” meaning of the word.  I like them because they add form and cadence to the visual form of writing chiefly since my writing turns into rants where I rattle off a list of adjectives without warning, credence, or need. 

However, double negatives and ending sentences in prepositions are things that are not Canadian rules but rather Latin.  The prohibition against double negatives comes from a time before time when monks were conforming English to Latin grammar so that we might have grammar at all.  Double negatives add emphasis to words written and spoken and go well with soda crackers, and serial commas.  I add the double negative rule because it one that I don’t follow along with the idea of ending sentences in prepositions being tawdry.  Hemmingway did it, so it does imply that the practice is suspect and probably crude, but the difference between Hemmingway, and you and I would be that Hemmingway moved paper and we’re reliant on other bored nerds surfing the internet begging for attention, validation, and companionship. 

There are a ton of rules that I get wrong and don’t care about.  You have your rules about the English Language that you’d like everyone to adhere to.  I know I am putting myself in jeopardy of my comments being spammed unto death by people who are barely clever inundating it with words like, “a lot” and “got.” 

If you find her: I am looking for a woman who follows these rules without trepidation, and breaks the other rules with abandon.   Also, a woman who knows how to use a semicolon and ‘whom’ correctly is more important to me than anything.