Champion Bleeder

Last night I sharpened my knives. A good, sharp knife can make a lot of difference when you're doing prep work in the kitchen, dicing onions and mincing garlic--that sort of thing. I use my chef's knife and paring kife the most often, so I only sharpened those two. About five years ago when I worked in the kithcen of Dean & Deluca, someone knocked my paring knife off a table and nicked the tip off. I had to grind it down a lot to make it useable again. A kife is supposed to have a convex edge, but after all of these years of abuse the edge of my paring knife is nearly concave. That makes it tough to sharpen--I pretty much have to sharpen it all the way down to the tang, which (on a good knife) is the metal part that meets the bolster. The tang isn't supposed to be sharp, my the one on my paring knife is.

So this morning as I was cleaning up from a tasty waffle breakfast, I wiped my paring knife off with a sponge and reamed the tip of my right middle finger on the now-sharp tang. It's not a very deep cut--it's more borad and shallow--but it bled tons. Blood is thickerthan water, but not mine. I bleed like a champ, even from the smallest cut. Crimson droplets of watery blood were splattering all over random locations of the countertop, the sink, clean plates in the drying rack. I just put a Band-Aid on my fingertip, which makes typing tough. This had happened before, they Band-Aid-typing fiasco; I get a lot of hangnails.

Why is my blood so thin? It's genetic. I think us folks on the Bir side are borderline hemophiliacs. I also eat about a pound of chocolate a week (an exaggeration, but not much of one), and chocolate thins the blood. That can't be helping any.

Joe is here right now, fussing overone of his art projects. They look very good. I'm rpoud of him. But we have too many. He works on these things like a man posessed, banging out about four new works a week. Do you own a cafe or gallery, or are you redecorating your home in a super-mod theme? Just contact Mr. Bir Toujour, he'll hook you up with a bumper crop of original art. If I had a digital camera, I'd post a photo and put up a PayPal account, make this thing an online art emporium. Come one, come all! Sneezy & Tacky has top-quality art masterworks at bargain-basement prices!