Random Nuclear Strikes

Dropping off “art”.

A couple months back, The Wife came home and asked if I could visit one of her co-workers to talk with her about an welding project. Being a not-quite starving student who is always up for doing something cool and different, I agreed.

This co-worker collects kitsch. From sixties memorabilia of all types, to funky furniture, ot old arcade games, this woman has a lot of stuff. She’s not a hoarder because she both buys and sells, but she has a lot of stuff.

One of the things she has is old hubcaps. Enough to spell her name out in six-foot letters on the ground. She wanted a “running man” that she could stand in her yard.

I told her that wouldn’t be a problem, had her select a bunch that she wouldn’t mind me possibly ruining, boxed them up and went to work.

It took me a couple weeks of two nights a week fab shop work to get it did and done, but the install was yesterday.

“Ben Bellevue” stands 8.5 feet tall and probably has Christmas lights on him by now.

He looks like this without his metal clothes on

Plymouth, Packard, Rambler, Oldsmobile, IH, VW, Buick, and Mercury. With Chevy truck knees and Ford truck hands.

Next up, she wants a couch with three hub cap topped “Space Needles” along the back. Probably sometime around March.

This quarter in Fab Shop I built this, welding screen frames for my “shop”, a fascia for a fireplace (which y’all will be able to see once the plasterer gets around to doing his deeds on the fireplace surround) and am ending the session by building a welding table like the ones we use in school.

I also want to get some time to build one of these.

I have the bowling ball and the bottle jack. Now I just need the time.

I’ve never been one to hide what I think. In the case of my vehicles, I tend to just post it on the back of the vehicle. Not in a “crazy” way, since most of them are subtle statements for insiders.

Like this

I do tend to be a little more upfront with my Jeep. I worry less about people vandalizing it than I do my truck. I do still have to spend an unfortunate amount of time in King County, after all.

Normally, my stickers like the one on the lower left get me the finger. I have had a small number of people attempt to berate me at an intersection. Also, I once had a guy berate me while traveling at highway speeds. I don’t have power windows, so ignoring him was easy.

I have also had one other guy try and merge with me while he was staring me in the face at freeway speeds. I knew to watch out for him because when I passed him a moment before I saw that his little truck had a sticker calling TEA Party members racists, homophobes and murders.

However, last week, I had something rare happen. I was driving the Jeep and as I was being passed on the right by a white Ford Escape it paused. I looked over to see two men and a woman looking at me. The driver was giving me a thumbs up, the woman in the passenger seat and the other man in the rear passenger side seat were both waving and smiling.

Shocked and amazed at the positive attention, all I could whip up at that particular moment was a head bob and a lifting of the fingers off the steering wheels.

As they passed I noticed a couple of very nice stickers about the Constitution on their rear bumper.

If you know these folks or, by an even more extraordinary chance ARE these folks, my apologies for my slight reply. Get in touch and I’ll buy you a beer.

I didn’t even bother with paying attention to the editorial panels this week. Instead, I’ll be dropping a couple quote panels from my Blogfodder folder I think most, if not all, will enjoy.

The first fits in with a portion of Joe’s philosophy on gun-grabbers.

The other is from the man himself

Which is why the folks described in the first quote haven’t moved faster. They still fear those they intend to make victims.

And for no other reason than I found it recently, here are The Shadows