Willy's Survival Guide: Rule #74

Never go to sleep without all of your belongings in close proximity, because Eddie is out there. Somewhere.

Crime and Self-Punishment

After we got back from a family walk with the little monsters tonight, Jeff and I realized that we were awful pack leaders. We had just enough food for Willy and Eddie to have dinner, but in order for them to have breakfast tomorrow, someone was going to have to run out and get more kibble before morning. We quickly realized already knew that neither of us would want to go to the store in the morning, so we decided to go tonight. Also, I wanted some Flavor Blasted Goldfish.

So, we packed up the whole family and ran out to Target. We tried Wal-Mart first because it's closer, but that was a mistake. All of the fluorescent overhead parking lights were off, including all of the outside lights on the front of the store. Um, wut? But there were still billions of people driving around the parking lot like frickin' maniacs. And there were even more people dodging in and out of the lanes with carts full of bulk toilet paper and five dollar DVDs. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe they were looting? I suppose there could have been a strange natural disaster that led everyone in town to pillage their local Wal-Mart. Anyways, lemme tell you something. I will never take overhead parking lot lights for granted again. You don't realize how much those lights illuminate things after dark. After nearly hitting three people, two carts, and a ransacking squirrel - and I was only like seven feet into the parking lot - I turned around and high tailed it out of there. Even Jeff, who is always on the lookout for a good deal, knew in his heart that it wasn't worth the seventy-five cents we could have saved on kibble.

Where was I? Oh right. Dog food.

So anyway, on the way to Target, we found some mail we had gotten earlier in the week sitting inside the middle console. Among other things, there was a card we had received from Jeff's parents. Not wanting to forget it, Jeff stuck it between the seats. We quickly ran into Target, (which BTW had a very pleasantly illuminated parking lot) and grabbed some IAMS and some Flavor Blasted Goldfish. And some Diet Coke. When we got back to the car, the card from Jeff's parents was in the middle of the passenger's seat. It was also wet and had teeth marks in the corner. I looked in the back of the car. I held up the card and said, "Who did this?" Willy just stared at me. And Eddie...Eddie did this.

Yep. He stared at the corner of the backseat and proceeded to sit like this for the entire car ride home...a personal penance for all of the actions in his life that he simply cannot control. I didn't even have to do anything.

When we got home, I gave him a Snausage. Sometimes, the hardest lessons in life are the ones you have to teach yourself. Also, don't drive into dark Wal-Mart parking lots.

The Tip Of The Iceberg

If it isn't obvious, that ginormous bump on the back of my hand isn't what you'd call natural. In addition to being really gross, that lump is one of the sources of all the issues I have had with my hand for the past seven years. As you can guess, being a right-handed artist with chronic right hand pain can be a wee bit bothersome aggravating okay, just lop the friggin' thing off above the wrist already and get me one of those titanium bionic hand dealies like the Terminator. After lots of doctor visits and nuclear-type tests that left me glowing green, (If I had been dropped out of a plane on Wednesday I would have taken out a city block) I have some answers. So, here is what a normal hand looks like on the inside.

The bump on my hand is called a carpal boss. It is excessive bone growth on the base of the third metacarpal and carpal bones. It's nasty. And it hurts like nuts because there is no cartridge between the joints where the extra bone has formed. Yuck. But let's not stop there. Oh no. Because that's not enough. In addition, the base of my third metacarpal is really messed up and jagged little bits of it are grinding against other joints and bones. Which BTW, feels great after say, shoveling the sidewalk, or you know, just sitting there. Now, I wasn't able to get pictures of my x-rays yet, but here's the gist of what things look like in there. I doubt you will be able to tell the difference between my representation and the actual CT scans.

So yep, you've guessed it, really screwed up hand = intense hand surgery. My options were either 'go under the knife' or just let it get worse and worse and grosser and grosser. So, in a few weeks I get to have three of those bones ground down and fused together with either plates or screws to form one massive bone of awesomeness. And after a quick eight to ten weeks of recovery and rehabilitation and several immobilizing casts, I'll be almost as good as new after another three to five months! Even though my art will have to take a long vay-cay, I've already come up with a list of things I can do with only one hand.

• Eat
• Poke Jeff
• Learn the left-handed half of sign language
• Eat
• Go Rear Window on my neighborhood
• Eat
• Poke Jeff some more

See. It won't be all bad. Well not for me. Maybe for Jeff though.

I'm Probably A Millionaire Already

Guilty confession time...I love Antique's Roadshow. And to anyone laughing at me right now, you really should think twice about that chortle. Really...who doesn't just relish the thought of having forgotten treasures worth billions of dollars just waiting to be found around your very own house? Seriously. It could happen to you.



I've decided that she must have been in shock. I assure you, if that happened to me...the reaction would have been a friggin' lot more explosive. More explosive, and by all means more embarrassing. So here is what I'm thinking. I'm going to become a millionaire just like this woman. That way, I can play Guitar Hero all day long, and learn how to solve a Rubik's Cube at the same time. So, all I need to do is find a 300 year-old relic worth millions of dollars in my house. Antique's Roadshow is coming around again this summer, so the timing is perfect.

This little box will be my first bid at a million bucks. It belonged to my great aunt, and I love it.

The little clasp on the front is a turtle. How freakin' adorable is that?

I think it's pretty old. I also think it's Japanese. Naturally, I put two and two together and concluded that this is a cigar box from the Japanese Muromachi Period, and a beloved possession of the Emperor Go-Kashiwabara of the Imperial Dynasty circa 1514. Of course I will need an appraiser at the Roadshow to confirm, but I'm pretty sure I can start cashing in on this bounty now. I'm thinking Mercedes-Benz Maybach. I'll probably visit a dealer tomorrow.

'70 Million' Reasons To Love Art History

Check out the new music video "70 Million" by the band Hold Your Horses. It really makes you want to head on down to the nearest art museum and get your culture on. Also, I'm so glad they opened the video with da Vinci, he's such a friggin' rockstar. See you guys, it's like I've been telling you...art can be fun.



Here is all of the artwork in the video and Wikipedia links:

• Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper (1495 - 1497)

• Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus (1485-87)

• Rembrandt, Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632)

• Jean Clouet, Portrait of Francis I (1525)

• Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665)

• Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa (1818-1819)

• Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Marat (1793)

• Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam - Sistine Chapel (1510)

• René Magritte, The Son of Man (1964)

• Piet Mondrian, Composition (1914 - 1944)

• Frida Kahlo, Self Portrait (1926 - 1954)

• Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Dora Maar Seated (1937)

• Edvard Munch, The Scream (1893 - 1910)

• Vincent van Gogh, Self-portrait with bandaged ear (1889)

• Andy Warhol, Marilyn Monroe (1967)

• Author unknown, Gabrielle d'Estrees et une de ses soeurs (1594)

• Giovanni Cimabue, Maestà di Santa Trinita (1285-1286)

• Caravaggio, Salome with the Head of John the Baptist (1608)

• Édouard Manet, Olympia (1863)

• Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People (1830)

• Otto Dix, Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden (1926)

• Gustav Klimt, The Kiss (1907-08)

• Marc Chagall, La Mariée (1950)

• Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas (1656)

• Vincent Van Gogh, Sunflowers (1880)

The Internet Holds All The Answers

In light of my recent 'bunny with a pancake on its head' post (Editor's Note: There is a real story behind the pancake bunny. You can read about it here), I've decided to address the issue of finding crazy crap on the internet. When it comes to such off-the-wall-awesome internet caches, I often get asked, "How in the world did you find that?"

The truth is, I really don't know how I find this stuff. I stumble upon most of it, usually from a link at another website. I'm like an internet Beagle. I just follow link after link, ending up somewhere and thinking, "How the crap did I get here?" Once, I'm pretty sure that I started out at CNN.com and ended up at IHasAHotDog.com. So the debate goes on: Am I a friggin' internet surfing genius, or do I have freakishly awesome dumb luck? Ah, the mysteries of life.

Anyways, I thought that the time has come to share my mad skillz useless-waste-of-time skillz with the world. Here are some of the crazy/awesome/say-wut!? sites that I have come across.

1. Bed Jumping: I'm petitioning the Olympic Committee to add this to the summer games in 2012.

2. YouTube: Ah yes, the treasure trove of awesomeness. And if you think it isn't possible to play expert Guitar Hero while simultaneously solving two rubix cubes, well, you'd be wrong.


3. The Land Walker Robot: Pssh. You mean you don't already have one of these?

4. The Official Rock Paper Scissors Strategy Guide: "Good ol' rock. Nuthin' beats that!"

5. The World RPS Society: Well if you bought the guide, you probably are serious about competing...

And finally...

6. Demotivational Posters: Spice up your office!