Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: March 2008
Oh, that’s just not right.
Gorillas caught doin’ it in the missionary position.
In the first photograph taken of wild gorillas engaging in the behavior, lowland gorillas in Congo nicknamed George and Leah mate face-to-face as Leah’s four-year-old daughter Nancy looks on.
What’s next — pole-dancing orangutans?
D.
4000
US death toll in Iraq hits 4000.
. . . which does not count the number of US soldiers injured.
. . . which does not count the friends and family members of those dead or injured soldiers, folks whose lives have been harmed or ruined.
. . . which does not count dead Iraqi civilians, their friends, their family members.
. . . which does not count the enormous drain on society and the world: think of all the good ways there are to spend a trillion dollars.
Peace.
D.
The original weapon of mass destruction
It’s Blog Against Theocracy Day (weekend, really), the blogosphere’s chance to sharpen the line between Church and State.
The Ark of the Covenant burned scorpions and spiders, zapped unauthorized ark-touchers, won battles. When the Philistines captured the Ark and placed it in Dagon’s temple, the statue of Dagon was found the next morning toppled and shattered, and the people in the region were afflicted by plagues of mice and hemorrhoids. The Ark was one bad-assed WMD.
When the Babylonians ransacked the First Temple, the Ark disappeared from history. Like fragments of the True Cross, lots of folks claim to have the Ark — from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Axum, Ethiopia, to the British Israelites who excavated the Irish Hill of Tara. But to my knowledge, the Ark’s trail of hemorrhoids and destruction came to an end sometime around 586 BCE.
Google “Ark of the Covenant” and you’ll find Jewish sites and Christian sites, all manner of people of faith who believe implicitly in the historicity of the Ark. But like so much of the Old Testament (from Solomon on back), independent archaeological evidence is lacking.
Folks who believe in coincidence and innuendo can buttress their faith with the flimsiest evidence. A stone fragment inscribed with the phrase “Bet David” (House of David) validates their belief in King David, and if King David was real, so too Solomon, the First Temple, the Davidic line, Jesus, and all the rest. And some folks don’t even need a chunk of stone:
But it should be noted at the outset that the question of historicity has been safely shunted aside. The historicity of Noah’s Ark cannot be asserted. But the historicity of the second Ark most definitely can be. If the Ark of the Covenant never existed, nobody would have told a pointless story about David dancing in front of it. Even if Noah turns out to be fable, David can never be anything but fact.
If you want to believe in the Ark, be my guest. It’s a free country, thank Flying Spaghetti Monster. (Some time ago, I overheard a conversation between two patients in my waiting room. Both had come in holding their copies of the New Testament so it was only natural they should strike up a conversation. “How about the Shroud?” said one. “Think it’s real?” The other fellow said, “Absolutely.” “Sampling error and contamination error,” said the first one, to which the second fellow said, “Amen.”) But I invite the nonbelievers to entertain the following question:
If the Ark did not exist, why would anyone invent it?
Perhaps this mythical WMD was a story to frighten enemies of the kingdom. Back then, the real thing would have to have been powered by God. God’s might could have been the great equalizer, the hole card which made a losing hand a winner. If the people believed it, they would not lose hope. And if the enemy believed it, they might be that much less inclined to attack.
Funny, isn’t it, how poorly mythical WMDs serve their governments? Then, as now, superstition will only carry a government so far. Eventually, the people or their enemies call out the Wizard of Oz. Eventually, they say, “Show me the money.”
Or, in this case, “Show me the hemorrhoids and mice.”
D.
Hillary is Jesus and other hyperbolic metaphors
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson endorsed Barack Obama yesterday. Richardson, twice appointed to high level positions under President Clinton, was thought to be firmly in the Clinton camp. How did the Clinton folks respond?
“An act of betrayal,†said James Carville, an adviser to Mrs. Clinton and a friend of Mr. Clinton.
“Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic,†Mr. Carville said, referring to Holy Week.
In related news, Senator Clinton’s chief pollster Mark Penn called Richardson’s endorsement “. . . treacherous, but insignificant. More like Axis Sally than Judas, if you ask me.” Political strategist Harold Ickes compared Richardson’s actions “. . . to the despicable behavior of Bobby Klinefelter. In sixth grade, Bobby used to lure me into the janitor’s closet with the promise of a bag of a Cheetos. Then he’d sucker-punch me in the neck and steal my lunch money, the bastard.”
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright quipped that Richardson’s endorsement was easily worth less than the deaths of half a million Iraqi children, while former candidate for Vice President, friend of the campaign, and recent HRC Finance Committee member Geraldine Ferraro said, “Frankly, I wouldn’t expect any better from that [expletive and racial epithet deleted.]”
***
Sorry about the snarky short. All hell is breaking loose out here, and this is all I got. I do have one question for y’all.
Is 2008 ever going to get any better?
We’ll see about live-blogging tonight. Guess it’ll be pretty obvious if I’m here when you’re here.
D.
Al dente be
Today is Flying Spaghetti Monster day. To celebrate, this Pastafarian has built an FSM statue and received permission for it to be displayed on the courthouse lawn of Crossville, Tennessee.
Read about her stirring spiritual journey . . .
Tonight at dinner as I was staring down at my spaghetti and meatballs I was startled to discover that the remains of spaghetti sauce took the shape of It, the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
It came to me then, that in only a few short weeks, on March 21, is Day of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, followed by six weeks of spaghetti fasting. The six weeks ends with huge festivities on May 1, the Day of National Prayer. It occured to me looking at the holy image of It that stared up at me from my plate that this is indeed a Sign. I sense that I am supposed to build the image of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and display its holy appendages on the Courthouse lawn of my hometown, Crossville Tennessee. There its blessed presence can help all the world celebrate Day of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the six week fast.
See her build and install her glorious FSM!
Learn how to build your own!
Happy Spaghetti Fast, folks.
D.
Joke? Crappy editing?
I’m reading Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, mostly because I want to watch the movie (big Coen Bros. fan here) but I want to read the book first.
It’s a fun book but it’s really not too deep. Based on my N of 1/2 a McCarthy book, James Crumley has a hell of a lot more to say and he says it with a much less affected style. I don’t like the lack of dialog quotes, the almost complete absence of speaker attribution, the dropped punctuation (McCarthy dont need no stinkin apostrophes!), the sentence fragments, the thick vernacular. Nevertheless, all of those pretentious quirks aside, NCfOM is a fun ride.
But I DIDN’T expect to find, in an otherwise humorless book,
Who must think that he thought that they thought that he thought they were very dumb. He thought about that.
Wow. Pulled me right out of the book. I can’t remember who said it, but there’s an old quote about cutting the “good bits.” I’m sure the author of that quote didn’t mean you should edit out ALL the good bits, but rather, you should cut the bits of which you are particularly, smugly proud. IMO, those two sentences qualify.
In other news: I’m a little over 25K words into my WiP. Not bad for, what? a couple of months of weekend writing? (Yeah, Tammy, I underestimated the word count when I talked to you the other night. Could have knocked me over when I checked it the next day.)
I have mixed feelings about this novel. On the one hand, I think this is some of the best stuff I’ve ever written. On the other, I’m terrified because I don’t know where it’s going. Which is kind of fun-scary in a way, too; I’m looking forward to seeing how this all works out, but I’m afraid I’ll write myself into a cul-de-sac. It’s happened before.
D.
Maybe it wasn’t one of my better jokes
. . . but this commenter takes me waaay to seriously.
This is stupid. Obviously the author doesn’t know the traits of someone who truly has steatopygia. Jennifer Lopez is not even close to having the condition (the angle from back to butocks must be 90 degrees). The correct term to describe her bottom would be “callipygia” which is a “well-shaped buttocks”. All of you are probably so used to seeing women with little or no buttocks that a slight protrusion would be steatogypia to you.
What’s at issue? Follow me below the fold.
The Speech
(Hate politics? Skip to the kitty.)
Read the full text or watch the video of Barack Obama’s speech here.
The man belted this one straight out of the park. I haven’t been this moved by a political speech since Edwards dropped out of the race — and, no, I don’t think Edwards could have given a speech like this.
As usual, other people have said it a lot better than I can. The empathy, the honesty, the intelligence, the logic of the speech floored me. What a relief from the foul winds we’ve been breathing for the last seven years — for decades, really.
Anyway, here is my inarticulate praise, which I posted at Daily Kos:
Effective, moving, logical
LOGICAL. The product of a brain not running on corn meal mush and twine with little twisty-ties holding one part to the other part and rubber bands for a power source.
I loved it.
***
Sorry about the political post. I know MOST of you don’t come here for politics. So here’s a pooty.
And because none of you want to talk politics (just guessin’), here’s my question for the evening:
How many of your grandparents were fond of spewing embarrassing racial slurs, ethnic epithets, or other random bits of nasty prejudicial slime?
I’ll kick it off. One of my grandmothers once said, “I hate those Chinese . . . ever since Pearl Harbor.”
D.
Doing our part to pull America out of the recession
Not much from me tonight, I’m afraid; we got home rather late from our weekend trip to Eureka. We spent money, lots of money (hence the title), on CostCo and PetsMart and a bookstore and restaurants etc.
But the big ticket item came today. A new car, perhaps? Down-payment on a vacation cabin? Hardly. Karen went to see a pain medicine specialist for a shot in the ass. Two shots in the ass, to be precise. She screwed herself up when she fractured her pelvis back in ’05 (it’s the 12-19-05 entry, if anyone’s reeeeally curious) and now, more than two years later, we’re still trying to make her better.
“Discouraging” barely begins to cover it.
She did the shots once before and they did nothing for her. That was with another doc, though, and this doc thinks, well, some docs got it, some don’t. Okay, I’ll buy that, but that’s not where I’m putting my hope. I’m putting my hope in the sheer perversity of the human body, its ability to react one way to Treatment A on one day, and the exact opposite way to the exact same Treatment A on another day.
Ugh. I’m tired. I doubt I’m doing a good job expressing myself. Anyway, she’s fine, thanks, but it won’t be clear for another day or two whether this was a big fat waste of time, hope, and money.
But it’s not a waste of money, is it? We’re bolstering the sagging US economy, yeah!
Back to work tomorrow so I can pay for all of this.
D.
PS: Sorry for not visiting your blogs, sorry for not even doing a great job replying to comments. I’ll do better.