I am Simon Jester

Randomness

Posted by Mad Rocket Scientist | Filed under Capitalism, Do It Yourself, Guest Authors, Idiot Legislation, Litigious World, Yellow Press

First off: Sonuva… They are drilling in North Dakota! About fricking time too.

Teen hops two six foot fences and ignores numerous warnings at Six Flags, GA and gets the Highlander Loser treatment. Who wants to bet his parents sue that there was not enough warning that the area under a 50 mph roller coaster was dangerous?

Dickie Scruggs gets 5 years at the Federal Penitentiary and Day Spa. In my perfect world, he’d have to spend the rest of his life working as a Public Defender, or better yet, as a low ranking attorney in the DA’s office. Five years in the pokie means he gets three hots and a cot on the taxpayer dime when in reality, he is not a dangerous person.

The Arctic Ice is melting and will be all gone this summer! Oh NOES! It’s Global Warm…oh, wait, it a cubic butt ton of undersea volcanoes getting all explodey under the ice. Move along, nothing to see here.

Local to me, today a new law goes into effect such that if you are driving and talking on the phone, you need to be using a hands free device. Opponents of the law say that the holding of the phone is not what causes problems, but rather, the fact that a person is talking at all is the distraction. I wonder if that is the case, why don’t drivers get arrested for talking to their passengers? What makes a phone call so much more distracting? Me personally, I have a much easier time staying focused on driving while using a headset than I do while holding a phone. Not sure why.

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And a final bit of Randomness that has nothing to do with the news, and more to do with gardening at home. We all know that containers are a great way to grow plants, but attractive clay containers are expensive, and heavy. Foam or plastic containers may be lightweight, but they are cheap and look like it. One way to get attractive containers and avoid the weight and the cost is to make your own.

Here’s what you do. Go to the local crap store and buy two very large identical plastic pots (say, 18″ or more across the top). Now go to your local building supply store and get a large bag of Portland Cement, NOT Concrete. For those not in the know, cement is the part of concrete that, when mixed with water, gets hard and binds the gravel in concrete together. Next, go to the garden store and get a bale or bag of peat moss and a bag of pearlite.

Now, in a tub or wheel barrow, mix equal parts cement, peat moss, and pearlite together. Add water and stir until the mixture has the consistency of brownie mix (thick, but flowing). Now, take your plastic pots and cover any drain holes with masking tape. Then, put a good thick coat of veggie oil all across the inside surface of one pot, and do the same for the outside surface of the other. Take the pot that has been greased on the inside and fill it about 1/3 full of your “concrete” mixture. Take the other pot, the one with oil on the outside, and place it inside the first pot. Push down and watch the concrete mixture rise up the sides.

The goal here is to have enough concrete to fill the inside pot to the top while leaving about an inch or so between the bottoms of the two pots (so the casting will have a base about an inch thick). Shift the pots around so the sides will all be the same thickness and either place a weight in the pot to keep it in place, or set it on a flat surface and run two perpendicular ropes across the top and anchor the ropes to the ground. In about 48 hours, you should be able to slide the pots apart (with a little effort and wiggling) and find yourself with a new, very lightweight pot. Just gently drill a small hole in the bottom for drainage and it’s ready to go.

You can also get creative with this, and using wood forms, you can make box planters of any shape. I’ve made planters with PVC pipes cast through them where the PVC pipe had small holes drilled every 4-6″ and the holes faced inside the box. Fashion a standpipe with a hose fitting and you can water the box nice and quick.

Update: Fixed some links