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!

MORE BIRDS IN THE DOOR

It seems to be a yearly event now. Each Summer I get a nest full of baby birds in my front door. It lasts about 2 weeks and then they fly off leaving me a disgusting mess to clean up.

I should just shoo the mama away when I see her building the nest but I don't have the heart.
See the sleeping action! Also you can see the mama:

HORRIFYING FACE (and corpse story)

This is Franklin Pangborn. He was famous performer from back in the day. I've never heard of him until now. This photo is very disturbing to me. It's difficult to explain why it creeps me out so badly. I'm wondering if it's because the guy is all gussied like a corpse in a coffin.

If I stare at the eyes long enough they look like they twitch. At the small size it doesn't bother me as bad. Click and enlarge the image for the real horror. Stare at it for at least 30 seconds. Does it seem creepy to anyone else?

This reminds me of something that happened to me as a child. My mom brought me to a funeral home to visit an old lady who had just became a widow. We walked right up to the coffin and stood there next to the dead guy. As my mom talked to the widow, I stared intently at the dead guy. If you stare at something long enough it seem to move. Of course it was all in my head but for the life of me I honestly thought it was really breathing. I swear and cross my heart I saw what looked like the dead guy taking a deep breath. I screamed out, "He's breathing!!" and my mom slapped me down and told me to be quiet.

As I stared more intently at the chest and stomach of the dead body, it looked like it would periodically do it again and again. I thought the dead guy was trying to trick us and I was the only one who knew his secret. I figured my mom didn't hear what I said the first time because she didn't get upset about the trickery, so I yelled it again.

"HE'S BREATHING! HE'S BREATHING! HE'S TRYING TO TRICK US! HE'S NOT DEAD!"

When I said it louder the widow became excited and looked into the coffin at the body. I got promptly smacked and told to shut up by my mother. This was extremely frustrating. I felt like no one was doing anything about this deceit! Why was this faker trying to trick his wife into thinking he was dead? I figured everyone would be happy about my discovery, but they weren't. I got lots of glares and stares. I remember thinking, "What is wrong with these people?! Do they not want him to be alive?"

CARLTON HOUSE DESK DESIGN

For my day-job I work at Karges Furniture. I've been there since 1990, first as a wood carver, and then moved into the engineering department. Recently I was allowed to design my first piece of furniture. I've always liked Carlton House desks so that's what I chose as my first project. What I like about Carlton House style desks are the walls of tiny doors and drawers curling around the guys who sit at them. It feels very private and personal, and nice if you need to concentrate.

Now that more and more people are using laptop computers, I suspect old-fashioned desks like these will make a comeback. People don't really need giant computer desks with printer, scanner and tower cavities anymore. Now with Wi-Fi the printer can be put anywhere, even in another room.

This desk uses mahogany solids, with mahogany and prima vera veneers. The white inlay lines are holly tree wood. Before applying stain to this desk, all the holly inlay lines had to be covered with a frisket, which is sort of like liquid latex rubber. This prevented the stain from darkening those places. After the stain had cured the frisket could then be removed by simply rubbing it off with fingers. The frisket-appliers cussed me real good for all those skinny lines.
I like secret compartments a lot. I'm not gonna say exactly where there might be secret compartment in this desk, but there could be some surprises here and there, on the inside. Those are not secret compartments on the sides in the photo above. They're much sneakier than that!

Above is a closeup of the inlay work. To make the shading on the white strips of holly, the tips of each piece were placed in hot sand until they were burned dark enough.

I'd love to own one of these desks since it was made to possess all the elements I personally love, but I'm gonna have to save a while to be able to afford one. They cost as much as a car.

NEW TOY

New-ish. It's used, but new for me... sort of. It's called the Ibanez Tube Screamer TS9. I had one of these guitar pedals about 20-something years ago. I left it at a buddy's house and as time went by it became more and more awkward to ask for it back. To make a long boring story a short boring story: I never saw it again.

Ever since I lost it I haven't been able to get a sound I liked on any other pedal, and I've gone through a bunch. For the longest time I couldn't get another one of these because they were discontinued and the price zoomed up on Ebay. Now they're easily accessible again. This pedal records very well. It sounds good no matter what type of music you play on it. I think opera backing music would even sound good on this pedal. Maybe even country! he he! Just teasing.


Before you get mad about the country music - gaze into the eye of the wiener dog... Your anger shall dissipate.

MY GREEN-MAN DREAM: Plagiarism-able school assignment material

I've decided to start helping students who are having trouble with writing assignments. I know how it is sitting up that night before a paper is due, racking your brain trying to think of something you can write about. Kids, I'm happy to say there will be no more need for that. I am going to allow anyone to plagiarize this story as their own.

Get your pencils out, here it is:

MY GREEN-MAN DREAM

By ________________

A while back I had a dream about a green-colored man with a long heavy head. So heavy in fact, he could not stand upright. He stood in a stooped position and looked at me. I remember noticing his shadow; it seemed very important at the time. After I woke up I couldn't remember why the shadow was so important. His head looked like some kind of vegetable with asparagus points on the top. To the best of my ability I drew what I saw in my dream. SEE DIAGRAM BELOW (Write it in all caps like that so the teacher thinks it's important.)

He stood motionless almost like a vegetable yet he did very subtly, almost unnoticeably, turn his head when I walked to a different place so I was never out of his line of sight. I was afraid to look away because I didn't know what he was capable of. I wondered if he'd attack if given the chance.

A football is not a very good gift. (Good finisher-upper.)

Well, that's it. Use it freely and enjoy your easy A! I don't allow you to copy the drawing though. Not because I value it, but because the teacher should see something created by your own hand. That will make it more authentic. If anyone does draw their own version of this guy I'd love to see it. Email me some pics or links!

DUNE BUGGY UPDATE

Here's an update on the dune buggy. Lee, the dune buggy man, says we're in the home stretch. A couple things need lengthened and welded, and a windshield needs to be cut and fit to the window frame. Then the shell can be put onto the body and it'll be ready to drive.

He put little rails on the back, so I can use bungee straps and haul stuff.

The old wires had a mysterious short in them, and several wires didn't connect to anything. There were pendulous hanging blobs of knotted wires here and there. In the long run it was easier for Lee to tear it all out and start from scratch.

He put in this shorty turn signal and headlight knob. The headlight knob is right in the corner of that black metal framework.

Also he hooked up a gas gauge with a light in it for me.

These wires go to the fuel sensor.

Here you can see the new turn signals and the red Ooga horn.

The 1st time I heard the Ooga horn (I guess that's what you call it) I literally jumped. It's startlingly loud. You can hear it toned down to computer speaker volume in this video.

Lee is also making a removable vinyl top. I'm not sure how long that takes, but the buggy will be drivable this Summer with or without it.

GUITAR NEWS

Woohoo! My guitar appeared on the GUITARZ blog! You can see it featured HERE.

I find myself looking at this blog practically every day. It's got some of the weirdest designs I've seen. Some of the nicest too. If you've ever thought about building a guitar for yourself that's a good place to find inspiration.

PRETTY AWFUL

I never realized how weird English was until I started trying to teach it to Mei. One time she said "No do that" to Lucy and I told her she's supposed to say "Do not do that."

She asked, "Why do you say DO two times?"

I couldn't think of a good reason other than it just sounded better. Mei's way is much more simple and streamlined. Maybe in the distant future people will say it that way.

The word PRETTY means LOVELY, but can also mean KIND OF.

The word AWFUL means TERRIBLE, but can also mean VERY.

I made the above chart to teach Mei the different usages of the two words. It took me about an hour and a half to get it done. It only took her 10 seconds to look at it. I hope she appreciated it.

Here in Southern Indiana we shorten the word AWFULLY to AWFUL, so we say "She's awful pretty." I'm curious if that's how people say it in other parts of the country, or if that's just our local hillbilly talk.

FENDER JAGUAR BASS

I realize this post will only be of interest to a small group but I'm too happy to not talk about it.

Recently Mei and I celebrated our 4 year anniversary. She got me a Fender Jaguar bass for my gift and I got her some shoes she was wanting. That's what she wanted! I believe I came out ahead on that deal. I asked her I don't know how many times to tell me what she REALLY wanted instead of shoes, but she REALLY wanted shoes.

My stringed instrument army is growing.

In the past I bought basses and guitars solely based on their looks. This is the first time I think I did it the right way. I took my old BC Rich bass into the guitar store and compared it to the other basses they were selling all on the same amp so I could get a good comparison. This Fender bass was my hands down favorite. It was so much better than my old one I was kind of ashamed to ask if they'd take it as a trade in.

I like that all the strings seem to be evenly volumed, and each string seems to be pretty evenly volumed across the length of the neck on any fret. That was a frustration on my old bass. This Fender has a thick growling tone with lots of low end bassy tone, but also enough treble to hear the frets clicking and crunching if I want that. It's got steady sustain too.


The tuners are so big and cartoonish I didn't like them at first, but now they've grown on me. These photos seem to bring out the fingerprints. I'm looking at this bass in real life right now and I don't see the fingerprints. I don't know if that means my camera is good or bad.

There are lots of switches and knobs providing mucho variety in tone. So much in fact, sometimes I can't settle on a sound. The more choices I'm offered, the more doubts and indecision I'm faced with. Every button click seems to make a completely different sound which is equally as nice as the last setting I thought I liked.

These are battery-powered active EQ dials. The switch on the right turns them on or off. The 2 dials are for bass and treble.

These switches are pickup selectors.

Then there are the master volume and tone knobs. All of these knobs and switches combined make too many combinations for me to add up, and the nice thing is the combinations all sounds pretty good. On my old bass I had basically 2 settings: (1) kind of usable and (2) everything else which was all unusable.

If I had to name one complaint about this Fender Jaguar bass it would be the cord jack being in the face plate rather than in the edge of the body. That puts the cord more in the way. It's not a huge inconvenience and can be rendered less intrusive with one of those 90 degree jacks.

I feel like a heel for finding anything at all to complain about though. Not only is this a good sounding bass, I like the way it looks.

In the past when I recorded music, the old BC Rich bass would kill my guitar tracks. It didn't matter if it was an acoustic guitar or an electric, or if it had light or heavy distortion. I could get a guitar to record exactly how I liked it, and then when I added the bass, the guitar would suddenly disappear into the song, or just sound like fuzzy and puny toneless white noise.

The pickups on the old bass were creating a signal which invaded the guitar's realm on the EQ band, cutting into the midrange rather than staying down in the lower bass levels. I could fight with EQ settings for a while and eventually get a sort-of sound from the guitars, but I was never completely successful. It was danged aggravating and unsatisfying. I've recorded a few songs with the new Jaguar bass and the Danelectro guitar and it's fun to record music now. I can just run a wire straight from the instruments to the recorder with no effects pedals or amps in between and they sound great, and they don't bleed over the tops of each other.

Maybe in the future I'll be able to put a music CD together and then if you guys have the stomachs and tolerance for it you can punish yourselves by listening to it. Hopefully afterwards you'll still want to be my friend.

THANKS, GUYS!

Here's my new favorite toy. A Danelectro DC-59 reissue. I bought it with the money I collected selling Pukey Pals trading cards. See? Booger and poo jokes really DO pay off! Thanks everybody who bought them.

A Danelectro guitar has a sound all of its own. It has a very crunchy, hollow, air-cutter sound. It even sounds good unplugged. That thin aluminum nut is partially responsible for the unusual sound.

And in case you were wondering: Yes, it is shielded... TOTALLY shielded.

After some research I found out the sound comes from the cheap materials they use to build it. They were originally built with cheap materials to make them more affordable, but as an unexpected bonus the cheap supplies actually made them sound better. They use poplar, which is one of the cheapest good hardwoods you can get. The guitar is very lightweight and feels almost hollow. Also they don't paint them; they cover them with Formica kitchen counter top material. As it turns out, layers of paint and lacquer will hurt or deaden the sound of a guitar.

Volume and tone knobs are stacked on the DC-59. The black ring is the tone, and the white in the center is the volume. There's one stacked knob for each pickup. The 3-way toggle switches from the bridge pickup, to both, to the neck pickup.

Lipstick tube pickups are unusual these days. They're fixed to the inside of the body, and are not adjustable like most pickups. There's a thin strip of wood for the bridge. That's not typical for an electric. When I look really closely at the wooden bridge I see a slight concave valley down the length of it, so the strings only touch at the sharp outside edges of the wood, and not in the middle.

Size comparison.

If you are thinking about getting an electric guitar you ought to consider one of these. They sound great, they're comfortable and easy to play and they're affordable. This one was $275 which is pretty danged cheap for how good it is. Also they tend to go up in value every year because they do limited numbers of a design, and then move on to something else. Once these are all sold, that's it. Some of the sneakier dealers like to buy up a bunch of these, hold them for a year, and then pull them out and sell them for double their original prices.

Jimmy and Jimi both played Danelectros at one time or another, and so did Elvis.

PICTURE FOR THE KIDS

Print it and color it. See what Your kids can do with it. If it's anything particularly odd or frightening send me a scan of the handiwork.

DUNE BUGGY

About 4 or 5 years ago I bought a dune buggy. I didn't know what I was getting in to. It had a few problems (I thought) and I figured I'd have it up and running by turning a couple screws. Boy, was I wrong. I found out to make it street legal in Indiana it needed a 2 page list of things, like bumpers, seat belts, emergency brakes, speedometer, roll bar, horn, turn signals, mirrors, etc....

I don't know anything about cars or motors or metal work. It made me sick to my stomach to think about it all. Fortunately my wife Mei knew Lee, a custom car guy who came to eat at her restaurant all the time.

Lee says these are called ghost flames. They show up and then disappear depending how the light hits them. The photos make this paint look purplish, but the color is more of a blood red in real life. First it got painted silver, and then it got a transparent red sprayed over the silver. Lee says that's called a candy color, and it changes tones as you move your head to view it. It's pretty danged cool.

The dash is tiny and there wasn't enough room to put the speedometer in there without it bumping your knees when you try to drive, so Lee put a scoop in the hood and mounted the speedometer outside on the hood. It's all waterproofed too.

There's a little cap just behind the speedometer to get to the fluids. Before, if you wanted to get to the fluids you'd just have to take off the car's entire shell. That would have been a nightmare.

It's not all that visible in this picture, but Lee put diamond plate on the running boards. Before they were just fiberglass, and people stepped on them so much they had cracked and were flapping loose. Now they have that on top and a metal skeleton underneath.

He also put a trunk lid on it. That way the engine is accessible without having to remove the entire shell. He made metal gallery walls too, but they aren't attached yet. When they're put on it, this will be like a little truck and I'll be able to haul small things back here.



This is a 1968 VW bug engine. Besides all the body work, Lee also had to get the motor working again. There were missing plugs and shorts and other strange problems.

Still a mess, but it's getting there.

That red thing in the center is an "AHH-OOO-Ga!" horn, and it's loud. He set it off and both Mei and I about peed in our pants.

This is the shifter knob. There's Mei in the background.

Behind the passenger's seat there's a lid.

You can open it to get to the battery. Again, it's nice knowing I won't have to remove the entire shell to get to something.
This is Lee holding up the grill he cut out to show me what it'll look like. Before it was just a solid closed in fiberglass panel. The air needs to be able to blow through to cool the oil or something. I can't remember what it cools. It wasn't the radiator since VWs don't have radiators. I believe it's the oil. You can see what it cools if you look back up 4 pictures. Whatever that is, that's what needs air.
Lee says there's still a lot more work to do on it, but it's shaping up very well. He said after this job he's retiring. It's killing me to wait for it to be finished. It was a big ol' mess when he started. He's worked miracles on it.