Well, it’s time for me to write something here. Normally it’d be something geeky and/or dorky, but as I’m sitting down to write this all I can think about is food. Food, glorious food.

So I’ve decided to share with you all the recipe for Mookie’s World Famous Stew.

Here are the ingredients you’ll need:
Olive Oil
3/4 cup White Cooking Wine
4-5 cloves of Garlic
3 Potatoes
1 container of Mushrooms
3 Tomatoes
1 can of Black Beans

First coat the bottom of a cooking pot with a very generous amount of olive oil. Dice the cloves of garlic and put them in the olive oil, and set the stove to simmer. While the oil and garlic are getting warm, cut the potatoes into small triangles. Peel them if you want, but I prefer to keep the skins on. Add them to the garlic and oil and turn the heat up to about medium. Stir the potatoes so they get nice and coated in the garlic and olive oil. Next, cut the mushrooms into triangles and add them to the potatoes. I prefer to leave the stems on, but you can remove them if you like. Once all the mushrooms are added, stir them generously into the garlic, olive oil and potatoes. Add more olive oil if you need to keep the cooking pot nice and slick. Let the mixture soak into the potatoes and mushrooms for about 2-3 minutes, then add the 3/4 cup of White Cooking Wine. If you prefer a less salty taste, any cheap white wine will also suffice. Stir the stew after you add the wine and let it cook while you cut your tomatoes into large, long triangles. Do not dice them into small squares. Add them to the stew and stir. Let it sit and cook while you drain and rinse your can of Black Beans. Then you add the beans and stir them in. Now that all of the ingredients are in the stew it’s important to keep stirring so the olive oil, white cooking wine, mushroom and tomato juices all blend together into a sauce. Adjust the heat as necessary. The stew will be done when the potatoes have reached your desired softness. Take it off the heat, let it cool for about five to ten minutes, then serve. It’s going to be hot, but it’s a thick, hearty stew that will keep you warm on a cold day.

And there you have it. Mookie’s World Famous Stew.
Enjoy!

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You know what
*ba-ding*
Bugs the hell out of
*ba-ding*
me?
*ba-ding*
It’s when people talk to each other
*ba-ding*
on an instant messenger
*ba-ding*
and type only three or four words
*ba-ding*
at a time.
*ba-ding*
It’s bad enough that the internet
*ba-ding*
has already taken away grammar, spelling
*ba-ding*
and punctuation.
*ba-ding*
But now whenever I’m online
*ba-ding*
and someone IMs me
*ba-ding*
I discover that the internet
*ba-ding*
has now taken away
*ba-ding*
full and complete sentences.
*ba-ding*
Does life on the internet move so
*ba-ding*
fast that it cannot wait for that
*ba-ding*
archaic thing called a “paragraph?”
*ba-ding*
Not to mention that the rapid-fire
*ba-ding*
sound of the IM “ba-ding” makes me
*ba-ding*
want to kill myself.
*ba-ding*
So please. I beg you.
*ba-ding*
The next time you’re online and
*ba-ding*
IMing someone, take the time to
*ba-ding*
not only bring back, grammar, punctuation
*ba-ding*
and spelling.
*ba-ding*
Let’s make an effort to bring back
*ba-ding*
full and complete
*ba-ding*
sentences.
*ba-ding*
Or else I’m going to kill myself.

*ba-ding*

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I have studied and appreciated music since I was a kid.  I grew up on jazz, classic rock and classical music.  I pride myself on my musical collection, which includes such jazz legends as Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis, Sonny Rollins and Art Blakey, and such classical immortals as Johannes Brahms, Camille Saint-Saens, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, W.A. Mozart, Edvard Grieg and William Byrd.  I’m a total snob about my musical tastes.

That being said… good lord do I absolutely love metal.

I remember when I was a kid, in the midst of studying trumpet concertos and jazz standards, my mother walked into my room with a look of horror upon her face.  I was blasting Sepultura.  She slapped her forehead and said, “Dizzy Gillespie is rolling in his grave!  How can you listen to this crap?”

For me, metal is a primal release.  It is angry for me when I cannot afford to be.  It lashes out things I do not have the courage to scream at.  It speaks to the dark side of me that I have to indulge every so often to keep it well-fed and content.  And if you can get your hands on some really smart metal, their music is just as cerebrally stimulating as anything Brahms or Miles Davis composed.  It’s just much harder on the ears.

But I am also old-fashioned when it comes to my metal.  I can’t get behind most of this weepy, neutered stuff today that you’re supposed to listen to while you’re crying in the rain with your guyliner running down your face.   When my metal is sad, it’s because your entire viking clan was wiped out by invaders and now you must swear bloody revenge.  Or it’s because mankind did not heed the warning of the ancient prophecy and now Satan walks the burning earth.  Aah, yeah, that’s the stuff.

In my musical collection Blind Guardian is seated right next to Brahms, Sepultura chills out next to Sonny Rollins, and maybe Miles Davis will eventually rock out with Mastodon.   In the meantime I will blast Dimmu Borgir until my ears bleed when I need to escape into an angry world of misery, Satan and death… because it just helps me feel so relaxed afterwards.

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I’m a big fan of comic books. I have been since I was about eight years old. I was ensnared by the realms of endless adventure, larger-than-life perils, shining heroes and dastardly villains. Every comic book was a new adventure, and the variety of stories being told was enough to kick my imagination into high gear. Every superhero was on a different world, or a different quest, or facing a different danger, and every so often there would be a crisis so great that every single superhero would have to join forces to fight it.

Every so often.

Marvel and DC have been doing that a lot lately. Major crisis after major crisis so large that everyone in the universe needs to get involved to stop it. I like those epic crossover tales as much as the next guy, but I wish they would slow down a bit! It’s getting to be like the boy who cried wolf for some of us! The first time we’re all worried. The second time we’re a little less freaked out. By the sixth or seventh time, the shock and surprise are lost.

But it’s not the number of crossovers that’s bothering me. It’s their effect on the variety of stories being told. Marvel and DC have vast universes. DC has fifty-two of them, to be exact! There’s so much potential for so many adventures to be had, so many dangers to overcome and so many perils to be faced! With a major crossover, we the readers get ONE story to read. ONE danger to overcome. ONE peril to face. You don’t like that story? Too bad. Everyone in that universe is involved in it.

I sincerely hope there’s a backlash coming from all these perpetual crossovers and tie-ins. I hope there’s a return to that variety of storytelling that I grew up with. I hope that “big events” become rare and special again, so when they do come and affect every superhero in the universe it’s a treat for us to get swept up in that epic battle!

Nowadays, when we’re on Epic Superhero World-Shattering Struggle Number Eight in a Row, the effect is lost on me.

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Howdy. I am Mookie.

I will be posting stuff here every Wednesday.

What will I write about? What opinions will I force down your throat? What sort of stuff will I geek out about? What sort of stuff will I get angry at? Will I remember to post stuff on time and not be a scatterbrained doofus?

Come back and see me next Wednesday to find out.

That’s all from me for now!

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