DON'T CALL IT A COMEBACK

.
365 plus 88 days ago I composed what would prove to be my last Good Rubbish post of 2011, and most of 2012 to boot.

There's been great speculation over the cause for this unannounced, unexpected, and perhaps uncalled for dearth in drivel, but the simple truth of the matter is that I started grad school in early May of 2011, and only now is that program tapering down.  Tapering down, it should be clarified, not only in terms of in-class time and all that silliness, but also in terms of lengthy papers which I am forced to write in order to receive the teaching credential which I have accepted as my personal goal in academia.

You see, when you exclusively work at a grocery store during the day, writing a bunch of nonsense on a blog is an entertaining escape from the doldrums of day-to-day life.  When you write papers as a student all day, writing a bunch of nonsense on a blog is burdensome beast that pays not at all.  The phrase "ah well" applies here.

Anyway, I can write again now AND I have time to work on projects again, which is even happier news for me.  As such, I plan to post on here a bunch.  Unless of course I find myself some sort of female caller, in which case I'll drop this blog like a sack of dirt once more.

The phrase "ah well" once again applies.

The first story of Rubbish's reemergence goes something like this:

Remember long, long ago when I made this kick ass media storage cabinet?  No?  Well then look at the link, you filthy vagabond.

And then remember less long ago, but still sincerely more than 3 years ago when Father McHanslaw built me  this big stonehenge-shaped media-cabinet-ensconcing plywood contraption for my well-before-30th birthday?  No?  Well I can't really blame you for that one.  Didn't make much of a splash on the date of its publication.

This post will come as the third chapter of this Good Rubbish thrillogy, and a fitting one at that.  Bows shall be tied, projects shall be completed in full, and things shall be put to bed, including me.  See, it's now 1:38am MST, and I'm tired as the dickens.  Why?  Because I've spent the past hour rebuilding those two posts I just linked to, as all of the photographs from the majority of Good Rubbish's run have ceased to exist on a "viewable entity of the internet" level.  Turns out my knee-jerk boycott of Flickr some 5 or so years ago (which led to my moving the whole of Good Rubbish's existence over onto Zooomr) was a really, really poor decision, as every photo I had on Zooomr has fallen off into some sort of server-al abyss.

Note to self:  Root for the little guy, but never ever, EVER bet on him.  He's the little guy for a reason.

So, for the record, anytime you see me link to an old post from here on out, you can rest assured that I spent 30 minutes or so reuploading all of the photos associated with that post from the hard drive on my computer onto Flickr, then re-embedding the html code back into this marvelous blog.  Pain in the tuckus?  Yes.  Worth it?  Occasionally.

Back to business:  I closed that post about the stonehenge cabinet with a teaser about how righteous it was going to look when I stained it, but as things turned out it actually looked really awful as a stained piece of wood.  The wood glue that had been used to attach the trim around the outside stood out like linear stripes of overripe cuticles, so I decided to just paint the whole thing black.  This is what it looked like:



Though functional, I felt the cabinet in this state to be rather uninspired, especially considering the garish centerpiece it was supposed to be complimenting.  So to rectify this problem, I decided to wallpaper the cabinet with a bunch of old posters I had lying around from my prolific and prolifically cheap bedroom decorating days of college.



I started by chopping up a giant Army of Darkness poster I purchased from central Denver music retailer Wax Trax (specifically their now dearly departed "Across the Trax" merch shop) at some point in the late 1990's.  Ash went on one side, and the lady on the other.  Don't mind the creepy face staring out from the other side of the cabinet... we'll get to that in a second.



The width of this cabinet far exceeds the length of a standard poster, so for the top I took a Public Enemy poster and chopped it into strips, then spaced them out across the beast.



Visible in the last shot you can also see the back side of a record which I used as an endcap on that piece.  That particular image came from some sort of space odyssey record I found at a thrift store, the other side was covered with a promotional poster from a seminal release of an all-Asian hair metal band called Loudness.  The album was Thunder in the East.  Pictures pending.

Though the cabinet was somewhat drab in its all black state, in truth the main reason I chose to wallpaper it was because I wanted to find a new use for this amazing Kenny Loggins poster which I'd purchased at some point in late 2001 during eBay's adolescent years (some of my all time best and all time worst purchases emerged from this era).



Please pay no mind to the fairly disgusting shoe being used as a paperweight in that shot.  Though this picture was taken at least 2 years ago, I can only assume I was in a great hurry when I took it.

Kenny, I felt, deserved to be front and center on this cabinet, so I chopped him into 4 pieces (the central shelf on the front side of the cabinet is fixed, whereas the rest are removable) and wallpaper glued him into place.



Once the shelves were back in place, the effect was truly haunting.  Like he's trying to sex appeal his way out of some abstract MC Escher designed mind-prison.



With all of that in place, I felt it wise to preserve my cabinet decorations, so I had the guys at the True Value Hardware on Colfax and Monaco (see:  the single best hardware store in the city) cut some 1/8" plexiglass to fit the various panels, which I then screwed into place.  To prevent fallout from any accidental beverage spills, I also sealed in the top panel with silica glue (either AKA or very similar to aquarium sealant), but I didn't do a very good job of it.

So now, without further ado, I present to you the cabinet as it currently exists inside my very own apartment that is definitely not a basement in my parents' house (more on that later).



Astute photoshop users in the audience may have noticed that I did a total hack job on this shot, as the posterized images are clearly far brighter than the rest of the shot.  What can I say?  The rest of the cabinet looked best without a flash, and the poster parts looked best with a flash, so I combined the two together.  Normally my photoshop skillz are much better than this, though.  To prove it, and also to prove that I am a wizard, I'll sneak in a picture of your personal favorite celebrity into one of these last two shots, and you won't even notice it.



Aforementioned Loudness promotional piece can be seen behind the floor lamp.



And finally, here's a shot from the front with all of my random trinkets stacked all over the place.  The end.

...OR IS IT??????