Plastic Model Kit - Level 1

My boss recently began dabbling with plastic model cars, and it kind of gave me a hankering. I wanted to see if plastic models would be a fun activity I could share with my seven year-old daughter. As a youngster I did a couple of these and had fond memories.

My daughter seemed interested in trying it, so we went to Discount Drug Mart and I told her to pick out a Level 1 kit. She narrowed it down to a purple convertible and a police car, and asked me which I thought she should select. (Secretly I'd been hoping for the police car...) I explained to her that if she enjoys the level 1 kit, we'd move on to level 2 and there were no police cars outside level one, but there were plenty of convertibles.

So we bought the 1/25 SnapTite® '05 Chevy® Impala™ Police Car Plastic Model Kit.

Here's how it went.......

This kit says it has 40+ parts. Not sure why they couldn't count them for us...

Yep. That's a shotgun between the seats!

This part was weird. The instructions said to tape the side mirrors in place and then snap the bottom on. At some point the right mirror was broken. I glued it on later.

I let my seven year-old try to do the whole thing. Since this was our first go at this, we stuck to the instructions pretty strictly. There were several spots she needed help with. (It does say 8+ on the box after all.) The SnapTite parts sometimes were cumbersome to get to, well, snap tite. Often I felt gluing would have been preferable.

A sprue cutter and file would have helped remove and touch-up the pieces. I used a utility knife, wire cutters, and sometimes I got sloppy and just twisted pieces off the sprue. Again, the method for putting on the side mirrors was sloppy and one broke.

Level 1 was easy. The end product was more toy-like in appearance than replica. It might be fun to re-do this kit with a nice paint job. 

She says she wants to try a Level 2 kit next.........

West Wing (TV) Characters Counterparts in Real Life

West Wing Seasons 1- 3
White House as of November 22, 2013

President	Josiah "Jed" Bartlet	Barack Obama
First Lady	Abbey Bartlet	Michelle Obama
Vice President	John Hoynes	Joe Biden
Chief of Staff	Leo McGarry	Denis McDonough
Deputy Chief of Staff	Josh Lyman	Rob Nabors
Communi- cations Director	Toby Ziegler	Jennifer Palmieri
Press Secretary	C.J. Cregg	Jay Carney
Deputy Communi- cations Director	Sam Seaborn	Jen Psaki
Personal Assistant to the President	Charlie Young	Reggie Love

Cinderella's dad was an idiot

Last time I felt the need to write about this film, I had a problem with the Fairy Godmother's lack of confidence in Cinderalla. Recently I've noticed something that I think just about everyone has overlooked but is painfully obvious; Cinderella's father was an idiot. Here is the evidence...

Exhibit A:
The story says he died shortly after he married Lady Tremaine (depicted above). This means he married someone who looked like this... (Just look at that picture. Are you serious?!) She has grayish-purple skin, odd skunk hair, and nuclear green eyes. No where does the story suggest Cinderella's father was a blind man. He married this woman. Idiot.

Exhibit B:
Lucifer. When choosing a wife, most men would shy away from a woman who chooses to name her pet after the Devil. Judging by the animals broad face and general girth, we can assume he was around before the marriage. What kind of person marries a woman who named their cat after Satan? An idiot.

Exhibit C:
The story says Lady Tremaine was a widow herself before she duped Cindy's idiot dad. No matter how charming she was; no matter how tasty her cookies were, I think there were enough strikes against her to merit the hire of a private investigator to inquire how her previous husband passed. The sinister eyes. A cat named after the Prince of Darkness. At least check into her past a bit, because I'd wager her previous husband passed similarly to how her next husband did - by her hand. I'll again mention that the story says "he soon died" after they were married.

The film shows just how sadistic this woman really was. It is no stretch at all to believe she killed two husbands.

The second one should have known better. He was an idiot.

Opinion Confirmed

My long standing opinion that the majority of contemporary art is meaningless rubbish has been 100% confirmed.

First I'll explain why I've always believed this:

1. Great music is appreciated by non-musicians. Great feats of engineering are appreciated by non-engineers. Great sports accomplishments are appreciated by non-atheletes. Great software is appreciated by non-programmers. Great movies are appreciated by non-actors. Great art is appreciated by non-artists; otherwise it's not that great! The contemporary art culture should not presume to be above this simple law of perception.
2. Art must be representational. The creator of the work must be attempting to communicate through the media; therefore it cannot be random (unless randomness is the subject but that of course would be unoriginal, right?). This doesn't mean the artist does not intend for there to be multiple interpretations. In fact, I believe great art should do exactly that.
   
3. Good art's core meaning need not be bluntly obvious but it should be clear following a brief study. There are fine lines between clarity, hidden meaning, cryptic meaning, and no discernible meaning at all. An artist should feel free to create something that hardly anybody understands, but they shouldn't expect it to be appreciated.

A national art contest in New Zealand had a late entry. Someone called the facilities department and kindly asked them to collect the packing materials from the other entries and pile them up. That was some guy's submission in the contest, and he won.

Like I said...meaningless rubbish...


I'm not making this up:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/arts/news/article.cfm?c_id=544&objectid=10596167
http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/newsdetail1.asp?storyID=162862
http://www.wanganuichronicle.co.nz/local/news/editorial-art-is-in-the-eye-of-the-cash-holder/3904001/

Professional Journalism is Dead

I saw the William Jefferson (not Clinton!) bribery scheme go across the news wire and I thought I'd test a theory: NY Times vs. FoxNews. Who is the most biased?

So I used Democrat Jefferson (corruption) and Republican Mark Sanford (gubernatorial unfaithfulness) to see which news source most defamed the name of their presumed opposition party via negative association. I just randomly picked articles that I thought discussed the main issue based on their titles (maybe not the best process). I didn't hand pick to support my theory.

NY Times:

• The word 'Democrat' appears once in this article on Jefferson.
• The word 'Republican appears 5 times in this article on Sanford.

FoxNews:

• The word 'Democrat' appears 9 times in this article on Jefferson.
• The word 'Republican appears 3 times in this article on Sanford.

NYT has a higher bias ratio of 5:1. FoxNews has a higher difference (6) when the incidents are subtracted. Whether we want to count the difference or look at the ratio, it's biased either way.

It's all silly though........

Oh! On a non-biased note, I was glad to see William Jefferson (Clinton this time) bring those reporters back from North Korea. Maybe they were getting into stuff they shouldn't but if so, they're real sorry and won't do it again. Just glad they're back with their families.

Turtles and Bears

My two year old daughter sometimes watches a show about a turtle named Franklin. This Franklin hangs out with his family and friends. He learns all sorts of lessons about getting along with others and basic academics.

She also has a book called Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? Jesse and his parents decide what he's going to wear throughout different times, seasons, and scenarios.

What is our world coming to? What are we teaching our kids?

When I was a kid, turtles were mutant ninjas who fought armies of criminal robots. Bears drank performance enhancing elixirs that enabled them to smash ogres. That's how it's supposed to be.

Society is going downhill in a hurry.

Bippety Boppity Boo!

I'd like to put emphasis on "Boo" because she turns a pumpkin into an elegant coach, she turns a horse and a dog into vocationally trained humans, and she turns mice into horses, but she either carelessly neglected to think out her usage instructions, or worse she didn't have any confidence in her goddaughter.

She pretty much said, "If you're still at the party when the spell's time limit is exceeded, it's going to be a mess." We have to assume that the fairy godmother (henceforth abbreviated FGM) understood the nature of this ball. It wasn't simply a party where the prince was going to be in attendance. No, it was a party advertised as a one night, full season of "The Bachelor" where the winner potentially would marry the prince. That was the game and FGM was certainly aware of it.

Because of her past Cinderella had become conditioned to unquestioningly following orders; she had to or else she usually received more orders as punishment. So I don't think we can fairly blame her for not thinking through the possible contingencies, right? When the chimes started a'chime'n, Cindy's pre-programmed nature to obey kicked in and off she went. Most people will stop if a palace guard orders them to. She ignored a directive straight from royalty. This chick was a zombie.

Anyway, what FGM should have said was...

"If things aren't going so well, hit the trail before midnight because the spell will break, BUT if you're sure you're getting the final rose, just stay with the prince. When your dress reverts to rags and he asks, "What happened?!", simply say that the clerk must have forgotten to remove the ink tag. Then he'll take care of everything."

But since FGM didn't think this thing through, even if Cindy won the final rose, her frantic departure jeopardized everything. Toward the end of the film we see just how fragile these glass slippers are but you know what's even more fragile? - the FGM's witts! I mean come on! Look at all the possible points of failure here! What if she had smashed her remaining slipper on the cobblestones? What if the stepmother had successfully kept her in her room? What if another pretty girl had the same size feet?

Had it not been for several things coming together for her in the end, Cindy would have lived the rest of her life in servitude to some real jerks. It turns out that a higher power than a fairy godmother had a hand in this story.