Spell Check

At least the ones facing the highway and parking lot were correct.

Good Advice

Have A Smoking Christmas

Seen at The Rim tonight:
We could see the smoke from a quarter mile away.
Thought someone was BBQing.
Pulled up and found out that the tree has so many lights they brought in a generator to power them all.
Needs a tune-up.

Call-Girl Barbie

I'm afraid that Mattel hasn't gotten the word that the USA is full of change up to our ears.
(Okay, the change only reaches our knees--let's be honest).
From the Barbie Basics™ line, the only black doll is also the only one with her tits hanging out.
At least she looks stylish in her basic attire.
You need a lot of expensive accessories to portray Streetwalker Barbie, although business must be bad because she's on clearance.



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No Good Deed Goes Unpunished--Baseball Edition

The title of this post refers to this one from the Garage's 3rd month.
(There have been more than enough other examples, but without photos I don't blog about them).



We've had a good many months of above average rainfall.
No more drought, no more water restrictions, life is good.

But this Spring has seen some explosive growth, as if the plants are striking back after 2+ years of abuse.
Trees that were just bare branches one week had full foliage the next.
Weeds are out of control.
My lawn isn't dead meat after all.
The wildflowers are back with a vengeance.
Many surprises!


Last week I mowed my back yard for the third time in a month, which is the same number of times it got cut in all of 2009 and it's only April!
Then I went to work on the grasses, weeds, and hackberry trees in our alley.

This phone-cam photo shows the unchecked mess to the west of our property line.
All she has to do is pay her hired crew to cut the forest down, but it never happens.
Behind OUR fence it's code compliant and looks pretty nice, for an alley.

My neighbor to the east is a nice old man who lost his wife to cancer a few years back.
Retired military, too.
I like to keep his part of the alley trimmed, too.
I've never mentioned it, and if he thinks it's the people on the other side of the alley that's fine with me.
I do it because I want to.
If the earth had spun slightly faster on a couple of days long ago my own parents could have been alive and retired and old, and I would have been a lawn-mowing machine for them.


But in the middle of my feel-good grass clipping I hit a fucking baseball hidden in the weeds!
It lodged against the side of my Murray and stopped the motor dead.



1) Tried to pry it out with my backyard fireplace poker?
Bent the iron!
2) Loosen the blade?
Wedged tight against the side and won't move at all.
3) Hacksaw the ball?
Blade snapped right away. WTF?
4) Dremel™ tool with a new cutting wheel?
It goes through steel like butter but after less than 2 minutes on that baseball the wheel disintegrated.
5) At this point I stuck a screwdriver into the grooves I had cut and managed to split the ball in half.
CorkFucker.

A new blade for my lawnmower cost $13.47 at WalMart.
And now that I have this new blade, why the hell won't the grass grow like it did last week?

I want to cut something!

Genny Cream

In 1981-2 I could (carefully!) walk across Route 9 in Clifton Park NY to a liquor store that sold 6-packs of Genny Cream for $1.60--and often did.

Times change.



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Bass Your Life On Christ

A T-shirt I recently found:
Don't have an issue with the message or the design.

I just don't approve of bad spelling just for the sake of being "clever", and especially of reaching too hard for a connection.

The people who are the intended target of such messages will usually just roll their eyes, so it ends up being a case of preaching to the choir--which by definition is a waste of time.

Hallmark Is Getting Weird

A 2009 Keepsake™ Ornament, with sound & light (1 beep/blink for yes, 2 for no) this is quite possibly the most ridiculous offering yet.
As a Star Trek episode this 2-parter wasn't terrible, even though it was only a vehicle to recycle the original series pilot as flashbacks.
But the visual of Spock and (buff!) Kirk questioning what's left of Capt. Pike was nauseating on TV back in the late '60s and nothing has changed since then.

Who's idea was this?



When did the garage pass 20K hits?
Who cares?

Have You Seen This?

Washing The Trailer

The band's f-ing trailer has been living in my garage since March, taking up all the extra space and making my workbench and powertools distant memories.

Years of filth were allowed to accumulate on it (intentionally) as a theft deterrent, and I can't fault the reasoning.
A clean trailer looks like it might have some good shit inside that's worth stealing. A band or DJ logo on the side practically guarantees a cut-off lock.

My position is that if it isn't in my garage it's on the way to a club where it's quickly emptied. When it sits alone in the parking lot there's nothing to steal.
Mainly, I just got tired of having to change my shirt every time I bumped into it, which happened a LOT since there's just no way to avoid it in my packed garage.



So I took it to the car wash, and brought a ladder.
My phone (LG EnV2) is the only camera I have that fits in a pocket, so that was part of the plan from the start.

One of my favorite phone pics ever.
If your monitor is calibrated you can even tell that the foam bubbles are pink.


Another side of this is pride--I got tired of driving around in public with such a filthy follower.
After replacing the tail lights and all of the wiring, adding safety chains and a new jack, installing a new lock system, and sweeping out years of dirt and hair, I thought the poor thing deserved a bath.

Imrov

Improv is generally understood as being short for Improvisation but surely the notion that you Improve upon the original is implied?

The table was right where I needed the monitor speaker to be, and moving the table to make room for a big tripod wasn't allowed.
So I improvised a solution: pole out of tripod and into umbrella hole, speaker mounted on pole, situation improved.
The offending table lost none of it's function, yet we could hear the vocals from the direction needed. In fact, having the option of umbrella outside/speaker indoors obviously improves the table's utility and value.

I wasn't the only person who took photos or video.

Trashcan Jellyfish

I have been calling empty trashcans on windy days (or nights) trashcan jellyfish for years, and always knew I would get a photo and post it here someday.
Usually seen at bus stops when I'm driving past and don't want to bother getting a shot.
This one was at our favorite gas station and I really liked the translucent bag compared to the white ones that VIA uses, so I whipped out my LG EnV2 phone for it's blog debut as a camera.