Hang Time Comparisons

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More Shelving in the Shop

George Carlin said it best when he declared, "What is a house, really, but a place to keep our stuff? If we didn't have so much stuff we could just walk around all the time."

Well, I have a fair amount of stuff myself, so I like making efficient use of what space I have. There is one area of wasted space in my shop that I've had my eye on for some time, and that's over my workbench. I have several oversize boxes with crap I seldom use, such as one that's full of clean, old towels and rags. There are a few boxes with things for the motorhome too, and things for the Harley that will probably never get used. I decided to finally get with it and build a shelf to get all this crap off the shop floor.

Instead of the variety I usually make (just welded steel angle and plywood) I opted for something that was more heavy duty without being any more bulky. To hold decent weight it needed to be tied in with the ceiling and the wall both. When there are shelves over your head you sure don't want them to be rickety, right? I decided to use Superstrut (or Unistrut) for the uprights. That stuff offers a lot of strength and ease of use in a pretty small package, so I figured they'd be easiest to use with my design idea. I also picked up ready-made L-brackets for the ends.

I started off by drilling a piece of angle iron and anchoring it to the ceiling with lag bolts. This is where a stud finder comes in handy!

I figured out about where I wanted the wall cleat to be and made use of the stud finder again, bolting the cleat up with lag bolts:

 

I hung the uprights loosely so I could measure the wall cleat for cutout locations. After taking the cleat back off the wall and carving my 2x4 notches out of it, I put it back up and mapped out which holes I wanted to use in the uprights. It's convenient having slots the whole length to use as needed! I opted to leave excess on the uprights and the bolts going down through the 2x4 horizontals in case I want to attach anything in the future.

It's time to get those horizontals drilled and cut so I could get things bolted together. Lots of measuring, removing, remeasuring... I drilled the horizontals with a counterbore so the carriage bolt heads wouldn't protrude and interfere with the plywood top when I put it over them.

I was happy to find the horizontals to be already level with the bracket bolts resting on the bottom of the slot openings. Easy-peasy.

Here you can see why I didn't need a horizontal on the left end. I used a wall cleat instead for less interference:

Ready for plywood!

It's funny how fast shelves fill up when you build them...

Strategic Placement

I have seen pictures with "strategic placement" of objects for as long as I can remember. Those are the pictures you see where it's obvious that the person is naked but the important bits are covered. Not all instances of strategic placement were for obfuscating nudity--many times they were just blocking something for copyright or privacy reasons. Even the nude shots weren't always actual nudity. They were instead "implied nudity," meaning the objects that were used to cover the person's private areas were often big enough that there could have easily been shorts or a bikini top under there. 

Hollywood has used a guitar for such a covering for years. Remember the Peter Sellers movie that had him wandering around wearing a guitar at a nudist park? Or how about this Herb Alpert album cover? What was under that whipped cream? Was anything under that whipped cream? I fantasized over this one many times as a kid.

Advertising has been using this form of attention-getting for decades. It wasn't unusual to see full nudity many years ago when our media was in its infancy, but enough public outcry over the naughty imagery forced the FCC to put the stops on that. From then on "thoughtful product placement" won over.

In the world of nudism, the winner for strategic product placement goes to World Naked Gardening Day. There are tons of pictures with clever positioning of watering cans or wheelbarrows. Those are all fairly easy to execute. The hard ones have got to be videos. I can't imagine how many tries it would take to get all the bits to come out just right. "Cut! I saw a nipple there again."

Here's an entertaining little commercial from Cricket Wireless:

I don't speak Spanish, but I can kind of figure out what's going on in this KFC commercial. This one probably required a few takes to get just right... it's pretty close!

Lots of times people take strategic placement pictures just so they can include their shot in more places and reach a wider audience. For example, isn't this a fun shot? How could it possibly offend anyone? It's just wholesome, grandmotherly-looking ladies enjoying a nice time out in a local eatery!
Even Facebook couldn't say anything against such a wholesome group of people if they're not showing anything.

Let's round it all up with a couple of related cartoons. I love cartoons. I wish there were more of them in the nudism vein...

Happy International Skinny-Dip Day!

Actually, I had no idea. Just because you see something posted somewhere doesn't mean it's legit, right? I was reading something on the web, and you know how one thing leads to another. Of course, the topic being nudist related I just had to read more about it. It falls on the 2nd Saturday of July every year, and that day is today! It's part of Nude Recreation Week.

There is some good history about skinny-dipping here on the Wikipedia website.

Obviously, not everyone has a place they can go skinny dipping. Or maybe you've thought about it but have just never had the chance to go skinny dipping. Like anything revolving around nudism, it's a lot more fun than non-nude swimming. Try it, you'll like it! I remember the first time I ever went skinny-dipping in a pool--In addition to the incredible feeling of being completely naked in the water, I was struck by how cool it was that I didn't have to pull my swimsuit back up as I hoisted myself up out of the pool. I was hooked!

If you do partake, make sure you choose an area that's safe for nude swimming--be it posted or private. You don't want jail time to ruin your otherwise perfect day. A wrong mark on your record could cause you to fail a routine security check and keep you from being able to enjoy your favorite nudist club!

Don't have a convenient place to go skinny-dipping? Neither do we, but we do have a hot tub, so that will be our way of celebrating this year. I suppose we could go skinny-dipping in Brenda's foot-cooling kiddie pool, but it wouldn't be more than a splish-splash and only our butts would be wet. Too cold for your fair-weather skin to be exposed? Okay, probably me too, but you certainly don't see this lady having any trepidation!

Come on, gather your peeps and get out there!

Crack a Grin

I don't speak any other languages. I know a little German from my year in northern Italy back in the 70's, but that's about it. I don't know shit for Spanish either. I also don't speak French.

This comic has circulated around the web in French for a while, but because it's a picture, you can't just copy/paste any text from it or have the page auto-translated by Google. I had some time to kill the other day and started typing phrases from the comic into my browser translator.

The mystery is solved. Well, it was a mystery to me anyway... 

Now, get out there and enjoy your Friday!

Painting Nudes... But Differently

I'm a pretty savvy internet sleuth when it comes to using search tools, syntax, spelling, and the like, but here's a challenge: Try to search the internet for nude people painting. Sounds pretty simple doesn't it? That's what I thought until I really tried to narrow things down to specific kinds of content. What I kept getting were pictures of nude paintings. The only real deviation other than that were people's bodies being painted, like before the World Naked Bike Ride or something.

People are pretty used to groups of people painting a nude person. There have probably been art classes using that setup since the dawn of cave drawings. It might be high school, college, or an art class anyone might attend.

I was looking for the opposite. I wanted nude people painting a subject model.

A really small one I found somewhere on a compilation website got me started, and I went on the hunt for nudes painting non-nudes. Not literally, because as I said--the search results rarely changed away from nude paintings. I did find a couple of good ones, but pickings' are slim. Maybe it's because they're most likely posed and not candid. Usually, these classes only have one model in them, but in these cases they're probably all models.

A similar category has lot more pictures to pick from. It's still nude people painting, but instead it's just a nude person painting a picture all by themselves. They are more plentiful, and are also a lot more genuine. I'm not a painter or an artist of any kind, but you'll get no argument from me about painting being more comfortable to do while you're nude... like everything else is!

While it would be nice if we could narrow down search results better I suppose there's not much reason for the search engines to wrap their algorithms around such a small segment of the searchosphere. It keeps the searchers and diggers like myself always reaching and trying. It gives me purpose.

There are other searches around this same topic, but with different varieties, such as nudes painting nudes, nudes painting houses, and nude arts & crafts. I'll leave those as possible subjects for future posts.

Fun with Nudists

Sometimes I run across pictures that I love and have to wonder what led up to the picture in the first place. That's probably what the lady is wondering in this picture. Did she just "happen" by and saw him? Was he stuck and asked her for help? Did she ask him if he needed help?

Sometimes there is just one little something about a picture that turns it from a totally ordinary one into something that sends cartoon question marks flying out of your head.  This picture would be just another typical day at a nude beach except for that one thing: Why are there beautiful white geese on the beach? Then, to carry it a little further: why are they side-by-side and so well-behaved? Maybe they're her pets and she brought them from home to keep the bad people at bay! (Everyone knows how ornery geese can be.)

This next one is a fairly common picture on the internet when you start perusing pictures, but I loved the composition of it the first time I saw it. It captures your eye because the subject matter is drawing you in with the weaving, meandering of the bare buns. Again, there's that one detail: Segway scooters. Seeing one Segway is unusual enough (unless you're wandering San Francisco) but to see a string of them is pretty unique. Maybe it's becoming the new cool "resort thing."

This is obviously "show night" at a club somewhere, but what a cool idea, eh? Marionette wires on a naked person. Let the dancers do the work!

This picture would be a normal picture on any other day but for one thing: the location. What the hell are they doing with a vacuum cleaner out in the middle of a field? "Now this, Marion, is the newest thing on the market. Soon, everyone will have one. Let's see if there's an outlet around here."

This picture had me wondering. Is she sending him off to work? If so, from where? Maybe they're camping or at a nudist park? Apparently, she got the good end of the bargain if she gets to stay naked all day. Poor fella. All that chafing...

Nude on Two Wheels

Sometimes I can't believe how lazy I am or how slow I am to act on things. Several years ago I wanted to buy myself a motorcycle to play with out in the shop during "me" time. I still have my Harley (which never seems to get ridden lately), but I wanted a something else--like a project bike. The Harley is road-ready and needs nothing, but I wanted something to modify and build the way I wanted to. A smaller, more nimble bike, but simple and old-school. (I love old-school.)

I decided on a Yamaha xs650 twin. After watching Craigslist ads for quite a while I found a good deal on one, and we jumped in the truck and went out on a snowy day to bring it home.

That was November of 2017.

When I first brought it home not much got done on it, mainly due to the Christmas season ramping up. Over time, I did get some work done and many things were gone through and fixed. Even so, it was a couple years before I even got far enough along to get it to start. What a slacker! I think the trouble is that I just love spending time with my wife and always want to hang out with her. I'll get back into it--this is just the way I operate. I tend to be on things, then off... then on again, then off. You never know what's going to stick with me. It certainly wasn't a temperature restriction, because my shop is heated, and it can get plenty toasty out there if I want it to. You can tell by the way I'm dressed here, sitting on it and making vroom, vroom noises.

We nudists can be motorcycle enthusiasts, too!