Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
About Walnut
View all posts by Walnut
Aw, screw it.
Walnut’s Thirteen Generator is broken. (From Frankie Name’s Photostream.)
I began working on my Thursday Thirteen last night. Plenty of time, right? But I didn’t count on the self-disgust factor.
Let me explain.
While live-blogging a few weeks ago, I got to make all kinds of obnoxious groaning noises over All The Great Movies Shaina Hasn’t Seen. Someone, Shaina perhaps, suggested I turn this into a Thirteen. Terrific idea, right? I could gush about all my favorite movies.
But between initial conception and ultimate execution, the idea morphed into “Thirteen Essential Films.” I’ll bet you see the problem already: rather than write about the films I think are important, enjoyable, life-changing, you name it — I decided to assemble thirteen “essential” films, whatever the hell that is. Which would be fine if I were a film critic, a latter day Pauline Kael (kids: substitute “Roger Ebert,” okay?), but I’m not. See, I forgot rule number one of this blog: write about everything through the filter of me.
And now it’s past 9, I’m tired, my back is sore from working out yesterday, and I still have emails to answer. So screw it. I’ll do what I wanted to do from the moment I woke up this morning. I’ll tell you about my dream from last night.
I’m in my 20s, in med school again, and a few weeks ago I broke up with a tall and pretty blonde. She was kind, sweet, caring, and so not right for me. I recall feeling relieved when she told me she didn’t think things were working out. Such a nice girl, I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
So I’m in a restaurant having dinner with a friend, an older man in his 60s who is short like me, paunchy, nearly bald — nice dude, but nothing much on the hunk scale. We’re talking about my erstwhile girlfriend and I tell him, “Oh, I really don’t think she loved me.”
“You’re wrong,” he says. “And I’ll prove it.”
Turns out she’s in the restaurant too, sitting at another table with her friends.
We go over to her table and she says, “Yes, I loved you. But I’m a vegetarian and you eat meat. It wasn’t meant to be.”
I’m flummoxed over the fact she had loved me. I had not been in love with her. The older guy whispers in my ear, “I can get her back for you.”
I don’t want her back, but now I’m curious. “Come on — she broke up with me.”
“Blow in her ear and she’ll follow you anywhere*.”
“Get out of here! You’re full of it.”
“I’m not. And I’ll prove it.”
He gets close to her, leans over, blows in her ear. At first she looks baffled, then a little disgusted — and then, turned on.
She gets up out of her chair and follows him out of the restaurant.
True story: I’m describing to my nonagenarian patient the scars the operation will leave on her face. Her younger friend says, “She’s not interested in winning any beauty contests.”
My patient’s eyes get big and round as she turns on her friend and says with mock fury, “I beg your pardon!”
Still yucking it up at 96. I love her.
D.
*No, idiot, blowing in her ear is meaningless. You have to use your penis power and hit the bottom.
Hat tip to O’Brien, you nut.
The Too Much Information Quiz
Regular readers know: I like to pretend that I have no shame. But is that really true? Surely there are some things even I wouldn’t do. I’ve never given you the full monty, for example, and never will. If it were something to write home about, I might reconsider. But until those “Why Be An Average Guy Any Longer?” pills kick in, you’ll have to live in ignorance.
So I thought: why not devise a test to see whether I lack all shame? and why not share it with my readers? and why not have some fun with it, too?
Here we go. Excuse all the male pronouns, but tonight I have no patience for the he/she business; substitute appropriate pronouns for yourself.
Some of the local family trees . . .
are bamboo.
From our paper, The Daily Triplicate (click link for the rest of the story):
11-year-old crashes vehicle
Published: April 24, 2007
By Nicholas Grube
Triplicate staff writer
An 11-year-old girl drove a car over a steep embankment Friday, ejecting her four passengers, one of them a 3-year-old boy.
California Highway Patrol is still investigating why the 11-year-old was driving the vehicle in the first place, when two adults – one of them her father – were in the vehicle at the time of the accident.
“The father gave the 11-year-old keys to drive the vehicle,” California Highway Patrol Officer Don Bloyd said. “She had her father’s permission to drive.”
However, Bloyd did not release information as to why the father allowed his daughter to drive the vehicle.
The girl was driving west on California State Hwy. 169 near Klamath around 6 p.m. Friday when she failed to negotiate a curve and lost control of the vehicle. She hit another car coming from the opposite direction and continued over the edge of a steep embankment, rolling the vehicle several times.
The girl, who was wearing her seat belt, stayed in the vehicle while her four passengers were ejected. Arlen Charles, 36, April Rodriguez, 24, and two boys, 9-years-old and 3-years-old, flew from the vehicle and down the embankment.
My OR staff tell me that Hwy. 169 is one of those curvy, two-lane highways with steep embankments — not exactly a big, vacant parking lot. (And even if it were a big, vacant parking lot, if you wanted to teach your 11-year-old to drive, would you load up the car with all the other kids?)
I want to know the story. What was dad thinking?
D.
Hot Dog
For one of my newer readers, Thorne, a gal who knows her way around tattoos:
From The Noise Board. I don’t know who this woman is, but she’s gorgeous, has a great smile, and loves dogs. Those are more than enough reasons to be featured here at Balls and Walnuts.
Wish I had more for you tonight; I really do. But I’m wiped out. More tomorrow, I promise.
***
I have to add a huge: Woot! to Cap’n Dyke’s spouse Dedra Farmer. We just caught her testimony in a rerun on C-SPAN2. You go, girl!
D.
Green Acres extra available for bar mitzvahs, bachelorette parties
. . . and he’ll clean ear wax, too!
Wandering the ‘net looking for a pic of child actor Johnny Whitaker, I found Genesis Creations Entertainment’s Celebrity Bookings list. Now I’m a kid in a candy store. Who knew Lisa Loring (Wednesday Addams) was this hawt?
Add to the hawt list Erin Murphy (Tabitha from Bewitched); and I have no idea who Ivonna Cadaver is, but I dig her look.
For you hetero girls, look no further than Brandon Cruz (Courtship of Eddie’s Father). But since he’s surrounded by screaming 13-year-olds, you’ll have to lust after Potsy instead.
What if yesteryear’s stars aren’t good enough for you — what if you want yesterday‘s stars? Book Fergie and Keven Federline through Esterman.com. Esterman has Ron Jeremy, too — you’ll have to watch the vid for a while to catch Jeremy playing with his pooch.
His dog. Jeez.
D.
The Cap’n Has Landed
The Cap’n ‘n her lovely spouse are headin’ for Washington, D.C. this week to testify before Congress. Per the Cap’n:
Hearing on “Strengthening the Middle Class: Ensuring Equal Pay for Women,†scheduled at 9:30 a.m. in room 2175 Rayburn House Office Building. Witnesses to be announced.
* Cap’n Dyke’s lovely spouse will be th’main speaker for th’WalMart Gender Discrimination Class Action Lawsuit at this hearin’. Blue Gal gives me great press, but Th’ Cap’n will only appear if for some reason Dee can’t appear. Here’s her declaration at Walmart Class, th’lawsuit’s website.
And if you would like to learn more about the class action lawsuit, here’s the website, and here’s their intro:
– Attention –
present and former female employees of Wal-Mart or Sam’s Club:
- Have you been denied career opportunities in management?
- Have you been denied equal pay for equal work?
- Have you been getting the run-around about promotions or raises?
- Have you hit the glass ceiling?
If you worked for Wal-Mart at any time since December 26, 1998, you may have legal claims in a class action sex discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart. Learn more!
Wal-Mart, be warned: The Mound of Blue Dykes has ye in her sights.
Ye may begin shakin’ with fear.
Hat tip to Blue Gal, who will surely have more details. And be sure to stop by the Cap’n’s place to give her some love.
D.
Hysterical
French treatment of hysteria, circa 1860.
So much of my work as an ENT is unglamorous — picking noses, digging decades-old wax from people’s ears, draining abscesses. It gets me down sometimes, especially when (as happened last week) a rug monkey coughs in my face and I know I’ll be sick within 48 hours.
Times like this, I need historical perspective.
About the new frogs
I may be a thief, but I’m not a dick. UC Berkeley News credits this great photo to Prof. Miguel Vences. It was used to illustrate their story, “Clutch piracy revealed as novel mating strategy in European Common Frog,” which is every bit as captivating as it sounds. Don’t believe me? Snip:
In high-altitude ponds in the Pyrenees, on the border between Spain and France, so many males are vying for fatherhood that they pirate the egg clutches after they’re laid. Grasping them as they would a female, they release sperm in the floating clutches, often successfully fertilizing the eggs left unfertilized after the initial encounter. In one pond studied, 84 percent of all clutches had been fertilized by more than one male.
Ejaculating right on top of a clutch of eggs. It doesn’t get much more Darwinian than that.
I’d like to change the blog’s subtitle, too*, but I’m feeling post-fast-food queasy and can’t figure out which template to modify. Maybe tomorrow.
D.
*For example, I could paraphrase Bette Davis: “Hang on, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”
A new standard by which to measure infamy.
William S. Burroughs’s monologue memorialized the captain of a sinking ship who dressed as a woman to get prime seating on a life raft. As measures go, this one barely registers on the modern Richter Scale of infamy. Think about it: this week alone, we’ve seen George Bush perseverate over his war of vanity, Abu Gonzalez play the fool to shield the boss, John McCain jest about bombing Iran — and then defend himself rather than apologize, and a psychotic undergrad turn a college into a slaughterhouse. Here in the 21st Century, one cowardly captain warrants less than a footnote.
But for some reason, Alex Baldwin ripping into his 11-year-old daughter hit a special chord for me.
See, I know myself well enough to say with near certainty that if I were President, I wouldn’t murder thousands of US soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis just to line the pockets of my rich friends. If I were the Attorney General of the United States, I would regard it as a position of trust, and I would try my best not to disrespect that trust. If I were a presidential candidate, I wouldn’t joke about killing thousands of Iranians, and if I were a depressed college student, I sure as hell wouldn’t buy guns and bulletproof vests.
But I’ve yelled at my kid, and that’s why Alec Baldwin’s tirade gets under my skin. Is that how I sound?
I don’t give a damn that you’re 12-years-old or 11-years-old, or a child, or that your mother is a thoughtless pain in the ass who doesn’t care about what you do.
That’s one of the tamer quotes. Then it dawned on me: he doesn’t know if she’s 11 or 12? Whaaaa?
Nope. I’ve never ripped into Jake like Alec ripped into Ireland, his daughter. Alec, you are such a dick.
Wait, that’s not quite what I wanted to say. It was this:
Alec, thank you for being such a dick.
D.
All I really need to know I learned in Cosmo
Time for another Cosmopolitan Thirteen! I’m eager to find out how the May issue will change my life. Will I discover at long last what I crave in bed? Will I learn the secret to perfect abs with Cosmo’s No Crunch Workout®? Could I find out what mysterious rules of attraction brought Karen and me together? And will I master the Surefire Technique That Takes You Both Over the Edge — Simultaneously®, whether we like it or not?
I’ll just be happy if this issue saves me hundreds of dollars on money-saving beauty tips. Like putting leftover guacamole dip in my hair for added shine and bounce — I am so there.
Follow me below the cut for a treasure trove of Cosmognosis.