Balls and Walnuts
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Zine Foo
Reptiles Magazine has an awesome cover critter this month: an adult male veiled chameleon in full display, with a baby veiled climbing on his casque. I couldn’t find the photo at the Reptiles Magazine website, so I pinched this photo from sell.com, where someone is selling baby veiled chameleons for $39 (a decent price).
This bad boy is in full aggressive display. You can tell by the black highlights, the vivid colors, and the jutting chin. His mouth is either gaping or about to gape. What pissed him off? Chances are, another male veiled. Chameleons are, to my knowledge, unique in the degree to which they despise one another. Even as tots, they will put on a vigorous show of aggression and, yes, fight each other.
In the 90s, Karen tried to raise veiled chameleons and a few other species as well. Turns out it’s easy to get them to breed. That’s the one time two adults won’t fight one another. Nevertheless, in veiled chameleons mating is not the sedate, ritualized act the nature programs would have you believe. Think Rhett raping Scarlet, with Scarlet raping Rhett right back, and you’ll have some idea of the excitement of a C. calyptratus mating.
Yes, they’ll breed and lay eggs readily enough, but getting the eggs to hatch, that’s a bitch. Even with a professional incubator, our yield rarely exceeded 10%. Not our most successful business venture, but much more fun than cleaning earwax.
Art Spiegelman (you probably know him best as the creator of Maus) has crafted a great cover for the June 2006 issue of Harper’s Magazine. Once again, I tried finding a copy of the cover at the Harper’s website, but they’re still stuck in May mode. The cover is a cartoon showing eight stereotypical images: a black Sambo, a greedy, big-nosed Jew, a bucktoothed Asian, and so forth. Spiegelman’s article deals with the notorious Danish cartoons — and, yes, Harper’s Magazine has chosen to reprint them in full.
Spiegelman has written a brilliant piece on the history of political cartooning, and he caps it off with his critique of Danish cartoons. He rates them with a one-to-four fatwa bomb scale, a nice touch. I enjoyed his insights, and besides, any essay which pops effortlessly from South Park to Al Jazeera deserves a shout.
Also in this issue of Harper’s, novelist Kevin Baker gives us a long but meaty essay, “Stabbed in the Back,” which serves both as history and exposition of present day Republican tactics. His premise: Republicans, like post-WWI Germans, have opportunistically seized on the meme of the backstab, the betrayal by one who is close at hand. His commentary on WWII, Korea, Douglas MacArthur, and the Vietnam War was an eye-opener for Karen and me. I’m not sure I agree with his final conclusions regarding the Administration’s inevitable failure to make the same meme work vis-a-vis Iraq, but his analysis is certainly unique.
Most provocative of all is Ben Metcalf’s notebook entry, “On Simple Human Decency.” Metcalf takes over from Lewis Lapham, who has edited Harper’s for eons. His question for us is this: “Am I allowed to write that I would like to hunt down [deleted to keep Walnut from getting kidnapped and sent to an Eastern European torture camp] and kill him with my bare hands?”
He takes this question through some amazing and hilarious permutations. I don’t think Chimpy’s handlers will let him read this one any time soon.
On one level, this editorial works as satire, but Metcalf also has intelligent things to say about the law which forbids people to speak or write any threats against the president. But the essay flabbergasted me. I couldn’t help but think, “This guy has grapefruit-sized balls, writing this thing!” Which is why he’s featured here on Balls and Walnuts, naturally.
D.
Two thin letters
Received: two thin letters, both SASEs, both rejections*. I have a third query floating out there in query-space, but it’s addressed to a Big Name. Fat chance.
On the other hand, I made it into a Big Name med school after getting rejected by nine others. To be more precise, Big Name School of Medicine wait-listed me for a few months, then tapped me late in the summer of ’90.
I nearly missed out on a future full of boogery.
Question to my author-readers: do your agents represent science fiction? And, if they do, how would you feel about putting in a kind word for me?
Figure on me being a total noodge for a while.
D.
*Neither were form letters, and both were kind. But one of ’em, it was clear this fellow hadn’t even looked at the chapters — not with any care, anyway, since he got the manuscript title wrong.
Son of Godawful? Mostly.
Let’s get one thing straight right from the start. The villain of The Da Vinci Code is NOT albino, dammit. He’s leucistic. Look at his eyes — they’re blue, not pink. Trust me on this. So you albino rights groups can chill out right now.
(Edited to add: okay, according to Karen, I effed up on this one. Turns out albinism is a complex condition with more than one possible genetic basis. Some folks with this condition have red eyes, but many have light blue eyes. My bad. I’m sympathetic to the albinos, by the way. It’s stupid — no, worse than that, it’s lazy writing — to use color as code for evil. So stop it, Hollywood, stop it right now!)
But you’re not here for a biology lecture, are you? You want the dish on The DVC. It’s below the cut.
Brilliant
Crooks and Liars has the video.
Anyone who studies humor, who is interested in the question, What makes a joke work? should watch this animated short. Robert Smigel and Matt O’Brien take a simple sight gag and run it through increasingly absurd variations. Same idea as The Aristocrats, but without the reliance on pornographic/potty humor (not that I object to potty humor). No, this short works thanks to (A) the clever use of surprise, and (B) an understanding of the symbolic value of its images. Watch it, and you’ll understand what I mean by (B).
I don’t want to ruin it for you.
D.
The single best work of fiction in the last 25 years
. . . is Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
From the New York Times:
Early this year, the Book Review’s editor, Sam Tanenhaus, sent out a short letter to a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages, asking them to please identify “the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years.” [Read A. O. Scott’s essay. See a list of the judges.] Following are the results.
I find it a little mortifying that I own only one of these (Updike’s Rabbit series, of which I could tolerate only the first two or three pages). I made it through half of A Confederacy of Dunces — ultimately, I grew tired of the protagonist. I’ve been tempted by Roth’s The Plot Against America. As an alternate history, it rubs shoulders with SF.
I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised; I’m a genre guy. SF, fantasy, humor, hardboiled float my boat, while ‘serious’ fiction usually puts me to sleep.
Question: will any of you vouch for any one of these books? (Linked above.)
D.
Thank heavens he takes after his mom
I’ve started and stopped this four times now. Kate’s right — I am off my game.
It cheers me to think that my son is better than I am. He lacks the depressive streak. He also lacks the self-esteem problem . . . for good or ill. Low self-esteem is a tremendous motivator. I often wonder how folks with high self-esteem manage to accomplish anything in life. Don’t they wake up and lie there in bed all day long, delighted with themselves?
Below the cut: Proof that my son is better than I am.
A cold, cold Fitzmas Eve
At the moment, Fitzmas Eve carries a damp chill, an overcast sky, and the promise of sleet, not snow. From the Wayne Madsen Report this morning (but see below* regarding Madsen’s credibility):
Yes, Virginia, there is a Fitzmas
With apologies to The New York Sun.
Dear Walnut—I am 8 years old.
Some of my wingnut friends say there will be no Fitzmas this year.
Some even say there is no Fitz!
Papa says, ‘If you see it in Balls and Walnuts, it’s so.’
Please tell me the truth, will there be a Fitzmas?
It’s not that I don’t love you, but . . .
I love double negatives more. Anyway, I’m a Demented Guestblogger today. If you want to see a case of shameless auto-blogwhoring, or self-pimping, or (if you hate neologisms) self-promotion, check it out.
For now, treat this as an open thread. Questions, anyone?
D.