Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Contests
The contest winners are . . .
Yes, yes, I’ve been remiss. Blame it on vacation. I promised you a pair of winners, and I haven’t delivered.
Reminder: this was the Gimme A Good Book Contest, which has proven quite useful. Thank you.
Winners: protected static and MEL. Would you prefer an Amazon or Barnes and Noble gift certificate? Email me, or respond in the comments.
D.
The Gimme A Good Book Contest
(Not literally “gimme.” I’m not begging for books.)
We have some vacation time coming up — the Bay Area for Thanksgiving, Vegas for Christmas – New Years. That means I’ll have access to real bookstores and won’t be dependent on Barnes & Noble online or Paperback Swap. But I need ideas, people, because whenever I have time for a REAL bookstore, I never have enough time to browse. And if I browse, who knows, maybe I’ll miss something great.
Here’s the contest: in the comments, sell me on a book. Authors, feel free to pimp your own books; the rest of you, pimp your friends’ books, if you like. Or just sell me on the best damned book you’ve read lately. Distant past, best-book-I’ve-ever-read is fair game, too. Easy, isn’t it? As I read through the comments, I’ll keep a running list of the books I want to buy. Of those, I’ll pick two people as winners, and each of you will get a $20 gift certificate to Barnes & Noble or Amazon or whichever bookseller you choose.
The contest ends Saturday, Nov. 17, since we’ll be leaving next Sunday.
Likes, in general: genre fiction, but no horror or cowpunchers, please. I like SF, fantasy (interesting stuff like Neil Gaiman or Tam’s novels, not the 900-page Tolkien wannabes, please), romance (especially if it’s funny or nasty — preferably both), hardboiled/noir, and the occasional crime novel.
I dislike SERIOUS fiction, the kind of novel that aims at revealing the Deep Thoughts of Life and forgets to entertain.
Technical excellence is important.
***
I should have a nifty food photo-blog for you later today. Stay tuned.
If you would be interested in guest-blogging while we’re on vacation, email me at (azureus at harborside dot com). We’ll have our laptop with us, so I should be able to do some blogging; nevertheless, Balls and Walnuts hasn’t had any guest bloggers in a long time, and it could be great fun.
D.
Kate has a contest
I expended my evening’s creativity on those 400 words, so if you want something to read, you know where to find it. And you’ll see lots of our friends among the entries — Sam, Dean, microsoar, and a few folks I haven’t met.
Live blogging tonight, but I’m not sure when. Depends on the leg o’ lamb. And oy, I’m tired; I think I’ve been cooking and cleaning continuously since noon. Aside from the lamb, I made some kind of eggplant dip, dough for a focaccia, tiramisu, and a pumpkin sweet potato pie. Oh, and I made breakfast for the fam, too.
Check in around 8 PM PST . . . hopefully I’ll be here.
D.
We have a winner!
Lyvvie wins the Challah baloo contest. This evening, I’ll check to see if I have your snail mail addie, and if not, I’ll drop you a line.
I wish you all could have won, but that damn cookbook is spendy. Oh, but I love it. I’ve been reading through it this past week, and I’m itching to try Julia’s rye bread, rugelach, brioche, and pumpernickel.
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A. J. Jacobs must have the most sadistic muse on the planet. He’s the guy who wrote The Know-It-All, a memoir about the time he read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica; and if you think that’s High Concept, you haven’t heard about his latest: The Year of Living Biblically, which documents his attempts to abide by every last commandment, including the stoning of adulterers. (He gets around the obvious lawbreaking aspect of the commandment by hurling tiny pebbles.) The man has a fine sense of humor, I’ll give him that:
This isn’t a cutesy grumpy old man. This is an angry old man. This is a man with seven decades of hostility behind him.
I fish out my pebbles from my back pocket.
“I wouldn’t stone you with big stones,†I say. “Just these little guys.â€
I open my palm to show him the pebbles. He lunges at me, grabbing one out of my hand, then chucking it at my face. It whizzes by my cheek.
I am stunned for a second. I hadn’t expected this elderly man to make the first move. But now there is nothing stopping me from retaliating. An eye for an eye.
I take one of the remaining pebbles and whip it at his chest. It bounces off.
“I’ll punch you right in the kisser,†he say.
“Well, you really shouldn’t commit adultery,†I say.
We stare at each other. My heart is racing.
Yes, he is a septuagenarian. Yes, he had just threatened me using corny Honeymooners dialogue. But you could tell: This man has a strong dark side.
So . . . what should A.J. do next? That evil muse of his will probably convince him to become a homeless person entirely dependent upon the kindness of strangers, but I think A.J. needs to take the reins here. His long-suffering wife has proven her ability to weather the most obnoxious of projects; surely she won’t object to a year of nightly sex, rain or shine, no heed paid to backaches or headaches or intestinal flu, and to really spice it up, every night has to be something completely different.
I can hear him now. “Come on, honey — it’s for my art!”
D.
Challah baloo: a contest
I wish I could show this to you in Smell-O-Vision.
Nothing smells as wholesome and welcoming as freshly baked egg bread. I use the recipe from Julia Child’s Baking With Julia, which is about as idiot-proof a bread recipe as there is. Julia’s bagel recipe also provides reliably delicious bagels. I keep kicking myself that these are the only two recipes I’ve tried from Baking With Julia; no doubt many of the others excel. I’d like to make the pumpernickel loaf, for example, except I don’t know where to find prune butter.
So here’s the contest:
1. Between now and next Sunday (September 30, at midnight), blog about baked goods and include at least one recipe.
2. In your blog, pimp this contest with a link-back.
3. Let me know in the comments to this post when you have posted. I’ll provide a link-back to your post, too, much as we do for the Thirteens.
4. If you don’t have a blog, write up a post anyway and send it to me. I’ll post it to Balls and Walnuts — and give you credit, of course. This will count as your entry.
5. The prize: need you ask? On Monday, October 1st, I will randomly choose one lucky winner to receive a copy of Baking With Julia. (If you already own it, let me know, and I’ll send you another cookbook of similar value.) You’ll need to provide me with your snail mail address when the time comes.
Per Lyvvie’s question:
6. Yes, multiple recipes/pimpages (on separate days) = multiple entries.
Any questions?
Lyvvie’s Upside Down Apple Pie Cake
microsoar: How Not to Bake Bread
sxKitten’s twofer: Toffee, Pecan, and Mango Crisp; Gingerbread
Tam makes Whatever Crisp
Jess’s Chocolate Cake
D.
Wheels
Spurred on by Shakesville’s Mustang Bobby, I’d like to tell you about my first set of gas-powered wheels. But first, check out my idea of procrastination . . .
Jess’s Eight Women Who Look Better Bald Than Britney. Yeah, it’s outdated, but I found this while making a point to an old friend and well PERSYS KHAMBATTA IS HOT, OKAY? Do hhhaawt bald women need any other reason?
Jackie Kessler gives it away. (An iPod Nano, three iPod Shuffles, and a Byzantine bracelet, to be exact.) No purchase necessary.
Who says ear, nose, and throat docs aren’t fun-loving guys and gals? All depends what you call fun. Watch that video to the end, and you’ll understand why some of the women I scope say (while watching themselves on the monitor), “Is that . . . ? NO! You couldn’t be down that far!”
Amazing, the poor anatomic knowledge some folks have.
Follow me below the fold for the coolest car ever made.
Pimpage: Summer Devon
Bam has an interview with Summer Devon, a really GOOD one, too. If you leave a comment, you have a chance to win Summer’s Taming Him AND an Amazon gift certificate.
You heard it here first. Um, maybe.
D.
Paris Hilton’s Prison Diary
The minute, the second I learned that Paris Hilton would keep a prison diary, I said to Karen, “Now, THAT would make a GREAT blog!”
Right away, the comic gears began to turn, and my mind became a kaleidoscope of all the Hilton canards. The pettiness. The vanity. The jealousy. The idiocy. All the Deadly Sins wrapped up in one petite blonde brazilianed package.
And then, fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck I discover someone has beaten me to it:
The Inner Thoughts of Paris Hilton
Each post concludes with the ass-bandage,
Disclaimer: This site is intended for parody only and was not created by Paris Hilton nor intended for any purpose other than entertainment.
Coward.
Well, at least now there’s nothing to distract me from finishing my romance and participating in Samhain’s Best First Line contest (see Kate for the full dish). (And don’t forget Kate’s contest where you can, like, win stuff!)
Let’s do us some live-blogging tomorrow night, okay? See ya when I see ya.
D.
Pimp Kate’s ride!
Kate Rothwell, an author Deserving of Far More Recognition But Too Unlucky to Get It©, is having a contest. She’ll send you a free book, and all you have to do is post your review. It doesn’t even have to be a positive review. You could slam it, say it’s not fit for kindling, say that all extant copies should be used to paper the walls of the Museum of Reprehensible Writing, and Kate will still honor the contest. Right, Kate?
Oh, as for the prize: if you post a review, she’ll put your name into a drawing for a $30 dollar gift certificate to the book vendor of your choice; and if you shout out her contest, she’ll put your name into a second drawing for a $30 gift certificate. How easy is that?
For the record, I love Kate’s writing, whether it’s her Summer Devon sex shtick (you know, the guy from the future where all men look like Michelangelo’s David only with a BIG penis) or Kate being Kate (here’s my review of Somebody Wonderful). I thought for sure I had reviewed Somebody to Love, too, but dammit, I can’t find it now. Well, I liked that one too!
So head on over to Kate’s place, read about the contest, and do your thing. Pimp her ride, whatever that means. I am such a square.
And I haven’t forgotten about my contest winners, either. Just lazy — still can’t think of a good prize.
D.
PS: what’s up with Somebody Wonderful not being available? That’s just not right.
Winners of the Blogiversary Two Contest
Edwin!
Now, all I need to do is come up with prizes . . .
D.