Props and Balls
Discovery!, Mad Props Yo Comments (6)
Esther Wilberforce Packard. I foresee many an hour wasted in these archives.
The eHarmony saga from the Right Hand of God. Older, yet timeless in its truth.
This is easily the finest representation of the collective response to the financial meltdown that I’ve seen, deftly illustrating the two major protagonists as a little boy (government) and a dude with a funky hat (society). I’m such a sucker for comics combining contemporary dialogue with ye olde tyme animation, a la Married To The Sea. They’re the best kind of silly, I think.
And now I’d like to say a few words about the scrotum. There is no call for a testicle cookbook. I love to cook and understand the occasional siren song that awakens cooks in the night daring them to try something exotic, but I draw the line at the wrinkly gonad. Or even a non-wrinkly one, for that matter. I saw this over here and left a hasty and emotional comment. Sometimes I do these things, then toss and turn night after night in feverish anxiety as to whether I said something correctly or worried that I may have been too harsh in my reaction. Allow me to recreate for you here a portion of the comment:
I think it’s a fair question. Also, I’d like to point out that I have no personal vendetta against the chef/author (the gonad gourmand, if you will) in question, allegations of chipmunk abuse notwithstanding. It’s just that I think that balls have no place on the kitchen table (except for highly-specific situations, none of which involve forks or knives).
Did I ever tell you about how I remodeled the living shit out of my house? It’s a good story chock full of cathartic swings of the sledgehammer, the manly screech of power tools, and massive amounts of plaster dust no doubt laced with anthrax and polio spores and whatever else was floating around the atmosphere in the early 20s. I think it’s a story worthy of its own post, though, because a person reaches a certain level of zen during such an activity and zen deserves more than just a paragraph. For example: When I tore down the shower wall in the main bathroom and found all of the plumbing rusted through and most of the wood rotted beyond the point of being able to legally be referred to as ‘wood’, it took a great deal of personal strength not to pull a Bruce Banner and go all Hulk on the rest of the house, schools, churches, South Carolina, etc. I eventually made everything right and the house is now a joy to behold, both inside and out, so it was truly worth the effort. But, Lord…..the effort. This poem speaks to me.
Putting in a Window – John Brantingham
Carpentry has a rhythm that should never
be violated. You need to move slowly,
methodically, never trying to finish early,
never even hoping that you’d be done sooner.
It’s best if you work without thought of the
end. If hurried, you end up with crooked
door joints and drafty rooms. Do not work
after you are annoyed just so the job
will be done more quickly. Stop when you
begin to curse at the wood. Putting in
a window should be a joy. You should love
the new header and the sound of
your electric screwdriver as it secures
the new beams. The only good carpenter
is the one who knows that he’s not good.
He’s afraid that he’ll ruin the whole house,
and he works slowly. It’s the same as
cooking or driving. The good cook
knows humility, and his soufflé never falls
because he is terrified that it will fall
the whole time he’s cooking. The good driver
knows that he might plow into a mother
walking her three-year old, and so watches
for them carefully. The good carpenter
knows that his beams might be weak, and a misstep
might ruin the place he loves. In the end,
you find your own pace, and you lose time.
When you started, the sun was high and now
that you’re finished, it’s dark. Tomorrow, you
might put in a door. The next day,
you’ll start on your new deck.
A year after I finished the inside of the house, I knocked a hole in the kitchen wall, installed a door, then added a deck. It just seemed like the right thing to do. I blame the poem.
Sir @ October 10, 2008
Even though I’m apparently too lazy to reply to the comment over on my own blog, allow me a moment to say here on your blog that I think the comment is entirely appropriate despite the fact that the mere thought of chipmunk rape makes me sad. Poor Alvin.
I sort of wonder if you could buy a sack of balls at Whole Foods.
And then you wrote about remodeling and that’s sorta dreamy.
I can’t speak to the gonad cuisine (except to say, ew, and this from a girl who will try almost anything, including bugs and strange-smelling fruit from Southeast Asia). But I can speak to the remodeling issue.
I am currently living in a 1/2 finished home. More specifically, it is the bottom half of what will eventually be a geodesic dome. I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments in the poem; part of the reason the dome is not done is because I know I could easily wreck things, and so I will not embark on the project until I am truly ready. Next summer feels like it will be the right time.
Lovely writing as usual, Sir.
Balls have no place on the kitchen table (except for highly-specific situations, none of which involve forks or knives).
Very hot
That eHarmony link was amazing. Also, please write more about the remodeling.
A-MEN, BROTHER, A-FUCKING-MEN! Not about the balls. Don’t care about them one way or the other. But about the carpentry/re-modeling.
I say this stiff-necked, bruised to crying and scraped bloody, but happy.
Spent the last two days underneath my house, working through the floor between the joists with a 65-lb “Brute” jackhammer breaking up adobe-solid clay soil, and then crawling along the trench with a hatchet and an army shovel squaring up the bottom and sides for the new footing I’m pouring under the entire center-line of the house. When it is done and done right it will be completely invisible. But I will know I have earthquake shear-wall strength to withstand just about anything California can throw at this old house.
Once this is done I’ll begin the re-model proper — changing the entire house around, 1/2 at a time. I told my wife to expect it’ll take three years, give or take a year. Sadly, since I’m self-employed in my day job I can’t hope for a layoff which would let me really do this construction which I love.
Some “friends” convinced me to buy “Rocky Mountain Oysters” at a street fair in Boulder, CO. They came clean a forkful away from lifelong scarring (and associated vendetta). What I mean to say is, people do eat testicles. For pleasure.
Unrelated: My mother is ripping apart her house and rebuilding it in her own image. One summer I helped her to gut three rooms. In the first we found a triangular crawlspace that had been sealed off, with a tricycle, a sink, a collection of comics, and a few dolls. In the second we found 1910s newspapers scrunched up as insulation around abandoned bottles of alcohol stuffed between the beams. Underneath layers of paper and paneling in the third: West Point crested wallpaper. It’s so weird knowing your house down to its bones. Those rooms feel a little haunted to me now, even though they’ve been reborn.