What's everyone up to right now?

[Jackalope]

Definitely not my imagination. I feel like I've been kicked by a damn mule.

[Nakara]

Definitely not my imagination. I feel like I've been kicked by a damn mule.

They won’t take you back? Boggles my mind they won’t try more. Hecc they did more for me when I had a panic attack that went away on its own.

[Sal]

Making bonemeal.

[ignoramus]

Washed and polished the old stang for tomorrow's "Picnic at Hanging Rock" annual classic car meet.
The largest in the country. Need to leave before sunrise to get in without waiting in a mile long queue for an hour
Will take some pics. Could be my last time going.

(Bought the nice alloy heads a while ago ...do you think I've had a spare minute to put them on!)

[Jackalope]

Just bought a new (to me) truck. 2011 Ram 1500 Laramie 5.7L hemi. Just waiting for them to throw new tires on it.

[Rev. Rye]

This week for the Deep Hurting Project, I was going to watch Stranded, an Alien ripoff made by the director of Battlefield Earth that's so cheap that it passes one of those folding book lights off as a fucking hologram projector/communicator. Unfortunately, that was taken. What wasn't taken, however, was Highlander 2. Fortunately, since I've actually seen the original (just rewatched it last night), I feel it's about time to do the first shitty sequel for the Project. Then again, this is the Special Edition, which does smooth out some of the most glaring plot holes (and replaces them with some even more baffling ones, like them not being aliens from the planet Zeist, but warriors from the ancient past, which makes the whole General Katana arc of this film even more baffling.)

Oh well, I guess it's just more time for me to search for that folding hologram projector booklight I've had for over a decade.

[Rev. Rye]

For my Business Ethics class, I have to write five single-space pages of notes, demonstrating our understanding of the text, and to hone our writing skills.

I just finished my first one of these, regarding the different approaches to business ethics in the US, the EU, and Asia. And, inspired by He Died with a Felafel in His Hand (my palate cleanser for Highlander 2), I decided to start with this dramatic demonstration about how one act might be viewed in very different ways by different cultures.

Here's my opening paragraph:

Imagine a toad sitting on a lawn. Imagine a man with a golf club walking past it and he decides to play golf with the toad. The toad is the ball. An American would likely see this scenario as being a textbook case of animal cruelty; after all, what did that toad ever do to the golfer? An Australian would likely see something different. In Australia, the cane toad is an invasive species introduced in a failed attempt at pest control. They have wrought so much havoc on the natural ecosystem that such a scenario as I described is treated as a public service.

Something like this:




If it happened in Chicago, well, we'd wonder what the fuck it was doing out in these Chicago winters failing to hibernate, and then we'd be appalled at the cruelty of such a thing. In Brisbane, given that the cane toad was introduced as an attempt at pest control that failed because the pests went up a lot higher than the toads could jump, and they became an invasive species so poisonous that EVEN AUSTRALIA'S NATIVE WILDLIFE, as infamously dangerous as it can be, was no match for its explosive breeding, eventually turning it into a pest, well, that shit is practically a public service there.

[ignoramus]

Washed and polished the old stang for tomorrow's "Picnic at Hanging Rock" annual classic car meet.
The largest in the country. Need to leave before sunrise to get in without waiting in a mile long queue for an hour
Will take some pics. Could be my last time going.

(Bought the nice alloy heads a while ago ...do you think I've had a spare minute to put them on!)

The old horse plus a few choice pics...

















shoosh!

[Rev. Rye]

Well, it looks like George Clooney's version of Catch-22 has finally had its trailer drop. For the record, Catch-22 is probably my favourite novel that I think can actually be properly adapted, and here's the trailer:





Any thoughts? Well, the thing is, it took a long time into the trailer for me to positively identify anything from the novel, giving me the impression that they're going to take a lot of liberties with the source material. That doesn't necessarily mean it's bad; Preacher does much the same thing and it's still good. But it gives shockingly little insight into how it's going to work as an adaptation. And it's surprising to see prominent swastikas, especially since they're stationed in Italy, and in the novel, the Germans exist solely as creatures that give the Americans flak and occasionally trade with Milo. No names whatsoever are given, and the only ones I recognise are Yossarian (mostly from the line "that's some catch, that Catch-22,"), Scheisskopf and de Coverley, and in those cases, it's only because I know George Clooney and Hugh Laurie's faces. Where the fuck are Milo, Nately, Major Major Major Major, or even Orr, Aarfy, or Chaplain Tappman? Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear? I get some hints at the darkness and the absurdity in the novel, but remarkably little of the combination of the two that makes the original novel so great?

Well, the one problem I have with the Mike Nichols film (besides the fact that so much shit had to be left out) is that Alan Arkin played Yossarian like someone playing through a vaudeville routine. Christopher Abbott, for his part, seems to be closer to my conception of the character: an everyman losing his mind (intentionally or not) because everyone else around him is totally far gone.

[Rev. Rye]

Dad says the Vaux amp is close to being ready for the proper electronics work putting it all together to be done.

Front board pre-Naugahyde:



(for the record, the two switches are power at the top and turning the Baxandall tone stack in the power amp on and off, because it's superfluous with the AC-Tone's power stack)

And now, a mock-up with the Naugahyde cover:



Once we get around to getting those last details fixed, we’ll send it to John at Minstrel Music and he’ll actually turn it into a functioning amp. And maybe I’ll figure out where to put the Vaux logo eventually.