Sorry about the lackadaisical posting. You know how it gets with work sometimes. But do not fret, I’m making quite a variety of cool stuff which I will be sharing with you shortly. In the meantime, a story: I got home from work on Tuesday night at 1:10 a.m. (not kidding about work kickin’ my butt ovah here) and I wanted to fall into bed and slumber, but for some reason I flicked on the tube and Dirty Jobs was on and it was an episode I had never seen before, about recycling cows. Really. See, on farms with thousands of cows, a portion of the cow population dies of natural causes. Then the “dead truck” (their name, not mine) pulls up with a winch and winches Kicked-the-Bucket Bessy onto the truck and off to the cow recycling plant. Here’s the point where I couldn’t turn it off. If the cow is fresh enough, they use the skin for leather, but in order to get the skin off of the cow, they cut a small hole, stick a metal tube in there, and fill ‘er with air to pull the skin away from the muscle. Which looks exactly like what you would expect it to look like. Ole Bess there went from a dead cow to the world’s most disturbing Thanksgiving float in two minutes. The guys who’s job is to skin swoop in there and put the hide in the basement and cover it with salt, and then they stick the remaining skinned cow into a gigantic wood chipper a la Fargo and chip her. That also looks exactly like you would expect it to look like, which is why I will not describe it to you. The only thing about the episode that irked me was how many times Mike said, “So you separate the meat and fat, and the meat goes into farm feed, while the fat goes in cosmetics.” He kept saying “cosmetics” like you and I would say “stanky gas station bathroom”. Hey, buddy, I’ll have you know on your high-and-mighty horse* that cosmetics include soap and lotions, so you’re smearing Essence of Bessy all over yourself too. Which is why if this shkeeves you out, you should use soap made from vegetable glycerin. If it doesn’t say vegetable glycerin, chances are it’s animal-based.
*They’re skinning the horse later.
And pertaining to my artsy-artsiness, I would like to give a shout-out to Gelly Roll pens by Sakura. I only recently discovered them, and they are terrific. They have nice tiny nibs, the ink flows smoothly, and they are waterproof to a certain degree, so you can put your lines in and then paint over them with watercolors without having the ink run and smear. I haven’t investigated the myriad of wacky variations of pens Sakura makes (puffy, metallic, flourescent, glaze, etc.), I’m only speaking about the basic Gelly Roll colors right now. Excellent pens. And they sell them at Michael’s, so I don’t have to go to the fancy art store to get them.
