Mafia Graves gun update: Core assembly 90% done

Tonight was an evening of vast frustration and agitation, but this is where my gun stands after another night of solid work time.  The stock went on exactly how I had planned it to, and I was ecstatic that it went so smoothly.

Unfortunately, the front clip not so much.  Although the picture doesn’t show all the details, there were numerous cracks to my Shell Shock, and because I’m human and don’t have four arms like Goro, I made some aiming mistakes with the drill and bore more holes than necessary, leading to some structural weaknesses.  The steps necessary to begin rectifying the problems pushes me back a little bit in where I wanted to be after the night, but from a visual standpoint as a whole, I’m pleased with the general progress.

If all goes according to plan, I’ll have this bitch painted by weekend’s end, and be right on the path down the home stretch.  It does feel good to be creating shit with my own hands.

Why do so many black people only pay in cash?

I know, it’s not February or Black History Month, but I still feel compelled to ask this question while it’s fresh in my mind. But honestly, genuinely, I really am curious to why so many black people are insistent on always paying for things in cash?

It doesn’t matter if I’m at Target, a clothing store, supermarket, or even at the Comcast service center I’ve been to more times than I should have, when it comes to most all of the black people I see paying for food, gas, clothing or bills, they’re doing so in cash. Especially the bills, but I may or may not get back to that, depending on my train of thought.

The first few times I saw the referenced YouTube clip, I couldn’t help but think that the commercial was presumptuous and pretty prejudice towards people who pay in cash, not to mention downright snobby. A deli-like food establishment isn’t exactly the best example to show the drawbacks of cash, and they certainly exaggerate the time it takes for a cash transaction to occur, not to mention not a single check card user seems to want a receipt for their transaction like people like me always want. But the message is fairly simple, which is that using a check/credit card is more expedient and/or convenient than paying in cash.

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I want to eat a candy-filled steak

Long story short: draught ravages corn crops, cost of corn goes up, cattle farmer can’t afford to feed cows corn, switches to candy

There’s something about this story that seems kind of dystopian, or Soylent Green-ish, but regardless it is still pretty cool, and I have to say resourceful and kind of ingenious. Perhaps it hits home a little too hard, with the state of Fat America, but apparently it works on livestock too.

All I know is that this is really giving me a hankering for some steak, and I would prefer it to come from this Kentucky cattle farm, and the label to read “100% candy-fed all-American beef,” or something along those lines.

I wonder if this beef will have any sweetness to its flavor, or if them fattening up on all this chocolate and candy alters the taste of them at all?

Mafia Graves gun update: Steadly coming together

Now I’m really seeing the gun coming together.  Amidst all the apprehension of drilling through two weeks of hard worked components, it’s really beginning to take shape now, in this photo of partial construction.  The shell housings are all inserted with all pertinent cracks bondo’d and sanded, and I’ve got the primary body parts all attached together in an intricate series of screws and epoxy.

Also progress was made on the stock and the front grip, with the wood-look treatment, using wood-panel contact paper.  The process was naturally long and arduous, and made me contemplate suicide approximately twice, from all the thin-slits I had to cut in it to wrap around the curves and grooves with minimal bubbling and wrinkling.  They will need a coat of lacquer to seal everything in place.

There is still painting and the addition of a few components to figure out and add before I can say I’m completely done, but where I stand right now, I’m very optimistic.  I’m so excited.

It’s a good thing I don’t pay for this subscription

Gordon Liu receives Maxim magazine, and has done so for the better part of the last decade.  For much of that time, Gordon Liu hasn’t actually paid for Maxim, but still continues to receive the magazine regardless.

Having been such a long-time subscriber to Maxim, Gordon Liu has seen the gradual, but consistent degradation of the quality of the magazine.  Gordon Liu is happy that he hasn’t been paying for Maxim, because frankly, this magazine hasn’t been worth actual currency for at least the last five years.

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Mafia Graves gun update: Sanded, ready for assembly

Well, I wasn’t expecting it, but sanding this motherfucker was the worst part of this entire process so far.  But for the most part, the vast meat of the brunt work is complete, and this is what my Mafia Graves gun looks like.  It looks a lot like the last time I updated, but it’s not that gay pink colored foam, but instead hardened plastic shelled.

Now, I have the fun part of figuring out how to assemble this gun together, with a combination of epoxies, screws and hopes and dreams.

But looking at this thing now, I am optimistic.

Jimmy John’s, Snickers, and Brock Lesnar

Ever since Brock Lesnar came back to the WWE, there’s really only one thing I couldn’t ever get around. Not the fact that he still can’t cut a promo to save his life, not that he’s obviously using the WWE again for his personal agenda, and not the fact that he doesn’t actually perform in anything other than pay-per-views, but the fact that he has been a walking advertisement for Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches.

I’m guessing that Lesnar has had some sort of pre-existing sponsorship contract with the company that had been grandfathered in and strategically maneuvered into his current WWE deal, because no individual has really pimped a product out like this since X-Pac pimped some energy drink but he had pull with the company then, but the point remains is that it’s unusual for any wrestlers to have sponsorship. The company as a whole, is a different story, but typically you just don’t see individuals having such types of deals, let alone wearing fucking company logos on their apparel, three times larger than their own personal branding.

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