DISASTER IN LIVING ROOM

This kind of thing happens every day here in Eville Indiana. It was exciting at first but now I'm bored with it.

Actually if you don't already know this is a phone app you can get for free. It's called Action Movie FX.

DANCING SKELETON PUPPET

I saw this video a while back but had forgotten how good it was. Even knowing it's not real, it seems absolutely real to me. He's got personality and stylish moves. I like the second half of the video best. He looks into the money hat and then weeps at the pitiful amount. I also like how he stops everything he's doing to take the time to watch the pretty girls walking by. Too bad the Ed Sullivan Show isn't still on. I bet this skeleton would have been a huge hit back then. It's somewhat depressing to know a puppeteer this talented isn't already rich and famous, and is reduced to working street corners.

MORE CHINESE WOODCARVINGS

I love these things. They're carved from large bamboo roots. The ridges of the root and the little hairy root stragglers and feelers are incorporated into the designs too. Each one has to be unique to fit around the shape of the bamboo root they're working with. This one has glasses frames and little whiskers, all from a single piece of bamboo.

Since bamboo has hollow segmented sections they don't have much surface to work with for their designs, but you'd never know it by looking at them. These things fascinate me. Having done some woodcarving myself I realize how difficult and intimidating it would be to do something like this. You'd have to have your plan worked out from beginning to end before you ever started. If you went too deep and punctured through to the hollow middle you'd ruin the entire project.

Look at this tiny bicycle made out of wood! Look at it! Those spokes are thinner than toothpicks. The entire bicycle was around 7 or 8 inches tall from what I remember.

I couldn't get close enough to pick up the detail with my camera, but you can kind of get an idea. When I looked at it in person I remember the pedals and how it looked like they would really turn.

I think this started out as a hollow log, and they carved it into a net with lobsters all over it. Everywhere you looked you could see thin, fragile slivers of wood and tiny details. How they did that without breaking it I'll never know.

Here's a closer view. This piece was pretty big. The lobsters were basically full scale. I think the entire thing was taller than me. I couldn't look at the back side since it was in a glass case, but it looked like there were hidden details down inside it too.

NUT CARVING

These are little carvings I saw in China. They're made from nuts.

I bought a couple. I'm slightly nervous about them. I wonder if insects will get at them since they are edible.

Maybe they aren't edible. I'm not sure. They may be more like seeds.

 EXPLANATION FOR MY ABSENCE:

 I haven't posted in a while because I've lost about 20 hours of my free time with a new job. I quit Karges Furniture because I had a good offer at another place. I loved Karges but I thought I should give this new thing a shot. It's tough getting used to after being at Karges for 21 years. That's half my life. So far, at the new job I've designed furniture for Bar Louie, Western Sizzlin', Holiday Inn, the Army and a bunch of other places.

 It's a pretty big culture shock from what I've done in the past. At Karges we had 6 months from the time someone ordered a piece to the time we shipped it. At the new place we have a few weeks. A lot of times we are still slapping the furniture together when the delivery truck arrives, and the driver will have to sit and wait for us. With each job it feels like there's no way we'll make it on time, but somehow it always manages to get done.

 So that's what happened.

PINOCCHIO VS DRACULA

THE TABLECLOTH TRICK

Is this real? I can't quit watching it.

Biertijd.com // Media » Tablecloth Trick

TARGET STACKS ITS MEAT THE SAME AS ME

Here's a drawing I made in 2009:

LINK

And here's a range cover I saw for sale at Target a couple days ago.

What are the odds of this?

After I think about it, it is logical if you want to draw farm animals these would be the three main animals. And if you want to stack farm animals it is wise to go in descending weight order so maybe everyone would stack farm animals that way.

LIFE LESSON

Here's a comic I did a while back and don't believe I've ever posted on this here blarg.

Everything was drawn separately and then pieced together in my photo-manipulatin' program. I think I even drew their arms separate from their bodies so I could rotate them to point in the right directions once I knew where they'd be standing. I like doing it that way now, rather than composing the entire scene in one shot. I can scoot and shrink and fiddle with all the junk in there before flattening it into one image. It's funner!

EVIL EXIT HALLOWEEN IDEA

With pieces of tape the same color as the sign's background, you can make EXIT signs more spooky for Halloween.

More sights from China.

This guy just made himself comfortable out on the street. I admire that ability to just not care what anyone thinks. I never bought anything from this street vendor because I felt bad to wake him up. He looked so content.

I have no idea

At first I thought the name of this store was GOD, and went, "Wow! That's rude!"
Then on closer inspection I realized it was called COD. That's still not much better.

This store mannequin looked like Jonny Quest to me. Even though all they sold were purses I had a compulsion to give them money just because of the mannequin.

I know by the look on Mei's face she was wondering why I took a picture of her buying a purse. That's just what I wanted her and anyone else watching to think. I was really trying to get a front and side profile of that Jonny Quest.

They're very unfriendly when it comes to cameras in stores in China. I've been told to get out several times. Mei told me they thought I was a competing business trying to learn their secrets.

CHINESE PUZZLE BALL

You may have seen these before. Sometimes they're called Mystery Balls. The fancier ones are carved from ivory, while the cheaper ones are wooden. I've been wanting one of these for a while, and I think I'll just have to keep wanting them. I'll never be able to afford one since they cost as much as a new car.

My brother-in-law has one with 28 or 30 levels in it. He let me try to solve the puzzle but I was too scared I'd break something if I handled it very much. To solve the puzzle you much align all the holes through all the layers. It's much more difficult than it seems. Usually you can get one hole lined up all the way through but the rest aren't even close. It's very much like a Rubik's cube; it's not too difficult to get one color but you can forget about it after that.

It's all carved from a single chunk of ivory. I have no idea how they can get in there to carve those inner layers. I would assume they'd have to carve the innermost layer first so they could hold it in place while working on it. If they worked on it from the outermost first everything would roll around and they'd never be able to grip anything to carve it.

I think I heard someone say all the old guys in China who know how to make these are dying off, and it's becoming a lost art. I hope they train some new younger guys to take over.

UNSETTLINGLY HIGH BRIDGE IN GUANGZHOU

We got to ride on a double-decker buss to the airport in GuangZhou. At first I was happy about that. We got up onto the top of the buss because that would be more fun. I thought.

I didn't realize we'd be barreling down a highway at rocket speed, and right on the edge of a roller-coaster-height bridge. The guardrail was about 2 feet tall. That would be just enough of a guardrail, not to stop your double decker buss from flipping, but to give it a quick spin and make the fall even more dramatic.

When I look at these pictures it doesn't seem as bad as it did in real life. It's difficult to conceive the scale of the drop in these shots. We were about 2 feet from the edge, and bouncing and bumping and flying across that highway the entire trip. Also big winds were blowing our buss which only added to the excitement. The only thing that gave me comfort was the fact that the driver probably drove that buss on that bridge many times a day, every day, and he was still alive.

Look at that tiny little guardrail!! Those are the tops of trees down there!

DANG! (Number 8)

I didn't have a single bad meal in Thailand. In fact every place we went was my new favorite.
I remember each time I ate somewhere I'd think, "I gotta remember to come back to this place!"

We never got the chance to eat anywhere twice, but it didn't matter. Everything was equally delicious.
So delicious I would say "DANG!"

While we ate at this place called Dang(?) a frog jumped through the entire restaurant, coming in one end of the dining area, hopping between the customers' feet and out the other side of the restaurant. Everyone saw it, and no one cared.

It started raining really hard so they let us stay there after hours until it stopped. It was an hour after they'd closed before we could go outside. While we were there they gave us some soup on the house.

LIU RONG SI Temple in GuangZhou China

This is a temple we visited in GuangZhou. I hope I typed the name correctly. We visited a few and I get them mixed up. This was a pretty big statue in the doorway. It had to be at least 9 feet tall.

Here's a detail of the little monster underneath the giant guy's foot.

There's no telling how old this stuff is. It could be hundreds of years old for all I know.

See this building? Look up there on the roof!

Here's a closeup

And each section had a uniqued sculpted scenery inside.

Here's Mei and a door.

MONKEY BEACH in Thailand

There's a place in Thailand called Phi Phi Island. It's actually pronounced "Pee-Pee Island," believe it or not. We went on a boat ride to Phi Phi Island and got to visit Monkey Beach along the way.

These monkeys weren't tame and would steal sunglasses, hats, earrings and cellphones and whatever they could grab and run with.

Monkeys were darting around and yanking food out of our hands too. It seems extra bad for a monkey to drink Coke since they probably aren't gonna be brushing their teeth afterwards.

This was a cliff right on the edge of Monkey Beach.

In this picture I appear calm but was very horrified by these tiny monkeys. Who knows what kinds of weird monkey diseases they carried.

I had to beg Mei to stand by the monkeys. She was scared of them too. I told her it was safe, but I didn't really know if it was or not.

We both made it out of there unbitten so I guess it was safe after all. Next time maybe I'll be more brave and approach a monkey. Maybe I'll even touch one. Or not.

ASIAN FRUIT : The Good, the Bad and the Disgustingly Hideous

This is probably the greatest and most delicious food discovery I've made in all my adult years. This fruit is called "Hong Mao Dan" which translates into Red Hair Egg.

I find them in Chinese groceries once in a blue moon, but they're never as big as these I found in Thailand.

The skin breaks off pretty easily, like peeling an orange. You don't eat that part.

Inside is something which is about the size, shape and texture of an eyeball. Mmmm.... eyes...

It's very sweet and slightly tart, somewhere in the range of strawberry tartness. There's a seed inside. You'll wanna spit that part out. I've been told by my grandpa if I swallow apple seeds an apple tree will start growing out of my belly button. I don't want to chance that! Anyway, these are pretty delicious. I could eat them all day long.

Even though they sell the delicious Hong Mao Dan in Thailand, it is also possible to buy...... (shudder).... THIS!........

DURIAN!!!! (wretch!) Just look at it's prickly evilness!

Look at all of them laying there, like rotting, (gag!) stinking dead animals... (choke!)

I defy anyone to tell me there's a worse smelling fruit in all the universe. Even if there was a fruit called "Granny Smith bung apples flavored with infected pig feces" it couldn't top this. I can smell these things blocks away. When I walk, I mean RUN, past them and I'm blocks away I can still smell them in my clothes. The smell is like a mixture of rotting animal, spoiled and rancid sour fruit, poisonous hair permanent solution, Satan's fart after he ate something he was allergic to, and just some general extra rot thrown in on the side.

Mei and I got some popsicles on a hot day. I got cherry-flavored and she got durian-flavored. I'm not kidding I could not each my popsicle  because I kept smelling durian odor coming off her popsicle. I walked a considerable distance away from her and could still smell it every time I tried to take a bite of my cherry popsicle. Even if you try to man-up and brave something like that it just can not be done. I felt like a failure but I eventually flung my popsicle into the trash, and accepted the fact that I was just going to have to be parched.


These were pretty nifty. These Chinese characters are grown into the skins of the apples. I wonder if they put stickers on the apples, and the apples tanned in the sun, and then the stickers were removed leaving tan lines.