Reply #23: No. She never reads it.

[NNadir]

You got a problem with that?

Um, maybe you think she needs to read cutesy yuppie recipes. Frankly, if she wanted to do that, she could probably watch Martha Stewart or whatever the fuck yuppie cooking shows are on these days.

I hear tell that you're having 40 guests for dinner. Wow. That must be quite a dining room you have there on the estate, even acknowleging that your dinner's cost can only be measured in negative numbers and all the guests are going to take home cash party favors.

How are they getting there?

Um. Let me guess. They're not all driving over in their E320 Mercedes 4 wheel drive (you need four wheel drive in Maine, right) cars, of course not. They're coming over on organically grown renewable horses, no doubt, raised on organically grown local Maine grown hay from the entirely self sufficient (except for all the imported dangerous natural gas) State of Maine.

You seem to be fidgeting a bit. Have some Maine grown sustainable Allen's Coffee Brandy to steady yourself, boy. Mommy won't let those mean, mean, mean boys be mean to you, no, no, no, no. Mommy will tell those boys they're bad, bad, bad.

You know, many, many, many years ago, I had a housemate who's sister lived with a man who was born with access to hundreds of millions of dollars. For about three years, we used to ride a motorcycle up from LA to Montecito, in the hills overlooking Santa Barbara for Thanksgiving.

The guy would sit there chain smoking dope specially imported from Oaxaca and giving these long, long, long pedantic lectures about the origins of the food, which of course, food which no real person could afford. All I recall of it is how boring he was. He was so boring, you almost felt sorry for him, because he was so isolated from reality, so isolated in fact that he might have been dead.

This is a guy who daddy bought him a Maserati dealership when he was 21.

A few times, it got cold on the drive back, I remember feeling so lucky to know what it is to shiver. And when I got home, I just couldn't wait to get back to my peanut butter and jelly on white bread, bread containing (gasp) preservatives.

I trust you'll be inviting some poor kids from El Salvador named Jesus from down in Providence to the Maine turkey dinner to hear a turkey lecture from you on how any turkey can prepare a vast turkey dinner fit for a god - with Allen's Sustainable Coffee Brandy aparatifs included - on a piddling 4 bucks per person.

By the way, I don't believe for a second that your vegetables are homegrown. They probably were flown in from Uraguay and then some guy stamped "locally grown" on them, making it believable by charging 4 times as much as one would pay at Safeway.

And of course, if you do bring a token Salvadoran to dinner, you'll brag about it.

You must be high. I don't know what you're smoking, but you're on something, and I sure don't want to smoke any of that. In times like these, it is right to be sober.

Be sure you teach the Salvadoran kids how to grow a sustainable, renewable, organic garden, although you should probably take into account that they'll be planting the Maine renewable vegetables in the cracks in the asphalt outside their rat infested rooms. You may not know this, but most of the people alive on this planet don't have a sustainably harvested forest in their family.

And be sure to tell Jesus how to grill a rat in a sustainable wood fired oven (although they may be firing it up with garbage and cardboard).

I have heard from a source that leaves me inclined to believe it, that some people would rather sleep on the streets rather than accept a night in a Salvation Army shelter, so overbearing are the lectures about holiness to which one has to listen.

I totally believe that.

God, I hate the yuppie car culture. It's so fucking despicable because it's so blind, so indifferent. I wish my wife wasn't sleeping. I need someone to tell me to laugh.