New Year's Resolution

Clean the cat crap off the weight bench in the basement.

The Racing Roaches Story

I was pretty bored in High School. Except in art class. That makes sense. I'm an artist.

My friend, Duke, and I, caught a couple of good sized cockroaches in art class one day and not content to leave well enough alone, painted them in racing colors. You know, like stock cars. If we'd have small enough paint brushes, we'd probably have put sponsors on them too. And when we were done, we carefully packed them into the barrel of a Bic pen (after removing the pen cartridge).

And off to Geometry class we went.

We didn't much care for our Geometry instructor. Or maybe it was Algebra, don't remember. It was Mr. Martin, whichever one he was.

Duke and I sat in the back of class.

Let the races begin.

We let the cockroaches go. They scurried up the class aisles. Being neon yellow and magenta, one with polka dots, the other with a racing stripe, they were hard to miss. A girl sitting in front of us, we shall call her Kathy ... because that's her name ... screamed and stomped on our damned racing roaches. End of race. Two little mushy yellow and magenta blobs on the floor.

Crap-ola.

All that art gone up in flames.

I'm going to hell for this one...

When I was in art school, I had to take a few academic classes, not many, but a few. They were a real pain in the butt. Things like English, Psych, that kind of stuff. We also had to take a few "electives". I whimped-out and took an adult-education painting class. Considering I was an art major, I'm surprised they let me get away with that, but it slipped through the system somehow.

Basically, it was an evening class attended by Indianapolis senior citizens that wanted to learn how to paint. I didn't really know how to paint, still don't, I'm a graphic artist and work with a computer. Anyway, I never went to class and took it pass/fail which meant all I had to do was get a D and it was the same as getting an A, I got full credit for the class. So I showed up for the first class and the last one.

So long story short, it was the night before "finals" for the class and I hadn't started on my project. I'd done a 3-dimensional painting for another legitimate class earlier in which I'd stretched canvas over wooden shapes. The resulting canvas looked kind of like a snail-azoidish-thingy. It got me a B in 3-D class, so why not rehash it for this class? Okee-dokee. I spray-painted it metallic silver. I also spray painted my platform clog shoes silver to match (gotta' have matching shoes and painting, right?). I then took two light reflectors and inserted a blue bulb in one of them and a red one in the other. I popped the lenses out of my cheap sunglasses and replaced the lenses with heavy blue and red gels in each of the eyeglass holders. And prepared my speech.

Off to class I went wearing my metallic silver, platform clogs. They were SO cool.

I carefully measured off 10 feet from the canvas on the floor and placed a strip of tape on the floor. This was the "observation line". I placed the blue light on one side of the canvas and the red one on the other side. When it was my turn to present my painting, I turned on the colored lights and had the instructor put on the colored glasses and stand on the "observation line" which I explained had been carefully calculated to produce the optimum three-dimensional effect.

There stood this poor instructor wearing these stupid looking red and blue glasses. The glasses and lights actually did nothing. Nothing at all. The canvas looked only slightly dimensional from any distance with or without the glasses and lights.

But after a few moments pause, she studiously stated, "I see it, I can see what you've done now. I can see the dimensional effect." She declared it fine art.

And it was at that point. I knew I was going to hell.

Everyone in the class took turns putting on the glasses and taking turns saying, "OOOOOO" and "AAAAHHHH". Some of them muttered that they couldn't see what everyone was talking about - I scoffed at them.

A couple of the REAL painting students were hanging around that night slumming and I remember being ashamed. So ashamed. They just gave me the knowing Evil Eye.

And Mam', if you're out there reading this now, I APOLOGIZE from the bottom of my heart. I'm truly sorry. What a jerk I was.

Apparently there ARE people out there that DO give a rat's ass about rat's asses:

Headline of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics*:

"Analysis of vascular responses in rat hindquarters arterial resistance vessels and veins in situ"

(*My subscription's about to run out but I'm holding out for a free toaster.)