Balls and Walnuts
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Category Archives: Flickr follies
Friday Flickr babe: appealing
Appeal, originally uploaded by vandemyse.
My search term today: appealing.
I like black and white photos. I’ll leave it to Dean to tell me if this one is as well executed as I think it is; I’m one of those “I knows what I likes” photography connoisseurs.
And I like this woman.
There’s character in her eyes, beauty in her bone structure, and she has kissable lips. Speaking of which . . .
Phaturday Phlickr Babe: Sultry
Dean loves nudes, but I love faces. Some of the best faces appear when you search Flickr for sultry.
This expression doesn’t say “sex” to me. There’s sadness, thoughtfulness, and above all else intelligence in her gaze. I want to know more; I want to know her. (This is a new photo since the original post. Funny thing . . . my comments still apply!)
As usual, I’ll try to hit the live blogging circuit by 7:30 PST. We had quite a crowd last Saturday. Feast or famine around here!
D.
Friday Flickr Babes: HORNY
I don’t know how Dean finds his Flickr Babes. I really don’t. But he has impeccable taste.
Me? I just searched for “horny.”
Horny Toad, originally uploaded by JimmyJames1982.
That might not be appealing to you, but to us folks who love us some reptiles, the horned toad is creme de la creme. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen them lap up ants, or shoot blood out of their eyes.
But you wanted a horny babe.
Faturday Flickr Babe!
Faturday Flickr Babe explained.
(By the way: the “fat” in “Faturday” is a coincidence of requisite alliteration and Roman Empire theology. It has nothing to do with the lipid content of the buttocks above. I happen to think these are perfect buttocks, and in fact, there’s a huge range of buttock perfection.)
My favorite part? The itty bitty downy area above the crack. Mmm.
Come ’round tonight at 7 – 7:30 PM PST for Live Blogging. See ya soon.
D.
P.S. For your reading pleasure: Fun at the Creation Museum!!!!
Monday Morning Flickr Follies
Some lighter-than-air entertainment for you on this blue, blue Monday.
Gud riting
From Acquariando’s photostream. Pretty. Not particularly relevant, but this is Random Flickr Blogging Day.
With regard to writing, our homeschooling strategy has been simple: give Jake something worthwhile to read, then have him write one or two essays about what he has read. We’ve hit the wall, however. He’s older and we’re beginning to expect more from him. We want him to produce college-level essays.
Yeah, he’s eleven, and we’ll probably give him ulcers. On the other hand, Karen and I both wonder what we could have accomplished if we had been given the most challenging regimen possible.
There’s “challenging” and there’s “discouraging,” of course, and the art is pushing the “challenging” envelope without falling into the Veil of Angst that is “discouraging.” We’ve bombed out on more than a few projects — the kid won’t read The Great Gatsby, for example, no way, no how. And one of the key elements of our strategy is to keep it interesting (rather than detestable).
With his most recent project (Ethan Frome), we realized our approach has reached its limit of usefulness. Time for a more organized approach to writing. And so this afternoon, I spent a few hours putting together thirty-five assignments which will, I suspect, last him until the end of the school year.
Here’s the general strategy.
1. Draw exercises from two solid books on writing: Watt’s An American Rhetoric, which was my writing bible in high school, and Diana Hacker’s Rules for Writers, a book used in Berkeley’s introductory composition course.
2. To keep things interesting, intersperse these exercises with exemplary paragraphs and essays from a wide range of other authors.
This last point: since I had to draw from books in our personal library, these exercises were idiosyncratic, easily not the “best” essays in the English language, but hopefully good enough to get the job done. Here’s a short list of what I tapped:
The intro to The Wind that Swept Mexico, a remarkable history of the Mexican Revolution
Readings from Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth, including his essay on James Fenimore Cooper
Walter Cronkite’s preface to Charles Darwin’s The Origin of the Species
A couple of Stephen Jay Gould’s essays in Ever Since Darwin
Chapter 1 of Marvin Harris’s The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig
Readings from Alistair Cooke’s America
The intro to P. J. O’Rourke’s Parliament of Whores
. . . and more.
My question: right this instant, are you thinking, “Oh good Lord, they’re not making him read X?” And if so, what is X? Remember, the goal is to give him exposure to exemplary writing. Great stuff. Because that stuff was the best I could do with the books at hand (remember, Karen and I were both chem majors, so our library ain’t exactly an educator’s paradise) but I’m sure we could do better.
Time to make dinner. See ya later!
D.
Three beautiful women
A quick one for your pleasure. Surely you don’t object to a quick one?
Today’s Random Flickr Blogging number is 3655. Here are three women who caught my eye.
The dazed post
First, to set the mood, some kind of mood, any kind of mood, today’s Random Flickr image:
(From diverken’s photostream. Amazing photographer — check him out.)
I’m in a mood. Dazed, stunned. I had to fast forward through most of Olbermann tonight because I have a hard time watching coverage of the Blacksburg shootings. What is it now — 32 dead, over 50 wounded? The only coherent thought I have is that Nancy Pelosi was right. This early after the shootings, silence is the only appropriate response. Nothing any of us say can lessen the grief of those families.
But others don’t share that sentiment, apparently — as documented in this Kos diary, asshats like Glenn Reynolds are already politicizing the tragedy. Also, now that we know the shooter was a Chinese National, how long will it take for racism to creep into the wingnut blogs? If I can’t even handle Keith Olbermann right now, you can bet I can’t stomach the wingnut blogs.
Listening to the news this morning, Karen overheard one of the talking heads asking an FBI profiler to comment on “this string of Asian gunmen,” or some such. String? Those kids at Columbine must have been hiding their Asian ancestry, and Charles Whitman must have been one of those blond Asians from Northern China.
The profiler, no doubt stunned by the question, said (paraphrasing), “I can’t comment on that right now.”
Neither can I. I can’t comment on any of it.
Maybe I would have been dazed even without the shooting. I worked nonstop from eight to four, saw thirty-four patients (Mondays are always hellish), then went to the gym and beat the crap out of myself for a while. Came home, made dinner, here I am.
And how was your day?
xxxxxo,
D.
Cat o’ nine
Today’s Random Flickr Blogging image is slightly unsafe for work, so I’ve buried it below the fold. Tom has links to this week’s other participants.
Tonight’s post should satisfy a few of your demands — pix! Flickr Follies! Sex! Blinded by Science (well, kinda science . . . um, health science. I suppose. If you really stretch the point). Maybe even Writer’s Life, if you would like to believe that this is what goes on in the dark recesses of my imagination.
Come along. You know you want to.
Flickr Follies for the evening, and a review
Sunday caught me between two hefty posts — Saturday’s story, and tomorrow’s interview with Jackie Kessler. Since I’m too anal retentive to let a day go by without a post, here’s a Flickr image for your contemplation. From Ga Music Maker’s photo stream:
But if you simply MUST read some stuff by yours truly, here’s my review of Interzone #208. That’s what I’ve been working on for the last two weekends. Enjoy.
D.