This Edge of Midnight

Happy New Years




Pigface, This Edge of Midnight

Arms Akimbo

Note that there is a giant new bit of metal for the draglink to connect to and that the steering arm for the tierod now allows things to go under the wishbone...

Samiyam did all of the work, really. I swept up and helped move the go-kart.

I think I will just use that socket wrench, instead of a kingpin.

It will let all of tough biker guys with swastikas on their rides know that I am even more crazy and tough than they are.

If they say anything to me I will deny ever owning a skateboard and state plainly that I only listen to opera.


And if there is any guff, well, I can just pull out my socket wrench kingpin and puts some knots on noggins.

Big Brass Ones

Next time you are feeling extra manly and cool, for God knows whatever reason you are thinking you are manly and cool, remember this pic...










Here is somebody's grandma, maybe great grandma, who looks to weigh all of about a hundred pounds - being more bad-ass than you perhaps ever have been or will be.

She is smokin' tire, getting loose on a foot clutch-hand shift Harley, drag-racing no less.


Have you ever done that?
Could you?

I didn't think so...

Candy Ass

I am pretty damned sure that The Dirtbombs are the bestest band in the history of the world.

If you don't agree, well, you are a candy ass.

Pussy...

Merry Christmas.

Merry X-mas

Here is to Jesus, and Mary, and the wise men, and the talking walnut all granting you joy and happiness this holiday season.

Frosty

I bet this Frosty was a lot more fun to hang out with than the one from the X-mas special...

Reindeer Warriors

I bet that Santa's magic reindeer are like awesome flying ninja warriors the other eleven months of the year.

Bert & Ernie

Ah, it is that time of year, is it not.
The time of year when the story of the spirit of friendship and giving fills the head and the heart.
Yes I am speaking of the Bert & Ernie holiday moment, from Sesame Street.
Oh it is magical.






Ernie, out of fraternal affection for his room mate Bert, pawns his rubber duck - in order to gather enough scratch to buy a cigar box. A cigar box for his pal Bert to store his paperclips in.







At nearly the same moment, with great irony, Bert is selling his paperclips. Selling his paperclips for the coin to buy a soap dish for his pal Ernie to store his rubber duck upon.



Doesn't it all just make you wanna smile.
Isn't the whole thing a little weird, now that you look at it from the outside.

What the hell was Mr. Hooper thinking, buying used rubber ducks and paperclips?
Who collects paperclips?
A rubber duck?
Two guys as "room mates"?
There are many more questions than answers with Bert & Ernie.

Yet their spirit of giving, their affection and generosity towards one another is undeniable.

Inspirational.



It makes me want to go out and sell some strangely personal, worthless object I possess, some trinket I covet yet holds no intrinsic value - and take that pittance of change to go buy you some worthless storage thing for you to keep your own creepy little fetishist object of infatuation in.

I assume you are similarly inspired.

With this act, the two of us will be drawn closer through the journey of monetizing some creepy secret part of ourselves in order to support the other in some icky personal self-pleasuring past time.


This truly is a wonderful time of year.

Forensics

Yeah, forensics...


I am not much of a fan of those CSI shows.
They depress me when I think of all of the unsolved murders and crimes against families. The reality versus the fiction, you know.


But I have recognized over the past few days how much I enjoy that aspect of hotrodding.
That might be the coolest part of building a hotrod.

There is not much in the garage that I have not actually made. The other bits that are here are things I mostly know the history of - or things that were a part of some other, past project.

The T body itself is some cast-away hotrod. Some other car that had lived it's life before I got my hands on it.
The 327 that was a block and a few boxes of parts lived in a "56 truck, as some saps upgrade, before I found it.
The "57 Chevy rear-end lived through the abuse of another few, before it showed up here.
The aluminum 'Glide transmission has pushed the power and had been tossed aside by people who thought better, before it got into my hands.
Some other small block engine breathed through the tripower carb intake prior to finding a home on my bit car.

I could go on and on...

It's all had some other hard life, loved and abused before ever knowing that life had not been entirely extracted by some past hotrod guy.
Most all of the bits that make up the T have been tortured and worked to the N'th degree - and yet I still think I might bolt them together with some lovingly crafted bits to make them live one more time.


I have been working on steering stuff, enlisting help from like minded folks.
That has led to me disassembling the front brake bits I have in an effort to get some raw parts in my hands.

Which leads to forensics...

There are "40 Ford spindles that some previous modder thought would be bitchin' with some 11" Chev disc brakes attached.
They show the signs of heavy use.
Miles put under some hotrod, before finding their way to my hands.

That is where the investigation come in.
Figuring the logic of some person before me.
Deciphering part numbers and measurements.
The fractions of inches that made things fit once before, made things work.
There are no manuals for this sort of thing. No guides, that I have found, to say how one plus one might equal two.
Only forensics.
And determination.

The same determination, the concentration of thinking that makes dissimilar whole.
The will to make beauty from scrap, and will, and hope.
The ability to draw truth from evidence.
The desire to actualize dreams from bits of the past and nothingness.

Just Ignore This

it's here for specific reasons, pay no attention...

Nothing to See Here

I am working on this, or trying to enlist some help on this.
Pretend it is not here.

Tired of Christmas Music?

Rammstein plus Ministry will scour sappy Christmas caroles right out of your watery head.


Don't say I didn't do anything nice for you, this holiday season.

Buck's

Something tells me that I could have dropped a few bucks at Buck's...

Leadership in Treacherous Economic Times

"I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system." -- George Bush




I just have to keep telling myself it's almost over, it's almost over.




If you are abandoning the principles of a system - to save the system...
What does that tell you about the system?

I mean if the principles of the system lead to the eventual collapse of the system, well...

And if the whole point of the free-market system relies on the causality of supply/demand - and you continue to apply the "to big to fail" policy to any industry that...

And you speak of free-market priciples in spite of generations of subsidies to all manner of agricultural/industrial concerns...

And haven't we seen a wholesale lack of principle evidenced by those concerns?



Oh, my head hurts.

The Atomic Punk

If you ever look through recent hotrod magazines you have probably seen some pics of this car.
It's a new build with some heavy 60's influence.

Built by Aaron Grote, a guy with some shop space, time on his hands, a love of hair metal bands and a good bit of creative vision.

It's funny how easy it seems to build a car when you condense it into four minutes.
Start with this, cut up that, order some of those, bend some metal to fit in there, make it shiny and go win some trophies.

Simple, huh?

Everybody should do it.

Tight Rope Bikers

Somebody stretch a steel cable across some canyon.
We gotta try this.

Custom 58's

This was just over on the JalopyJournal, but god damn it - it's worth posting all over the place.

The Impala's from 1958 are just about the coolest things ever for a foundation for a custom car.
They were as close to a factory custom as Detroit ever got.
These two are great examples.
Perhaps a bit more than I would be inclined to do to a 58, but still cool.

A slight shave and a big slam, that is about all I would do.
Oh, I would dip it into a vat of inky blue-black paint, too.
Stark white tuck and roll, with red piping.
Dark red carpet with white edging.
Multi-carb Caddy power, with lots o' chrome.
Cadillac wirewheels with pinner whitewalls.
Can you tell that I have though about this some.

58's are the shit.

Torino Telladega

I really like the movie Talladega Nights.

This car doesn't have anything to do with that, other than the fact that it is a Torino Talladega.

I just thought this picture was cool.

Uncle Fred

So the next time you are talking to old Uncle Fred - if he mentions he has been clearing out that old shed and is getting rid of some of that old junk - if any of that old junk looks anything like this, please let me know.

Bang Bang

The Knux know to not F with no Ho's.

Man With No Pants!

Karen was digging through the archives here, at pretty not good HQ, and pulled out this drawing.


Man With No Pants!


It is not just a drawing, though.
This was part of the deliberation and planning involved in my becoming a super-hero.

Back before I decided to take over the world, I was thinking of being a super-hero.
See, I really am benevolent.
The trouble was that I don't have any apparent super-powers and the chances that I might fall into a vat of Chemical X or be exposed to some intense radiation seemed slim.

I needed a way to fight criminals without super-powers.


Then in came to me, one day when I was not wearing pants.

I would be Man With No Pants!

Sure, it doesn't seem like much when I just say it, but please consider it.

If you were, say for example, robbing a bank - things are going just fine, the customers are all cowering in the corner, the teller is scooping cash into your burlap sack...
Then I burst through the door.

Man With No Pants!
(You have to kind of say it in that bravado singing way.)

You, no good bank robber, will be rather startled.
"Dude, you are not wearing any pants!"

My super-power would be my ability to distract and disarm you.

"Dude, you are not wearing any pants!" you would keep saying.
"Where are your pants?"

I would bound over, grab the gun from your hands, knock you to the floor and render you immobile until the police arrive.
I would, of course, leave shortly before their arrival to avoid any indecent exposure charges.

Wembley Wreck

The rather unfortunate Wembley Stadium get-off.

Sharpest Claws

I was gonna post the Dirtbombs, doing "My Last Christmas"...

It is a really rockin', depressing tune about choosing the last Christmas.

But the Eartha Kitten reminded me that we're supposed to be happy.
And she has really sharp claws.
So, we picked this song instead...

Miller Time

The garage fridge looks nothing like the one portrayed here, which tells me it is time to go to the store...

In other news, I hear the Titans won.

Wheelie Evel

More Evel

Big jump over the big rigs.

I think it's Evel week.

The big Vegas jump.

X-2 Skycycle

Evel Kneivel and the X-2 Skycycle.

Bad Ass.

The Mint 400

The Mint 400 holds space in a special segment of cells in my head.

First off, it's an epic desert race of historic proportions which will likely never be seen again.
Hundreds of machines battling through the worst of conditions for giant purse money.


Then, besides all ot that, somehow a publisher thought it would be a great idea to send a young-ish Hunter Thompson to the Mint 400 to function as a reporter.
It is possible that without the Mint 400 that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas would never had been written.










Big stuff.
One of my favorite reads of all time was due, in part, to some fool giving HST credit and an excuse to go to Vegas.







Thompson doesn't linger in his description of the race.
He admits he only, really, saw the start.






After that, some time bouncing through the desert with a random earnest photographer, a trip to the casino at the start line - well, the dust and the drugs and the booze begin to cloud the view of the race.









Reports are that the photog assigned to the story, with HST, kept with job.
He continued to snap pics of dust clouds.






These are not those pics, as far as I know.
I lifted these from the LIFE magazine archive, I mentioned previously.

I always like to add perspective to my reading, historical context, images, all that sort of thing.
These photographs fill in some grey area of my own vision of HST's story.

You can click through the little ones to enbiggun 'em.

Holiday Cheer

It has started.
All of the mirth, cheer and good will towards men is wearing on me a bit.

It is the music, really, that gets to me.
The holiday music I have droning on all around me seems particularly up-beat this year.
As if normal, traditional X-mas songs were not happy enough.
This years round of background caroles seem to have just an extra touch of goodiness, the beat is just a bit faster, the singers a touch more enthusiastic.


Maybe this years holiday auditory assault is just a bit too jazzy.

I get that it is supposed to make us all feel a smidge more festive.
Remember, I used to work for the folks package and pipe this sonic swill.
I know the concepts behind the scenes, too.
We are supposed to walk through stores a bit more quickly, look at a few more sales items, buy a couple extra junk gifts, stuff an extra order of appetizers down our gullets.
All with a greater sense of urgency and fun.
So, perhaps, it sickens me for reasons beyond just the obvious ones.


Oh, I am am one hunk of happy holiday fun - don't misunderstand me on this.
I am throwing garlands and tinsel all over the place.
I will be hanging stockings with the utmost of care.
I nearly bought some chestnuts the other day.
Yeah, chestnuts.
I was going to roast them.
That is some goddamned holiday spirit, there.


I would only prefer to not have this cloud of X-mas music hanging over me.

Lay Lady Lay

Who says I am not a big, soft romantic?


Ministry, doing Dylan's Lay Lady Lay.

Polish Off the Afternoon

Hey it's Friday afternoon.
You are probably wondering how to kill a few hours.

I have got it.

http://images.google.com/hosted/life

If you haven't already heard, LIFE magazine has had their whole photo library indexed by the Google guys.
So spend a few hours searching for anything you care about.
It's probably there.

Friday Fueler, F'd

Not every fueler ends it's career cackling away at vintage drag racing meets.
Some rust away in the back corner of shops, stripped of usable bits and parts.
Others bounce between gaurdrails at the big end of the track, their remains swept into dust bins and trash cans.

Cat Armor

I was doing some research on armor, for the baboonbots, when I stumbled across this bit of cat armor.
Really nice bit of kitty kit there, huh.



As you might remember, I am also sorting out some genetic modification stuff to create a glow-in-the-dark-cat-human-hybrid to function at an intermediate level of my army to be used in taking over the world. The Korean scientists are still involved, and are making some great strides. The glowing part is sorted, so it's the trans-species mash up that needs done.
How hard can that be, really?


Anyway, that doesn't have anything to do with anything.
What a tangent to tear off on...


We are talking about armor for good, old fashioned housecats here.
I haven't quite figured out the stick thing, on the back there.
But, as far as cat armor goes, that seems like some really nice craftsmanship.

Post Vacation Post

Yeah, I am back.
I have been for a few days.
Not avoiding you, heavens no...
Just catching up, trying to get used to waking up before I am ready to do things I would rather not.
Taking more than a week off creates it's own challenges.



But, hey, the time off was great.
You got to see some absolutely lame pictures sent from my phone.
Some better pictures didn't make it through the the cellphone-camera-interwebulator.
KVC took pictures with an actual camera, I will post up a link if they make it to her flik'r account.


We drove to the desert.
It rained.

Yeah, it rained, in the desert.
Which was kind of cool.
I watched tumbleweeds turn green. It turns out that tumbleweeds are actually plants and not giant balls of sticks, escaped from cowboy movie sets.
There was sun, too.
And turkey, wine, pie, conversation, reunions and all of that sort of thing.


Quiet, too.
I had forgotten how nice it is to drive for a long distance.
Eventually, after enough miles, there is a quiet that comes with driving.
There isn't anything to talk about, after a while.
There really isn't much too look at, once the sun sets.
There is barely anything to do, outside of the small movements required to keep a vehicle travelling at a high rate of speed between a couple of lines painted on the asphalt.
That combines in a moment of quiet, for me. Thinking sort of pauses, being comes to the fore. Driving, just driving.


And we were in the south-west, which has it's own manner of quiet.
It really is a landscape that is waiting for you to die, and might kill you when you're not looking.
It is lovely and unforgiving.
Harsh, abrasive and beautiful because of it.

You can see the remnants of the dreams of others, littering the south-west.
Abandoned homes, businesses, lives are scattered all about.
Worn, vandalized and empty.
The shells left behind seem to mark the midpoints between the current oasis' of life, commerce and optimism.
Probably some long line of commentary I could pull from that, but I won't.


There is some quiet left in me.
I am trying to hold onto it.

Wake Up

David Bowie with The Arcade Fire, Wape Up....

Friday Fueler

Friday Fueler robopost.
I lifted this from the Draglist coverage of CHRR.
I need to make it to the next one.

Anyway, hard to top the Greer Black & Prudhomme car.

Vacation

Pretty Not Good is on vacation for a few.
Your search for the coolness ends here.
I know, you are looking around on-line, searching for some cool thing to make your time on the old interweb seen useful.
So often, Pretty Not Good delivers on those expectations.
If there were a picture of interweb cool, on Wikipedia, it would have been lifted from here.

I will be road tripping to the canyonland.
There are few parts of this country that make me feel so welcome.
So at ease.
Stretches of land where people are mere markers of time and space, within the landscape.
People like 49er's, outlaws and carpet baggers.
People like Jesse James (the gunslinger not the new version) and Edward Abbey created reality.
The land that demands that people fight and live to make a mark.
The land which is the sod our great American dreams sprouted in.
Fallow land, today...

But it is a landscape one of beautiful brutality to this day.

A land that demands the best of men and brings out the worst.
The land that McCain falls back to, to consider the hat which he was just handed.
A place where hippies look for the vortex of metaphysical enlightenment.
The dirt of bullshit and dreams.

America.

So, I am going to go see some of it.
Some I have seen before.
Some that has not exposed itself to me, yet.


Vacation.

Road trip.

Expect phone photos...

Getting Closer

I am pretty sure I caught a shiner at one of these guys shows.
A pretty good one, too.

I also scored a lot of free drinks at a gay club, where you could always count on this type of shit being spun on the turntables.
Big, gay, leather bears like goth-punk boys in combat boots, I guess.

I am a complicated guy, and that was twenty years ago.
Don't think about it too much.


Nitzer Edd, Getting Closer.

Friday Fueler

I am not sure that we are starting a weekly thing here, with the fuel cars on Friday.

Yet it is Friday and I am posting another such jobby.
Just enjoy it, don't expect it.
Or expect it, look forward to me disappointing you.


Yeah, Friday.

AARRRGHH!

Are you as fascinated by this wave of well publicised piracy as I am?

I heard the number of ships hijacked was coming on seventy for the year.
We are talking about ships, great big floating city block sized ships.
Ships big enough to transport thirty heavy tanks.


They spirited away with an enormous super tanker the other day.

Pirates stole a super tanker on it's way out of the Suez Canal.
Ponder that, it was a big headline news story yesterday. Every paper I picked up had a story on it, yesterday.
Pirates.
Yesterday we had folks floating around outside an orbiting space station.
And we also had high seas piracy.







The convergence of pirates and space walks in the same days news is a bit dizzying.







Apparently there is not much to this whole piracy business.

It has me thinking about maybe changing my line of work.

There seems to be a standard pirate operation going on. I am thinking you could pull the whole deal off with two boats and maybe a dozen guys.
One boat, say a fishing boat, is the cover.
You hide five or six guys in some speedy little boat, behind the fishing boat.
When the giant ship is close, you send out the six guys to capture it.

I am kind of fuzzy on that whole capturing part, as it seems pretty silly that a half dozen guys with small arms are able to board a super tanker and commandeer it.



Do they use grappling hooks to get on?

Are their locks on the doors of ships?
Giant ships are built of steel and designed to repel the onslaught of heavy seas and vicious winds. It seems like they should be able to keep out a couple of guys with guns.
I guess not.


Then you just park the ship off the coast of some nasty country and demand a ransom.
Ransom is the modern addition to the process, since the actual booty is not being hauled on ships these days. No giant treasure chests of gold these days.
Ransom is where it is at.

Though I might be tempted to keep the tanks, if I absconded with a ship full of modern armor.
I could outfit a Waterworld style pirate navy, with the turrents of the tanks.

That would be cool.


Anyway, the start up capital to get a clan of pirates together seems pretty slim.
I am convinced I could round up a crew of scallywags and dirty bilge swilling rats.
One dumpy boat and one speedy boat, along with some ropes.
Then, it is just a matter of setting up camp in some terrible country at war with itself, who doesn't mind a few odd pirate types hanging around.

Some quick cost/benefit analysis makes it look pretty good. Solid ROI opportunity.


This whole world economic global melt down has slowed some cash I need finance my bid to take over the world. My backers; sovereign funds, loony billionaires and so forth are ginched up about the credit situations - so they keep giving me the old "I checked with accounting and the transfer should go through today" bit.
Like I don't know what that means...

I am thinking this whole pirate gig might be a good way to keep the ball rolling.
You know, large unmarked cash ransoms can finance the baboonbot work. I'll develop some solid PR for the transition to taking over the world.

Ironhead

I kinda like this.

Kissing Families

Silversun Pickups, from Pikul...

Fueler Feud

I found a fantastic foto of a fueler feud for you, friend, on this f'n Friday.