Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: August 2009
What do women want . . .
in their guy-on-guy gay romance novels? (Because you know guys aren’t the market for this stuff.) No, really: the women who crave this stuff, what do they want to read? Hot man-on-man action followed by tender cuddling? Or two guys hitting the mall together for a romantic day of shopping?
Is it boy meets boy, boy loses boy, boy gets boy? Must one boy be young and beautiful, the other worldly and experienced? Should all members be thick and empurpled?
Do you have to have an HEA?
Discuss.
While you’re thinking about this, have a kitty.
D.
It’s over
I think I might have mentioned that Jake will be getting back into the public school system this year. He’ll be a Freshman. A Freshman taking Math Analysis/Trig (which, here, is a Junior year course), if we have any say in it. A few weeks ago, we learned that they would require him to test out of Geometry and Algebra II, so he’s been cramming away, weekends too. This kid hasn’t take a summer vacation for the last three summers and it’s not something that was ever an issue for us. I think it really bothered him, how much math he would forget between the end of one school year and the beginning of another. So we decided to press on through.
As a result, he’s way ahead of the game. You’d think the school would be satisfied reviewing his homework (we’ve saved EVERYthing) but no, they like their tests. He took the Algebra II test on Friday, the Geometry test today. We still don’t know how he did, but he doesn’t feel bad about either test.
Anyway, I’m not sweating how he’s going to do in Math Analysis/Trig. I’m sweating P.E.
P.E.
Team sports.
Showers.
Well, a guy can get used to showering with a bunch of other guys, but team sports? Truly traumatic. I told him he should just start getting used to hearing, “Hoffman, you SUCK!”
D.
Various and sundry arthropods
Scientists are closing in on the mass production of spider silk.
Spider silk is nature’s miracle fiber: three times stronger than Kevlar, ounce per ounce stronger than steel, able to stretch up to one-half its normal length, and packaged as a minuscule filament 80 times thinner than a human hair. It’s even been said that a strand of spider silk the width of a pencil could stop a Boeing 747 in flight.
Spiders have great eyesight in the UV frequencies, and exploit it to create dazzling neon dances — for sex, of course.
Spiders are bad-ass predators, but centipedes are, um, bad-asser:
Speaking of arthropod sex, horseshoe crabs on the shores of Delaware Bay are having an orgy. It’s like The Dating Game — only all the boys win!
Shrimp sterilizes all life in a salt water aquarium? I can believe it. We used to own a freshwater shrimp who accomplished the same feat.
The Eurypterids may have gone extinct over two hundred million years ago, but a close relative of these giant scorpions may have survived to the present day — underwater.
I’ll close with a picture of a guy getting nipple noogies from a coconut crab.
A little to the left . . . aaaah, that's it.
D.
Saturday Science
Over at Daily Kos, Darksyde’s This Week in Science is even better than usual.
Highlights:
* Discover Magazine covers science’s greatest fails
* As many of you know, Texas Board of Education sets the pace for the nation’s public school textbooks. In the past, they’ve been dominated by Dominionists (hey, it’s what they do) who believe in their own interpretations of science and history. Guess what, folks: these ultra religious whack jobs are at it again.
* For counterpoint to that last story, here’s some awesomely great news: Lonesome George got laid!
D.