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.

It said, in part:

After careful consideration, we have decided to close the above-noted account for the principal reason(s):
Past due history on one or more accounts
Total bankcard balances are too high compared to credit limits
One or more bankcard accounts not paid as agreed

Chase’s careful consideration probably boiled down to the fact that I hadn’t used the card in over a year and don’t carry a balance. Why, how are they going to make any money off of me?! Indeed, that’s what someone at regular customer service guessed at last night when I called in a huff. But she said she wasn’t qualified or able to explain the reasoning and I’d have to call the thieves (my word not hers) at the “Portfolio Lending” department.

Listen, I know the deal. I’m not making them any money. So cancel the card because of lack of activity. But don’t give me these bullshit reasons about me being a bad risk. I get my credit report every month. I’ve also been paying off all my credit cards every month. So I know the three reasons listed above are total crap.

And that’s what I told the guy on the phone. “These reasons are complete crap,” was my exact phrasing.

“Well, uh, you know we report on what the credit bureaus,” he started.

“Bullshit. I know what my credit report says and I know my score is well north of 700.”

“Well, uh, we can review your account and reopen it.”

Well, there’s the rub. I told him I didn’t want it reopened, just reviewed. He said, he couldn’t do that.

“So let me get this straight. My credit’s bad so you had to close the account. And the only option you’re giving me is to review my credit and then reopen it. But this isn’t a ploy to get me to start using the card again?”

“Uh, no.”

“So that’s my only option?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, then review it and reopen it.”

“Well, while we were talking it I went ahead and reviewed it. Everything looks okay. So we’ll go ahead and review it.”

Now, instead of screaming “What the fuck do you mean you reviewed it while we were talking without my permission,” I kept my cool and said:

“I supposed I’d have to call some other department to see about closing this account for good.”

“No, I can do that,” he said.

“Do it.”

So good-bye and fuck off, Chase, you shady bastards. And if my credit number does take too much of a dip because of this activity, you’ll be hearing a lot more from me.

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.

“Keyboards,” they said. Yeah, because we know how well keyboards work when the power goes out.

And then there’s the classic “My kid can’t do it right, so obviously it must be discontinued” argument. Hey, here’s a teaching moment for both you and your kid: Some times, things we have to learn in life aren’t fun and don’t come easy. Deal with it. I hated handwriting. I still have a bump on my writing finger. Guess who has two thumbs, is now a writer and does his creative writing long-hand with pen and paper … this guy!

And now one school is going to bring it back. Well, what will they think of next? Teaching kids American History? Most annoying is that one of the program directors said they’re going to rely on singing and dancing to make it “fun.”

How about focusing on the writing, you idjit? Huh? That’s your problem right there with education today. “Oh, it’s supposed to be fun.” They’re kids. Sit ‘em down, shut ‘em up and teach them to write their damn letters. They have the whole rest of the day to have fun. Like in math class.

And, while we’re at it, get off my lawn.

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!

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.

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

Not to worry.

Susan pointed out that she was getting a front-row seat to stunningly beautiful countryside–after all, she wasn’t trying to thread the car between a stone wall (buy some shoulders, Ireland!) and an oncoming cargo truck driven by a tweaked out Eastern European teenager. And my mom said it was one of the most relaxing vacations she’d ever had as Susan and I don’t fight like all of her other traveling companions and, too, her motion-sickness medication meant for hours of back-seat sleeping. We could just wake her up when the scenery got interesting.

Dublin

Ireland lives up to the hype and then some. Hell, we’d ratcheted expectations down because, really, who typically raves about Ireland? Irish-Americans, that’s who. And what else are they gonna say? “Ah, it mostly sucked. Awful, awful place.” We figured such people had a vested interest in making the country out to be super-duper awesome.

Even in the pouring rain and scene from their patented death roads, the country is as every bit as beautiful as the post cards and posters and movies and Irish Spring commercials make it out to be. And the people, aside from speaking English (unlike those stubborn Italians and South Americans), are some of the nicest you’ll meet anywhere in the world. Hell, they still like Americans in Ireland. (Because honestly, I WILL have a screaming match about U.S. foreign policy before I ever pretend to be a Canadian.)

Some things the American traveler should know about Ireland.

1) Holy shit is it expensive. Now I know how Mexicans feel when they vacation in the U.S.

2) Did I mention the roads? Small. Tiny. No shoulders in many places. (Which makes driving on the wrong side of the road from the wrong side of the car all the more interesting.) And in many places, they like to put the relevant road signs AFTER the turn-off!

3) The beer, as you imagine, flows like water. And they take the branding very seriously it seems. In every bar and pub, a Guinness went into a Guinness pint glass. A Smithwick’s went into a Smithwick’s pint glass. And so forth and so on.

4) Despite the reputation as a drunken land, the bars are stingy with the whiskey and other hard liquor. You ask for a Jameson’s on the rocks (or, in Irish, “over ice”) and you’re not going to get a rocks-glass full like you would in New York or Louisiana. You’ll get one shot glass over ice. There you go sir. Enjoy.

5) It’s not called drinking and driving in Ireland. It’s called Drink Driving, which sounds really, really fun. But they take it really, really seriously. Indeed, there’s a big debate going on in the country because a rural politician wants to lighten up the Drink Driving laws that basically make it illegal to have even one pint before hitting the road.

6) The food, despite ignorant-ass American stereotypes, is actually rather good. You can’t mess with an Irish Breakfast. C’mon, it’s eggs and like sixteen types of sausage. How do you not like that? (Interestingly, the French group in one place ordered American breakfasts AND American coffee–to which I say, “Honh-honh-HONHHH!”) Also? Fish and chips? FRESH fish and chips? And out near Galway, at Moran’s, we had some of the best oysters ever eaten anywhere in the world. Seriously. The pubs know their way around a soup, too. I’ll tell you that much!

Mussels at Moran's

7) After enough beers, the Irish actually DO start singing. And they’ll question your manhood if you don’t know a song or two yourself.

Dublin's spire

Oh, details. Where did we go? We started in Dublin, where we stayed at the Trinity Capital Hotel, directly across from Trinity College. Dublin is a beautiful city and easy to navigate on foot–especially for New Yorkers who are used to walking everywhere anyway. Mama was a little worn out after a couple days of walking, but she’ll get over it.

Our first stop was The Brazen Head, reportedly Dublin’s oldest pub. Quite fitting to have your first pint of Guinness at the country’s oldest pub. Even more fitting is that there’s a bar called The Brazen Head not even a block from our apartment in Brooklyn where I spend a good bit of time.

Gravity Bar at top of Guinness Storehouse

After that, we walked over to the Guinness Storehouse–which is basically a museum dedicated to Guinness. A museum that also serves Guinness. What’s not to like. Then it was off to a Literary Pub Crawl. Cheesy as that may sound, it was actually both educational and fun–and involved alcohol!

Outside Trinity College during pub crawl

Did someone say bangers?

After a morning of walking around Dublin, we picked up our car and drove out to Dunboyne Castle, where we attended the “Afters” party for our friends Nikki and Derek, who’d gotten married the weekend before in Louisiana. I could probably write another 2,000 words on the party, but it’s a little hazy. Also, another bit of Irish genius? The guests pay for their own damn drinks. That’s good sense right there, if you ask me. Certainly makes more sense than the American tradition of celebrating your new start in life by going $30,000 into debt!

I think I just got served.

And then the next day, we headed west for Galway, making a detour to check out the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren. Thankfully, we got to see snippets of the Burren on the way to the Cliffs, because between the late start, a couple of false turns and the rain, it was basically dark (and we were soaked) after seeing the Cliffs. Then we drove into Galway, where we stayed at The Western, right in the city center. After a meal of fish and chips at McDonagh’s down on Quay Street, we went to bed.

Watch out for that first step. It's a doozy!

The next morning, we tumbled back into the car to drive off to Connemara National Park. The drive out was stunning. And this particular road was actually wide enough so that I didn’t spend the entire drive with my butt cheeks clenched up. Of course, there was some construction, a little mist and some traffic issues due to a Horse and Pony Show that seemed to be held in the middle of the road.

Our trusty steed, the Nissan Note

Though we were tempted to trade it in at the Horse Show

But, hey, that’s part of the experience, right. I almost wondered if it was some sort of animatronic display put on for tourists.

And then there was Connemara. I guess it’s beautiful. I don’t know. All we saw was the inside of the visitor center. The mist and drizzle decided at that moment to switch over into honest-to-god rain. We’d seen lots and lots of countryside on the way out, so we opted out of getting absolutely soaked and headed back toward Galway, driving straight through it and onto Moran’s, which is, well, just look for the signs off the N18 south of Galway. You’ll find it. Eventually.

After cramming our faces full of seafood, it was back to Galway, where we caught a little traditional music before retiring for the evening.

So, yeah, if you can afford it, go to Ireland. Great place, great people. Hope to go back some day. (Uh, just don’t go in October unless you like rain.)

Pssst. Hey buddy. Wanna buy a horse?

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.

No comment

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.

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.

While it’s true that I go to Grand Prairie once a year for Christmas Eve, it would be more accurate to say that I drive through Washington in the dark, turn off before I get to Grand Prairie-proper and go directly to my uncle’s house. Same thing ever year.

So the rest of Grand Prairie has been frozen in my mind, stuck back in the 1990s. It was then that my dad–by that point, long divorced from my mom–decided to take his single-wide out of the trailer park in Nuba and move it onto 28 acres of woodland he bought just off the water-tower road. Left onto the road, first right after the water tower, then right immediately after the hard-left curve. The driveway cut through a couple of fields and a stand of trees–long enough you didn’t even know there was a trailer back there.

Oddly enough, it wasn’t that far from the knocked-down shack my mom had grown up in when they were sharecropping or whatever it was they did. Sweet potatoes, I think it was.

I’d be too scared to live alone in the woods, but in high school, it was certainly a nice break for my friends and me. When we got tired of driving the Taco Bell-to-Sonic loop in Opelousas while getting drunk, we’d schedule a weekend of camping while getting drunk. We’d set shit on fire, throw fireworks at each other, get all muddy and disgusting and eat hot dogs and Little Debbie Fudge Rounds till we were about to puke. Hell, one weekend, I somehow managed to convince half the high-school population of Opelousas Catholic to drive in a caravan back there for a bonfire. It was about 25 degrees, the wind was blowing about 20 miles per hour and all of the wood was consumed in about half an hour. Needless to say, the party didn’t last long and soon enough, it was just the boys too drunk and stupid to come in out of life-threatening cold. One of the things I remember that night is someone doing donuts in Toby’s Toyota Starlet while he yelled into the frigid air, “My carrrrrrrrrr. My carrrrrrr.” (Side note: We loved that car. If there’s a car heaven, that little gray thing is up there right now.)

Aside from Daddy building a house back there, the place didn’t change much as I went to high school, college, back to grad school.

So I guess I could be forgiven for thinking that part of Grand Prairie would have remained the same. It hasn’t. There are more houses now on the stretch between the Ville Platte highway and the water-tower road. What shocked me more is there is what looks like a pine forest grown up in the pastures surrounding the water tower. Trees some 20 feet tall where there were scrubby little things before. Pines grow fast sure, but it would take them at least . . . Oh, it’s been 15 years, hasn’t it?

And alongside the old driveway? A trailer park. Farther back, a subdivision. I didn’t have the courage to drive down the length of it. Private property is still a sacred thing in these parts.

After driving around looking for Mama’s old house and not finding it, I could only come to the conclusion it had succumbed to the elements are been bulldozed once and for all.

Oh well. Such is life. I wanted to stop, shake my fist and say, “HOW DARE YOU?!?” but then I figured I’d sound like one of those preservationist wankers who think property and houses are just museum pieces for the enjoyment of the nostalgic set. I’d long ago moved out of the area, so I had no right.

Besides, it’s not like nostalgia and memory or all that accurate after all. That same afternoon, I drove by St. Pete’s Catholic Church — again, the real one. With the exception of the upside down cross, where St. Pete hangs for all eternity, it didn’t look like I’d been remembering it all these years.

Indeed, it looked a little better, a little more stately than the imaginary one that had been living in my mind.

Oh, and one thing about the church has changed, too. The graveyard’s gotten bigger.