Balls and Walnuts
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Drat! Another meme.
This one’s from Amanda. It seemed a bit boring, so I decided to make it more challenging.
1. Go into your archives.
2. Find your 23rd post.
And you thought Metallica was a head-banger band.
3. Post the fifth sentence.
A bloke named Hendriks braved Bengal tigers, heavily armed Indian outlaws, and worst of all, the Indian Customs Export Bureau to take seven tarantulas back to Europe.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
Done.
That’s the boring part. Where’s the excitement? The challenge? I’m going to change rule #4:
4. Pretend your fifth sentence is a punch line. What’s the joke? (Kinda like Jeopardy, eh?)
How does the London Zoo punish people who disobey the “Please Don’t Feed the Bears” sign?
5. Tag five other people to do the same thing.
I’ll leave this one open to the public. I’m feeling memed out.
More later . . . I hope.
D.
She’s baa-ack.
Don’t know for how long.
Bare Rump discovers vibrators. This one may not be work safe.
D.
Local ubermarket caves to International Jewish Conspiracy
The bitch, the absolute, incontrovertible, undeniably heinous bitch of the Atkins Diet is that I can’t eat any of my Yid comfort food. Although Atkins is dead and his company has filed for bankruptcy, I continue to follow a low carb diet because that (and exercise) is the only thing preventing my jelly roll from ruling the world or, barring that, forcing me back into my fat clothes.
Make no mistake about it: Jewish comfort food is not low carb. Here’s a short list of all the things I dearly miss. (more…)
Schwarzenegger Street, or, Meet the Muppets
From new pal YesButNoButYes, who found it at BoingBoing, check out Schwarzenegger Street.
California, what were you thinking? If you wanted an actor in the Governor’s seat, you should have picked Gary Coleman. Whatchoo talkin’ bout, Ahnold?
Just kidding — Coleman’s political beliefs fell to the far right of Arnold’s. An oil rig or three off every beach, a gun in every household, that sort of thing.
How about John Cusack for gov? An aside: I’m looking forward to seeing Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton in the screen adaptation of Scott Phillips’s gem of a novel, Ice Harvest.
D.
NaNoWriMania Day 5
On the North Coast, the storms begin in earnest after Halloween. I’ve been cooling my heels all afternoon waiting for this one to blow over. From a NaNoWriMo point of view, this is a good thing: I’m home writing rather than out shopping. 2,163 words today — go me!
Of course, we’re all snails compared to Paperback Writer (see Go Cheetahs). Sheila’s November word count sits at 34,052 — as of yesterday. AND she finds time to blog.
SO . . . I’m looking at the monitor, thinking, are these good words? As I understand, the point of the exercise is to tear down a few internal writing barriers, and give the muse a few hits of crack (oops! here on the North Coast, crank is the drug of choice) or perhaps an enema (is that the better metaphor, considering what I’m putting down on the page?)
Is it all crap? Sadly, while you can upload a text file of your novel to the NaNoWriMo site, all they give you is a word count. They need to install a crap-o-meter. Then again, if they did that, folks who pegged the meter might get discouraged and drop out of the contest.
It’s nearly impossible for me to figure out if my novel is kaka or not. I haven’t reread any of it, since That Way Lies Disaster. I’m delighted to report that I have a plot, characters who are not boring, conflict, complications, and an overall plan which includes an ending. I guess I should be happy that I have that much.
My problem is, I’m playing with hardboiled conventions, so I’m wondering whether each character or plot element is (A) trite, or (B) necessary to fit the genre. The dead bodies have to start piling up . . . don’t they?
D.
Technorati tag: NaNoWriMo
PS: So far, I have Maureen, Invisible Lizard, and Jona on my NaNoWriMo friends list. You folks who are WriMing, can you tell me your usernames so I can add you to my list?
My username is dshoffman, by the way ;o)
Blogging question
Blogspert Jakob Nielsen has written a list of the 10 most common blog design problems (thanks to Dave Munger for posting on this). I’m curious what you folks think about his Don’t #8: “Mixing Topics”:
If you publish on many different topics, you’re less likely to attract a loyal audience of high-value users. Busy people might visit a blog to read an entry about a topic that interests them. They’re unlikely to return, however, if their target topic appears only sporadically among a massive range of postings on other topics. The only people who read everything are those with too much time on their hands (a low-value demographic).
I’d rather not think of my loyal readers as a “low-value demographic” but I’m definitely guilty of this sin.
Question: should I relegate political posts (like the one below) to a separate blog, or do you think Nielsen’s Don’t #8 is hooey?
My suspicion: those of you who read me for the humor skip over the politics. I doubt the political posts hurt the blog overall. What do you think?
D.
The buck stops where?
Or, to be more specific: will Dick Cheney fall on the sword for George W. Bush? Consider:
- In his October 19 speech to the New America Foundation, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to then Secretary of State Colin Powell, fingered Cheney and Rumsfeld: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.”
In the Q&A after the speech, Harlan Ullman commented, “I also think that the cabal really has a leader and the leader is George W. Bush, and I think that it’s the president who’s driving the ship of state.” In his response, Wilkerson made no mention of the president. Search the transcript for mentions of Bush 43, and you’ll find precious few.
- This last Thursday, on National Public Radio, Col. Wilkerson went even further by blaming Abu Ghraib and all other prisoner abuse on Dick Cheney. Read Steven Clemons’s (The Washington Note) story here. From the Editor and Publisher story: Wilkerson said he had some hard evidence: a trail of memos and directives authorizing questionable detention practices up through Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s office directly to Cheney’s staff. The directives, he said, contradicted a 2002 order by President Bush for the military to abide by the Geneva Convention rules against torture.
To my eyes, Wilkerson seems eager not only to pin the blame on Cheney but also to exonerate George W. Bush.
- Elsewhere on the web, John Dean gives us his thoughts on the likely outcome of Special Prosecutor Pat Fitzgerald’s investigation. From Dean’s analysis of the Scooter Libby indictment, he concludes, “it appears Libby’s saga may be only Act Two in a three-act play. And in my view, the person who should be tossing and turning at night, in anticipation of the last act, is the Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney.”
Again, no mention of President Bush. Dean thinks the whole point of the Libby indictment is to get Libby to flip on his boss, Dick Cheney. Another snip: “Will Libby flip? Unlikely. Neither Cheney nor Libby (I believe) will be so foolish as to crack a deal. And Libby probably (and no doubt correctly) assumes that Cheney – a former boss with whom he has a close relationship — will (at the right time and place) help Libby out, either with a pardon or financially, if necessary. Libby’s goal, meanwhile, will be to stall going to trial as long as possible, so as not to hurt Republicans’ showing in the 2006 elections.”
I think Dean’s analysis falls down at this point. A protracted legal battle does nothing to help the Republicans. On the other hand, if Libby and Cheney fall on their swords hard and soon, Bush could say, “Show’s over, folks, time for the country to heal,” put a popular and clean Republican in the #2 slot, and try to patch up his tattered presidency in time for the ’06 congressional elections. As it stands, dubya is more a liability than an asset to the Republican candidates.
D.
Technorati tags: Dick Cheney, George Bush, Dean, Rumsfeld, cabal, Fitzgerald.
Pimpage for a friend
Psyched, by Kenney Mencher
My pal Kenney is having a show in Atlanta:
blue line gallery
465 Boulevard, S.E. #203
Atlanta, Georgia, 30312
Phone: 404-635-0622
GRAND OPENING RECEPTION
NOVEMBER 4, 6-10 pm
So, what do you think — does that guy look like Andy Dick, or what?
D.
Sex, more sex, and a new meme
Ever since we moved, we’re on dial-up modem. Karen hasn’t called to set up the cable modem. There’s no upside to dial-up modems but there are numerous downsides. For example, to watch my virtual girlfriend fulfill every possible command would, at the present download speed, take 53.3 hours. I’m not that desperate. (more…)