All the Books: Recipe #9 – Crispy Roasted Potatoes

All the Books: Recipe #9 – Crispy Roasted Potatoes

I want to tell you a story, a story about overwork, a story about depression, a story about cooking potatoes, and story about overcoming difficult odds to triumph over evil. I started this project for two reasons – One: I had too many unused cookbooks. Two: I needed to remember how to write again. After about ten years I was coming out of a depressive slump from which I almost didn’t escape. When you’re wrapped up in problems, and your brain is working against you, things can quickly go from bad to worse. We won’t go into the problems, but let’s agree that I was not at what you would call my fighting condition for such a set of circumstances to arrive. Over the last, let’s call it two years, I have been able to work my way out of the situation. Also, quite frankly, the question “What’s the worst that can happen” was pretty handily answered. And that, my dears may darlings, is a lovely and freeing feeling. Once the three worst things that can happen, have already happened, what else can they do to you?


This pic of pitching wizard is merely here to fill space. Please ignore him.

This releasing of tension coincided with a new found ability to cope with situations and a slightly lower disaster to good day ratio. The reason I bring all this up, is that there are still some times when I slide back and just can’t. Just cleaning the table to make a corner of the kitchen look presentable is too much. Finding a recipe is too much anxiety, and the effort to photograph and edit is more than I can bear. The result of all these things is that sometimes you don’t get a post for a week or three, because even though I made tonight’s dish a while ago, there simply was too much else to do and I had as couple of weeks at work that were a little rough due to training and people leaving and such. So, that’s why this is late and some others will also be late.



So, a while ago, I was at one of those little gift stores you sometimes get. They sell magnets and aprons with the name of your state of them. They smell vaguely of lilac and always seem to be run by the same middle aged woman. She sells candles, and the sort of blank cards with photographs on them, as well as (sometimes) books like this one. Now, one may ask why I bought Sheet Pan Suppers, by Molly Gilbert when I already have (by my own admission) too many cookbooks. I would reply that I live in a house with a bunch of enablers. Just today, the day I write this, my father bought me French Cooking: Classic Recipes and Techniques because I didn’t have a single French cookbook. Nice, but... you know? Like I don't have enough cookbooks to work through? So I bought a copy of this book, on my own recognizance, because I thought it might be interesting. Now, fair dues to Molly Gilbert, I had seen this recipe and thought “Oh, okay, when I make something ELSE from this book, I can make that as a side and get a nice two-fer.” There are 120 recipes in this book and many of them look like they would be good things to cook. However, when I found myself rushed and in need of SOMETHING to cook so that I would have a post ready for the next week (when I still thought this was going to go up on September 10th) and I sort of had some potatoes on hand already soooooooo....



Having made this the way the recipe said to (with a slight adjustment in the kind of potato I had on hand), the result was pretty good. I feel sort of bad, like I’m rendering a disservice to poor Molly Gilbert, because all her hard work and effort to write an interesting book, and I’m spot lighting a fairly simple side dish. I’m pretty sure if she ever reads this she’ll be glad to know that the dish turned out well and was rated as pretty good. Still though. Listen, find this book, buy it, pay the full list price like I did and make something more interesting. While you’re at it, overcome your anxiety and depression and start a food blog where you don’t actually talk that much about the food, don’t actually share the recipe, but talk about yourself a lot and generally give the impression that this whole thing is some kind of Post-Dadaist Neo-Absurdist stab at being the sort of artist that really annoys the squares. You could do that, but someone else probably has beaten you to that idea.

The Memory Palace (Pros and Cons)

The Memory Palace (Pros and Cons)

The other day, I was giving someone my phone number. Not an everyday occurrence, but it should have been simple enough.

I was all “Hey Brain, can I have my phone number”
And brain was like “Phone Number! Right! Coming up!”

And what did I end up writing down? 810-228-3... BRAIN! That is a number that stopped being relevant in 2002! You might remember that year, it was the one when we moved out of my parent’s house and no longer needed that neat Cobra cordless phone!

“You wanted a phone number.”

“YOU HAD ONE JOB!”

And thus the fundamental flaw inherent in the Method of Loci is revealed.

Let me back up a second, because this requires some explanation. If I ever write a book for helping parents understand challenged kids based on my own experiences, I will title it “A Fistful of Learning Disabilities” and if I write a sequel for people challenged by sleeplessness I will write it “A Few Sleep Disorders More” because that’s how the movies went! If it bugs you did I didn’t go with “A Fistful of Sleep Disorders” you can read all about my feelings on the subject in my blockbusting, best seller follow up “The Good, The Bad, And the Fuck You, That’s Why” but I digress.

Dyslexia makes digesting words really hard, ADD makes reading a huge pain in the ass to begin with. If you’ve ever had your eyes just drift over the words, but not take them in, it’s kind of like that, only the book sometimes seems to have been translated by someone who only speaks English as a third language and never actually learned Centari, but figured they could translate the book based on the pictures. Now make it three times more frustrating than that, because your basic ADD sufferer is actually paying attention to every signal entering their brain, but I digress.

So while I was still young, and they thought that I was either what was still being called retarded or possibly a next level “Professor X is going to show up any day now” superbeing, suggestions were made. I honestly have no idea what side of the ledger Memory Palace came from, but it was one of the things I had explained to me. I distinctly remember by father told me about a method called Roman Room, or Journey Method. Now, I love my father very much, and he was doing his best, but can we all agree Memory Palace is a way more badass name and move on?

So a quick breakdown, if you haven’t read any of the links I presented...

Imagine that you are trying to remember your grocery list, a long and complicated list that would require a lot of work. Instead of writing it down and reading the list, you remember the list by walking through your home and look at a series of object you placed there earlier. You place them in the imaginary version of your home, not the real one. The idea is you remember your home pretty darn well, so you would remember the things you place in it. Now, either you place the actual physical steak you want, or you get symbolic (or even resort to puns) and maybe just leave a wooden steak imbedded in the floor. You’ve got a flower blooming in the window (get flour) and a bird sitting on the flower pot (eggs... probably?) and so on. It’s more complicated than that, way more complicated.

It can become hyper-complicated and even fractally complicated. Quick example, I’ve got a wing of the palace dedicated to each person I know. I walk down the wing, and each door has some notice explaining what that particular memory is about. I close in on the door and instead of just zooming in, I get as much information as my attention can hold. I enter the room, and the curtain has my mental notes about the meal we had together that day. I close in a little, and I can remember what each of us has, in a little further how it tasted, in a little further and how each morsel felt, in a little further and each drop of water that condensed on the glass and in a little further and I’ve suddenly lost five hours because staring that deep at the curtains takes time and energy and should only be done at leisure or because of a serious need. There is also the minor issue of other people, and for that the connections between them are connected by portals, themselves acting like hyperlinks to someone else’s story, while all existing in the same room. I said it got complicated.

The other problem is, numbers don’t work. Numbers are this... thing. That’s where my dyslexia goes into overdrive, numbers are not and will not ever be my friends. I can’t even trust them to enter my head in the right order (I don’t swap letters around much, but ho-boy does 12 turn into 21) how can I trust them to behave when they get there.

So here’s the thing, I do have these lavish wings where I put events. Things that happened to us, conversations we had, they are woven into the carpets and sensations are embedded in the grain of the wood that makes up the furniture, but stuff like names and labels, we have to go to the library for that. And you’re thinking “Hey, no problem, dewey decimal, microfiche, computerized records... google. No prob, I totes got this.” AND I just laugh and laugh and laugh.

See, my mind isn’t set up like a modern library, nothing so easy. My mind operates like a medieval library, and the three of you who know what that means are cringing and clutching their teddy bears. See, we’re talking parchment scrolls, and vellum books with no note on the spine about what’s in them. Books were so expensive that if there were thirty pages left over at the end, you’d just write thirty more pages worth of stuff to fill those pages. Piles of scrolls and manuscripts often shoved into cubby holes and possibly only the head librarian knew the contents and location of each scroll and book. Possibly, sometimes you had to just read through and see if you could find anything.

And that’s how the other half of the palace exists. One half, an opulent palace, as the name suggests, on the other half a cold cloister, half library and half warehouse (Because there are stacks of banker’s boxes stuffed full of “Old Business” that I don’t wish to clutter up space) and while the librarians are often quite helpful they will sometimes just blindly grab into the cubby that says “Phone Numbers” and hand me any old scrap that their fingers happen to grasp. Normally, it happens to be the piece on top, but I find I tend to run at full speed through the place when I’m dreaming and things can get disturbed.

The sheer amount of information my brain has decided it can hold onto it also a problem, since we haven’t a Bing Search but a Brother Bernard a Brother Darryl and another Brother Darryl. The problem is that the person who put everything in place, and who knows where everything is, was Father... Ted(?), and Ole Dad Teddy ain’t be seen round these parts fer some time now. This means that Bernard, Darryl and Darryl have exactly zero idea where to find anything beyond the basic labels.

As a result, I got the wrong number.

The Geek World is Not My World

I’ve often said this to people, but probably not enough. I am not actually a geek. Some people think I might be, because I know a lot of stuff. Useless, pointless, meaningless stuff, but more stuff than almost anyone else they know. Of course, every once in a while, they’ll need to actually know something and I’ll still have the answer to that. However, you just need to meet me for a few minutes on a good day to know I’m not a geek.
On a bad day, I’m so withdrawn that I might be mistaken for one, or I could be a mountain dwelling goblin unused to all the fresh air and sun light.

Now I know what you’re going to say. “Weirdo, you’ve got geeky interests. You’ve got lots of geeky friends. You only sleep with geeks as far as I know. How can you not be a geek?” Well, I only sleep with bisexuals or people with strong bi-curiosity as well. Does that make me bi? I used to hang out with a lot of black people, does that make me black? Most my friends are women, does that make me a woman? The thing is, there is something I’ve often noticed about the geek world, or rather geeks as people. It’s one of the things that keeps me out of their world.

Geeks aren’t very smart, or at least not smart in the right ways.

People who are part of the geek world cling to their intelligence like a life ring in a storm. They have a nasty tendency to act like they’re the only smart people in the world, and are unable to understand why the rest of the world regularly dumps on them. Of course, the rest of the world knows why they dump on geeks, and it’s got nothing to do with the glasses or liking Star Trek.

Lots of really cool people wear glasses these days. Doctor Who is pretty close to a mainstream interest and Star Trek has been mainstream for decades. Everyone knows Star Wars, and lots of people like Wil Wheaton, not just geeks. Wil might be seen as a cool geek among geeks, but he sort of left geekery back in the dust sometime ago. He became a cool person, who has geeky interests. Here is the thing, Wil Wheaton is smart in two ways. He’s smart in Cool Person ways and he’s smart in Geek Ways. He’s good with rules that can be written down and rules that cannot be written down.

Social Rules can never be written down because the way you understand them is by smell and feel. People who understand the rules understand there is no way to write them down because the information can’t really be written down. There are too many fiddly bits, too many complications, too many factors that adjust other factors and too many factors that adjust because the other factors have adjusted to the adjustments made by other factors that are always adjusting because why the hell not? You have to feel your way along, you have to read tiny subtle signals and you have to adjust constantly.

What I've mainly noticed about geeks, is that they're not very good at Social Rules because those can't be written down.

Computers aren’t like this. The rules of computers can be written down, and easily understood. The thing is, computers are far less forgiving than social situations. If you screw up with a computer, you kind of have to stop and start again from the beginning. Socially, you rarely really have to do this. You aren’t regularly cast from and entire circle of friends, having to start with completely new people just because you failed to use a slash when you were supposed to use a backslash. You’re not required to find that one damn slash and turn it into a backslash before anything else can move forward.

This is one of the reasons people who are good at Social Rules freak out on computers. They don’t understand why we can’t just forget that one error and move on. If it were a social situation, they’d take a little shit, and then we’d all move on. In the Geek World however, a mistake is a big thing that must be corrected. It must be documented, it must be categorized, it must be fixed before we can move on. This has crippled more than one geek before they even start. They see that they’ve made an error in a social situation and try to apply computer rules to it. They think they can’t fix it, because everyone else has ignored it, and think they’re being shunned. This is a problem because in reality, they fix it by ignoring it.

Geeks make a Social Error and flip out because they think it’s like a Computer Error and worry they won’t be allowed to fix it.

Of course, one problem is that Social Rules are a constantly shifting ice flow of contradictions and hierarchy. People who play that game badly think it’s about pushing those around you down lower so they can be higher. People who play the game well know it’s about raising people so that you can stand on their shoulders and you’ll all go up together. People who play the game abysmally, think it’s about making yourself like the guy you want to raise you up. And then you have the fear that one person will get raised and you’ll be ignored. That was, greatly speaking, the point of my last post.

The game has no formal rules though, because if people could read the specific rules, with each little detail there for them to see, they would start acting differently. Once they were conscious of their behavior, they would strive to change it. Try this as an experiment sometime, make mention of someone’s little verbal tick. Mention that they say “Exactly” a whole hell of a lot. Then watch as they strive to cay “Certainly” or “That’s Right” instead. When a normal person realizes their behavior can be tracked and predicted, they will start doing something else. This is another part of the rules, but one that can be written down because it’s large enough not to be specific. You can have the big unspecific rules written down because they don’t help much anyway.

No part of the Social Rules may be written down, or the rules cease to work. Including this one.

This is why I can’t really be a geek, or part of the Geek World. I can’t be part of the Normal World either though, in case you’re wondering. I understand both sets of rules and play each world with a combination of rules from both sides. I feel my way along in computers and science, and I use the strict written rules as a wedge to get into people’s heads. I understand enough about both worlds to float around and be a strange, quixotic character for either group, mainly by playing opposite strengths around each group while demonstrating an understanding of the rules of the current group.

Mind you I also have paranoia, A.D.D. and social anxiety disorder to work with here. So it’s very possible that my mind is cracked in just the right way that I can both exist and not exist in whatever world. I understand the rules quickly, but have a totally inability to really play by any of those rules. I don’t belong, but I can be here as an observer. I am accepted everywhere I go, but not really a member of any group.

I am, socially speaking, Schrödinger's Cat.

Which proves that maybe it wasn’t such a dumb idea and that things really can exist in two forms at once. But probably not, I suspect Schrödinger was right and the cat would either be alive or dead.

So I Might Be Responsible for Hipsters

So I Might Be Responsible for Hipsters


About... 15... 20 years ago? Maybe? I read an article about how art works. That’s the point. It was in a magazine, either Maxim or Playboy, it was of that tone. It was how a guy who had been in the New York Art scene noticed how art worked and how poseurs actually had greater success than the actual artists. He described a couple of artists who he thought were doing really great and original things, but they barely sold any work. However other artists, the poseurs according to the writer (he included himself in that category) who used elements these two were using had great success. He complained that there were deeply held reasons why the first artist used blue the way he did, but the copy-cats just knew what would sell and faked it. Either way, their stuff sold and the people who influenced them didn’t. The point of the article was more about how selling paintings in the art world is less about the actual art and more about how well you can bullshit art patrons at a show, but the intro will hold long enough. Incidentally, this happens all over the place. The first time I’d ever heard of Motorhead it was in the context of “These guys influenced every guitar heavy band of the 80s from Metallica to Megadeth to Guns N Roses of all people.” Any art/entertainment world has their version “This person/group were never really mega-stars with the public, but everyone in the biz knew they were awesome and borrowed from them liberally and went on to mega-star success.”

Now, my generation grew up in a post-modern world. Even though we didn’t understand it at the time, we were being raised by a generation who themselves were reading articles in popular magazines like Time and Newsweek that had titles like “What Does It Mean To Be Cool?” and other such nonsense. The Baby-Boomers had sort of lost track of cool, to be perfectly honest, and spent much of the 80s in discussion about what fit in the Monolith of “Cool” where Arthur Fonzarelli is the perfect form of cool. Yeah, just dropped 2001, Happy Days and Plato all in one sentence. Where’s your god now? The problem of course was the belief that cool as a rule was a single ideal that could be achieved if only you understood all the graces. Except Fonzie was more of a yūrei than a human, if yūrei is indeed the word I want. Jeeves would know.

There is a great Calvin and Hobbes comic that exemplifies this idea.


So having said all that, let me tell you a story about a kid named Tim. Tim might not have been his name, but it was so long ago that I can’t honestly yank his name from the files and I’m going to give him one instead. Now Tim was a freshman when I was a senior and his growth spurt was still three years off. As such Tim might have been all of four foot eleven. I remember him being shorter than me by a considerable distance and I’m not that tall now. Tim developed what can only be called a “Man Crush” on yours truly. A part of this was probably that I actually knew the kind of music he liked (kid was a huge fan of classical) and didn’t give him shit for not knowing who Nirvana was. Side note: When that band came out, I was the only person in my class that knew it was a state of mental awareness and not just some dirty guys from Seattle thrashing away at instruments in post-punk-rock-beat-combo rage.

Now, a note about me in high school. I stopped wearing jeans as soon as I started picking out my own clothes. I never found them comfortable, I never liked them. So I wore sweatpants or dockers. I wore t-shirts and flannel shirts because of comfort, to this day a cable knit sweater at Christmas receives a hearty “Have you actually met me?” And over that was a grey trench coat and a fedora to top it off. Not a trilby! A fedora is a felt hat that looks sexy as fuck. A trilby is a douche flag worn on the top of a douche to give instant identification of docheiness. As you might have noticed over the years, I ran out of fucks three days before my fifteenth birthday. I had quietly used up a life time supply, and from then on it was me and Honey Badger for life. I didn’t choose the honey badger, honey badger chose me. Although, the honey badger is not my spirit animal. My spirit animal is a two slice toaster, which is fitting when you think about it.

I didn’t listen to popular music, I listened to old Jazz, new Jazz, Prince, Mannheim Steamroller, Blues Traveler, Narada and Windham Hill collections, classical music, Irish folk music and so on. I threw some popular stuff in there, but it would get lost in so much else that no one could say with any regularity what was going to come up next. By the time I was a senior, everyone knew that trying to start shit with me was a one way ticket to Scaryville. Since I never beat a person, but rather grabbed their pressure points and explained to them in a soft, calm voice that despite what they thought, it didn’t actually hurt yet, but I could make it hurt. The last time someone had decided to snatch my hat as a gag, they were unprepared for how fast I turned, grabbed them by the throat and smashed their head down into the lunch table. This happened in the cafeteria in front of about four hundred thousand witnesses. When I didn’t beat the hell out of the guy, but simply explained “You don’t ever touch my hat, understand?” and wouldn’t let him up until he agreed that he understood and was very sorry and could he please run away forever now... that story was blown all out of proportion if you’ve heard it from another source. I didn’t even hit the guy, much less kill him. Point is though, no one fucked with the hat after that.

Except girls, who all wanted to be allowed to wear it, which I still don’t understand. It didn’t fit them and I could only tell they were winking because their cheek twitched, since the brim covered their eye, what did they want? Seriously? What was that all about?

So here is what Tim saw “That guy, THAT GUY! He walks around wearing a hat from before the dawn of cool. Mutha’ fucka’ is like proto-cool. He’s so cool that cool would have to chill out before it was as cool as him. And he doesn’t give people shit about not liking popular stuff, he even knows about classical and prefers Satie's Gymnopédies to Pachelbel’s Canon which I didn’t even know was allowed and maybe it isn’t, but dude ran out of fucks to give in 1982! I mean... just... holy shit dude!”

Now Tim missed a lot, having only seen the end result. He didn’t see the questioning, the bullying, the struggling, the second guessing, the fact that I had like, five friends total, or the fact that I was kind of sticking with the hat and coat at that point out of sheer bloody-mindedness. At least, I think I was, hard to tell at this stage. I need a new hat, and I very much need a new long coat. This isn’t important. Tim only saw the fact that the coolest dude in the room was a guy who didn’t much care, and did what he wanted to do and nobody could touch him. Hard for a very short 14 year old not to see that as a thing to be looked up to.

So Tim bought a hat and a coat. His was a wider brimmed chocolate brown fedora, and he got a brown London Fog trench coat. I was sporting a black hat and grey coat, so he wasn’t copying me completely, but he was super-proud of getting his shit together like I had. I told him it was cool while internally going “No, this is my look, get your own.” but not saying it because he was super-proud and I was clearly his hero. Heroes can’t just shit on somebody who announces “I’m gonna grow up to be just like you!” because... well you can’t! If I were older, I might have been sitting there having a two-word story “Skinsuit? Skinsuit!”

Now, is Tim a hipster? No, Tim is just a kid who wants to achieve something. He knows the hat is important, and the not giving even a percentage of a fuck, and the coat seems to play a roll. No, I think the third kid in this line, the one who has a man crush on Tim, who only hears “I don’t give a shit, don’t listen to anything mainstream, get a hat.” I think maybe he’s the hipster. He never saw the original cool person (Mike) or the original long haired hippy (Neil) or even the angry punk (Vivian) he only saw the enthusiastic kid who was still trying to figure it all out (Rick) and was wearing a hat not because Dana Andrews and Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant (who I will crush on forever) wore the hat, but because one he knew in school wore it. That third kids saw the hat, found actual fedoras hard to come by (Seriously you have no idea how hard it was to find a fedora in 1990’s Michigan) and just bought a trilby because you could still get those at Sears. He didn’t know that the not listening to mainstream was less because I got off on other things, and thought it was because there was something inherently wrong with mainstream. Which is wrong, there are good songs and bad songs, and while I rejected some popular music I listened to stuff that was on the charts as well.

The fourth kid in this line? That kid is TOTALLY a hipster, and probably a real douche-canoe too. His connection to this idea of cool is totally lost, he doesn’t even know that the guy who wore a fedora and sweatpants ever existed, but the hat and the coat remain as a sort of racial memory. With no understanding at all about the original cool, and with elements having dropped off over time, he thinks not caring is the key. So he has to make sure you understand how much he doesn’t care, and how very much he doesn’t listen to mainstream music. He’s going to tell you these things, because in reality he does care and he does listen to Mylie Cyrus, but thinks that’s not cool. He’s lost the fact that the original cool person thought I Love Your Smile was actually a great little song.

And that’s what happened, a person does a thing, a second person decides the first person is a Cool Person® and copies that person. Perhaps a little ersatz, but an acceptable step in self-production. A third person admires the second person, and makes a copy. Now we have a copy of a copy. What made the first person so super-cool that he was constantly covered in liquefied oxygen (the sense of confidence needed to wear sweatpants with a fedora) has been lost in translation. The copies are more and more inferior, and the idea of cool has actually been splintered in a rather glorious way.

The Internet has ensured that there will never be a Monolithic Fonzie Model of Cool ever again. Cool has become like beauty, in the eye of the beholder, but we all know what the identifiers are. If we sat down and did some sciencey shit, we could probably say that this, this and this are part of the cool formula. Problem is, I was part of the, drugs, sex and self-harming Art Team. I couldn’t be doing with the writing shit down and taking measurements Science Side. Now it’s all down to what you like, what you think is cool, and who has the confidence to pull off whatever it is their doing. Probably some sort of honesty is in there too, but my brain is starting to hurt and I need some drugs or sex or something.

I never thought of myself as cool, until it was pointed out to me through the fact of someone wanting to look like me so much he went out and bought parts of his wardrobe to mimic parts of mine. It was around that time that I started to think, “Heeeey”

As a result, I’ve begun to think that me, and people like me, might be responsible for Hipsters. I’m not sorry, but I will admit I could have been a better steward of The Cool.

A few tales...

Remind me sometime, to tell you about the time I stole fire from the gods and blamed some guy for it. I wonder whatever happened to him. Eh, doesn't matter.

Speaking of guys that I forget what happened to them. I was once asked to be the savior of mankind, but I didn’t like the hours. Ended up getting some other guy to do it. Don’t know what happened to him either.

I might also tell you about the about the summer I spent in a convent, pretending to be a nun for tax reasons.

If You Don’t Know What a Libertine is, I Won’t Have Sex With You… Apparently

I don’t know why, but it sounds shallow to say that I didn’t sleep with someone because she didn’t know what the term Libertine meant. I feel it's snobbish, somehow, to set your standard on a single word. However, looking back on the situation... yeah that’s totally why we didn’t bang.

See, I met her through a mutual friend. Now he had some specific things to say about her, because he was kind of a tight-assed misogynist who I think was probably struggling with some issues regarding his own sexuality. That’s neither here nor there, but it’s important to understand that he said she was a slut who’d fuck boys or girls because she didn’t care and she was a slut. Yes, he started and ended the sentence with the slut declaration. Now, if you know me, you know where this is going. I had to meet this person. If this guy I knew was going into full granny pearl clutching mode, I had to meet the person who was causing those pearls to be clutched.

And she was... really good looking. I mean, really cute and had the sort of body that makes a guy in his mid-twenties sit up and take notice. And she had... a habit. She would laugh and lean against whoever was nearest and press herself against them and press her cheek next to theirs and laugh and it was MUTHAFUCKIN’ enticing. She had a certain sexual aggression, which I like, and a confidence of self which I’m also a fan of. Her stated preferences, sexual and otherwise, put check marks in a lot of boxes for me. I'm way into sluts is what I'm saying.

One of the first conversations we had, she was driving and either I mentioned that he had told me about her or she had asked if he had. I can’t remember and I don’t intend to go into the fine details of the memory palace to find out. I could, but what the fuck is the point? The important part of this story is that I admitted he had indeed mentioned her to me.

“He said you were something of a modern day libertine.” I said, she said she studied poetry and literature, so I figured that little softball would be good.

“What does that mean?” She asked, which I judged to be a decent question, because that statement could go multiple ways.

“Well, I’ll admit, those weren’t his exact words. I’m not sure he knows what a libertine is.”

“Well, I don’t know what that is.” she admitted, and I kind of deflated a little.

“He intimated that you were a sexually free individual.” I said, because I had all these two cent words, I’d already paid for them, fuck if they were going to rest on the goddamn shelf!

“Did he call me a slut?” She asked.

“Yeah, that was closer to his terminology.” I said. “And he said you didn’t make distinctions between genders.”

“I’m bi if that’s what he means.”

And that was the first problem, there were others, but that was a problem. I mean... I mean... I mean I’m sitting here on the bench, I’m sitting here on the not getting Altoid blowjobs bench, because she doesn’t know what a libertine is. And do not think for one moment that was her idea, because telling me she had Altoids and mentioning how amazing they made her blowjobs was very much her idea. Her ideas had to do with me getting peppermint blowjobs as a starter. Then we’d go over to a friend and she would show me exactly how bi she could be.

Looking back as I am now, I should have been all over that. She was hot, into me, and while trying to court me explained that she had absolutely zero limits if only I would make suggestions. She enjoyed the sort of music I liked, she enjoyed the kind of sexual shenanigans I enjoy. And there was no good reason to avoid this, besides having a slight, niggling feeling that to bang her would be a violation of Rule #2, which I knew better than to ignore. Her habit of sliding her hand down the front of my shirt to run her fingers through my chest hair could have overcome that though, I’m pretty sure.

But she didn’t know what was meant by the term “libertine” and a apparently, that’s my Rubicon. Or my Durin’s Bridge if you are of a geekier mindset. Instead, we did nothing. There is more than the one word, she had a certain level of incuriosity about the world. She just wasn't someone I could stoop down to mentally and she wasn't up to climbing my mental tree. As a result, I never laid an indecent hand on her (my right, if you're keeping track) , or even kissed her, because she missed out on basic terms. Had she known what the term meant, I could have been – it’s unsavory to say what (or where) I could have been, frankly.

So the moral of this story, and there is one, is that frogs should never give rides to scorpions. Or something. I don't know, do what you want.

New Cocktails: Fortune and Glory

Does anyone over the age of 30 actually believe in that whole “One Last Job” myth anymore? I did once, and as a celebration of that One Last Job, (the one in Munich not the one in Peru or the one in Lyon or the one in Madrid) that I did with Elsa and Josephine. But there is never truly “One Last Job” in this business. That’s the most important thing to remember. Because if you can keep going in this business and not get burned or killed, then someone is going to ask you to go in for that score that you just can’t refuse.

Still though, this is a great little number to drink after you’ve gotten to the end of a big job. Once you’ve got the 270 million in bonds, or the hard drives, or the Rembrandt, or whatever it was that we were getting in Peru... I honestly never knew what was in that case but the Israelis REALLY wanted it pretty bad.

1 Measure Goldschlager
1 Measure Krug Clos Du Mesnil 1998
1 Measure Peppered Vodka You can get Absolute Peppar if you must, but really it’s best to do these things yourself.


Place all in a mixing glass, stir twice (and only twice) with a Bar Spoon, pour into Cocktail Glass. =

Tales I Tell: Mount Olympus

Did I ever tell you about the time I set fire to Mount Olympus? I won’t make excuses, and I refuse to dwell on details, but I will say that no one cheats me out of my payment and leave it at that. One might think they’re all-powerful and have all that “Power of a God” crap going on, but when it comes to thermite, everything burns. I don’t like going to those sorts of extremes, but sometimes people have to be taught a lesson.


So, yeah, long story short is that I can’t go back to Greece until I get a new fake passport.

Champagne in Paris: How It Became Evident That I Am a Character in a Movie

You know what? I am a fictional character, and I have incontrovertible proof. Have I told you the champagne story? No? Okay, sit down and I will unfurl this tale of truth. That’s a fancy way of saying this is a true story. This is one story of about a hundred and sixty three, but in a way it’s the story that proves everything.

I had been in France for all of three hours. I’d fallen asleep on the train from Chuck The Gallbladder and we were looking around Paris. I was there with my girlfriend at the time, since it’s France, we’ll call her Lezette. It sounds better than to say I was visiting a girl name Holly, which makes it sound like I was dating Angela from “Who’s The Boss” a contention she would agree with, but I would argue.

Now, in Paris there is an Obelisk. There was a giant Ferris Wheel, in front of The Louvre and in front of the Ferris Wheel there is still and obelisk. I only mention the Ferris Wheel that stood in the Place de la Concorde because I was given a choice. We could see the Ferris Wheel, or we could see the obelisk. This is important. I had an illusion of choice. If you are caught up in the story, you believe that I could have either gone to the obelisk or the ferris wheel. Not true, because I am not a real person, I am the main character in a movie. I have no agency, I have no free will, the writer and the director decided that I had to go to the obelisk.

Wait, I must set the scene, that’s important too. October in Paris is like May in Michigan. It’s warm, but it also rains and everything weather wise has that sort of constant changing aspect that brings a touch of magic to whatever you’re doing. The ground is wet from the rain, but it’s warm and inviting and there is going to be an adventure if you just go out and find it. It was night, I can’t remember how late, but late enough that the sun was gone. Not so late that the city was deserted. I’ve been to Boston, New York, LA, Cleveland... nothing shuts down like Paris does. After Midnight it’s like walking around a Film Noir where you know stuffs happening somewhere, but the streets are deserted.

So anyway, it was probably around ten at night, still warm and inviting and still fun to be had. Now, for reasons that aren’t always clear to outsiders I was being silly. I didn’t just walk, I stopped across the road saying “Gobalisk, goblalisk, gobalisk.” If you repeat the word “Obelisk” quite quickly, it sort of sounds like that and if I think something sounds sort of like something I push it and make it sound like that. This is both sort of childish and something that Lezette found deeply attractive at the time. She’d grown up in a world where people acted with dignity, a world where people wanted the approval of others, a word where people did not stomp and bounce their head and repeat the word “Gobalisk” over and over. She lived in a world where people behaved themselves, and did the things adults are supposed to do. In short, she had never seen someone who so utterly and completely failed at the single most important life-task of all, giving a shit.

Now, while I am completely distracted by my goofiness, a Frenchwoman approaches me with a bottle of champagne and a paper cup. Yeah, I’m talking a Dixie Cup here. She then approaches and speaks the sort of gibberish you get in France, probably a local dialect of some variety. Anyone know what the hell The French are supposed to speak? No, of course not, they’re just making up sounds! We’re just all so intimidated by the French being all French that we don’t call them on their bullshit.

Lezette makes a hand wave, because she never actually did ANYTHING in her life before I came along. I however, did everything until that moment in my mid-thirties, but that’s another story. This was Ocotober of 2001 and I did everything. So this woman is standing with her Dixie cup and her bottle and Lezette is trying to wave her off and if speaking apologetically in the local gibberish and I interject because that’s what you do when you are fictional. I spoke up, and I asked a question, and I caused a problem.

“Hold on, what’s she saying?” I asked, and it was that moment that the whole fake language thing dropped. See, French people can all speak English, most of them can do so better than those raised with the language.

“Oh,” She said smiling and it was that moment that I got a good look at this woman under the unflattering sodium lights. “Tonight is my hen party and my friends say I have to give a stranger champagne.” She then paused for a moment and added. “For luck!”

Her friends waved to me as I looked over at them and I smiled. I’m pretty sure Lezette was having the internal conflict equivalent of a conniption fit. This is not the sort of situation she had ever been in, or envisioned she might be in. A complete stranger, probably a lunatic, offering a cup of what simply had to be poison, so they could distract us before stabbing us to death. Our bodies would wash up on the shores of Lower Mongolia, which for those of you paying attention is a landlocked country. In her head though, we were dead the moment she talked to us.

“Okay.” I agreed “If it’s for luck.”

I took a big gulp, and the French woman and I stand cheek to cheek, she with a crystal flute and I with my Dixie cup while her friends photograph us. I wish her luck, she refills my Dixie cup, and we part ways. I stick my arm through Lezettes and we walk towards The Fountain of River Commerce and Navigation and she sort of looks at me and the conversation begins...

“I have lived in Paris for two years, and you’ve been here for roughly two hours.”

“Yeah. You want some of this?”

“Sure.”

“Is it any good? I know nothing about champagne.”

“How the hell do you do that?”

“Limited experience with it I suppose.”

“I have never had someone offer me champagne. she just walked up to you and gave you champagne.”

“You would have refused to have anything to do with that situation.”

“No one has ever even offered.”

“Sorry.”

“It makes me feel like the sidekick in a movie.”

“It’s my world. You’re just living in it.”

“No.”

“No?”

“These things don’t really happen in real life, you’re a character in a movie. You can’t really exist. You have to be a fictional character.”

This wasn’t the last conversation I would have about this subject. It wasn’t the last I would have with her, or with other people. There is the fact that people have trouble telling the difference between me telling a true story like this, and a tale of complete balderdash. Someone actually said to me recently “If anyone I know has traveled back in time and shot Hitler six times, it was probably you.” which tells you exactly the sort of thing I’m up against.

We’ve all been there.

I was sitting in a bar in Malta, waiting for my contact with a briefcase full of something unsavory, drinking the local excuse for beer, listening to a guy from Wales explaining the power of the Hulkamaniacs, when it occurred to me I needed to have my medication checked. Seriously, I have no recollection as to how I actually got to Malta, nor do I remember exactly what was in the case, or if ever I knew. All I can remember is that I was supposed to get it to Serbia and that the man at the other end would finish paying my fee.

I do remember that girl at the end of the bar though, but it would be hard to forget her after all the trouble she caused. Still, how many of us haven't gotten on the wrong side of the Mafia now and then over some little cutie in a bar? She’s fine by the way, living under an assumed name some place nice. That’s all the detail you need. Pretty sure there’s no one left alive with a grudge, but you can never be too sure.

I did eventually get the case into Serbia, and got myself out, but that’s a story for another day.

New Cocktails: Spaghetti Western

Gonna be square with you, there is no interesting story to how this one came about. I was sitting on the Drax Space Station with Commandette Debbie, and you can only bang so often before “We be doin’ it in zero G” looses it’s novelty (14 times, in case you’re wondering) and you just settle in for some old Spaghetti Westerns which you can watch because all the movies were being fired into that satellite we’d “appropriated” for the purposes of aiming a laser guided bomb into... well you heard all about that I’m sure. Anyway, there was a faux gravity bar, spinning Babylon 5 style up there. As we were watching the movies, I made this cocktail inspired by the viewing material. After we blew up the station and landed back on Earth, she asked me to make her another drink and as I was dealing with that whole plot convenient amnesia thing and could only remember that one drink, I perfected it while we waited for rescue from Borneo.

2 parts Tequila
1 part Lime Juice
1 part Rum
1 part Limoncello

Put ice in a glass and build cocktail with lime juice, limoncello, rum and then tequila. Serve with Mexican/Italian fusion dishes.

Tales I tell: Not the Hat

Did I ever tell you about the time I nearly shot the Queen of England? Not that I wanted to kill Queen Liz Two (Liz Harder) but what can I say, I was broke and they offered cash.

Now, I could have splattered Liz Harder’s brains all over Philip, which to be honest, was my plan at the time. The problem was, Liz Harder had this really ROCKIN’ hat. I mean, it was an A-Mazing hat. I came, just looking at the hat, the memory of this hat is giving me a stiffy right now. I couldn’t ruin that hat. NOT THAT HAT! So… I decided not to shoot her.

I didn’t get the money, and MI-5 still wants to have a long and drawn out conversation with me. Fortunately though, I was going about with a different name and identity at the time, and this was of course before that whole national manhunt because of the stolen plutonium thing. My point is that I got away in the end, but the people who asked me to kill her are rather miffed. The thing is, you wouldn’t thing a consortium of organic biscuit makers would…huh, he does make organic biscuits, doesn’t he?

New Cocktails: Good Fairy

A good fairy, rather than just a green one.

I invented this cocktail while staying in England with a pair of Parisian girls. It would be inaccurate to say I was “with” them exactly, but it wouldn’t be correct to say that nothing went on between the three of us. We were there for reasons beyond simply enjoying ourselves though, you might have read about the diamonds going missing. The largest Diamond Heist in English history tends to get noticed. I was annoyed, to say the least, because I don’t like my exploits to make the papers and that one did. However, as I was never officially implicated, I can discuss the matter now.

None of that is important, what is important was that I invented this little drink as something to pass the time between waiting in that farmhouse for The Greek to arrive and actually going into action. It’s a strong little drink, but then, they were strong girls.

2 measures Absinthe
2 measures Blue Curaçao
1 measure White rum
1 measure Orange juice

Put all in a cocktail mixing glass with ice. Stir with a novelty swizzle stick. strain into a champagne glass and serve. Be careful though, you may find yourself on the run from Interpol by the end of the night.

Tales I Tell: A month in Bangkok

I know they don’t call it Bangkok in Thailand, but it’s what we called it when we were there. That was an interesting month to say the least. That was when I was traveling with those fellows I met in Greece. They weren’t Greek themselves, that was just where we met. I believe that they were an Israeli-Sino alliance group, although I must point out that I was very drunk at the time. I can’t honestly say I remember what we were doing there, or what my role in the group was supposed to be, again… drunk.

What I mostly remember are the girls from the group, because I almost had feelings for one of them. Her name was Biyu Goldenstien, and she was very likely a Mossad agent with a mixed heritage. Most of the group was made up of Chinese Jews, what with them being an Israeli-Sino alliance group. She was beautiful, and had very nice legs which could crack a man’s neck with a flick of her hips. The other girls were also beautiful, but there was something special between Biyu and myself.

There was something, and it relates to something that happened in Bangkok that year, some sort of crime, a theft or something? That’s the problem with Varinthip, which is a sort of Thai whiskey. I leaves me able to operate a bank vault (apparently) and able to fight off fifteen guards (allegedly) but leaves me more or less unable to remember actually doing it.

Sadly of course, it all came to an end. The details are fuzzy, because of drunkenness, but I do remember being told that they needed to find a goat for some reason, and then someone shot me. I woke up in an Israeli detention center, being screamed at in Hebrew, which was pointless because I didn’t understand it at the time. I tried explaining to them that I was unlearned, but that only brought misery as they soon brought in someone who could speak English to shout at me.

I did get out, because I always do, but that’s a story for another day.