Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: such as it is
Two quick questions
What’s your favorite and/or the best eBook reader?
Can I load a pdf onto an eBook reader?
Thanks!
D.
World of Warcraft ate my family
World of Warcraft is the biggest MMORPG on the planet (MMORPG = massive multiplayer online roleplaying game). When we first bought into WoW, they had a population of one million. Eighteen months later, six million people participate in WoW.
We’re three of them.
I was the first addict, but after a while I realized I could either write a novel or spend half my life in a fantasy world. I put WoW aside, but soon after that, my son took up the battle. He became distracted by Warcraft’s other attractions — Warcraft Online, in particular — but this summer, he’s back in action with his undead warlock, Khufu.
I never thought Karen would go for this stuff. She hasn’t gamed since Civilization I; most computer games give her motion sickness. But now, she’s up to level 30 or 31 with her elf hunter Mygale. (Mygale = the genus name for one of her tarantulas, if I remember correctly.)
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. With these sleepless nights I’ve been having, there’s nothing much to do but take my troll rogue SheWitch around the Arathi Highlands, killing raptors, fleshstalkers, and a variety of elementals. I’m up to level 39 and I’m one mean bitch with a poisoned dagger.
WoW has spilled over into the real world, and vice versa. Search You Tube for “World of Warcraft” and you’ll find a wealth of videos (4,340) based on WoW’s pre-packaged animation* — WoW’s version of Too Sexy, for example, or the infamous show tune, The Internet is for Porn. In China, WoW is a big enough sensation that Coca Cola references it in their commercials. Folks have had their wedding ceremonies in WoW, and the WoW creators have honored the deaths of famous gamers with in-game tombs. Recently, an in-game funeral (for a guy who died in real life — just so we’re on the same page here) was raided by a rival faction, creating quite a controversy, since funeral attendees were all unarmed.
Like all good addicts, the three of us believe we are in control of our addiction. I’ll only play when I’m too tired to do anything else. Jake and Karen only play when our high speed internet connection is working and the house power isn’t out. We have limits.
Enough BS’ing. Time for me to do some real writing.
D.
*It’s considered a novel film genre, an emergent property of gaming known as “machinima“. Here, for example, is a machinima version of the famous courtroom scene from A Few Good Men. I think the Half Life 2 version of Tom Cruise is a better actor than the real thing, but that’s just me.
oh, the irony
I wrote a post about sleep deprivation and its ill effects on language skills in particular and mentation in general. Then I screwed up while posting (my fault, not WordPress) and lost everything.
More tomorrow, assuming this isn’t the beginning of Fatal Familial Insomnia.
D.
Ah, the smell of hate mail in the morning.
Or late evening. Whatever it is.
I like the medical info on your web-site but do you think you can quit coming aginst our beloved president!? If you don’t like him get out of this country!!
Treat others the way you want to be treated!God is watching.                        Jane Smith
This is so very wrong in so very many ways: from the assumption that dissent justifies banishment, to the sanctimonious, hypocritical, and pink signature line, to the exuberant punctuation, to the blushing happy face. And heavens to betsy, I’m not even going to start in on the grammar and spelling.
Thanks, Jane. You made my evening.
D.
PS: I changed the name and deleted the email address because, unlike Jane, I do try to treat others the way I would like to be treated.
Wanted: Guest Bloggers
We’ll be on vacation from June 30 to July 5, so I need five or six guest bloggers. (Our laptop is in no shape to make the journey. Don’t ask.) The more the merrier, of course. If you’re interested, I’ll need you to mail me your post by June 29. Include JPEGs if you like. Try to stick to my usual obsessions: food, sex,writing, books, movies. Politics is okay, but I’ve been trying to get away from that lately — so many people do it far better than I.
Naturally, feel free to hype the hell out of yourself while you’re here. If you’re interested, email me at azureus at harborside dot com.
I’ll leave you with a great You Tube viddy which I found at Gabriele’s place.
Back to writing. It’s not going well today, which makes me wonder if I’m going in the wrong direction. Wish me luck.
D.
Milestone
Earlier this week, I finally finished categorizing all of my old posts (from the Blogger days of Balls and Walnuts). That means you can now put all of my recipes in one place by clicking on Food in the Categories section. Cool, eh?
A quick perusal reveals recipes for fried potatoes, bread pudding (two recipes), buffalo burgers, chicken kebabs, ravioli, pancakes, velvet butter chicken, roast lamb, focaccia, and a whole lot more. Maybe not a whole cookbook’s worth of recipes, but close.
My first patient just showed. Time to be a doctor.
D.
Where did he go?
I’m the Vice Chief of Staff at our little community hospital, which means all illicit drug sales, bootlegged whiskey, gambling, and prostitution have to go through me. (Note to JCAHO: I’m kidding. KIDDING, do you hear? Those government guys have no sense of humor.)
In February, the hospital arranged professional photos of the officers — the chief of staff, vice chief of staff, and secretary. Only this week did our photos show up in the hospital lobby. The photographer did something funky to the photos, made them look like tintypes. That’s my excuse for why it took me ten seconds to recognize ME.
I didn’t like it. Not one bit. The guy in the photo has a bull neck and a round head. Where did those come from? And he’s old.
That’s not me, I thought, whining in dog-frequencies.
This is me:
The only difference between me and the guy in the photo, this photo, is (A) I have better taste in music these days, and (B) I have facial hair. Otherwise, we’re still the same. Both of us have the same goofy laugh, the same love of food, the same twisted romantic view of life. Both of us can make love up to one time per evening. (Joke stolen from Steve Martin. I couldn’t resist.)
I know this sounds like a vain rant, but that’s not quite it. I feel no urge to see a cosmetic surgeon, even if I had money to waste on such things. I don’t mind aging, either, not in any abstract sense. Each decade of my life has been better than the one before, so at this rate, my Golden Years will be divine.
I wonder, though, why I have so much trouble internalizing some sort of appropriate self-image, something that ages as I age. Why, whenever I look in the mirror, I expect to see that guy in the Yes shirt.
I also wonder how sometimes an afternoon can last forever, while high school and college seem like they were yesterday.
That’s enough maudlin self-indulgence for one evening. Bottom line, that “professional” portrait was one fugly photograph. I’ll bet the photographer was an ex-patient whom I sent to collections.
D.
Jury Duty
I got — perempted? Is that a word? They tossed me out on peremptory challenge. That means they didn’t like something about me. Was it . . .
A) The fact I have more than a high school education? Karen and I often wonder whether lawyers and prosecutors dislike professionals because we’re over-educated and opinionated.
B) My expressed opinion that a child endangerment charge should require some proof of actual endangerment — that the mere presence of a controlled substance should not constitute endangerment?
C) The fact I knew the defendant’s attorney but didn’t say so? She volunteered that I had taken care of one of her kids several years ago. I didn’t remember her. Correction: everyone looks vaguely familiar to me. The judge, defendant, and prosecutor all looked like they might have been my patient at one time or another. Just one of the oddities of my brain. But now I’m wondering if they thought I was a liar when I said I didn’t know any of them.
D) The fact that, whenever I wasn’t required to pay attention, I had my nose in Tamara Siler Jones‘s Ghosts in the Snow?
I suspect it was either A, B, or C, but I think D is the funniest option. Imaginary Q & A between me and the prosecutor:
Prosecutor: . . . So you seem to have some definite views on criminality. Do you have any problem with making a finding to uphold the law as stated?
Me: I don’t think I have a problem with that, but I would be more comfortable if you actually presented evidence of true criminality.
Prosecutor: “True criminality.” Can I ask what you mean by that?
Me [waving Ghosts]: Kinda like the perp in this book.
Prosecutor: Excuse me?
Me: The killer slices girls open from the chin to the pubic bone. Then he dismembers them, cuts out their organs, and eats ’em for breakfast. Now that’s true criminality.
Prosecutor: Judge?
Judge: Get the hell out of my courtroom, Dr. Hoffman.
Hee hee.
D.
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.
Pacific Northwest heat wave
Hot.
Hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot sticky-crotch hot!
HOT!
Short-tempered, shvitz-bath, chafing-thighs hot!
Cold cold cold cold cold cold
NOT!
Hot damn, it’s hot!
Must be at least 78F out there.
D.