My extended building project is a series of 2’x2’ dioramas, each with its own theme, add some bridges to join the sections, then let my granddaughters play on them. At the same time, I’m building a nice resume for my infant scenery business, more on that later. The scale is 28mm/ Heroic scale, but this is a bit different, the entire scenario is little people that mine gold and are protected by fairies. So far so good. I was asked to build a castle at the same time, so I did, but the further I went, the more the castle interfered with my view, so I dropped it from the scene. I’ll use it later.
Here’s where I started. This is just drywall mud in a multilayered foil form, easy and cheap.
Then I used the pieces to clad some foam to get this shape. A good start.
Here is after a few washes, and some basic water layout. Not done yet!
This is after a few water layouts and accents.
I have an entire castle made, but I can’t see inside! I finally said, “Nope,” and dropped it for some palisade work I had laying around, and it looks like this.
Much better view, and lots more things to add for coolness, like torches.
A farm, with Grandma.
GOLD! With miners.
Next up are the details, more trimming, drybrushing etc. Enough for another episode, til then…
Left to Right: Granddaughter #1, Granddaughter #2, Guardian Faeries, 3,4,5.
And of course, the Gallery, with lots of great stuff this time.
I’ll be starting up a business around my scenery work soon, so if you have ideas, or potential clients, lemme know. /Shameless Promotion
Now that we’ve assembled a passable Caisson, we can move on to the main body of the scratch build. To start with we need to make sure it can hold the weight of the model. While on the human scale, the main model is light, on the scale of the styrene we’re working with, it has a bit of heft. So the basic chassis is going to be a ladder frame of the thicker box tube. As I measure it out to fit the appropriate width of the model, I make a discovery – I cannot cut the box tube squarely. Every slice has a deviation from perpendicular, and there is a variation in length. Not huge, but enough that they will not all have that great of a contact surface on both ends if the ladder frame is assembled hollow. I found this out when the ladder frame fell apart. So Plan B – I take the ladder frame and assemble it on a sheet of plasticard, gluing it to the flat surface. Once glued down, I take a pair of scissors and cut the ladder framed section off the main card. The particular sheet I used was the same one I’d taken the Caisson parts from, so there was a notch already cut into the board. It was also thin enough to cut with regular scissors and not fail catastrophically. I then took little scraps of plasticard sheeting and reinforced the joints on the side facing away from the sheet.
Hand crafted by trial and error
The platform is now very sturdy and will serve as a proper base for the remainder of our work. But it’s ugly, you might say, and I’d agree with you. It is also the underside. People will not be getting a good look at the kludged face of it. They will be seeing the perfectly uniform sheet that we glued the box tubing to. The next step is to position the ‘bearings’. They’re not real bearings, they’re just short sections of box tubing through which the axles will run. But they do fill the important role of attaching the platform to the axles, and thus the wheels. When I first set about planning this, I realized that the slope would be defined by the front and rear wheels, and the middle wheels will be a bit tricky. So I positioned the bearings for the front and rear axles and began brainstorming. I’d initially envisioned short posts which would hold the middle bearings at the proper level below the plane of the platform. This idea got torpedoed by the inability to get precise lengths on the box tubing.
After going through a couple of possible ideas in my head, I decided that the best move would be one which did not depend upon my precision to keep the middle wheels on the proper level. I was inspired by a leaf spring. With the flexibility of plasticard sheeting (or at least the flexibility of the thickness I was using), I could have the bearing for the middle wheels float, and the weight of the model would hold them against the surface underneath. I could have made independent suspensions for two bearings on the middle axle, but I was worried about the strength of such a structure. I had a panel of a good enough width, and a length of box tubing long enough to make a suitable bearing along that width, so I affixed one spring to the front end of the platform and under the front bearings, thus holding the middle axle at whatever height was appropriate for the surface the model rested upon.
There was much rejoicing.
Yay.
Testing our new suspension
The rejoicing stopped as I turned my attention to the question of keeping the wheels on the axles. Initially, I rejected the idea of gluing them in place. On the Caisson, I’d capped the axle with bitz large enough to prevent the wheels from sliding off. I had no more of them, so I started looking for alternatives. Inspiration struck as I spied by collection of skulls. Not real skulls, mind, but plastic ones for decorating miniatures in Grimdark. So far I’d only used one, and I’d paid good money for them. And the Ork skulls looked just the right size to act as hubcaps. So I started futzing about with the correct angle to trim the end of the axles to get enough plastic to plastic contact to make sure the skullcaps don’t fall off. When I realized I’d trimmed an axle too short, I asked myself why I was going to such trouble to avoid gluing the wheels in place.
The answer was simple – I didn’t want to work with superglue.
The alignment looks good.
Whining aside, I realized that the simplest way to get the look I wanted was to glue the axle into the wheel and glue the skullcap on the hub. Then I could adjust alignment by simply nudging the skull while the glue was still wet. So, I got out my superglue, cut the axles to the proper length, and affixed the wheels and caps on one end of the axles. Then it was simply a matter of sliding the axles into the proper bearings and gluing the wheels on the other end. I waited until the wheels were dry before attaching the other set of skulls. That way I only needed to worry about lining them up, and not that I was going to dislodge the alignment of the wheel as I did. Why persist with the skullcaps when their purpose was no longer relevant. Two reasons – one, I had grown attached to the visual; two – I’d already cut them from the sprue and cleaned up the attachment points. I could have thrown them in the Bitz box, but there was scant little decoration on this wagon chassis as it was.
Decorative touches
Speaking of decoration, at some point I took the flag from the chariot kit, extended the flagpole, and attached it to the back of the chassis. I also attached a not-so-random towhook under the back end. This towhook is for the Caisson. While all of this was going on, I was also spray-priming the animals and the Caisson. It had gotten up to forty out, and I wanted to take advantage of the warm weather. The assembly of the main chassis took so long that the sun had set before I was spraying that component. Luckily, my spray area is indoors, and I had light to see by. Unluckily, I had an open window sending all my warm indoor air into the cold outdoor air.
This week starts off really well by giving me an extra hour of sleeping, though in reality the whole idea that the gubbmint can dictate what time it is seems like one of those Canute-levels of arrogance that is unfortunately too common among the priestly caste.
The big news is Venus(retrograde) being her bitchy self, but the rest of the sky working to keep her contained. Specifically:
She’s in alignment, but with the Sun (which is directly opposed to the anti-libido of V(r) and with the moon (which diffuses and deflects her retrograde effects). Even better, in opposition to that alignment is Mercury (signifying oppositional/negatory change) and Mars (which is the counterpart to Venus and so puts the kibosh on the retrograde aspects.) Furthermore, Venus(retrograde) is trying to pull her crap while being in Libra. Libra, being the scales of justice, is having none of this backward-ass motion shit. Venus(retrograde) is a terrible sign, but with everything else going on this week, she can just go pound sand.
I know 11/12ths of you are getting irritated at all the attention that the universe is giving Scorpio, so I’ll get it out of the way first. Congratulations on surviving your dry spell. With Venus(retrograde) moving off into Libra, your home life should begin improving immediately. And I do mean home life — having the moon conjoined with Jupiter indicates that any problem you are having with extramarital partners will lag behind your spouse resolution-wise.
We’ve already talked about Libra having to play host to Venus(retrograde). Ordinarily, this would be bad, but as mentioned above, all the celestial censors are doing their part to shield you. So good news! Your week isn’t going to suck as the primary signs would indicate!
Aquarius still has to deal with Mars for another couple of weeks or so. Expect less belligerence starting about Nov 15.
Saturn in Capricorn is good for achieving your Glibfit goals. Start making room in your waistband for Thanksgiving dinner now.
Mercury in Sagittarius is an auspicious time for hunting. Also, this indicates that I’ll finally be able to get my father’s pistol out of gun-jail. About fucking time.
Loyal sidekick Rat and I pretty much plan our year around our primary hunting season.
This year, while we put in for and drew tags for deer, cow elk, and bear, the primary draw for us both were buck deer tags for the 30,000-acre Bosque del Oso State Wildlife Area in Colorado Game Management Unit (GMU) 851, west of Trinidad and very close to the New Mexico border. My project work in New Jersey this year forced me to pick one particular hunt, so the difficult-to-draw Bosque received out attention.
So, we did our map recons, cleaned, serviced and checked zero on rifles, prepared sidearms, sharpened knives, packed camping gear and everything else into the inestimable Rojito and headed for the Bosque the Friday before the season opened. We got down to the area early enough on Friday to have a quick vehicular scout around, seeing two big gangs of wild turkeys and a few does, but no bucks. That mattered little to us at that time, though, with a full five-day season ahead. A day-by-day recap of that season follows.
Day One
Cherry Canyon.
Opening Day dawned bright, clear and warm. That makes for a great day camping and woods-bumming, but not a great day for hunting. The woods were bone-dry, which made moving a lot like walking through dry corn flakes.
The Bosque was obtained by the State of Colorado, assisted by the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, from a natural gas extraction company. Natural gas extraction is still going on there as part of the purchase agreement, so while access into the Bosque by hunters is limited to foot or horseback traffic from the few designated parking areas, there are good roads for into the unit and we used those on opening day to make a quiet, if not really stealthy, foray far into the right fork of Apache Canyon on the north side of the Bosque. We took a good stand on a hillside overlooking a wide place in the canyon for a while but saw nothing other than scrub jays and chipmunks. Later we walked almost off the end of the property, seeing signs of black bear and turkeys, but no deer.
Mid-day usually doesn’t see much movement on warm, clear days, so we went up Bingham Canyon and proceeded to crawl Rojito up the ultimate portion of the access road, known to the local game wardens as the “Jeep Trail.” It lived up to its name, about a three or four mile climb up a steep, narrow path littered with boulders. It was a bad trail but nothing Rojito and I hadn’t done before, so when we conquered the trail, Rat and I admired the view for a bit, knowing that once any precipitation came in we wouldn’t be able to return. There was no deer sign about, so we headed back down.
In the late afternoon we went over to the eastern edge of the Bosque. By this time, it was t-shirt weather, but we walked up into Cherry Canyon. That location is much drier and more open than Apache, but while we saw some tracks, we saw no deer. But we knew colder, wetter weather was to move in overnight, which normally gets deer moving, so after repasting on Rat’s patented Heart-Stopper Bacon Bacon Cheese Bacon Double Bacon Cheeseburgers with sides of bacon, we retired that night optimistic for the next day.
Day Two
Rat, glassing from a ridgeline.
When we awoke on Sunday morning, the temperature had dropped noticeably, and the sky was low and gray, which boded well for seeing game. We headed again over to the eastern part of the Bosque, this time up Alamosita Canyon, a big, open canyon with pines on the south-facing slope and junipers and sage on the north-facing slope.
The wind was right in our faces as we left Rojito and headed on foot up the gas company road – ideal. Stepping slowly, we moved quietly up the road and into the broad canyon.
Not long after we entered the canyon and began ninja-ing our way up through the sage, over the top of a small spur poking out from the canyon wall to the left came two forkhorn mulies, maybe 60 yards away.
“Nice meat bucks,” I whispered to Rat. “Want one?”
Rat’s deer.
Rat replied by dropping to one knee and taking aim. I watched through binoculars as he fired, sending a 165-grain .30-06 pill right into the bigger buck’s vitals. Through the glass, I saw a big puff of hair explode from the buck’s far side and knew we had a dead deer; the buck hadn’t quite figured that out yet and ran in about a 150-yard semicircle up the hillside, crossing a gas wellhead clear-cut and dying on the far side. When we found the buck, we could look about a hundred yards down the hill and see Rojito parked; as the Bosque allows using the gas company roads to retrieve game during midday hours, once Rat had the buck dressed we were able to pull Rojito up to within thirty feet or so to load the deer up.
I have to say here, I’ve shot deer I had to drag for miles and miles to get out, which really makes one appreciate a convenient extraction for once.
Then the snow moved in.
By the time we had Rat’s deer loaded the sky was spitting wet pellets of snow, which were beginning to accumulate. Since Trinidad was only about 20 miles distant, and since our featureless campsite had nary a tree from which to suspend a game pole, we decided to run the buck into town for processing. On the drive out of Alamosita we saw on an adjacent sage flat another forkhorn meat buck, a near twin for Rat’s. Rat asked me if I wanted to sneak in and get a shot at him, but I kind of wanted a bigger buck, so declined. We ran Rat’s buck into town to the processor, grabbed a hot sandwich, and rode back out to the Bosque and ventured once more up the right fork of Apache Canyon.
Not really suitable for cold weather.
There we remained until night was coming on but found no fresh tracks other than those of a cow elk who had crossed the canyon on her way somewhere in the previous hour or so. Even so, we went back to our cold dry camp that evening with one deer in the bag and confident of the prospects for a second.
Day Three
Cold.
On the third day, my luck changed, and not just because I was still toting around a 10-pound .338 Win Mag whilst loyal sidekick Rat was happily hiking along encumbered only by his day pack and sidearm.
The snow had stopped, but the day was still chilly (low 30s) and the sky still mostly cloudy. We ascended Torres Canyon in the morning and saw a few tracks in the recent snow but no bucks. Spotting a few does on the road over to Alamosita gave me a bit of hope, but despite a long afternoon tramp up the canyon that had been good to us the day before, we saw no shootable bucks. By day’s end I gave up most of my hopes for a big buck and determined, with two days left, to take a meat buck if the opportunity presented itself.
High point of the day, though, was watching several huge flocks of sandhill cranes as the afternoon sky cleared. The big birds were flying high and heading south, and as always, we marveled at how their cries came down so clearly from their considerable altitude. It’s a sound always associated with hunting in southern Colorado.
Day Four
Alamosita Canyon
The penultimate day of our five-day hunt broke clear and cold.
With Rat again happily unencumbered by his rifle, we decided to hike up the left fork of Apache Canyon, having previously only gone up the right fork. That side of the canyon was a little narrower than the right fork, heavily wooded on both sides, steeper and rockier on the north-facing slopes.
The warm afternoon before had melted snow and produced mud in open areas which had frozen overnight, preserving tracks. We cut some interesting trails: A trio of turkeys being trailed by a bobcat, a mountain lion track left in the snow, and tracks of fox, coyote, rabbits and pine marten. But the big event of that hike was when the sound of a rock tapping down the canyon wall to our right led us to see two bull elk trying to pick their way along the slope to get out of our sight. One was a middling five-by-five, but the other was a huge, magnificent six-by-six that any elk hunter would have been proud to have on the wall. The bulls were a mere hundred and fifty yards away and could have been easily taken, but we had no elk tags for the Bosque, and so we watched them picking their way slowly along the steep, rocky slope until they were out of sight.
Bobcat, tracking turkeys. Hope he scored.Lion track.
Then, this being a Tuesday, misfortune struck. A large drilling rig and its crew entered the left fork and proceeded to drive up the company road, making a fair amount of noise and pretty much scotching any idea of hunting that canyon any further. Rat and I walked on out, picked up Rojito in the parking lot and decided to hit one place we had not yet explored, that being the nearby Cirueta Canyon. As it happened, we didn’t get to explore that location.
On the approach to the canyon’s parking area, we spotted a gang of mulies in a creek bottom not far from the road. We determined that there was one forkhorn meat buck in the band of does.
Now I’m no fan of road-hunting, but when the blood-wind blows you such an obvious prize, it’s folly not to accept. As Rat was driving, I grabbed Thunder Speaker, bailed from the vehicle and creeped into the creek bottom, moving from juniper bush to juniper bush to within about sixty yards of the little buck. Finding an opening in the juniper in front of me, I slid Thunder Speaker through the branches, rested the fore-end on one large branch and let fly. The little buck was facing me with his head high; I put a .338 pill right between his front quarters. He ran about sixty yards – towards the road, mind you – and collapsed. Once again, the extraction was easy, which was something of a first, having that happen twice in one season; I don’t know about most of you, but I rarely have that kind of luck.
Thus ended the 2018 mule deer hunt, with no trophies but plenty of high-quality, additive-free, free range venison in the freezer. Any day hunting is better than the best day working, and a day when you bring home venison is just that much better.
Other Notable Events
About to tag my freezer-filler.
An observation: I’ve always maintained (and have done so here in previous articles) that you can shoot little stuff with a big gun, but you can’t shoot big stuff with a little gun. While this is true, in the case of this year’s plump little meat buck I ran across the down side of that. While my shot killed my buck quickly – and I will tell you, a .338 Win Mag will put down a 125-pound deer right now – there was a drawback, as the buck wasn’t facing me straight-on but quartering a little more than I had suspected, so that my 225-grain .338 bullet exited rather forcefully through the right front quarter, destroying most of that quarter’s edible meat. So, I will have to bear that in mind in future deer-only expeditions.
Sunday evening (Day Two) the weather precluded cooking in camp and the cold had us wanting a hot meal, so as evening set in we headed down the road to the village of Segundo. The general store and deli at that location were already closed, but the bar across the highway (Sam’s, in case you’re ever in that area) was open, and while they didn’t have a menu they did have a free-lunch counter consisting of an open bag of chips, some cookies, and a big crock full of sausages alongside a supply of rolls and condiments. We had out hot meal, but the real entertainment of that evening was meeting the man who was apparently the inspiration for the character Gabby Johnson in Blazing Saddles. He was an older gent with an impressive beard and did speak authentic frontier gibberish, offering such gems as “Ash-a-stebba garage cat inna gorge thang” and “Mer dawg issa horsa bit off da kin beet.”
And, finally, having tagged out a day early gave us an afternoon to explore Trinidad. In case you aren’t familiar with that Colorado metropolis, Trinidad is an old mining town a few miles from Raton Pass and the New Mexico border. While most of the mining in the area has faded away, it seems to have been replaced by recreational weed, as we counted over twenty rec-weed shops during the two or three hours we spent strolling around town seeking cold beers. That close to the New Mexico border, I suppose that should come as a surprise to no one.
What’s Next?
A few more cold nights in the old summer-weight tent has us now shopping for a canvas wall tent with a stovepipe hole, to keep us warmer of an evening; that will make sleeping a whole lot more pleasant. But plans for next season always seem to begin during an actual hunt, and sights seen in the Bosque have me determined to seek fall turkey and bear tags for the area in coming years. Rat and I also have a wealth of preference points for elk but haven’t yet decided what to spend them on.
Any day hunting is indeed better than any day working. Work may beckon now, but there are a lot of grouse and other small game in Pennsylvania, not so far from my temporary New Jersey digs, so watch for some news from that quarter soon.
This week’s alignments: Sol-Mercury-Saturn. Something bad is ending, or at least we will find out about it this week. Anything bad in particular? Hard to say. There are indicatiors that it refers to a venereal disease or genital dysfunction (Venus retrogade in Scorpio) though this could also indicate some gossipy person catches a sudden case of STFU. The stronger indicator (Saturn) indicates the trouble ceasing has something to do with… sea-goats. Does that mean anything to you? If sea-cows are manatees, does that make sea goats narwhals? Walruses?
This week, Derpetologist and Mustang are going to get laid. Or possibly divorced. There’s a crapton of ambivalence in the skies this week. We’ve got Sol-Terra-Venus(retrograde) with Mars in opposition. Which means home/love with both benevolent and malign influences and martial aspects either resisting or the root cause of them. Very two faced.
Speaking of two-faced, Gemini gets a visit from the moon, which is the classic sign of betrayal. If the moon were waxing, you could see it as an expansion of your circle of friends, but the moon is waning, so back-stabbery it is.
ONCE AGAIN, ZARDOZ IS BACK TO RAISE HIS CHOSEN ONES FROM BRUTALITY, AND BRING PROPER ADVICE TO THE PATHETIC BRUTALS SEEKING ADVICE FROM THE WRETCHED BRUTAL THEREPIST: DEAR ABBY
DEAR ABBY: I’m a millennial, and it seems these days people stay at jobs for only a few years before moving on. That has been my experience in the past, but now I’m in a position that’s fulfilling and where I am creatively satisfied.
All my friends are always looking for their next gig, but for once, I don’t feel that way. They keep sending me job postings they think I would be interested in, which would be right up my alley if I was looking, but I’m not.
How should I respond? Does it say I’m lacking motivation or goals if I don’t have the desire to leave the company where I am currently working? In this day and age, is it OK to stay longer at a company, or does that actually hurt your resume? Does it show a lack of drive? — SEEKING GUIDANCE
ZARDOZ TAKE $100 FOR “THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPENED, ALEX”.
ZARDOZ HAS IT ON HIGH AUTHORITY THAT MILLENIALS ARE AMONG THE FILTHIEST OF BRUTALS AND ARE INCAPABLE OF MAINTAINING ANY MEANINGFUL EMPLOYMENT. BRUTAL SEEKING GUIDANCE THEREFORE IS A TROLL, A FALSE FLAG, AND THUS IS BEST SUITED TO TOILING THE GRAIN FIELDS FOR THE VORTEX.
ZARDOZ HAS SPOKEN
DEAR ABBY: I’ve had it up to here with my crabby next-door neighbor. She grows vegetables in her garden — squash and pumpkins at this time of year. Our properties are separated by a wire fence.
A few days before Halloween last year, a friend brought her two grandsons, who are 4 and 6, for a visit. They were excited to find a pumpkin in my yard that weighed about 10 pounds and managed to get it into my house because they wanted to make a jack-o’-lantern. No sooner did I reach for the phone to tell my neighbor what they had done than she came banging at my door accusing the boys of theft! To make peace, I handed the pumpkin to her with my apologies.
This morning I noticed two pumpkins have tendrils that have crept through the fence and are now growing on my property. More than one person has told me, “They’re on your property, so they belong to you.” Another has said that if my tree grows over her property, she has the right to trim the branches. Ergo: I get to keep the pumpkins. I think a fair solution is to keep one pumpkin and give her the other. But “Crabby Cathy” might have other ideas. Before this gets ugly again, what do you say? — PUMPKIN PILFERER IN PETALUMA, CALIF.
BRUTAL OBSESSION WITH PUMPKINS IS AGGRIVATING. IT IS PUMPKIN SPICE EVERYTHING THESE DAYS AND ZARDOZ NO LONGER ACCEPTS BRUTAL FIXATION ON PUMPKINS. THE ONLY THING ZARDOZ HATE MORE THAT PUMPKIN ARE THE DISGUSTING BRUTALS THAT PERPETUATE BRUTAL INFATUATION WITH THE FLAVOURLESS GOURD. ZARDOZ ONLY ADVICE, IS TO SEEK BRUTAL NEIGHBOUR AND CLEANSE ALL WHO INTEND TO SPREAD THE SCURGE OF PUMPKIN MANIA. PUMKIN SEED SHALL NO LONGER PLAUGUE THE EARTH IF ZARDOZ HAS ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT.
Geek books and real books. My fun real book this past month was by H.L. Mencken, who was incapable of writing anything uninteresting. Although we love him for his short and cynical essays, chock full of quotable and meme-able sentences, his scholarly work is equally enjoyable. The American Language is a study on how our version of English developed and on the taxonomy of American vocabulary, grammar, and usage. It delights my inner geek, amuses and informs on every page, and gives a fascinating insight into Mencken’s inner thoughts on the language that he used so brilliantly and effectively. I was less thrilled with a lot of the updates added by editors after Mencken’s stroke and eventual death, but at least they were kind enough to set their portions off in brackets.
My geek book for the month is High Fidelity Circuit Design, by Norman Crowhurst and George Cooper. This is a book from the 1950s that has recently been reprinted. If you want to understand Nyquist stability criteria, feedback, and the finer points of tube amplifier design (I told you it was a geek book!), look no further. These days, engineers use computer modeling to determine gain and phase margins for stability and sims to predict performance, but back in the stone ages, they actually plotted stuff on graph paper and used rulers and protractors. I confess that reading this covered my with waves of anachrophilia.
SugarFree
October is the month for horror. I went back to the classics: Dracula, Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekell and Mr. Hyde. Old friends to cuddle up with.
If you’ve never, Frankenstein plays out far differently that pretty much every movie adaption. The Monster is made over just a few pages of grave robbing and surgery, no electricity and no cackling, and Frankenstein is young, only about 21, and while full of hubris, he isn’t a mad scientist, just a mildly full-of-himself student. It would be interesting to see a film adaptation actually tackle the book.
SP
Let’s see, what have I been reading this month. I’ve just started The Pattern of Evolution by Niles Eldredge, which our European guest had selected from our library for bedtime reading and left laying on the table upon his departure. (One of the great benefits of marrying another extreme reader is that there are always books that I haven’t read, and I don’t even have to venture out to the library or pay Amazon.)
I’m revisiting The Drunken Botanist by Amy Stewart. Stewart has put together a pretty comprehensive look at the major plants, herbs, spices, that are made into various potent potables. There are interesting historical notes about the discovery and use of the different ingredients, and some geeky botany stuff, too. Oh, and recipes for drinks. This isn’t really a book one reads straight through, although I am. But I also read cookbooks cover to cover just for fun.
In fiction, I’m still working my way through the Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly on Kindle. I haven’t viewed the series which is based on the character, but I might add it to my watchlist.
In audio, I was listening to A Dangerous Fortune by Ken Follett, but I’ve kind of lost interest about halfway through. Plot: Horrible people do horrible things. Less horrible people also sometimes do horrible things. Especially in 19th century banking empires, British politics, and banana republics run by thugs. Eh. Probably won’t finish it unless I end up having another long, tedious drive alone.
jesse.in.mb
I don’t have much to report. I went on a bit of a binge of buying cookbooks including Mormioto’s Mastering the Art of Japanese Home Cooking which is accessible enough and got me to make my own dashi from scratch (god damn did my kitchen stink of fish for days, but it was very tasty). I found the content personal, but I was hoping for more…I dunno, context for the food I was preparing. I also grabbed Maangchi’s Real Korean Cooking more to kick money her way than anything as I’ve been scraping recipes from her website for years (The Boyfriend does not approve of how much I gravitate to her more gochugaru-centric offerings).
I burned through the available issues of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina which started off with just the right level of twisting to the character I was first introduced to by Melissa Joan Hart, but I’m not sure it is living up to its promise so far.
Started but not finished: I circled back to The Lies of Locke Lamora, and pushed through until it found its groove. I’m a little more than half-way done at this point so maybe by next WAWR I’ll have a final opinion. I’ve been chipping away at just the introduction to James R. Walker’s Lakota Myth, which has been unskippably interesting, but also too academic for the naked-poolside-reading I was hoping the main contents would be while Iwas in Palm Springs…perhaps next time I’ll have more.
The Wizard of Oz: Or so I thought. It was actually a 2 hour radio broadcast will a full cast. Not recommended.
Till We Have Faces: I didn’t realize this was fiction, based only on the name I assumed it was non-fiction. But it was one of the few Lewis books left that I hadn’t read so I threw a hold on it in the library’s audiobook application. It is in fact fiction, and it is fantastic. In addition to being written by an expert craftsman, this is a novel that would be pretty impossible to write in this day and age. The concept of having a female protagonist who takes up some masculine role in society would inevitably become bogged down in the current simple-minded discussion of gender issues. But being written in the 50s actually allows Lewis to write a stronger, more interesting female character that provides a clearer analysis of gender roles. Nothing turns me off of fiction faster than weak women, and between this book and That Hideous Strength, its nice to see my literary hero doesn’t fall into my literary pet peeve. Also, this not really a book about gender roles. Its not a book about any one thing, because it is about nine or so different things. If I had to pick one thing it was about the most, it would be about how you would get along in a world where the divine is real and doesn’t really love us. Highest Recommendation.
Democracy in America: Ufda. I find historical books about history and political economy really interesting, but they require a lot of concentration because you need to both consider the words on the page and the frame of reference that they were written in. Kind of like the Screwtape Letters. In any case, 34 hours of that is just too much for me this month, when I’ve either been too sick to do productive work (fucking strep, fucking high-false-negative strep tests), or working 7 days a week to catch up. Only made it through about the first third, I’ll come back later. Incomplete.
Whitepapers: I don’t normally list all the whitepapers and journal articles that I read, but there were some interesting ones that might be of interest here
Honestly, there isn’t much groundbreaking here, but it lays out the argument for charter schools in the suburbs. Just the kind of thing you would expect to find from some shitlord conservative think-tank like… *needle scratch* the Progressive Policy Institute? Interesting for that reason alone.
You know all those people saying “80% of the US is opposed to political correctness?” This is the research that they are pulling from. Its generally a pretty interesting look at the electorate, though I think it has some shortcomings. It’s interesting because the categorization they propose feels truthy, and it seems to be a better signal than party affiliation for predicting opinions of the tribes. It’s limited because it doesn’t spend a lot of time on meeeeeeee and my tribe. Political opinion is a high dimensional space, and this projects that space onto a single axis. It puts me in the moderate camp, which is probably right in that I’m pretty close to center on the left-right axis. But I’m a huge outlier on a bunch of other axes on the political space. A model is only as good or bad as its predictive power, and this seems predictive for a lot of people. “Bad for outliers” is hardly a reason to reject a model. And I found it to be very helpful to see the divisions within the right wing and within the left wing. Its not news that the right and left disagree, but disagreements within the wings are pretty important these days. Highly Recommended.
The truest thing I’ve ever read was the argument that Killmonger was the protagonist in Black Panther, which is an Alt-Right parable. The second truest thing I’ve ever read was this paper. This paper documents and discusses the reduction in faith in information provided by institutions like media, government, and academia. The interesting thing though is that this paper is *incredibly* careful to present the case in a way that doesn’t turn off anyone from any political orientation. One of my hangups is that a lot of this distrust is the result of these institutions becoming untrustworthy because they are becoming self serving, partisan, and/or low-quality shitholes. Guess what, it talks about that (maybe using different terminology…) One of the hang-ups of a friend of mine is that the Right has a financial incentive in developing an ecosystem of alternative news outlet and those with the biggest financial incentive are the loudest talking about how you can’t trust the MSM. Guess what, it talks about that too. It is pretty clear that this has been heavily edited to take into considerations the thoughts and objections of reviewers with a very wide array of intellectual orientations, and its a very, very strong document because of that. I told this friend that this is exhibit A for why educational institutions need intellectual heterogeneity. While this progressive friend is not yet ready to admit that academia is a stifling monoculture, this paper is helping me change his mind. Highest Recommendation
Podcasts: I just wanted to call this one out because it is really, really interesting
So to Speak Podcast with Don Verrilli. Verilli was the Solicitor General in the Obama administration. He is, quite possibly, the most skilled Supreme Court lawyer alive. I probably don’t agree with him on anything policy-wise, but when the guy talks about how to argue in front of the Supreme Court, there aren’t too many living people with more to say. And when he makes an admission against interest, well, that’s worth taking a note of. He makes two here.
First, Verilli says that he thinks the Roberts Court really does support the 1st amendment because they have an ideological commitment to it. Its not just a tool for achieving a partisan end of being pro-business or owning the libs. I think this too, but its nice to hear it confirmed like this.
Second, an more importantly, Verilli comes out and says that there’s not an Originalist argument for campaign finance laws. He talks about how the Founders had a broader understanding of corruption that the modern court does. But even if that’s true, they didn’t think that there was an exception to the 1A to combat this. I don’t think he says it, but this is consistent with the idea that it was the structure of the government that was supposed to prevent this type of corruption, not restrictions on civilian action. Recommended if you follow the SC
I went 6-7 last week, so I’m still doing crappy. I put in a lot more effort last week, and got the same result as when I was half-assing it. You can probably guess what’s going to happen this week. That being said, I’ve added the moneyline odds. Moneyline odds are based around 100 – if there’s a plus in front of them, it’s the amount you’d win from a $100 bet. If there’s a minus, it’s the amount you’d have to bet to get $100. So in the first example, a $100 bet on Miami would win you $290, where a $360 bet on Houston would win you $100.
If anyone wants to know, I got my odds here, on 10/25.
Here are this week’s picks:
Miami (+290) at Houston (-7.5 / -360). The Dolphins haven’t been so bad, and the Texans haven’t been so good to normally support a spread over a TD, but Ryan Tannehill is out. And while he’s not the greatest QB around, he’s the best the Dolphins have. HOU – give the points.
Philadelphia (-3 / -165) at Jacksonville (+145). Cody Kessler seemed to breathe new life into the Jaguars in the second half of last week’s game. After screwing up for an entire month, however, they still have a lot to prove. PHI – give the points.
Cleveland (+320) at Pittsburgh (-8.5 / -400). Cleveland has shown that they are a much better team than last year. Tough defense, decent running game. I’d be very surprised if the Steelers can meet that point spread. CLE – take the points.
Denver (+400) at Kansas City (-10 / -520). Again, a point spread I’m not sure that the favorite can meet. The Chiefs have shown they are a strong team, but the Broncos displayed their own skills last week. Even if it was just the Cardinals that they stomped. I wouldn’t take the moneyline, even at 4 to 1, but I’d take the spread. DEN – take the points.
NY Jets (+280) at Chicago (-7 / -340). Chicago has shown a great talent for letting me down. I think they’ll win, but again, I think it will be close. NYJ – take the points.
Washington (-110) at NY Giants (PK / -110). The Redskins showed some toughness in their win over the Cowboys. Maybe it’s just because I haven’t paid enough attention, but I don’t see the Giants beating them. WAS
Seattle (+135) at Detroit (-3 / -150). I’ve been underestimating the Lions all season. At home against the Seahawks, I’ll stop that. DET – give the points.
Tampa Bay (+170) at Cincinnati (-4 / -200). Tampa isn’t a bad team, but Winston throws a lot of passes to people in the wrong jerseys. Cincinnati is a good enough team to take advantage of that. CIN – give the points.
Baltimore (-2 / -130) at Carolina (+115). Baltimore is a good enough team to beat Carolina. Cam Newton is a good enough QB to be a pain in the ass for the Ravens, but I don’t think he’s quite good enough to get the win. And with a 2 point spread, it’s basically a pick’em game. BAL – give the points.
Indianapolis (-3 / -155) at Oakland (+135). Oakland has lost a lot of close games, but the Colts have a good offense. A really good offense. IND – give the points.
San Francisco (-1 / -110) at Arizona (-110). Ah, the suck bowl. Does anyone care? Meh, ARI – take the point.
Green Bay (+350) at LA Rams (-9 / -450). I think the Rams will probably win, but again, I also think the Packers are a good enough team to cover the spread. I’d feel better about that prediction if the spread was 11 points, though. GB – take the points.
New Orleans (-110) at Minnesota (-1 / -110). The Vikings are a good team, but I don’t know if they’re as good as the Saints. NO – give the point.
New England ( -14 / -1250) at Buffalo (+800). Okay, now that is a point spread. Still, I think the Patriots will make that. NE – give the points.
Well, the kit containing the animals arrived. It was made by the same folks who made the main model, but is an older kit for their fantasy line. It’s supposed to make a chariot that can be pulled by either horses or lions. Since our IFV model is far, far larger than the chariot, we’re going to use both horses and lions. They did recruit the aid of a traveling circus after all.
Ragnmar: “Um, won’t the lions eat the horses?”
Dorian: “We just put the horses in front. That way the lions motivate the horses and the horses motivate the lions.”
Circus Lady: “I told you earlier, they’ve all been lobotomized, and had override chips implanted. The controller is built into the handle of my whip.”
Dorian: “Sure, spoil the fun.”
Ragnmar: “You’re a dick, Dorian.”
Don’t Worry, They’ll be Fine
The chariot kit also has a heap of bitz that will be perfect for adding character to other pieces. My army in the actual game has a lion’s head ensign, so it won’t be hard to find homes for the lion-themed decorations from the chariot. Lets clip all of the animals off the chariot sprue and assemble them. I specifically picked the chariot because the animal were posed to be pulling, and had an attachment point on their harnesses where a simple loop shackle could be fitted. We will eventually attach our chains to these shackles, but we’ve got to get them made first. The base model had the animals attached to a yoke, but has only one yoke in the set. To provide consistency, I want all four to be attached by a similar system.
My first idea was to drill into the attachment point and fit these staples. The loops of the staples proved to be too wide for the model as built. I’d made the mistake of buying the staples before I had the chariot model, and guessed wrong. When I tried to squeeze it narrower to fit the model, I started to realize it was going to be a good deal of work to get it to fit. Not only that, but in the end, it was going to be rather ugly and not fit properly. Oh well, $1 lost. Not really, since the staples are still perfectly serviceable in their original function.
An alternative came along when my first shipment of plasticard pieces arrived and it turned out I’d ordered the wrong size. I’d been buying axles for the main carriage, and these pieces of tubing are way too narrow for that role. But, if I can bend them into a hundred an eighty degree turn, they would fit almost perfectly as shackles for the chains to attach to.
So now we get to our first piece on working with plasticard. What is plasticard? In short, it’s high density polystyrene. Yes, the same material they make styrafoam from, only without the foamy airspace. I have straight tubes of the stuff and I need to bend it. Best way to do that is to apply heat. We’ve ventured into something I’ve never actually done before, but I’m too far down the rabbit hole to stop now. So, the first source of heat I tried is hot water. I took my Japanese kettle, set it to boiling, filled a coffee cup with hot water and rested a plasticard tube in it. I got a gentle bend in the part of the tube in the water after quite a few minutes of waiting. This did not make me happy, as I needed a rather severe bend, and I’m an impatient sort. So I dumped the now cooled water into my brush-washing bin and went to get my hairdryer.
My hairdryer has never been used on hair. I got it when I first needed to put plastic up to the windows on my house. It has only ever been used on plastic, and today would be no different. Now, if you do the math, there is probably more energy trapped in that cup of hot water than I’ll be getting out of the hair dryer. But the problem was, it wasn’t conducting into the polystyrene, but evaporating away with the steam. The hot air moving past it at high rate of speed will transfer more of its heat into the polystyrene than the water did. One thing to note with as thin a work piece as I’ve got here – the airflow out of your standard consumer hair dryer is not even in temperature. There are hot spots directly downwind of the heating elements. These hot spots are what we are looking for, as they will render the plasticard the most malleable. There may be some trial and error involved in finding these spots, but in the end, I got a loop. With the air of pliers and a mandrel, I was able to refine one of those bends into a shackle shape. Some trimming and cleanup later, and it glued neatly to the attachment point on the first horse. That’s a second benefit of switching from metal to plasticard – we can glue it and paint it using the same glue and paint as the rest of the model. The day is saved, we can now get our draft animals modeled. Sadly, as always happens, I get the technique perfected on the last shackle I need to make.
A lot of frustrating time went into this.
They will need a base, as they were not balanced to stand without being attached to the rest of their original kit. I can get some bases from the game store when I pick up sheet plasticard for something else I plan to do. Fast Forward a Week, and we have a plethora of plasticard options. Except there’s still a problem. I underestimated the diameter of the plasticard tube yet again. On the bright side, the new tubing is of the perfect diameter to serve as an axle for the wheels. So, I’m going to adjust my mental plan for the design. Not by much, mind you, but I had originally planned the MDF axles that came with the wheels and pinning them to the tubing, which would have required tubing wide enough for the axle to fit inside. Did I just say MDF? Yes. When wheels I got are Medium Density Fiberboard. While I can’t glue them to the polystyrene using plastic glue, I can paint them using the same paints.
I’m going to be perfectly honest. Scratch-build is new ground for me. So I’m going to start with a proof of concept and put together a caisson. Since there are multiple definitions of ‘caisson’, lets be clear – I’m talking about the two-wheeled cart for hauling ammunition. The wheels came in packs of four, and I only needed six for the main build. So I have a pair free for this proof of concept. I also have in my bitz collection a great many ammo boxes and fuel cans. As such can build the caisson and heap it with appropriate cargo without any additional investment. Is this a part of the main kitbash? Well, yes, it’s simply going to be towed behind the vehicle.
We finally got around to sprucing up our basement which doubles as a bedroom when my dad visits. He doesn’t do stairs all that well and since the garage and basement are on the same level it’s easier for him. There is a full bathroom down there as well so he has everything he needs. When he’s not visiting it doubles as an orgy room. Just kidding. Maybe.
While the basement is big enough to have a queen size bed laying around I always liked the idea of a Murphy bed since it would free up floor space when the bed isn’t needed. They make hardware kits for a few hundred dollars, and really only a few hundred dollars of wood is needed. However, I thought about it some and figured I could build it with just 4 bolts (3/8ths thick) and use some of the ¾ inch plywood I had in the back of my truck (that was supposed to go towards a different project). I did make a run to the lumber yard for some poplar, but if I had to buy the materials instead of using what I had I would buy ½ inch plywood for the bed frame and cut the poplar down to ½ inch thickness as well. Since the poplar is 13/16ths thick a thin blade on a band saw would do the trick in splitting it into 1/2 inch and 1/4 inch thicknesses. The leftover ¼ inch thick pieces would then be perfect for some of the trim work later on. Unfortunately, I don’t own a band saw (yet…) so I made do with what I had.
I started with the bed frame, ripping the poplar down to 2 ½ inches and cut to length. Then I used my super handy Kreg pocket hole jig (*sticks out hand for a kick-back from Kreg) and screwed everything together. No glue needed as the frame will get glued to the plywood:
This is a view of the foot end, and the two areas that are “notched” in are where the fold down legs will go.
After I glued the frame to the plywood, I used my super handy Makita track saw (*sticks out hand for a kick-back from Makita) to shave off any proud edges so that the sides of the frame would have a nice even surface to glue to:
Here is what the bed frame looks like with the sides glued on:
The other end is the head end, and I wanted some type of built in headboard that also doubles as a support for the mattress when the bed is folded up:
Other than a couple of screws in the sides it’s just glue holding the headboard and the brackets to the frame. The mattress we bought is really light (20 pounds?) so this is plenty strong.
Also, I glued a piece of scrap I had that was ripped to 45 degrees to brace the corners which are also just glued together:
For the case, the ¾ inch plywood is definitely needed as this will support the head end of the bed when it’s down, and the entire thing when it’s folded up.
I cut dadoes on the sides where the back will attach with my super handy Makita compact router (*still waiting on my kick-back Makita!) then pre-drilled holes to make it easier to glue and screw to the back:
I still managed to get glue all over the place while trying to attach the sides to the back. A nice, slow drying, gel type of glue would be awesome (*sticks out hand for a kick-back from Tite-Bond for the genius idea) as the regular wood glue just ran down the sides in the few minutes it took to assemble it. Perhaps construction adhesive for subfloors or even liquid nails might work better here (*retracts empty hand). Hopefully I’ll remember that next time.
Here is the case with the sides attached:
The top was glued all around, but just screws on the sides. The clamps really made for a nice, solid fit:
So after the case was built I took out my tape measure to check that the inside was big enough:
63 ½ inches.
Next I checked the width of the frame:
61 ½ inches. Huh. So I’m off an inch and a half. I’m not sure where I gained this extra inch and a half, but it’s a hell of a lot better than being an inch and a half short.
So I decided some wood blocks that go where the bolts mount the frame to the case would do the trick:
So here it is assembled in the up and down position:
There is a lot of trim work still to do and some kind of safety latch to hold it in the upright position is needed, so I will save that for part 2.
This week starts off really well by giving me an extra hour of sleeping, though in reality the whole idea that the gubbmint can dictate what time it is seems like one of those Canute-levels of arrogance that is unfortunately too common among the priestly caste.
ZARDOZ HAS IT ON HIGH AUTHORITY THAT MILLENIALS ARE AMONG THE FILTHIEST OF BRUTALS AND ARE INCAPABLE OF MAINTAINING ANY MEANINGFUL EMPLOYMENT. BRUTAL SEEKING GUIDANCE THEREFORE IS A TROLL, A FALSE FLAG, AND THUS IS BEST SUITED TO TOILING THE GRAIN FIELDS FOR THE VORTEX.
BRUTAL OBSESSION WITH PUMPKINS IS AGGRIVATING. IT IS PUMPKIN SPICE EVERYTHING THESE DAYS AND ZARDOZ NO LONGER ACCEPTS BRUTAL FIXATION ON PUMPKINS. THE ONLY THING ZARDOZ HATE MORE THAT PUMPKIN ARE THE DISGUSTING BRUTALS THAT PERPETUATE BRUTAL INFATUATION WITH THE FLAVOURLESS GOURD. ZARDOZ ONLY ADVICE, IS TO SEEK BRUTAL NEIGHBOUR AND CLEANSE ALL WHO INTEND TO SPREAD THE SCURGE OF PUMPKIN MANIA. PUMKIN SEED SHALL NO LONGER PLAUGUE THE EARTH IF ZARDOZ HAS ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT.
