Category: Introspection

Note: Friends asked for pictures; This is a recap, and a continuation of the previous post… so you can skip that one… it’s okay.

Not the safest way to go about this I am sure – but I am making my process up as I go.

I think I remember there being plastic guards on these things back in the day. I think, however, that my table saw might be from before "the day", so all is good.

There was only one guide, so I made due with a board I double-clamped to the table. Also, the other guide did not come close enough to the blade, so I put a piece of wood in there to space it where I needed it.

Hey… wait…

… In retrospect, I could have just chosen to cut from the other side.

In case you are wondering – the wood is a hard maple, very heavy, rather hard, and made out of maple… from a maple tree most likely. It is a nice quality wood, has a pretty grain to it like what you would expect to see on a violin or a bitchin’ Les Paul.

These square clampy things come in handy.
… One of the few cases where I am pretty sure I am using a tool as it should be.

This is from a big heavy hardwood bonking mallet, and also from the hood of the car.

Both did not occur simultaneously… in case you were wondering.

I know you were.

Who knew that big wooden bonking mallets could hurt thumbs? Lucky thing I am right handed, or I would have hit my good hand.

It looks ominous… but it is just a box with some antique clamps.

A box top with clamps. The clamps are all biting it… rarwwwrr!

Viola! … erm…

… this is what two days hard work looks like?

I probably could have bought one for just dollars somewhere.

Yay!

It actually opens! … well, sort of. Soonish I will put some hinges on it.

I took a router to the lid part, around that time I realized it was way late for super-noisy machines. The box will have to wait.

So… what am I making the box for? I really have no idea. It would have been smart to think of something to make a box for, but now I have to go around looking for things to put into the box, or make things to put into the box.

For all the work I put into it, it should look awesome and open the gate to hell… but it doesn’t – and I have no idea where I messed up along the way.

Next stages – more routing, staining, hinges, brass corners, handles…. some sort of nifty mechanical devices for the inside perhaps…

Interesting lecture from T.E.D. covering current issues into future likelihoods, in Enriquez’s usual entertaining, informative, and intermittently hilarious fashion:

I am home now, have a number of things to catch up on – a few items to ship, those commissions to get working on.

Thank you Brian, Coni, Seth, Lexxie – Being able to make it back home this past weekend means more to me than I can even try to express in words.

Thank you.

This is something I am jotting down here so it does not get lost in my sea of bookmarks or on my cluttered desktop, but I recommend, if you are an artist, author, or musician, that you follow the below link and bookmark it yourself… or better yet, if you are able, follow through with it.

It is a blog by Neil Gaiman about wills for creative types, and the importance of having one. He has even been so kind as to provide a template for the will in pdf format.

The blog, containing said document, is here

[via The Onion]

I found this over on Ectomo today, and I thought it an excellent film for this occasion.

No one dies, but at least they tried…

I couldn’t leave this one out. Monty Python and Star Trek combined.

You’ve probably seen it on the internet thirty years ago, but I missed it. I was busy being awesome that day.

This post is dedicated to the brave men and women of the United States Postal Service, who come rain or shine, snow or volcanic eruption, will boldly and without question, engage anything made of cardboard or paper in mortal combat.

Their remarkable ability to bend or fold most anything, even cardboard tubes, without fear of “do not fold” stickers, is second to none in the known universe… and beyond!

But this year, they have gone above and beyond. Their astounding levels of daring and brazenness know absolutely no limits … as demonstrated by our moving experience of this summer past – wherein they not only managed to defend our home for weeks against our long-awaited priority packages, but completely and totally destroyed most everything they did not pilfer.

As tribute, I offer you this list of little known facts, tips, pointers regarding the USPS:

1) The only way to destroy Chuck Norris, is to ship him.

2) Need to turn rocks into gravel? Ship them! Why waste all that time and energy with the sledge hammer when you can have violent postal-monkeys do it for you?

*Trick: to save on postage – address the package, put a stamp on it, and drop it off at your local post office. Insufficient postage means it will come back to you, as long as it has no resale value. If not thoroughly broken, repeat.

3) Need a building destroyed? Put a shipping label on it! The USPS is unaccountable for terrorist acts, and are licensed to kill any and all who get in their way… even bears! one of those minor details that most tend to forget about – until it is too late anyway.

4) If you need diapers, fill a box with valuable things and ship it. Seriously – when we moved via the USPS, our box arrived minus an antique tomohawk, a canoptic jar, airbrush set, and gods only know what else. All these things turned into packages of diapers!!!

The postal monkey lady tried to explain this as “The box must have been too empty to ship safely, so they probably padded it to protect your things”.

… apparently the post office, despite their status as a “shipping service” – has absolutely no shipping paper, peanuts, or bubble wrap.

They do however have mountains and mountains of diapers… because they are just *that* hardcore!

To further ensure the protection of our valuables, they also removed them from the box completely – and have most likely stored them at N.O.R.A.D. for safe keeping.

Last year, after being amazed by their ability to fold the unfoldable, I began the practice of shipping most of my prints in reinforced heavy duty cardboard tubes, and hermetically vacuum-sealing the end caps (just in case the post office uses them in a log-rolling competition).

Since then, they have only managed to destroy one tubed package (folded), and three cardboard reinforced photo mailers; These I credit to the postmaster general – or perhaps one of his postmaster colonels, all of which are rumored to be able to fold steel girders, concrete pillars, time, space, and even my best-reinforced packaging.

Unfortunately, some of the printing services I use, still ship in outdated ‘box technology’ – so I end up with packages of damaged prints on my doorstep… oblong things which were once square… wrestled with and fornicated upon.

These I typically ship back for a refund, or file a claim for. In cases where the damage went un-noticed for weeks after receiving, however, Beth typically uses them in her craft projects. Otherwise I hold onto them for conventions – offering them as freebies or for cheap, or using them as display pieces for unwatched children-monkeys to chew on, and for contagion-ridden adult human-things to touch with their filthy human hands (though not necessarily in that order).

Recently, because of the sasquatch conspiracy, sales have been at an all-time low; Things were actually bad enough that I was starting to worry that perhaps people had found about my various crimes against humanity.

I was very, very relieved to find out that such was not the case, and more relieved to find that I can put the ‘barely damaged’, unnoticeably damaged pieces up for sale, and they vanish almost instantly.

… So this week, I think Beth and I will go through our damaged prints and set up a special section on Ettadiem.com for just these sort of things. If you would like to know when these offers are… offered, you can subscribe to the rss2 feed for my site, or go to the EttaDiem site and do the same.

Perhaps it is the cabin fever speaking here, but I have been a bit annoyed by all these yetis, doing their yeti things.

I went searching for my car again, which the night before was skillfuly hidden within 4 feet of frozen snow and ice.

Tonight, like the night before, I found it buried… or rather I did not find it buried, but did find it once I unburied it.

Cleaning it off again was refreshingly counter-productive – what with the yetis and all; By the time I cleared off the entire thing, the front half was covered again by yeti magic.

So, I started over, this time keeping one eye on the car, one eye on the snow-covered yeti-bushes, and the rest of them on the nearby roads;

By this point, I too, was covered, and looking dangerously similar to a “snow bank” – which people around here like to hunt for sport with their angry-bumpered SUV-mobiles, swerving back and forth in random fashion, in order to catch the unfortunate snows off guard.

In my head, I could just see myself smashed to a pulp and hanging over a Michigonian mantle, its owner scratching his ice-planet helmet-hair with a wire hanger… letting people poke at my stuffed rump with a corndog for a used hockey puck and a can of chew (twice that amount if they bear the flannel of an enemy tribe).

“I bagged this oon at aboot two o cloock”, he would say “he were mating with a femeel snow bank whoon I seens im in my windshield…”

“No… I do not want to end up in that sort of mess” I said to myself “…again”, looking left then right, and right again.

It was then that I noticed my car was once-again covered.

… Tomorrow, I buy a gun.

[via the internet]