Pirates

I make an excellent pirate and I won the Best Pirate prize at my sister’s party to prove it! This is me slitting my friend’s throat. (I’d rather just blur the face than have to later take down pictures when folks object.) I slit many a throat that night. Good times.




The best part of the costume, though, was my peg leg. I managed to bandage up my leg behind me and attach a peg to my knee that I could actually walk on. From the front it looks completely convincing and I got some gasps from a couple fiends.








Some more pics just for fun.


















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I had all that pirate fun on just a can and a half of beer. My drinking habits just aren’t what they used to be—and that’s a good thing. It’s not so much that I’m making a conscious effort to drink less; it’s just that I don’t really feel like it. I hope this kind of from-the-inside-out change denotes a lasting change of heart. After all, from the heart the mouth speaks. It’s merely lip service without a concomitant change of heart.

I’m a work in progress….

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I fixed my violin, the one I mentioned in the last post. I wound up using an old guitar string instead of the traditional catgut, though I suspect it’ll eventually break since it isn’t as strong. A string from a bass guitar or viola would work better. I’ll keep an eye out for one.

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You can often buy a new printer for the cost of a replacement ink cartridge. Printers are disposable and cheaply made, so even if you manage to bypass manufacturers’ ploys to thwart the refilling of cartridges (which is getting more difficult), you’re still left with a crappy printer prone to clogged printing heads, worn rollers and worn photoreceptor drums.

I got so frustrated a couple weeks ago that I threw away all my printers and decided to try another approach: buy an older, used office printer. I was surprised at how amazingly cheap they are and how plentiful and cheap the parts and consumables are. I got an HP Laserjet 5si printer with internal Ethernet print spooler, duplexer (double sided printing) and three thousand page capacity (prints 11 x 17!) for $160. This is cheaper than many of the cheapest (and total pieces of garbage) desktop laser printers available. The toner will only cost me about a fifth of a penny per page. Best of all, the thing is built like a tank. I know because the first thing I did was take it apart for a thorough cleaning, inspection and lubrication. Amazing.

Nose hairs and cat guts

Sunday I taunted friend X for not jumping in the pool. He's a very persnickety guy about things like dirt, spiders, and cloudy pool water with algae along the sides. I can't swim, but I swam that day. I mean, you couldn't get me out of the pool or off the diving board. Monday I woke up with slightly swollen lymph nodes, a bad feeling about the sinuses like when you breath water in through your nose, and a generalized malaise, for lack of a better word. So far, it doesn't hurt when I pee.

When I was a kid I had a small microscope that I used to check out the crazy menagerie that subsists in a pool of stagnant water--crazy amoeba-type thingies enveloping and eating protozoa- type thingies. At least the protozoa had a fighting chance to dart away with their undulating cilia. Me, on the other hand...well I do have rather long nose hairs. My kid sister has made it her raison d'etre to point that out on a regular basis.

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I bought this violin some time ago out of some romantic notion that I'd learn to play fushion/jazzy/new agey stuff like Charlie Bisharat. I can muddle my way through a scale on most instruments except those that have strings. That violin has sat idle for a long time mostly because I suck, but also because the little string thingie that holds the tail thingie to to the body thingie broke. And it appears to be made out of catgut. And we're fresh out of cat guts. Is that something you can get at the butcher maybe?

Well, I mention all this because it's my aim to at least fix my poor violin. I've got some ideas about what to use in lieue of guts, feline or otherwise.

Novelties

My father taught us a few things about his childhood. He told us fantastic stories of collecting wild watercress after a rainstorm, riding a bus cross-country overcrowded with sweaty people and live chickens, raising pigeons and making excellent soup out of them. In other words, he taught us about a time and place that's just a little more old fashioned than our contemporary suburban existence. That said, it's no wonder that certain things, which for many are mere novelties or faint memories, are very much part of our childhood memories. Here are some examples.

Radio dramas.
I love radio with a passion--the kind that engages your mind and imagination, not the kind that makes a sort of white noise sountrack to much of our lives. With the exception of the Wave (KTWV) when it first started--it's a much different station now--I never listened to FM radio. Today I listen to tons of talk radio, but when I was a kid I used to listen to those old timey radio dramas and comedy shows. Even when I was a kid in the late seventies and early eighties these shows were relics and aired for their nostalgic value, but I was experiencing for thefirst time and absolutely loving them. George and Gracie, The Shadow, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, The Whistler, Dragnet, The Lone Ranger, Jack Benny, all the greats.

Wooden tops.
Ya, the kind you tie a string around and throw to the ground. Toys R Us used to sell them for like a dollar in a blister pack. I can't find them anymore and I've tried. If you cut notches in the top just right they would whistle as they spun down. For a while when I was growing up yo-yos made a comeback and were cool again. I think tops are due for a resurgence.

Black and white movies.
These I haven't watched enough of, but I just absolutely love the old Bogey movies. I have to admit I've had a bit of a crush on the strong females in these movies (a post WWII phenomenon?). They have this witty, stylized, just-the-right-thing-to-say way of speaking that's just wow! And of course, no one looked so cool in a trenchcoat and fedora as Bogart himself.

Parrot

"Here, you want to put it in your scrapbook?" I pushed an according-folded paper straw wrapper toward her. Tonight was a special night. Seven of us got together for a mini-reunion and we had a wonderful time reminiscing.

"No no, I have quite enough of your stuff saved up in an envelope. Actually, it's more of a shoe box." Ya, I don't doubt it! I wrote her quite a few things--bad limericks among them, I'm sad to say!--and gave her a few of my handiworks. I'm always making things and a few folks have gotten them as gifts throughout the years. Among other things, she'd gotten a pair of earrings I made with beads and music wire. "I wore them the other day, those earrings you made."

"Wow, I made those a long time ago." Smiling wryly, "I wonder what ever happened to that little boy who made them." The unofficial theme this night was that some things never change. With maybe a hint of sarcasm she parrotted back my rhetorical question, "So what did happen to that little boy?" Some time during the night I'd joked that I was about as transparent as a pane of glass so I'm sure she probably noticed that it was not a little wistfully that I said "He's still back there somewhere."

I lied. He's not back there. He's still in here [imagine arrow pointing out of screen at writer] and it was wonderful to revisit him and his friends. He has changed a bit, though. Some things always change.

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Incidentally, I woke up with a patch of purple and yellow spots on my tongue in the shape of a dinner fork. Should I worry? ☺

Ketshup

…or “catch-up,” if you will.

First off, I need a new hobby like a hole in the head. Having established my sadomasochistic propensities (ritualistic self flagellation?) in the last post I naturally decided to take up the hobby of fixing century-old pocket watches and reselling them on Ebay. Some of the tools from my jewelry making days have come in handy.




The movements on some of these watches are enough to make this grown man cry from mere joy.









The procss involves taking the whole watch apart as shown here, cleaning the parts, verifying none are broken, reassembling the watch, oiling sparingly and adjusting the regulator so it'll keep time.





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Ok, so the party I mentioned in the last post was a phenomenal success by some measures—over four hundred people showed up!—but it was a little tough for me just as I feared it would be. Example: Y asks me, “Is that X over there?” It was X over there and he was, let us say, fooling around with someone else. I knew X and Y had some sort of romantic connection and that Y came all the way out here on X’s invitation. All I could get myself to say was, “That looks like X over there.” My heart broke for her. I didn’t see her again that night. Now, to be sure, I may be ascribing feelings to her she never had, but my heart broke nonetheless to see that disregard for another’s feelings. I spent most of the night catching up with folks whom I hadn’t seen for years, but I remember at one point just having to get out for fresh air, muttering something like “I just don’t belong here.”

We lost the cameras along with the pictures, but that picture above is of me wearing something similar to what I wore that night. I looked like a banker from the 1930s, but that's just fine by me. I added a pocket watch with a Prince Albert chain and an old pipe.

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Sunday I’ll be seeing a gaggle of old high school friends I haven’t seen for years. It's a theme that's been repeating in my life quite a bit lately. Should be fun, though I have to admit I'd prefer to see some of them more than others.