And the King of the Gypsies is . . .
Dean!
Here is the complete list of entries:
Demented Michelle’s post on the modern Roma of Europe
Bonnie Wren’s Super Sabado: a bit light on Gypsies, but Star Trek makes up for it
Kate’s bwaahahahahahahahaaaa entry
Lyvvie gets nasty on us. Don’t tell her mom
Actually, it was really easy picking the winner. Dean was the only guy who entered, and it makes no sense whatsoever for a chick to be King of the Gypsies, so —
Just teasing. Contestants names were written on identical slips of thin paper, which were then tossed into the air by an impartial representative of the accounting firm of Pfysting, Rhüm-Chob, and Taynte. (That would be me.) Dean’s was the only slip to land face-up. It’s kismet, I tell you.
My thanks and regrets go out to those of you who did not win. I wish I could send you all a copy of Gogol Bordello’s Gypsy Punks, but we’re still in savings-mode on our remodel (bare wood countertops, bare wood floors, and not that nice wood, either. Stuff with nails and staples in it, and all kinds of mysterious stains).
We’ll do another contest soon . . . maybe another bad sex-writing extravaganza?
D.
Milestone
Earlier this week, I finally finished categorizing all of my old posts (from the Blogger days of Balls and Walnuts). That means you can now put all of my recipes in one place by clicking on Food in the Categories section. Cool, eh?
A quick perusal reveals recipes for fried potatoes, bread pudding (two recipes), buffalo burgers, chicken kebabs, ravioli, pancakes, velvet butter chicken, roast lamb, focaccia, and a whole lot more. Maybe not a whole cookbook’s worth of recipes, but close.
My first patient just showed. Time to be a doctor.
D.
Where did he go?
I’m the Vice Chief of Staff at our little community hospital, which means all illicit drug sales, bootlegged whiskey, gambling, and prostitution have to go through me. (Note to JCAHO: I’m kidding. KIDDING, do you hear? Those government guys have no sense of humor.)
In February, the hospital arranged professional photos of the officers — the chief of staff, vice chief of staff, and secretary. Only this week did our photos show up in the hospital lobby. The photographer did something funky to the photos, made them look like tintypes. That’s my excuse for why it took me ten seconds to recognize ME.
I didn’t like it. Not one bit. The guy in the photo has a bull neck and a round head. Where did those come from? And he’s old.
That’s not me, I thought, whining in dog-frequencies.
This is me:
The only difference between me and the guy in the photo, this photo, is (A) I have better taste in music these days, and (B) I have facial hair. Otherwise, we’re still the same. Both of us have the same goofy laugh, the same love of food, the same twisted romantic view of life. Both of us can make love up to one time per evening. (Joke stolen from Steve Martin. I couldn’t resist.)
I know this sounds like a vain rant, but that’s not quite it. I feel no urge to see a cosmetic surgeon, even if I had money to waste on such things. I don’t mind aging, either, not in any abstract sense. Each decade of my life has been better than the one before, so at this rate, my Golden Years will be divine.
I wonder, though, why I have so much trouble internalizing some sort of appropriate self-image, something that ages as I age. Why, whenever I look in the mirror, I expect to see that guy in the Yes shirt.
I also wonder how sometimes an afternoon can last forever, while high school and college seem like they were yesterday.
That’s enough maudlin self-indulgence for one evening. Bottom line, that “professional” portrait was one fugly photograph. I’ll bet the photographer was an ex-patient whom I sent to collections.
D.
Thirteen things I learned from Cosmo
As promised.
1. Women need help shaving their pubes into dumb designs.
Guy tip #1: shave it all off. That’s what we really want, not furry “landing strips.”
2. Bronze eye shadow is “in.”
Guy tip #2: Bronze eye shadow is only “in” if your guy is “into” heroin chic.
3.“Damp, chilled tea bags work wonders for sleepy, puffy eyes.”
Guy tip #3: Surprise your guy with teabagging and he won’t give a damn about your sleepy, puffy eyes.
4. “Plan Two Hot Dates With Him. Instead of orchestrating a perfect evening you’ll both love, make a deal that you’ll do whatever he wants one night as long as he does the same for you the other night.”
Guy tip #4: I like this advice. I can’t think of a better way to assess incompatibility. Two dates, and you’ll either be engaged or broken up.
5. Don’t leave your contact lenses in at night, says Monica L. Monica, MD.
Guy tip #5: Monica L. Monica? I’m going back to my old name, Doug E. Fresh.
6. Astroglide has massage lotion!
Guy tip #6: I learned about Astroglide from a gay Bay Area psychiatrist. Instinctively, I realized this guy knew more about lubricants than a score of Pep Boys employees. I’ve never gone back to KY.
7. Brighten up your hair color by adding Kool-Aid powder to your shampoo.
Guy tip #7: Guys dig cherry Kool-Aid powder. We’ll lick it off anything. Anything.
8. According to actor Owen Wilson, “When girls put lipstick beyond their lip line to make their mouth look voluptuous — that’s no bueno.”
Guy tip #8: When guys throw dippy Spanish expressions into their conversations, that’s muy estupido.
9. To make her feel sexy naked, compliment her sexy parts.
Guy tip #9: It really doesn’t work to say, “Honey, your clitoris looks just like a wee penis!”
10. He says: “My buddies really like you.” He means: “Okay, we’re officially dating now.”
Guy tip #10: Be sure he doesn’t mean, “I hope you’re into bukkake.”
11. 57% of guys have accidentally zipped part of their member.
Guy tip #11: If your man does this, DON’T blurt out, “Frank and beans! Frank and beans!” or else he might offer you some of his style gel.
12. Big, fake eyelashes are sexy, but big, fake boobs are not.
Guy tip #12: Oh yeah? Says who?
13. If you cheat, don’t tell. You’ll be doing more damage to the relationship if you come clean.
Guy tip #13: Don’t cheat in the first place, dumbass! Jeez. If you care that little about a relationship, leave the relationship. Unless it’s one of those open relationships. Yeah. That would be cool.
Have you learned anything new today? Leave a comment, and I’ll link to your Thirteen.
View More Thursday Thirteen Participants
Technorati tag: thursday thirteen
Man-tush over at Darla’s place!
Dusty gives us the latest on the Rove & Leopold show (not a 13, but what the hey)
Thirteen smiles from Pat (With Wallace and Gromit cookies!)
D.
Jury Duty
I got — perempted? Is that a word? They tossed me out on peremptory challenge. That means they didn’t like something about me. Was it . . .
A) The fact I have more than a high school education? Karen and I often wonder whether lawyers and prosecutors dislike professionals because we’re over-educated and opinionated.
B) My expressed opinion that a child endangerment charge should require some proof of actual endangerment — that the mere presence of a controlled substance should not constitute endangerment?
C) The fact I knew the defendant’s attorney but didn’t say so? She volunteered that I had taken care of one of her kids several years ago. I didn’t remember her. Correction: everyone looks vaguely familiar to me. The judge, defendant, and prosecutor all looked like they might have been my patient at one time or another. Just one of the oddities of my brain. But now I’m wondering if they thought I was a liar when I said I didn’t know any of them.
D) The fact that, whenever I wasn’t required to pay attention, I had my nose in Tamara Siler Jones‘s Ghosts in the Snow?
I suspect it was either A, B, or C, but I think D is the funniest option. Imaginary Q & A between me and the prosecutor:
Prosecutor: . . . So you seem to have some definite views on criminality. Do you have any problem with making a finding to uphold the law as stated?
Me: I don’t think I have a problem with that, but I would be more comfortable if you actually presented evidence of true criminality.
Prosecutor: “True criminality.” Can I ask what you mean by that?
Me [waving Ghosts]: Kinda like the perp in this book.
Prosecutor: Excuse me?
Me: The killer slices girls open from the chin to the pubic bone. Then he dismembers them, cuts out their organs, and eats ’em for breakfast. Now that’s true criminality.
Prosecutor: Judge?
Judge: Get the hell out of my courtroom, Dr. Hoffman.
Hee hee.
D.
The traitor always bites it in the end
I’m sure you’ve heard: Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald won’t be seeking an indictment against Karl Rove. I can hear (insert name of your favorite superhero) now:
“You win this time, Turdblossom, but we shall meet again!”
In the movies, the hideousness of the evildoer’s fate is often proportionate to his infamy. Perhaps we can find solace in this fact. Surely Rove is more wicked than any of the dudes listed below. If so, perhaps his comeuppance will be that much tastier.
The importance of thorough research
Today, I bought the July issue of Cosmo. For research purposes, not for the
62 SEX MOVES
Guys Share Tons of Totally Original and Mind-Blowing Tips.
Not at all. And good thing, too, because those Totally Original tips included such Mind-Blowing suggestions as, “After climax, a guy’s head can feel overheated and tingly. If you gently pull his hair and massage his scalp, it will quickly relax him.”
I’ll save the What I Learned From Cosmo post for my Thursday Thirteen. For now, I have a question to ask. Why do we in America get this:
while the Brits get this:
Compare the covers. In the Land of Pat Robertson, we get GORGEOUS EYE LOOKS. In England, they get SEXIEST EVER NAKED CENTREFOLDS. Why can’t I get nude Cosmo at my grocery store? I’d even let them spell it CENTREFOLD.
Did you know Cosmo published me? It’s true. Reese Witherspoon was the cover girl. I wanted to talk about the Middle-Aged Balding Jewish Male Sexual Response, but they were only interested in hearing me pontificate on sore throats. They were all hung up about me being an ENT doc — but dammit, I’m an expert in other things, too! I felt so cheap . . . particularly since they bought me off with a complimentary issue.
I have a pretty good idea who writes this stuff. That obsession with swallowing? Guys write those articles. But this 62 SEX MOVES story, I dunno. There’s a guy’s name attached to every move, but what guy calls his dick “my member”? And, “Watching a woman do yoga is the hottest foreplay you could have without touching each other.” Whaaaa?
There’s horrendous advice in this issue. In their Sexy vs. Skanky feature, they list “Sharing clothes with your friends” under Sexy, “Sharing guys with your friends” as Skanky. Not! And they’re telling women not to drink eight glasses of water a day. This is madness! “Eight to ten glasses of non-caffeinated, non-alcoholic beverages,” that’s what I tell everyone.
I think they need me on staff as their resident ear, nose, and throat doc, sniffer-out of bogus things attributed to guys (but really written by women), and test subject for all of their latest sex tips. I think I have a great deal to contribute, and besides, they already know my work.
D.
For love
This is challah, love in bread form. One of these days I’ll learn how to take a decent digital photo.
Karen appreciated my challah, but my little heathen, a focaccia fanatic, gave my challah the thumbs-down. That’s okay — it just means he doesn’t love his dad. (KIDDING, Jake, KIDDING!)
Today’s Smart Bitches Day post will focus on the following question:
What do your characters do to show their love?Â
Because, you know something? Protestations of an eternal bond are like, feh. Just feh. Screw the words, I want to see actions.
Flickr Follies 2.0
For this week’s venture into Random Flickr Blogging, I present to you this image of blissful newlyweds:
“May our love and your manhood grow like the bamboo.”
(With apologies to Leobin’s photos.)
D.
Supersnark
Bam has the coversnark (postersnark?) on the upcoming Superman Returns, which leaves me with . . . what? Superman’s sexuality doesn’t interest me. After all, Larry Niven covered this subject to hell and back in his 1971 short story, “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.”
Niven’s story hails to us from the latter part of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, back when stories were long on concept, short on plot, character development, and, well, anything that might make you think you’ve been reading a story. There are many notable exceptions to this — Jerome Bixby’s classic, “It’s a Good Life,” Jack Vance’s “Bagatelle” (or, indeed, nearly anything else by Vance), Frederic Brown’s “Arena” (upon which the Star Trek Gorn episode was based — but, trust me, Brown’s story is much better), or Niven’s own “Inconstant Moon.” Us over-35 types could probably go on and on about the Golden Age. Still, “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex” has its merits.
The story is a pseudo-academic treatise on Kryptonian reproductive habits in general, and on the pitfalls of Kryptonian-human lovemaking in particular. Here’s a snip:
Lastly, he’d blow off the top of her head.
Ejaculation of semen is entirely involuntary in the human male, and in all other forms of terrestrial life. It would be unreasonable to assume otherwise for a kryptonian. But with kryptonian muscles behind it, Kal-El’s semen would emerge with the muzzle velocity of a machine gun bullet. (*One can imagine that the Kent home in Smallville was riddled with holes during Superboy’s puberty. And why did Lana Lang never notice that?*)
In view of the foregoing, normal sex is impossible between LL and Superman.
Artificial insemination may give us better results.
It goes on too long, in my opinion, but Niven works in enough zingers to make the trip worthwhile. Interestingly enough, he completely misses the now-popular gay hypothesis. Wonder if he’ll give us a sequel?
D.