Purple Monkey

Several years ago I painted Shatner. It was my first oil painting. As of right now, it is also my only oil painting because I can't find the larger one I was working on after this one.


It may or may not shock you at all after viewing these images to learn that I don't know how to paint. In order to paint Shatner I had to transform myself into a human ink-jet printer.

First, I took a plain canvas and drew a grid on it in pencil. I don't remember, but I think there were about fifty columns and maybe sixty rows, something like that. I numbered each column and row so that I could address any particular cell in the grid.

Next, I found a picture that I liked on the Web of Golden Globe award-winning actor, author, musician, entrepreneur, and philanthropist William Shatner.

After that, I wrote a small application that chunked up the image I had of Bill Shatner into a grid of fifty rows and sixty columns, to match my canvas. The application averaged the numeric value for the gray shade in each cell on the grid, and assigned that cell a number from 0 to 7 according to the average gray value, 0 being black, 7 being white, and everything in between a shade of gray from darker to lighter.

I imported the output from the chunking application into Excel, and the result was that I had a grid of numbers that corresponded to the blank grid on my canvas.

I mixed up on my paint palette six shades of gray and I squeezed out some black and some white paint, too. For my gray shades I made and printed out a grayscale standard that showed me what each of the shades of gray, numbers 1 through 6, should look like. That way, if my paint dried and I had to mix it again I'd know which shade should go with which number.

From there I just had to paint by numbers, column after column, and watch Shatner's face emerge from the canvas.

Labels: images, Shatner

Sometimes women come up to me when I have the baby and they say, about him, "What a cutie!" Sometimes I answer, "Thank you. Did you see I also have a cute baby with me?"

I did that one day to this fat old lady at Einstein Brothers and she made this kind of clicking, groaning sound and she said, "Yeah, right." And walked away.

When I'm in Starbucks with the baby in his stroller and women come up to him and say, "Aww, how cute," sometimes I think it would be funny to say, "You like babies? I'm really good at making them."

I never say that, though. But it's true.

I was trimming the bougainvillea yesterday and I saw a bird's nest.



I tried to get in as close as I could, but I didn't want to frighten the bird.



After a while, the bird flew into a different part of the bush so I could get a couple of pictures of the eggs inside the nest.



Later, when I was finished trimming, the bird came back.

Labels: animals, images

Snakes and flies. Snakes and flies. Flies are one thing, but snakes are another. Flies are annoying enough, but snakes -- snakes are nasty.



I can take a fly here and there. I can even take two flies copulating when I'm trying to eat my lunch. But I cannot abide by a snake. Not any kind of snake, not anywhere near me. Not alive, not dead. Not venomous, not beneficial. And in two days I've seen two snakes, maybe a hundred feet apart.

The snake in Figure 3 scared the crap out of me the other morning. I was opening the door and I heard a rustling sound, as if there were a lizard moving in some leaves on the ground, but there were no leaves. I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye, and there he was.

I called the fire department. I don't know anything about snakes, and I certainly didn't want him around the baby. The fire department has this unit that comes out for snakes and critters and things like that. The station is right near where I was and the guy showed up seriously faster than I could have loaded up my CO2 pistol.

The fireman was very official, with these heavy leather pants and this special snake removal stick. It was comforting. He told me it was just a bull snake and that some people actually ask them to bring bull snakes to their property to help with rodent control. He asked if I was sure I wanted it removed, and I said I did. He seemed to understand that, which was nice.


The fireman was a real professional and as nice as he could be. He didn't make me feel bad at all that I'd called him out to remove a twelve-inch beneficial snake. I'm glad to be a Rural Metro subscriber. That's the company that provides the fire and ambulance services.

Then, the next day, I was out walking in the evening and I was startled to see this guy on the road next to me.

Labels: animals, images