Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: March 2007
What might have been
I can well imagine the conversation which took place behind closed doors after I left my interview at Wake Forest University.
“I don’t care what you want,” the chairman must have said. “I want him.”
“We don’t need another assistant prof,” said my would-be boss. “I need a fellow. A FELL-OW.”
“You don’t understand. He’s the future!” (Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating. But it’s my fantasy and I’ll put whatever words I want into the chairman’s mouth.)
“Then you find a place for him in the department, but I don’t want him.”
So the chairman, hoping to find some sort of niche for me at Wake Forest, sent my CV to one of his cancer research buddies — Frank Torti, a guy who just happened to have been on my thesis advisory committee at Stanford.
My CV hit Frank’s desk like a steaming hotcake on a breakfast platter. It cooled over the next four months, buried under reprints and grant proposals. But Frank found it eventually.
Courage. Character.
Most of you have probably heard the bad news: Elizabeth Edwards’s breast cancer has returned (report on MSNBC). This morning, Karen and I followed the story with a lot of concern and anxiety. When we heard the couple were holding a press conference to discuss Elizabeth’s health, we feared the worst.
We support John Edwards — but that phrase barely scratches the surface of how we feel about these two. We’re enthusiastic about John and Elizabeth. We admire them. We regard them as heroic figures.
And neither one of us can remember the last time we felt this way about any candidate for the US Presidency.
Some of you know that Karen and I have been through a certain amount of grief. Nothing like John and Elizabeth, who had to get past the death of their son, Wade, but I think we’ve been through enough to appreciate the difficulty of picking things up and moving forward. Tough enough to just keep going; truly remarkable to turn everything around and live an exemplary life of service to the nation.
Before Wade’s death in a car accident in 1996, Edwards was an extremely successful North Carolina trial lawyer. Judging from his book (Four Trials), the man had it made — a much sought-after attorney who had made his reputation by defending the underdog against big corporations. He writes,
I have always been an optimist, but I was a different kind of optimist before Maundy Thursday, April 4, 1996. That was the day my son died and my world stopped turning.
In spite of disappointments that had been real to me, up until that day I had always known mine was a happy life. And I admit that all along I had a secret sense that it would go on like that forever.
Edwards has since attributed his move into politics to this tragedy. Here is a guy — a family — who got kicked in the teeth, but they got up, dusted themselves off, moved on. They did it again in ’04 when Elizabeth was first diagnosed with breast cancer, and they’re doing it now, with the news of her recurrence.
From the MSNBC report:
Mr Edwards insisted it was possible to combine a vigorous campaign with caring for his wife, promising to be at her side “any time, any place” she needed him.
“We’ve been confronted with these kind of traumas and struggles already in our life,” he said, referring to the death of their 16 year-old son in a car accident in 1996. “When this happens you have a choice — you can go and cower in the corner or you can go out there and be tough.”
If you saw the press conference, you know the bond that exists between Elizabeth and John. It’s palpable. They’ve been together thirty years, they’re true partners, they love each other, and it all shows.
Regardless of your political affiliation, take a moment to check out Edwards’s website. Get to know the man. And you can give them your best wishes and prayers here.
D.
Crosseyed and Painless Thirteen
This is, what, the third week I failed to write a Thirteen about my surgical internship? You wouldn’t think it would be such a big deal. After all, I made my romance protag a surgical intern; but I also filled his life with prime booty, and gave him a sex drive powerful enough to overwhelm even the worst internship fatigue.
Yup. Fantasy.
No, the memories are still too tetchy. I might as well try to write “Thirteen Painful Memories.”
Hey, there’s a thought!
Blissed
This is Charlotte, our ferret. We used to have two, but her sister Emily escaped one day and never showed her twitchy nose again. My fault, unfortunately. I’ve never been good at multiprocessing, and one day, I tried simultaneously to give the ferrets some exercise and clean house. Emily slipped out, but the smarter and nicer Bronte remained.
I would love to think that Emily is sipping mojitos with other expatriate ferrets, chatting about the irresistible cache of stray socks and the unbearable yumminess of human toes, but alas, ferrets can’t exist without humans. Ours would only eat one brand of kitten chow and never, ever showed interest in other offerings. If Emily were dying of thirst and found a puddle of water, I doubt she would know what to do with it.
Not to mention the sad fact that something — a dog, perhaps — picked off the cats in that neighborhood. A ferret would be no match.
Charlotte doesn’t miss her sister. Emily was nasty to everyone, her sister included, and Charlotte’s personality improved greatly following Emily’s disappearance. We keep Charlotte up in our master bedroom so that she’ll feel part of the family. Kind of a bitch when she musks, but it’s worth it to keep her happy.
Short blog tonight — I want to start working on my Thirteen. Happy Hump Day!
D.
Naked Couch Day, Sans Couch
D: But but but Dean’s doing it! In two places, even. And Kris is doing it, too!
K: NO. I will NOT let you humiliate us in public AGAIN.
D: Those leopard skin briefs could have belonged to anyone.
K: Anyone with the fur of a Tasmanian devil.
D: Exactly. And that chair photo left a great deal to the imagination.
K: Really? You thought so? I thought it left very little to the imagination. Just a teensy inconsequential mote —
D: You won’t even have to take off your clothes.
K: What?
D: There was nothing in Dean’s challenge that said both parties had to be naked.
K: So I’m not going to regret this later.
D: Not at all.
K: But you might regret this later.
D: I would if I had any shame.
Yes, that’s precisely what led up to this particular photo shoot . . . yielding an image that captured the zeitgeist of a generation, a cover widely regarded as Rolling Stone Magazine’s greatest ever.
Who’d wanna live in a world without wood?
Today’s Smart Bitches Day post brings us Summer Devon’s Futurelove, an ebook I’ve wanted to read ever since I heard the premise. More on that in a moment. As those of you who have tried to get me to read your pdfs and ebooks know, I’m hopelessly slow at reading things off my computer. Dyslexic, in fact. I keep wanting to turn the page. The fingerprints are a bitch.
With the advent of my Blackberry, Summer’s erotica opened up to me like a nubile vixeny refugee from Barely Legal. Come to me, Summer! Show me your stuff!
Here’s the premise. In the future, I don’t know how people reproduce, but it doesn’t involve penises or vaginas. Clones, perhaps, or test tubes. Maybe they duplicate particularly attractive people using a transporter, just like they did in those old Star Trek episodes, Captain Kirk, Space Queen, and Good Kirk, Bad Kirk. I don’t know. Summer doesn’t tell us, and I don’t care, because this is erotica, not science fiction, and in erotica no one bloody cares how anything works as long as people with hot bodies are getting laid and getting laid frequently.
In the future, all manner of physical defects have been genetically engineered out of the human race. The men all have hot bods, they’re super-strong, they don’t fart or snore or leave their dirty socks lying around or ignore their girlfriends just because Monday Night Football is on and if they’re eating anything in bed, it sure ain’t crackers. They lack all of those 21st Century flaws — which would be cool, of course, except for the nonfunctional penis problem.
Welcome to Balls and Walnuts, Elissa and Stan!
Tonight, my friends Stan and Elissa called. I had tried to reach them earlier this week, and was alarmed to discover that their cell numbers, home number, and email addies were all defunct. I googled Elissa and found her at work (hey Elissa, WTF are they doing sticking you at the bottom of the page?), sent emails and left messages, and had begun to despair of ever finding them again.
Yes, yes, I could simply write to Elissa at her work, but you know me. Overdramatic to the hilt.
So to welcome them to Balls and Walnuts, I’d like to point them to a few posts I think they’ll enjoy.
First off, they’re cat people, so they might enjoy the heart-to-heart I had with Mist soon after we adopted her. And then there was the time Faithful and Emerald decided to decorate our bathroom. And guys, if you’re feeling lazy, you can at least check out Spidercat.
Stan may or may not appreciate my Thirteen Memories from Sophomore Year. That’s when I met Stan. And, no, I didn’t work in that story about the fire alarm and a certain Asian dormie clothed only in her loosely bound bathrobe, who, I am given to understand, showed signs of extreme chilliness that evening. I didn’t see it. I have only Stan’s word that it was memorable indeed.
While we’re on the Thirteens, Stan and Elissa have a healthy interest in sex, so I’m sure they’ll appreciate this post — featuring, among many other delightful things, How To Masturbate Your Pussy To Orgasm. (Cat relevance!)
Oh, and Elissa? I’ve been working out lately. Here’s my ass. (Sorry, Stan, just had to flirt with your wife.)
You guys haven’t seen Jake in a couple years, so this photo should bring you up to date.
Stan, to make up for that picture of my ass, I give you this and this.
Hopefully, my friends won’t be too shy. (That means: LEAVE A COMMENT, DAMN IT!) But in any case, would any of you like to suggest one or two favorites of your own?
D.
Life, meet Art. Art, Life.
Live blogging tonight!
Jake and I have been sharing yucks and generally having fun with the Sam and Max games. These retro mysteries are all about the wisecracks; the puzzles are usually trivial.
In the first game, Culture Shock, Sam and Max contend with a trio of former child stars who are roaming our protagonists’ neighborhood, promoting the mesmerizing video of cult-leader-wannabe Brady Culture. The video promises to teach viewers “Eye-Bo fitness,” eye exercises guaranteed to get you the girl/boy/job/foot massage of your dreams.
As if anyone would believe eye exercises could improve your life. Crazy, huh?
Meanwhile, purely in the interests of research (natch!), this afternoon I googled “psychology adults abused as children.” This search led me to this Amazon page for EMDR in the Treatment of Adults Abused as Children.
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing — Eye-Bo by any other name. What’s the big idea? One reviewer writes,
EMDR helps you to integrate the two halves of your brain and to heal from trauma that is trapped in your nervous system. EMDR is a very effective treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It isn’t quite as spectacular as the books make it seem, but it really can work.
Hmm. How does that work, again?
EMDR helps you to recognize that the abuse happened in the past, and is not happening in the present. Therefore it is easier for you to process your traumatic experiences because you don’t have to live as if the abuse is still happening.
I see. It’s that old right-brain/left-brain thingamobob. But are there any peer reviewed reports to support EMDR? After all, these are vulnerable patients who come to their therapist following a childhood of victimization. No one would take advantage of such folks by taking their money in exchange for unproven methods . . . would they?
As usual, Quackwatch has the dope:
Only one published study has directly compared EMDR with a no-treatment control group. Jensen (1994) randomly assigned Vietnam veterans with PTSD to either an EMDR group or a control group that was promised delayed treatment. EMDR produced lower within-session SUDs [Subjective Units of Distress] ratings compared with the control condition, but did not differ from the control session in its effect on PTSD symptoms. In fact, the level of interviewer-rated PTSD symptoms increased in the EMDR group following treatment.
The author concludes,
The proponents of EMDR have yet to demonstrate that EMDR represents a new advance in the treatment of anxiety disorders, or that the eye movements purportedly critical to this technique constitute anything more than pseudoscientific window dressing . . . .
Because of the limited number of controlled studies on EMDR, both practitioners and scientists should remain open to the possibility of its effectiveness. Nevertheless, the standard of proof required to use a new procedure clinically should be considerably higher than the standard of proof required to conduct research on its efficacy. This is particularly true in the case of such conditions as PTSD, for which existing treatments have already been shown to be effective. The continued widespread use of EMDR for therapeutic purposes in the absence of adequate evidence can be seen as only another example of the human mind’s willingness to sacrifice critical thinking for wishful thinking.
And now I get to kick back and watch. Will any EMDR fanatics come out of the woodwork to tear me a new one? Folks are always rarin’ to testify, it seems.
D.
Cherry blossoms: three views
The Japanese lurve their cherry trees, not so much for the fruit as for the blossoms. Perhaps, as this site suggests, the “cherry blossom front” marching across Japan captures the national interest because it symbolizes the coming of Spring. But this is too simplistic. Cherry blossoms had symbolic mojo for the samurai:
The cherry blossom was considered an especially beautiful and important symbol for Japanese samurai because at the height of its beauty it would inevitably fall to the ground to die. Samurai also had to be willing to sacrifice themselves in their prime, and the cherry blossom was evidence that this is the natural way of things and could even be beautiful and pure.
. . . and cherry blossoms have a Zen symbolic value as well. This site quotes from Robert Aitken’s A Zen Wave:
Here’s what Aitken tells us about the importance of the cherry blossoms to Japanese life.
[page 131] Instilled in the Japanese mind is the association of the ephemerality of the cherry blossoms with the brevity of human life. Blooming for so short a time, and then casting loose in a shower of lovely petals in the early April wind, cherry blossoms symbolize an attitude of nonattachment much admired in Japanese culture.
Compare this attitude with the Western attitude of the pretty cherry blossoms presaging the appearance of the real purpose of the cherry tree: cherries.
Below the cut: three views of the cherry blossoms in my front yard.
My life in candy
Oh. My. God. Now they’re making chocolate-covered PayDay bars.
It’s like a Baby Ruth, only better. Baby Ruths are too chewy, too provocative to my TMJs. Chocolate-covered PayDay bars melt in my mouth, giving me that quick double-charge of sucrose and theobromine. Aaah.
Candy wasn’t always this good.