Strange dreams indeed...

This post is dedicated to the queen of weird dreams, my pal Stacey.

The other night, my loving wife fed me a meatloaf sandwich in bed to make up for the fact that she was making me sit through "RuPaul's Drag Race" before bedtime. It is a sad fact that if Silverfox has one weakness, it is for cheesy reality shows featuring drag queens being catty to one another. Me, I couldn't care less which dude looks more like a chick, and I fell asleep thinking about how Pint Size needed his school uniforms washed the next day.

My subconcious (as anyone who has slept in my vacinity will tell you) is notorious for being suggestable when I'm sleeping. The combination of drag queens, meatloaf, and my worries about my youngest son led to a dream that kind of looked like the following:

In the dream, Pint Size was a contestant on the show, and came toddling down the runway in front of RuPaul and his/her judges in a lovely blue chiffon dress. He paused for a moment at the end of the runway and yelled "DA DA DA-DA DA!" at them before toddling right back. Sadly, Pint size got eliminated at the end of the show, and started crying loudly when RuPaul told him to "sashay away" for good.

When I woke up the next morning, I set our DVR to record the RuPaul show for Silverfox, so she will never need to watch it in our bedroom again.

Fun with photoshop and Pint Size...

For those of you that haven't heard yet, Silverfox is planning a Halloween/ Rock Band 2 jam session party on October 25th, where she encourages everyone to dress as their favorite dead (or alive) rock star. She asked me to make some invitations to this event, and I decided to alter some pictures of the kids to use on the invites. After all, I really set the bar kind of high with the wedding invitations...

I started with the following picture of Pint Size:

Cute, isn't he? So, in keeping with the rock and roll theme of the party, I changed him into his true self... a member of the KISS army since 2005:
Yeah, he wants to Rock and Roll all night, alright.

To accomplish this effect, I had to airbrush out his bangs though... and I looked at it and thought "Boy, he looks like a Vulcan!" Leading to this pic:
Once you start on these things, it's really tough to stop... Here he is as a Klingon:
No Melinda, he still can't say "Q'uplah".

Then I said to myself "Hey, wouldn't Pint Size make a cute unstoppable killing machine from the future?":
Yeah... I have way too much time on my hands at work...

Once you swap the top, you just can't stop...

Well, by now you've all read yesterday's post... and may have realized I am now obsessed with manbabies.com. So much so that I couldn't stop at the pictures of me and Pint Size, but have since moved on to borrowing pictures of my friends and their kids for my Photoshop entertainment...

I should probably send a few of these to the site that inspired them, but I figure I already have the satisfaction of showing the world my mad photoshop skills, so why bother?

Now on to the photos... for my first offering, I present Dave Gabol and his son, Jack in "Daddy naps while Jack reads"

The hardest part of it was matching Dave's skin tone to Jacks. I wish I had a higher resolution image to work with, though.

My second offering today is Drew, Stacey, and Ace Spiehler in "Now who's the clone?"

Three funny things about the above picture...

One, Drew looks less like a baby and more like a midget than any of these I have seen thus far.
Two, I was so tempted not to enlarge Ace's head at all, but just paste Drew's head over his that I really had to force myself to finish the job. (the big joke after Ace was born was that he was actually Drew's clone)
Three, I didn't have to change Drew's reflection in the glass at all to match Ace's head. that's not as funny as it is scary.

So, Stacey texts me about this site...

Called manbabies.com... which is full of pictures of Dads with their kids having swapped the Dad's head for the kid's head in photoshop. She also recomended that I should make one of me and Pint Size and submit it to the site.

Look. I don't have time to make a silly photoshop project that will just go into some guys "to post" folder for several weeks without so much as an e-mail telling me that it will eventually be posted...

I have time to make two.

I still haven't decided if i'm gonna submit them to the manbabies site or not, but they sure came out cute... (if slightly creepy) so I figured I would just share them here...

I call this first one "Superman and Superbaby having breakfast at McDonalds"

The second one I have titled "Are you sure this thing is safe?"

Three things I am sure of after this particular experiment...

1) Pint size had better watch his waistline as he gets older or he's gonna look downright silly.
2) I was an adorable baby.
3) I have WAAAAAAAY too much time on my hands at work.

Stone Knives and Bearskins

"I am endeavoring, ma'am, to construct a mnemonic circuit using stone knives and bearskins."- Mr. Spock, City on the Edge of Forever

Technology sucks.

To wit: This is a small representation of the absolutely brilliant marketing campaign I've come up with for the company a series of posters that we will give to our customers to advertise using our product with their customers, the contractors presently engaged in rebuilding our city...
Great, right? It conveys our commitment to the region while showing that we know our stuff, and asking that people think about buying locally. Anyway, the V.P. of sales loves it and wants to make up a bunch of full sized posters (22" x 28") to distribute to all of our customers by Wednesday.

"No problem!" I optimistically think to myself as I activate photoshop. "All I have to do is make a larger image, with better resolution, and turn it into a PDF file that our local Kinko's can turn into postery goodness.

HAH! How naive I was. I put it all together, asked the computer to turn it into a PDF, and the machine bogs down; processing my request for TWO HOURS only to tell me that it can't do it.

Computers suck. They suck hard.

Now, I know that there are friends of mine out there saying "But Rob, why didn't you just use Pagemaker to do it?" I did on the rough draft I gave to my boss to display in his office. the problem is that in incorporating the JOVAL logo and artwork into Pagemaker, I wind up with a little eggshell white box printed around the two logos because Pagemaker doesn't recognize transparencies in an image file.

Sometimes I long for the simplicity of a drafting board and glue stick.

Fun with pictures of friend's kids...

Damn, Stacey... time to get Ace to lay off the Mocha Frappachinos!

Still more...Fun with Photoshop.

For your consideration... A picture of me with a few co-workers.

Now, watch carefully as.... nothin up my sleeve... PRESTO!
David Copperfield, eat your heart out.

For those who wonder about such things, the original picture is the bottom photo, which I took. Bossman Barry took a second photo of me leaning on the truck, and I 'shopped em together almost seamlessly... no wonder that the Inquirer wants something more substantial than photographic proof these days...

Fun with photoshop... part deux

This week on "Pimp my ride", we heard from D. Grayson of Gotham city who wrote, "I know that older chicks dig my benefactor's car, (which is fine for him) but I also know that there is no way that the fly young honeys will want to be seen with me in this tank. I mean, that cars style is like, 'Holy 1930's Batman!' Help me, please!!!! Pimp my ride!!!"

And so we did. We gave the whole thing an updated look, added some 40" rims, a sound system that even the Joker would think is crazy, and a built in 90" plasma that rises up out of the hood. as you can see, at least one fly honey agrees that Grayson's new ride is off the hizzle:



Next week, W.W. of NYC has a plane that she says makes her invisible to the opposite sex. We'll see what we can do about it next time on "Pimp my ride"

Where's Robbo?

YOWZA, work has been busy since I got back. It’s been getting so it’s next to impossible for me to get in a full six hours of goofing off lately.

What? You think I actually work?

So, where did I go? Away. And I still didn’t get sand and surf under my feet. I figure instead of filling your life with the gory details, I’ll make it a fun, quiz type thingie for y’all instead.

My vacation involved:

Spaceship one
The Wright Flyer
Devil Dogs
Red Sangria
Dwarf Planet Pluto
Burlesque shows that left a friend covered in glitter
Freak shows that I vicariously attended
The "Peanut" M&M dressed like Chewbacca
Bagels
Mike’s
Telling stories about the blasted hurricane (grrr)
A mad dash to catch a plane
Frank Sinatra
Ducks that fart at midnight

Best theory posted in the comments as to my whereabouts gets a special DOA article all about them, suitable for framing. Those that encountered me on my travels are inelligible.

Idle hands, they say....

So, after seeing my ability with photoshop, My boss asked me if I could create a part we don't make. "Sure." says I. the result, the "reindeer flange":
But of course, I could not leave well enough alone. I was also really bored. so, I proudly present "Reindeer flange out for sunset stroll on beach with Angelina Jolie":

I laughed for twenty minutes at the concept.

In other news, I have decided to archive my cartoon efforts for your viewing pleasure. It will make it easier to find them when I tell people that I do indeed cartoon and post the efforts on the internet from time to time :)

Fun with photoshop...

So, been working on the company website, and I'm finding that a lot of the parts I want to put in the catalog are too big to photograph. Case in point, gutters are normally ten feet long, and would never fit on my desk. This looks like a job for photoshop! I found a part that resembles a small version of what I needed, and went to town.

Before- a piece of halfround downspout.

After- a piece of halfround gutter, but small!










I called my boss and coworker over to check out my handiwork. My boss said "You photoshoped the shit outta that!". My coworker refused to believe that it wasn't a small piece of gutter that I was kidding them with, to the point where he started searching my desk for it. I looked up, smiled and said "It's okay... I'm familiar with the old computer geek saying, 'DOES NOT COMPUTE'"

Lovin the job, folks.