Pearl Slaghoople Designs

At some point this year, I am pretty sure I have been abducted by aliens.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it's been happening annually for about ten years now, and I think they've become emboldened by the fact that I've never said anything about it.  Well, consider your streak over alien bitches, because I'm speaking up this year.  

The reason I say this is because every year it seems like Christmas and the seasons in general just spin by faster and faster and the only rational explanation is that I've been asleep or missing for part of the year.  So this shit ends now.

All the probings aside, I tend to miss absent friends and family more around this time of year. I'm sure I'm not alone in that feeling, but it does make me think back on childhood Christmases past when my mom and grandparents were still alive, and the whole family would gather on Christmas eve and Christmas day to celebrate.  

My mother was always good for a gag gift or two, from "The Elves" most of the time, but sometimes just from her.  Recently, my wife was digging around in a drawer upstairs and found one of my mom's gifts to her when we first got married.

It was a small jewelry box, and when my wife opened it, she saw this note:

Because the image of my mother wearing the contents of this box still makes me laugh to this day, I decided to post pictures of what was inside.  

First, please to enjoy this exquisite piece of modern-art inspired jewelry:

In case it's not entirely clear, this is, in fact, a ring.  It's made from wire and some toxic death-toy called "FormaFilm." You were supposed to bend the wire into flower shapes and dip them in different colored liquid plastic to make delicate, beautiful petals.  Or, as another option, you could simply twist the shit out of the wire until it was an unrecognizable mess, dip it in the goop and call it "making Mom a ring for Christmas."  It's pretty obvious which road I took.   My wife modeled it for me and it's really amazing just how subtle and tasteful it is. 

Also in the box were these fine designer earrings made entirely of rocks and discarded nipple clamps:

As you may have guessed, I was heavily into rock tumbling when I was a kid.  Even now I can hear the horrible, soul-crunching noise of the rocks tumbling in the plastic container.  It sounded like a Megadeth bass solo being played on a broken banjo.  Now picture that solo going on for a month straight, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with the only break of blessed silence occurring when I had to shut off the tumbler in order to empty the can out and prepare to start it up again with a finer grit abrasive.  I'm really surprised my parents didn't go batshit insane listening to that thing.  That reminds me, I have to pick up one of those tumbling kits for my nephew.    

I distinctly remember that the first pair of earrings I made were roughly three times this size, and my father told me that "they might be a little too big." In reality what he was probably thinking was that my mother's neck wouldn't be strong enough to hold them up.  (He actually knew what he was talking about, because he had a very similar-looking pair of cufflinks that could have been used as a lethal weapon.)   I took his advice and made a smaller pair, even though it killed me because the smaller stones weren't as cool looking.  Even so, these are no light-weights.  In fact, if my mother wore these earrings every day for a year as she claimed, she'd probably have looked like this.*   My money is on her removing them the second we left for school.

So all you moms out there, enjoy the Christmas jewelry you're sure to get, and make sure you save it for when your kid is all grown up so that he can mindblast pictures of it to his live 3D headspace stream or whatever it is that will replace the current social media options 30 years from now. 

p.s. -  I'm always available for  one-on-one jewelry design consulting if you want me to create something that really accentuates your personal style and sense of Flintstone fashion. 


One more thing before I forget:  Normally I'm not a huge country music fan and I don't like many female vocalists, but that being said, I happen to love the voices of Maria Mckee, Patty Griffin and Neko Case.  I'm going to go ahead and add Hannah Bethel to that list.  She's a young, up-and-coming artist managed by my buddy down in Nashville.   Check her out if you get a chance.

*except whiter.


Cuteness Overload.

I saw this in the Wireless catalog the other day and thought it was so cute:

No, actually I'm lying. In fact, it chilled my soul and continues to haunt my dreams.  I'm hoping that by sharing this with you, I can somehow dilute the horror evenly among my readers so I don't have to bear it alone.  That said, I have a few observations I'd like to talk to you about.

Let's start with this one. Super-realistic?  If you are sculpting a DEMON SQUIRREL PRINCE then yes, yes it is.  And damn right I would have killed it if I could.  I would have unloaded a full mag right into its head the minute I laid eyes on that fucking thing, even though it probably wouldn't have done any good.  

Maybe it's just me, but "perfectly cute and kitschy" is not how I would describe this.  I would go so far as to say it is evil and horrifying.  I picture it walking up to my sliding glass door and knocking slowly with its bony claw until it hypnotizes me into letting it come in.  

Also, I am pretty sure acorns are not what this unholy abomination is hoarding.  I would bet money that it hoards nothing but tasty, tasty souls.  Last but not least -- A customer favorite?  Really?  WTF kind of depraved customers does Wireless have, anyway?  Dear god, just look at this face:

Is that not the exact opposite of cute and kitschy?  It knows things about you.  It knows about that bag of birdseed you keep under your mattress.  It knows what you like to do with those walnuts late at night when nobody is watching.  

It comes down off the wall at night, claws its way up the skirt of your bed, sits on your chest and watches you sleep.  So sleep tight. 

Come.  Take my hand. 

[edit - Hey, just to take your mind off the horror and get into the holiday spirit, let me tell you about this sale my wife has going on.  If you go to her etsy shop and buy a hat, scarf, fingerless gloves or headband, and put "All Hail the Demon Squirrel Prince" in your order, she'll take off $5.00 per item and give you free shipping to boot.  No, she doesn't know about this yet. But when she gets her first order that says, "All Hail the Demon Squirrel Prince," I think she'll know where to go for answers.]


Lawyers don't surf.

After Star Market, I moved on to something cleaner and less demanding.   I traded sour milk and rat feces for gasoline, oil, and washer fluid, which was a definite step up.  I worked for a full-service gas station, back when those still existed in New York, and even though it was hell on earth in the summer and 20 below zero in the winter, and we had to wear white uniforms with green pinstripes on the pants, it wasn't all bad.  I was 16 years old, I had a new driver's license, an old Impala that sucked down gas like Lindsay Lohan sucks down -- wait for it -- booze, and no plan other than filling up that 36 gallon gas tank as many times as I could that summer. The Impala got about eight miles per gallon, so sticking to that plan was a pretty easy thing to do.  

On the nice days, it was a cake walk, but toward the middle of July you really had to work for your money.  When it's 102 degrees outside and you are standing on black, sun-blasted pavement breathing hot exhaust fumes from a half-dozen cars and trucks, and your boss insists that you keep your top shirt button buttoned at all times, it's hard to not take the easy way out and just die standing up.

Let me tell you what sucks the most about working in a full-serve station.  It makes sense when you think about it, but when you're filling out that application on a beautiful afternoon in late May, it's the farthest thing from your mind.  It's simply this:

The worse the weather is, the busier you are.

At the time, most gas stations had pumps that were in the open with no covered roofing.  And trust me -- nobody wants to save three cents a gallon by getting out of their car in the pouring rain, sleet, snow, high winds or hail to pump their own gas.  In an indirect way, that's what almost got me fired.  To express it in a completely incorrect mathematical manner because I really, really suck at math, the equation in my mind looks something like this:

(bad weather + recurring asshole) x (short straw/had-it-up-to-here) = potential bad decision

Mike and I were in the hut wishing away customers.  The hut was nothing more than a glass door and a plate glass window tacked onto the front of a 16x16 foot white cinderblock building.  The building was just big enough to hold a front room with a desk and a couple of chairs, a tiny break room behind that, a footlocker-sized concrete safe with a money slit on top,  and a bathroom accessible through another door in the back.

It was Wednesday night, and it had been pouring rain for five hours and it didn't look like it was going to let up any time soon.  Mike and I were sitting on hard plastic chairs, our ankle-length yellow slickers unbuttoned, water dripping into pools beneath our seats.  Mike got up for the third time in as many minutes and ran a squeegee across the window to wipe away the condensation so we could see what was going on.  We knew we'd hear the bell if anyone pulled up and ran over the air hose, but it was nice to see ahead of time whether you're up against an 18-wheeler with a 100 gallon diesel tank on either side, or a Volkswagen bug driven by a guy sticking two dollar bills out of his window.  This was also important because if it turned out to be a single car, you alternated, but if two or more pulled up, you both had to go out.

Like every other job working with the public, we learned pretty quickly who the pain-in-the-ass customers were.  There are the ones that won't pay $10.03 if they told you to pump ten bucks, or the ones who changed their minds and decided to pay with a credit card after you'd already given them the cash price discount. And of course, there were the drive-offs, and while generally not recurring, those came out of your pay.

And then there was the guy we called Peener O'Tool.  The peener in the beemer.  Or simply, Peener.  He was all of these things and more.  Because not only did he show up every time the weather sucked,  but he got off on making you wait on him hand and foot.  So he would sit there in his BMW with his window rolled down half way and he'd basically mock you to your face and there wasn't anything you could do about it.  He was one of those guys who, if you told him he had a nice car, would say "I know" instead of "Thanks."

He showed up every Wednesday, like clockwork, rain or shine. He didn't abuse you as much when it was nice out -- I guess there wasn't as much fun in that.  Even so, he wasn't going to pump his own gas no matter what the weather was like.  He might get his suit dirty, or wrinkle his silk tie.  The other thing that pissed me off about this guy is that he would always drive in the exit and end up on the wrong side of the pumps, so his car was facing in the opposite direction from the other 99% of people who weren't obnoxious idiots.  I assume he did this because the gas cap was on the passenger side, and he was too lazy to loop around and come in from the entrance.

The week before, he had pulled up in a rainstorm, and I got the short straw since it was my turn.  I walked out to the pumps and he rolled down his window and said, "Super unleaded. Fill it." and rolled up the window again.  Of course he pulled up a little too far just to make it more difficult for me.  I tapped on the window and asked him if he could move back a little, but he ignored me.  I sighed, stretched the hose to its limits, and started the pump.  He always used his credit card, so I ran back to the hut to get the credit card machine and the little 4x6 clipboard and pen.  There was no swiping a card at the pump during the late 70's.  This was a metal slider thing and a hunk of carbon paper that you slipped the card under to take an imprint.  Stone knives and bearskins.  You couldn't get any of it wet, so you had to hold it under your slicker.  By the time I got back, his tank was full, so I put the credit card machine on top of the pump while I put the hose away.  It was really coming down hard now.  The water was splashing underneath my slicker and the lower half of my uniform was soaked to my knees.  He rolled down the window and I handed him the credit slip on the little clipboard, along with a pen.  He signed it, took his card and returned the clipboard without a word.  I turned and was about to jog back to the hut when he called me through the slitted window.  I looked back and he smirked at me.  "Check the oil," he said.

We weren't allowed to say no, so I had to do it.  The Hess motto was "The customer is always right, especially when they're obnoxious idiots," and we had to follow that motto just as closely as we had to follow the button-up-and-die dress code from hell.  I think he was hoping I'd walk to the front of the car and fumble around a bit looking for the hood release, but I had been working there long enough to know the hood release on those cars was inside.  I nodded, and said, "Can you pop the hood for me, sir?" God, even now, the fact that I called him sir pisses me off.

He waited until I was leaning under the hood then he gave the horn a tap, for the sole purpose of scaring the shit out of me.  I'm sure he thought it was hilarious.  I checked the oil, which was fine, as we both knew it would be, and brought over the dip stick for him to inspect.  He made a show of looking it over, then nodded.  I ran back around to the front of the car and replaced the dip stick, then slammed the hood.  I walked back and said, "Anything else I can help you with?"  Of course there was.  He said, "Sucks to be you today.  Check my tire pressure, will you?"  I gritted my teeth, and ran back to the hut to get the pressure gauge.

Mike had been watching all this through the window and when I walked in, he said, "Sorry, man. He got me a couple weeks ago if it's any consolation."

"It's not," I said. "What an asshole.  Can you believe he wants me to check his tire pressure now?"

"I believe it," Mike said. "He's the only person who's ever made me clean their friggin' windows during a thunderstorm.  I'm about ready to put diesel in his tank next time he comes in."

That didn't seem like such a bad idea to me, either.  I ran back to the car, sneakers squishing, and squatted down next to the first tire as I unscrewed the cap and tested it.  It was fine.  Five minutes later, I had confirmed that they were all fine, as I'm sure he undoubtedly had known. I wasn't giving him any more chances, so I just gave him the "OK" sign and ran for the hut.  It wasn't the sign I wanted to give him, believe me.

He left, and I wished him into a pole.  I'm not entirely sure, but I think he may have been the first person to be listed in my manifesto who didn't actually know my name.  A few hours later, I saw something that gave me an idea.  An evil, horrible, wonderful idea.  Assuming he didn't drive into a pole in the meantime, of course.

The station was small, and only had four pumps on two islands, two spigots on each side of the pump.  Back then, you couldn't pick which type of gas you wanted by pushing a blinking button. If you wanted Super unleaded, you had to pull up to the blue pump, either on the inside, near the hut, or the outside, next to the street.   I shared my plan with Mike and he said he was in.  Now we just had to wait for another rainy Wednesday.

A few weeks later, it happened.  It had rained all day, and it showed no intention of stopping.  It was a Wednesday, and we were both on the schedule.  After the day shift left and it was just me and Mike,  we immediately bagged the inside Super pump.  We had these little yellow bags with "Sorry, Out of Order" printed on them, and if there was a problem, you'd just close the pump until it could be fixed.

We waited, for the first time actually hoping that Peener would show up to make our lives miserable.  He didn't disappoint.  At 6:30 on the button he pulled up to the inside pump,  saw it was out of order,  backed it up and pulled in on the other side.  He didn't even attempt to turn around, which meant his filler cap was on the wrong side.  I think he just wanted something else to bitch about since that meant I had to drape the hose across the trunk of his BMW.  I looked at Mike and he looked at me.  "I'll take this one," I said.  He just grinned as I donned my yellow slicker and pulled my hood up around my face. "Good luck," he said.

I walked up to the BMW's window, and Peener nodded at me.  He brought the window half-way down and said, "Fill it up.  And check the oil and the tires, since it's so nice out today."

I very carefully draped the hose across his trunk, put the nozzle in the tank and locked it while I checked the oil and tires.  I had the pressure gauge and the credit card machine all ready to go, so I didn't have to leave and I could keep watch.  I confess that I didn't really check the tire pressure. I just squatted down next to the car for a while at each corner, all the while scanning on-coming traffic.  Finally, I saw what I needed.  I had hoped for a pickup truck or even a delivery truck, but I hit the mother lode.  An 18 wheeler at the light about a quarter mile away.  I had to time it perfectly.

The outside of the pump was only a few feet from the right lane of Central Avenue, and whenever we had a thunderstorm or simply a downpour, it resulted in a gigantic and very deep puddle directly across from the outside pump.  There was a depression there that would fill up with water and it was at least four inches deep and 20 feet long.  You had to be very aware of passing trucks or you had a good chance of getting soaked.  All of us had learned the hard way and this is what I had been waiting for.  Most cars tended to at least try to avoid the small lake created by the rain, but if there were cars in the inside lane, the bigger trucks had no choice but to barrel through.  

I showed him the dipstick, then stuffed it back in the engine and slammed the hood.  I walked up to his window and took his credit card, keeping my eye on the approaching semi. Halfway. Probably doing about 25 or 30 mph. Shifting. Belting smoke from the twin stacks. The speed limit was 40, but most people did more than that.  I could hear the truck changing gears as it picked up speed.  I ran his card, but instead of clipping the card and the slip to the little clipboard, I just rested the card on top.  Holding the credit card machine under one arm, I reached out to hand him the clipboard and pen.  Because I'm clumsy and clearly no good at my job, I tipped the clipboard and the credit card slid off and fell on the ground next to the car.  "I'm sorry!" I said, making a show of backing away and scanning the ground under the car and not finding his card.  "Jesus Christ!" he said, then opened his door and leaned out of the car a little bit to see if he could spot his errant card.

It was a beautiful thing, and I can still picture it now.  It was like the final scene of Point Break, when Patrick Swayze is on the beach in Australia during the 50-year storm and he heads out into the surf for the final time as Keanu Reeves stands on the beach and gives another oscar-worthy performance.

"Wait, there it is!" I said, pointing directly under his door.  At the same time, I turned my back to the road and braced myself as the 18-wheeler barreled by and a six-foot-tall wall of dirty brown street water rose up and then crashed down on the open car door and unprotected back of Peener and his expensive suit.  When the truck had passed,  I looked past the dripping hood of my slicker and just stared at the destruction.  Peener looked like he had been hit with a fire hose.  Water was dripping from his hair, the steering wheel, his chin, you name it.  He had gravel on his shoulders.  He looked up at me in confusion as if he had no idea what had just happened.  I bent down and scooped up the small rectangle of green and white plastic.

"Here's your card," I said, holding it out between two fingers. "Sorry about that."

He was furious, and even though he wanted to blame me, he really couldn't.  I was just the idiot who dropped his card on the ground.  He's the one who opened the door.  I finally got him to sign the slip, then I went back inside.  Mike was rolling on the floor laughing so hard he could barely breathe.  After Peener drove away, we immediately pulled the bag off the pump and then replayed the event over and over for the rest of our shift.

He complained to the company, of course.  Hess owed him a new suit, they were going to pay for detailing his car if it was the last thing they did, the town was going to hear from him about that pothole, blah, blah, blah.  Typical blowhard stuff, from what I heard.  The thing that almost got us fired was the fact that we had placed the "out of order" bag on the pump when they weren't actually out of order.  That's a big no-no for some reason that has to do with gallon readings per pump or something, and Peener had actually thought to mention the out of order pump.  Steve, our boss, put two and two together.  He knew about the puddle just like the rest of us did.  He was actually pretty cool about it though, and pulled us into the back room and gave us a speech.

"Don't do any shit like that again, or I'll have to fire you.  I know that guy is a dick, and I know you did it on purpose.  He made me check his tires in the rain, too, but dealing with his crap is part of the job. It's what you get paid to do, and if you can't take it, then you're free to find another job.  Are we cool?"

We were cool.  Both Mike and I worked that season until the snow flew, then we put in our notice.  It was probably a good thing too, because everything went self-service the following spring, and the station closed shortly thereafter.  If there's any justice in the world, Peener still has ditch water in his ears to go with the gravel in his douchebag soul.

I only hope he remembers the day he caught his first tube.

p.s. - Locals rule.


Say hello to my little friend.






Job One:  When You Wish Upon A Star

















"No way!" he said. "Where?"











I'm all plugged up.








I fell asleep, and dreamed of chocolate water.













Two in the Bush.
























About two hours later, my phone rang again.










"What the hell happened?" I asked.














Most likely his too, come to think of it.



So this happened on our last camping trip:

Yeah, I know. I probably have some sort of hantavirus coursing through my bloodstream now, diligently working its way into my brain.  But chipmunks are notoriously cute, and I had nothing but time and peanuts.  And man, was she a little whore for the peanuts.   We named her Raihbys, because Rabies was just too conventional. Why not make her spell her name every day for the rest of her life, right?   

At first I shelled the peanuts for her, and handed them to her one by one.  She was a bit tentative, reaching out slowly taking the peanut gently, and it was really cute.  After about an hour she was like "GIMME MY PEANUTS, BITCH!" and she'd jump around on my lap and nudge my hand and if I didn't let go of the peanut fast enough she'd yank it right out of my fingers.  Finally I just started opening my palm flat with a pile of peanuts on it, and she'd jump up on my hand and stuff her face until the pile was gone.  

Initially she didn't really know what to do with unshelled peanuts. She quickly figured out she could break them open, take the peanuts from inside and stuff them in her pouch, but that turned out to be a lot of work, and it apparently took too much time. 

Eventually, she dispensed with opening them up at all and just pounded them like a porn star, shoving one in each pouch and a third in the mouth.  Then she'd hop away into the woods, and a few minutes later we'd hear her coming back and we'd do it all over again. 

We made her promise to tell her cousins to lay off our garden, too, but I'm pretty sure she was too high on peanuts to understand what the hell we were talking about.

In other news, the first one is mostly done:

Still needs to be sanded, painted and oiled… and then I only have three more to go.  I tried to convince my wife to just get folding chairs for the other three spots.  I told her we could go for sort of a shabby chic look, but she wasn't buying it.

Edit:  Chair above with the finish applied:


Loving you is easy 'cause you're beautiful.

As I mentioned in my previous post, last weekend we drove to Maine with some friends. Vidna drove, I rode shotgun, and the wimmin folk sat in the back.  We always called that "Italian style" in my family.  In this case though, they actually like to sit back there because then they can talk about girl stuff that Does Not Pertain to Us.  Because I was riding shotgun, the unwritten rules of the road stated that I was in charge of the music.

Let me tell you about the music on this trip.  It was glorious.   Last summer, we somehow got Minnie Riperton's song "Loving You" stuck in our heads, and it killed us all weekend.  It was like having a rash you couldn't get rid of.  We were all constantly walking around singing the "lalalalala" part, which, if you've never heard the song, is really, really annoying.  And it never failed -- just when I had finally succeeded in removing it from my skull by performing a mini-exorcism that consisted of simultaneously screaming the lyrics to "You Shook Me All Night Long" by AC/DC and repeatedly punching myself in the thigh as hard as I could, someone in our group would walk past me and go "lalalalala" under their breath and Minnie would be back like the persistent and malevolent demon that she truly is.  My only solace was that the person who did that to me generally did it to themselves too, because that song is truly evil and its brain-burrowing knows no bounds.

So for this trip, my plan was to gather up a bunch of hits from every year of the 70's, and force everyone in the car to listen to it.  Right around 1974, Minnie popped up, and we all sang the song right up to the point where she has sex with a dolphin. (yes, the link is safe for work.)

Luckily, that song is not the one that got stuck in our heads this year.  That dubious honor would go to a gem from 1970 called "I Hear You Knocking" by Dave Edmunds.  None of us knew the actual verses, so we were just going around singing the chorus over and over.  It was infuriating. And also hilarious.  If you're ever planning a trip to Maine and you want to inflict some 70's pain/pleasure on your passengers, here's my play list.

Last year it was just the four of us, but this year we had an extra passenger:

Come get some.

Yes, your eyes do not deceive you.  We had Action Jesus along for the ride.  Added bonus: he recited the entire Lord's prayer - loudly, and at inopportune times.  I'm still trying to figure out exactly who he looks like.  

The first thing I wondered was if he was anatomically correct, because that's just the way my 12-year-old mind works.  It turns out he has a permanent diaper.   I thought that was marginally better than the blank crotch of G.I. Joe, and it ties in pretty well with the whole rough-woven robe thing he has going on.

One thing I did not know about Jesus before this trip -- he could kick your ass from here to Kingdom Come. The dude is seriously ripped:

There's no two ways about it -- I have to buckle down and work out more.  I know it's not really fair to compare myself to Jesus, especially since he probably just raised his arms unto the heavens and commanded, "Let there be Six Pack Abs" and it was so, but at least now I have a goal to aspire to.

If anyone overheard any of our conversations, they probably thought we were complete holy rollers.

"Jesus will make the clouds go away."
"Maybe Jesus can find us a parking spot."
"I think we should bring Jesus to the beach with us."
"We won't need to see the wine list.  We have Jesus and water, we're set."
"Jesus failed us, which is why we had to drink that shitty Burger King coffee. Blame him, not me."

OK, maybe not that last one.  That coffee was the work of the devil.  Pay attention, because I'm going to share with you a little tip about beaches in Maine on Labor Day Weekend.  As you may know, they are crowded, and there are lots and lots of children and families all sitting practically on top of each other to be near the bathrooms and concession stands.  I imagine it's that way all summer.  Now, if you are like us and you don't particularly like screaming children and getting hit with the warm overspray of aerosol coconut oil from the leather-tanned lady basting her jerky-like thighs not five feet upwind from you, you can  just keep walking down the beach.  That's all you have to do.  Just walk.

Eventually, you will notice something.  First, the brightly colored toys disappear, along with the screaming children. Then it suddenly dawns on you that more and more people around you are in shape.  You have arrived at your destination, and you can spread your towels and set up your chairs.

You are now officially on the gay section of the beach.  It's not an official section or anything, and where it starts can vary from day to day.  It's simple, really.  Just keep walking until things get gay, then stop.  And let me tell you this: it's totally awesome.  Very few kids, polite people, no crowds… Nothing at all like it would be portrayed on television.*  Really, other than maybe seeing a little more cock than you normally might on any given day, you can't go wrong.


*This might annoy  (both?)  my gay readers, or maybe it won't -- I'm not really sure.  I'm certainly not trivializing the struggle for gay rights or anything, but while I was writing this, I think I may have finally figured out what I don't like about the way gay people are sometimes portrayed on TV.  

I think the producers are still trying to go for the shock value; trying to see what they can get away with during prime time.  So instead of treating it like it's no big deal, a non-event, they have to shove it in your face and (just like everything else) try to make it seem like they are being edgy and pushing the envelope.  Because of this, I have discovered something about myself.   

I apparently don't enjoy unexpected man-on-man action.  For some reason, having that sprung on me in a manipulative manner irritates me.  

Here's a half-assed analogy.  I don't particularly like sports. I don't watch sports on TV, and sports in general holds no interest for me at all.  I don't mind one bit if you happen to like sports, and I don't care if you play them -- that's all fine, you can do what you want.  But if I'm sitting at my house watching Army of Darkness and drinking a scotch and you suddenly change the channel to the final inning of the world series just to elicit a reaction from me, you can bet your lunch money that I'm not going to want to watch it,  no matter how exciting it may be to those involved.  I just don't give a shit about the world series.  And you messed up my movie. 

That's the same feeling I got the other day when I was watching The LA Complex (Don't judge me. I miss Kaylee) and, in the space of 10 seconds, a badass gangsta rapper went from pushing around some kid to making out with him on the floor.  It annoyed me.  I mean, don't get me wrong -- after that, it turned into a decent character arc, and the continuing story of the rapper dealing with his suppressed sexuality is pretty good, but when I felt like I was initially manipulated into reacting a certain way about it,  it pissed me off.   


I ain't dead (yet.)

Wow.  I really need to crack a window in this place and let in some fresh air. I've been gone so long there's an inch of dust on everything.  I've actually been getting email asking if I'm OK.  So the answer to that question is yes, I'm fine.  Thanks for asking, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  So what have I been doing?

Lots of this:

Some of this:

A bit of this:

And a bunch of other happy horseshit that comes with being a homeowner.   Sometimes I really miss my apartment.   

Just got back from a trip to Ogunquit, Maine with some friends, and I am currently working on a few posts that I hope to have up shortly.  No promises though. September is my vacation month, and I have to finish these damned chairs before they finish me.

Here's a pretty moonlight picture from the right coast:


Blood from a stone.












Other weird stuff I stumbled on this week:


The other thing that made me laugh today was this:


"Can I help you, Mr. Virgil? 

