Nothing much

So... last week I started to make some observation here in view of some 'Intelligence for your life' heard on the FM radio one night while mixing up rubber concoctions and daubing paint about.

Something about narcissistic tendencies, stopping to look at yourself in the mirror- every mirror! -and so forth...

At first I thought to muster a defence for what must seem most often like self-agrandizement in this forum citing A) respect for the privacy of friends and family, B) prudence in the case of my minor children, er, child and C) deference to the wishes of my wyfe who- without any hint of paranoia whatsoever -desires to stay well out of the publick eye.

And who can blame her really? You stick your head above the crowd and somebody will invariably lob something at it! Or you end up on YouTube being chased by stalkerazzi and the next day Harvey whats-his-name, formerly of The People's Court, is on the Today show harping about your brutal encounter with his poor overworked camerman.

Speaking of YouTube, what a vast time-sucking wasteland of popular culture trivium and amateur showmanship that is! Have I mentioned this before? Every so often I get sent a link to some not-to-be-missed piece of video- which takes my Flintstones-era computer for-stinking-ever to load and thirty nine seconds to watch -and then get stuck browsing the links to related and unrelated clips, usually for a few hours thereafter.

Once I checked out a whole gaggle of guitar videos concentrating primarily on twelve-year-olds playing Van Halen's Eruption with more speed and facility than I've been able to muster after, well, after seeing those youngsters I won't even say how long I've been scratching the strings trying to make vaguely musical sounds. Sheesh! There are enough guys with real talent playing guitar in their garage or bedroom on YouTube to populate a small- maybe a not-so-small -African nation, I think. Maybe even Australia, who knows?

But on the plus side I got a good look at what must have been every Star Trek blooper known to man. Coming only thirty years after my first missed opportunity to see them at an appearance by the late James "Scotty" Doohan at a local college. Being a backwoods kid, I had no sense of the geography of the campus despite its location right next to the high school I attended. So I missed whatever stage presentation the Chief Engineer of the starship Enterprise had made, caught only the waning peals of laughter as the lights came up after the showing of the blooper reel and was immediately carried along by the tide of humanity anxious to shake hands and proffer some scrap to the star for his autograph.

For all my misdirection while finding the college library, I did come prepared for a signature with my Starfleet Technical Manual in hand. I was not, however, prepared to stand and make comprehensible speech in the presence of so lofty a personage. When finally I came along in the line to the table where he sat I could barely gasp, 'Good evening, sir!' and shove the book in his direction. To which Mr. Scott, er, Mr. Doohan responded, 'What's yer name, lad?' Hah! 'Lad', he called me! 'W-w-w-es...' says I. And he scribbled 'To Wes! James Doohan', slapped it shut, slid it back across the table to my sweaty hands and turned to the next startled youth standing in line.

Wow... I wish I still had it but like so many artifacts of yore, it went away, traded or sold while scrabbling after a newer, older passionately desirable gewgaw representing some other TV favorite.

But I digress- Finally I decided, well, if it seems somewhat self-involved to engage in this kind of exercise in...

Then the lights went out from an electrical storm and the whole mess went away.

And I sort of forgot about the whole silly notion after that.

Now I'm pretty much chalking it up to the fun of typing- pecking, really -and watching the letters appear onscreen, it's spelling and writing exercise and so on. Nothing wrong with that. Might even slow the onset of brain rot, a little. Maybe.

But aside from that, all the bright ideas for making something out of nothing that I've had since then- I get them all the time away from the keyboard; here, there, everywhere, anytime day or night -have taken wing and I got nothing, Jerry, nothing!

And no wonder, it's 3 AM... and time for all little and not-so-little self-centered toymakers to close their eyes and venture off to the land of Nod.

 

Perseids

Excited by a tidbit of news on my welcome screen I raced out of doors at the stroke of midnight, hopped my bicycle and pedaled for the park next door in hopes of finding a suitably bedarkened piece of real estate from which to view the expected meteor shower.

Alas, while there was, as foretold, no moon to obfuscate the streaking arcs, there was in place of that orb plenty of slow moving cloud cover. Waahh. Still, it was a pleasant interlude, quiet and still around the neighborhood with a soft breeze wafting about.

In other news: Despite the pressing presence of several crafting projects here in the toy lab I succumbed to a wild hair and created a new cartoon self-portrait. Like one wasn't enough! But as much as I like my Classic Plastick 'retro logo' I've always held a slight sneaking grudge because it wasn't my own rendering but that of a talented patron of my homespun enterprise pitching in with some unsolicited- but welcome, to be sure! -signage. We made some kind of deal with my makings for his graphical input and both came away happy little toy geeks.

Anyway, I figure this new cartoon'll serve as a little calling card, as it were, for graphical employment and the like.

It reminds me of my last self-portrait done as a drawing class assignment in art school. Simply in subject matter, not in style or execution. It was in all modesty a quantum leap in my rendering skills at the time as I devoted hours and hours and hours to it, trying not only to create a realistic portrait but also to replicate the aesthetic stylings of my wizardly professor. The head and hands were drawn separately and added into the whole as 'puzzle parts' of a sort with miscellaneous doodads drawn into the clothing in a non-sequitur approach to illustrative ornamentation. I was growing my hair out at that point and still wearing suspenders as a fashion statement. Or I drew them in so I could add buttons and hanging things onto them, I forget which.

But, sad to say, it disappeared somewhere not too long after I came home from school. I know there were times thereafter when I cleaned out sketchbooks and loose drawings, gleaningthose worth saving and pitching the detritus of three years of doodling and printmaking and drawing but what became of that particular drawing I just don't know. It was practically life sized so it's not as if it would have slipped away undetected on its own...

Anyway, here's the new calling card for your perusal. I may have to see about registering a site name for drawing bidness as it might be a wee bit confusing for the uninitiated to navigate from the front page of the toy making site to the drawing archives. We'll see:

 

mini-vacation

Hey, I'm ba-a-a-ack! Yes, in case you didn't miss me I spent three whole days away from the rattle-and-hum of the toymaking sphere, the cat and the computer and the 12x70 tin enclosure I call home.

The cat, doleful as ever, seems to have eaten less than she does when we're around. I swear she eats more when we're home because she thinks we're competition for her bowlful of fishy kibbles and bits.

A short absence like that always means a boxful of mostly worthless emails upon returning, of course. Amazing how many varieties of come-ons and schemes show up on a daily basis. What a waste of time and energy. Multiplied by the thousands, nay, millions of times it goes on, day after day... Tsk, tsk. How better all that could be spent. But, hey, who are we kidding? Where the bottom line is concerned is anybody seriously thinking this particular shell game is going away anytime soon? No.

But I digress! It was a very, very nice three days spent in the company of family and friends. Thousands of them, literally. Got to explore scenic Reading PA just a little bit. Directed by one new acquaintance the first night to a great Chinese buffet. You know that was a real highlight for moi! I likes my coconut shrimps, Forrest. Too bad its over sixty miles from home, just a smidge too far for casual dining on any given weekend.

Only fifteen, maybe twenty miles from my part-time workplace though... hmmm....

Greeted plenty of old friends, indoor picnicking lunch, pitched in off and on for some crowd control- meaning standing by answering questions like 'Where's the ladies' room?' and 'Do these stairs go up?'("No, but you can go up on them...") -and cleaning duties too. ( Reminding me why I gave up that line of work but, hey, anything for a good cause... ugh...!)

All with a close-to-home-friend-in-tow, a recent foot surgery patient with a few weeks of convalescence remaining, she enlisted our assistance with her wheelchair for the duration. We got the better of the deal, I think, with handicapped seating on the floor of the venue where the air conditioned air- heavier than the warm air rising from those five thousand and some odd souls respiring repeatedly -gathered in bunches, making the requisite coat and tie not only endurable but welcome.

Circumstances beyond our control made it possible to spend the two nights in a nice economical hotel rather than drive back and forth as I previously expected to do. Saved plenty of wear on the car... and us, that extra hour and a half of sleep in the AM we would have spent driving made a big difference in wakefulness throughout the day, lemme tell ya. 

Even so, recuperating from three days out of town will take another two days at least. So it was a sleepy, sleeping in sort of day today.

Which, no doubt, is why I'm still goofing off here at three in the morning! Yaaahhhh!

Good night already!