So this happened .....again

 

I was minding my own business as I was washing my balls and all of a sudden a pin hole opened up in one of my veins. Since it was kind of serious because I take blood thinners I had to call on Lisa for help. She was upstairs working on her crystal show on Popshoplive. This is a home shopping app that we have been selling on since they first started a couple of years ago. I couldn't take my finger off it because I had to apply pressure to control the bleeding. If I did let go I would spew blood everywhere. I couldn't reach the phone as I was half in and half out of the shower. I called her on Alexa. What you do is call out an announcement on Alexa. "Alex announce: Lisa come to the basement I am bleeding out."

Which was not actually happening as I have been here before. You can't panic you just have to stop the bleeding. I just need the paramedics to come with a pressure bandage. After the requisite five minutes of panic she called them and they came down to the cellar and put on the bandage. Of course I was buck ass naked while he did that.

In the meantime the people on the app were freaking out. We have a little community that come every week and are used to our banter. So they were naturally worried and wondering what was going on.

Of course Lisa had to bring the fireman to guest star on the show and all of the women creamed their jeans because the dude was good looking. Those bitches forgot all about me.

I told them that he had seen my junk so he was off sex for a long time.

In the meantime we were losing sales. We have the ability to split screens so while Lisa was running around doing what I usually do for the show I was on the split screen. I told them that the only way I would feel better is if they bought more stuff. While I was saying that I went to Youtube and played the Sarah McLachlan song that they use on the ASPC commercials that play on late night TV were they show the pitiful dogs and ask for donations.

It worked and they started buying stuff.

You got to keep your eye on the balls. Ehh......the ball. You know what I mean.'

KLEM TV

link

Unbeknownst to most Americans, there is an ongoing trademark battle between Big Spirits (Bacardi vs. Pernod and the Cuban government).  Long ago, there was a brand of cuban rum called Havana Club. After the revolution, the distillery and brand were appropriated by the Cuban government. Bacardi also left Havana and set up business in Puerto Rico with corporate headquarters in Bermuda. The Cubans (with financial help from the Europeans, i.e., Pernod) built the international brand of Havana Club which was available everywhere but the US. I have a bottle, procured on my honeymoon in the Caymans, which I smuggled back to the US.

More recently, Barcardi started marketing their own version of Havana Club rum in the US. They claim to have gotten the rights and original formula from the family of the long-dead owner. They are currently engaged in high-stakes litigation over who has the legal right to sell rum in the US under that brand name. Curently, Bacardi does and wants to continue to do so. Bacardi is prohibited from marketing their Havana Club in the rest of the world.

As an aside, I should point out that rum used to be the most popular spirit in the US. Recall that Rhett Butler was rum runner, not a whiskey runner. Whiskey -- and related bourbon -- dominate the US spirits market, but only became more popular during and after prohibition. In George Washington's day, applejack was the most popular hard liquor. Whiskey is presently losing ground to tequila as the number one spirit in the US, just as Bud/Coors/Miller is losing market share in beer to Pacifico/Modelo/Corona.

The Goose Is Loose

There was talk at Lem's about a geese -- almost a mini-theme. Here's my contribution:

Martini in Grey Goose glass with Grey Goose pick

I frosted the outside to make it look ice cold. From the top, you can look down inside and see the "olive."

Faking Bad Update

Time to celebrate!

Dom Perignon, 1998

I was finally able to create the most difficult and challenging beverage of all, a glass of water:

It looks simple enough, but there are several problems:  (1) to avoid "shrinkage" of the plastic which causes it to pull away slightly from the walls of the glass leading to an unsightly and "fake" appearance; (2) to get the ice cubes to appear slightly melted and (3) to get them to "float" like real ones do. Here is a top view of the ice:

Next, I added a bit of frosting to the outside wall of the glass to give it the appearance of being cold:

I'm still working on simulating the "sweat" that appears on a glass of cold beverage on a hot day.

That is a real bottle of Dom which my father-in-law gave us long ago for an anniversary but it's long gone. It turns out that the ice is fake too:

Sale Says Jersey Sales More Important Than Winning

Deadspin:  "White Sox Scratch Chris Sale After He Reportedly Cuts Up Throwback Jerseys"'

Chris Sale was scheduled to start tonight’s game against the Detroit Tigers, but the Chicago White Sox scratched the lefty at the last minute. The team said in a statement that Sale was removed because of an incident in the clubhouse that was “non-physical in nature.”

Multiple reports say that Sale was mad about the throwback jerseys for tonight’s game. According to Tommy Stokke of FanRag Sports, the pitcher cut up the uniforms so they were unusable:

Sources say: Sale cut up throwbacks during batting practice. Upset that, in his view, PR and jersey sales were more important than winning.

White Sox throwback uniform 1

White Sox throwback uniform 2

Scott Adams on Persuasion, Trump and related subjects

I came to this Scott Adams video via the suggestion at the end of another video, in which Howard Stern speaks about Orlando and guns. EBL also has it up on his site.  Never mind... that video has been taken down on Sirius XM copyright grounds. Sorry.

Faking Bad Update

Rainbow Ice Cube, Melting

This is a project I started months ago but then put aside until today. The photo does it no justice but you can see from the refracted sunlight in the foreground that the cube is a perfect six-layer rainbow cast. The red pool is freshly poured and will require several hours to cure. I'll try to take some better photos then.

“VoteyMcVoteface”

"Cameron enlists tech groups to boost youth turnout for EU poll"

Concerned that young people will fail to vote in the EU referendum, the prime minister has enlisted technology companies including Facebook, Uber, Snap Fashion and The Lad Bible to generate ideas to boost turnout.

Asked at a meeting at Downing Street how to get those aged 18-24 to the ballot box on June 23, Jenny Griffiths, 28, the founder of Snap Fashion, came up with a “VoteyMcVoteface” campaign, which will be launched on social media this weekend.

Young people will be asked to take a grinning selfie of their “vote face” and share it on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, showing they have registered to vote with the same hashtag as the campaign name.

A Downing Street source said the idea was well received by David Cameron. “The PM believes it is essential that we all do everything we can to encourage more young people to register to vote in a referendum that will have such a huge impact on their futures,” he said.

The initiatives come at a time when the government itself is prevented from trying to boost voter turnout, due to the pre-vote purdah period that began on Thursday.

Embalming Fruit Slices 3

[Continuation from here]

That is the fruit of my labor -- a faux negroni, served shaken cocktail style. I'm quite pleased with the look. I'm going to keep an eye on it though. Even though the fruit slice is hermetically sealed and completely surrounded by plastic resin, there's a chance that anaerobic bacteria or mold could feed on it from the inside. Mold will eat anything cellulose with residual water -- both of which are present inside that embalmed orange slice.

Oh and, just to head off the negroni purists who insist that the drink be served in a highball glass with ice and an orange wedge -- I started making one of those too but ran out of plastic. I'll finish it in due time. I'm even thinking of sending one to spinelli as a peace offering.

Proof that it's fake:

Embalming Fruit Slices Update

[continuation from here]

Lemon and lime slices treated in glycerin for one week

A week's immersion in glycerin changes a fruit. I observed some crenation and some color fading -- unacceptable for Plastic Realities. I already knew that raw, untreated fruit is incompatible with my resin, so my next thought was to soak them in glycerin just long enough to dehydrate the surface. I wanted to press forward with some resin casting experiments and so I set up a series of comparative experiments: raw, untreated fruit; 1 hour-treated fruit, and the 1-week treated fruit. I should know the results by morning.

The good old days

Memory Lane

Embalming Fruit Slices

Fruit slice immersed in glycerin.

I'm experimenting with embalming fruit slices. I've been unhappy with using plastic fake fruit as garnishes in my plastic beverages. I've tried embedding raw untreated fruit in the resin, but the water content seems to screw things up. I read online about some tricks that florists use to preserve flowers and leaves -- contact with glycerin. If you dip the stems of flowers or leaves in glycerin, it displaces the water and preserves the look and feel of the flowers. My hypothesis is that the glycerin will displace most of the water in the fruit slice w/o compromising the look and appearance, and being closer chemically to the plastic, will be more compatible. I'm not so much worried about subsequent decomposition when one of these is embedded in plastic -- it's an anaerobic environment. Plus glycerol is a cheap and nontoxic substance to work with and to dispose of.

Wish me luck!

How to make your own Big Mac

The sauce is not a secret recipe.

Hearing Hands

Alan Rickman and the strawberry eating tortoise

Reddit: The last thing Alan Rickman did before he died is voiceover for this video of tortoise eating a strawberry.

The Shovelution

"The Shovelution clamps to the handle of any typical shovel, and because it is adjustable, the user can settle on the position that best suits his or her height, an important consideration since snow shovels can be used by more than one member of the family."

"The Shovelution costs $30; shipping is $10."

"Florida store offers free firearm with jewelry purchase"

"We kind of took the take off the shotgun wedding and twisted it a little bit so more people could get involved,... This kind of gives the guy an incentive to purchase a piece of jewelry for his wife,” Czerok (Shop owner) told reporters. “Or, vice versa, we’ve sold a couple of gentlemen’s rings and the wives got the shotgun.”

The jewelry store has been around for 14 years, says Czerok. Her husband Nick, the jeweler, opened the gun store addition in 2012. Both of the Czeroks are firearm enthusiasts.

Don't you just love it when people have an aha moment? All of a sudden nothing is the same again.

"McDonald's staff throw a surprise birthday party..."

"...for a lonely 93-year-old widower who has gone to McDonald's almost every day since 2013"

Every Pitcher Tells A Story, Don't It?

"Milwaukee's Finest Beer" Plastic in Blatz Glass

I put a nice creamy head on that beer, just the way ricpic likes it.

The glass is a small tavern glass, just like they used to pour in Milwaukee taverns. Wisconsin people never used to say "bar" -- it was always "tavern."

Blatz was one of Milwaukee's first breweries, and was the first one to bottle and ship beer around the country. I have a large Blatz pitcher as well, which I picked up a yard sale in Wisconsin last time I was back:

You can't find that kind of stuff out here. The ubiquitous pitcher was the unit of beer you shared with friends. Do people still do that?

As Beers Go Bye...

So I've decided to focus on beers. Here is an example of an Oktoberfest prop I recently made:

Plastic in glass

Notice there isn't a full head on that beer.  That is something I'm able to do, but I think gives a false impression of what a beer really looks like as a prop. To further illustrate, here is a real beer with a full head and after it's been enjoyed a bit:

 Beer in glass, full

That by the way, that is a real beer in glass.

Beer in glass, enjoyed

I like the half-full look. My wife saw me working on this one in the morning and accused me of starting too early:

Plastic in glass

But, there's something about that which strikes people the wrong way. I think it's dashed idealism.  What say ye?

All of these are for sale.