A Second Tie Sampler (With Designer Thoughts)

Since the last one was such a success… Here are more ties with designer thoughts.

 

This one has some very strange neon cats and toys with a teal background.

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“Oh, these splotches of paint I just dripped look like cats, guys check this out, we gotta do something with this!”

 

Here’s a Tabasco one, with standard sea food and tabacso logos floating through ribbons of color.

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“I have to do a colorful tie now. What do people eat with hot sauce, oh yeah, fish and stuff… I have no idea what I’ll do tomorrow, but for today the tie has seafood.”

 

Now we have Mickey Mouse… playing golf… in what is apparently hell and the Matrix.

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“Another Mickey tie! I can’t do this anymore! What am I even… Oh I have a game on Saturday, I’ll have Mickey playing golf! at least then I can pretend my job is better than it is and I’m playing golf.” 

 

Here are some people watching a tennis game.

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“Man TV is so boring. All there is to watch is tennis… tennis, tennis, tennis… oh, I’ve accidentally made a tie.”

 

Dis one got money, da Grants and da Benjamin’s

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“Ha money, money, money, I have so much money, my tie is made out of money. I bet other people would want to pretend to be like me.” 

 

And finally, one with Abrams tanks, no I’m not wearing it.

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“You’ve heard of tank tops, now let me show you tank ties… God, I need sleep!”

So… I was getting a cat out from behind the water heater.

So… I was getting a cat out from behind the water heater.

Okay, let me back up. It was the morning of Independence Day (U.S.) and I was sleeping late because two days earlier I had been plagued with terrible headaches and I didn’t want that to repeat. So I was getting up at around 10, or at least that was my plan. I had been in a semiconscious state for about ten minutes when I heard a crash. I then heard my Mom calling a name I recognized as a cat. (The cat isn’t ours but she insisted on calling him ‘Mike’) After I heard some more thumping for a few moments, I got up, descended my ladder, and walked into the living room. One the floor was a shattered CD case of an MST3K recording and several books. I continued out to the kitchen where my Mother informed me that ‘Mike’ had gotten in and was being chased around the house by our indoor cat. As I entered, Mother was able to shut the pantry door, trapping him on what was once a back porch. She left to go around and open the back door, I decided the simpler thing to do was to open the door carefully and then open the back, which I did, but not before the cat ran to the other side of the room and tucked himself into the corner.

After several minutes with the back door open we declared him out and closed it. Inspecting things to see what had fallen over, I found that ‘Mike’ was still very much tucked in the corner next to the water heater. After obtaining some gloves and opening the back door, I tried to gently pick him up and put him outside. He did not agree with this plan. The second my hand got near him he began jumping like a flea straight up the wall. After several unsuccessful jumps he managed to grab onto the water heater’s edge. How I have no idea, because, if you’ve ever seen a water heater you know, there’s nowhere to grab. After a few awkward dangling moments he was on top. From my now inferior position I tried to coax him toward the door. Instead he looked in the other direction and found the corner between the wall and the heater. As I reached to block the hole, and hopefully push him down, he decided ‘bombs away’ and jumped head first into said hole.

So now we had a trapped cat. Looking through a small space between the heater and wall revealed an eye, and some ear twitching. At this moment we had to wake my Father, who would know how to shut off the water. It turned into shutting off the water to the whole house due to the fact that the heater has no cutoff. We then drained the heater, which took the better part of an hour.

The problem with an empty water heater is that there is still no good way to move it. Especially if it’s as shoddily worked into an old shoddy house as mine. The house was done well, but to say the utilities weren’t is an understatement. Anyway, we had to disconnect the water and the gas, and even then there were several unbendable pipes that allowed for virtually no movement on the part of the heater. After fifteen minutes we managed to move the bottom enough so that ‘Mike’ could turn right-side up. At this point we decided to let him jump up on his own, so we put a board in under him (he was already standing on the trim) and moved it slowly up. He jumped just above it each time until he was again on the top of the heater.

At this point I backed away having seen this very afraid cat leap up into windows, claws bared, about an hour ago. My Father, however, reached for him, I assume to pick him up. At this point he exploded into a ball of kitty fury and somehow landed on the floor. As I quickly scooted out of the way he burst past me and out the back door.

This was not how I wanted to spend the morning of the Fourth. But I assume it wasn’t how ‘Mike’ wanted to, either. I think however, unfortunately, it is safe to say, we won’t be seeing him any time soon. Probably for good reason. (Unfortunately as well, I got no pictures)

Nothing to Do

So, this has nothing to do with anything, but I got this letter from Macalester university or something, and it begins with blah, blah, blah. That about sums up my feelings for it.

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I also went through a very tough time recently when I had to give away the decepti-fridge.

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Though everything turned out okay, because the guys installing the fridge actually re-applied the sticker and made my new fridge a decepti-fridge.
(This was months ago and I’m just now getting over it enough to write about it)

So anyway, I hope you are having a good time while I actually think of interesting things to write about.

Things that will get You Punched in the Mouth – Fixed Dice

So I was at the dollar store the other day. Inside were these. 20130215-233715.jpg

These are a set of regular dice and a set of dice that only rolls seven or eleven. One of the “fixed” dice has only fives and the other has half sixes and half threes.

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Is there actually a human being alive that thinks this won’t get them punched in the mouth immediately? I mean, there is not even a way too cheat someone with these subtly. If someone takes even a close look at the dice it’s very obvious that one has only fives. I guess you’re supposed to play some kind of trick involving the other (regular) dice, but even that seems improbable to pull off with anyone other than a complete idiot.

They’re a great novelty, but they aren’t really very great. I mean, I can roll them on my table and laugh, but I don’t really want to get punched in the mouth. This is possibly one of the worst ideas I’ve ever seen. I have no idea why anyone would make this. I also have no idea why I bought them.

Specificity is Always Good

I’d like to be specific here: specificity is always good. And one should practice being as specific as possible. Whether it’s just a board game, or your job, or some dangerous work that you have to do, you want people to understand what your intentions are and how your going to go about them.

Let’s face it, none of us are evil masterminds or spies who would benefit from our intentions not being known. And we can still keep some things secret, but in everyday life, making your intentions known is helpful to others, and then they can be helpful to you. No one wants to bump into you, or to get in your way at the copier, or to turn your computer off for that update right as you were in the middle of that big project. This loses both of you time, you even more because of the time you spend yelling at them. It’s great when people know what you’re doing and can avoid getting in your way.

Okay, that’s not specificity, that’s openness. But the two usually go together, and you should never be nonspecific with a plan you are being open about. With that copier example, you want to tell someone that you’ll need “X” copies and then tell them which copier you’re going to get it from. You also don’t want someone chopping their arm off while doing work for you because you didn’t tell them what could go wrong or something like that.

Being specific is probably best if you’re working with someone, which you should be. In a cooperative board game it is one of the things that can save the game. If you’re working in an office it is best to tell every exactly what you are doing and what they should be doing so they can see how it all comes together.

To be concise, specificity is always good. Conciseness is always good too.

You think they bought it?”