Balls and Walnuts
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Just a piece of paper
(Update from Blue Gal:
“Posted this story to Daily Kos and immediately got 8 or 9 comments asking me to delete my post because CapitolBlue is not a reliable source, fwiw. Standing by my own comments, though.”
Guess we’ll know in the next day or two if this story has legs.)
Blue Gal, I don’t know how you do it, but this story you’ve sniffed out is truly remarkable.
From Doug Thompson’s post (Capitol Hill Blue):
GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the [Patriot] act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.
“I don’t give a goddamn,†Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.â€
“Mr. President,†one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.â€
“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,†Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!â€
Be sure to read Thompson’s whole story, as well as Blue Gal’s commentary (both linked above). I’ve been too busy to see if Kos & the rest have picked this up yet, but . . . amazing, if true.
So . . . consider this story as a thoroughly unverified allegation. I’ll yank it if the story falls through.
D.
Bad Mojo: that other Kafka game
Bad Mojo hit the shelves in 1996. Karen and I, sick puppies that we were, instantly got hooked. There’s just something unspeakably special about pretending to be Gregor Samsa, you know?
Yup, that’s the premise: you’ve been magically transformed into a cockroach (by the ghost of your dead mother, no less) and you must navigate through an ultra-grungy apartment complex to learn the secrets of your existence. You must unravel your own personal mystery to become human yet again.
Despite the superficial resemblance to “The Metamorphosis,” precious little in Bad Mojo invokes the words or themes of Kafka. A Berkeley research associate rips off his lab and plans on driving to Mexico with the loot. Before he can make his getaway, his mother’s locket transforms him into a cockroach. Ultimately, Bad Mojo becomes a story of redemption, one that probably would not have sat well with Kafka.
Hmm. Perhaps I’m wrong. Ever read “In the Penal Colony”? It’s an unpleasant, nasty, violent tale of punishment and redemption. I hated it when I read it in high school, but it has stuck with me over the years. Can’t say the same for Don Quixote.
Bad Mojo has been re-released as Bad Mojo Redux (that link will take you to the video trailer, too), with more than a few extras:
A bonus DVD packs in a couple hours’ worth of extras, including a fascinating making-of documentary (with audition scenes and refreshingly honest creator interviews); developer commentary on the game’s FMV movies; concept art and storyboards; and video hints for solving the puzzles.
I’m not enough of a fanboy to pick up the Redux, but I’ve replayed it a few times, and if they release Bad Mojo 2, I’m buying.
D.
Of course it’s pointless. That’s the point.
Because every kind shout deserves a great shout-back, and because most of y’all are literary types anyway . . .
Props to YesButNoButYes (or, as I like to call them, WhoNeedsBoingBoing) for finding this cool Kafka game, Kafkamesto. Earlier this evening, I played Kafkamesto for about an hour before realizing that if I could win, it wouldn’t be a Kafka game!
But I’m too much a Type A whack job not to keep trying. I’ve already googled for a walkthrough, but the best I’ve managed is this message board.
I’m sick. Sick as Kafka.
D.
The Strip beckons
Oy, I’m tired. We’ve been squeezing patients into the schedule so that the boy and I can get out of town at the end of the year. It seems like I spent eight hours today shoveling ear wax, which is exhausting, no matter what you might think.
Stick around to the end, and I’ll tell you one of my favorite ear wax stories.
I grew up in a teaching family, which meant my dad had his summers off. Half the time, we vacationed “back East,” visiting relatives in Massachusetts and Connecticut. The other half of the time, we went to Vegas.
I come from a long line of poker players, folks who have (or had) the knack of making money at the table every time. Bliss to my father is an afternoon playing low ball, then coming home forty or fifty bucks in the black. I’m not sure why he avoids the higher stakes table, but soon, I’ll have the opportunity to ask him.
Yup, we’re going to Vegas.
My parents retired to Las Vegas. I wish they would have retired to Maui, Seattle, Portland, or San Francisco, but no, they retired to Vegas. Thus, even though I’m all grown up, half of my vacations still find me in Vegas.
In case you’ve never been, this is what Las Vegas is all about:
Leaving casinos reeking of cigarette smoke, buzzed on other people’s nicotine, tinnitus amped up a few dozen notches thanks to the slot machine noise;
Walnut-brained casino employees chasing us away from one area after another because I have my underage son in tow;
All you can eat buffets where ugly excuse me handsome Americans pile their dishes eighteen inches high with king crab claws (because, after all, it takes energy to go back for fourths and fifths);
Traffic that makes me homesick for Los Angeles;
Freezing cold winters, blistering hot summers.
Why did they retire there?
Anyway, I can’t complain*. They’re flying me and Jake out on their dime, thanks to the fact that our money pit of a house has left us nearly broke. We’ll be there from the 26th to the 1st, so if any of y’all are going to be there, let me know. We can score some free watered-down drinks at Slots-o-fun and flirt with the mini-skirted seventy-year-old hostesses.
Karen gets a pass this time. She’s recovering from a nasty crud, and doesn’t want to get sick so soon after this last illness.
A mom brings her sixteen-year-0ld girl in for an ear cleaning. The second I start scooping brown gold from her canal, she begins moaning like Meg Ryan.
Now Mom’s laughing, my office staff is wondering what the hell I’m doing back there, I’m squirming (thanking my stars I don’t have to stand to clean ear wax), and, unbeknownst to me, a little old lady totters up to our front desk.
“Excuse me, dear,” she says. “Does Dr. Hoffman clean ear wax?”
And my receptionist is trying very hard not to say, “Does he ever!”
D.
*Hah! What am I saying? I live to complain.
The prostitute joke
The most striking thing about Wikipedia‘s World’s Funniest Joke entry is just how unfunny the joke is. The runner-up isn’t much better.
The entry may lack humor, but it’s not entirely wanting in meat. The ‘world’s funniest joke’ stems from a 2002 study by the University of Hertfordshire’s Richard Wiseman. Wiseman wanted to find out what jokes had the greatest appeal across cultural and demographic boundaries:
The study documented regional differences in humour, as well as variations between the sexes. Men preferred more aggressive jokes, as well as sexual innuendo, while women preferred word play.
I’m partial the shaggy dog story, which Wikipedia defines as “an extremely long and involved joke with a weak or completely nonexistent punchline. The humor lies in building up the audience’s anticipation and then letting them down completely.”
The humor also derives from the delivery — which is, after all, the whole point of The Aristocrats. One of the tricky things about blog humor is that body language is, with rare exception, impossible.
Anyway, I thought the following joke was pretty damned funny.
You know your blog is on the map when . . .
Wikipedia picks you up. (Look under Influences, Books, etc.)
Veterans to my blog might remember my not-so-memorable review of John Scalzi’s novel Old Man’s War. That review barely made a splash on the blogosphere. But then Karen read Scalzi’s novel, had a fit, and convinced me to post her scathing opinions. The author weighed in (see the comments), shouted it out on his blog, and the whole thing drummed up more than a little traffic for me.
A few months ago, I began noticing a steady trickle of hits from folks coming to me via Wikipedia. At the time, it struck me as kind of neat — sort of like seeing your name mentioned in the paper. I never bothered to blog about it until now.
Why? Because Wikipedia is one of the top search terms over at Technorati, and I’m feeling mighty slutty right about now.
More later. I promise. Gotta go watch The Daily Show & Colbert, then clean the kitchen first.
D.
Technorati tag: Wikipedia
Cover your Aslan
Fun reading this morning in the New Yorker (December 12, 2005): film critic Anthony Lane dishes on “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”:
It was only a matter of time before a major studio got its talons into C.S. Lewis. The only thing delaying any attempt to film his Narnia novels was the lack of technology; until recently, for example, there was no computer-imaging program powerful enough to re-create a wholly convincing wardrobe.
. . .
And so to the conceit that, for decades, has stirred both the souls of the faithful and the loins of professional Freudians: first Lucy, then Edmund, then all four children feel their way uncertainly through the folds of a deep, furry passage and into another world.
I read all seven Narnia books as a kid, not because I liked them (I preferred science fiction, surprise surprise, although when it came to fantasy, Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain series had my vote as best runner-up to Tolkien), but because I had pre-pubescent obsessive compulsive disorder and I had to finish any series I started. I remember enjoying only one of the books — The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Can’t remember a single thing about it, though.
I tried rereading Alexander’s books recently, and found them to be thin gruel compared to Tolkien. Anthony Lane comes to the same conclusion regarding C.S. Lewis:
When, as a grownup, I finally opened “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” it struck me as woefully thin soil, with none of the gnarled roots of lore and language on which Tolkien thrived.
Well, we can’t all be Tolkien, even if we’re C.S. Lewis (or Lloyd Alexander).
My favorite fantasies written in the last 20-or-so years, not counting Terry Pratchett’s work: David Gemmell’s Legend and Glen Cook’s The Black Company, both of which taught me a lot about writing. They would both make splendid movies, too.
Neither of those novels ripped off the Tolkien universe. I am soooo sick of elves and dwarves.
D.
Editing update and a quote source
Lest you think I’ve been a lazy boy: yes, I’ve been working on my big mothah manuscript. My NaNo month left me a bit rusty as regards my novel, so I started over from scratch. I met and passed the 1/8 mark just a moment ago. Yippee!
Thumbnail description of The Brakan Correspondent, for those of you who aren’t intimately familiar with it already:
A respected newspaper journalist’s quest for the truth pits him against imperialistic aliens, his oppressive government, and cannon-wielding semi-intelligent pigs.
Sucks, doesn’t it? I prefer the blurb I gave over at pbw’s site once upon a time:
Del.icio.us Fo.cacc.ia
Technological sophomore that I am, Del.icio.us remains a mystery to me even after I checked it out. Yahoo bought Del.icio.us today. I gather they are some sort of Web 2.0 search engine. But is it a search engine, or a “social bookmarking service”? (Which is what, pray tell?)
Content drives web traffic, so my ignorance puts me in a bind. Still . . . while I may not know much about Del.icio.us, I do know plenty about Del.icio.us food. Del.icio.us Fo.cacc.ia, to be exact.
While the ingredients are simple enough, there are a few toys which make this recipe sing: a good mixer, a rubber spatula for scraping down the sides of the mixer, an open-ended cookie sheet, a pizza stone, and parchment paper. Of these, the last three are indispensable.
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup room temperature water
1/2 to 1 packet of yeast
1 tsp salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
More olive oil to brush the focaccia
A variety of goodies to sprinkle on your focaccia (details below)
Sprinkle the yeast on the water; stir to dissolve.
Combine flour, salt, and olive oil. With the mixer on the lowest speed, add water/yeast mixture in a stream. Use the spatula to scrape down the sides. Keep stirring until the dry and wet ingredients are combined, and the gluten has begun to develop (about five minutes max).
Coat a bowl or 1 Quart measuring cup with olive oil. Turn the dough out into the cup and cover with plastic wrap. At room temperature, the dough will take 1 to 2 hours to rise*. At least 30 minutes prior to the end of this rise, turn your oven on as hot as it will go (450 to 500).
You’ll have a VERY wet dough, so don’t even think of kneading this baby. Using the spatula, scoop the dough out onto a big square of parchment paper (about 14 inches by 14 inches). The parchment paper needs to be on the open-ended cookie sheet (or use a pizza peel, if you’re a real pro).
Using your fingers, spread the dough out as thinly as you can. It doesn’t need to look pretty — focaccia is supposed to be rustic, okay? I shoot for 13 inches by 13 inches.
Paint the top with olive oil. Now it’s time to add goodies. I like to top my focaccia with freshly ground black pepper, coarse salt (the stuff you would use on a pretzel or salt bagel), and onion. To keep the onion from burning, I chop it finely and mix it with some olive oil.
Fresh herbs are great on focaccia. Rosemary, thyme, garlic are all great additions. Once again, mix these additions with a bit of olive oil to discourage burning.
Using your cookie sheet (or pizza peel), slide the focaccia onto the hot stone. Bake for about 15 to 20 minutes, but keep a close eye on it. It should turn a nice golden brown.
If you cut the cooking time short by about 5 minutes, you can use this as a killer base for a pizza.
Easy!
D.
*Depends on how much yeast you use, how warm your kitchen is, how active your yeast is, etc. The original recipe called for only 1 teaspoon of yeast, but that sometimes ended in disaster (cold day or old yeast = flabby dough). That’s why I increased the yeast to a full packet. If your dough goes crazy and is ready before you are, no problem. Punch it down with an oiled spoon and let it rise again.