Pomplamoose Does ‘Beat It’

Chase Sucks

So back when I dropped sucktastic Chase for my banking in favor of the incredible USAA, I held on to one wankerific Chase credit card. Yesterday I received a notice from the slobber-boxes at Chase.

Why Your Kids Are Dumb

A school in Brooklyn has decided to start teaching handwriting again. Seems that New York City schools in their ongoing quest for excellence had quit teaching handwriting.

“No time,” they said. I’m sorry. Are there somehow less hours in the day than there used to be? How did our teachers, back in the day, manage to find the minutes in the day to teach us to write our own alphabet.

A Starred Review in Booklist

So I just found out that First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival is getting a starred review in the Nov. 15 Booklist. Sweet! Like the Publisher’s Weekly reviews, Booklist reviews are long on plot summary and the thumbs up or thumbs down usually comes as one sentence near the end. And here is that sentence:

Readers need to hold onto their hats because Wheaton’s roller-coaster ride of a book has hilarious highs that plunge to soul-baring angst, then zoom back up to the top.

To be honest, this is the first time that “roller-coaster ride” has been used to describe anything I’ve ever written. But I’m not complaining. Besides, as anyone who’s taken a graduate level lit theory course can tell you, the reader defines the text, not the writer!

The Wisdom of Monkeys

Gawker.TV has been live for one day and already I’ve learned something new. How to peel a banana the right way — the monkey way. Been doing it wrong all these years.

Irishland

Don't make me turn this car around. Not that I could ...

I just returned from a brief trip to Ireland with Susan and Mama. We enjoyed ourselves tremendously–some more than others. I spent the bulk of the time with a white-knuckled death-grip on the steering wheel of a Nissan Note trying to remember to stay on the left side of the road while trying to get to some beautiful natural scenery, which, upon arrival was inconveniently hidden by sheets of driving rain. This started to give me a complex and, being the sort who assumes responsibility for everything that goes wrong, I began to think this was turning out to be the worst vacation ever.

Not to worry.

Two Months to Go

It’s October 30 and we all know what that means! Time to panic and run down to the local drug-store to buy a last-minute Halloween costume. You can grouse about how that dented Miley Cyrus mask looks silly and makes your beard itch — or you can make a game of it and be proud you’re wearing The Last Shite in the Shop (as I heard an Irish DJ refer to this shopping pattern).

Oh, and Oct. 30 means we’re now less than two months away from the shipping date of The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival. It starts shipping from Amazon and B&N.com and other online retailers on Dec. 29.

Of course, a lot can happen in two months — like a massive coronal eruption on the sun’s surface frying us all to a crisp — and lord knows I’m tired of waiting, but two months is nothing. Nothing.

WTF? Happy Halloween

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Squirrel Head Potpie

When a recipe starts by telling you to boil ten squirrel heads, you know you’re onto something good! I found this little gem in “Louisiana Cultural Vistas,” one of those fancy magazines they put in upscale hotel rooms in New Orleans. It’s actually an excellent damn mag judging by this particular issue. And the potpie recipe was tucked in an article about Mary Land, author of Louisiana Cookery and a woman light years ahead of her time — conservationist, serial marrier, hunter, fisher, cook.

Anyway, the recipe card reads:

Boil ten squirrel heads until tender in just enough water to cover. Make pie crust and line casserole. Place a layer of heads and some juice. Dot with butter and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Make another layer of heads, juice and more pie crust strips. Cook in oven for one-half hour. (Serves six).

I sure as hell hope the recipe assumes you’ll take the meat off the skulls before putting it in the crust. Otherwise, that would be one huge (and crunchy) potpie.

Reality vs. Fiction in Grand Prairie

This weekend, I made a quick pass through the real Grand Prairie, Louisiana — as opposed to the alternate-reality one I created for The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival. To be honest, I didn’t expect to find that much difference between the two. After all, the one is based on the other.

But I was wrong.