Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: such as it is
Nostalgia for Gerald Ford, etc.
The other night, when Karen and I were watching Chevy Chase’s impersonation of Gerald Ford on the old SNL, I said, “Those were the good old days, you know? When the only thing about our president you could make fun of was his clumsiness.”
For a long time now, I’ve wished we had a president whom I could respect. Here’s the Wiki on Jimmy Carter, the last president I liked, a guy my dad still says “was too nice to be president.”
Some heavy-duty insomnia last night, so I may or may not chime in later with something more substantial. I’ll close with two links:
Thanks to Dean* remembering Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, I have tracked down the elusive theme music: Sarah Dash, “Sinner Man.” Amazing that I should have warm thoughts about a disco song, but there you have it.
And here is an interesting link to excerpts from Adam Hochschild’s book, King Leopold’s Ghost, wherein Hochschild speculates on the historic basis for Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz. Here’s a snip:
”The ‘Inner Station’ of Heart of Darkness, the place Marlow looks at through his binoculars only to find Kurtz’s collection of the shrunken heads of African ‘rebels,’ is loosely based on Stanley Falls. In 1895, five years after Conrad visited this post, Leon Rom was station chief there. A British explorer-journalist who passed through Stanley Falls that year described the aftermath of a punitive military expedition against some African rebels: ‘Many women and children were taken, and twenty-one heads were brought to the falls, and have been used by Captain Rom as a decoration round a flower-bed in front of his house!’ If Conrad missed this account, which appeared in the widely read Century Magazine, he almost certainly noticed when The Saturday Review, a magazine he admired and read faithfully, repeated the story in its issue of December 17, 1898. That date was within a few days of when Conrad began writing Heart of Darkness.
Oh how I love the holiday season, tra la la . . .
D.
*Read Dean’s Global Orgasm Day story. Read it now! Much better than anything I have to offer.
This could be interesting
In this morning’s email:
hi i am Jana Duggar.. if you have any questions at all you can email me at bowlingqueen1@aol.com!!
I only take emails with no cursing in it!
Thanks
I’ve invited her to give an interview for Balls and Walnuts. But how do I confirm she’s who she says she is? (There is a Jana Duggar — I confirmed that much.) Or does it even matter? It could be fun either way.
You may leave suggestions for questions in the comments. And keep it respectful, people. I only want questions with no cursing in it.
D.
Damned chipping Sodburies
This is what I get hanging around at Lilith’s blog.
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My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Duke Douglas the Edible of Chipping Sodbury Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title |
The Edible seems so apropos . . . considering the fact that tomorrow is Global Orgasm Day.
D.
The things I’ve learned
1. Jokes based on somewhat obscure literary works tend to fall flat on their faces. Or on their chocolate ears.
2. Today is the first day of Hanukkah. It falls on a different day every year. Damned lunar calendar.
3. Cats like me better when I’m drunk.
4. Karen’s “You never change” charge (see #13 of this last Thursday’s Thirteen) has more to do with personal philosophy than with any shortcoming on my part. “I don’t think anyone ever changes,” she told me when she read that bit. “You can’t change your personality.”
Do you think she’s right?
D.
Mistah Korto—he dead.
Ever wonder what sorts of presents ear, nose, and throat docs give one another? Contrary to popular belief, we don’t make candles from saved ear wax. That would require too much effort.
Here’s what I received from this dude, one of my favorite ear surgeons:
Cufflinks? Perhaps, but who wears cufflinks anymore? And that goes for tie clips, too. You might as well send me a sterling silver snuff spoon for all the good a tie clip would do me.
Expensive jewelry, perhaps? Heavens knows I’ve sent Joe lots of patients. Yeah, that’s it. To show his appreciation, he’s sent me something loaded with sapphires . . . something I could drop on the wife, score some major league points. Heck, yeah!
But when I opened the box,
Brittle
Typical doctor, I’ve never handled my own illness well. Even as a kid, I would become emotionally fragile with a common cold. Fever, in particular, tended to lay me bare. I remember bursting into tears over an episode of All in the Family.
I’ve never had that male barrier to crying — not much of one, anyway. I guess my father never shook me by the shoulders (the way Don Corleone rough-housed Johnny Fontane in The Godfather — Be a man! What’s the matter with you?) No, he tended to push my older brother my way, saying, “Go see what’s wrong with him.” Like that ever helped.
It took me a while to learn you simply didn’t cry in front of people. Least of all people you cared about. You could tear up and discretely wipe your eyes — yeah, that’s cool, no one looks askance at that. But the big emotional outpouring? Nah. Folks tend to think you’re tetched.
The urge to tear accompanies any of my strong emotions. In the past, I may have told the story of the time I developed an autoradiograph and got the result I needed to complete my PhD thesis. I called Karen and she couldn’t understand why I was crying. For me, that autoradiograph meant seven years of my life brought to a successful conclusion. I was RELIEVED. What couldn’t she understand about that?
When her father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, that choked me up, too, and I think it confused her. Why should I be that upset over her father’s illness?
Certain memories I keep at a distance because, well, they’re just too embarrassing. Back in high school, I was a bit too emotionally naked for my girlfriend at times. That’s an understatement, you understand. I suspect she thought I was a raving lunatic.
But that’s adolescence, right? We get to write off lots of bullshit, blaming it all on childhood or adolescence. But I know I’m the same me, older and wiser perhaps, better able to keep things under wraps. One thing I’ve learned is that the emotions of the moment are not to be trusted — and are certainly not to be acted upon.
I’ll be a lot better once this crud passes. Once I can stop taking enough cold meds to anesthetize a draft horse. I won’t have to fend off these wandering thoughts and emotions that rise unbidden from the limbic system, fingernails on the cortical chalkboard.
Maybe my muse will wake up, too.
D.
On behalf of all men with latex allergies . . .
I would like to register a complaint.
Would I want to be a condom-tester? Would I ever! (That would be my first choice of dream jobs, followed shortly by Gynecologist Specializing in the Age 18-24 Demographic, or the ever popular Purveyor of Moustache Rides.) But there’s one small problem: we’re not talking about just any condom.
Our team is developing a type of spray can into which the man inserts his penis first. At the push of a button it is then coated in a rubber condom. It works by spraying on latex from nozzles on all sides. We call it the ‘360 degree procedure’ — once round and from top to bottom. It’s a bit like a car wash.
Damn it, I’m allergic to latex. Spray this sh!t on me and my groin will become a giant welt. Nevertheless, I’m intrigued, and I can imagine dozens of gorgeous female UC Berkeley engineering students clamoring to be the first to see this device in action, crying, Oh, Walnut, pick me! Pick me! and, Omigod! New technology is SUCH a turn-on.
The manufacturer, Vinico (the people who brought you the Multi-Orgasmus-Kondum, 2 Kondome+penisring), wants men:
We are looking for 30 Condom-Testers. Your job is testing the new condom. We are looking for men with a penislengh* from 9 until 12 cm and 15 until 20 cm. Men between 13 to 14 cm are welcome, too**. You should have experience with condoms and beeing almost 18 years old. Your data will be kept very safe. If you have any questions, please contact us.
I have experience with condoms and I beeing almost 18 years old, or at any rate I beeing more 18 years old than 99 years old. But that latex business, oooh. Ouch. Hives are such a buzz kill.
Hat tip to the lovely May, who discovered the spray-on Kondome at Tim Worstall’s place.
Porno Gingerbread Men (see post below) and spray-on condoms. Any more holiday gift ideas?
D.
*Oh, those clever Germans and their made-to-order compound nouns . . . but I’m pretty sure the word is Shvanzelangen.
**Karen, quick! Where’s our metric ruler!Â
‘Tis the season
‘Tis the season for runny-nosed Tiny Tims to cough tuberculous fomites into my dumbstruck mouth. My head feels like a helium balloon, my throat full of thorns. When I finish this post, I’m dosing up on cold remedies and with any luck I’ll be comatose by midnight.
‘Tis the season for well-meaning patients to shower our office with fudge and cookies and See’s Candy. I love you. I hate you. Don’t you realize I have no self-control?
‘Tis the season for other well-meaning patients to ask, “Are you ready for Christmas?” or “Get all your Christmas shopping done yet?” I know this shouldn’t bother me, but it does. It makes me long for those patients who, with one glance at my swarthy, Semitic good looks, assume I’m tribe. NO, I’m not ready for Christmas, and neither are my atheist son and wife. I’m not even ready for Hanukkah! (You try finding candles here in the boonies.) Something about those questions rankle. They remind me I’m an outsider, a poor bastard who has to rub his fist against frosty windows to view scenes from Norman Rockwell’s wet dreams.
‘Tis the season that gives me the blues.
D.
P.S.: Sorry about the downer post. Sex tomorrow, I promise — thanks to Blue Gal and May for a couple o’ hot tips.
Top Ten Viral Videos
The things you learn watching Olbermann.
Marketing firm The Viral Factory has posted their list of Top Ten Viral Videos. Beats the hell out of me why the Numa Numa kid took number 2 and the Star Wars kid took number 1 (both videos are annoyingly boring) when one of the contenders should have swept the contest:
I can’t get over the cuteness of that girl’s tushy. I bet I could win that competition, too.
Edited to add:
For the rest of you who haven’t seen the other vids mentioned in the comments, here are the links . . .
Trojan vaulting (another cute tushy!)
Trojan judo (what the heck is happening here?)
While we’re at it, this is cute, and won’t endanger Shaina’s innocence
D.
Frog Talk Responsa
Q: What’s your favorite thing about writing a blog?
One favorite thing? The audience. I love having an audience.
Q: If you had a choice between making your living as a writer or as a chef, which would you take?
Writer. Cooking is fun, but the mental challenge of writing is much deeper, and more varied. I suspect being a chef would get dull after a while.
Q: If you could spend one day learning from any chef in the world, who would you choose and why?
Julia Child. We would have to resurrect her, of course, and hopefully she wouldn’t have that zombie problem. (If all she ever says is, “MORE BRAINS,” then I’ll know I wasted my opportunity.) What would I learn from her? I’d love it if she would teach me to be a better baker.
Q: If you could step back in time and right a wrong, which one would it be?
Easy. The theft of the 2000 election by George Bush. I can think of other historical wrongs of greater magnitude, but the farther back you go, the harder it is to predict unintended consequences. A Gore presidency? I can’t see any downside.
Q: If you could talk to only one famous writer for two hours, who would it be?
Probably Vonnegut. He’s a hoot. Fitzgerald or Faulkner would be too drunk, Conrad or Dostoevsky too depressing, P. K. Dick too crazy.
Q: If you could collaborate on a novel with any writer, past or present, who would it be?
Toughie. My one attempt at a collaboration (on a screenplay) ended in disaster, thanks to the other guy being . . . ah . . . what’s the polite term for nuts?
This is like my sister’s chef question. Whom would I most like to learn from? When I look at it like that, I think of the contemporary writers whom I admire the most: John LeCarre and Martin Cruz Smith. Of the two, I think I like Smith the most.
As for dead authors . . . Raymond Chandler.
By the way, did anyone notice the remarkable similarity of the recent polonium poisoning of the Russian ex-spy with the plot of Smith’s Wolves Eat Dogs? Uncanny!
Q: What is your favorite post from your blog?
I’m afraid this changes with my mood. Today, I’m feeling glum and pensive (you know why, CD), so I would have to go with either Thirteen Patients or Healer. Ask me on another day and you’re likely to get another answer.
Q: What is your all time favorite recipe?
You think I would hold back on something like that? Although my family is sick of it (at one time, I made it once a week), tagine still ranks as one of my personal favorites. That tagine recipe has it all: depth of flavor, complexity of texture, variety of color. It’s the perfect main course. Close runner up: velvet butter chicken for its richness and flexibility — you can use that same basic recipe for any meat, fish, or shellfish, and it would probably work for tofu as well.
Q: If you could visit any country, that you have not been to, which one would it be and why??
Another toughie . . . but if I’m travelling solo, I would pick Antarctica, because there’s nothing like it anywhere else on Earth. Does anyone remember the blog 75 Degrees South? Simon posts some spectacular photographs of Antarctica (click on “Gallery” in his menu). I figure, if it’s breathtaking to look at a small, two-dimensional photo, how much more spectacular would it be to see it in person? Memories to last a lifetime.
That’s it for now. We’ll do another Frog Talk some time soon, so save up your questions!
D.