Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: October 2007
The Library Thing Meme
Yeah, thanks, Darla, thanks a BUNCH. Does anyone really read these list-meme posts? I mean, what could possibly be interesting about this. And how did this post end up in a different font? And what are the numbers in parentheses?
The instructions: “These are the top 106 books most often marked as ‘unread’ by LibraryThing’s users. The rules: bold what you have read, italicize what you started but couldn’t finish, strike through what you couldn’t stand and underline those you have no intention of reading.”
The Fix goes live
The Fix: Short Fiction Review.
I’ll be an active reviewer after the first of the year. Until then, not so much. Got hospital chief of staff biz to worry about.
D.
Oh, please
JustSayHi – Free Personals
Not even an R rating? Are they kidding?
Then again, my 12-year-old reads my blog . . .
Hat tip to Joolz, whose blog has a great URL.
D.
Cool bird dancing to crappy music. (Thanks, sxKitten!)
Stephen Colbert is cool, too. (Thanks, Kate!) Really cool.
Tiramisu
Who cares if it’s the quintessential 1990s dessert. (What will be the quintessential dessert of the new millennium, I wonder?) It’s still one of the most die-and-go-to-heaven treats there is, and, more to the point, I’ve never blogged the recipe.
I thought about adapting the recent Cook’s Illustrated version, but they skip the zabaglione step and use raw egg yolks. RAW EGG YOLKS! What am I, Rocky? (Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky, not Bullwinkle’s.) So I went back to a more traditional, and admittedly more labor intensive recipe.
Below the cut: Tiramisu, the Photo Blog.
Friday Flickr babe: sultry (again)
Kimmy, originally uploaded by silverinuk.
It’s hot tonight. Unseasonably hot. Your grandma used to tell you a cup of scalding tea would cool you down, and in that same spirit I offer Kimmy.
Over at Flickr, one of the folks commenting on this image felt the photographer should have cropped this pic below the elbow. I disagree. There’s a line here, a gentle S-curve which takes in Kimmy’s head, her slender torso, her lower back in shadow. This is art to my untrained eye. Crop it below the elbow, and you have an artistic nude, but not . . . art. Yeah, I can’t express myself worth beans tonight. But here’s the cropped version, so you can decide for yourselves:
Kimmy – (Cropped), originally uploaded by silverinuk.
D.
PS: here’s Dean’s Friday Flickr babe. How come no one else is playing?
Thirteen cool microorganisms
I’m tired of fretting over macroscopic creatures. If it’s not the humans in my lives (agents, those ornery creatures!), it’s disappearing ferrets or reappearing rats. Let’s take a break from vertebrates and consider life on the nano scale.
Back ache
Back ache #2, originally uploaded by amitaibu.
Eh, nothing major, but I’d rather be lying down than sitting at the computer right now.
Oooh, this should be fun. Karen’s trying to explain “rug muncher” to The Boy.
Tomorrow: Thirteen Microorganisms. See ya then.
D.
Rats
Yes. They’re back. But not cute ones like these:
No, we’re infested with the great fat brown ones, Rattus norvegicus. They’re nice enough as pets, but you don’t want them in your attic, pooping and pissing everywhere and making more racket than Britney with a quart of tequila. For a while, the smell of cats in our house kept the rats away, but I fear the vermin have figured out that Ash and Mist are softies. They’re not hardened rodent-killers like our poor, ill-fated Faithful. Moth-killers, maybe. Provided the moth doesn’t put up much fight.
They kept my son up last night with their carousing. It’s like the dorms all over again, except rats don’t listen to the Kinks at top volume or guzzle their own bong water. Jake devised a method of eradication as novel as it was ineffective: he repeatedly banged on the ceiling with his didgeridoo. And this afternoon, Karen took a stab at Novel Eviction* Techniques by burning a stick of agarbathi incense in the crawlspace.
At least now, the house smells nice.
What can I say, he’s on my mind lately.
This is a rerun (below the fold), but it truly is one of my favorite posts. When I finally figure out how to make YouTube videos with my birthday present, I might start here.
After reading this, if you want more of my grandfather, read my short story, “Heaven on Earth.” That story, too, is one of my favorites.