Wicked Purple Heels

*Why in the world would I have a sudden craving for pudding??

*Took advantage of the decent weather on my day off to try and get the garage somewhat sorted out in anticipation of moving some of my studio work back out there and kicking the wife's car back out into the driveway. Managed to get rid of a few things, get some of the rest reorganized, and get some general cleanup done (including the dried out toad I found underneath one of my carving logs). But, the sure way to tell that you've managed to really stir things up is when you blow your nose later and all that comes out are chunks of black goo. Just lovely.

*For those of you who have spent time in office or manufacturing settings, you may have been exposed to the concept of the PDCA cycle. As presented, the stages of that cycle when used for implementing a new procedure are Plan, Do, Check, and Act. I had the thought today that it is more realistically represented from the side of the employees by the statement 'Please Don't Change Anything'.

*It's a very simple concept. Feed you brain more, and feed your body less. You'll be amazed at the results.

*Once again, I showed up at my supposedly scheduled court date only to be told it had been continued. AGAIN. That means another subpoena will be coming my way sometime in the near future. This has done very little to boost my confidence in the way the legal system operates, but just as a side note, it did reaffirm the fact that I could never work in an office/cubicle farm setting.

*No more vacation for me. At least that's what I've been told. Aside from the time I already have scheduled off, I can't take any more vacation time this year. I will have to cash out my PTO overage when the time comes around in October, or just lose it. I am not happy about this. You spend ten years working, not really taking much, if any time off, you don't take sick days, and when your PTO builds up to a good level where you can actually start taking a decent amount of time off, you get told you can't. My time off is causing difficulties in scheduling. I put in my requests for all of 2010 in October 2009. That means at the least I asked for time off in January 2 months in advance, and for December 14 months in advance. I didn't ask for any weekends on that would cause me to miss a scheduled weekend. I aimed my large blocks of off time to be the opposite of when most people want to be off. I'm not sure how much further over I can bend to be accommodating of the work schedule. I am just not happy about being told that.

*Don't rent "Up in the Air" if you are addicted to the typical smarmy happy ending of most romantic comedies you will most likely be highly disappointed. I think I would put this one along the lines of "Shopgirl" and "Lost in Translation" if I had to categorize it. It's up and it's down, it's light and it's dark. It's changing perspectives and clashing ideas. It's just like real life. This film also wins my prize for all-time best use of a necktie ever.

*Came up with what I thought was a pretty good idea for some signage at Julie's shop, and I think I can pull it together for about $100. Now, I just need to get that donation tiki done and out of the way so I can get working on those signs. And I'm also still waiting to hear what she thought of the artwork I had shown her for the inside of the shop.

*On the turntable: The Police (Ghost in the Machine), Prince (1999), and the Ohio Players (Gold).

*Spring is arriving, and along with that comes tree trimming season. I would usually be out in my SUV cruising around looking for more logs. But, after my little garage cleaning spree, I have discovered that I probably have enough stock wood to keep me busy for the next couple of years. If I work full-time. I have also discovered a couple of logs that have some type of wood boring beetle living in them. So much for using those. That would also seem to be a sound warning that I need to get busy and work down my levels of stock before I go about acquiring more.

*How could you not want to watch a movie about roller derby? "Whip It" is that movie. The big claim of this movie is that it is the first movie directed by Drew Barrymore. She did a good job for her first time out. The whole story is a bit formulaic and predictable, but I really enjoyed the whole thing, despite how old it made me feel. The most fantastical part of the whole movie was the pre-sex scene in the clearest, most well-lit indoor swimming pool I have ever seen in my life. Never before have I seen 2 supposed teen-agers with such incredible breath control. The repeated appearance of a Stryper T-shirt kept me giggling, too.

*"The Men Who Stare At Goats" was a movie that had been on my 'interested in' list for a while. Finally got around to watching it the other day, and I wasn't as amused by it as I thought I would be. Mostly because the skeptic in me went through the entire movie with his mouth hanging open in disbelief. Not to say that the movie wasn't amusing overall, but I couldn't get past the notion that it was based on a true story. Mostly because it involves the government investing time and money in things I would hope the government would know aren't worth investing time and money in.

*It struck me today of how similar Disney is to Harley-Davidson. Both have a long and impressive track record in their respective fields, and both of them have mass marketed themselves to the point of being both omnipresent and ridiculous.

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If Onions Could Dream...

*Is it reasonable to use Facebook as a platform for getting my work out to the masses? Is it reasonable to think that that is even a reasonable thing to be thinking? Guess the only way to test that theory is to gather up bunches and bunches of 'friends' and see what happens. That would mean that I need to step up my output to match this theoretical increase in demand. No, that's not right. I need to step up my output because art is what I do. Knowing more people just gives me a way to get rid of the excess products. Guess I'll give that theory a try and see how it works.

*Here's another interesting question from "If.." (McFarlane and Saywell). This one is one up from the bottom of page 74 and reads as follows: "If you had to choose the worst work of art ever created, what would you choose?"

I had read this question a while back and have been chasing it around in my head for a while. At first, I was just thinking of it in terms of what would be considered classic art, sculpture, painting, and the like. But then I expanded my definition to include other more performance based types of art, like dance, music, and other such things. That proved to be too much to try to consider. I just don't have a wide enough view to be able to look over so many categories and come up with a good answer. And then there are things like opera and ballet that I don't really care for. Part of the reason I don't care for them is the fact that I just don't understand them. I can appreciate the effort that goes into becoming skilled at that type of art, but I have yet to find works of it that I personally enjoy. Therefore, those types of things fall into the 'slightly dislike' category, and get discarded for the purposes of answering this question. So, we swing back more towards 'classic' art. But even as I thought about that, I began to understand how scant my knowledge was of art, even at the most broad and superficial level. That would tend to not be helpful in answering this particular question. So, I finally decided that I just have to take my tiny little sliver of knowledge and find somewhere within it the worst work of art ever. Dadaism was where my mind went at first. Now, I know it's a movement and not a specific piece of art, but I thought that would be a good starting point. And besides, even though I can see images of Dadaist pieces, I have no idea what any of them are called. I wandered into abstraction next, and then into photorealism before coming to rest in impressionism. Now, I am not a fan of impressionism in general terms. It just doesn't grab me. I did have my opinions of impressionist art altered considerably when I got to see some actual paintings by Van Gogh in person (I was in person, not Van Gogh). All of the pictures I had seen over the years did nothing to prepare me for how these things looked in real life. I was amazed, and that's another long and winding story. Most art would be things that I would be judging strictly on the basis of pictures I had seen, which, I discovered, doesn't count for a whole lot. That was something I had to take into consideration. The bulk of impressionism was still in the running for the prize, though. In my choice I figured I also had to rule out technical skill, which is something I am not qualified to judge. The actual meaning/intent of the piece was something else I knew only in very rare cases, and would be tough to use as a criteria. By this point I was quite confused, as I am quite sure you are. I had a decent handle on what I couldn't use as a basis for a judgment, but not much more. Then it hit me. One of the most dastardly works of art ever created. A technically excellent work wrapped in a subtly dark cloak of conformity and indoctrination. A lovely vision of an unproven message paid for with the blood of thousands upon thousands of people. My choice for the worst work of art ever is....coming up right after this word from our sponsors! But, since we have no sponsors, they can contribute no words that will enable me to build the tension of my revelation any further. I have to say that my choice for worst work of art ever is the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Part of the function of this work was to overwhelm the ignorant masses and push them into believing that since this was all bright, shiny, and impressive, it must be the truth (a tactic still widely in use to this very day). I'm sure there are all sorts of iconographic religious works that fall into this category from untold numbers of religions past and present from all over the world, but this is the one that I can think of by name. And I'm really not at all fond of the style that it's done in. So there you go.

*I am supposed to be in court on Monday morning. One more attempt at getting this DUI case from 3 years ago over and done with. I keep thinking my whole participation will go like this: 'Sir, do you recognize the accused?' To which I will reply, 'No.' And then the weasel defense lawyer will use the fact that I don't remember someone I may have seen for all of maybe 20 minutes 3 years ago while they were strapped to a backboard in the ED means that the State's entire case is no good. Probably end up just like the case Nikki was involved in. Someone gets drunk, drives around, smashes up a couple of cars, kills some people, and then walks. Liberty and justice for those who can afford it. I'm wondering if when I get there this time they will have continued it again without bothering to let me know like they did the last time. The only ridiculously small consolation regarding this whole situation is that it's not scheduled to start until 1030. If it starts at all.

*Average male life expectancy is 75 years and a few odd months. Therefore, in 21 days, I will have expended 53.3% of my average expected lifespan. That makes me somewhat uneasy. That whole passing of the halfway mark and all. Of course, the actual percentage of time expended could be significantly higher than that number, and could also be somewhat lower, but it's really hard to tell. At least until you drop over dead. Then it gets real easy to do the calculations. But once again that deep seated and subtly insistent urge to 'go' is starting to register in my conscious mind. Not that the 'go' part of it is a direct translation to physically move to another place. It seems to be more of a call to action. A call with a dark undertone. A call that says it's time for me to do more than sit on the couch watching VH1's 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders of the 80's while I eat cookies. Not that it would take a great leap forward to exceed that benchmark in any dimension. At least with the bar set that low it shouldn't be hard to get started.

*Got several ideas for signage at Julie's shop. Just need to do some tweaking, scaling, researching, and prototyping to see which one works best. Nothing says that there has to be only one sign, either.

*The basement is not picked up from the last gaming session, the studio is once again approaching dangerous levels of clutter, and the weather stubbornly refuses to cooperate in letting me move some of my creative efforts back into the garage. Crap. Everywhere I turn there's a mess that needs to be cleaned up. I blame society. Now I just need to figure out a way to have society come and clean my house. And while they're at it, they can tune up my lawn mower, too.

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Butter Brickle Olives

*On the turntable: ELO, Cosby, and Animal Stories.

*Quick lesson: People cause global warming. Fewer people, less warming. Got it? Good. And before you go and get all worked up in a frenzy about the polar bears or whatever, think of how much it is that the extinction of the dodo or the passenger pigeon has impacted your day to day life.

*After a lag of 20+ years, I finally understand. Back in the day, I used to hang around with this guy named Darren Pettyjohn. We went to the same church and were in the same grade at the same school, so I think it was kinda mandatory. Anyway, this one day I see Darren eating some cantaloupe. No big deal, right? That's what I thought, until I saw him sprinkling salt on each bite. I thought this was revolting. Why would someone ruin a perfectly good cantaloupe by putting salt on it? His return comment was that it tasted good. I no doubt loudly questioned his sanity at that point in time, and then forgot about the whole thing. For some reason, this little nugget got stuck in my brain and would randomly surface for reasons I am not consciously aware of. Until last week. So, I'm parked on the couch after work one night, waiting for the Tylenol to remove the pulsing spike from my brain while I watch World's Dumbest on TruTV. I'm having a bit of a snack during this whole process, and then I realize what it is that I'm eating. Spicy tortilla chips. Spicy to the point where I needed something to take the edge off, so I had gone to the fridge and gotten some diced up cantaloupe, which I was putting on top of each chip Before eating it. Took me over 2 decades, but I finally understood how the whole spicy/salty thing worked with the sweet of the cantaloupe. What can I say? I can be really slow on the uptake sometimes.

*I don't think I've ever been unaware that I've sneezed. I will say that with the understood condition that I'm not sure if you can sneeze in you sleep. So, I guess what I meant was that I don't think I've even been conscious and unaware that I've sneezed. Therefore, I don't see any reason to have need of someone who then points out to me that I have indeed just sneezed. Nor do I see this event as a worthy cause for invoking any type of religion or mysticism.

*Another quick lesson: Sports heroes are admired for what they can do within their chosen sport. Not for what they do outside of it. Hence the term 'sports hero'. Got it? Good. Relying on someone with highly developed physical prowess to be a moral guidepost for you can end in vast disappointment.

*The first of what could be many FoaMoai has come off the production line. The Boss found this prototype amusing, and that's about the best I could expect, I guess. Need to figure out what kinds of finishes I can do on them, which means I need to get a few more done. Remember kiddies, you never want to destroy your first prototype, in case you need to go all the way back to the start of things again. Now, if you happed to be a masochist, ignore the previous statement. At least the raw materials for these should be easy to come by, since it's all stuff that gets thrown out anyway.

*Many thanks to my old high school classmate Russ DeFord for helping me to look whiter than I ever thought I possibly could. After a reading a Facebook post where he mentioned the Humpty Dance, I dove right into my stacks of CD's and came up with my copy of 'Sex Packets' by Digital Underground. This I inserted into my car stereo, I then rotated the volume knob to the right, and once the windows started rattling, my transformation to Ultra-White was complete. And I couldn't possibly care less. Thanks, Russ.

*Given that there are over 6,000,000,000 (that's billion, for those of you who are counting the zeros) people currently alive on this planet, there must be a shockingly large number of those, who, in the time it's taken you to read this, have been engaged in some type of grooming of their pubic hair.

*Somehow managed to go 3-0 with 400 point armies on the Cyprien's Cove map. Once again, I have a sneaking suspicion that an incomplete understanding of all the appropriate rules may have worked in my favor.

*My friend Steve may have in his possession my new bar fridge. It's bigger than the dorm fridge I currently have. In fact, I think it's exactly double the size of the one I have. I like the idea of having a larger, but not full sized fridge. Now all I have to do is figure out a place to put it. I am still rolling around the idea of building it into the wall by the bar and letting the back of it hang into the Hobbit Hole, but I'm not sure that would leave enough room behind it. I could move the bar to the other side of the room and then just put the fridge through the wall into space where the furnace is. That would give me a semi-legitimate reason to build a new bar. Then I could put the display cases I haven't bought yet on the other wall. Or, I could just go acquire the fridge, and when my conquest of the last room downstairs is complete, I can find a home for it then. The ranch dressing packets, I'm thinking, will have to go.

*My bad kitchen mojo continues, this time with a near failure at the utterly simple task of cooking rice.

*I can't decide. And in the time it will take me to make a decision, I will have come up with other possibilities. But for the moment I am trying to decide between The Blue Moai Lounge and Three Moai Island.

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