Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: asides
yeah, I’m still here
just have nothing to say.
Here’s a link to all the Bulwer-Lytton contest winners starting in 1983.
And here’s the 2010 winner:
For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss–a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.
–Molly Ringle, Seattle, Washington (2010 Winner)
D.
A passing resemblance?
Yesterday, one of my older patients said to his wife, “You know who he looks like? That guy. You know. The one who played John Adams.”
Having missed that one, I flashed on some actor in a powdered white wig . . . but a little trip to IMDB later that day revealed he was referring to Paul Giamatti.
I dunno . . . I don’t see it.
Noise, and the nearly nonexistent lefty survivalist
About a week ago, I finished Darin Bradley’s Noise, a novel about college students responding to — and some would say helping to precipitate — TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it, an acronym common on survivalist web sites, along with WTSHTF: when the shit hits the fan). In some ways, Noise is an infuriating novel. Bradley wrote it following the completion of his PhD in English literature and theory, and it shows. He writes in the postscript, “So I had a head full of cognitive theory and nineteenth-century American utopianism, and I had loads of free time.” The novel often reads as though Bradley had just finished Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and said, “Hmm, you know what? Not lyrical enough.”
That said, I loved Noise and recommend it without any other reservation. Alternating chapters relate the first person narrative of “Hiram” (who, with his college roommate “Levi” have adopted new names to fit their new identities in the post-WTSHTF world) and The Book, a cobbled-together guide to surviving TEOTWAWKI. The details of TEOTWAWKI — referred to in Noise as “the Collapse” — are sparse, but Bradley suggests an economic bust so profound that governments and law enforcement fragment, its individual subunits going rogue in a last-ditch effort to survive. Hiram’s chapters detail his and Levi’s efforts to “get the jump” (predict the Collapse so as to get a head start on last minute preparations), put together a Group, bug out of their college town of Slade, Texas, and make it to their Place, which they have called Amaranth. The Book chapters would make a fascinating read all by themselves, as they provide a manual for how to survive and ultimately thrive in the most ruthless of new (post-apocalyptic) worlds.
Hiram is little more than a boy. The memories he draws upon to ground himself in this new world are of his days in the Scouts and his all-nighters playing Dungeons and Dragons. Bradley masterfully orchestrates the interplay between Hiram’s memories, the dictates of the Book (theory), and the things he must now do (practice). To commit sometimes horrific acts of violence, he and the rest of his Group have adopted new names, wear face paint or masks, carry out their actions in a somewhat ritualistic manner, and afterwards reassure one another with, “What you did was right.” That last essential closer is what in my opinion makes this a truly haunting work, for it is the acceptance of the perpetrator’s new society, his Group, which makes maiming and murder not just socially acceptable but laudable to them.
This book has stayed with me. I won’t spoil the ending here, but I will say that the closing image was predictable yet still remarkably powerful.
And this book has played into some of my own fears and anxieties about the world and the shit we’re getting ourselves into. I’ve been beefing up our somewhat meager emergency kits, trying to think both of the relatively trivial emergencies like breaking down on a drive over the Grapevine in the middle of winter, and the big ones, TEOTWAWKIs. In the course of doing my internet searches, it soon became apparent that survivalist types are largely right-wing and, well, religious. And that led to what I had thought at first was an innocent question, but has turned more interesting than I’d first thought:
Are there any liberal, lefty, left-wing survivalists, or are they all rifle-toting God-loving Obama-hating rednecks?
When did high school turn so brutal?
And I’m not talking about bullying — Jake’s at a Catholic high school, so there’s none of that. Unless you count what the teachers are doing.
I popped my head in to see how he was doing. I suspect he was sleeping, but he denied it. He has to finish reading a chapter in his American History text, and it looks like he has about 10 more densely worded pages to go. It’s 10:30 and he still has assignments for Biology and Spanish due tomorrow. And he has a four to seven page paper due on Friday for Theology.
Used to be he was chronically sleep deprived because he’d be up all hours surfing the net. Now he’s chronically sleep deprived because he’s inundated with homework. Is this necessary? Really? I think my high school did a great job preparing me for Berkeley, and I know I didn’t work half as hard as Jake is working now. Well, maybe half as hard. I still had time for leisure reading. And for a girlfriend.
It’s the sleep deprivation that bugs me the most, perhaps because it’s something I understand only too well, having had lots of experience with it during training and from time to time thereafter. My episodic bouts of insomnia occur frequently enough that I am always at least a little bit grateful when I have six or seven uninterrupted hours of rest. I think Jake’s youth is getting him through this, but at what cost? At the very least, he hasn’t the time to join me at the gym.
He’s been slow to do his online Driver’s Ed, and now I’m thinking it’s a good thing he doesn’t have his license. I don’t think he’d be safe to drive, not when he’s been up all night working.
D.
60 and counting
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) – TLC reality show “59 Kids and Counting” may soon need a new name. Arkansas couple Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar appeared with their burgeoning clan on NBC’s “Today” show Tuesday and announced they are expecting their 60th child in April.
Eighty-five-year-old Michelle Duggar said she’s in good physical shape and that she’s not worried, despite complications during her last pregnancy that led to the premature birth of their youngest child two years ago. She says she’s made it through her first trimester safely.
The couple has said they don’t use birth control. Michelle Duggar says she didn’t necessarily expect to get pregnant again and that she and her husband are excited to welcome the new addition to the family.
“If it’s a boy, he’ll be, oh, J-something,” said Jim Bob. “And if it’s a girl, she’ll be, ah, J-something-else.”
The couple confided that in recent years, megadoses of estrogen for Michelle and electrostimulative ejaculation for Jim Bob have been helpful assists to conception.
“My trips to the clinic give me something to look forward to every month,” said Jim Bob.
“With today’s advanced hormonal techniques, the sky’s the limits!” Michelle enthused. “The good Lord willing, I may have another twenty before St. Peter greets me at the Holy Gates!”
D.
Die Sünde
On our honeymoon (Christmas, 1984), we did the European museum thing — the Louvre, the Musée de l’Orangerie, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Salzburg Museum, and the Neue Pinakothek in Munich. What stood out the most from all of those museums was Franz von Stuck’s Die Sünde:
If anything brings me back to Munich, it’ll be this painting.
D.
Paranoia
So I’m trying to use Google Earth to check out some of the neighborhoods in the Washington DC area, and guess what? When I zoom in, I don’t see details on the homes or buildings. It’s like I’m looking at some kid’s Lego model of Capitol Hill.
Seriously. At first I thought, “Gee, the houses on this little inlet of Chesapeake Bay look similar. And, wow, they’re all painted white?”
If you have Google Earth, go take a look at Capitol Hill. Named buildings like the Library of Congress have greater detail than other places, but they’re still fakes.
Maybe there is no Capitol Hill. Maybe it’s all one giant sound stage. Maybe after the War of 1812, DC was never rebuilt.
D.
22 tongue depressors
Apparently, Balls and Walnuts has descended to the new low of being the chronicle of my declining health. First my teeth get massacred, now I’m dealing with evil TMJ. More accurately, a lot of the muscles of mastication on my right side have been in spasm, resulting in some nasty trismus (inability to fully open one’s mouth). Trismus can be measured with a ruler, the “inter-dental opening” distance, or with the number of stacked tongue depressors you can jam between your incisors. A week ago, I could only fit 12. Now I can fit 22! So it seems that jamming depressors in my mouth is a good thing. At least I can (almost) yawn again.
But really. It was getting ridiculous. Rock bottom was when I couldn’t even open wide enough to eat a banana. Here I am trying to do the right thing by my TMJs and eat soft food, and I can’t even eat soft food. I thought I was going to have to start taking all my meals through a straw. Which wouldn’t be too bad, since it’s hard to get fat on smoothies. (At least it’s hard to get fat on my smoothies.)
Speaking of fat, and still speaking about my body, I can fit my thin pants again. They’re a 32 inch waist. About a week or two ago I could wedge myself into them, suck in my gut and button the button, but that doesn’t count. I am now appropriately sized such that I can comfortably fit the 32s. Time to get some new pants to show off my ass. Do they make Apple Bottoms for guys?
Yeah, somehow I don’t think it’s a guy poured into those jeans.
D.