But I really learned a lot in the process, I learned that if I’m going to get complicated with the painting I should probably paint them first and then glue them on. I learned that I should probably test the hanging mechanism before I get to the show.  I also learned that paint drys out if you don’t use it for 2 years.

As much as I can relax a little from creating these guys every free minute I have I can’t really take too much time off. I need to have some ready because I think people are going to want custom colors and I’m going to be selling ‘blanks’ so that other artists can design their own.  Which is fine with me because I really like the construction part better anyway.  That would free me up to create more sculptures and worry less about finishing them.

I need to re-evaluate the construction process. I have it pretty much down to a science now, I can order all the parts from McMaster-Carr. But there are two steps that I need to improve, its really annoying to cut the u-bolts shorter with a dremel and I know there has to be a better way to make the knocker hinge then bending a screw eye.  Also I haven’t perfected the attaching it to the door part… which would seem like a major part right?

I just finished some new pieces for Artomatic and I thought while I was getting them printed I would put them up on Zazzle so I could have the possibility of selling them. But yet again I apparently don’t own the property rights to pieces of Transformers. Not the whole thing.  I was led to believe in art school that If you changed the image 70% then it was a new piece of Art.  I would think that drawing a transformer from a picture and then combining it with another picture would be enough. Add the fact that I don’t think that anyone would reasonably think that this is an official hasbro product, it’s called PARODY.

What makes things weirder is that they claim it’s because of a copyright claim from the rights holder, but not for the Lincoln one, that’s either because it uses the Lincoln navigator grill, or because I didn’t put Transformers in the keywords.

Installation has to be complete by May 13th… and I’m already way behind. But I have lots of old door knocker parts, I’ve finished 2 posters, and I’m almost to the casting stage of 3 new knocker designs. So things are in motion.

Hey Internet,
Just so you know… if you plug in a $9 trendnet wifi dongle to the Patriot BoxOffice it will wirelessly stream video’s with minimal configuration. I think this is awesome because this is not how cheap electronics worked in the past. It’s pretty great that things just work.

Patriot Box Office

Trendnet WIFI Adaptor

So who would want to see this movie?

That box was taped to the door for over 2 years before my mom finally got him to get it fixed the right way.

I wish this was that ingenious… This is more of a ‘I’m tired from fixing the more important part of the car the ‘right’ way and I just want to make this a little better then go inside‘ kind of fixing.

The problem was that Laurel’s exhaust had broken completely away from the catalytic converter. After the first few weeks of embarrassment at driving a little sub that sounded like a 16 year old had hollowed out the exhaust on purpose we kind of got used to it. But since her car has to be inspected in a month I thought is try to fix it.

Here’s what I came up with, a couple of U-brackets linked together in some haphazard way. I don’t think it will pass inspection, but at least it won’t be embarrassing to drive for the next month while I think about how to fix it for real.

I am an idiot.

I was pretty sure of this as I was falling slowly to the earth while holding on to a ladder that was wedged in a tree.

Now the worst part about falling off a ladder while holding another ladder isn’t the thoughts racing through your head about breaking your ankle or getting hit in the balls by an aluminium ladder leg, its the thought that when you’re screaming out in pain that you broke your ankle you might have to explain yourself to the neighbors that were doing yard work next door.

But alas, that didn’t happen.

Last year when we had just moved into the house we were doing some yardwork, trying to cut back all the vines that were choking out some trees along the back fence. I noticed that buried in the vines was an extension ladder, with a tree growing in the middle of one of the rungs. Because our motivation only lasts so long we just igonred the ladder until some future date. Well something told me that “future date” was this weekend.

I was on a roll from replacing the steering rack boot on Laurel’s Subaru, clamping the exhaust back together and cleaning up the garden. So I looked at this puzzle and thought, “that probably isnt’ that hard”. So I began by removing the vines from the ladder and trying to lift it up as far as I could, which was about 5 feet off the ground. Good easy progress! This is going to be a sinch! So then I started to realize that I was going to have to squeeze the rest of the tree down to a pretty small diameter. So I got out the roof straps and tried to use some kind of mechanical advantage to get it down.

Which sort of worked except the ladder kept getting caught on stray branches. I tried standing on the broken fence and pushing it up, which ended in my quickly jumping off and deciding that I need to go get the other ladder. This should have been forshadowing of what was going to happen, but I pressed forward with some kind of idiot determination. Every time something like this would happen I would look next door to see if my neighbors saw anything. They were out working in their yard and to make it worse they run a general contracting company, so they know the ‘right’ way to do things. There’s just something worse about doing things the wrong way in front of professionals that makes it more embarrassing.

I like doing things myself, not in some kind of I’m a real man because I can fix things kind of way. But in the way that people would be surprised that I could physically do something like that without another set of hands. Like mounting the kitchen cabinets or hanging a 10 foot wallpaper mural. But these things are best done in the privacy of my own house. Where other people can’t see ‘How’ you do things. With my methods it’s best not to see ‘how the fudge is packed’.

I’m glad that nobody was recording this because I would have ended up on youtube for sure.

One time I saw the Weinermobile driving down 610, 2 weeks ago I saw the Herman Cain 999 bus driving into DC, my grandma used to spin yarns about a spectral locomotive that would rocket past the farm back home. But none of this could prepare me for what I saw on 95 South a couple weeks ago.

Is this from the same people that think that people will order ‘Sex on the Beach’ as a pickup line. That works right!

Who is this drink for? Bros who ice bros? Who thinks it’s awesome that you can go up to a bartender and say ‘you got sum poise in here’? I would love some poosie in my mouth! I’m awesome and people like me because of my drink orders!

I’ll suck down sum poosie tonight that’s for sure… and by that they mean they’ll try to ironically drink this sugar and caffeine based beverage that they say they hate but actually they’re not really a man who can drink a real drink. Hemingway would put a cigarette out in your eye if you offered him ‘Sum Poosie’. It’s in a pink can for gawds sake. Is it for women? Then why does it have a girl in a bikini on the bottle. Who are they really marketing this to? and who gave them the money to produce this? Let’s make sure they’re the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

The other day I took my favorite stainless steel thermos mug to work with coffee in it. I’ve been noticing that all my coffee seems to taste a little weird. I had been chalking that up to having to use almond milk and stevia because I ran out of normal milk and sugar. But this day I was sure that I had used the ‘regular’ stuff. I didn’t think it could be the mug because I had gotten it right out of the dishwasher. I tried to scrape it with my finger nail, but nothing came off. When I got to work I noticed on the counter was a bottle of ‘Coffee Clean‘ coffee pot and mug cleaner. So I thought… what the hell, I’ll give it a try.

Holy Crap…

A thin brown lining literally sloughed off the inside of the thermos in sheets. It was gross. What’s also gross is that lining is probably on the inside of my intestines too. But that’s going to take another kind of cleaner.

The picture above is another mug that I brought in today to document the results. It was in way worse starting condition and the results are fabulous. If I’m going to have to share my mugs with Laurel and Kara and their weird teas I’m going to have to keep my mugs clean.

How could I have not thought about this before?

I can’t figure out why… But this guy is my nemisis.

I’m sure he’s a nice guy.  He’s probably some kind of cancer survivor that works really hard and volunteers for soup kitchens. But how I know him is “That guy who’s always going the opposite direction on his recumbent bike” when I’m going to or coming home from work.

Rain or Shine, Winter or Summer, He never stops… He’s like some kind of healthy terminator.

I’ve seen him close to my house and I’ve seen him on Church street in Vienna and every road in between.  He’s never happy or sad, he just has this relentless look on his face as if riding that crazy bike is the only thing that keeps him going. He’s never going very fast… always slow and steady… winning the god damn race.

Stop being dependable and hard working when I’m barely awake and hungry!