The fascination of the abomination
Blame Lilith, who likes to run a class joint over at her blog, but sent me this link knowing full well what I would do with it:
Dig those pelvic thrusts!
More to follow. I’m working on something of considerable religious significance.
D.
What I didn’t do today, and why.
Today, I didn’t catch up on my chart basket. I didn’t call 15 voters in California’s 50th District, encouraging them to go out and vote for Francine Busby. I barely glanced at the Huffington Post headlines, Daily Kos, or The News Blog.
I dropped by my own blog briefly, left a couple of comments, got distracted. I stopped by Beth’s place only long enough to let her know that my weak attempt at SBD was day-old Harry Potter porn. And that’s all the blogging I did today.
Yes, I did my job, saw patients, made a few people better. But I would have shirked that responsibility too, if I could have gotten away with it. Why? Because of this book:
The losing entry is . . .
For those of you who have been following Miss Snark‘s writing contest, here’s my entry. Beats me why it didn’t cut the muster. (Hey — just found out, Stephen won! Here’s a link to the winning entry.)
(more…)
It’s a bloggy birthday!
Balls and Walnuts is one year old today. Ignoring my “this is a test” post of April 8, 2005, I hit my stride for realsies with this post about my (still unpublished) story, “My Troll Lover.” Unremarkable story and equally unremarkable post, although I do like the phrase, “Puns. Toe jam of the humor pantheon.”
I thank Pat for steering me towards Blogger, and I think Dean and Dave guided me towards WordPress. Pat may have had a hand in that too, come to think of it.
Balls and Walnuts used to be Shatter, of course. I thank Sheila for suggesting that while “Shatter” was interesting, it really wasn’t me. (Whereas Balls and Walnuts . . .)
I’m still trying to think up a good contest to celebrate our one year anniversary. Time to make dinner (falafel, one of my favorite easy dinners, and I think I’ll make bread pudding, too). Stay tuned; I think I might write about roast chicken tonight.
D.
Culinary pariahs
Apologies for the profanity. Food makes me passionate.
Some folks love food, some just eat it. If you don’t know what this gizmo is, you’re probably in the latter group.
Hey, nothing wrong with that. I don’t look down my nose at folks who don’t know their cassoulet from a hole in the ground. But can I give you some advice? If you come over to my house and I make you cassoulet, don’t (A) insult me for the fact I spent several days preparing this for you, or (B) refuse to ever invite me to your house for dinner, since for you it’s all about one-upsmanship, and you don’t want to put out the effort, or (C) forget to show up in the first place. Yes, all of those things have happened to me, some of them more than once.
I like cooking for people. Know what I made for my wife and son tonight? Homemade ravioli with two different fillings (spinach and cheese, and sweet potato) and two different sauces (tomato sauce for the first, sage and browned butter for the second). Yes, it was delicious. No, it wasn’t that much work (about two hours prep time). Yes, I’d do it again.
But not for some people.
Life imitates art: Borges on Judas
(To my regular readers: and now for something completely different. Isn’t it amazing what I’ll do to generate hits?)
Hang around here long enough, and I’ll bring up fantasist and poet Jorge Luis Borges, one of my favorite short story authors. Recent discussions on the Gnostic apocryphal Gospel of Judas reminded me of a story Borges published in 1944: “Three Versions of Judas.”
In “Three Versions of Judas,” Borges pulls out what is, for him, an oft-used trick: invent a scholar, invent that scholar’s corpus of work, then launch into a discussion which would past muster in any peer-reviewed journal. “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” comes to mind. Nils Runeberg is the fictional academician of “Three Versions of Judas,” and it is the Runeberg heresies which are so relevant to the real life Gospel of Judas.
Writers Guild of America’s top 101
Writers Guild of America, West, has published their ranking of the top 101 screenplays. Here’s the top 10:
1. Casablanca
2. The Godfather
3. Chinatown
4. Citizen Kane
5. All About Eve
6. Annie Hall
7. Sunset Boulevard
8. Network
9. Some Like it Hot
10. The Godfather II
I don’t have many quibbles with that list, until I look at the next ten. Suddenly, Annie Hall and Citizen Kane (fine cinematography — but a great screenplay?) seem out of place.
11. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
12. Dr. Strangelove
13. The Graduate
14. Lawrence of Arabia
15. The Apartment
16. Pulp Fiction
17. Tootsie
18. On the Waterfront
19. To Kill a Mockingbird
20. It’s a Wonderful Life
Dr. Strangelove, Lawrence of Arabia, The Graduate: each of these is, I think, more deserving of a top ten ranking. But Tootsie — how the hell did that even make it into the top 101? That movie is crap. It took an easy target (soap operas) and satirized it with all the edge of a wooden spoon. Moreover, the movie is sexist, since the basic premise is that Dustin Hoffman makes a better woman than all the other women who surround him. (Yeah, I know that’s not the party line on the movie — ‘Dustin Hoffman becomes a better man by pretending to be a woman,’ that’s the party line. But think about it. Am I wrong?)
I have lots of other quibbles with that list. The Maltese Falcon deserves to be higher than #47, for example, and there’s entirely too much Woody Allen. Also: The Silence of the Lambs? ET? Rocky? What were these guys thinking?
Go. Have a look. If you love movies, there will be plenty to spark your ire.
D.
My friend Dan has way too much time on his hands
He sent me the link to San Francisco in Jello. And if Dan has too much time on his hands, what can you say about the woman who crafted such a thing?
D.
We’re gonna have a good time
Wikipedia Meme
Go to Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/). Type in your birth date (but not year). List three events that happened on your birthday. List two important birthdays and one interesting death. Post this in your journal.
So maybe I’m too paranoid about identity theft to use my real birthday for this one. (And yet, anyone who wants to steal my identity need only read this blog. They’ll have a hard time copying my hairy insteps, naturally.) So let’s just say that I used someone’s birthday to generate the necessary responses. Here goes.
Three events:
- 1690 – “Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick“, the first newspaper published in the Americas, published for the first and only time. (I suspect they were slammed for printing nude drawings of Massachusetts Puritan Sir William Phips.)
- 1957 – Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, is integrated through the use of United States Army troops. (A productive show of military force!)
- 1988 – Monty Python member Michael Palin sets out from London‘s Reform Club to start his BBC documentary Around the World in 80 Days. (No snark. It was an awesome series.)
Two important birthdays:
- 1897 – William Faulkner, American writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1962) (author of As I Lay Dying, the second best book I was forced to read in high school, after Heart of Darkness)
- 1936 – Juliet Prowse, British actress and dancer (d. 1996) (object of my father’s admiration: the first time I ever heard the phrase, “built like a brick shithouse”.)
And one interesting death:
- 1980 – John Bonham, British drummer (Led Zeppelin) (b. 1948) (Cause of death? Choking on his own vomit. Did you have to ask?)
I tag: anyone else who is struggling to come up with a Friday topic.
D.
Orgasmania
Damn, girl, take off the glasses! And stop hamming it up for the camera, for cryin’ out loud. It’s just a damned orgasm.
I just received this email:
This email is to notify you that in response to your all your hard work promoting www.beautifulagony.com, someone has joined the site and we have credited this referral to your promoter account.
You now have a total of 2 referrals credited to you.
Thank you for your work promoting www.beautifulagony.com, you now have enough referrals to claim one month’s free access. Please reply to this email, making sure you quote the text below so we can grant you access.
To whomever signed up at Beautiful Agony, thank you. Now, for one full month, I can watch people fake orgasms for free. At the very least, this might give me something to talk about for the next Smart Bitches Day.
Snark undoubtedly to follow. Hey . . . isn’t that Owen Wilson?
D.