“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, except that of the Christian faith where some tenets may be found offensive by a vocal minority, although should beliefs of said minority be found offensive by the majority, then the majority shall be deemed intolerant and their own offense of no consequence; or abridging the freedom of speech unless such speech is contrary to the ruling party except where said ruling party is of a conservative or libertarian nature, or of the press, unless such press is critical of the ruling party except where said ruling party is of a conservative or libertarian nature; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble except where said people gather in peaceful protest of the ruling party where the ruling party may determine a proper and appropriate location for such protest to be held such as in remote areas where media coverage is unavailable or unlikely and where the subjects of the protest do not have to hear or address any complaints offered by the people, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, unless the ruling party at its sole discretion determines such grievances to be unfounded or unless ruling party is of a conservative or libertarian nature.”

Gift card giving is getting crazy. Do you ever think about that? Why gift cards? Why not just exchange cash? And, in that case, while exchange the cash at all?

Think about it. Your friend gives you a $25 gift card for your birthday. On your friend’s birthday, you reciprocate with a $25 gift card. Now, you’ve effectively evened out.

Now, your friend gets married. So, now on birthdays, you’re giving a gift card to your friend and probably also his/her spouse. So, now that’s $50 you’re spending. If you’re lucky, you’ll get $50 in return on your birthday, but odds are that you’ll get $25. So, the couple is up by $25.

So, you can even that out by getting married. Then, you’re back to fifty-fifty.

Then, come the kids. So, they have a kid. Now you end up giving the kid a $10 gift on his/her birthday. So, now you’re down by ten dollars again.

You can even that out by having a kid of their own, but then your friend has a second kid. Back to square one.

The answer is to have six kids, because the odds are your friend will not have six kids. Many people will stop at one or two these days. So, by going past the average, your family will be up at least $40.

Of course, if your friend gets the same idea in his or her mind, your friend may up the ante by having 8 kids.

You can reciprocate by having 12.

Your friend gets divorced, marries a younger woman, has 6 more kids.

At this point, you’re down by two, but is it really worth ten bucks to have three more?

I think your friend wins at this point.

Then again, you can probably stop at six kids because, at that point, who will have time for friends anymore?

I think the odds are on your side for six kids. You’ll either best your friend in the gift card game, or you won’t have to worry about it because you won’t have time for friends anymore.

Or, maybe we just all need to come up with an alternative to the gift card giving madness?

That’s the expression I am imagining may be on some spammers today. Well, probably not because a lot of the spammers are bots so they don’t even have faces. But, then neither do bananas, except this rare one pictured here.

Hey, look, an orange!

Made some backstage changes here that should keep more comment spammers out. And, by that, I mean that Akismet won’t even block them because they’ll be nuked before they even reach Akismet. The downside will be that it will lower my blocked spam comment count, but I guess that’s a fair trade off.

If it works, I’ll spread it to my other blogs.

Shiny silver werewolves in the local park! Film eaten by a banana.

Hopefully, it won’t block legitimate readers from commenting. Let me know if you are unable to leave a comment… by leaving a comment. Ha ha a-ha! Seriously, tweet me if you cannot leave a comment here.

Home Made Nachos!

Refried Beans!

Home Made Enchiladas!

For more photos, visit Wordless Wednesday.

So, this is apparently how it all went down.

Chrysler is in deep doo doo. Despite receiving money before that was seemingly necessary to prevent bankruptcy, they went under anyway.

Well, under bankruptcy laws, secured creditors are the top of the pecking order to be paid back by the sale of assets; unsecured creditors scrounge around for whatever is left.

So, the government found away around that by selling “Old Chrysler” to “New Chrysler” and having “New Chrysler” essentially owned by the unsecured creditors. Or something like that.

Well, some folks in Indiana were none too happy about that. Being secured creditors, they saw right through that thinly veiled circumvention of bankruptcy law.

Went all the way to the Supreme Court, which yesterday said “Whoa, Nellie! We have to take a look at this!” And they put a hold on the whole thing.

Late today, they released the hold and issued a statement that basically said, “Ha ha. Just kidding. The rule of law doesn’t mean anything anymore. The Anointed One will save us all. He can do no wrong and he can do whatever he wants.”

And, thus, came to be the Grand Banana Republic. And the people rejoiced and tithed 80% of their income to the Banana Capitol to be dispensed with as they so desired.

The end.

This was supposed to be a quick and easy thing, but it turned out not to be so!

First, I did the audio. Dragged out my old Sony lavalier microphone, figuring I’d see if it still works. Put in a fresh battery. Plugged it in. Didn’t record. It showed the voice bars as I talked, but wouldn’t record. Finally, I figured that out (apparently there are two settings that conflict, and if you try to set them in what would seem to be the correct way, it doesn’t work) and recorded the audio.

Then, I manipulated the audio to achieve the effect I was going for.

Next, I did the actual animation, which took a bit longer than I expected, primarily because of the number of things I had forgotten since the last time I rendered a video. Got that straightened out, and went to putting the audio and video together.

That was another case of having forgotten a few things, which meant looking things up, and Google doesn’t always give the best results. Saw a video on how to do what I wanted to do. Had to fast-forward through the jibber-jabber until the guy finally got to the part the video was supposed to be about, which is the thing I needed to know. Watched it and I knew there was an easier way. So, I tracked down another video. Yes, I knew it! There was an easier way. How close I had been too!

Then I decided I wasn’t quite happy with the audio portion. So, I tweaked it some more. Got it perfect! Well, near-perfect anyway. I was quite pleased with it and it had nearly exactly the effect I was looking for. Saved the file.

Then, I took a snippet from the file that I also needed to use and saved that.

Then, I accidentally overwrote the audio file with the dialogue with the snippet that I clipped out. So, all that was lost. No, I didn’t make a copy. When the software asked if I wanted to save the file, I should have said “no” because I had already saved the good copy before cutting out the snippet. But, I instinctively said “Yes, of course I want to save it!” and hit “Yes” and immediately realized what I had done.

Too late.

So, start again basically from scratch.

Finally, I put the whole thing together, which you can see here:

You can also watch it in HD. I don’t know why you would want to watch this in HD, but you can if you want.

A black and white cat in a black and white world.

You don’t have to go all-color or all-grayscale. You can mix the two to create a more interesting shot. The magic of Photoshop!

Once again, I stole the title style from JD so you can blame her for the title ending with a preposition.

Anyway, there are things that even JD will not do for you. Luckily for you, I’m here to fill in for those things. In the past, I have done such things as taking pictures of manila envelopes and taking pictures of empty bottles.

This time, I took pictures of a banana so you don’t have to. You’re welcome.

We’re not going to get into the politics of banana production, instead, simply enjoy photos of bananas.

You’ve already seen the banana photographed above, so now below you can see it in Star Trek: The Banana Generation phaser mode:

Below, we have a film noir banana pistol:

This next one is a bit more mysterious. The banana pistol appears to have been left somewhere, but what is that ominous shadow? Is someone approaching, preparing to arm themselves with a banana? Or, is the shadow that of a closing door, from the murderer fleeing the scene, leaving the banana weapon behind?

Here is a banana, all alone in the dark, half-naked, not knowing anyone is watching. Who’s watching the banana? Is it the mystery murderer from the previous scene? A banana stalker gone bananas? Who will save the lone banana?

Alas, no hero arrived in time. All that remains of the lonely banana is the banana peel, carefully left behind by the murderer. Or, was the banana simply kidnapped, left in a baggie to be sliced and cut into a fruit salad or perhaps a Jell-O mold?

The banana is never seen again. The show must go on, however, and so our producers have found a replacement banana.

But what fate will await this banana? Will the ghost of the banana past show up to ruin the scenes? Will this banana suffer the same unknown destiny? That’s a story to be continued for another day!

Or not.

This ball-peen hammer was originally used by Vulcan (a.k.a. Hephaestus) to forge thunderbolts for Zeus.

Okay. Not really.

This is an old ball-peen hammer, sometimes called a ball-pein hammer which makes no sense because it is used for peening in metalwork, and peening is not also spelled peining. Go figure.

Even though it was designed for peening use, which is the process of working a metal to improve its properties, such as building resistance to cracking and a whole bunch of other stuff I don’t feel the need to go into right now, it will still do a good job of hammering a nail.

Sacrilege, I know. But, at least it has a job, which can be hard to find these days.

And, thus ends Retro Week with a bang, bang, bang…

You’ve seen portions of this clock before here and here, but here it is in its full awesomeness:

It’s huge too. Imagine a normal sized clock. Then add a starburst. Takes up a lot of wall space. But it is awesome, so that’s okay.

I’m guessing this clock is from the 1960’s. Presumably made by Elgin Clock & Home Products of Chicago, Illinois, not to be confused with the Elgin National Watch Company, a.k.a. the Elgin Watch Company, formerly of Elgin, Illinois which moved to a suburb of Columbia, South Carolina, which was then renamed Elgin, South Carolina. Also not to be confused with the Elgin Clock Repair company of Elgin, Illinois.

You see, this is why unique branding is so very, very important. Much less confusing when people are looking up things fifty years later.

Now, maybe the walls ought to be painted sunshine yellow…