No One Wins in a Parrot War

Dark on the way to work.

2008-04-18T19:36:39Z

Ad on Amazon.

2008-04-15T22:28:20Z

HDC Ton Automotive Bottle Jack, anyone?

It comes with a 5 ft. air hose!

Need a home for beehives!

2008-04-03T19:27:04Z

OBOY! Bee season is a week away, and I still need to find a home for four more hives! Who has room? Who wants bees? Someone inside, or at least not TOOOO far outside the perimeter.

You won't have to actually DO anything, just have a little area for two hives.

You will get to see the inside of the hives (if you want), learn more than you wanted to know about bees, and I'll make sure you get a couple of jars of honey out of the deal (honey from your neighborhood is GREAT for allergies, because it is a positive exposure to the pollen that is affecting you!).

I have had beehives that shared a 1/4 acre yard with 2 dogs and 2 cats, and everybody got along fine. Bees generally fly up for a quarter mile before flying close to the ground, so you won't have to worry about bees flying around in the yard bothering people. I have never had experience with anyone getting stung with my bees. I mean, I get stung ALL THE TIME, but that's only because I have the hives open with my hands inside them. I never got stung just walking around.

So, if you're interested, shoot me an email at jason@redrocketfarm.com, letting me know where you are, how much room you have in your yard, how terrified of bees you are, and what your interest level is. If you're worried about having bees near you, comment here and we can discuss it.

Walking around in the city just now.

2008-03-26T18:14:14Z

Taken with my blackberry phone. Too bad I didn't have my real camera with me. What were they talking about? It seemed heated at times. Anyone want to guess?

Yes, that is a "Hooters" awning. I mean, of course.

Photos from the week.

2008-03-24T17:43:31Z

Busted up hotel. The outcropping is the famous glass elevator leading to the revolving restaurant at the top. Like a lot of native Georgians, I grew up with a feeling of pride for the Westin, because for years it reigned as the tallest hotel in the world. Then it became the second-tallest. Then, we just gave up and started being proud of the Krispy Kreme on Ponce.

I am considering a tutorial on how to make these if the interest level seems high enough.

The special way these are folded allows for as much or as little dumpling sauce to be held in the dumplings after you dip them. It's like a MOAT OF DELICIOUSNESS!

Dad was really irritated when I took this picture. "Don't take a picture of me like this... Jesus, son." He's on the mend, and didn't have the energy to take a swipe at me. HAHA, HAPPY EASTER, DAD! WELCOME TO THE INTERNET!

This is the truck. Its main job right now is to haul bees around, and take me to work. It's eating gas at a horrifying rate, but the idea is that when I move away from the city, I'll get a tiny economy car to zip in and out of the town with, and the truck will just be there to do farm chores. I love you, new truck.

Not. Happy.

Especially the "n'hicks" part. They make their own rules.

Brief update.

2008-03-24T13:24:46Z

Sunday - Made homemade dumplings.
Monday - Bought a truck.
Tuesday - Dad was gravely ill, rushed to hospital. Mass in stomach. Completely terrifying. Sister came for visit, which was great, but made everything seem more ominous to me, because she never visits our parents.
Wednesday - Fell off the ends of the earth for a while. Sorry internet friends!
Thursday - More worrying and freaking out.
Friday - Hung out with Liz one night. Very fun, took my mind off things. (I now keep in touch with NINE ELIZABETHS!)
Saturday night - Found out that dad's not dying. He's on the mend.
Sunday - Easter was completely indescribable. I am dizzy from it. Had a lot of octopus. Stayed up way too late last night.

TUTORIAL: How to Cut Pineapple Like a Native

2008-03-17T02:19:25Z

I've gone through a few pineapples figuring out how they cut pineapples in Hawaii, and I eventually cracked the case. I wanted to show everybody how to do it, so I took a bunch of pictures on my kitchen counter. Here you go!

Higher resolution here

???

2008-03-14T12:22:30Z

Are we a test market here, or is this a real thing?

Either way, it tasted pretty rough. I could only eat one.

CORN THING update: CORN THINGS ARE SHIPPING! I have lots of people to send these to, so please be patient, if you're not in this batch, you'll be getting the dreaded thing soon.

Anybody reading this: Please take more pictures.

2008-03-12T16:38:46Z

I had a long conversation with my UK friend about photos the other day. She was telling me how she wants some taken, but feels like she should be ready. It's the same with everybody. Lose some weight, get the perfect haircut, wait for your complexion to be really great... then when the stars are aligned, have your picture taken.

I have always felt the same way. Like just about everyone else, I think I look lousy in photos. But everyone else looks great, you know? You don't pick them apart and stare at things you don't like, you just see the whole image at once and think of them.

And the pictures of us in high school? We thought we looked so horrible. (I actually destroyed or gave away a good number of mine because I disliked them so much. I wanted them to just not exist). But look at them now. WE LOOKED SO CUTE! I'd LOVE to go back to looking that cute again.

But you know, you're cute now. You are. And in another ten years, you'll have the same conversation with yourself. You'll wish you'd just taken more pictures this year, because you looked young and pretty. It's something you won't think about until you're older.

So, these are for you, Cambridge. I hated doing it, I'm very critical of them, I don't love them and I think I look awful. But I know that's normal, and I figure I won't always. I've always been shy of having my picture on this journal, but I'm going to try to do more in the future.

So please, take pics everybody. Take tons. Don't wait for the weather, or anything else.
Because you're beautiful. We all are.

*EDIT: Feel free to post the same sentiment, or even link back here if you want. But pass it on! We should all be taking more pics! Especially with Spring coming soon.*

The first CORN THING eating. And Leprosy. Totally unrelated, I swear.

2008-03-11T13:58:26Z

Welp, Adam (nothinganything) ate a CORN THING. And still he lives!

"We ate corn thing.
We liked it.
We never, ever want another one."

The comments about CORN THING got out of control in there, and I drew this for him as a warmup this morning:

Trip(s) to the airport.

2008-03-10T16:01:38Z

I was back waiting at the airport for my friend's girl to show up. I was there to take pictures of the special moment when she showed up. We had already been there in the morning, but there was a major delay, and she had to take another flight. My Sunday had been bookended by visits to the airport.

The most beautiful people live at the airport. The combination of travelers' preoccupation, comfortable clothes, books, and the glow of waiting for loved ones, results in a giant airport full of people who are asthetically the polar opposite of Wal-Mart shoppers.

My friend was nervous, and I tried to make him laugh, so I nodded towards a girl who was wearing an intensely pink shirt (the graphic artist in me wants to call it "T-Mobile Pink" but the corporation-hating part of me wants to just leave it at "pink").

"Wow. What happened? Couldn't she find her pink shirt today?" I whispered.
"EH?" My friend asked. Could this joke possibly be new to him?
"Her shirt. Couldn't she find a pink one?"
"She HAS a pink shirt already."
"I know," I shot back, studying his face for any sign that he was playing with me. "It's really, really pink though. I was saying, why couldn't she wear a PINK one though, right? It's funny."

I suddenly became aware of how loudly I had been saying the word pink. And how often. And how anyone wearing a really, really pink shirt would probably know what I was talking about.

I winced and turned my head. She was looking right at me with her mouth cracked open. My friend saw her face and said "Oh nooooo duuuuude" in slow motion. I couldn't help but laugh at getting busted like that, and I mouthed the word "sorry" to her, but I'm sure the sincerity was compromised by my laughing while I was looking right at her.

To the pink-shirted girl, it must have felt like every John Hughes film where the pretty but impoverished girl has to wear a bright pink burlap sack to school because she can't afford a real dress. The cruel rich kids (me) push her down and her books go everywhere. Good times.

She turned and went in the bathroom, where she stayed for a long while, giving me ample opportunity to make up the whole story of the pink shirt. I decided that she was waiting for her boyfriend who she'd only been dating for a little while. She had carefully picked the shirt out of dozens just to make him happy, thinking "maybe it's too pink? No, not possible!" In an airport full of people wearing black, she stood out as someone different and awesome, and now she felt stupid. She went in the bathroom to feel self-conscious, cry, or maybe try to fashion a NEW shirt out of paper towels and found gum.

Eventually the pink shirted girl came out and walked down the platform, away from me and every kid in middle school who called her flat and stuck gum in her hair.

I can't believe how many times in an average day I have to look to see if someone has mace on their keychain. I went and stood next to her.

"Look, I am so sorry. Really. So sorry." I said, looking forwards.
She didn't turn to look at me. She stared at the same invisible spot. "I thought maybe I had toilet paper on my shoe. But I didn't have any."
"No. My friend's really nervous about his girl showing up, and I wanted to cheer him up. I told him you had a really pink shirt, and I liked it. It cheered him up."
"And you laughed because I caught you! I thought there was something wrong, like I had toilet paper on me! Like maybe the girl in the pink shirt had something on her?"
"No, it was just your pink shirt. I'm so sorry I made you worry!"
"How funny! We're so stupid, you know? You like it, really?" She couldn't stop laughing.
"It's so bright. It's like looking at the sun."
"Oh good. I'm so happy. I wore it for him. I haven't been dating him long, and I hope he likes it."
"He will! He's going to spot you right away."

The girl in the background simply CANNOT BELIEVE how pink that shirt is.

Okay... More info about the CORN THING

2008-03-04T21:44:31Z

Regarding the CORN THING.

Okay, the response has been pretty strong, and all the little CORN THINGS have homes to go to. I am ACTUALLY GOING TO HAVE TO GO TONIGHT AND BUY MORE! "Oh man... that guy.. He LOVES the CORN THINGS. The stuff you're supposed to put in the back of the toilet to make the water smell like corn? He just came and bought four more packs! WAIT... you don't suppose he's EATING IT!?!?"

__________________

> Jason,
> I can't believe I'm doing this. I'm a very finicky eater. But I can't
> resist the call of "Corn Thing". If you've still got enough to go
> around, send one here:
>
> L Metcalf
> 234 Wickerbag Avenue
> Deathand, TX 11100
>
>And if I haven't mentioned it before, I'm glad you're posting more regularly again. :)
>
> L

Thanks, L. I am a finicky eater, also. I have been since I was little. VERY suspicious of weird foods. My parents used to make me sit at the table for hours (HOURS) because I wouldn't eat their food. Every night, while the rest of the family went to watch television together, I had to stare angrily at cold Brussel Sprouts while listening to the sounds of the Muppet Show combined with their laughter coming from the other room.

So believe me when I tell you, this is actually fine. I wouldn't bother to go through this much trouble just so send stuff that's awful. It's just really.. well, I don't want to sway your reaction, but I can assure you of two things:

1) You will like it.
2) You will never, ever want another one.

Love,
Jason Thomas

ACTIVITY: How do you like... CORN THING!?

2008-03-04T17:57:26Z

I went to the "International Farmer's Market" on Buford highway on Saturday, and picked up some classic weirdness. I took lotsa photos, and will post them soon. Maybe later today.

In the meantime, here is an item I picked up. It is sort of like candy? But it's about corn. My French is a little rusty, so the best translation I can give you is that it's called "CORN THING" and it boasts being "Edible" and "Tastes like unique!" Now, I ATE one of these, and they're real interesting. I was going to go into some detail and describe how it tasted, but I think it would be fun if you did it for me. So here's what we'll do.

Email your address (with real name and username, please) to me at jason @ redrocketfarm.com and I'll send you a CORN THING. Then, when you get it, call me on the phone while you're eating it, and tell me what you think it tastes like. I will post your reactions here.

I have a few of these but not tons, so hurry up. If you wait too long and I run out, you'll have to settle for a FAX of a CORN THING.

Also: Real post about bees soon. Sorry for the delay!

My sister is really cute. Apparently.

2008-02-16T21:04:43Z

Of all my cute sisters, Ann Marie is the only one to be featured on cuteoverload.com

Please be sure to leave an embarassing comment telling the world how farm fresh she looks!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY UNREPENTANT!

2008-02-07T17:45:19Z

I don't usually do this, so sincere apologies to anyone who was hoping for a REAL post (soon.. soon..). But this guy's special, and really gifted. And grouchy. Check unrepentant, out and please comment him a happy one.

Happy Birthday, UnR

Scary Iron Head News: LOST!!!

2008-02-01T14:15:46Z

I got a weirder-than-usual email this morning:
"Do you like LOST? Your story was linked there.
Brett W."

I did a usage check, and I've gotten A LOT OF HITS from LOST fans: lost.com

(Scroll wayyy to the bottom of the page, and there's the link. How mortifying that people are all coming to see a page I slapped together in ten minutes. I AM A REAL DESIGNER, PEOPLE! I USUALLY MAKE PROFESSIONAL LOOKING THINGS, I SWEAR!)

Real post Monday!

Being Spiderman

2008-01-29T03:35:59Z

click for full

When I was three, I started loving Spiderman and wouldn't stop.

I loved Spiderman because he was broke, weird, always getting yelled at, and girls didn't like him. I could relate on all those levels, and he became an immediate favorite of mine for life. For years, two minutes was about as long as I could go without thinking about Spiderman. I pawed through every Spiderman comic I could get my hands on, tried fruitlessly to draw him on numerous occasions, and had extremely vivid dreams about him. I didn't really interact with other children much, so I had no way of knowing so many kids had this same fixation, all I knew was I wanted to eat, breathe, and sleep Spiderman and Spiderman-related merchandise.

Spiderman was also on a show I hated called "The Electric Company". The show featured weird theremin music, bizarre psychedelic effects, and the incorporation of Acid Jazz, which was like regular Jazz, but funkier (truth be told, the funk was the thing I disliked). It all sounded seedy, scary and the jazzy characters on television who liked it, always creeped me out. They wore dark sunglasses, kept their voices at a seedy level, and said things like "Heyyyyy... outta sight, man!" and "Hey cat! Gimmie some skiiinnn, OWWW!" These were not normal people, and it seemed like Jazz cats were exactly the sorts of characters I'd always been warned might one day try to use candy to entice me into a van with no windows.

However, in addition to the funky jazz influence, The Electric Company also had Spiderman. Every day, I would suffer through the eerie sights and sounds of the show, waiting for Spidey to come on so I could finally turn it off and try to forget about Morgan Freeman, and how he seemed to be possessed by the Devil. They usually waited until towards the end of the show to have the Spiderman segment, and then when he finally did come out, HE DIDN'T SPEAK! Instead, some strange synthesized sound effects were heard, and a word bubble would appear over his head with his thoughts written inside. YOU HAD TO READ WHAT HE WAS SAYING! The only way they could have presented a less satisfying Spiderman to me, would have been if they had drawn webs on a sleeping Basset Hound, thrown on red underpants and called him "Spiderman". Nevertheless, I watched it faithfully, and was happy to have it. Weird-no-talking-Spiderman-who-didn't-swing-around-or-do-much, was better than nothing.

I insisted on being Spiderman for Halloween for two consecutive years before my Mother had to put a stop to it.

At my graduation from Kindergarten, I was actually very well behaved. For the first ten minutes. Ten minutes was about as long as I could go before I started to have extremely elaborate fantasies about being Spiderman. People in the audience had to watch me make "devil horns" at them throughout the rest of the proceedings. Afterwards, my parents told me how proud they were of me, except the part where I was "being Spiderman" while the rest of my classmates were sitting quietly. How had they noticed?

At the bank with my mother, there was always a robbery in progress. I would wait until the last possible moment to swing down, crawl across the floor and web the first two robbers. Then I would kick the the last one right before he was able to finish wrestling a purse away from a sobbing old woman. Everyone loved me. When the woman behind the counter asked my mother if she wanted me to have a sucker for being good, my mother could only shake her head sadly. What could she do? Her son wasn't "being good" at the bank. Her son had been crawling around on all fours, swinging on the velvet rope, shoving his palms around and making "Thwip! Thwip!" noises like a spastic. He had also come close to kicking a customer with one of his tiny legs.

At church, there would be an earthquake, and the giant Jesus on the cross would come swinging down towards all those poor people. I would throw myself under it, and hold it until they snapped out of it and ran, shouting "Thank you, Spiderman! Thank you!!" They would love me so much. Even if the big Jesus killed me, I would die for them. My father would hear me muttering under my breath, "I could save them. I could save them all," while I stared off into space, and hiss at me to "shut it".

Everything I got my hands on, I would examine thoroughly to assess its contribution to my superhero fantasy. A disused band-aid tin from the trash was attached to my belt everywhere I went, in hopes that I could put some Spiderman web-fluid cartridges or some other relevant items in there. Once, my father brought home magnets in the hopes that a healthy interest in physical science might distract me from my Spiderman fixation. Instead, I taped them to my hands to see if maybe I could climb the refrigerator with them.

At some point, I decided I wanted to make a giant web in our neighbor's back yard. Because I was always taking it, string was a pretty rare commodity in our house (I usually needed it so that all my action figures could swing from webs or, if I thought they were evil, become caught in them). My father, tired of never having any that wasn't already tied to the furniture, had purchased a giant spindle of cotton string. All was well in his world. All was well in my world too, because a giant spindle of string was exactly what I'd been looking for. Barbara still tells the story of coming home to find it. "I knew that you'd done it. You'd gone around every... single... tree and every single bush in the back yard. It was all kind of...webbed together."

Of the items in the Spiderman Utility Belt, I had never seen Spiderman use a watch, walkie talkie, tiny grappling hook, or handcuffs. I was a little suspicious.

My Spiderman fixation finally came to a head when I decided to take it up a notch. I decided I would try to make a spiderman mask.

I started with a shirt that I couldn't wear anymore. The reason I couldn't wear it anymore, was because my torso would show through the largish holes I had cut out of the front and the back. I had two red gravestone shapes which, once sewed together, looked more like a red executioner's hood than a superhero mask. No matter, I would just tuck it inside the neck of my shirt.

The biggest problem was the eyes. In the comics, Spidey's eyes were large white shapes, but I had no idea how they worked. I'd never seen sunglasses with white lenses I could use. Luckily, there was a short-lived spiderman series on TV that I'd seen, where the eyes were made out of screen. Of COURSE! I cut the eyes out of a window screen I didn't use anymore, mainly because if I ever opened that window again, my parents would see two Spiderman-shaped eyeholes in it and I would have to live somewhere else.

One problem is that the edges of the eyes were really sharp, I know because while I was using my mom's sewing scissors to cut them out, I got a few cuts on my hands from the screen's tiny, sharp wires. I tried folding the edges a little for safety, in hopes that it would keep my face from getting scratched. I was in quite a rush, as I was only a few stitches away from having my own Spiderman mask! When it was done, I looked in the mirror and tried it on. I remember thinking it looked pretty good, although if I could see it now, I know I must have resembled a low-budget sideshow attraction.

Web shooters were a problem for me. There was an advertisement in the comics for a small squeeze-bulb that would shoot out webs "just like Spidey's". It looked like a rip-off to me, so I never ordered one. It didn't stop me from daydreaming about what it MIGHT have been like. Maybe it wasn't EXACTLY like Spiderman's webs, (I was no rube) but maybe you could still swing around by them a little before they broke. Maybe you could sorta rope up bad guys if you used a lot of the web-sauce and if they stayed still while it dried.

They sold some official Spiderman Web Shooters, but they were just suction-cup dart guns that strapped to your wrists. The darts had some thin kite string tied to the end, so that once you shot a dart at something, you were effectively tied to it. I went through about ten of those, because they had a tendency to break after about a half an hour. (Too bad I didn't just SAVE them. There's one on ebay selling for $179 right now!)

I tucked two watches off Dad's dresser into my pocket, thinking they would make good looking webshooters, and headed out. As I made my way through the living room, mom made a big show of thinking I was the REAL Spiderman, while Dad seemed more interested in the eyes, and where they had come from. It was clearly time to go out in the back yard and try out the new mask.

When I was that age, most of my days out of school were spent alone, running around in the back yard. I had a trapeze on the swingset that was unhooked on one side, which meant I could swing on it like it were a rope. I could also pretend the yard was the side of a building, and that the trees were actually flagpoles. I would jump from one flagpole to another, and once in a while I would fall, fall, fall down into the lower part of the yard and catch myself at the last possible moment. This game usually repeated until it got dark and I heard the dinner bell, or I fell asleep in the grass, and someone had to come and carry me back in the house. It was no wonder that I was such a skinny kid, as I refused to eat my parents' cooking and I rarely stopped running around the backyard.

We had a large dinner bell on the house, which could be heard throughout the neighborhood (much to our mortification in future years). I had one ring pattern and my sister had another. When I heard my ring, I dropped my webline (garden hose) and the bomb I was trying to diffuse (piece of bark) and ran on inside. I was keenly aware of my parents' ridiculous "no masks at the table" policy, so I took it off. My Mother screamed. Blood was trickling out of some of the deeper gouges in my face, while the dozens of tiny cuts made it look as if I had been caught head first in a belt sander. Two broken watches dangled from my small wrists. Once she had collected herself, I remember Mom saying, "It's a miracle he didn't blind himself."

They took the mask away and I was told not to wear it again. I kept finding it, however, and as soon as they saw my face was cut up, they knew what I'd been up to. Eventually they had to throw the thing away. I have no idea why they tried to keep it in the first place. Sideshow purposes, I can only guess.

One more time...

2008-01-14T19:06:35Z

The amazing and hillarious plinko gushed about this entry in her journal, so I wanted to give a brief encore for her.

Here's a picture of Malerie. This is after we hugged, and I was describing the pie to her. She was distracted enough that I was able to snap this shot without her covering her face and giggling, which is what I do when anyone tries to take my picture.

Thank you, everybody for reading me again after being gone so long, to everybody who's telling folks about my journal, and especially my long-standing comedy crush plinko.

Who wants pie?

2008-01-14T05:18:34Z

I was staying up late, and on the phone with someone, who told me that her favorite sort of pie was lemon. I asked whether it was Lemon Meringue (my favorite) or Lemon Icebox? "Neither," she replied. Apparently, in Florida, Publix makes some sort of bastard pie. The lemon pie is not as gelatinous as the lemon meringue, it has the consistency of a pie filling you might find in a can, and on some extremely rare occasions, Publix has one. As soon as she sees one there, she grabs it up and eats it right there in the store, with two forks as fast as she can, with crumbs and lemon flying everywhere. At least that's how I imagine her eating it, based solely on her long review of what she described as this delicious, amazing, holy sour pastry.

Well, I had to try one of these lemon pies. I like lemon stuff so much, so I went to Publix, and asked if they had any ideas about the fabled lemon pie. The woman behind the counter was named Malerie, and she did not in fact, know what I was talking about. She had two name badges on, one said "Malerie", the other said "Guy". I asked her about this, and she told me that Guy was her father who worked for Publix for years, but had passed away in November. This would be her first Christmas without him, and she was a little scared about it. She looked visibly upset, and I gave her a long look. "Come here," I said. "Come here, come on," and I gave Malerie a long, rocking hug. I continued to hug Malerie for a long time.

I have a tendency to hug strangers. Also, to hug anyone I like who I suspect may let me. It's strange, because my family was a relatively standoffish bunch, and rarely hugged or cuddled. Once, I had a roommate over for the holidays, and while we were driving back to the apartment, he told me it was odd that my father never said "goodbye" to me. I disagreed with him, because I was pretty sure I remembered him saying it, or at least something. The next time I left my parents house, I paid attention. My father shook my hand vigorously, looked me in the eye and said simply, "Go." He still does this. My sister and I were very affectionate when we were very young, and many of the photos of us from that time show us holding onto each other tightly, as if for dear life. As the years went by, we stopped hugging.

Now, I hug people every day. I fought the urge to do this for years, but I have given up on that. Maybe I'm making up for lost time, or maybe I'm trying to give people the love my family didn't seem to have. When I hug someone, it's more like holding. I put my arms around them, and pull them close, and just... hold them there. If I think they're having a bad day, I squeeze a couple of times. I want to be as close to them as possible. I want them to know that even though I might not know them very well, or even at all, I love them very, very much. It's not a quick thing.

Standing there in the Publix bakery, Malerie and I eventually and gradually started to let go of each other. I kissed her on the face, and she sniffled a little bit. She said, "I'm gonna make you that pie."

It was ready on Sunday, but I didn't pick it up until Monday. Malerie wasn't working that day, and there was another woman at the bakery, Mavis. Mavis looked at me and said, "You pickin' up that pie? You Jason Thomas?" I hadn't said anything, and I was surprised she recognized me. "Malerie said you'd be pickin' up a pie, and that it was real important. We lost the paperwork on it, but she remembered you. She been frettin' about this pie every day, so I'm glad you're takin' it off my hands."

I was staying up late. Gus jumped up on the kitchen table, and I opened the plastic pie container. Trying to maintain its perfection, I cut myself a glistening slice as carefully as I could. This late at night, I would just usually eat it in my hand over the sink, but this pie was too special and personal to be treated like a common Zinger. I gingerly slid it onto my favorite plate, where it waited patiently to be featured on the cover of a cooking magazine. I had been looking forward to this private, wonderful moment. It was probably the only pie I would ever taste that was inspired by my intense, and probably inappropriate, love for a complete stranger.

I took a bite, and was pretty surprised. It tasted a little like congealed dishwashing detergent, wrapped around a horse's dick.

The Bee Year: "Birds, Bees"

2008-01-07T02:43:23Z

Me, at ten.

The Thomas children were not encouraged to play with other kids.

In a neighborhood filled with couples who had children our age, it was surprisingly difficult to find any that our parents felt were appropriate playmates. While not critical of the children themselves, their parents frequently had some sort of quirk that our mother wanted to avoid. When we asked to play with Arnie Davison, we were told that his parents were Mormons, and it was probably best to stay away from them. When asked about Jenny Stephens, my mother told us in confidence that her parents sold something called Amway. How about George Beyers' folks? "Swingers!" my mother hissed.

This struck a chord with me. What was so bad about swingers? I mentioned that I frequently liked to swing, myself. She told me that it was different, and that the type of "swinging" which the Beyers did, was when people who were lonely brought other people into their bedrooms to make time with them, and that it was bad and wrong. I felt a little pang of shame because I knew that I'd done a little of that, too. I knew I didn't really understand everything about the whole thing, but I suspected I might be the bad kind of swinger like the Beyers, but that my mom didn't realize it. I felt it was best to stop asking questions and keep quiet.

The one girl who we were allowed to play with was Stacey Lewis. She was my sister's age, she lived only two houses down the road, and best of all, there appeared to be no major scandals associated with her family. Stacey was tall, weird and pretty, and of course I developed an immediate and permanent crush on her. For a while, she and my sister played together exclusively. They would play house, or collect berries.. I didn't care how girly the activity, I just wanted to be included. Sadly, I was doomed to be stuck in the role of the annoying younger sibling who was in the way. I knew that if I could be alone with Stacey without my older sister, I would be seen in a much more mature light. Luckily for me, my sister and Stacey drifted apart after a while, and I started to spend more time at the Lewis household.

I was always very nervous around Stacey, and desperately wanted her to like me. She was older than my ten years, so she usually decided what we would do together. Sometimes we just walked around the neighborhood making fun of the dogs that we saw, or maybe we would climb around the empty house that was nestled between our own, and pretend we lived there. Other times, we just dug holes.

The more time Stacey and I spent together, the more my crush developed into anxious yearning for her affection. I tried to impress her by telling her about the R-rated movies I'd seen. I had never actually never seen an R-rated movie because I was completely terrified of them, and to this day I can still remember the nightmares I'd had because of trailers for R-rated movies that I had accidentally witnessed. When pressed for details, I had to make up things to tell her about "The Thing" and "Escape from New York". I made efforts to position myself uphill from her, so we were closer to being the same height. I wanted to hug and kiss her like in the movies, and I desperately wanted her to be my girlfriend. At some point I bragged about chasing a bigfoot out of their yard on two separate occasions.

One day, we'd been playing and losing at "Raiders of the Lost Ark" on the Atari, when she wanted to do something we called "the tickle game". Stacey would lie down, and pull her shirt up to expose her stomach, then I would start to tickle her. In retrospect, it wasn't so much a game as it was me just tickling Stacey. While we did this, we would talk, and I would try to figure out ways to get her to like me.

"I think I saw that bigfoot again last night."
"Oh yeah?" Stacey asked casually, her eyes closed. Usually her eyes were closed during the tickle game, making me feel like she wasn't really listening to me. I always struggled to come up with something good to get her attention away from the tickling.
"I'm pretty sure it was the same one. If I see him around again, I'll throw a ninja star at him. That should do the trick." Everyone knew that throwing stars could be used on pretty much anything, not just ninjas.
"Move your fingers more. Like this," she whispered. Her father was in the next room, and for some reason she never wanted him to see us doing this. I didn't ask why, I just enjoyed the secret we shared together. She guided my hands up and down her stomach, showing me where she wanted me to touch her.
"So.." I started. "I'm thinking of taking up smoking." Both my parents smoked, and I thought they looked very smart and grown up doing it.
"You're not old enough," she shot back. "And you can't smoke until you're seventeen."
My fingers absently crawled around her belly buttton like a spider. "Oh, I know.. but I'm practicing." I had been. I started trying to see how I looked with a ball point pen in my mouth. Pretty good, actually.
This is what I hated about the tickle game. There were no opportunities for me to do anything to get Stacey to fall for me. I couldn't save her life by pushing her out of the way of a car, or saving her life from a stray dog. There was nothing to do but talk, and it never seemed to be getting her to appreciate me more. Stacey unbuttoned her jeans, and tugged them open a little. "Go lower," she whispered insistently. "and tell me if you see my dad coming over here."

Stacey eventually made us go to her room. She wasn't a swinger or anything, we were just going so I could tickle her in private. She undressed and put on a pair of shorts, so she could have me touch her legs. While she was changing, she mentioned something that ultimately would keep us apart from then on.
My mom's getting bees," she said.

The words were so powerful, and I had to ask to make sure I'd heard them right. I suffered from a very real condition known as "Bee Terror". "Bee Terror" was the term I had come up for my affliction of being very, very scared of bees. I had been stung by a bee on the finger the previous summer, and my entire hand had swelled like a catcher's mitt. It itched like crazy for two weeks and I wasn't eager to go through it again.

It was the last time we played together. Once the words had been spoken, it was like a disease had fallen upon their property. As much as I yearned for Stacey, her mother wanted to be a beekeeper, and that was that. It was as if she'd said her mom was going to raise Draculas in their basement. I leaned on our chain link fence and looked into Stacey's yard. Her mom was getting bees, but when? What would they look like? I felt there was a good chance they were already over there, waiting to cover me from head to toe and sting me just like in "The Swarm".

Stacey came walking up the driveway. I wasn't too excited because I knew she'd come over to see my sister. Ever since I stopped going to her house, she'd started playing with my sister again. She didn't understand how much I wanted to be her boyfriend, or how much I wanted her to tell me she loved me. All she wanted was to boss me around and make me touch her, and now that it had stopped she liked me a lot less.

"By the way," she said, stepping into our house with an angry dignity. "You look stupid with that pen in your mouth, and you're going to fall on it and choke to death."

Scary Iron Head wins its first contest.

2007-12-18T15:09:13Z

In this Garden Rant post, biologist Jim Nardi sent in an image and article breaking down (ha, HA!) the things he found in a cup of compost. It's a very interesting read for anyone who's ever looked at all the bugs in the soil and wondered what their little jobs were.

As a contest, they requested that people write in about the most interesting thing they've ever found in the soil, bug or not. The winner would recieve Nardi's new book Life in the Soil: A Guide for Naturalists and Gardeners. I submitted the brief Scary Iron Head story, and it won! The book came in the mail, and although I was too shy to ask if Nardi would sign it, I'm very happy with its high density, illustrations and all the information that would make any hobby-naturalist happy.

Oh, Scary Iron Head. I'm so proud of my terrifying, weighty, bodyless thing!

Merry Christmas, LJ friends!

2007-12-17T19:03:51Z

The holiday work lunches, the wrapping paper, "what are we giving your parents this year"?, the cooking, the trips to the crowded stores... It's that time again.

Here's Harry Dean Stanton.

Happy Holidays, everyone. It's good to be back.

NOTE: My friend Tom posted his favorite Harry Dean Stanton holiday memory. Maybe you have a Harry Dean Stantontime memory you'd like to share?

The Bee Year - Preface: "Calm"

2007-12-16T17:55:07Z

It's the end of July, and there's a cool breeze drifting through the yard, but not so strongly that it would rile the bees. Instead, it's that kind of light breeze that makes everyone look at each other with their eyes half-closed and say, "Mmmm... That feels good. I wish it was like this all the time." It can't be like that all the time, however. A breeze like this is nature's backrub; it comes up behind you and feels wonderful for a minute or so, but it goes away as soon as the wind has somewhere else to be, leaving you aching for more. For some reason, it's sticking around this afternoon, and I'm trying to take advantage of it by finishing my honey extraction, then working the hives outside. I've taken a couple of days off for this, and I have all the time in the world to enjoy the last of my beekeeping chores for the season.

Using a hand-cranked centrifuge called an extractor, I've spun the honey away from the honeycombs and collected it into tanks. This has to be done in a warm place so that the honey slides from the frames easily, so it's hot, sticky work. Once the honey is cranked away, the empty frames will be saved until next year. They're still sticky from the honey extraction, as is everything else; the frames, the tools, the extractor, as well as my hands and arms.

Everything that has honey on it (except the extractor, which is too large to move easily) is hauled out into the back yard. I carefully spread everything out on the picnic table there, frames resting in their supers, tools propped up in a tray. Then, I wait.

I don't have to wait long. One honeybee gently sets down on a frame and walks across it. Her leg accidently slips into a tiny drop of honey, then she pulls it away. She shifts her head down to inspect her find. Her mouth moves close to the golden bead, and her probuscis slides out of her mouth, piercing the sweet, thick, nectar. She draws honey through it like a perfect, clean, drinking straw. She pulls as much inside herself as she can, then flies away. The others will ask her where she's been.

Found-honey is an absolute gold mine for bees. Typically, their foraging involves finding nectar from flowers, then converting it into honey through a time-consuming and work-intensive process. To the bees, finding honey just laying around would be like you going to work to find piles of paychecks on the ground outside of the office building. The effect is similar, and a trickle of bees soon turns into a greedy but happy crowd. Within moments of the first bee's departure, hundreds, then thousands of bees arrive to take their fill.

I have more work to do, hauling tanks, filling jars, then cleaning out the extractor. Instead of getting up, though, I stay and watch them a while. Most of the honey-covered items are completely blanketed with bees now. Moving my hand close to them, I can feel the heat coming from their combined attendance. A couple of bees wander inside my t-shirt. Soon they will become confused, their irritation threshold will be passed, and this will cause them to sting. Their bodies will release pheromones which will tell the others that a sting has taken place, and to be on alert. I don't want to ruin the party, so I take my shirt off.

Attracted to the motion, a bee alights on my hand, then another. Honeybees are gentle, and when they're foraging, even more so. Typically the only time they will sting is if they become seriously agitated, or if they are protecting the hive. This far from home, the bees are happily lapping up honey, and protecting the hive from intruders is the last thing on their minds. If I can avoid getting one caught in my hair, they will continue to be as gentle as lambs. They walk across my hand, licking the honey off my skin and I feel their tongues slip across my honey-covered fingers. As if playing, a dozen or so bees half-walk, half-float across my hand, cleaning me. Bees take turns landing on my back and shoulders, but finding no honey there, take flight again. The effect is like having fingertips lighter than any human's, dance across your skin.

A reader criticized me for chewing my fingernails. It has been a lifelong habit, but I was
embarassed enough that I stopped doing it, and haven't since.

The quiet humming of the bees, the warm sun on my arms, and the gentle honey-scented breeze gliding across my back and up my neck are soothing beyond description. Half-naked and covered with bees, I realize to myself that this is possibly the calmest and most relaxed I have ever been in my life. It's this single moment that I wish I could share with every person who winces as they learn my horrifying and dangerous hobby.

I sit there for hours, watching the beautiful, perfect creatures at work, feeling them on my body, and my thoughts drift back to how it all got started.

Bizarro Genius Baby: Storyboards

2007-12-14T01:14:23Z

Since somebody asked me to post these, here are the storyboards for Bizarro Genius Baby. The area with the question marks is the part in the scrap book that I couldn't figure out. I wanted to show Frontalot's relationship with the super-intelligent baby being great at first, but then she starts to turn on him. I couldn't come up with pranks for baby to play on him which would utilize her intelligence, but not be downright hostile. Michael Barnes and I talked on the phone about it for hours, and all we came up with was time travel and Man-Thing. It got pretty ridiculous. A few days from the deadline, and I still didn't know what I was going to do there. I was in the car with Julia on the way to get some tacos, and she just came up with the swapping heads with the chicken idea. It was like the floodgates just opened, and all the other concepts came rattling out of us. Cute AND a cure for writer's block!

The sketches after the storyboards are all for the ending sequence. Originally the ending was supposed to be comprised of five panels with some very limited animation between the credits. For some reason it got away from me, and I did all these sketches. I just didn't think the five panels Front and I talked about told the story well enough. In order to get it done on time, I stayed up and did all the drawings for the ending in one ridiculous caffeine-filled night. I knew that I wanted them to have a "looser" style than the main body of the cartoon, but after drawing my 30th panel, I was really glad for it!

FOR ALL THE STORYBOARDS, CLICK THE IMAGE

The part where MC Frontalot is in bed was removed when Front came up with the idea to have a nerd-binge at the beginning. This of course means passing out on the couch, so the first drawing I did for the cartoon, Frontalot in his bedroom, wasn't used. Three minor jokes were sacrificed, but that's creative destruction for you.
1. Front is sleeping in a Bert & Ernie style bed.
2. He's soaking his glasses in Barbasol, or Denture cleaner.
3. There is a copy of a "ROM" comic book on his nightstand. Not "ROM: Spaceknight", but a comic about an actual ROM chip.

RRF: I just want a little peas.

2007-12-13T03:00:37Z

Here's today's seed packet.

I am working on elements like this one for the Red Rocket Farm website. Right now the site is just "functional". I'm really excited about having a site I'm not a little ashamed of.

"Peas" will actually be for "Portfolio", and clicking on it will take you to that area of the farm.

I like to watch a movie or documentary while I'm drawing something tedious like this packet for peas. Netflix has a feature where you can watch movies online. I've never tried it, so I took a few minutes to seek out something that I could watch without having to pay too much attention to it. I watched "Heater", an indie Canadian film about two homeless guys who team up to sell a heater that was still in the box. A great film I would recommend to anyone who doesn't mind feeling a little sad.