Pouring My Art Out

Yeah, I used to look like this… and you can’t take that away from me…

Posted on March 24, 2016 by pouringmyartout

Okay… yeah… it was a while ago… but I still want credit for inventing the wardrobe malfunction…

Posted in Pictures of me | Tagged art, fashion, history, humor, me, not-so-current events, photography, sexy, social-media, style | 4 Comments

So, I have this one post with 44,306 comments…

Posted on March 24, 2016 by pouringmyartout

Yup… you read that right… we are pretty sure it is a WordPress record, although they still claim this is the one stat they don’t keep track of. If you are new here, please add a comment… or 30 comments… or your whole life story, favorite joke, rant, rave, whatever.

To get to this post, just click the blue words on the top of my sidebar… over there… to the right————> yes, that’s it, where it says:

Help break the WordPress Record for most commented post!!!

Oh, I may have made a link when I copied it… I have no idea if that one in the post will work or not… give it a try… I promise I will answer each comment you make because I answer them all… which, I suppose, means that 22,153 of the comments on that post are mine… if mine are counted.

Don’t worry if it takes a minute to load that post. Because there are 44,306 comments on there… and you should leave one too… and be a part of history.

Posted in stuff about blogging, wordpress | Tagged blog, bloggers, blogging, blogs, current-events, humor, social-media, wordpress | 6 Comments

A very short story… with a twist… or two…

Posted on March 23, 2016 by pouringmyartout

In The Footsteps Of The Masters…

Father and son stood in the sandy dunes, watching the flaming vapor trail of the launch vehicle as it soared towards space, bellowing out its defiance to gravity. “This is a proud day, son,” the father said, “We are the first of our kind to send a rocket into space. They say that, perhaps, the old masters managed such a feat, before the great waters came and swept their civilizations away. Our people returned to the old ways of the forest and the hunt, and it has taken us a long time to get here.”

“How can we know that the old masters ever sent a rocket into space, father?” the son wanted to know.

“The archaeologists are constantly poking around the ruins of those who came before us,” the father replied. “They have lately been using undersea vehicles to explore more of the old cities. I was reading an article just the other day about what appears to be a museum found off the coast not far from here. Supposedly, there were the remains of what looked like space craft of some sort. Now, we must get you back to school. But I am glad I checked you out to be here for this historic occasion.”

The son wagged his tail-stump in appreciative happiness, then bent to politely sniff his father’s hindquarters. “Dad, have you been taking your cholesterol medicine? You smell a little like you haven’t been.”

The father shook his head, and admitted he hadn’t taken it yet that day. He hugged his son to him, giving his muzzle a lick. As they walked back to the car, the father took this bonding time as an opportunity to ask his son about his school work, and, just because he was curious to know what the young people thought of one of the issues that was constantly in the news, he asked one last question.

“So, tell me, Spot, you don’t really take all this talk of global warming seriously, do you?”

Posted in fiction | Tagged fiction, global warming, humor, science fiction, short story, writing | 12 Comments

Oh, I’m a blacksmith, and I’m okay… the final chapter…

Posted on March 21, 2016 by pouringmyartout

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I know that the quality of some of these photos is bad, it was dark in that barn… and smokey… and I didn’t want to bring the big, good camera, so I brought my old one… which hates low light… but look how happy I am… and look at my once pristine leather apron, which is now burned and smoke and soot stained… much like I am.

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I loved everything about the blacksmith class I took. I hope you read the two earlier posts, so you can learn all about what we made… a steak-turner…

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I couldn’t take any pictures of me hammering my own project on the anvil… I don’t have enough hands. That is another of the students.

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That is a horrible picture, but it captures, in a sense, my favorite part of the project… putting twists in the bar. That is our teacher, showing us how to do it. You have to heat up the part you want to twist, then cool the metal on either side of that in the quenching water. Then quickly, so it stays hot, you clamp it in the vice, and stick a two-ended monkey wrench on it and twist, trying not to bend it side to side.

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Then he showed us how to taper a five inch point on the other end… not a square taper this time, but a rounded one.

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He made it all look so easy.

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Okay, I got my steel bar with the loop and knot I made at one end, the double ended monkey wrench, and a wooden hammer and wooden block… so you can knock any bends out of the twisted part without flattening the twist edges. Notice my new gloves are now broken in.

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Oh yeah… I got me some twists! You only needed to do one twist to pass the class. I did four… in alternating directions, twisting a different number of times every time I reheated it and twisted it again.

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That looks so awesome. Then it was just a matter of lots of heating and pounding to lengthen and round the end to a nice rat tail.

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This was not as easy as it sounds… Then, I had to make a bunch of complicated bends to make the twisted hook that you actually use to flip a steak on a barbeque…

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And there you have it… my very first blacksmith project… From a plain, square, 18-inch-long bar of steel to an actual tool. I can’t wait for the next class, where we are going to make blacksmith tongs!!!

Posted in My art, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged art, blacksmith, blacksmithing, humor, metal, photography | 10 Comments

Oh, I’m a blacksmith, and I’m okay… part 2…

Posted on March 21, 2016 by pouringmyartout

Due to the overwhelming popularity of the first post of this series… (with 0 readers so far)… I have decided to just keep plowing ahead with the exciting adventure of my first blacksmithing class, and also, giving you free lessons…

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I learned many valuable lessons at my first class… among them, the fact that blacksmithing is hard… and also, the fact that you should really shave the back of your neck… or have someone do it for you… because there are hot sparks and cinders and ash flying around, and you are bent over a lot… and, well, a burn on the back of your neck is bad.. but not as bad as a forest fire… (okay, that didn’t really happen, but it could have)…

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That there is our awesome volunteer teacher… who is brave enough to let a bunch of amateurs play with fire and red-hot metal… (not really, if you let the metal get red, you ruined it, it needs to be a bright orange, the same color as the hottest coals)…

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That is a demonstration of the steps needed to make our first project… a steak turner… It might sound easy, but it took us more than 6 hours to do it, what with all the learning everything from scratch… Remember, this is three six-hour classes just to learn enough basic safety and skills to be allowed to take the beginner class.

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After we got our forges going, we all got to cut an 18-inch piece of steel from a long, square, steel bar.

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The teacher showed us the first steps, and then we were ready to try it on our own… look at my new hammer and gloves… so clean and virginal… sniff… they grow up so fast…

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There is no feeling like sticking your first piece of steel into the forge… well… there is… but I’m not going to talk about that here…

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That is the perfect color to get your metal… well, the orange part, not the red part… once again, that part is too hot. You can ruin the structure of the steel by burning all the carbon out of it. When you get it so hot that it comes out of the fire looking like one of those sparklers kids play with on the 4th of July, you really messed up.

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There is a lot of juggling going on… not literally… but you have to pump air into the fire, check your piece, move coal around, poke the fire, check your piece, dump the ashes and the clinker… (see last post if you don’t know what that means)… check the color of your piece again, pull it out, hammer it, then stick it back in the fire when it cools… which doesn’t take long.

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I won’t bore you with all the details, but we first had to pound the end of our bars out into a 7-inch-long, still square, tapered point… which isn’t easy. Then we used a u-shaped bending tool in a vice to get a loop in the end.

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Then we had to keep heating and pounding until we got the whole tapered end wrapped around the bar in this cool knot. Join me later to see how my project came out.

Posted in My art, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged art, blacksmith, blacksmithing, current-events, humor, metal, photography | 10 Comments

Oh, I’m a blacksmith, and I’m okay… part 1…

Posted on March 21, 2016 by pouringmyartout

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Look at me, so excited, in my still-clean leather apron, on my first day at blacksmith school… looking sort of cute with my skewed glasses and child-like enthusiasm, I must say…

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You know I share not just my art but my whole life with you, so I might as well teach you how to be a blacksmith too… vicariously… That is my forge. It was left that way on purpose by the last person to use it. That is because the coal… bituminous, for those who care… has three distinct forms. The black stuff is not what you want to burn, you want to burn the stuff that was heated and partially burned by the last person to use the forge… (which goes out about 20 minutes after you stop cranking air into it)… The lighter stuff is now called ‘coke’, and it burns much hotter and more evenly than the regular coal. The third stage is called ‘clinker’… when the coal has been burnt until it won’t burn anymore. It looks like glass mixed with bits of steel.

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There is my hand-cranked air blower. First, you have to sort all the coal by hand, piling up the coal and coke, and getting rid of the clinker.

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By the time you sorted and piled all the coal, you have cleared your ‘clinker box’, that pit in the middle of your forge table. In the bottom is a little rocking panel. You jiggle a handle under the table back and forth, which rocks that door side to side, allowing burnt coal and ash to fall into a bucket under the table.

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Next, you light your fire by making a bowl out of crumbled newspapers…

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You add one last piece of paper to make a ‘jellyfish’. Then, you put the jellyfish in the clinker box, light it, pile on coke, and surround the coke with a volcano of coal, which, as it heats up, and turns to coke, you push into the center… remember, you have to keep cranking in air, and clearing your clinker box, and moving new coke into the center, and breaking up the big lumps that fuse together with the tar in the coal…

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And if you do it right, you end up with one raging-hot forge fire! Remember, add fresh coal instead of coke, and you get less heat and a lot of green smoke, and people look at you like you are a loser. Also, bear in mind that different levels inside the fire are hotter or cooler. and than you can burn steel if you let it get too hot. (It’s all about the color)…

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Okay, you are now ready to forge some freekin’ steel!

Posted in Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged art, blacksmith, blacksmithing, forging, humor, metal, photography | 2 Comments

The me tiki… part 8… (or): chasing crack…

Posted on March 20, 2016 by pouringmyartout

So… you know that tiki I am carving that looks just like me?

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Well, as I was rounding down the corner of my face, I found this crack that didn’t seem to be too bad… until I started chasing it… to see how bad it was…

The thing about having a crack in your head, combined with having crack squirrels in your head… is that if I had just ignored it, it wouldn’t have been quite so bad… but I was worried about that black stuff… that might be wood rot… so I started chasing the crack.

I finally made myself stop… because… you know… I have ears…

Posted in My art, Stories of my life | Tagged art, carving, carving tikis, humor, tiki, tikis, wood | 42 Comments

Just sayin’…

Posted on March 19, 2016 by pouringmyartout

That one was fun to do…

Posted in funny famous people pictures, My art | Tagged art, current-events, donald trump, humor, Photoshop, politics, social-media, trump | 4 Comments

Mirages, a fat guy (?), and some aliens… and I need a Spanish translation here…

Posted on March 18, 2016 by pouringmyartout

Well, here we are, at the end of my adventure to Arizona to visit my daughter. I got to be a monk for a day, and spend some quality time with my kid. And now, in case you have never before witnessed an actual mirage, please pay attention to this photo…

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If you look closely at the black car… no, not the silver one, the black one further up the highway… yes… now look underneath it… see what looks like water and a reflection of the car? The lines of the freeway vanish, and you can even see a reflection of that green sign to the right, too… no… not that one, the one to the left of that… That false water is an actual mirage, a trick of heat and bouncing light waves. Now, this wasn’t a particularly hot day, not by desert standards. But normally, dull black asphalt does not reflect anything. It isn’t shiny. But dark things do absorb heat, and this magnifies the effect. I have seen mirages on flat sand when it is really hot. It looks like a huge lake. I can totally see how somebody who was dying of thirst and going a little crazy would wander towards that refreshing water until they dropped dead.

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So, I left Arizona… another 6-hour drive back to San Diego, full of stuff I have seen quite a few times… and your mind starts to wander… especially mine… because it is full of crack squirrels… and they get bored…

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Yeah, see all those tire tracks on the dunes… I hate that people get ATVs and just go out to tear up the desert.

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My Spanish is not that good, despite the fact that I live 20 minutes form the Mexican border… but every time I stop at this rest area, I can’t help wondering if it is really named after a guy called ‘Fat Jimmy’ Sunbeam.

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One of my favorite parts of this long drive is when you start to climb back over the mountains into San Diego. These are some crazy rocks… how did the pioneers ever get over these in wagons.

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I mean, they came all this way, and then this…

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At the top of the first big mountain, there is a sign for the ‘Desert View Castle’.

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Now, I have driven by that exit hundreds of times over the years, but this time, I decided to get off and see the castle… and it was what I expected, a tourist trap. I didn’t even go inside.

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I just snapped a few pictures to share…

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Of the ‘desert view’…

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And frankly, after driving through desert, and walking in desert, for the whole weekend, I wasn’t impressed… but I am glad I pulled off the freeway…

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Because, on the road to the ‘castle’… I saw all this…

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It was all just lined up by the road in front of a few rundown old trailers and motor homes…

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In a weird way, this sums up California…

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Because most of the crazy people in the world end up living in California sooner or later…

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And the really crazy ones end up living in the desert…

Posted in My travels, Stories of my life | Tagged deserts, humor, mirage, photography, travel | 2 Comments

The far reaches of forever…

Posted on March 18, 2016 by pouringmyartout

So, you know how, when I travel, I like to get up early and go on my morning adventure walks… I have shared enough of them here… but when I went to visit my daughter in Arizona, she doesn’t live in an ‘adventurey’ part of town… so I went on an adventure drive.

I just headed East… into the rising sun, and found a cool little hill to climb… that isn’t the hill up there, that is just a hill I took a picture of because it looked awesome in the early morning light.

I took these pictures, and considered what to do next… I had time, my daughter is not an early riser.

Now, every time we visit Jessica, I see that awesome mountain in the distance… the one on the left in the picture above. I keep saying I want to go get closer to it to get some pictures, but something always comes up.

I stood on that hill in the cool morning air, looking at the sun rising into the silver-blue sky…

I love misty mountains disappearing into the far reaches of forever…

And I was struck by how green the desert is at this time of the year…

But mostly I was struck by an urge to get closer to that mountain with the awesomely steep drop-offs.

So I kept driving towards the sun…

And I did get pretty close to that mountain…

Unfortunately, I ended up on an Indian reservation, and there were no roads leading to the bottom. It might well be a scared place to the Native Americans there, and they don’t want too many people climbing it.