Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: July 2008
Hellbore
We saw Hellboy in the theater back in 2004 — pre-blog, so I’ve never reviewed it here. Good movie. While I never felt that Hellboy or his pals were in any real danger, I still cared for them; in particular, the romance between Hellboy and Liz (Selma Blair) engaged me. Hellboy had so many things to make it special: Selma Blair, looking all smoky and goth; Ron Perlman, always a strong stage presence; John Hurt (guess how old he is. No, guess); Nazis awakening Cthulhu; Selma Blair; and Selma Blair. Selma Blair was really good in it, too.
It’s one of those movies we watch over and over again on cable; you know, a film that gets damn near everything right. So of course we were looking forward to Hellboy II: The Golden Army.
My life among the nickle-and-dimers
The good: we made $480 at today’s garage sale. That’s not counting the $230 I made selling our various doors.
The bad: the big stuff didn’t sell. And by “big,” I mean “heavy,” not necessarily “expensive.” In particular, I wanted to unload our junky furniture the sight of which is a pox upon my eyes. As an example, we have an old desk whose current role seems to be cat bed, and that thing weighs a ton. And we have a lot of dirty old aquaria that I’ve been dying to sell.
Okay, here’s the experiment. I’m going to put out one aquarium with a “FREE” sign on it, and we’ll see how fast it disappears. If that works, maybe I’ll do it with a few more.
The ugly: a family came by with all their little kids in tow. Cute kids. We were nice to them, sold them stuff for next to nothing, and I gave away a few things, too. The dad kept trying to bargain us down on little stuff. You know how it goes —
Him: How much do you want for this?
Me: Five dollars.
Him: I’ll give you two.
Me: Make it three.
Him: Two-fifty.
Me: How about THREE.
Second or third time at this, his wife (who appreciates what we’ve given away to her kids) says to him, “Hey, these are nice people! No need to get all Jewish with them.”
Um, as a Jew, I can generally sniff out fellow Jews. These folks weren’t.
It’s sort of like the N word. Black people get to use it, the rest of us don’t. I’m allowed to kid a fellow Jew about being a cheapskate or a hard haggler — though I never would, because it’s an inaccurate and not very funny stereotype — but the rest of y’all back off.
When she left, she thanked us again and gave us a parting “God bless!”
“Blessed be!” I should have said. “May the Goddess shine upon thee!”
I never think of these things until it’s too late.
Live blogging later, maybe eight? I’ll stick around for a while and see who shows up. Hope y’all are having a great weekend. I’m tired and sunburned, but otherwise life is peachy.
D.
Friday Flickr Babe: if you’re going to do it, do it with gusto
As a teenager my brother, bless his heart, used to say that when you saw a woman in her bikini, you were seeing her at her very best*. This made no sense to me. Surely a naked woman made the better eye-feast than the bikini-clad woman? But, no, he was insistent.
I have since seen women with and without their bikinis on, and I can say with absolute certainty that he was wrong, or at the very least, he and I will never agree on this one.
You who are so wise in the ways of home-selling . . .
Keep the advice coming. We’re having a garage sale this weekend.
I’m advertising, and I’ve enlisted the aid of one of my favorite scrub nurses, a Portuguese woman who made over six hundred dollars at her last garage sale. This is a woman who knows how to sell shit. I don’t know what she’s going to ask for her assistance, but whatever she asks, chances are it isn’t enough.
I’ve already decided not to mess with prices. “Make me an offer” will be my motto. I’d like to think people will offer a fair price on things, but I’ve heard too many stories of people wanting stuff for free.
Bake cookies. That’s what one of my friends always tells me. Feed ’em chocolate chip cookies, thereby guilt-tripping them into buying stuff. She likes garage sales because she thinks it’s fun convincing people they NEED this garbage. I think she’s nuts.
I’ve already made $230, though. Tonight, I sold some of our construction detritus — French doors that we’d had to remove since, guess what, French doors leak like sieves when faced with horizontal rain; a storm door, never used; a window box, removed from the “old kitchen”; the ultra-heavy front door which we replaced; and a few other doors besides. Where did all of those doors come from? They looked vaguely familiar, but fuck if I could name their former location.
But we have oh so much more junk to sell. Tons of Jake’s clothing, much of it heartbreakingly new. (And we bought this stuff why?) Snake cages and other aquaria. Ikea furniture, fart and it falls apart. Children’s books and toys. An old gas dryer. A wet-dry shop vac with one of its casters missing. An old Peugeot mountain bike.
Meanwhile . . . time to do more laundry. Good night!
D.
We’ve got a hot one
Those nice folks who spent a long time poking around our house last weekend? They’re coming back on Friday for a second look.
Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes . . .
We’ve asked a gardener to come out tomorrow to mow the lawns and neaten stuff up, and we’ve got a housekeeper coming Friday morning to do whatever it is she does (and she does it well, believe me). I wish I could bake a loaf of challah, though, since that makes the house smell so nice. But since I don’t have the time off from work to do something like that, I decided instead to google “tips advice showing your home.”
. . . and discovered this nightmare. And I thought baking challah would be a lot of work. I mean, really:
Make the House Sparkle!
- Wash windows inside and out.
- Rent a pressure washer and spray down sidewalks and exterior.
- Clean out cobwebs.
- Re-caulk tubs, showers and sinks.
- Polish chrome faucets and mirrors.
- Clean out the refrigerator.
- Vacuum daily.
- Wax floors.
- Dust furniture, ceiling fan blades and light fixtures.
- Bleach dingy grout.
- Replace worn rugs.
- Hang up fresh towels.
- Bathroom towels look great fastened with ribbon and bows.
- Clean and air out any musty smelling areas. Odors are a no-no.
And that’s just one-tenth of the article.
I have to agree with that last bullet point. When we went house-hunting in Seattle, one otherwise beautiful home had an unaccountable odor in the hallway. Every time I passed through the hallway, I smelled cooked cabbage. The realtor said, “I think they have a dog,” but that means what, exactly? Dog farts don’t linger for hours, do they?
We have a funky smelling bathroom downstairs. Maybe I should go buy some of that smelly crap . . . what’s it called? You know, it has cinnamon and star anise and dried flowers. A bouquet? Gaaaaaah! I am so not up to this task.
Hmmph. How come so many of these advice-givers tell me I have to “disconnect my emotions”? I only have one emotion here: I want to sell this house quickly so that we can buy, not rent, when we get down to Santa Rosa. Or at least, I don’t want to have to rent for more than a few months. And if we have to rent, I want to be in a place like Oakwoods where they have EVERYTHING furnished, so that way I don’t have to unpack anything but clothes. Unpack once, that’s my goal.
Don’t any of these websites provide simple advice to make my home appealing? You know, something I can bake, or spray into the air?
Maybe a potted plant, strategically positioned. That would be easy.
D.
Mondegreen? Get the hell off it, then!
In a recent AP story*, I learned that Webster’s Collegiate recently had added 100 new words to their dictionary, including such head-scratchers as “dirty bomb” (it took them this long to add that?) and edamame (if I’ve been eating it for over twenty years, it sure as hell better be in the dictionary). One new addition is mondegreen, defined as a word or phrase frequently mistaken for another word or phrase . . .
It comes from an old Scottish ballad in which the lyric “laid him on the green” has been confused over time with “Lady Mondegreen.”
The AP story provides a few examples: ‘Lucy in the sky with Linus,’ from the Beatles song of almost the same name; ‘there’s a bathroom on the right’ (Creedence Clearwater’s ‘there’s a bad moon on the rise’); and “‘scuse me while I kiss this guy” (kiss the sky — Hendrix).
Funny how all of these come from song lyrics, but that’s all I can generate, too. Iron Butterfly’s “In A Gadda Da Vida” came to mind, and Wikipedia confirmed that the title may be a mondegreen of “In the Garden of Eden,” or perhaps, “In the Garden of Venus.” Also, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” is full of mondegreens.
Guess that Bob Dylan song.
The challenge is coming up with mondegreens not derived from song lyrics. The American Pledge of Allegiance has a famous one (who the hell is Richard Stands, after all? or is it “where witches stand”?) And when I was a med student, one of my dictations — “a large abdominal aortic aneurysm” — became “a large abdominal area cancerism.”
“Cancerism” still makes me cringe. What a word!
Also in the medical vein (sorry, sorry, I know we’re not doing puns today), there’s a famous one, perhaps apocryphal, that has a woman believing “fibroids of the uterus” is actually “fireballs of the Eucharist.” Christ the Avenger, I guess.
When I snuck a look at the Wikipedia entry, I saw that a whole song was composed of mondegreens. Release date 1943, and one of the writers shared my last name. Can you guess it without cheating?
How about it — do you have any favorite mondegreens?
D.
*AP had a hissy fit not long ago about bloggers linking to and quoting from their articles. Why they want to shoot themselves in the foot like this, I don’t know — but fine, I’ll reference it without providing a link or attribution. Nyah, nyah.
Oh, and here’s a whole great pile of mondegreens, if you’re enjoying this.
In addition to Simon alone, there are still more Simon and Garfunkel mondegreens, including Aaron Bernstein’s mishearing of “silence like a cancer grows” as “silence like a casserole” (from the hit song “The Covered Dishes of Silence”), and Clare Tiss’ joyful singing of “I have a watch, I have it o-o-o-o-o-n . . .”
“I am rock, I am an island,” of course. Makes more sense if you’ve heard it.
Caipirinha
As usual, I couldn’t leave well enough alone; I had to modify the recipe. Instead of muddling big chunks of lime, I threw it all into a blender thinking it would kinda sorta come out like a Margarita. Nope, no go. It was all chunky, bitter, undrinkable. I suppose I could have filtered it and re-blended it with more ice, but then it would have been too dilute!
There must be a way to make a blended caipirinha. Here’s a thought: I could use lime zest, lime juice, rum, and ice. And maybe mix the zest in just a little bit at a time so as not to overdo it.
I’m tired tonight, so that’s all I’ve got for you: booze.
D.
Thirteen reasons I’m looking forward to Santa Rosa
Yeah, I know it’s not Thursday.
In no particular order . . .
1000 pounds
That’s how much garbage I dumped this morning.
I am happy to report that our U-Haul truck came through unscathed.
Our housekeeper suggested we rent a big dumpster and do it that way. Doh! Why didn’t I think of that? Admittedly, we had way too much junk to fit into a single dumpster, but we have time to load and unload a few dumpster-fulls.
***
Some commercial flashed on a moment ago, something about a product that helps you control your child.
“. . . WHICH WE DESPERATELY NEED!” Karen said.
“You do,” said Jake, and I said, “No we don’t, we have you under perfect control.”
“You do not.”
I pointed at his computer. “Every day, you’re right there in front of the computer . . . which is just where we want you.”
Cue evil laugh.
***
Live-blogging tonight — I’ll shoot for 8 PM at the latest.
Tammy, I found you a great little housewarming gift. It’s not tacky kitsch, as I had hoped. It’s actually kind of nice. Don’t tell anyone — I have a rep to preserve.
D.
Blowin’ Shit Up Day
Here in America we celebrate the birth of our nation by settin’ shit on fire and blowin’ shit up. I’m always tempted to get a bunch of $1s and $5s and set them all ablaze, but Jake likes the glittery stuff. None of us like the screamers so we always ask about that. Nevertheless, every year they sell us at least one screamer. I’m tempted to take the burnt-out husk back to the tent the next day and ask for my money back. Jake could drip a little red food coloring into his ear canals and let it run out onto his neck. I’d say, “You said this wouldn’t scream.” Then I’d point to his bloody ears. “Now look what you’ve done.”
Really, though, we do a damn fine job of (nearly) setting ourselves ablaze every year. Safe and sane is for pussies. Jake likes to put a bunch of ground blooms together on the ground, their fuses all pointing inward. That way, he can light one or two and get them all spinning at once. We also like to save fireworks from year to year, because old fireworks carries that cachet of unpredictability. Will it be a dud? Will it explode?
Ground blooms fly this way and that. One of them flew under our rented U-Haul (I’m dumping eight years worth of accumulated junk this weekend) and I had visions of the beast turning into its very own red-and-white ground bloom. Would our insurance cover that? As it is, they had our names on their blacklist from the last time we rented. Blow up a truck and I’m sure that earns you a spot on their Double Secret Blacklist.
After we shot off our Big Mama Grand Finale firework — and you know, don’t you, that they’re never as much fun as the medium-priced fountains — we did some more ground blooms and then we got tired of it all and threw a huge brick of 48 ground blooms into the burn barrel (which by now was blazing pretty good). You’d think 48 ground blooms would do something cool like make the burn barrel explode, lacerating our colons and spleens with rusty burn barrel shrapnel, wouldn’t you? Sadly no. The 48 ground bloom super-brick merely smoked and flamed and pissed itself into ashen oblivion.
I was a kid back when they didn’t have fire-safe pajamas. I remember how sparklers would sometimes leave little black spots on my jammies, places where the micro-fireballs would try to take hold but never managed to gain any momentum. I suppose they could have doused me with lighter fluid first, but then it would have been harder to make it look like an accident. Anyway, I disliked sparklers. The sparks hurt. I guess I was a sensitive child.
Back then, I liked fountains best. I can’t recall when I first saw “real” fireworks, up-in-the-sky fireworks, but it must have been at Disneyland, where every evening is the Fourth of July. That’s been my favorite form of July 4th entertainment ever since. Last year, we spent the Fourth with protected static and his family. They live close to a show — and what a show. Those Seattleanianites sure know how to blow shit up.
Roman Candles are back. They don’t call them Roman Candles, but the idea is the same: it’s a fountain you can hold. I vetoed that idea. And do you remember pinwheels? They had another name which escapes me. Saint something, or maybe it was named after a queen. Why did they take those off the market?
A few years ago, one of the locals was showing off to his friends — he’d been a demolitions expert in Nam (or maybe the first Iraq War) and so he thought he knew shit about blowing shit up. And he did, too — he blew a few fingers off really well.
But I guess it’s too late to give you a cautionary tale. I hope you all had a safe Fourth. We did, but it wasn’t for want of trying.
D.