Saturday, March 31:

I was two knobs away from finishing the kitchen cabinet project (which has bloomed to a total of ten knobs) when my Chili Pepper kiln took a shit. I am inconsolable. I hate you, you stupid fucking piece of shit kiln. I've got a headache. I'm going home.

Friday March 30:

About a year ago I was taking a picture of the giant rotted hole in our bathroom floor for the blog page. Don decided that he wanted to be in the picture too because he's 100% BEHIND whatever it is that makes me happy, be that the blog or the beads or whatever. So he hiked down his pants and made with the plumber's ass (or plumber's BEHIND, whichever you prefer). As with the picture of the hedgehog poo I never really had a reason to inflict this photo upon you so I never did. So, thus far Random and Odd's Stuff Portrait Fridays has brought to light two previously unseen photos, both of which are of questionable taste. Coincidence? What isn't!

Hey! There are some new pimped aardvarks up in the Aardvark Project Gallery! Hooray! Already I am glad that I got out of bed this morning. There's a Dragonvark from phoenixxfirestudios and a Stegoceradvark from spielorjh.deviantart.com. Go look at 'em!

Tuesday, March 27:

Yarg. My Dad has been in the hospital since last Wednesday with pneumonia. He will get better but his recovery is being hampered by the fact that he has morphed into uncooperative Hospital Dad (the exact opposit of Regular Dad.) So it's been a rough week for everyone- us, Dad, the nurses. Anyways, I bring this up because my shipping times and bead outputs are a little slow as a result. Bear with us on that.

Thank goodness for random and odd's Stuff Portrait Friday. Blogging on a regular basis is hard work for me and I especially I need a little push this week to come up with something funny. This week's theme is "Behind" and I actually have a picture that goes with that. We all have that to look forward to now.

Friday, March 23:

To celebrate the fact that I am incredibly behind in work this week I spent an hour looking for the above photo so I could participate in "Stuff Portrait Fridays". It's a sort-of game started by http://randomandodd.com where in folks post photos on their own blogs according to a weekly theme. I read about it just today on Jean Yate's blog page and thought I'd give it a whirl. This week's theme: Two.

My "Two" photo is kind of gross but I'm posting it anyway because I think the funniness outweighs the grossness. So, anyway, my photo is of a turd produced by my late hedgehog, Biscuit. The image has not been altered in any way. Hard to believe as it may seem, Biscuit the hedgehog pooped out a perfect, though backwards, number two. (Most hedgehog turds are number one shaped. That's why this is so neat.) She always had an excellent sense of humor.

If you have a blog page and a "Two" themed picture you can play along!

Wednesday, March 21:

Kate Mc Kinnon clued me in about the identity of the peculiar duck toy that I found on the ground. It's a Pokemon character named Psyduck! And it's got Psychic Attack! Of course it does. Armed with this information I Googled "Psyduck" and found this lengthy Wikipedia article on said toy. Apparently, Psyduck works as an anchorman on a Pokemon News show. He suffers from intense headaches that cause him to release psychokinetic powers and also suffers from some kind of sleeping disorder. It sounds like he's got a medical problem that's being exploited by his handlers, but that's just me. If you follow a few links in the Psyduck article you will find a staggering amount of information about all things Pokemon. (And by "staggering" I mean "an amount so copious that it's facinating and a little sad"). So works the Wikipedia.

Just for the record, I did attempt to make my own Psyduck out of glass. That design is not real intuitive--it's so short and fat and the bill is so pendulous. Mine came out taller and thinner than the original. I don't really like it but everyone else does so we're going to use it as a pull for the blinds above the happy yellow sink in the kitchen.

Four new beads on the FOR SALE page!

Monday, March 19:

The tile project (the one where we're decorating all of the trim in our house with 4x4" tiles painted by people with a few drinks in them) is still plugging along. Above are two recent examples that demonstrate the range of subject matter and painting styles typical to this kind of artwork. I'm pretty sure that the hideous clown was an attempt to "fix" an already painted tile that came from the reject bucket (or "Bucket-O-Theory", as we call it). Since no one will own up to painting the clown I may never know exactly how he came into being. A gal with a robust attention span, Caroline, spent several hours working on the fish tile. That's a beautiful little painting. Most of the 150 or so tiles created so far fall somewhere between the two of these. A bunch more of them are in the Bucket-O-Theory. I don't think we're going to finish this project anytime soon.

I found a toy on the ground on my way to the studio this morning. It appears to have been ambulatory at one point but the snow shorted it out. Darn. I'm going to make a bead that looks like it.

Friday, March 16:

Somebody sent me something funny--gummi bear art. Click here for the rug and here for the chandelier. Pretty nifty!

Wednesday, March 14:

After having them sit on my desk for two months I finally, finally mailed the lids from two possibly salmonella-contaminated jars of Peter Pan peanut butter back to the distributor. I tried to mail them yesterday but was unsuccessful because the door on the mailbox was stuck shut. Mysterious! It was as though Con-Agra forces were conspiring against me. I got them mailed out today, by God. That is precisely the kind of project that I never get around to completing. Now I'm reveling in a pool of self-satisfaction.

It's my studio-buddy James' birthday today. He's 36 years young. For a gift I was going to clean out the lizard condo and give him a less stinky working environment. Unfortunately, I had to spend a chunk of time this morning on the horn to the IRS getting a question answered so I didn't make it in on time to clean. I guess I'll just get him a pack of smokes. Happy Birthday, James!

Sunday, March 11:

I was all by myself at the house last night, which is rather unusual. I was considering bouncing my superball against the wall for a few hours when I remembered that I had an aardvark to decorate. Hooray! Something strange to do! Since my aardvark lives on top of the Phrenology head on my desk choosing a design for him was kind of a no-brainer. Here's a large view of the critter so you can read what the different sections say. I'll wait while you do that.

Don helped me out with some of the sections after he got home. He came up with "Hatred of Texans", "Messiah Complex", "Yen for pretzels" and some others. I used my combined minimal knowledge of Phrenology and the habits of aardvarks to come up with the rest.

To whiten my aardvark I used flat white acrylic paint (the same paint I used to paint the walls in my bathroom). The surface of the toy is lightly textured so it holds paint really well. The black lines are sharpie marker. Have you requested an aardvark from Paul yet? They're free to folks who are in on the ground floor of this project. Email him now if you haven't already!

Saturday March 10:

My day was brightened recently when I received a box in the mail from a customer and fellow aardvark lover named Paul. The box was full of aardvarks--two beanie babies and two squeaky toys! How wonderful! And how bizarre! And what the hell?

Apparently, Paul is channeling his enchantment with the earth pig into a swell on-line art project aptly named "Pimp My Aardvark". It's similar on a small scale to the decorated fiberglass cow projects we've seen around the country--each artist gets an animal and decorates it however they want. What's nice about this one is that after you decorate your aardvark, all you have to do is take a picture of it and send it to Paul's site. There your work of aardvark art will be on display for all to enjoy! And you get to keep your decorated aardvark! (Personally, I feel that a decorated aardvark would make a swell hood ornament.) What a tangy idea this project is! How is it that you are not tempted to join in? I'm going to decorate my aardvarks with all my might.

To get a rubber aardvark of your own simply visit Paul's site and click on the "Contact Me" email link. Ask and you shall receive. Pimp My Aardvark is just starting up so the gallery looks kind of empty right now. I am hopeful that it will fill up soon with hilarious artwork.

Tuesday, March 6:

Someone emailed me yesterday to let me know that Viacom had removed my link to the song about the lower case "N". That is SO annoying. I found another link to the song and fixed the one in the archives. Here's the new link if you want to rock out to that song again. Screw you, Viacom! While we're at it, here's another clip of Morgan Freeman as Easy Reader teaching us about plurals. He's dreamy!

Maybe I should write a Zen koan about copyright infringement. I've been reading The Recorded Sayings of Zen Master Joshu to find out what koans are all about in the hope that we can write them about individual beads. (Winters are really long here-did I mention that? Everyone needs a hobby or at least something to think about doing.) Since koans are inaccessible to rational understanding, writing them should be right up our movie. Yeah, I'd better get back to beadmaking now.

Here's something I've been meaning to mention. I'm pretty much out of those little bottlecap magnets that I've been giving away with bead purchases. The new treat that you will receive with the bead you win on Ebay is a Demotivator card. I carried a huge selection of these cards in my shop before I closed it. Your card will be selected at random from the pile of cards I have in the store. Sometimes the sentiment on the card is not very nice but it's always really funny. I hope you enjoy them. The magnets will be back someday when I have the time to make more.

Monday, March 5:

My customer-pal, Linda, is auctioning off part of her bead stash in order to pay vet bills for her kitty, Tucker. She's got one of my masks up for sale. Go look! Read Tucker's story in the auction and go look at Tucker, too. Thanks!

My buddy James moved into the studio last week so he can work on mosaics and what-not. Lucy the iguana likes to stare at James when he works. On Saturday he and Foster (Bob Foster) came up with the idea to include a free Zen koan with each bead auction. I think this is an excellent idea, especially if they will be writing them. Unfortunately, both of them work full time at jobs that embrace neither Buddhist teachings or beads so...don't hold your breath. The things I could get done if my friends didn't have to work all the time.

Saturday, March 3:

My stars! How the time does fly. I've been busy working in no particular order on things that need to get done. Really low on the priority list were these knobs for some new drawers (not from IKEA) that we have in our under construction kitchen. So far I have three knobs done--a frog, a lizard and an angry sun. I need to make three more. You know what would have been cool? Knobs representing the Power Animals of our dearest chums. Too bad I didn't think of that before. Dang. That may not have worked anyway since not all animals are round. If asked, some wiseacre is bound to say that their power animal is the Minotaur or something. That would have been hard.

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