August 2023 Photo Diary - Strip Teaser in Last Pic

Author's Tier! I am looking at you, you special, beautiful people! (You are beautiful. Go in the bathroom mirror and look at yourself in that favorable way that the camera never seems to capture. We all do it, and even though no photographer has ever gotten us just right, we know it's just a matter of time.)

1. I have chosen to lead this month's "photo dump" with a highly meme-able image that I hope will set the world alight with its irreverent versatility. This is more or less the constant view from where I sit and work all day. To call these two cats useless dumbasses would not begin to reveal their lack of positive contribution to the home. (Please, do something amusing with this photo and send it around.)

2. If I have played my cards right, the next photo is of me finally preparing the house for a new coat of paint. It has been needing this since I moved in, in 2009. I said I was going to pay someone to do it, but I think I knew all along that deep down in my heart I am way too cheap to not do a half-assed facsimile of any skilled professional trade by myself. 

3. Lauren is typically the Craigslist-conjurer of our blessed union, but this careworn old torso that I located—which will grace the upcoming Achewood holiday shop photos—easily beats the Makita impact drill and matching IKEA nightstands she scored this month.

4. The thing I said about painting the house also applies to refinishing hardwood floors. I last did this when I bought my first house in 2000, so I look forward to doing it again in 2046, when I am seventy-one. Perhaps there will be, by then, a drum sander that attaches to the front of my walker.

5. I discovered that you can get these fancy garment labels made, even if you are not Ralph Lauren. It's true, anybody can do it. I have been sewing them to things. This photo and the next one are of a hat that I made on a 1976 Singer "Zig Zag" sewing machine. (Lauren is teaching me how to sew, and found this old clunker on Craigslist for me when we first met.) If you want one of these hats, I will make more. I believe I mentioned elsewhere that I actually like making things with odd machinery; I find it meditative. 

6. The Wicked Eye confused my young mind for as long as I can remember. Adults would not say what happened there; I got the sense that it was a bar. (Bars were where grown-ups would drink either brandy from fancy cut-crystal snifters, or the special "Uncle Mitch" egg nog from coffee mugs, and dress like Larry from Three's Company, including a vest and a collared shirt that was open at the chest.) However, I could also tell there was something dark and untoward happening there, and that it involved ladies whom I was unlikely to meet at the Cub Scout Jamboree.

7.  I don't want you doing a lot of guessing about what OBOE THE GAME is, as I will invariably let you down when you finally see this idea in the strip (your idea will be better than mine). But I had some fun drawing this at the Subaru service department waiting room yesterday morning. A little story: I had been looking forward to the free fancy coffee drinks from their automatic dispenser, but my latte had the flavor of that one packaging chemical that made all microwave dinners in the early 90s taste weird, so I poured it out after two dispiriting sips.

The Month Ahead

September will see the rebuilding of the Achewood shop in a newer and larger location, which will have: (1) space for producing more large canvases (hello, oil paints, finally), and also (2) this guy who does the "work" part of the packing and shipping and customer service, while I swan around in French cuffs and doing French inhales and calling myself Mr. Bosnia. (This last part is mainly just a favor to him, as all young men are best-off when outfitted for the rest of life with odd stories of eccentric early employers.)

Now that the home improvement projects are letting up, I'll be backfilling this tier with more material that I should have posted on a more even schedule this month...if only I could have posted it from bed, while asleep, healing from that time the 10-amp disc sander kicked off a baseboard and bit into my actual stomach like some kind of deranged pony. I'd show that photo, but it involves my midsection, and this is not that sort of Patreon. Perhaps if I start an Only Fans that's about injuries cheap middle-aged guys give themselves.