I mean, it wasn't that many years ago that if you wanted to cook up a batch of meth, you had to pretty much resign yourself to ruining a perfectly seedy motel room. Or a run down suburban rental property.
Mobile Meth Lab Found on Moped
The Journal Gazette, November 11, 2009
An Auburn man was arrested Monday after police found a mobile meth lab on his moped, police said.
The man was pulled over about 7 p.m. Monday at 15th Street and Touring Drive for not having an operating headlight on his moped after dark, police said. The moped rider, James Hunter, 31, was cited, and his moped was being searched when drugs were found, police said.
He was taken to the DeKalb County Jail on charges of dealing methamphetamine, possession of meth-making materials, resisting law enforcement and marijuana possession. Hunter was being held without bail.
Article from Ft. Wayne Journal-Gazette
Before long there'll be an app you can download and cook-up a batch on your iPhone.
So maybe I need to take a different approach here.
Shorter posts on a more frequent basis? Hmmm. Sounds interesting. Plus I've got an overstock of oddball photos from the Monday night estate auction. I don't need to be buying this junk but I can take the pictures for FREE!
Like this little jewel. Ummm, it's a camera, if that wasn't obvious. Actually I could have probably justified buying this. If I'd bothered to actually register as a bidder. It probably went cheap cuz it was a little beat up and most likely didn't work anyway. Just the kind of funky old camera I would deserve. And treasure.
It's a Yashica 16EE, roughly the size of an old Kodak 110 Pocket Instamatic. But more of a "high-roller" model. And by comparison to the Kodak, this thing weighed a ton! I've got 35mm stuff that weighs less, but they've got less metal (and glass) in them than this thing does.
But there seems to have been a fairly limited market for such cameras. Probably kind of expensive for a camera that I'm guessing might have produced only a so-so image.
At least the Pocket Instamatic had a drop-in 110 film cartridge. This thing seems to have used a 16mm film cassette. I don't remember ever seeing the film available anywhere, at least not where I was shopping for 35mm stuff. Good luck trying to find any now. Now if you could just hack this thing, gut it, and implant the innards from an old Pocket Instamatic...
But I'm not even sure you can get your hands on 110 film cartridges anymore! Or find someone who still processes the stuff.
And I Don't Even Have An Irrational Childhood Fear Of Clowns
The season for the Monday night, outdoor, after work estate auctions is coming to an end. But not to worry! I've still got a bunch of pics to work with. Probably at least enough to last thru the Winter, at least no more often than I update things here.
Here's a nice little piece of art to hang in a young child's bedroom. Or maybe behind that bar you built in the basement, over in that corner by the furnace and water heater. Someone has obviously thrown somethng at him, per his request, as evidenced by the broken glass in his frame. This seems to be a common problem with framed estate auction artwork.
I guess he was maybe a mute clown. Or more likely he was a mime. In which case he probably didn't have to ask twice to have stuff thrown at him.
I don't care what you say, this is at least slightly gruesome. You know this was bought from a small ad found in the back of "High Times" magazine, and there was a conversation that went like this.
"Duuuuude! Can you imagine how much dough we'll save by doing our own piercings?'
"Yeah, man! And then we can do piercing for all our friends down at the skate park and actually make some extra money!"
"Righteous! But here's the best part. We can finally get studs and rings and junk stuck in the parts of our anatomy that we're too embarassed to ask someone else to pierce!"
Ouch.
The most telling part to me is the fact that the kit still looks mostly intact and barely used. I'm not even sure that the bottle of disinfectant has been opened. Excuse me, I'm feeling a bit queasy. A couple of botched piercings, a 2:00 AM trip to the all-night clinic, a few lingering infections, and pretty soon it's "Game Over"!
UhhhrrrruhhHHRrrrr...that's it...I've officially creeped myself out.
There are days when you just don't feel like making decisions.
So when I stopped in at the Big Lots store on my way home from work, I was a bit disappointed when I spotted their flyer with this weeks special bargains.
It seems that they demanded that I make a choice.
My choice, eh? So for less than a sawbuck, I can get one of those eco-friendly L.E.D. flashlights with a generator built-in that you have to crank up to use. Or...I can look like a DORK! Actually, the more I think about it, I'm pretty sure that in the past, I've spent much more money than that to look like a dork. I think I'm leaning toward that head-band flashlight headlight contraption. As long as it includes batteries.
So a couple months ago there was this program on public TV about dogs that I was watching. Well I was kind of watching and kind of doing other stuff. But at some point I heard them say that dogs smelled like 50 to 100 times better than humans!
How can that possibly be? Sure, there's probably some "Froo-Froo" dogs out there that smell really good. But on average, most humans I know tend to smell at least acceptably well. Especially when compared to a wet dog in the cab of a pickup truck on a hot summer day.
Thinly sliced cabbage.
Somehow I ended up at one of the surprisingly common websites where people comment about favorite foods, beverages and other products that are no longer available.
In one thread they were complaining about the demise of Doo-dads Snack Mix. I hadn't thought of Doo-dads for years and I'm figuring that you probably haven't either. They were kind of the "uppity" version of Chex Mix. There were seasoned cereal bits and pretzels, if I recall, as well as these little breadstick things and maybe something cheese flavored and crunchy. And now I too was a bit miffed because they stopped making Doo-dads.
But I can't even say that I know what the stuff tasted like. There's a distinct possibility that I've never eaten any. I miss Doo-dads, but not for the reason that most normal consumers would. I miss them because now I'm being denied an opportunity for pranksterism. A chance to make an ordinary, boring trip to the grocery store exciting and entertaining.
No, it didn't involve tampering with the actual contents of the box. That would be too random, too clumsy and way too stupid. Even for me. This was more cerebral and subtle. And it was a little bit challenging because not every store seemed to carry Doo-dads. If they did, they usually weren't in the aisle with the more common potato chips and cheese puffs. They tended to be stocked with the other "hoitey toitey" snacks like Rye Krisps and Old London crackers. And this is where the visual aids come into play.
Actually this is one of the rare times when I felt like the internet let me down. For all the weird crap you can find almost instantly, I had no luck finding a picture of a box of Doo-dads. And I was a bit worried about clicking off the "adult content" filter while searching for Doo-dads. So what you see here isn't the real Doo-dads logo. But the real logo was done in a similar lower case font. And that's an important part of the gag because it won't work with upper case letters.
So how did the prank work? Quite simply, you found the Doo-dads in the store and when nobody is watching you turn all the boxes upside down and the product now has a new name!
That's right. There's a new snack food on the market and it's called Spap-oop! And when you stop to think about it, does eating Spap-oop sound that much worse than eating Doo-dads? I just wish that I could claim this was an original idea of my own, but it was something that I remember some comedian mentioning years ago. It might have been Rich Hall. I think he did those Sniglets things. Or maybe Kip Adotta. He could turn his words pretty well. Though it could have been Steven Wright, just because it's got his kind of weird vibe to it. Yeah, I'm going with Steven Wright until he reads this and tells me differently.
You didn't think I was done not buying auction items, did you?
This was a pretty big sale so there was plenty of non-bidding opportunities. If you don't believe me, well just look at this exceptional assortment of, uhhh, stuff. You can't help but be inspired to not bid.
It should have been illegal to even offer this bike for sale unless you were buying it for a young boy who had been very, very naughty. First off, look at the gnarly looking welding job on the frame. It looks like maybe I welded it. And I know this will be hard to believe, but that's not a good thing.
If the frame broke while you were riding it and one of those ragged, rusty weld joints managed to break the skin, you'd be making a trip to the doctor for a tetanus shot.
The worst humiliation though is the fact that this was a girl's bike converted, somewhat, into a boy's bike. But not well enough to fool any boy who'd be old enough to ride it. I mean, it's still pink! If they'd slapped on some green Rustoleum or even wrapped the frame in duct tape they might have gotten away with it. And the duct tape would've been stronger than the bad welding.
This piece of work would belong in the It's Art Because I Say It Is catagory. This style of print was kind of popular some years ago. For a period of about six or eight weeks if I remember correctly. If you look closely you'll see that a teardrop has formed below her eye. I'm guessing that she's depressed because someone has broken the glass in her frame. Or it might be allergies.
There's something almost biblical going on with this sign.
It's one of only a handful of true landmarks here in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. And it's celebrating it's 50 birthday in a few weeks. But it's still more than just a big animated sign on a bakery. You have to cast your gaze upward to see it. It's a giant loaf of bread, a common foodstuff and dietary mainstay. Bread has played a part in many religious ceremonies for centuries. The story of the loaves and fishes. The breaking of bread with family and friends. And of course there's the manna that fell from the heavens and sustained the Isrealites on their forty year trip through the desert. I don't want to get too gorpy here, but you get the idea.
For half a century, nearly non-stop, this sign has cranked out almost 700,000,000 giant slices of bread. You can read here about it's history and recent restoration. But I think mostly that it's just reassuring to know that even though a lot of bad things can happen to us in our lifetime, we're not likely to die of starvation. So we've got that to be thankful for. And if you drive past the sign at the right time you'll be enveloped by the aroma of freshly baked bread, which is pretty heavenly in itself.
I appreciate that you've all been so polite about not demanding this second installment of my auction adventures.
But the time is right, and the time is now! Here's the second batch of stuff that I didn't buy at the auction a couple weeks ago.
There was this collection of cool looking old tin containers. First, a can of something called Solventol. When mixed with water, I guess, this stuff made a cleaning solution that "melts" dirt. It probably "pulverizes" grime as well. I'm surprised it didn't eat right thru this tin can after all these years. This was the stuff that made white side wall tires look like new, removed heel marks from mom's linoleum floor and removed most of the fountain pen ink stain from your old man's shirt pocket. I'm thinking that whatever was in this can is now considered to be hazardous material and you're not going to buy any without filling out a lot of paperwork.
Then there's a can of Watkins Petro-Carbo Salve. Go into your regular drug store and ask the clerk if they have any salve and see what happens. If you get a blank stare then find yourself a different clerk, or a different drug store. Salve seems to be another of those words that's fallen out of common usage. Kind of like the word balm. Though I have seen a product called "Bag Balm" which some people use to soften their skin even though it was originally intended to be applied to a cow's udder. Around the edge of the lid they're also bragging on the fine liniment that Watkins made. When I hear the word liniment I think of something that'd be applied to a horse's legs or fetlocks or whatever they're called when they get arthritis or the dread mogus or one of those other horse diseases.
Next up is a box of something called "Krazy Ikes" which I refused to bid on. At first I thought they were some kind of 1950's candy named after General/President Dwight "Krazy Ike" Eisenhower. But it says on the side of the box that they "make hundreds of interesting toys." "Interesting" in the 50's must have meant something different than it does now. From the looks of it, you can make these brightly colored wooden figures do things like carry a ball point pen over their shoulder, play hockey using a green olive as a puck, or throw cherry tomatoes at each other. This, of course, was interesting only until frisbees and slinkys became available. The box looked so fragile that I didn't try opening it up for fear that it might disintegrate and they might make me buy it at some inflated price without even getting to bid on it. As a matter of fact, after taking this picture, I swear that I saw it begin to smolder so I just got the hell out of there!
And finally there's this painfully cute baby picture. It's still amazing to me that a picture like this ends up at an estate auction. But of course it's impossible to know the story behind the story of whose photo this is and how it ended up here. I could have bought it and brought it home and passed it off as a shot of myself at this age, because I'm pretty sure this baby is cuter than I ever was. But all that's going to do is invite comments from people wondering how such a cute baby ever grew up to be such a drab and ordinary looking adult who needs a better haircut and who should stand a little closer to the razor when he shaves. Plus the photo is black and white, which means that I can't see if there's anything pink or blue in the picture so it might actually be a baby girl. And that's another whole set of issues that I don't feel like discussing here.
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LaidOutInLavender said:
that is such a cool web site! I collect old photos too! read more
on Flea Market Photos -
Jay said:
[this is good]I've just added that quote to my mental library of Things To Say. (It's how I use the grey area... read more
on An Indisputable Life Truth -
kcline said:
Ahhh the F word. My Sister-in-law thinks it is a word like "the" or "and". She has absolutely ZERO clue... read more
on Can You %@#*@ing Hear Me Now?
Thanks for using my photo, Clay! Glad that it came in handy for you for your post, but I'm sorry... read more
on Good Fortune (Cookie)