Author: Tim Morgan

Which costs more… 25 gallons of gas? Or a DVD player?

There are two things about this image that are interesting to me, the rising price of gas and the commodification of consumer electronics. Industry CEOs may disagree, but I think that something officially becomes a commodity when they start selling it at the corner convenience store. Let alone advertise it on their sign. “Yeah, honey I stopped by the Mapco on the way home for some milk, bread, and a picked up a DVD player, too.”

As for the gas, it would just make me feel better if they would just wait until the middle of the night to raise the prices, rather than doing it like they did this morning. I watched as they raised the price three cents while I waited for my turn light to go green. I tried honking my horn and yelling out my window to have a mini-revolt (admittedly, an act of passive agressive civil disobedience at the corner of Harding Place and Trousdale Drive) but no one joined in so I just looked like I was crazy.

So I spent the weekend painting again. During my recent trip to Las Vegas, I went on the Hoover Dam tour. I took lots of pictures of the dam, including these two shots (left) (right.) It wasn’t until I returned home that I realized that the two shots together actually made an interesting looking panorama, and I knew I’d found my next subject for painting.

Here are some more views. 1 2 3 4

I’m really having fun with this. The paintings are acrylic on two 30″x40″ canvasses. I painted them in parallel, so I wouldn’t have to risk mixing color twice and have them not be the same. I’m not watering down the acrylic paint, so I’m finding it to be a pretty expensive hobby, but most good hobbies are.

It’s going over my couch.

Vegas Vacation 2004

I’ll just make my own. I spent the majority of my Saturday afternoon and evening working on transforming a photograph I took two years ago into glorious art.

My walls have been empty for months now, since my old roommate moved out, and as a new homeowner I’ve been trying to find ways to make this place feel more like me. I got a hankering for real “art” rather than just framed prints and posters, but I quickly determined my taste in art greatly exceeds my budget. Which led me to the decision to try my hand at doing it myself.

After a bit of debate, I finally settled on a Poker Night themed painting. The condo has been host to numerous poker parties now, I felt it would be an appropriate conversation piece come the next party.

It was pretty exciting for me to watch this come together, this is the first creative thing that I’ve done for myself in a very long time. I’m already thinking about other things that I can do. I think I’ve found a hobby.

Yesterday in the mail I got a flyer from Lane Bryant and Catherine’s. It was addressed to Ms. Morgan. You know what this means? It means that somewhere…in some computer…in some database program…the computer thinks I’m married.

And thinks my wife is fat.

I’ve got two vacation ideas, and I can’t decide between either of them:

Idea One: New York City, to see this play, currently performing on Broadway.

Idea Two: Los Angeles, to go to this club to see this performer, currently performing every Friday night.

But it really doesn’t matter all that much considering I only have 38 hours of stored vacation time and no funds budgeted for travel anytime soon.

I was looking up the telephone number of my insurance agent today for a friend, and instead I just sent him the link to the site. He commented to me that the site was nicely done. I told him I disagreed, that it was a little heavy handed with the pictures of the horses…I mean, do they insure horses? A quick trip back to the site revealed that they, in fact, do underwrite such bizarre items as “mortality coverage,” “stallion infertility,” and “personal equine liability.”

I can just imagine a conversation:

“My horse broke its leg. Is that covered?”

“No? Okay, does that mean the horse is totaled?”

It does now make sense that I used this company when I had my Mustang.

I don’t mean to throw a wrench into your plans…but I can’t help but go after the easy, easy pun.