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Gary
3,982 Posts
If this thread gets to 3 pages its going to look sweet on :Strut Central: You know what I mean?
You guys wanna talk about hobbies or something?
I'm working on a model of an F-15. Its my first model ever. I work on it at the kitchen table after the kids go to bed. It is hard painting all the little parts and glueing them right. I guess that part takes practice.
I got really interested in physics for a while there. Read lots of popular physics books from the bookstore, and then I got my fill of that. These days I'm reading a lot of Korean history books. I also write an article for our local Korean American magazine. You know the kind you find at Korean restaurants and markets and stuff. It's glossy and has my picture and everything. At the end of each article I give a little bio and an email address where I can be reached for questions and comments. Nobody has ever emailed me. Not even once. Makes me wonder if anybody reads it.
You guys wanna talk about hobbies or something?
I'm working on a model of an F-15. Its my first model ever. I work on it at the kitchen table after the kids go to bed. It is hard painting all the little parts and glueing them right. I guess that part takes practice.
I got really interested in physics for a while there. Read lots of popular physics books from the bookstore, and then I got my fill of that. These days I'm reading a lot of Korean history books. I also write an article for our local Korean American magazine. You know the kind you find at Korean restaurants and markets and stuff. It's glossy and has my picture and everything. At the end of each article I give a little bio and an email address where I can be reached for questions and comments. Nobody has ever emailed me. Not even once. Makes me wonder if anybody reads it.
Comments
Models seem like fun to do, but when you're done, what do you do? Display them? It seems like one of those things where the process is more fun than the product imo.
I like to draw psychedelic art, but it's so time consuming I don't have time for it atm. Kinda sucks.
When I was a kid I went through a period where I obsessively built models. I took great care in getting them perfect and devised a number of my own painting techniques to simulate camouflage, battle damage etc (I built mostly tanks and war planes). By the time I was 8 or so, I was good enough where they would occasionally display my works in the window of the local hobby store, the only child at the time to receive this honor.
But yeah, what to do with them? After admiring them and playing with them for a while, I inevitably blew them up.
When I was in about 5th grade I was into models, sorta. But they were hard. I had a fighter jet, and a horse, and some MIG and some others I had done.
I had these young cousins I did not care for, I liked their parents even less, and their uncle ranks high on my list of unpleasant people.
When ever they came over and I wasn't around my mom would turn them loose in my room and they would destroy it.
I wasn't a neatnik, but these kids would draw on the floor and go through all my stuff.
One day I came home to find they had broken all my models. That was the end of models for me.
I had these really great hard wood blocks. They lived in a wooden wagon, and had been my brothers and my sisters before they were mine.
Came home one day and couldn't find them. Found out those kids liked em so much my mom gave them to them.
LaSer... My man... That was the saddest story ever. Are your cousins still assholes? You should tell them to register in the strut and salma Hayek this bitch. It's reconciliation time!
I have not seen them since they were about 12.
I have not seen their mom or dad for 25 years.
The mom got so bad even my mom quit talking to her, and my mom has a really high tolerance for obnoxious people. (Lucky for me.)
I think the kids father was my fathers 2nd cousins, so the kids were my third cousins.
^^^ so clever it's about to go on Facebook
When I was in high school I got a coupon for a free haircut at the local super cuts wannabe place. I had no actual cash, but needed a cut. That meant no tip money. So, I get the hair cut and use the coupon. No tip, which is like extra dick move on top of the coupon. The best part though, the ratty Volvo that I was driving at the time had a busted driver's side door. I had to get in the passenger side and climb over.
That was a fucking low moment. The walk of shame after the coupon/no tip and then the passenger side climb. If there's any balance in this world, hopefully she thought I was a dipshit (understanding I was just a kid) and then got a good laugh at me crawling trough the car.
Never really got into models myself but my grandfather is huge on them, especially powered boats and submarines. He spends countless hours putting them together and then once a month he and some like minded fellows participate in a model regatta at some indoor pool in the west side of town. I hear it gets pretty wild and competitive in there.
I have one somewhere and I laughed out loud. Good shit.
There's a ton of folks who need it but don't recognise the fact. The 5 I've helped have approached me on the basis that they saw I'd done it myself, and had the self-awareness to want similar transformation.
So these are acquaintances, not random dudes.
Starts with a full and frank analysis of what's wrong, weaknesses, threats, recognising the five stages of grief. Thats a tough process and sorts out the motivated from the curious.
Move onto the fun bit, outlandish desires brainstorming and teasng out strengths and opportunities. Then out of this soft life-mentor stuff I throw in some business techniques - financial analysis, expense audit, balance sheet, build some tactical 90 day plans that move them towards their strategic aims, wrap it up in a project plan with milestones, performance/potential analysis of their resources, the Kano customer service concept....
In the two years one dude has changed his life from shit job/debt/woman woe to a happily married dude, solvent, in his dream job. One girl from a bored wife with dull career to owning and running a restaurant by the sea, and one young single mum from a life of drudgery and child minders into a creative and flexible career in the countryside with a new beau and a rosy future.
The two who fell by the wayside seem to carry on their lives, albeit with no change, so good luck to them.
Bastards.
Anyways I build these thoughts into a website for make resource available for all those truly willing to achieve their own renaissance.
Alternatively, just go buy "How to Have A Brilliant Life", though its not exactly 50 Shades, nahmsayin
Now back to your normal modelling program...
took wayyyyyy more than 5 stages. beat THAT.
Except for the thin one-spots.
Pain in the fucking ass.
My doctor - who I was sure hated children and felt nothing about how much he hurt them with needles, cold metal stethoscopes and the needle and thread he stitched gashed pinkies with. One time, my parents and I were leaving a restaurant, a nice one with carpet and dim lighting and plush seats and I saw my doctor walk in just as I was about to get out of my chair. I froze. I thought he was there to take me away. I refused to look at him or get up. It was a bit of a scene and I am not sure who was more embarrassed, my parents or the doctor who looked like he had obviously done something to scare me stiff. My Dad had to pry my fingers off the chair and carry me out of there with my face buried in his shoulder.
And the asshole who cut my hair. My Mom was not trying to spend hours with my thick unruly hair and so I got boy cuts, which I did not want. The last time we went to see him I squirmed and pitched such a fit, he cut his fingers on the scissors. I got banned.
I'd like a ship in a bottle for the fireplace mantle.
I lost all of those somehow. You have to send them to me some time.
I love how this thread has turned out.
This is mine:
http://koreanwordaday.tumblr.com/
The name says it all. I think 990 is a pretty good number, but i look at others peoples tumblrs and they're all weird. just pictures of socks and raindrops and moody shit and animated gifs of people being surprised. i don't really get it. i've had young people try to explain tumblr to me and i don't get it. i just used it because it seemed like easy.
http://white-bed.tumblr.com/
who is looking at this and thinking it is interesting? i mean, what is this shit?
it's been a while. how's thangs?
I liked models a lot when I was a kid. Lots of Top Gun F-14s, old Chevys, but the best was this one for sure. It wasn't particularly challenging to build-- it was tough to paint though. I never really got sick of looking at it, taking it apart, putting it back together, etc. I think it fell apart after a few years.
This reminds me of the ee cummings book based on his experience in WWI, "The Enormous Room." Highly recommended even if you don't like his poetry.
is this on channel 4? seriously though, i need this. only i wish i wasn't the type of person that would just carry on as before...
It's possible it's him, but I just don't remember. It's not my field or subfield, I just read some stuff and heard about he changed the game a bit AND was like "If you don't agree with what I say, go read the Korean and tell me something different" which I thought was cool.
I read a book the other day called Not In Front of the Servants discussing the life of servants in England from 17th-early 20th centuries, but primarily Victorian England. Some fascinating stuff, but a few things jumped out at me for how outrageous they were:
-Some English "ladies" would not bother learning the names of their servants and simply call them by one name, or the name of the first servant in their position that they had. So the female servant would be "Jane" and the male would be "Reginald" for instance. There were be like 8-10 "Janes" in her lifetime.
-Many of the ladies of the estate would demand their servants (particularly the male coachmen and groundskeepers) run their dogs and do exercise to "not get too fat and embarrass the family."
-Each servant would have a different outfit signifying their role. Additionally, sometimes they would receive a new outfit FOR CHRISTMAS and then have to pay for it out of their wages.
-If the sons of the estate banged the servant girls and it was found out, the servant girls would be fired, although she for all intents and purposes was not allowed to refuse their advances.
-Victorian houses had huge amounts of stairs and back entrances so the estate family would only see the servants when they were needed. Meanwhile, they had to carry huge buckets of water and heavy items up and down (sometimes) 10 flights of outdoor stairs.
BTW, this book is not from any of my fields either, but I had it laying around, sold it and had wanted to read it. The sale forced me to read it.
It seems fairly tame considering some of the stuff that was happening around the world at the time (though in no way right). The 'name' thing is actually unintentionally hilarious. I'm surprised they didn't just number them instead of having to use a pesky name.
The main thrust of the author's argument was critiquing those (even now) who look back at that time in England and are like "GEE, WEREN'T THOSE GREAT TIMES IN BONNY OL' ENGLAND!" (Eyeroll) Also detailing the lives of these faceless nameless people who served and lived in these houses of the rich. Full details of their miserable lives, horrible condition and how some kept their spirits/were able to persevere.
Has anyone here read Fifty Shades of Grey? I'm assuming it's idiotic, but curious if someone has and what they thought. I find these acts of pop culture torture informative. I watched like 20 minutes of the last Twilight movie as a social experiment and found it at best excruciating.
I do that now. We work for Germans and I call them all Klaus on the phone.
9/10 I am right.
I already know what they call us.
No the last time I read something on the bestseller list I found it just made me gnash my teeth (The Alchemist). I'm reading Anna Karenina at the minute. It's slow going but worth it. Speaking of pop culture experiments... I work with young people and tend to end up taking groups of them to the cinema so end up getting exposed to a lot of films I otherwise wouldn't. In the last few years I've seen a lot of the big studio animated films they put out. I was surprised how much I liked them, I was thoroughly entertained (Monsters University, Despicable Me 2, etc.) The Smurfs was crap though.