End of the Blue Dog Tools

A Difference of Opinion, Gerald Guthrie, 1996 Inkjet Print

The physical layout at the studio where I work weekends is such that we have adopted a categorical system of tool usage by function. You will not find peg-boarded walls festooned with anal compulsive outlines of hammers and saws. You will find boxes of stuff, arranged as twistors, cutters, grabbers, bangers, snippers, etc. It looks sloppy, unkempt, disorganized, but it is an efficient way to work. Grab the needed tool out of the box or basket, throw it back in after you are done.

Complain all you want to about party politics and partisanship, the fact of the matter is, it is here to stay.

I've related how Martin van Buren used party politics to take the presidency. And that he was one of the worst leaders we've ever had. But that is the way it is. Much as I get angry over things like this (and I obviously do), over the lying, the cheating, the stealing, the Lowest Common Denominator corrupt, manipulative, venal, base, cynical behavior of politicians, this is the way things work. This is the nature of democracy. It is sausage making on an apocalyptic scale.

It is the way things work for the same reason that any other suite of tools we use works, but in the social realm. It works. Grassroots movements may come and go, semi-anarchic egalitarian movements may rise and fall, but a hierarchical, closely linked, collective social network of like identities, common interests, and self-interested purposes consistently works in politics - regardless of the character of the system.

Tools, I said? Yes, tools. Social tools. A suite of social tools. A cultural package. They've been around since at least the Neolithic. Ever since we started to collect in groups larger than clans and tribes, we've made use of this nebulous suite of virtual tools. Long before Twitter, long before Facebook, long before the recognition of these things in present form. Friendships, acquaintances, alliances, caucuses, a network of favors, debts, punishments, rewards, mutualisms, parasitisms, consortia, which together make up a group identity, a purposeful superorganism. That which we strangely insectoid-flavored socially mutated apes use to get things done. The Id of our Collective It. The creeky, vaporous mechanisms of our weird swarm behavior: our wisdom, and idiocy, and madness of crowds which is, well, us, governing.

As someone who uses tools a lot, as someone who appreciates tools, I recognize that there is a holism to a suite of tools. In any craft task, you aren't just making use of one tool. They are bound, entangled, One Whole out of Many. The Greater Than the Parts. If I think about it too hard, when examining a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, or a really slick hack or fine job, I can almost get misty eyed about that suite of tools. I involuntarily invoke the Pathetic Fallacy, when I think of that faithful, brave, dependable, comforting, likable little satchel of tools.

And when a job is botched, I can't really blame the tools, now can I? Can I blame all the conservative tools out there for the botched job of the last thirty years? Well, yes, and no. But if I am honest about it, I've got to blame the users rather than the tools.

Of course, there is such a thing as redundant or worthless tools.

Take, for example, Blue Dog Democrats. They are gone, not for any lack of functionality or missing social worth, but quite simply they are gone because they were redundant. Blue Dogs, mainly from the South, conservative Democrats, fiscally conservative (but that is rather a stupid designation, is anyone fiscally libertine?), occasionally socially conservative, were redundant. Useless. They were hammer-saws. Screwdriver-ratchets. Tweezer-files.

People didn't need them, because there were other tools (pun intended) in the bag called Republicans that pretty much had the same function.

Do I feel bad for the Blue Dogs? No. Why should I feel bad for a tool?

A Fire Ecology

Titanium knives

I have a burning desire to cast titanium.

Ah ha ha. I just realized there was a pun there.

No, really I do. A lot of casters will tell you the ultimate casting experience is cast iron. While I agree cast iron is extremely sexy,  I have a major hard-on for the look of titanium. It looks like steel but without the rust. Problem is, titanium is chemically highly reactive. In its molten state, it will eat through most refractory materials such as alumina, silica, or magnesia. As a result, a technique known as skull melting is used. This involves keeping a section of solid titanium metal interposed between the melt (done with an electric arc) and the crucible walls.
Titanium melts at about 3000 degrees F. Because titanium is reactive with oxygen, a normal atmosphere cannot be used. Typically, the melt occurs in a neutral argon atmosphere or a vacuum.

So, I wish to engage in vacuum induction skull melting, dude.

Vacuum Induction Skull Melting of Titanium

Ain't gonna happen. Darn it. So, I'm stuck with just the regular old casting of either aluminum or bronze at a measly 2000 degrees F with plain old fire.

The weird thing I noticed the other day, walking up to the library, was the bricks. Yeah, stupid, I know, but looking at the bricks that the library was made of, I realized they all were made with fire.

Then I noticed the concrete walls. The glass in the windows. The metal frames of the doors. All made with fire. The asphalt parking lot. Fire.

Fire! Almost every freaking thing we make is made with fire!

I mean, looking around, I'm surprised we have any carbon or oxygen left! (Of course, that's silly. Its just that all our stuff around us looks like a lot of stuff to us little fire-domesticating monkeys).

I don't know, it's just I've never really thought about it in an all-encompassing way before. It struck me as rather amazing, how much fire we use.

Speaking of which, my niece just got done with an engineering project involving converting human waste into carbon fuel. She never mentioned it to me, probably because I would have made fun of her and her poop project. (I would have too). It's featured on the Discovery Channel, which you can watch right here .

I think, though, I'd rather they put it all back in the earth. Do the terra preta thing with it, instead of burning it.

Kind of like the ethanol projects, it all used to be food. And I think that burning food for fuel is pretty fucking stupid.

Let the Dipshittery Commence!

See the map? That's my version of the senatorial map of the United States of America. You will notice that the state of Kentucky is now a giant sucking black hole of uselessness now. Were you to fly across the country, Kentucky would still be there. Nice enough place from above. Green hills, green valleys. Maybe a little too many cows and cowshit retention ponds in the western part. But overall, pretty.

Drive on through, still there. Pretty drive, pretty country.

But in senatorial space, it's just a big empty now, with two empty useless suits representing the state. Two empty useless suits with nothing but acrid smoke and the stench of manure inhabiting them.

One, one of the best corporate lapdogs KY ever produced. A man who has never said no to taking it up the ass at the behest of his rich masters,  Mitch McConnell, cocksucker extraordinaire. A man whose vast, large, generous, grand sweeping vision for this country is to deny a President a second term, keep the depression going for ten more years, keep the honst decent hard-working people down and desperate, and so help the cocksucking rich steal, pillage, and rape every last worthy resource, asset and skill our country has within it. And he does good for KY in the process, or rather, the ruling class in KY. Oh, he will make noises about democracy and freedom, but he takes care of those that do not need taking care of first and foremost and fuck everyone else.

And why? Oh, he will be amply rewarded. His rich masters will take care of him, and the Party of Fuck You (formerly the party of Fuck You, I Got Mine) will take care of him. He's set. He's golden. Americans get the best government money can buy.

And now Mitch has a young apprentice. Rand Paul. Learning from the master. Oh, Paul makes noises about being a rebel, about a fresh approach, about a Tea Party tidal wave, but he talks the same stale old talk all career politicians do. Hypocritical parasite. Cocksucker in training. With Mitch's hand firmly up his ass. You can barely see Mitch's lips move when Rand talks, but move they do.


Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul


Want proof Rand has nothing new? Read this interview in a formerly great paper, now just a Murdochian rag. "Crazy reformer" they say. REBEL. Mav-er-rick. Wild and crazy guy!

He claims he will tackle defense and entitlement issues to reduce the budget. Yeah, well. We'll see.

How about his other insanely new ideas?

Cut spending.
Term limits.
Constitutional amendment to balance the budget.
"Read the Acts" bill.

All of these as stale and old as a stone-hard turd stuck in the constipated fossilized bowel of a once unhappy, now long extinct dinosaur.

No, not McConnell!

It was a metaphor! I'm talking the bills. Nothing new. Nothing even exciting and new. The same dumb shit I've heard for going on thirty years now.

And not particularly bright ideas either.

Term limits? They are called elections. That's why we have them. Besides, you would find the selection of candidates head towards the most cynical, vilest, venal, opportunistic bastards ready to sell their vote to the highest bidder - at least in the last term. Got to get their nut before they head to K street and lobbying! Got to suck a lot of cocks and build up favors! Pure dipshittery, this idea.

Balanced budget amendment. Uh, read up on consitutional law. It is a dangerous gimmick, not a solution. Anyone who proposes this is either fucking lying or ignorant.

"Read the Act"? Hey, you can't get even half the American people to take thitry minutes out of one day to VOTE! You think they will spend a few hours plowing through lawyerese to understand a bill being voted on in a few days. And if they do get through the language and don't like what they read, then what? Complain to their congressman, who is horse-trading votes on seven other bills No. This is again, just a bullshit gimmick to look democratic.

These are distractions, to take our limited attention spans off all the dipshittery.

The Doomsday Machine

A lot of people wondered why Reagan suddenly got all soft on the Russkies starting back in 1985. Many have felt that - having gained an unassailable position of strength through the massive nuclear arms buildup, the development of Star Wars anti-satellite and missile shields, and the ascension of a new premier in the form of Gorbachev - Reagan could finally feel at ease at the bargaining table - much to the chagrin of the rabid war-wimp conservative hawks who now revere St. Ronnie's name.

Well, Gorby was (is) an intelligent, reasonable, rational leader. He was someone you actually could negotiate with, rather than the calcified sclerotic necromorphs who occupied the Kremlin before him. Reagan, I suspect, was not entirely Alzheimered out yet. So, we got that going on.

The arms buildup was formidable, but hardly credible. The Soviets, bless 'em, had managed to cancel all that advantage out by simply maintaining there existing rather formidable nuclear force.

And Star Wars?... Well, Star Wars had always been, always will be, a fucking joke. Ask either side about that. Most of the generals are still alive. It mattered, despite Right Wing Lies to the contrary, not at all. Especially when the Soviets could have neutralized a fictional or working "space shield" with the addition of a few hundred dummy warheads. All I can think is, Edward Teller must have gotten Reagan to smoke some really good shit to buy into that fucking trillion dollar boondoggle.

No, I figure Reagan was informed about the Dead Hand .

What's that? Well, it was a doomsday machine built by the Soviets which went operational around January of 1985. It was designed to automatically launch a counterattack against the United States - just like in the movie Dr. Strangelove.

You see, the Soviets, realizing that they could not compete militarily with the US, convinced that it was only a matter of time before those primitive paranoid batshit and bugfuck crazy Americans would launch a first strike, made sure that they built up an arsenal that would unleash so many horrors upon the world - nuclear, bacterial, viral, chemical, that not a single person, anywhere, under any shelter, would survive.

"Surely" they thought, "even the Americans will not want to destroy the world of humanity utterly". (Because the dirty little secret is, despite shooting off every single warhead on Earth, civilization, despite the immense resulting shitstorms, would muddle its way through).

So, this Doomsday strategy only works if people know about it. Which is, I suspect, why Reagan shat his Depends, on starting talking with Gorby. Yes, even Reagan could see where this is all going.

Pity Rupert Murdoch does not see it the same way. He's made arrangements for his own Doomsday device to go off, should he kick the bucket. "Arrangements have been made", he says.

Casting Aluminum Hand Guns

Here is the original wax of the hand gun. I include it for reference.

Here we are pouring molten aluminum into the ceramic shell lost wax mold of the hands. I rigged up a tree of six hands to pour into, as you can see here:

An out-of-focus picture of the hand tree after the pour. The metal is cooling inside the ceramic shell mold. I will hammer the material off: 

The white ceramic shell material has been partially hammered off, and I will now cut the hands free of the aluminum rigging:

Here is one of the hands, cast in aluminum and ready for finishing touches. What you just saw, from wax to metal, took about two weeks time in span, adn perhaps three hours in actual time:



Attack of the Molemen

Okay, it all makes perfect sense. They had the 2012 calculation off by a few years, and it's this year. All this time we thought it would be Invaders from Outer Space, when, nope, the threat was right under our feet! All this time, we are looking for comets or portents in the sky, when instead, foolish humans, look down, and tremble...

Witness, in Germany, a sinkhole :









Guatemala City, a really alien looking sinkhole:

In the past year, sinkholes have appeared in Tampa, FL, Quebec, and Milwaukee WI.

Clearly, this is a prelude to invasion, and we all know who is responsible... The MOLEMEN!

And why not? We've obviously shown our weaknesses. Electing one narrow-pated gappy-toothed squinch-brain after another. In fact, I rather suspect that they have been adding mind control substances to our ground water to disable our higher order mental functions.

Clearly, we have lost all capacity for rational thought, and the Molemen will use this opportunity to impose their supreme will upon us wretched Overheaders.

I, for one, welcome our new underground overlords.

"You Can't Cheat An Honest Man"

Never give a sucker an even break.

Never smarten up a chump.

These are the words the immortal WC Fields uttered as Larsen E. Whipsnade in the movie "You Can't Cheat An Honest Man".

These were his grandfather Litvak's last words "just before they sprung the trap" (they hung him).

Ah. The art of the con. You know, that very first maxim isn't true. Of course you can cheat an honest man. This is included in the lore as a rationalization. See? It's the first lie of the con.

"The con is a legitimate social tactic because everyone is on the make. If they weren't on the make, if they weren't lookin' for a leg up, why, they'd never have fallen into my confidence to begin with? Serves 'em right!"

So goes the lie. Don't believe it. If you really think that theft (which is what a con is) requires a willing victim... I don't know what to say.

You know what the worst con of all is? The one we play on ourselves. The great physicist Richard Feynman once said "The first principle is you must not fool yourself, and you are the easisest person to fool". What he meant by that is "Forget about what other people are lying to you about. Concentrate on what you are lying to yourself about".

Be careful with that. There are a lot of people out there who believe that they want what is best for the country, when, really, they want what's best for themselves. They just assume the rest of the country is just like them. Or at least as much of a chump as them. It isn't.

I'd like to smarten up those types of chumps.