Balls and Walnuts
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Category Archives: Humor
A Birthday Wish List: Part 2
#7: A wish-fulfillment fantasy.
Sometimes, bad things happen to bad people, and the spirit of Schadenfreude takes hold. Like the feeling you get when that jerk in the Trans Am who cut you off three minutes ago gets pulled over for speeding, you know?
When we were kids, my brother and sister had this odd habit. If my brother got punished, my sister would rub her hand over her breastbone and say, “Aaaaaah.” She pronounced it with a guttural flare, as if the sound came from deep within her viscera. If my sister got punished, my brother would return the favor. Since I had a cast iron ass, they got little satisfaction in seeing me punished, and any “Aaaahing” from them would be met by my laughter.
It seems to me that as adults, we get to say “Aaaaaah” far too infrequently. What better birthday present could there be than to see a rich and powerful hypocrite brought low?
What I dream of:
George Bush caught on tape telling us what he really thinks about the displaced poor of New Orleans.
Pat Robertson indicted on child pornography charges.
One day, at a press conference, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan says, “You know, folks? This is all bullshit — I mean, I could tell you stories that would knock your socks off. Aw, hell. No time like the present.”
Rush Limbaugh . . . wait. He’s already shot himself in the foot so many times, what else could happen to the guy?
What I’ll be satisfied with:
Photoshopping rude images of Ann Coulter.
#6: The perfect father for just one day.
Remember the sitcoms of the 1960s? In Father Knows Best, Jim Anderson was, like a modern day Odysseus, never at a loss. No matter what you threw at the guy, he handled it with sensitivity and style. Princess having boy trouble with those creeps from the local frat? Jim would bust a cap in their ass and dance a jig on their graves. Kitten having menstrual cramps? Jim would give her a few tokes from his pipe and teach her the secrets of Far Eastern meditation. Bud busted for having the neighborhood’s first methamphetamine lab? Jim would post bail and buy his son a trampoline so that the boy can channel his energy more constructively.
I want to be that kind of dad, if only for a day.
You know. The kind that never raises his voice, solves every problem, and finds himself at the center of every group hug.
What I dream of:
A day wherein I’m the perfect father to my son.
What I’ll be satisfied with:
Not raising my voice above 80 decibels, and not making the kid cry.
#5: The great discovery!
As a kid, I used to fantasize about black ops agents coming to my school and spiriting me away from my classmates. “You’re far too important to our nation’s security to waste your time here,” one would say. Then the other would chime in: “We need a four-foot-tall boy genius to man our special space ship. This craft will make you the master of space and time. Do you think you can handle it?”
And I’d think: Can I handle it? Fuck yeah!
Only I wouldn’t have used the F-bomb back in elementary school. I’d heard it once or twice, soon learned it wasn’t in the dictionary, and was the only word guaranteed to put my mother in shock. Oddly enough, the word “frig” seemed to have the same effect, even though I was certain I’d made it up. Guess not.
Nowadays, I don’t particularly care to be the master of all time and space. As I learned in high school from watching the movie Laserblast, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I’m already a corrupt son of a bitch.
No, I’d be content if someone else discovered me.
What I dream of:
Some big agent, say Neil Gaiman‘s agent Merrilee Heifetz, finds my blog and sends me an email dripping with praise and wishful solicitations. Then comes The Phone Call (cue Scarlet O’Hara’s vocal inflections): “Oh, Dr. Hoffman, Ah am evah so hopeful that you are unrepresented, because it would be mah honah and privilege to be your agent.”
Don’t know if Ms. Heifetz has a Southern accent — actually, I kind of doubt it — but that’s part of the fantasy. I’m sure she’d oblige.
What I’ll be satisfied with:
Getting my damned sitemeter to top 100 for the day. Where the hell do you people go on the weekend? Don’t tell me you have lives.
D.
A Birthday Wish List: Part 1
Whenever my birthday draws near, I get contemplative. I like to think about what I’ve done with my life and what I still want to do. At the risk of being a downer, what if this next year is my last? What can I do in the next few months that will make my life more complete — or, for that matter, make a difference in the lives of the folks around me?
In some respects, this comes down to a list of wishes and unfulfilled dreams. While I believe we should all strive to fulfill our dreams, I’m also a realist. Sometimes our dreams are self-destructive or hurtful to the ones we love. Sometimes they’re damned expensive. Thus, we must temper our dreams with a dose of good old-fashioned common sense and practicality.
It is in this spirit that I tender for your consideration the first installment of my 44th Birthday Wish List.
#10: A Good Massage.
I hope you’re paying attention, Michelle, cuz I bet you give a damned good massage. And, no, I am not talking about ‘sensual massage.’ Once, when we were visiting Karen’s parents in Los Altos, I went to a local masseuse whose name I pulled from a phone book. I’m a shiatsu fan, so I picked a Japanese name out of The Book and crossed my fingers.
So, what do I get? Some old gal whose idea of massage is running her fingernails up and down the insides of my thighs. I wanted to tell her, Lady, if you’re trying to give me wood, get your granddaughter in here to take over, ‘kay? Instead, I suffered in silence and payed my $$, because I’m still self-hating enough to figure a woman deserves that kind of money just for touching my naked body.
As for my wife, any day now I expect her to kill me for the insurance money. And you know? She’ll deserve it, too.
What I dream of: a half hour in a hot tub followed by a skillful two hour massage.
What I’ll be satisfied with: if I rub my back with chicken fat, our cats will walk all over me and give me a good licking.
#9: Dinner at Hoppe’s.
Picture this: it’s 1996. Jake is eight months old and he has already hit the terrible twos. I’ve just finished my remedial year *cough cough* my year as faculty at USC, and I have some down time before San Antonio expects me to show up and, um, be a doctor or something.
Karen and I decide to have one last fling on the California Coast (thank heavens we were wrong about that!) so we drive up north with our screaming, why can’t you understand I am the alpha and the omega, eight-month-old son. We have clams and lobster at a superb seafood joint on the Ventura Pier — which, sadly, has since washed away — and great grub at The Palace Cafe in Santa Barbara. Onward up the coast, until at last we come to Cambria, Morro Bay, and Cayucos.
We have a price fixe dinner at Hoppe’s in Morro Bay. Jake is in fine form; the only thing that will quiet him is constant stroller-strolling. Karen and I take turns eating and pram-pushing, and we both manage to eat a dinner that’s not quite hot and not quite cold.
Guess what? Even given those less than ideal circumstances, we agree to this day that our dinner at Hoppe’s was the best eats we’ve ever had, ever. Perfect food, from the salad to the vegetable garnish.
What I dream of: a quiet, romantic dinner with Karen at Hoppe’s. Jake can eat a burrito.
What I’ll be satisfied with: we had not-half-bad sushi tonight at the NWTEC Internet Cafe.
#8: The best birthday cake in the whole, wide world.
Which requires, natch, a Tahitian virgin.
What I’ll be satisfied with: a forkful of Bailey’s Irish Cream cheesecake from the NWTEC Internet Cafe.
D.
The things I’ll do fer love
A Pirate’s Dilemma: Part the Last
This here tale be poorly suited for young ‘uns and Puritans. Ye’ve been warned!
The beauties hoisted yer ill-fated Cap’n upstairs like a sack o’ bullion. I could scarcely credit me fortune, but me self-congratulations were a mite premature. And that warn’t the only thing premature. When they dunked me in a claw-footed tub o’ suds and washed me proper, I made a right fool o’ meself, I did.
“Damnation,” said I. “I suppose that’s what ye get fer years of abstinence.”
Arumba, the Nubian, pressed some vile grog to me lips and bid me drink. “For strength, Cap’n. We have plans for you.”
That they did, I tell ye. Once that bitter brew passed, I swooned, and felt meself borne up again by their fine strong arms. And then I felt no more.
When I came to, Maria of Cordoba and Mai Poon, me Cathay princess, were ministering to me rusty equipment. Oui Oui the Parisian was doing unspeakable things to me teak leg, and Arumba was pressing her ample bosom to me parched lips. Me head swam like some dark leviathan twenty-thousand leagues deep, yet I had the sense of others in the room, scurrying to and fro like hungry bilge rats.
Above me moans, I heard Stella’s voice. “Where is it?”
And another voice, a masculine voice, but not terribly so. “Damn it, woman, search again.”
Blast! I knew that voice. One of Her Majesty’s finest, an agent of the Crown. And a right ponce, too. I recalled that this one had a long history of consorting with beauties of the evening.
It all made sense. The malt vinegar bottles on the tables downstairs weren’t for feminine hygeine — they were for fish and chips. And the ferns and calla lilies weren’t for me rival, Jack Sparrow. Oh, no, me bucko.
The Jolliest Roger had taken to servicing Her Majesty’s fleet.
“Infernal limeys!” I cried, but with Arumba’s plump endowments in me face, it came out, “Mm, mmphms!” I struggled to rise, but the double-dealing vixens had bound me hands and foot.
“Step aside, ladies,” said that infernal Britisher, Randall Richards. I felt a cold draft of air on me nether regions as me beauties shoved off me rudder.
“Ye have me at a disadvantage, Randy Dick.”
“Indeed,” said the fop. “I would know where you keep the key to your lockbox, Captain Wood.”
“Ye’ll get it over me dead body, ye limey bastard.”
He gave me a waggish smile. “Have it your way. Stella? Waterboard him.”
Waterboard? I count meself a student of the torturing arts, yet I had not heard such a thing. But me ignorance would soon be cured.
Stella hove into view, that great glorious mountain of flesh I’d once called me own true love.
“Nothing personal, Cap’n. It’s just business.”
Buck naked, she straddled me face.
“One more time,” said Randy Dick. “You have stolen bullion from Her Majesty’s Ship The Drake. We’ve searched your ship, and haven’t found the bullion or the key to your lockbox. That leaves only one conclusion. Stella? Sit.”
The mistress of the Jolliest Roger settled herself, sealing off me grizzled mouth and nose with her plenteous booty. I struggled for air, all in vain. When I thought meself a goner, she stood.
“Well, Captain?” said Dick.
I gasped, coughed, spat. “Is that the best ye can do? That be heavenly.”
Randy Dick stroked his hairless chin, pondering me fate. “A hard case, this one,” he said. “Let’s try some softer torments, shall we?”
“Oui Oui,” said Stella. “Give him The Special.”
The Special. Something about the way she said those words shivered me timbers. But I found little to fear, at least at first. Oui Oui gave me rudder the Parisian treatment, as it were, and I figgered I could stand such torture for a year or more before I’d crack.
I spent me load of shot, but Oui Oui kept going.
“Damn it girl, stop!” said I. “I ain’t yer personal mess hall!”
“Oui Oui can suck the rind off a watermelon, Cap’n,” said Stella. “I beg you to reconsider before you lose your last coat of varnish.”
True enough, the pleasures of Paradise had given way to an infernal ache. What a way to meet me maker!
“Enough,” I cried. “Ye’ve unmanned me, ye dastardly succubus.”
“You may stop, Oui Oui,” said Randy Dick. “Where’s the key, Captain.”
“Ye’ll have to look where the sun don’t shine.”
And that be me story, mates. I lost The Drake’s hoard to these scurvy scoundrels, but at least I got them to do what no beauty had never done before. Arrr, not even Mrs. Morning Wood.
Shenanigans at the Jolliest Roger
A Pirate’s Dilemma, Part the Second
Old Stella had made some peculiar changes to the Roger, I tell ye true. I remember well a time when a seaman like yers truly could grab a pint of grog, settle into one of Stella’s leather-backed chairs, and put his peg up on an oaken barrel. And a fine bar she stocked, arrrr.
I tarried at the threshold. “Stella, what’s become of the place? Where’s me bar? Where’s me fine old leather chairs, and barrel to rest me peg a spell?”
“Times have changed, Cap’n. See that hunk of brass? That’s an espresso machine. Now I can steam milk like the pros –”
“You always steamed my milk like a pro, Stella dear.”
“Kind of you to say, Cap’n. My new clientele likes lots of glass and stainless steel –”
“Avast! What be those plants on the tables, and hanging off yer beams?”
“Calla lilies, Cap’n. And those be ferns.”
“Stella, Stella. What sort of godfersaken house of ill repute are you runnin’ these days? And what be that on the table — malt vinegar? Stella, I like me lasses to smell like lasses –”
But I had no chance to finish, for at that very moment the beauties appeared, floatin’ down the stairs like visions of Earthly delight. Frenchies and Spaniards, jade-bedecked vixens from Cathay and the finest Nubian princesses. “Oooh la la, it’s Captain Morning Wood!” cried one, and “Can I sit on your lap?” cried ‘tother, and “May I please polish your peg leg?” cried a third.
They surrounded yer blighted hero and whisked me to a table. While Stella plied me with her finest rum (she’d saved me a pint, bless her heart), they begged me fer stories of courage and adventure on the high seas. But before long, I came to know their darker purpose.
“Cap’n,” said the Nubian, a fine lass with a high breast, two of them in fact, “is it true you shipped with the legendary Jack Sparrow?”
“Oooh!” the others did cry out in their feminine ecstacies. “You knew Jack Sparrow? What’s he like? Tell me, tell me please!”
“Ay, ’tis true,” I said most mournfully. “I knew Jack Sparrow. I shipped with the Perrier-drinkin’ scoundrel.”
Aye. At last it made sense: the cafe lattes, the calla lilies, the ferns. Jack Sparrow — that bilge-sucking, eyeliner-bogarting blaggard — Jack Sparrow had come to town and fouled me beloved Jolliest Roger.
“Jack Sparrow is not the man ye think he is,” I said to a chorus of soulful moans. “One fact I’ll give ye, one fact to prove that Jack Sparrow is a right poor excuse for a pirate. Here ’tis: that craven swab don’t even know his alphabet like a rum seadog.”
“Huh?” said me gorgeous beauty from Cathay.
“I tell ye true, Mai Poon, or Rita Cosby taint a man. Ol’ Jack Sparrow, he confuses his M’s for his Arrrs.”
“Como?” said Maria of Cordoba.
“Si, si, Maria. One day we made to board one of Her Majesty’s privateers. ‘Look ye, Jack Sparrow,’ I said. ‘Have ye ever seen a stouter mizzenmast?’ ‘Mmmm,’ he replied. Mark ye! A yummy Mmmm, not a right manly Arrrr.”
I gazed upon a sea of beautiful but sadly blank faces, I did.
“That poxy hunk of shark bait wasn’t looking at the mizzenmast, ye sex-addled dames. He was looking at me bosun’s rudder! And by rudder, understand I be speaking metaphorically.”
These flowers of femininity met me revelation with general consternation. I began to fear me willy would stay dry for another long turn at sea, but then Stella arrived, bless her soul.
“Girls, girls! The Cap’n isn’t here for your pleasure.”
Stella’s lasses needed no more encouragement. With a great whoop, they spirited me onto their fine, soft shoulders, and hauled me bodily upstairs to their den of exotic pleasures.
“Fair winds!” cried me good hostess Stella. “And, girls, don’t forget. The Cap’n has been at sea a very long time. Before you get intimate, you had better swab his poop deck!”
Here be yer pirate romance. Arrr.
A Pirates Dilemma, Part the First
Taint easy being grizzled as a cockswain’s dungbie, I tell ye, and me with a leg o’ teak from the knee down. The eye patch don’t help at all, neither. Of late, it seems I can only wet me beak in the back end of a cackle, or in the bunghole of a portside beauty with fewer eyes than me. Imagine me surprise, mates, when I stirred meself one morning and found not one but two beauties casting hopeful eyes on me sorely underused mizzenmast.
But I be gettin’ ahead of meself. Name is Wood, me friends. They calls me Morning Wood, on account o’ I rise before the cock crows and I be barking orders before the sun peeps out her shiny eye. We’d just taken a fine haul, having scuttled Her Majesty’s ship The Drake off the Ivory Coast, and I was of a mind to give me men some much needed shore leave. And, truth be told, I longed for a fine young maiden of indiscriminate tastes to shiver me timbers right well.
We put anchor at the Port of Sassandra. So many bronze beauties lined up at the docks, I figured I had to be in Davy’s grip to be this close to Paradise. Old Stella herself met me at The Blinkered Eye — that be right, Stella of the Ivory Coast’s most famous house o’ ill repute, The Jolliest Roger. Stella had so many rolls of flesh, twas said she could satisfy the whole Spanish Armada with nary a risk to her honor.
“Ahoy, Wood!” she cried. It tickles her fancy to talk like a pirate, it did. “Is that a hornpipe in your pocket, or do you be glad to see me?” Sadly, she ain’t too good at it.
“Darlin’, how would you like a ride on the Cap’n’s Fo’c’s’le?”
“That be a fine proposal, Wood, but I’ll do you one better. I have me some new blood, I do, and I’d be honored if you’d inspect the merchandise.”
“Inspect the merchandise? What do you take me for, woman, a common water-clerk? I be here to find meself a good time –“
Old Stella sighed. “I meant, how would you like to get laid? Really laid? Not just a roll in the hay with my pet sheep.”
I was as stunned as if I’d been clogged on the head by sodden oar.
“You mean it, woman? A real dame, one of the human persuasion?”
“Two X chromosomes and all, Cap’n.”
That one went over me head, but I liked the sound of it all the same.
“I’m a baby eater. An eater of babies.”
Jonathan Swift ain’t got nothin’ on Bob Cesca. Check out this satire on the Huffington Post.
Excerpt:
The president’s mother, Barbara Bush told reporters during a visit to Texas, “Those puppies were going to be used as fishing bait anyway, they’re much better off now. BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHA! HAHA! HA!”
D.
Why it pays to go to a board certified ear, nose, and throat doctor
Meanwhile, over at Chelicera, Karen reviews the gruesome history of the Mississippi Flood of 1927. (Don’t freak over the title. She’s being sarcastic. Or ironic. One of those.)
Those who don’t remember history are condemned to repeat it, right?
D.
The fundamental frequency of guy thought
From Monica Jackson’s blog, The Way There:
“Okay, tell me the truth. Do you ever go to the grocery store or somewhere like that, and count the guys you’d possibly sleep with in a ratio to the ones who are ick, and work it out mathematically—and figure out when is the highest likelihood of the greatest concentration of fuckable men at particular grocery store at any one time?”
Thank you for asking this question, Monica. Why? Cuz I never would have guessed that women think this way. Guys, yes. Beginning at puberty, sex never leaves our brains (except for a thirty minute interval after each orgasm).
Quien es mas lindo?
One Saturday afternoon in 1982, I watched The Sting with Karen and her two roommates, Kira and Suzie.
“So,” I said, “who is cuter, Newman or Redford?”
Take a moment to answer that one for yourself. Even if you’re a guy. Especially if you’re a guy, cuz the point of this exercise . . . well, hell, let’s not get too pedantic just yet. Guys? Ask your wife this question. Try to predict what she’ll answer.
I figured it had to be Newman. Those blue eyes, that chiseled facial bone structure. (Great bones do it for me every time. I still have wood with Lauren Bacall’s name on it.) But, no. All three picked Redford.
Even then, twenty-two years ago, Redford had a white raisin thing going. And now look at the two of them.
Newman first.
It still baffles me, this question of what women find attractive or unattractive in certain men. Miss Snark has femwood for George Clooney. Maureen’s nipples go stiff over Al Pacino. Meanwhile, the Bitches keep ripping on poor Fabio. (See, Beth? I worked in a Fabio reference!)
This question is important to me, since I enjoy writing strong female characters. These female leads have been mutant parakeets and giant spiders, but eventually I mean to get back to Homo sapiens. When I do, I’d better have a grip on the feminine mystique.
So, help me out, y’all. Here are some pairings of famous duos. Tell me who is cuter and why. To keep from prejudicing things, I’ll save my opinions until the end.