Balls and Walnuts
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More odds and ends
I’m impressed with the FBI. Honestly, no snark! I received a spam which looked suspicious for child pornography, so I dropped a tip at the FBI’s website. They require you to leave all kinds of contact info, so I gave my office address and phone number.
Yeah, yeah, keep reading . . .
Cold enough for you?
It snowed Thursday. In California. On the freakin’ coast.
Over the border in Oregon, here’s what happened to our garden goldfish tubs:
Evening grins
From Da Nator, Plumbing and Porn:
Now we’re talkin’ – those gay boys really know how to do it. And look, they have implants, too! On second thought, the idea of trying to fit several steroidal muscle boys into a tiny airplane bathroom is not all that appealing.
You know how I know you’re gay? You keep staring at pretty boy Brad Patton. (Sorry, just watched 40-Year-Old Virgin for the 41st time. Can’t help myself.)
And by way of Blue Gal, Longmire Does Romance — an exhaustive (exhausting!) font of snarky romance cover humor. My favorite: It Only Burns When I Pee. Check it out.
Okay, I had to get in on the act, too. Kate — what do you think?
And
Ooooh oooooh ooooh! Don’t miss this great viddy (hat tip to Maureen):
Effect of Drugs and Alcohol on Spider Webs
Must-see video. Don’t do drugs, chillun!
D.
PS: Join the John McCain googlebomb project!
Ruby Slippers and twelve other junior year memories
I was telling Michelle the other day that the only time I ever noticed shoes on a woman was in my junior year of college. Her name was Carmela Maria . . . gaaaaah. How do you forget the last name of a woman you might have married — in a parallel universe where her dad the longshoreman wouldn’t have killed you first? Anyway, they were Carmela’s ruby slippers, and I’m saving that story for a bit later.
1. The house on Milvia. Fellow Napa State Mental Hospital volunteer and all-around pal Debbie — she of the corn silk smooth hair and affinity for boyfriends with huge hands — knew I was miserable in the dorms. Her lesbian roommates were graduating that year, and Debbie was looking to find a smaller place. She invited me over to her apartment to watch Gone with the Wind and, more to the point, to check the place out. By the way, watching GwtW with three hyperintelligent women, two gay and one most emphatically not gay, had to be a high point of my sophomore year.
I loved the place. Quiet neighborhood close to school, grocery stores, fresh produce stand, cheese shop, bakery, fish market, bookstore . . . heaven, the best place I’ve ever lived in. It was one of those sleepy, concrete pylon-obstructed areas where you just know everyone’s growing hemp in their garages, watched over by a beautiful Husky named Nikka Sue, a dog who had come to Debbie’s rescue one evening when some creepy dude was following her home.
It took me a while to recognize the apartment. Remember how my hippy cousin dowsed a map to find me a place to stay, freshman year? The apartment complex without vacancies? This was the very same place.
More stories below the cut.
Pescadero Beach, September, 1997
In my mind’s eye, I can see my son as an infant, toddler, eleven-year-old, and everything in between, a smooth continuum. I wonder if it will always be this way. I hope so. I hope, twenty, thirty years from now, that I have the opportunity to think these thoughts.
Last night, Jake asked his mom, “If you had one wish, what would it be?” And good mama that Karen is, she replied, “I would wish you would have the happiest life you can possibly have.”
Sorry. I’m still a bit freaked out over Bush’s saber-rattling tonight vis a vis Iran and Syria; and Chris Matthews just said, “A lot of people are going to go to bed tonight terrified.” My response: Oh, yeah. Terror is a good word for it. We’ve been in Iraq for four years and we’re in the shit deeper than ever. In seven years, Jake will be eighteen. Do any of you doubt that, given enough leash, Bush would want an American military presence in Iraq seven years from now? And when does reality truly set in — when will we see reinstitution of the draft? The man clearly has escalation on his mind, escalation of unconscionable proportions. At some point, he’s going to run out of bodies.
Yes, maybe everything will be hunky-dory in two years when Bush leaves office. But what about the 17- and 18-year-old kids who are in harm’s way now? Also, I don’t doubt Bush’s talent for getting us into a mess so horrific we can’t extricate ourselves in any simple fashion . . . even with a Democrat as president.
Folks keep talking about the Democratic Congress’s wondrous powers of investigation and subpoena. Will investigations prevent Bush from taking pot-shots at Iran and Syria? Will subpoenas bring the troops home?
He’s a danger to our security, to our children, and to the world. Impeachment is the only solution.
D.
Why I gave up on Crichton
In the Jan 7 New York Times Book Review, Dave Itzkoff has a hilarious, ripping review of Michael Crichton’s new novel, Next. Here’s the opening paragraph:
Though the moment may lack the inherent gravitas of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s encounter with Lincoln, or even Elvis Presley’s private audience with Richard Nixon, surely history should reserve a special place for the day in 2005 when Michael Crichton was invited to the White House to meet with George W. Bush. Imagine: the modern era’s leading purveyor of alarmist fiction, seated side by side with Michael Crichton. Oh, to be a concealed recording system in that Oval Office! Did Crichton confess to his host that he’d been inspired to write “Rising Sun” by a certain Poppy in chief with a propensity for puking on Japanese dignitaries? Did our president tell Crichton he found the dinosaurs of “Jurassic Park” every bit as frightening as our ancestors did at the dawn of time, 6,000 years ago?
The rest of the review is every bit as good.
Now, you might think I gave up on Crichton because of that fateful meeting in 2005 when he entered the echo chamber of Bush’s brain to confirm the president’s doubts about global warming, but I dismissed Crichton more than twenty years ago. Here’s the story, for what it’s worth.
Pimpage
And I just now thought of a new caption. To paraphrase Gerald R. Ford, a man who knew how to exercise his sphincter ani (serious flatulence problem, I’m told),
“Did you do that? Show some class!”
D.
Hebrew School
I never described the fallout from my Hanukkah Lobster story. Humiliated in front of my first grade class, unmasked as an ignoramus, I vowed to learn more about my religion. I demanded that my parents get me some religious instruction.
In our community’s synagogues, Hebrew school provided preparatory instruction for Bar and Bas Mitzvahs. I was too young for that. For a few years, I went to Sunday School, and I have pleasant memories making challah by braiding instant biscuit dough ropes, saving quarters to plant trees in Israel (much needed for our New and Improved Israel, AKA Israel the Expanded Edition, AKA Israel post the 1967 Arab-Israeli war), and doing crazy shit with macaroni, Elmer’s glue, and gold spray paint; and somewhere along the way, I forgot my desire to learn more about Judaism. Religious instruction, such as it was, consisted of stories about David and Goliath, Samson the Crazy Motherfucker, Esther and Haman. This was fun. Pleasant. A great excuse to get out of the house on the weekend.
Then Hebrew school happened.