Boots of such majesty, such grandeur!

From Wikipedia:

"The boots reportedly originated around 2010 in Matehuala in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí, located in North-Central Mexico. Following their creation, the trend has expanded to parts of the United States where large numbers of Matehualan migrants live, particularly in Dallas, Texas but also in Tennessee, Mississippi and Oklahoma.
"The pointy boots are made by elongating the toe of normal boots by as much as 5 feet (1.5 m), causing the toes to curl up toward the knees. For those boys or men who can't afford to pay a shoemaker to prepare the boots, they use garden hoses to make their own. The boots are then further modified according to the wearer's personal taste. Alterations incorporate paint, sequins and can go as far as adding flashing LED lights, disco balls and even mirrors."

Fashion is sometimes just indescribably stupid. This is one of those times.

Tautological Redundancy

Give it a couple of years

Large swathes of earthquake-ravaged Christchurch suburbs are going to be abandoned.
The houses will be demolished, but if they weren't they'd slowly fall to bits anyway.
Which would be kind of cool.

Hiatus and Changeover

Having made arrangements to transfer my tech enrolment from a general carpentry course to a joinery/furniture-making course, I now have a hiatus until the beginning of August, when the new course begins.

I found, after spending a day on work experience on site with a builder, that my ancient, creaking, ricketty body is no longer capable of the continual heavy lifting and carrying involved in the builder's trade. If I'd worked my way into it over the last ten or twenty years I'd probably be OK, but coming into it cold from a fairly sedentary lifestyle was rather a shock to the system. I'd probably manage a couple of days of continuous hard yacker, but by day three I'd certainly be well on the way to an ignominious collapse. Hey-ho.

The reality check came as a bit of a blow to my ego; at the risk of sounding big-headed, I'm not used to failing at things.

However, I think it might well be a blessing in disguise. I was always more interested in the joinery side of woodworking, and I went for general building/carpentry mainly because of its much larger employment pool. Joinery will be a lot easier on my aging body, as well as being more in my line, and I'm looking forward to it.

You can't stay in that tree for ever

There's just no excuse for this sort of thing

Ball-point pen and digital tone (Photoshop)

How could I possibly resist?

Head in Head

Oil pastel, A4. Click to enlarge.

The two earthquakes yesterday (one 5.7, followed an hour later by a 6.3) have once again laid waste to my workroom. I'm really getting sick of picking up thousands of little toy soldiers and roleplaying figurines and returning them to their little plastic drawers.

Fortunately, they (the earthquakes, that is) don't appear to have done any additional damage to the house itself. The roads are back to being a bit of an obstacle course, though nowhere near as bad as in February, and once again there is liquifaction all over the place — which means that we'll be back to having to carry dust masks when it all dries out and the dust clouds start to fly.

I have really had a gutsfull of earthquakes. They can fuck right off.

Change of Life

I've decided that since the money involved in freelance graphic design, illustration, web design and what-not is so unreliable, that I'll try something else instead. Since I like building things, and I like working with wood, carpentry or joinery seem like good options. Having had Christchurch fall down around our ears means that there will be plentiful work here for the next decade at least, as the city gets rebuilt.

Last week I started an accelerated (6 month, full time) pre-trade carpentry course at CPIT. Basically, it takes all the theory hoo-ha from a standard apprenticeship program, mushes it together with some practical skills training and work experience, and releases its graduates into the wild to pick up apprenticeships, beginning with a little relevant knowledge, and free from after-work night classes.

So far, it's been fun.