African Tortoise in Winter

I built our tortoise Leo an insulated 12'x4' home out in the chicken barn. He is way too big,smelly and noisy to live in the house. There was also a "he goes or you go" kinda thing going on. Anyway, I'm worried about him out there. He has two 250 watt heat lamps and a daytime light that I put on a timer. I just put in a wireless thermometer, which works wonderful. It has a little transmitter mounted inside his cage and the reciever is in the house. So far with the two heat lamps going the temp is in the high 80's if the temp is below 30. Above 30 and it'll get close to 100 so on those days I have to remember to unplug one of the lamps. The only problem I can see other than no natural sunlight for 4 months is a power outage. I'll have to run his heat off of a generator if that happens.

Screech Owl pen and ink

A Poem

sitting in my car
waiting
boredom
elderly crossing guard
helping children
I aim my fist at her
it launches from my arm
across a great distance
and fells the old woman

CHECKMATE!

I am now a fully ordained Priest.

Friday Night

I'm sitting in this pub with my wife and I'm thinking....why does my brain play back the guy next to Me's laugh one second after he finishes laughing, and it's not just his laughing. A group of women are talking and giggling a couple of tables over from us and I'm playing their laughter over in my head too, and it's not just a carbon copy of their laughs. I exaggerate how stupid they sound and play it back for them(in my mind). All the while trying not to appear completely insane to my wife. It's not that easy to pull off. I mean... am I mad? If I truly was I wouldn't be asking this question I suppose.

Mississippi John Hurt

29 Geese

twenty nine geese on a cold November morning
flying north I think or is it west?
winded, I sit and feel
as my life ends

Merle Haggard

New Friend

She was sitting in the middle of the road so I scooped her up and took her to Dunkin Donuts with me. She smelled aweful. Stunk up the car.

Leo vs Prudence 1

Yesterday I caught these two in battle. Leonardo was furious at Prudence and was chasing her all over the yard. Prudence had no idea that Leo was trying to kill her, she thought it was a game. She would try to ram her face inside Leo's shell,where his head was, and Leo would pull his head in and try to stab her with his spikes. Then she would run away and the tort would chase her. He was really pissed off. I couldn't find my Flip video camera to film it. I'll try to get some video today.

Waylon Jennings Drawing

Johnny Cash Drawing

This took about ten hours! 14x17

Al Swearengen

Pen and Ink. I'm not sure if I dig this or not.

Johnny Cash

Bring Me The Head Of The Man Who Sold Me This!

I bought this at a local flea market for 5 bucks. Ten minutes into trying to figure this out I wanted to kill my whole family.

Waylon Jennings work in progress

Success!

The dinosaur hunt was a success!

speaking of dinosaurs...

The Pipe

I don't speak of The Pipe, it came as did the spear. This is such a sacred item that I feel uneasy writing about it. It will not be photographed and put on here, this is not for show. To say it's a holy item is unjust, for It is The Universe. I do not begin to understand it's powers. I just sit calm and quiet and thank the Great Spirit and I smoke. I have faith that what I seek will come to me when the time is right.

Tom Waits Drawing

LOVE

Tom Waits work in progress

Cinnamon

Every night just as the sun is dipping behind the trees Cinnamon my bantam hen comes back through the woods and heads right for her roost. I let her out in the morning and she immediately heads over to the neighbors house to hang out with her chicken. She spends the entire day there. I can hear her cackling away over there, having a grand old time. The neighbor used to have two hens but a fox ate one of them. I put up a wire fence in the back to keep the dog in the yard and it took the hen a few days to figure out that she could jump over the gate in the back. At first she would walk all the way around to the front of the house and I would have to open the front gate to let her in. It's pretty funny watching her come home after spending the day at her friends house.

Last Two, Done

The Raven

Friday Night

Darkness put and end to the Raven I started painting.

"I kilt the bar that kilt me"

So I finished making the smoke flaps and attached them to the top of the tepee. Some of the painting I did is starting to run. We've had lots of rain the past two days. Whatever. It'll be swell. I attached the smoke flaps with some snaps I installed. I'm awesome at putting snaps and grommets on things. I'm on a red wine kick too. Oh, so I'm standing inside the tepee on a 4 foot ladder,installing the snaps on the smoke flaps and all of a sudden I look around me and it hits me. Only a mental patient would be doing what I'm doing right now. It was kind of sad. I'm a grown man. My family is in the house and it is pouring rain out. I'm outside fitting a fucking smoke flap(whatever the hell that is) to a tepee. A tepee I'll never use. Anyway, I have to see this thing through.

Baby Buffalo

Saturday

The kids and I visited The Mount Kearsarge Indian Museum today and had a blast. Dug out canoes, tepees, bows and arrows, very cool stuff. They also had a Medicine Forest with examples of local trees and medicinal plants. We also paid a visit to a nearby buffalo farm and got to see a baby buffalo. I painted a wolf on my tepee this morning and also worked a little on the Tortoise Winter Quarters. Nice day.

Friday Night

I spent a couple of hours tonight painting the Eagle. Totally obsessed with this. It's part of my illness(or gift). Nothing else matters to me. You're all just tumbleweeds in the Sergio Leone western that stars only me. Or maybe it's the Omega Man? Or maybe I'm Mickey Rooney doing a one man show on Broadway and I'm painting the tepee in my head, backstage, to try and get my mind off the fact that I just strangled my wife of 60 years to death. Or maybe,maybe, I just broke a glass lamp over her head and I'm not sure if I killed her. I could go back and check, but I have to finish painting. Whose to say if it was even me that belted her with the lamp? I've been here the whole time. The tumbleweeds will vouche for me(I think).

Tepee painting continued

Me and my Family

This is exactly what my family is going thru with me and my tepee

Tepee Update

I was up late last night sitting in bed sewing pockets on the smoke flaps. Totally normal. I painted a turtle on the door. The outline is red, I need to get some black paint to fill it in. Some are starting to think I'm obsessed with my tepee. Maybe I am. I need to get it "road ready". I plan on making a trip up into the mountains and spending some time alone in it. I need to come up with a way to carry the 12 foot poles into the wilderness. Most likely it will be some kind of harness around my shoulders and I just drag them behind me. I can fill my huge "Lowe Alpine Crossbow" backpack with the Guinness and tobacco. The Holy Spear I can strap to the outside of the pack. Anyway I have to somehow figure out how to attach the smoke flaps to the tepee. I think I have to take it down to stich it in place.

Thoughts while food shopping

strawberries!
some day I'm gonna set these lobsters free
probably leave the straps on their claws though
they should make a candy bar that will make my arms bigger without exercise
where are those little baby 4 packs of wine
we should get a ping pong table
when is Ramadan? I want to fast with the Muslims
shit ya, I want yogurt
I should pick this old woman up over my head and run around the store with her screaming
instead I'll just punch her in the back
that guy is a lunatic, go the other way
Paul Harvey was a great American
could I get out of Chief Jay Strongbow's sleeper hold?
I wonder if Vicki will let me get this four dollar peanut butter?

I got the door in! I cut a 24 inch canvas circle then Speedy Stitched a sleeve around it and put a ring of 3/8 copper in the sleeve to give it some form and strength. I'll probably paint a bear or buffalo on it. Also when I built the tepee I used roofing nails to attach the canvas to the poles. I'm replacing those with 5/16 dowels in the poles and 3/8 grommets in the canvas. This way I can take it down and transport it then put it back up. Next step is the smoke flaps for the top.

Yoda pen and ink

THE LORAX!!

The Lorax and The Doctor Of Manliness at Storyland

Painting the Tepee

I started painting some animal prints on the Tepee. I'm hoping to finish with the prints today. Tommorow I head up to the White Mountains to recharge my spirit and scout possible fall camping spots.

Me and my baby Warwolf

Keepin it real at a recent BBQ.

Seven Dwarfs Painting

"There's a lot of symbolism here. Notice the one in front, holding the lantern, is wearing red. He is the Kommisar, leading the people to the glory of the Revolution. The sleepy one has the longest beard, yet he is young. This signifies the ...out-of-touch old-money-supported young elite who are lazy and just tag along for the ride. The chubby one is the pseudo-repentant, who is the father of the sleepy one, and he knows the real story, the real deal, and has to put on the smiley face otherwise his days are numbered. He is the old money, the old elite, and now he has to do what the Committee demands of the proletariat. The grumpy one, he's the old guy who used to work for the smiling chubby guy, and now he's the Man-at-Arms and the secret police, watching with a stern eye and waiting for the moment he can exert his power over the once-elite bourgeois Capitalists that once had power over him." Comrade Jeffrey Engel

Seven Dwarfs: Work In Progress

Seven Dwarfs Mural: Work In Progress

My New Home

The new home of World Manliness Headquarters is almost finished. I plan on moving in for good on Saturday. No more living the life of a wretched white man. I will live simply. Like my ancestors did. Living off of whatever Earth Mother decides to give me. My Cracker family can visit me whenever I deem appropriate. Also I need to secure some tobacco and an ample suppy of Guinness and cartridges before the big move.

Seven Dwarfs Mural: Work In Progress

Seven Dwarfs Mural: Work In Progress

Seven Dwarfs Mural: Work In Progress

A dream.
Out of the mist.
A thundering stampede.
HE was leading the charge on
An enormous white buffalo.
He is standing on its back.
Arms outstretched, tears of love flowing.
Charging into a hail of bullets he lets an arrow fly.
Giggling now, he gives me a wink and flips me the flute as he storms past.
It's over.
I am back in my tepee.
Sharing some sacred tobacco with HIM( how did we get here?)
Have I crossed over to the insane? Is HE real? Am I real?
Is he here to kill me?
HE stands and says "You're not getting the flute Billy" then slams the flap shut on the way out.
I hear him drive away.
I open the flap and scream at my house for more Sake. After getting no response I hurl the empty bottle at the chicken, spin around and scream "FUCK YOU" to the sky.

Big Medicine

This spear. No one had seen it before yesterday. Nobody even considered that it was real. The man lived on a remote lake and spoke with loons. Questions of his sanity. The headdress, the flute and the spear. Rumors of a Professor Toru Tanaka like creature running ghost-like thru the morning wilderness fog. Appalachian trail hikers in the woods near Dartmouth heard his primal screams. The chipmunk,Squeaks, that lived in his pocket. No one believed. Until now that is. I started building a tepee about a week ago. Yesterday morning I was startled awake, just before sunrise. It sounded like a gorilla was thrashing around in the dark. I jumped out of bed and ran outside but found nothing. Nothing except The Spear. It was leaning up against the unfinished tepee. As I was standing there, staring at The Spear I heard the mournful cry of a loon off in the distance.

Tepee

Me and 3 female members( Davina, Sophie and Sadie) of the tribe built this today. We need to get a 20ft by 10ft piece of buffalo hide (heavy canvas tarp from Lowes) and then it'll be done.

Tepee update

After spending sometime in the shelter last night, staring into the fire and finishing my second Guinness a vision came to me. I needed to destroy this shelter and build a second one. So that is what I'm doing today. I employed my children to take down the first one, neatly stacking the wood against the fence for later use. I took to the forest to harvest some 12 foot birch poles for the new tepee. The woods behind my house are thick with them, so finding decent trees was easy. After asking each tree permission for use of its trunk for my shelter I cut them down. I also thanked each tree for the sacrifice. So construction is under way.

Sketchbook Snapshot of the Day

Siesta Time

Every day it's the same thing for Leo the Sulcata. He wakes up and crawls out of his burrow and finds the sun. Then he sits there for an hour or so, once he's warmed up he eats until around noon. Then goes back in his house and sleeps for a couple of hours. When the sun is starting to get low he comes out and eats for the rest of the day. At sunset he's back in his burrow. Not a bad life.

P.S. Leo weighs 22 pounds and his shell is 16 inches long

Sketchbook Snapshot of the Day

Close Call

So the Dell guy is sitting at our dinning room table fixing(pretending to) Vicki's laptop. The kids are outside. He is not saying a word. Im on the couch in the other room, staring at him, also not saying a word. First Im thinking he is just some weird computer nerd. He looks a little like Harvey Kietel. I notice his watch is on his right hand and I think, idiot. After about a half hour of his mind games I start to wonder if he is here to kill me and my family, after all Vicki lined all this up over the internet not knowing any of these people. I write a text to Vicki telling her that Ted Bundy is still here. Just as I am about to click send I see him pick up some kind of device. I think he can intercept my text so I just close my phone and dont send the message. I also notice that his watch is now on the other hand. Now I start to wonder what my kids will think if they come in the house and see me sitting on this guys chest, repeatedly plunging the hunting knife ,thats on top of the fridge, into his chest. Still total silence. He keeps looking at me. He is too quiet. I need to get my rifle without alarming him. I hope the girls dont come back in. Where the hell are they anyway. Then out of nowhere he wispers to himself,"Ok your all set". Im to his right,sitting on the couch in the other room. He says this looking straight ahead into the kitchen. I come out to meet him at the table by sneaking around and coming straight at him from the kitchen. He mumbled something like "googly googly motherboard something something". I asked him if he needed me to sign anything and he wispered no(to the floor) then as quick as a cat he was gone. FREAK!

Sweat Lodge

I'm building myself a little "quality alone time" shelter. When it's finished I plan on spending a couple of days in it. No stupid family. Just me. The chicken can visit if she wants, but when the hallucinations kick in I will crush her with a rock.

Last Night's Sunset

Sulcata Country

My Two Dogs: Sushi and Prudence

I think this is checkmate Dad