Lunarly speaking: Worm 09

by Mike Koppa — last modified 2009-04-14 23:27

Every once in while, relatively, I have an idea. For 2009, I will commit to sharing one of them on or around every single full moon. No kidding.

Worm Moon
Pobody's nerfect.

I have a fear of coming off as holier than thou with all my commenting about how "we" could be better. It's about time I confess to being part of the problem. When it comes to plastic crap, I am accumulating my share. I could blame my kids, but let's face it, it's up to us parents to say no when we ought to.

I'm going to forgive all of us who are guilty on the basis that there's just way too much distraction in our daily lives to stop and think straight about simple things. Once a person becomes aware of a problem, I think they'd rather not contribute to it.

I'm thinking why not put a government public service message on all plastic crap. So, in the name of offering solutions rather than just pointing out problems, I went ahead and created the label for the government to adopt (see above). I ran it through the spell checker so it shouldn't really need any proofreading. They can just start mandating it on the packaging for all the plastic crap tomorrow.

And when I start getting into something I tend to take it pretty far. In this case, I'm getting the ball rolling with complete line of stickers and shirts and other fine Heavy Duty merchandise at my new CafePress store. But then I get to thinking, "Who in the hell is going to actually buy and wear one of these shirts?" Probably not you, but maybe it'll resonate with the hip high school alt, punk, and goth crowds. They're the people that really give a shit anyway. So I did it because maybe you're one one of those hipsters. God bless you if you are and fuck everybody else. Just kidding about the fucking part. I never use that kind of language.

And if this clever design is lost on you, which is probably is because it's so subtle it hardly matters, it's a rip off of something that might be familiar to the 35-to-40 set.

And now a brief update on studio-related activity

If you'd have been paying attention, you'd know that 2009 is dedicated to the transformation of my home interior in order to get the letterpress operation up and running in 2010. Part of the renovations include the bathroom adjacent to the future pressroom, which now serves as the playroom/den.

An incredible serendipitous series of events amused me enough to share it with the rest of the world via the world wide web, even though about ten people in the entire world view this page every month. If you're one of them, consider yourself lucky, because what you're about to see is positively amazing.

Here's the story. You know how your basic bathroom cabinet has a faux drawer on above the cabinet doors? If you don't, you can see it here.

Because there was just no easy way to nail the faux drawer panel on (you'll just have to take my word for it) I had to figure out some clever way to cobble the thing together. It was late and I was determined.

See that short piece of paneling up there?

There's more of them. And other scrap, too. I figured I could probably use the scraps to build it up and hold it in place from behind. All I needed was some clips to hold it place from the front while I worked on it from the backside.

It just so happens that I have a variety of what I call "canvas clips" in my arsenal, leftovers from the old days when I tried to run a picture framing shop. Note that there a few different sizes, and good thing, too, because this was not a one-size-fits-all situation. The variety was vital.

Now that it's secured, albeit tenuously, from the front side, I can get to work on securing it from the back, which required a different size canvas clip than the front. Again, thank goodness for the variety.

As you can plainly see in these out-of-focus shots, the faux drawer hangs from the top by one screw on each side, and the canvas clips on the bottom prevent the panel from pulling away from the rest of cabinet.

So what's so amazing about that? I'll tell you what's so amazing, you skeptic. What's amazing is that what was in the first place a stupid financial decision came back to bless me down the road.

When I set up that frame shop, I bought four sizes of canvas clips, enough to last five lifetimes as a picture framer in a variety of unusual circumstances. In my entire life I think I've used about twelve of these clips for framing jobs, and I certainly did not need to ever acquire this kind of inventory. But, lo and behold, there I am a handyman in need at the eleventh hour, and what on earth would I have done without them? Cried. That's what I would've done. I would have sat down and cried. And instead I laughed. Well...smiled. I smiled good and long. Thank God for dumb decisions.

And finally, another foray into videography.
I grew a beard for the winter, for the first time ever. In a barroom agreement I agreed with friends not to shave or trim any head hair from Halloween to March 1. We had a great time celebrating the shave day, and it resulted in this mysterious video production by The Heavy Duty Press.