I christen thee the U.S.S. Ineptitude

It’s finally finished.  I put the final coat of matte finish on ye olde Enterprife yesterday and brought the sad specimen to my office to proudly(?) display on my desk.

Here she is, warts and all.  Click pics to embiggen.

 

Doesn’t look too bad from a distance, does it?

The major flaw that will stand out immediately to anyone familiar with the Enterprise is that the warp nacelles are turned outward slightly.  Thanks to the layers of paint I put on the pieces before assembly the pylons fit too snugly and I couldn’t get the nacelles to snap all the way down.  I tried so hard with one that I ended up breaking the tip of the pylon, so I gave up and left them both misaligned.  Oh well.

I was rather proud of my paint work on the deflector dish.

The closer you get, the uglier it gets.  The front ends of the nacelles are bundles of painting/filling/sanding mistakes.

I’m also somewhat pleased by the weathering work I did on the saucer.  I may have overdone it slightly though.  I got carried away. 

To get that effect I took a piece of hardwood charcoal (I didn’t have any pastels.), sanded a bit of it down into powder, then dipped a brush in it and lightly went over the saucer and other raised parts from front to back. 

All in all it could have ended up much worse thanks to all of my n00b blunders.  Aside from the nacelle alignment problem it looks pretty decent sitting on my desk.  Hopefully the next one will be better.

You came in that thing? You’re braver than I thought.

I may have broken some universal law by using a Star Wars quote to describe a Star Trek project, but if Princess Leia thought the Falcon looked bad, she would never have stepped foot inside the pitiful Enterprise I’m attempting to build. 

I have all but ruined the model by making every type of mistake possible: incorrect assembly order, handling painted parts before they’ve completely dried, horrific seam-filling, trying to glue or fill seams over painted parts, sanding and painting before dry.  You name it, I’ve done it to this poor model.

Still, despite the fact that it looks to have been assembled and painted by Katherine Hepburn during breaks on the set of On Golden Pond, I’m determined to finish it and display it, warts and all.

I’m finally through painting-sanding-filling-sanding-painting-painting-filling-sanding-and painting the saucer section and the main fuselage.

It really doesn’t look that bad as long as you don’t get too close. 

There were some minor successes among my failures on this project though.  For one, I’m pleasantly surprised by some of the detail painting I did, including the deflector dish and array (seen in the picture above).

Some of my paint work on the nacelles (below) turned out better than I expected also.  It’s just too bad I marred them so much by trying to fill the seams, which resulted in more sanding and repainting with less than satisfactory results.

Once my final re-spray dries I’ll be able to assemble the ship and start with the decals. Hopefully if I can do a decent job with those and get a nice matte finish on it the ship will not look too bad.

From a distance.

Many thanks to the great folks at the Starship Modeler Discussion Forum for their kind words of encouragement as I struggle through this first project.  That is a fantastic community of model-builders always willing to offer advice and tips.

A sadder and wiser man, He rose the morrow morn

He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

[You down with S.T.C.?]

Last night a wasp infiltrated our home.  I’m normally very tolerant with the lesser of God’s creatures, but when it comes to things that sting I kill on sight.

I grabbed my battle-scarred flyswatter and went on the assault.  I felled my foe with one (ok two, because I missed the first time) blow, and carefully picked him up with a tissue.

As I went to deposit the vanquished invader into the kitchen garbage can I gave one more squeeze to make certain of the kill.

That’s when the stinger got me.  Right in the pad of my middle finger.

I don’t know if the wasp was still alive and struck back with his last breath, or if I just happened to squeeze right at the extended stinger.  Either way he got his revenge. 

And it hurt.

Call it Karma.  Call it divine justice.  Somewhere Samuel Taylor Coleridge is chuckling.

This might be a 5-year mission

I began construction on my Polar Lights 1:1000 Enterprise today.  It wasn’t long before I was reminded why I quit building models:  I stink at it.

Fortunately this is just my practice kit, because I’ve made several stupid mistakes already.  As a matter of fact I think I’ve already ruined it by trying to remove some stray glue with sandpaper that was too coarse.  The top of the main saucer looks like it got caught under someone’s tire.  Joy.

I’m going to try to repair it by wet-sanding with some finer-grade paper.  Fingers crossed.

Still, I bought the practice kit for a reason.  I hope to get all of my stupid mistakes out of the way before trying the larger Enterprise.

Beans don’t burn on the grill

Inexplicably the podcast I do with Spike Nesmith continues to get more popular every week.  It has become so popular, in fact, that we have officially outgrown the free podcast host we were using.  Thanks to all of your downloads we exceeded our monthly bandwidth limit!

What a nice problem to have.

So now we’re movin’ on up to a gen-you-wine bo-no-fide pro-fay-shunnul podcast host:  Libsyn.  That means a fancy new address and no more bandwidth issues

Check out the new Paul and Spike Show page today and subscribe (or hopefully re-subscribe) to the RSS feed for your weekly enjoyment. 

And as always we thank you for your support.

To boldly glue…

When I was a young lad one of my favorite hobbies was building models.  Plastic cars with crooked wheels, visible blobs of dried glue, and wrinkled decals littered my bookshelves for many years.

Like most of my interests that didn’t involve girls, videogames, music, or girls it faded away in my teens.  But recently the urge to fill my house with glue fumes and and profanity has struck again. 

It didn’t start with a “Hey, I want to build a plastic model again!” epiphany.  It started with a “Hey, I want a model of the starship Enterprise.”  Of course that means actually building a model of the Enterprise, since they don’t come assembled. 

The problem is I was never good at building models.  I think it was my combined lack of patience and artistic ability, neither of which have improved with age, sadly.  Still, I proceed with my plan.

The first step was to find a model of the Enterprise.  I recently scored this antique* from Ebay:

* In this case “antique” means 1983.  It pains me to accept that most items from the 80s are antiques now.  Sigh

Before I try (and most likely ruin) that one, I’m going to practice on a cheaper, less rare kit recently released by Polar lights (Available now at fine retailers!):

It’s a snap-together — the training wheels of the modeling world.  I’ve found comments online from several folks who have built it though and most say they still used glue for durability and a more seamless assembly.  I’ll do it just for the practice.

Snap-together or not, it still looks intimidating to me.  Somehow I have to turn this:

Into this:

I’m most concerned about my painting ability, or lack thereof.  That’s why I really want a trainer before tackling the big model.  I have no clue how to paint models, so I’ve done some research online.  Priming, sanding, painting, finishing.  It all sounds so complicated.   Fortunately if I butcher this one I’m not out much.  Depending on how I do I may even buy a couple more cheapies before trying the antique.

My next step is to get some supplies.  Unfortunately since I live in the real life equivalent of Bedford Falls there aren’t exactly an abundance of hobby shops around.  I stopped in one local craft chain store yesterday.  “We have both kinds — scrap-booking and basket-making.”  Sigh.

Unfortunate Twitter juxtaposition

Spring miscellanies

Fear of dissent.  I’ve made the assertion before based on personal observation, but more evidence is rolling in.  Not only are we apparently becoming more polarized as a nation, but more and more we’re consciously blocking out any news, information, or opinion that doesn’t jive with our own. 

The New York Times recently ran a story speculating about the future fate of CNN, “a network whose strategy is to steer the middle course in its news coverage,” in light of viewers jumping ship for more the more biased Fox News and MSNBC. 

It would seem that no one wants just plain news anymore; everyone wants talking heads spouting opinions that never waver from the ideological comfort blankets we carry with us.  Hearing the other side makes us uncomfortable — or worse, offended.

[I'm fully prepared for Fox News fans to blast me and the NYT for suggesting that CNN is in the middle, but CNN's news-to-bloviating ratio is infinitely higher than that of their rivals.  And while they used to be known as the Clinton News Network for their unabashed support of the former president, objective observers now can not deny they are closer to the middle than ever, and much more centered than FNC or MSNBC.]

I even lost an old friend because of this phenomenon.  An old high school classmate of mine was spouting Fox News talking points on Facebook on a regular basis.  He eventually “dumped” me as a friend for challenging his opinions.  The arguments never got personal (at least I didn’t think of them as such because while I have strong political opinions I don’t define myself by them), but apparently he’d rather stick with his own “kind.”  After all, when your world is black and white I guess grays are a nuisance.

It’s sad.  Sad that we may soon see the end of (relatively) unbiased news.  Sad that we can no longer stomach disagreement.  And sad that we wrap ourselves so tightly in our own beliefs that we live in echo chambers with nothing but electronic versions of Yes Men coddling us everywhere we turn.

[I feel obligated to point out two bright exceptions to this trend:  fellow WV bloggers Muze Euterpe and Elvis Drinkmo.  Muze and I have gone many rounds in the political argument ring on our blogs and have always maintained mutual respect and friendship.  Elvis hit me pretty hard in a political discussion on someone else's blog recently but shortly thereafter apologized in case I took offense -- which I didn't.]

—

Now what? Because of our growing inability as a society to disagree civilly, I’m close to giving up political debating entirely.  What was once a career turned into a hobby, but though I maintain strong political beliefs — some conservative, some liberal — I’m past the point of wanting to argue for them anymore.  It accomplishes nothing.

It hit me the other day when someone online made an outrageous statement equating Obama’s fans to Rush Limbaugh’s.  How do you reason with someone like that?  Would any amount of rational argument force them to second-guess their stance?   What purpose does it serve to try?  You’d be better off trying to convince me that Hannah Montana is a better musician than Jimmy Page. 

Of course I’ll still tilt at windmills occasionally here and on the podcast, but I think my days of arguing about it all are over.  It’s just not worth it. 

—

Look!  Up in the sky!  I’m really enjoying the brouhaha caused by the recent Air Force One photo shoot over the skies of Manhattan.  Now we’re seeing news reports on everything from who in the White House knew what and when to how much we taxpayers paid for the fiasco.

Lost in all of this is one simple fact:

PEOPLE WERE FRIGHTENED BY AN AIRPLANE.

I wonder if it’s too early to look for an Air Force One costume for Trick or Treat this year. 

DING DONG. 

“Well hello.  Happy Hallowe–Oh my God.  RUN!!!”

—

New Toy.  I’ve been having oodles of fun with my new Nintendo DSi(tm).  It’s a nice step up from the DS Lite.  I may write a more in-depth review of it later (because I’m sure there just aren’t enough of them on the internet already), but so far I love it.  My only complaint is that the battery life is significantly less than the DS Lite, so keep the charger close by.

Games I’ve been playing:

Pokemon Platinum
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
Chrono Trigger

—

I wonder if The Queen would give me her old one?  My venerable third generation iPod(tm) finally bit the dust recently.  Everything works but the click wheel, so I just can’t scroll through my song lists to select what I want to hear.  So now it has become a glorified external hard drive for my music collection. 

I’m considering a new one because both my car stereo and home theater receiver have iPod connectors, but I’m not yet sure I want to pay the Apple tax again when a much less expensive player would do the trick.  We’ll see.

For the time being I’m surviving with my iPod connected to my computer at work, and a cheapie Insignia Sport(tm) 2GB player for listening to podcasts in the car. 

Spam update

Here are some of the latest message headers in my Spam box.  I swear, some of it is like poetry.

“Here I buy everything that needs me! And advise you.”

“Become more appetent for females.” 

“It’s like having a female catcher.”  [Huh?]

“Give her heat today!”

“To you already is there a lot of years?  It to love a not occasion rarer.”

Has the captain let go of the wheel?

While young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats’ manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief.

Those were the words of Zel Miller, keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention in 2004.  Miller was only echoing the sentiment shared by most Republicans at the time:  Criticizing the President is unpatriotic. 

My what a difference a few years can make, as evidenced by the photo below of a participant in the “FNC Tax Day Tea Party”(tm). 

Over the years I’ve liked to think that I have a pretty firm grasp on the state of politics in the US, in part because that was my job for quite a while, but also because I’ve maintained an interest in it.

These days I frankly don’t know which end is up.

Is it no longer unpatriotic to try to “bring down our commander in chief?”  Dissent is a good thing now, whereas silent obedience was the duty of all good Americans before?

It’s enough to makes one’s head spin.

Make no mistake, I disagreed with the sentiment then and I still do.  I’m just trying to keep up with the rule changes.

What’s even more confusing is we now have a President whom we elected to uphold the Constitution after the previous one twisted, mangled or otherwise ignored the parts he didn’t like, but now is defending some of those very same practices. 

“Same as the old boss“?

Where’s the Tylenol?