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restoring a gargoyle
Tuesday, May 18 2004
This morning in Spanish class we were deluged with a huge volume of new words and it was a little overwhelming. Meanwhile, there were some in our class who weren't sure how to pronounce the Spanish word for and.
[REDACTED]
I wanted to repair the broken gargolye, the one that had fallen from its hanging screw beside the front door, but there wasn't much that could be done with Super Glue. The nose hadn't simply broken off upon impact, it had been pulverized into a chalky powder. To fix the gargolye I was going to need some sort of sculptural filler material. When I was in town today I visited Michæl's craft store and bought a dual-syringe epoxy kit as well as a special clay as two possible repair media. When I tried the epoxy, I found it relatively easy to work. As a fresh gel it held its form rather nicely in place of the gargoyle's nose. I came back an hour or so later while the epoxy was still soft and rubbery (but no longer sticky) and carved in the details of the gargolye's restored features using a utility knife. Then I painted over it with acrylic paint mixed to match the color of the rest of the gargoyle. It was, I dare say, a reasonably effective restoration; you have to get within a few inches in order to notice that it's been repaired.
With a dollop of fresh epoxy for a nose, along with its undamaged twin.
After the restoration. I didn't bother with a tongue.
News.google.com is a unique place to get news, because the most obscure, poorly-written articles have a way of bubbling to the surface of the front page. I go there all the time and see all phyla of fucked-up articles, including poorly-translated English versions of Chinese news articles and oddball opinion pieces. Here's one I saw today from a blog which gives an opinion concerning the "gay marriage in Massachusetts" shitstorm. The writer is against gay marriage because, he says, it further disconnects marriage from procreation, and might lead more people to have kids with the faith that someone else will raise them. It's the most absurd argument against gay marriage I've ever read (although I've yet to read an argument against gay marriage that wasn't in some way absurd). I couldn't help myself, so I wrote the author the following email in hopes of pointing out the inaneness of what he had spent precious minutes of his life writing:
I'm sure I'm not the first to point this out, but there's already a possible disconnect between biological parenthood and raising children - the system of adoption, which is the only recourse for children born to unfit parents in a world, say, without abortion (which I get the feeling you also oppose).
You seem to insist that in order to bless a relationship with legal marriage, the parties must be able to reproduce - what then of elderly people getting married? Are they also providing a possible out to people who irresponsibly undertake pregnancy? Do orphanages also provide such an out? One wonders why, under the current system, we're not all cowbirds, laying eggs in the nests of others, even before the wonderful new irresponsibilities that will come once gay people can raise our kids!
--gus
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