Yesterday we got six inches of snow. It was
so pretty and it's been years since we've
had snow around the holidays. Usually
it's late January before we get some. Too
bad it warmed up to the point that this
morning's snow turned to rain and converted
the whole thing to slop!

I guess that's as close as we're going to get
to a White Christmas this year.

Ok kids, what was the oddest name you
invented for something. Some kids called
spaghetti busketti or had other odd or
cute names for things. Mine was "ME-MO"
Pronounced "me moe". Me-mo was oatmeal.
Why I gave it such an odd name as a kid
I'll never know, but even now, years and years
later I'm as likely to write 'me-mo' on the
shopping list as the word 'oatmeal'

Freddy the non-ferrous ferret
To the tune of “Frosty the Snowman”


Freddy the non-ferrous ferret,
Had balls of purest brass.
With nickel toes
And an aluminum nose,
And a lead casting for his ass.
When he went out courting,
He carried flowers made out of tin.
And he’d never rust, when he was feeling lust,
Because of his non-ferrous skin…

Well, the camera has arrived and since it
is significantly larger than the one it's
replacing, I'm going to have to devise
a new location for it. Behind the nose,
so the nose is off, painted a darker
shade of brown to allow the lens opening
to blend in and a little alteration to
the VR goggles battery box may allow
me to kill three birds with one stone.
How to turn the goggles on and off
without having to pull plugs, how to
charge the LiPo battery without having
to remove it and how to power the
camera without introducing yet another
battery pack. It's off to Radio Shack
to purchase some bits. and we'll be
back later with another progress report
and hopefully some spiffy photos.

Cheerio all.

I have reached a stopping point
since I'm still waiting for the
delivery of the new video
camera. The old one has more
or less failed, I guess it didn't
like being altered. Oh well,
I guess I wouldn't like being
altered by a ham handed
surgeon either. UPS tracking
says the camera will be delivered
tomorrow, then I can get back
to work.

Today wasn't completely
wasted. I got the lower jaw
made, furred and the tongue
made, covered in fabric and
attached. I've pondered a number
of ways to articulate it and actuate
it when Tabor speaks, from really
high tech and geeky with micro switches
and solenoids to very low tech
with a mechanism not unlike the
way energy is transferred from a
key to the string in a piano. I
think this is a case for K.I.S.S.
Keep It Simple Stupid, so I'll
see what sort of mechanical
arrangement I can devise that
will be sturdy and unlikely to fail
in the field.

---

After more consideration, I've decided
NOT to articulate the jaw. It's crowded
enough inside that head as it is.

Them spray glue chemicals, 'bout to make
your po' boy sick. Lawd, them volatiles are vile.
Going to put the project on hold for a day or two.

Well more progress, more bloodshed.
Trying to get the ear fur on, there's spray
glue on the earfoam, more spreyglue
on the backside of the ear fur and only
one chance to get it right, since once this
stuff latches on to a pre-glued bit, it's
almost impossible to re-position it. Then
while it's busy trying to stick to itself and
do everything possible to fuck up the
job I manage to stab myself in the hand
with an exacto knife. At least I managed
NOT to bleed on the fur I attached. So
the job's on hold again until this latest
injury heals.

At least until my hand heals. Yes, I
sliced myself a good one with the
runaway electric knife. I figured
yesterday, that if I was careful I
could do stuff on the costume and
broke open the barely healed gash,
so I guess I'd better just let it be
for a week or so. Darn, I'm so hot
to work on this since it's in the
final stages, just the fur needs to be
put on, then I can model it for the
camera.. Oh well, cest la vie.

"Blunderbuss". What a fun sounding word.
An Anglicization of the German word
"Donderbus" or "Thunder gun", it is the
direct ancestor of the shotgun and has
been immortalized as the quintessential
pirates weapon of choice. It seems also
to have been popular amongst turkey
hunting pilgrims, or at least so the
advertising gurus of Madison Ave. would
have us believe.

Let us consider the weapon then. A
very versatile peice, it was used to
great effect in clearing the decks when
capturing a prize, the gun itself cared
little with what it was loaded, a single
round ball or shot, bits of chain and
broken crockery or even small rocks. If
it could be stuffed down the barrel, it
could be fired to devastating effect.
I imagine, that facing a scurvy bilgerat
armed with one was an experience not
for the fainthearted. I eagerly await the
arrival of the one I ordered. It looks
like a fun gun to shoot.

I'm typing this one-handed, not for any fun reason but
because I was going to work on the fursuit head, but
the electric knife had other ideas and laid my left hand
open. The project is going to be on hold for a while.....

60 grains of powder and some newspaper wadding= heads popping
out of windows with eyes wide. I know I shouldn't do it too often but
some days it's good to blow off some steam! BA BOOM!

I just had to give my blackpowder pistol a try
so I put a little powder in it, stuffed a bunch
of newspaper in it for wadding and took it
outside. BA-BOOM! Damn that thing is loud.
Major amounts of fun, and smoke and one
hell of a muzzle flash. I can hardly wait to
try out the blunderbuss that's on order...

The gay liberation movement was originally
born on the hot June streets of the west
village when a bunch of fairys, faggots
and street transvestites decided they'd had
enough of being dragged out of bars by the
police, taken downtown, photographed and
their names published in the next morning's
papers for the crime of wanting to congregate
with other gay people. Their anger and
righteous rage set a match to the tinderbox
and rocked the village with a week of rioting
and eventually gave birth to the Gay Liberation
Front, a radical political organization that wanted
our rights as human beings and wouldn't take
"NO" for an answer. They eventually schizimed
and gave birth to the Gay Activist's Alliance,
Brooklyn United Gays and dozens of other
small organizations, each a bit less radical and
a little more moderate and less inclined to
rock the boat, until we come to today when
the radical old guard and the more out front
youngsters are disavowed and are told to
not screw in the streets and frighten the
straights and just maybe if we ask nicely enough
they'll allow us a few crumbs from their table of riches.

Well you know something? Speaking as one of
the old guard I'm not inclined to be quiet. I
think it's time to get back to our roots and
shake things up a bit and give these straight
bigots a taste of our gay rage. I never thought
I'd feel the need to advocate violence, but in
the case of the Mormon Church, I'm willing to
make an exception......

BURN IT DOWN!!!!!!!

What can I say, I woke up feeling like
homemade shitand just spent the day
curled up with a book except for the
times I took himself to the park for
walkies. I did a little work on the sea
chest, so the day wasn't a complete
waste. Mainly I'm waiting on some stuff
to arrive, before I do much more on the
chest or the head...

I did figure out a fairly satisfactory way around the molding
nipple in the eye hemispheres which will allow me to use
these if the others I ordered turn out to be unsatisfactory.
I just heated them up until surface tension pulled them
into a rounded shape, then polished the heck out of them
with polishing compound. Some distortion, but not completely
unacceptable..Oh well, back to performing radical plastic surgery
on the head...

Well, I'm radically reshaping the face and I guess
it looks a little better. I just got the replacement
hemisphere's in for eyes and they turned out to
have a molding nipple in the middle of each of
them which renders them totally unsuitable, guess
what, I get to look for another outfit and order from
them. These I hope will be what I need. If they are
I won't install them until I'm completely done with
the spray glue. I don't want to mess these ones up.

Other progress, the sea chest is almost restored.
I'm waiting on some replacement hardware that
will hopefully come in this week.

Mostly, I'm waiting for the replacement plastic
hemispheres so I can re-make the eyes that
got screwed up by the solvent, that and I want
to give more thought to how I'm going to change
the shape of the head. I have a feeling I'm going
to have to make a new nose as well.

Mainly because I'm stuck. I wish someone would look at
the pictures and advise me how to make it look less like
a mouse. When I lengthed the muzzle to accommodate
the fan, all of a sudden the head looked like a mouse or
a rat with rabbit ears. I could use some advise as to how
to make it look more bunny like.

NO, I'M NOT Drunk..just discouraged..I'm having trouble
with my fursuit head. It seems to be determined to turn
into a mouse. When I lengthened the muzzle to
accommodate the really big fan, the proportions became
Murine rather than lepine and I'm unsure how to fix it.
Take a look at the pictures and give me advice, please?

Well as everyone must know by now,
Obama is now President elect. But that's
not the main point of this post. It's not the
fact that he won, but how big he won. He
ate McCain's lunch.

I guess it just goes to show that the country
is finally starting to turn the page on the old
politics of fear and division that have gripped
this country for so long. Non-white vs White,
straight VS gay, old vs young, rich vs poor etc.
The peoplehave spoken about how sick they
are of the status quo. America as a schoolyard
bully, ramming it's jingoistic cowboy way of
doing things down everyone's throat because
we can. A country where the rich are stroked
and the poor are soaked, a country where
minority's be they racial, ethnic, sexual or
what have you are marginalized, nay
demonized and are reduced to begging like
Oliver Twist, "Please sir, I want some more".

I have been a life long democrat, from republican
parents because I've always felt that the democratic
party has represented what's right and good
about the American dream and the american ideal,
that regardless of who we are or what we believe,
we are all in this together, that this is OUR America
and we are one, rich, poor, white, non-white, straight,
gay or whatever, we are Americans first and foremost,
we are our brother's keeper.

Today, though I'm part of the old generation, white
haired and limping through the final stages of my
life, I feel hope for the future. That the dream is
still alive and that one day we will again be able
to hold up our heads on the world's stage and not
be vilified and held up as models of excess, brutality
and hypocrisy.

Tried another tack and the result was even more
hideous than the previous one. Tore the head back
down to skullcap and ears, nearly out of foam, I think
it's time to admit that I can't sculpt what I see in
my head and what I do sculpt, I wouldn't give to my dog
as a toy. I think I'll just put the fur I purchased
up on furbid (most likely at a massive loss) and
save my shekels to hire a pro to do it.

Well, I tore the fursuit head back down to the
skullcap and the ears ( I like the ears), the rest
of it was turning into Bizarro Tabor and not in a
good way. Luckily I bought enough foam that
I can do this a couple of times, but it pisses
me off. I know I'll never be able to accept
anything less than what I can see when I close
my eyes. Sigh, lots of vision, zero talent.
Story of my life..

This is a sort of progress report on the
construction of "The Dread Pirate Tabor"
fursuit. I decided as I said before to
make the head's central core out of
an inexpensive construction worker's
hard hat, so after stripping out the
webbing (and laying it aside for later
re-installation) I went to my workshop
and sawed and ground off the brim all
the way around it until now it's more or
less a bright yellow skull-cap. A good
solid platform to attach the elements
of the armature that's going to be
carrying the foam that will give the head
shape and the fur that will be spray glued
to the foam.

Then I went to work on the ears, probably
the most important part of a bunny's
head. I made each one in two parts of
the densest foam I could get a hold of
and spray-glued them together around a
central core of 1/8" square mild-steel
square-stock with enough protruding at the
base of each ear to allow me to attach
them to the plastic skullcap. I used wire-
rope binding clamps and washers for that.
The result turned out to be pleasantly
rigid, with just a bit of flex and the wire
core allows for a bit of adjustment of the ear
shape. I'll probably snap a couple of pictures
and post them later.

Now I've got to put on my thinking cap and
visualize the face and how it's going to
attach to the skullcap and decide whether
or not to make the mouth movable. The
only thing I have to work from is Heather
Bruton's badge she made for me which is
a profile drawing. It's very interesting to
try to look at the 2d drawing and try to
visualize it in 3 dimentions.

I mentioned a while ago that I wanted to make a
"Dread Pirate Tabor" fursuit and after giving it much
thought and a bit of research, have made a small
bit of progress. The fur arrived yesterday and looks
very sexy. Two colors since Tabor is a two-tone
bunny, A white with silver-gray tipped fur for the
underside of his muzzle, cheeks and chest and
a gold-tipped white fur for the rest of him. It's
going to be a partial fursuit, based on period
clothing that I'm going to order from
http://www.museumreplicas.com . Check them
out, they have a lot of nice things there. Since
no pirate bunny worth his salt is going to attempt
to board a prize vessel unarmed I've been
working on his weaponry. I made up a couple
of wooden cutlass's (in case I mess up one).
Now that they've been painted up, it's really hard
to tell at a distance that they're not metal and I
ordered a pair of non-firing replica flintlock pistols
for the bunny to thrust into his belt sash. Arrr, a
dangerous bunny pirate he'll be.

I was puzzeling over just how to do the inside of the
head so it wouldn't wobble around when I was wearing
it, then I stumbled over an idea from a book on
costuming. Build the head around a cheap construction
hard hat. You get the webbing to hold it steady and
there's plenty of ventilationroom around your head.
Install a couple of battery opperated fans and you're
set. I'll post pictures as things progress. I'd post
pictures of the cutlass's, but right now they're hanging
up in my garage drying. Later perhaps....

As some of you know, I've not been
a very happy bunny for the longest
time. Have been fighting (mostly
unsuccessfully) clinical depression
all of my life. There are days when
I'd cheerfully put a bullet through
my head just to make the pain stop.
I'm on a couple of anti depressants
that seem to only have slight effect
and my shrink is loath to put me
on anything else because she's
worried how it will interact with all the
other crap I'm taking.

It wasn't suppose to be like this. We
were born to be happy and to make
others happy as well, at least that's
what I was told as a child. Where did
it all go wrong and why did it have to
happen to me? I can't think why a
loving creator would want to screw me
up as badly as he has. THey say
God is perfect and incapable of error,
don't you believe it. Look at my screwed
up psyche and you'll know he can
fuck things up as badly as the next
bloke. Worse actually, because my
screw ups just affect me. HIS screw ups
can affect everyone.

When I was drinking five and a half
liters of scotch a week I wasn't happy,
but I was at least numb and that was
alright. Numb is almost as good as being
pain free and I could accept being like
that if it wasn't for the side-effects.

I think the closest I've ever been to
feeling good about the world and myself
was back in the late 60's when a friend
brought back some opiated hashish from
Cambodia. Awsome stuff, that. Left me feeling
truly at peace with the world and myself.

Too bad I can't pop down to the corner
Chemist whenever I'm feeling low and
have a pipe or two. I'd feel ever so much
better and perhaps my tomorrows would
seem less bleak. Oh well, it's not going
to happen so why fret over what you can
never have.

Life sucks. Sometimes it swallows and
sometimes it just spits it back in your
face and laughs....