Artsy Fartsy

So among the tumult of life these last few weeks I had to pencil in a little art time (har har har) to complete a painting for my history class. I know that a painting isn't your run of the mill history final projects but my professor was really cool and gave us quite a few options to choose from and I chose to paint.

There is a depression era photo taken by Dorothea Lange that is known as "migrant mother" that I have really wanted to render as a multi layer stencil for a long long time. In fact, I even attemped to do so once a few years ago and wound up spending like 12 hours cutting out a single layer that was only 8 1-2" x 11" before I gave up. This time around I did things a bit differently. I decied to do a larger print, I kindof dumbed down the layers because i havent stenciled anything for quite a while and I told my professor that I was going to make a painting thus obligating myself to follow through.

I snapped a few shots of the process with my futuristic camera that is also a phone... you should really check these things out because they are nifty. I think that in the future every one will have phones that also take pictures.















I know that was a long bunch of pictures without dialog but I will do nothing to excuse myself because I am lazy and don't feel like labeling them. What I can tell you about the process though is that it was pretty fun. Like I said, it has been a really long time since I have cut a stencil like that so it was a little bit daunting at first and I suffered from "cutters block" also known as "I-have-no-idea-where-to-start-itis" but I eventually got to it and it wasn't so bad.

That project definitely got the gears turning and I hope to do some more projects like this and hopefully some fun mixed media stuff. Keep an eye out for that stuff because i hope to mess around with some of it soon.

Gold in my back pocket.

I have been failing wonderfully at diligently posting blog entries. I hope to do better in the future though as I can now do them from anywhere by using the gold in my back pocket. You might be wondering what it is that I am actually talking about, so I will clarify. I bought an iphone recently and it has a lot of the same characteristics of gold ie. it weighs a ton and costs a lot of money. My overall satisfaction makes up for the weight in my right pocket where my phone now resides and the void in my left pocket where all of my money used to be. All in all I'd have to say that I am stoked on it.

So, the title to this entry is actually borrowed from a pseudo rap song by my good friend Ja Speed called "Gold in My Back Pocket B*tches". It is a wonderful song meant to be sung falsetto through six months worth of beard. Ja, in fact, is chalk full of these sorts of things. His portrayal of a drunk indian, though it would probably offend most people, makes me laugh uncontrollably and his monolog of a has-been hippie calling 911 to report a still-is hippie for living in a van up the canyon is timeless. To honor Ja I have created this OBEY-esque image:


I hope to turn it into posters, stickers and T-shirts to make my millions.

In other recent news, I am almost done with most of my schooling this semester and am very excited to have some free time in the evenings to pursue my life of leisure with my wife. and our 5 kids that we don't have. kids put the backspace backspace backspace in F-U-N. Just kidding about that.

I really have nothing against kids; you can ask anyone who knows me and they can vouch for that. Natalie on the other hand can't stand kids. Okay that was a total lie. She actually loves kids, especially babies, and she has set out on a mission to clothe every baby in the world with hand knitted apparel. Some of the stuff that she knits is pretty sweet and makes me wish that I was a baby so that I could wear it. Photos will eventually be posted of her goods. The trick is to snap a photo before it winds up on a random baby never to be seen by me again.

Natalie's knitting is awesome because it has the captivating power to consume her attention to the point of not noticing that I am at the skatepark riding my BMX bike which I have been doing a lot lately. It has been a blast and I have been progressing a ton- a feat that I would have not thought possible about a year ago when I was super afraid of everything. As a result of all of the riding my legs have been looking particularly heinous. I took a photo but it doesn't really get across the sickly green color that my knees have turned due to bruising.

I am really hoping to get some riding footage to share on here soon. I am kinda holding out for the tailwhip to happen first. I have been working on those ones lately and today I even got back onto the bike and then fell over so that is real progress. AND I totally was super close to getting a foot back on a whopper (bunnyhop tailwhip) today. woo hoo.

Until next time.

Bees Please and a Dry Place to Sleep

Memorial day weekend provided nothing short of a variety of things to write about. It was a figurative cornucopia of things to do and see- a pinata full of bees, rain ,bicycles, bruises, bratwursts and babies. That is quite the pinata. You'd need to be fast to evade the angry bees, indigestion and soggy bruised babies on bicycles. In a fortunate turn of events, The crew of the USS Revolution Mfg.* was granted shore leave** on Friday making our holiday weekend into a rare four day weekend to be savored by all. I personally am a fan of four day weekends so naturally I was very pleased with it all. Since so much happened I will only provide highlights.

Friday it was our pleasure to learn something new about bees. Aaron's dad Farmer Boyd ,his brother in law, and his uncle have recently become bee keepers. It is actually one of the coolest hobbies that I have ever heard of. Between the the three of them they have about 9 hives which produce quite a bit of honey. I have heard that honey produced in your locale can be very effective at reducing allergy symptoms because of the amount of pollen that it contains from your area. It is like an immunization in that it gives your body an idea of what it's up against and helpes it adjust. It is the Adrian to your Rocky II.

Beehives

So the beehives are pretty cool. Not your great great grandpa's bee hives either, they are to of the line new school ones that don't look like a pile of rope that I feel the primal urge to grope. They are high quality "bee dressers" with drawer like slats that they can build honey on. So thats the new school stuff; we can now move on to the "future-school" stuff.

To extract the honey, eager bee keepers stole a large stainless steel centerfuge that would have housed 8 Russian cosmonauts on the International Space Station. Originally designed to allow velcro clad space men to jog like the guys on 2001: A Space Odyssey, the canister is also very good at spinning the honey right out of the honeycomb. Very cool.

Farmer Boyd and the Space Can

Saturday was a good time. Started out in the morning by heading up to Springville Canyon where Natalie's family was camping as part of the Davis family reunion. By way of background, my wife is a descendant of a certain Davis family through her mother's side. The original Davis's
had quite a few children- 12 or so if I remember correctly. Natalie is in the third generation and all of the generations make up about 740 descendants, a good chunk of which attend an annual Davis family campout. Fun times.

Anyways, we headed up in the morning and I went on my first road bike ride of the summer with Natalie's uncle and two cousins. It was a blast and I took a picture of my bike at the top.



Later in the day we decided to take a break from Davis Family festivities and head out of the canyon for lunch and to run some errands. We decided to have lunch at L&L Hawaiian BBQ which was great. I got Spam Musubi which for those of you who may not know is just Spam sushi. MMMMMMM.

Spam Musubi

Later we went to Salt Lake to visit the Hales who are on my side of the family who are some of my favorite people in the world and after that we headed back to Utah County where I destroyed my heel at the skatepark by bruising it really bad. After that, we decided to camp out with the family in our car so we loaded all of our earthy belongings (not really though), several bratwursts and headed back to the Davis gathering.

It was really fun because our car turns out to be bigger than our bed so we had a lot of room and it is also a lot more rain proof than a tent. (only important because it rained cats and dogs that night) Another highlight of Saturday was the amount of baby time that Natalie got. She sure like babies...weird. Maybe I'll get her one for her birthday.

Sunday Consisted of more rain, more babies more sleeping in the car and Davis's.

Monday, we got haircuts. I got the girl who sucks... again. The first time I got her I showered after and realized that she missed half of my hair and drove back enraged to get it fixed at which point she practically scalped me. I was very bitter but I am too nice to really confront the girl about it so I allowed myself to be victimized again this time. I swore profusely and then re-cut it myself at home. I was way too mad to go back. I am getting mad now just thinking about it. ...must kill soon.

Well, it is late and I must be getting to bed now. That sums up the post that I should have finishd earlier. Better late than never I guess.

until next time...

David Bowie Day (Without The David Or the B)

Yesterday marked the end of a pretty stressful work week. I did my best to keep up with the two jobs I had to perform at work and I think that I did okay for the most part. Fortunately though, I only had to do it all for four days and get to spend this wonderful friday nursing my new owies. (did you get that from the title? It was clever right?... well it was to me anyways.)

This is a late entry. It was intended for yesterday but I fell asleep when I was in the process of getting myself to go write it. I was very very tired.


I was trying hard to work my buns off to
help complete the factory to-do list yesterday but things weren't going so smooth. I started out the day by burying a small sharp resinsickle that had formed from dried pooled up resin from a fresh built snowboard into my thigh and breaking it off in there. It was gross and I had to squeeze it out of my leg in the bathroom. A few hours later I knicked my knuckle on a belt sander. It was super minor and I was feeling super luck and kind of cocky because it could have been much worse. A little while later while I was counting my lucky stars I wound up grinding off my other knuckle on a ski grinder.

It really isn't horrible. Worse things have happened to me. But it tends to contribute to a stressful day when you have a weeping wound on the knuckle of the hand you happen to be using that day. It was either at this point or shortly after when I decided to reward myself by skipping history class and go to the skatepark instead. That was a good idea but when I was there I was faced by an angry badger that clawed my leg in the process of being defeated by me.


The phrase "you should se the other guy" is appropriate here. Although I was cut up a little bit in the process I still pulled off a decisive victory over said badger. I don't think we'll be seeing him around much anymore.

After my heroic day I fell asleep in my clothes for hours and then showered in a daze and went back to bed at ten. Really. you can ask Aaron White. I guess he called at like eleven or something because he was making fun of me for it today.

Scooter Diary: A Soul Searching Journey

Under the most epic of titles should follow the most epic of stories. Okay, so that sweeping generalization might not be fulfilled in this case and the title itself may be misleading as well. I included the phrase "a soul searching journey" only because finding my body would be easy... it is located at the end of the large red streak on the pavement. My soul on the other hand would be nowhere to be found in this situation.

I really like to ride my BMX bike on my lunch break and after work at the Orem skatepark, which is located very close to my work. Ever since school started this semester though, this has become something of a problem because I have had to ride my road bike to work thus sacrificing my lunchtime bmx ride. The solution, and my latest stroke of genius was delivered to me in a dream (actually a BMX magazine) by an angel (actually by BMX legend Taj Mihelich). I wish you could see what I saw. It was a very majestic Moped with a glorious bike tied to it. I had to attempt it... just had to.



This is actually the more stable version. Originally I tied it to the basket that was formerly installed on the back rack. It added an exciting degree of instability and leverage. In addition to making me very afraid, it also made me second guess my own knot tying abilities and subsequently question my own manhood as the front of the bike came untied and fell off the rack as I was cruising through traffic in Orem. Featured in this photo is the new and improved low profile bungie chord edition. There is NO REASON why anyone shouldn't feel perfectly safe riding this around Utah County.

A Brief Stint with the Swiss Army

Okay, maybe I wasn't exactly in the Swiss Army but a am becoming a multi-function individual. A coworker of mine took a well deserved vacation to Southern Cal leaving me to try my best to do both of our jobs. It was pretty difficult but it was very educational. His job is a lot more physical than mine is and it seems like the smallest mistakes are immediately catastrophic. You could say that I am not exactly jealous of his job but I am also happy to have become slightly more useful in the process of learning.

First thing First

This is my first posting in the blogosphere. By way of introduction, My name is James. I have chosen to post under the name Jimmy Tweedles, which is an awful nickname that my great grandpa Big Lloyd (usually said as one word consisting of two syllables in my family) gave me that used to infuriate me as a kid. I decided that it might just be time to embrace it.

I have stood at the edge of the blogosphere many atime pondering whether or not I should begin to pollute cyberspace with my ramblings. Subsequent environmental changes have inspired me to take the plunge. Firstly, my friends are sick of listening to me and secondly, my English teacher has invited members of her class to blog in order to pick up some extra credit (which I forsee I will be in desperate need of shortly). So here I am, typing away, to no one in particular. I hope someone finds and enjoys what I have to say from time to time.

If you happen to follow this, you may at times read about various subjects from family to religion to bicycles to what I ate for lunch. These are my passions in order of importance, most of which are fairly benign subjects and should not offend... unless you hate cyclists, my wife or any one of my siblings, Mormons or eating lunch. Then I must say you should avert your browser and read no more. If not though, read on, for tomorrow I might say something worthwhile.