See my vest! See my vest! Made from real Gorilla chest!

July 10, 2007 18 Comments read Attractions, Midwest, Travel, USA, Wisconsin

On the morning of the fourth, Lesley and I decided that the best way to celebrate our freedom whilst the sun was shining would be to poke fun at the captivity of others. Thus, our course was determined, and we made our way to the Racine Zoo. The last time we were there, we were attacked by a tiger, and I was molested by a camel. If this experience was to live up to its predecessor, the animals had their work cut out for them. Luckily, they all had can-do attitudes. The Racine Zoo is no longer free, but a big flashing smile at the entry gate and a suggestion made that perhaps I could appear to be under the age of 15 was enough to get me in for half price, saving myself a grand total of two dollars. Go ahead and mock me. It’s ok. The two dollars isn’t the point. The point is that I can bend retail workers to do my bidding. THAT is true power. First stop was the Castle of Monkeys. Since today is Monkey Tuesday, it feels right and natural to talk about monkey antics today.

At night it turns into the Damn Spooky Castle of Monkeys, and I hear Skeletor takes up residence there.

I’m fairly certain that this is the same monkey that looked so concerned a few years ago after Lesley made a face at him. This time, he kept waggling his eyebrows suggestively at her and clutching at the cage in a “Hello? Let me out, baby! I love you! Don’t you love me?” sort of way, and she kept waggling hers at him. While they were waging eyebrow wars, I wandered over and took pictures of the other monkey, who alternated munching on lettuce and sticking out his tongue at me. Lesley snapped me out of my fascination by indignantly shouting “THAT GODDAMN MONKEY IS FLIPPING ME OFF. That nonchalant bastard!”

Sure enough, the monkey had enough of Eyebrow Wars and was now very calmly sitting on a rock, flipping Lesley the bird. Realistically, she had no choice but to retaliate.

It was a hot enough day outside that many of the animals were hiding out in whatever shade they could find. We only got a glimpse of the lions, the tigers, and the andean bears, but the alligators were out in full force.

And when I say alligators, I mean a shit-ton of tiny alligators. It’s as if they captured half of the hatchlings in the New York City sewer system and used them to populate this tiny pool, forgetting that these cute, foot long handbags will eventually grow into surly, 21-foot long cowboy boots. After taking a picture of the peahen below, she hopped out of her enclosure and followed us around the park like a Peahen Lindsay Lohan, begging us to take more pictures, drinking everything in sight, and making pathetic noises when we stopped paying attention to her.

WOODEN UMBRELLA HAS A FLAVOR. NOM NOM NOM!

The giraffe then tried to intimidate me into not publishing the photograph of his secret rendezvous with with the umbrella, but ever since I discovered that being short places you at exactly the right height for a shockingly perfect nutkick, height no longer intimidates me.

The fuzzy and cute, however, makes me powerless.

Lesley desperately wanted to feed the giraffe some grass, and the giraffe desperately wanted to let her. How could the zoo stop a love this pure? We paid our two dollars! Can’t we feed a hungry animal? The rest of the adventures of the 4th to be continued…

I’m tired of all of this motherfucking shampoo on this motherfucking plane!

July 3, 2007 7 Comments read Everything is Terrible

What ever happened to the days when it was a big deal to fly on an airplane? When people would dress up just for the occasion, and you didn’t have to worry about sitting next to someone who looked or smelled like the Elephant Man? Or someone who might attempt to pay for their third drink at thirty thousand feet with food stamps? The days when some tiresome ‘security’ guard who doesn’t speak passable english wouldn’t hassle someone like my dad for having (gasp) a full size cologne in his briefcase? The days when you didn’t have to gather all of your toiletries and makeup, check each one to see if it was over or under the allowable amount of ounces, and then figure out how you were going to get it all to fit in a quart size plastic bag, because you can’t put it in your checked baggage lest a minimum wage government worker monkey on a power trip were to take his giant egg beater and whip it through your suitcase, wrinkling your clothes, breaking your breakables, and loosening product caps enough so they’ll ooze fluid all over everything?

Only two more hours until I get to experience the joy of all of these changes, once again. Given that I very nearly have to bend over for a cavity check to search me for some hidden Bumble & Bumble every single time I fly, I’m pretty sure the terrorists have already won. It’s clearly a war on hygiene. An assault on your sense of smell. How did I get on this extra-hassle-terrorist-watch list? I’m pretty certain that by virtue of the plain fact of the size of my waistline, I don’t have nearly enough strength of character to believe in any cause enough to die for it. Just saying.

Lesley called me yesterday to request that I not miss my flight like the best man did yesterday–there’s not much chance of that, as unlike him, I didn’t find it to be a priority to go out drinking the night before.

Forewarned is forearmed, though–I STILL might not make it to Wisconsin, if only because if there are any screaming babies on the flight, I will surely take it upon myself to flush them down the toilet one by one.

Project Sparklebooty

June 26, 2007 21 Comments read Projects

A couple of years ago, I won a pickup sales contest–somehow I still didn’t earn a commission check for the month, but that was an angry rant for two years ago, not today.

I ended up ordering two humbuckers without a real game plan for how I was going to use them, since I was/am perfectly happy with the Lace Sensors in my strat. The third pickup I ended up giving to delicateman, since he threw some pickup sales my way that ended up putting me up over the top.

I didn’t really want to buy a new guitar just to gut it, so I started checking ebay for a reasonably priced vintage guitar. What I found was this:

I loved that the paint job looks like an old bowling ball, and I ended up picking it up for cheap. sixshotsorfive and I determined that the finished product should be named Sparklebooty, and thus Project Sparklebooty began.

The seller indicated that he thought it was a Teisco body…maybe. In reality, not knowing has made it a real bitch to try and find a neck for it. One thing’s for sure–modern necks don’t fit it. If you bought a Squier or an Epiphone or any other cheap new/used guitar from the Kirkland Guitar Center around May of 2005, there is a good chance that at some prior point, I removed its neck and tried to fit it onto this body.

It doesn’t quite look like any Teisco I’ve seen–it’s definitely not a Del Rey, and their other, less popular models don’t get a lot of love on the internet. According to Wikipedia, Teisco guitars were also imported in the U.S. under several brand names including Silvertone, Kent, Kingston, Kimberly, Heit Deluxe and World Teisco–and not a single picture exactly matches what I’ve got. It does seem to be in a similar family, though, so if I happen to see a Teisco/Silvertone/etc neck in decent condition, I may have to pick it up. Eventually I plan to have a Warmoth neck made for it with skull & crossbones fret inlays, but I don’t see that happening for a long time, and I’d really like to get this project going–I’ve already had the body sitting in my closet for two years.

In order to fit the humbuckers, I’ll need a new pickguard. The body is routed out enough underneath the original pickguard that I shouldn’t have to do any additional routing to accommodate them. I’ve also bought some pirate knobs, which are pretty fucking awesome, if I do say so myself.

Since Sparklebooty is such a unique color (not quite silver, not quite gold), I’m not sure what sort of pickguard will look best with it. Aged pearl would probably look really nice, but I want something fairly dark or obnoxiously shiny, so it’s out off the bat.

I could stick with tortiseshell which has that vintage-ugly-cool, but that’s not very piratey. I could go with smoked mirror, which I think would more closely match the guitar. I could go with clear mirror, which would more closely match the pickups. Black abalone could look awesome or it could be truly, truly awful.

Or I could do what I did with my strat, which is to get a clear acrylic pickguard and paint the back whatever damn color/design I want. What should I do?