The Professional

Save your damn criticisms of my so-called ‘violent outburst’ at Uncle Stuart’s wake, everyone. I refuse to apologize for my abrupt and necessarily profane exit, for to ask me to do so is to ask me to apologize for being what I am, which is a card-carrying, unrepentant mortar and pestle snob, something I have always been and will always proudly be. You morons might as well ask a leopard to shed its spots, or an antelope to lose its deadly venom. I simply cannot abide it when dumb people speak in an uneducated fashion about mortars and pestles and their qualities or lack thereof, so when Aunt Ceil, regardless of her supposedly crushing grief, defended the ridiculous basalt mocajete she bought in Oslo, I had every right to become upset and call her a worthless whore, as you would too if you only took the time to understand the vast differences between the various kinds of mortars and pestles available on the open market. I’m sure that Ceil would be delighted to spend the rest of her pathetic days crushing her grains and herbs in some bastardized ceramic Apilco from Williams Sonoma, but that doesn’t mean I have to be around her when she yaps about it. If any of you lunkheads would care to come by the trailer on a weeknight and examine my vast mortar and pestle collection, a simple sixty-minute lesson in mortar and pestle history, culture, and myth will be offered by me at no charge. No charge to receive an education I dare say most of you mouth-breathers need in the most dire way! Finally you’ll be able to circulate in decent society when I speak to you at length of the importance of low sand content in the volcanic rock of a well-crafted mortar and pestle, the surprising depth differences between Italian, South American, and Indonesian mortars and pestles, and the tragedy of counterfeit Tunisian olive wood models flooding the markets of our west coast, making idiots like you believe they’re getting the real thing when one slack-jawed look at the porousness of the interior curvature would tell you otherwise. If anything, you should all be thanking me that I didn’t brain Ceil with a 7-iron as soon as she came out with that asinine statement about how grinding moisture-rich and acidic garlic varietals in an Aztec metate releases their flavor more than if you used a well-ridged earthenware suribachi. Jesus H. Christ, losers, was I the only one who nearly threw up when that came out of her gob? Apparently so. Tell you what, why don’t you keep the invitation to Donna’s wedding and all the other meaningless family gatherings until you learn something about mortars and pestles and can make a simple statement about them that won’t have me heaving, okay? And though it’s too late for me to back out of Sidney’s christening, don’t expect me to remain silent there on the issue of his father’s recent embarrassing dart purchase. Nice set, nimrod---I’m sure those 80% Tungsten Cyclones will be worth plenty on eBay when everyone realizes those are actually Collette Shafts with 2ba thread weighing them down. Did you even graduate from elementary school, numbskull?