Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Contests
Last day for the contest (update x 2!)
Scroll down a bit to enter.
Last night, I dreamed I was back at Berkeley (always a pleasant dream!) and I was asking one of the coaches, “Is 45 too old to try out for the wrestling team?” You should have seen the look on his face.
Remember last month’s post on the Body Mass Index? For those of you who are weight-obsessed like me, Monica Jackson has a fine three part series on dieting. Check it out.
Edited to add:
Make sure you check out Blue Gal’s Blogiversary cake TO ME!
And Cap’n Dyke has something special for me, too! Cap’n, ye can stomp me with those black leather boots any time ye pleases.
I had intended to write more tonight, but I’m wiped. Long, loooong week.
***
Quickie medical quiz for the night owls:
(And no fair googling)
Would you rather have saturnism or satyriasis?Â
D.
Blogiversary TWO (& a contest)
Yup, it’s Balls and Walnuts’s’s second blogiversary, or close enough: April 9, 2005 was my first real post.
For my second blogiversary, I’ve thawed out some birthday cake. Looks mighty warm, in fact.
(Um. In case you don’t remember my birthday cake, it’s not precisely safe for work; but you’ll have to go below the fold to find out about the contest, now, won’t you?)
Recipe contest: we have a winner!
Thank you all for participating in the Balls and Walnuts First Annual Ridiculously Easy Recipe Contest. You’re welcome to add more recipes, but the contest is now CLOSED.
Yes, I’ve picked a winner.
Methodology
Contestants’ names were scrawled on a 3×5 card. If the contestant (call her ‘Julia Child’) submitted multiple entries, her entries were labeled “Julia Child 1,” “Julia Child 2,” and so forth. Next, I cut the strips as uniformly as possible, placed them into an empty water bottle, and shook.
I uncapped the bottle and one LARGE slip fell out. They had all stuck together, thanks to the presence of a bit of residual water in the bottle.
Too cheap to buy cookbooks for all of you, I unpeeled the slips and placed them face-down on a table. My son picked the winning name via a process of intuition and an abbreviated form of ‘eeny meeny miny moe.’
And the winner is . . .
Contest: keep it simple
I haven’t even sent out prizes for the last contest (sorry — this weekend, I promise!) and here I am hosting another one.
Here’s the challenge: post your family’s favorite “simple-but-delicious” recipe. Something your family loves. Something they ask for again and again. But most of all, something easy.
Post your recipe in the comments below — or, if you’d prefer, post a link back to your blog. Previously published recipes are fair game. ANY meal is fair game (main courses preferred, but again, if it’s simple and delicious, go for it).
The contest will run until Monday. Monday evening, I’ll draw names to determine the winner. If you give me multiple entries, you’ll have multiple “name slips” for the drawing.
The prize: any Julia Child cookbook available at Barnes & Noble . . . let’s say, $60 or under. That should cover damn near all of them, I hope. I would recommend either Baking with Julia or Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1.
The other prize: why, a whole host of wonderful recipes! But that part is up to you guys.
Have fun.
D.
Rocks on the brain
‘Kay, everyone, Kris Starr has a contest, and it’s easy. (But Kris, you really expect me to believe that guy on the cover is a doctor? He looks younger than Doogie Howser at his youngest! And he doesn’t look like he’s had all the joy stomped out of him by med school and training. He . . . he looks like a pre-med. *Shiver.*) Michelle has a book giveaway, too!
I woke up this morning thinking about the Vasquez Rocks. You all know the Vasquez Rocks, unless you’ve spent the last 40 years or more never watching television, never going to any movies. You may not think you know the Vasquez Rocks, but you do.
Vasquez Rocks are an absolute trip for people like me and my son who love to rockclimb but don’t know a thing about it. And who don’t have proper shoes, not to mention proper equipment. Thanks to the formation of the rocks — a formation which makes them recognizable to damn near everyone — newbies like my son and me can climb to great heights with little risk of broken bones. And it’s always cool to be climbing a little bit of Hollywood history.
Here’s a short list of the Vasquez Rocks’ guest appearances:
Star Trek: The Original Series. Three episodes
Blazing Saddles
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Apache (1954)
Planet of the Apes (2001)
The Outer LimitsAustin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)
Army of Darkness (1993)
Dracula (1931)
Give up? Pic below the cut.
Pimpage
And I just now thought of a new caption. To paraphrase Gerald R. Ford, a man who knew how to exercise his sphincter ani (serious flatulence problem, I’m told),
“Did you do that? Show some class!”
D.
You’re all winners
Seriously. If I had to choose one winner for our contest, I think I’d plotz. So you can ALL* do a little victory dance (not a work-safe link, btw) and when you’re done, email me your snail mail addie, and I’ll arrange for you to receive a copy of Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex?
I’m at: azureus (at) harborside (dot) com
And I’m a winner, too. I finished a 2000-word short story this weekend. It’s still a bit rough, but if you’re curious, here it is: “The Necklace.” Fellow blogger Pat Johanneson has part of a story up, too.
Sorry, I won’t be personalizing these copies. I’m too lazy. Generous, but lazy.
D.
*All = those of you who wrote stories. I’m not that big a pushover.
The artist formerly known as Kenney: a contest
After School Special, by Kenney Mencher
Click to see larger image
My friend Kenney Mencher, formerly known as Kenney Mencher, has a big show opening on January 12 at 826 Valencia in San Francisco. I have my fingers crossed that some of you Bay Area folks might make it to the show. I’d love to go, but I have fresh tonsils bouncing around (I like to stay in town for at least 10 days following a tonsillectomy, in case there’s delayed post-op bleeding).
Here’s the contest. Kenney’s paintings are all about narrative; in that sense, he has a writer’s heart. Guess that’s why I like him and his work so much. Anyway, take a look at Big Red and, in the comments below, tell me the story behind the painting. Note that there are no right or wrong answers, but whoever’s story tickles me the most will win my copy of Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex? Maybe I’ll even autograph it (because even though I didn’t write it, I should have written it).
I’ll let the contest run for the next couple of days. I’ll announce a winner on Sunday, how’s that?
Warning: Kenney has been known to take work inspired by these crackpot contests of mine and put them on his website (see this poetry page). If you object to that, or if you prefer to remain anonymous, let us know in the comments.
D.
NaDruBloDa!
You’ve suffered through NaNoWriMo. You’ve dodged PETA’s hurled bricks on the way to CERN. You’ve written encouraging letters to NASA while worrying about the global implications of a weakened NATO.
Ack. I’ve had too much gin and can’t think of enough fun acronyms. Which brings me to the subject of today’s post:
NaDruBloDa!
It’s a contest. To play, you have to blog drunk on December 29, 2006. Any drunken rant will do, but I’m going to chuck all pretense of objectivity and hand the prize to the entry which makes me laugh or cry the most. That’s right, folks, you can go either way on this one, depending upon whether you’re a maudlin or happy drunk.
Prizes. So far, only one, but I may add others.
I’ll post reminders as December 29 approaches.
That’s it. That’s all I have, folks. Drunken blogging. But in the spirit of same, I’ll offer you a few drunken stories:
The first time I got shitfaced drunk, I was with a bunch of other drunk teenagers, and undoubtedly I was driven home by a drunk teenager. I had forgotten my house key, and when I knocked on the door (at about 2 AM), I said to my dad, “Fuller brush!” Amazingly, he didn’t punish me.
The second time I got shitfaced drunk, I was in the dorms drinking shots of Riesling and College Ave. brand vodka. Not a good combo. I became so weepy everyone left the room, leaving me to myself. I think my Floppy nickname entered into the dorm vernacular soon afterwards. My hangover was of epic proportions, such that I cannot, to this day, stomach even the smell of Riesling.
The last time I got shitfaced drunk was in med school, when I had the epiphanal thought, Why am I doing this? I had no answer. Hence my two-drink limit to this day.
D.
Not many scary stories . . .
Jess gave us this story from her trick-or-treating days:
My story is uninspiring but delightful all the same. I have a twin sister and we decided once to dress up alike. We went around town separately, however, and stopped at the same houses multiple times. The poor people had no idea if we were some lost child or how many of us there really were. They were so confused! We had way too much candy for two people but it was fun anyway!
Jean gave us a smorgasbord of scary moments. My favorite,
As an adult, I had to live in the Bronx for three years. I hated that. I heard gunshots regularly. At 2 am, I heard what sounded like large metal dumpsters being dropped — there were no metal dumpsters in the area.
Mysterious things that go crash in the night — now, that’s scary.
By drawing, Jean wins it. Congratulations! (I’ll let Tam know.)
D.