My life has always been this glorious mix of heaven and hell, and these last couple weeks have been a terrifying dip far deeper into the hell end of the spectrum than I am comfortable with. However, today I feel quite strongly that things are turning around and I can once again see heaven on the horizon, growing closer as I race toward it. I have many things that I could post about, and time and circumstances willing I shall do so in the next forty eight hours, but I did want to quickly post and say that I’m doing alright.
I have a number of exciting projects in various stages of completion that I want to share with you, but I’m rushed at this moment so I’m just going to post my electric cycle project (of the 500W sort that is street legal and requires no license to drive), which I’ve got a full-scale profile-view mock-up of sitting in the work room right now. The next step is to transform this into a three dimensional chassis which I am planning on wrapping to become a primarily composite vehicle.
Following entries will of course discuss why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings.
But now I head off to school to pick up Nefarious and then not long after we head on down the street for her Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class. I’m told that on her recent American Thanksgiving visit to her mother, she was sent to her room for kicking her mom’s new boyfriend in the nuts as hard as she could, so as much as that sympathetically amuses me, like me with Judo as a child, it’s probably good that she has a safe environment in which to channel such urges.
I’ve had this odd 12″x48″ canvas sitting here for the last couple years and I finally re-primed it a few days ago with a mix of wall filler, white acrylic, clear topcoat, and carpenter’s glue to give it a really nice feel and texture, sanded to make it a little easier to work on. I forgot how physically difficult it is for me to make my body do this, in part because I have to control how much I shake, and in part because I’m not strong enough to hold my arm up for so long (it’s not like typing where I just have to move my fingers, resting the weight of my hands and arms on the keyboard), so I think I’m going to take my time on this but I’m going to try and do a little bit every day. That said, I’m not particularly good at slowing myself down when I’m inspired to create something even when it negatively impacts my health, so perhaps it will go faster than that. Anyway, here’s the rough sketch (done in black ink over pencil on the canvas) that I’m using as the template.
Even if this video of a three year old being overly aggressively searched by a typical TSA thug isn’t upsetting to you, you have to admit that it really underscores how pointless all this “security” is. Some little three year old white girl whose dad is a TV reporter is pretty f-ing far from being on some future FBI’s most wanted list for blowing a jetliner out of the sky with a diaper bomb. Come on, profiling isn’t always a bad word. Even taking away her teddy bear to X-ray it is ridiculous (and even if you want to tell me that sometimes kids toys are used to smuggle drugs, I’ll remind you that the TSA has no mandate or legal right to search for anything but direct risks to air travel safety — they are given this special ability to bypass normal search warrant law on that condition).
Fingers crossed that this video stays up as it’s been getting take-down notices on the ‘Tubes.
In “good” news it looks to me like the porno-scanners are on their way out, but at the same time, using them was only a part of the motivation, thus the air quotes. The half-core of what was driving it was corporations using fear — the engine of American politics — to sell showy and very expensive yet useless equipment… And now that the contracts for those sales are signed, those corporations would rather if the machines never get plugged in. That way they get the money, and don’t have to worry about follow-up, let alone the inevitable lawsuits that could severely cut into profits. And so we’ll move on to the next stage of the scam with new gear and new procedures… and whether you’re concerned about government abusing its sheeple, or whether you’re concerned about politicians conspiring with lobbyists to funnel tax money into private already-very-wealthy hands, this terror-war scam has got it all.
Let me begin by making up for the horrible unfriendly human “abuse” video of last night with a much more fun friendly animal “abuse” video… some Japanese TV show in which they put a big plush penguin on an RC car and take it to a zoo. The real penguins are blown away, and eagerly follow around the giant penguin with glee — “we love you giant penguin,” they squawk happily.
We always try and do a little clean up on the weekends, so Nefarious made me the deal that if she helped by taking the garbage to the bin (in the rain in her high heels no less), in return I would pull her back to the studio in the wagon. At first I thought to myself how nice it was to hear her laughing boisterously, you know, the purity of childhood happiness and all that. It wasn’t until I went back and looked at the photo that I realized that the laughter and said childhood joy was not entirely “pure”.
If it’s not obvious, the devil is in the details.
Nefarious went to the toy store to spend some of her savings and got one of those foam puzzle mats (with a printed car track) and it fits perfectly in front of the doll house. Following are a couple of night time pictures of the house that I quite like. As you might notice, we’ve slowly been adding furniture and so on, and various decorations, including some for the Christmas holidays.
Other than that, I have some unusual swelling in my leg which I’ve already theorized could be the result of walking around on a broken bone and not knowing it (due to the severed nerves), but could also be another bone tumor growing near the first one… Either way, I think it’s about time to go get it x-rayed. And I do always like getting x-rayed, so any excuse works for me.
Other than that “other than that”, let me post just a couple more animal videos that I bookmarked ages ago. You’ve probably seen them, but for those few of you who are have a low viral load when it comes to the things one catches online, here’s a dog parkour video (which to my surprise you can find lots of) and a video of a foal playing with a ball — I always enjoy watching videos of animals playing, especially when they’re not dogs (because that’s in the “seen it a million times” category) or cats (because I despise cats and have been given non-humorous thought to forming an organization to ban them as pets due to the dangers of trichomoniasis).
Oh yeah and while I’m posting videos, I wanted to say that I think I’m going to build the bike with legs in this video, which is obviously based on the work of Theo Jansen, who I’m a fan of. Finally (for real this time), I just saw the greatest project car ever on eBay. If you bid in the next couple days, you can get it for, as of now, about $2,000, which is incredibly given the amount of work invested so far.
First some pictures:
It’s an eight-wheeled Corvette-sort-of-thing, with a double GM front and a double Jaguar rear. The start of a custom interior (including LED gauges) is installed, and the lengthy gull-wing-door fiberglass body looks fairly complete. The engine is totally nuts, made up of a pair of Mazda twin rotary engines put together into a single mega-engine managed by four MSD ignitions. I have no idea how close to running it is, but seriously, what a kooky and inspiring project. This is the kind of crazy backyard engineering that makes up for the stupid shit in the previous entry and makes me love America again. I can’t imagine how much fun that would be to drive around. Holy head turner. Anyway, I’m done now.
Oh wait, speaking of head-turner vehicles, I like these “Big Ass Trucks” too.
My seven year old daughter is going to be flying to the USA to visit her mother for Thanksgiving soon, and I’m really worried about what she’s potentially going to be facing with the TSA. I’ve been reading and hearing more and more about their new “enhanced pat downs” in which TSA agents, not even limited to same gender, are permitted to do extended fondling of genitals and breasts. Full on grabbing and groping and rubbing and stroking and squeezing and detailed manual examination of genitals. Not some back of the hand frisking, but actually grabbing hold of the vulva (or penis and scrotum) and “checking it out” in detail, plus breast exams that involve squeezing and twisting (enough to be described as “painful”) to make sure the person doesn’t have explosive implants (I kid you not — it’s this ridiculous).
Alternately, naked photos are taken of the person, including explicit child-pornographic images of little boys and girls. Little girls being genitally fondled or nude photographed by adult men. How is this OK? How is this stopping terrorism? How is this protecting freedom? I have no doubt that cavity searches will be added very soon, because they’re the next “logical” step. Oh, and it should come with minimal surprise that most of the abuse is being done to children and attractive women, because that’s what it is — abuse. It’s not even security theatre any more. It’s purely abuse, the government showing you who is boss.
It’s beyond sickening. This video above, which I hope you’ll watch and perhaps pass it or one of its many twins on, gets particularly gross about half way through. If you don’t want to trust Alex Jones (the hard to listen to part of this video isn’t him, but one of his employees describing her TSA encounter along with her eight year old and 20 month old — who they also did this sexual assault to) then I’m sure you can follow the bread crumbs of related videos and spend the next hour being sick to your stomach. There is an endless stream of both news reports and individuals sharing their traumatizing government rape stories. What a sad and disturbing fall from grace America is continuing to experience.
