Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: September 2007
Is vibrador Spanish for vibrator?
I’m working through some edits Lyvvie suggested, and that question came up.
Oh, here, too.
Back to my editing. And you folks, back to your baking. You won’t win my contest by lounging about all day.
D.
Oh, and this was just too funny. No vibrators, only a bad video game, lots of X-Files actors, and one hilarious writer.
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.
GallimauFriday III: the Gonadal Special
Hat tip to Indecision 2008 for tonight’s NEWSFLASH: Hillary Clinton Denies Desire For Sweet Caress of a Woman’s Tongue.
Regulars here know I’m not a big Hillary fan. But asking her to comment on rumors that she’s a lesbian? Why, that’s as irrelevant as asking the Republican Presidential candidates if they troll airport bathrooms for long-shlonged dudes, or tryst with mommified dominatrices who let them poop their Pampers. Ask them if they’ve ever appeared in drag while you’re at it.
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For those of you who missed yesterday’s story: it’s true. We do think with our nuts. Or at least, the potential is there:
Men have a source of potentially life-saving stem cells between their legs.
A team of American researchers has found a way to easily identify stem cells in the testicles of adult mice that can be coaxed to turn into brain cells, muscle cells, heart cells, blood cells and even blood vessels.
One day, they say, male patients may be able to turn to their own testicles as a source of stem cells to repair an ailing heart or kidney or to fix the brain damage caused by Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease.
Thus explaining the commonplace mid-21st Century catch phrase, “Saved by the balls!”
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It’s Yom Kippur. Have you asked Stephen Colbert for forgiveness yet? I would, except I haven’t wronged the guy.
I’d call and make shit up, but I suspect that wouldn’t be in keeping with the Yom Kippur spirit.
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Speaking of balls. From the Department of Testicular Atrophy: Vicente Fox writes that George Bush, “windshield cowboy,” is afraid of horses.
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And here’s someone that should stimulate a fair share of gonads out there . . .
The Lazy Thirteen
Dig the frog. This fella took a perch right next to my front door.
Sometimes work sucks the life out of me. When that happens on a Wednesday/Thursday, there’s nothing for it but to write a dead easy thirteen.
Coming soon (not)
Fans of Alan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen have been waiting for the movie version. And waiting. And waiting. According to the official website, the release date is 3/6/09. What’s taking so long?
Moore’s graphic novels have led to other successful movies: V for Vendetta, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and From Hell. Seems obvious that Moore’s greatest work should at least have the potential of becoming a successful film adaptation.
According to this story at MTV.com, the production has had trouble — it “has already chewed up and spit out such esteemed directors as Terry Gilliam and Paul Greengrass.” Now, Zack Snyder, director of 300 (adapted from the Frank Miller graphic novel) and Dawn of the Dead, is at the helm.
Man, that MTV.com story is one long (and from what I can see, empty) article. I WANT MY WATCHMEN. Its message of the dangers of well-intentioned fascism is more important now than ever before; I wish we could see a release date before the ’08 elections.
Here’s the IMDB writeup on Watchmen. Recognize anyone on that cast? I don’t, except maybe Billy Crudup.
Here’s a short and sweet review, and here’s Watching the Detectives, a Watchmen wiki. Enjoy.
D.
Yum
That last post was too much of a downer, or too self-indulgent, or too something. No way I’m leaving it at the top of the blog.
These are amazing.
On that website, those soft drinks look great, too, but I can’t see paying $16 for a $9 product. I think I’ll whine at my local supermarkets first.
D.
Tuesday Morning Fanfare
Kris Starr has a contest. She’s offering all kinds of wonderful prizes, including Aussie man-candy, this thing that looks like a Dildo Family-Pak, some sort of S&M paddle, and that numbing cream guys use so that they can last to ease your sore back. At least, that’s what it looks like. I didn’t read the fine print.
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Monica re-posts an article on twenty ways to break writer’s block. I suppose I could link to the original article, but I like looking at Monica’s photo too much 🙂
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I sent off seven query packages in the last two days. Wish me luck.
I’ll have more for y’all later; I need to eat my lunch.
D.
Smart Bitches Day: Who says it ain’t still Summer?
My first thought on Summer Devon‘s new erotica novel, Revealing Skills: damn, that cover model looks like Geena Davis. My second thought, experienced while trying to find an image to prove the first thought: damn, there are a lot of topless photos of Geena Davis on the Intertubes!
Here’s the review. Revealing Skills? Loved it. Cue William S. Burroughs’s voice: “I give it five out of five erect penises.” Actually, Burroughs wouldn’t have given it any erect penises, but he could surely have drawled that line with all the gravitas it deserves.
Gilrohan’s a shape-shifter spying for his king. In fesslerat-form, he’s captured by one scullery maid and saved by another — Tabica, a comely slave with the odd ability to understand his squeaks. And that isn’t her only power. Her touch transforms him back into a man, which is convenient, really, since human-fesslerat sex would be an entirely different kind of erotica.
Tabica has all kinds of power, much of it centered in her womb. She’s the vagina dentata of female love interests. Gilrohan recognizes her for what she is: the rarest and most powerful of magicians, an ereshkigal. Her abilities are wild from a lack of childhood training, possibly as dangerous to her as they are to any man foolish enough to bed her. Can Gilrohan rescue Tabica — and himself — from Lord Lerae’s castle, and can he survive the charms of her warm, wet, and fuzzy?
She again lightly stroked his penis, which twitched, delighted by her smallest attention.
Thank God it’s a penis and not a member or a man-shaft or whatever else some of you erotica writers call it.
Gray Anatomy
Grief, originally uploaded by poppinsgarden.
From the GW Hatchet:
Senior James Daley woke up one morning naked and drunk in an unfamiliar apartment with condoms strewn about the room. A girl next to him rolled over and introduced herself.
“My first thought was, where am I?” Daley said. “My second was that I have to get out of here as fast as possible.”
A friend filled Daley in about how he met the girl later that day.
“I guess she bought me a lot of drinks that night,” Daley said. “And then when a friend tried to take me home she said ‘no, I think I’ll take him home.'”
Daley said he felt taken advantage of and would not have hooked up with her if he had not been so drunk.
Was this rape? Sexual assault?
. . . . (snip) . . . .Yet many students such as Daley consider such encounters a part of college life, however unfortunate they may sometimes be. Advocacy groups have begun calling situations where consent or denial is unclear “gray rape.” Students say it occurs every weekend in places including dorm rooms, bars and fraternity houses.
I’m not so naive as to think this didn’t happen when I was in college. But does gray rape really exist, and if it does, is it becoming more prevalent? Drug abuse and alcoholic binges are on the rise, and the resultant impaired judgment is likely a key factor in rape, gray or otherwise. That’s not the whole story, however.