davidd's A DOLL A DAY 2024

[Alliecat]

Haha, cute. I would love to find a certified happy place where I could quit my bitchin.
Wow, so you are an even better neighbour if you are doing this stuff on your own and he's not even around to help out a bit!
Agree with the correlation between "serious grownup" and "boring"

[davidd]

I would love to find a certified happy place where I could quit my bitchin.

And where attentive staff members in white jackets would attend to your every need?  

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19 August - A Doll A Day 2024:

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How does stuff pile up so fast?

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In this case, a lot of it came from an area used for another project. I needed to clear some space so I kinda just chucked a buncha stuff in here, employing the "practical logic" of "I'll sort it out later."

[Alliecat]

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. "It piles up when you say 'meh, I'll do it later'."
The arm & legs sticking out are kind of funny. That looks like a very nice little table though.

[davidd]

20 August - A Doll A Day 2024:

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"Those were really his last words, huh?"

"So they tell me, yeah."

[Alliecat]

I feel like I should know who these guys are so I 'get' what the story is?
Rather mysterious this way!
IS there a story?

[davidd]

IS there a story?

Sort of, yes. The cryptic dialog is a reference to a long-standing urban legend.

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21 August - A Doll A Day 2024:

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When rummaging through the clutter in his basement, reclusive inventor Frank Walker occasionally runs across a nostalgic memento from his past.

The Esoteric Abundance Response Squad (or E.A.R.S.), a precursor of sorts to the later Optimist Program, was initially conceived for outreach and recruitment  by the secretive PlusUltra organization. Over time, the duties of the small but highly skilled cadre of “Esoteers” (so named for their ex-pertise in esoteric lore, science, technology, and phenomena) came to include the design, operation, and maintenance of an advanced cryogenic research and development center located [REDACTED].

Today the primary purpose of E.A.R.S. involves maintaining a manageable balance of “esoteric abundance” (which might be loosely defined as “fun and weirdness” or “zaniness”) at identified nodal points or trans-dimensional vortices, the vortices being an unfortunate side effect of Nicola Tesla’s early ex-periments in cross-dimensional travel which allows dissonant energy from the Tomorrowland Dimension to “leak” across dimensional barriers.

“I wonder what became of Addie Ventura,” Frank mused. “She was a swell chum… back in the days when we actually used phrases like ‘swell chum.’”

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(Find out what happened to Addie by following @adventurelandex-plorersclub on Instagram. Learn more about PlusUltra, Tomorrowland, and Frank by following @plusultrasydney on Instagram)

21 August - A Doll A Day 2024

[Alliecat]

Um, OK.
Guess I'm not up on my urban legends, and I don't really do Instagram, so I'll take your word for it!

[davidd]

Um, OK. 
Guess I'm not up on my urban legends, and I don't really do Instagram, so I'll take your word for it!

Okay, so... Problematic Issue No. 1 is that I sometimes dabble on Instagram, I'm on Flickr, and I'm a member of a number of forums. As a result, my small assortment of regular contacts is widely dispersed. Thus, references, replies, and "inside jokes" usually do not translate well from one online venue to another. Yesterday's picture is a case in point: it is a very specific reference to a specific post by one of my Instagram contacts in which she, in response to a tongue-in-cheek question, responded with a fairly lengthy fictional account of her professional background as a Disney World secret agent working for an organization called E.A.R.S.

Problematic Issue No. 2: urban legends are often pretty obscure. The figure with the sideburns here is modeled after screen actor Kurt Russell. A semi-but-not-entirely-true urban legend is that Walt Disney's last words were: "Kurt Russell." This is semi-true in that, while the actor's name was not among Walt's last spoken words, it was on one of the last memos that Walt Disney wrote, spelled as "Kirt Russell." The other figure is modeled after screen actor George Clooney, who starred in a time travel movie about Disneyland called Tomorrowland which involved a lot of fictional conspiracy theories as well as time travel and obscure pop-culture factoids. I thought it would be amusing (to me) to have the time traveller and the aged Russell mention the rumor.

I would give up on Instagram myself if I didn't have two or three contacts on their who are in to making really obscure references and chasing trivial factoids down circuitous rabbit-holes to make outlandish but plausible connections... and who are really funny.

I'd give up on a lot of forums and online haunts if I didn't have connections like that. I do not follow a lot of people nor do I have very many followers, but I have one or two or three people who keep me coming back to a number of online venues. It'd be so much more convenient if everybody were in one place, but different people have different online preferences.

Anyway... "Kirt Russell" are Walt Disney's "legendary" last words.

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22 August - A Doll A Day 2024:

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I'm okay... just tired.

[davidd]

23 August - A Doll A Day 2024:

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Mini Hands Make Light Work

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Trivia (Smart Doll Symphony) replaces old outdoor holiday string lights with new ones that actually work.

[Alliecat]

Haha, mini hands. That's cute, and so is the photo. They always look so "active"; the posing is great.
I'm sure you've posted George before, but he looks different this time and I didn't recognize him, nor, really, do I recognize Kurt. Then again, I haven't seen him in anything since forever ago and some older movies.
With the shadows, it has also taken me forever to see that "just tired" doesn't have a ... can, or a coffee pot, or something... on her head. Yeah, I'm tired too. One of those days weeks.

[davidd]

I'm sure you've posted George before, but he looks different this time and I didn't recognize him, nor, really, do I recognize Kurt.  
With the shadows, it has also taken me forever to see that "just tired" doesn't have a ... can, or a coffee pot, or something... on her head.   

The heads are "unlicensed" or "knock-off" versions so the resemblance to the source material is approximate at best.

The coffee pot on her head... and you're right, that's what it looks like, is a beret-style hat in shadow.

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24 August - A Doll A Day 2024:

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Rebuild Project

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A couple of the action figure guys work on the surf shop diorama rebuilt project. The new version will not be an exact duplicate of the original because I do not have the same materials available. For the original, I picked up palm fronds and driftwood sticks. This time, because I am no longer in a semi-tropical climate, I had to buy... actually purchase using money... bamboo sticks online. I found the burlap rice bag at the town dump and repurposed it for the surf shop sales counter.

[Alliecat]

Another fun & nicely posed shot. Your gang always looks like they're really working.
Bummer that the scavenging is now restricted to the dump and not the beach. And you don't even get to escape to a semi-tropical climate this next winter!

[davidd]

Your gang always looks like they're really working.

Bummer that the scavenging is now restricted to the dump and not the beach.  And you don't even get to escape to a semi-tropical climate this next winter!

Of course they're really working. Otherwise I couldn't justify their cost!  

There's pretty good stuff at the dump sometimes.   No seashells or bamboo flotsam here, but plenty of interesting rocks and stones to pick up, and the occasional wild animal bone.

Yeah, no tropical getaway this coming winter, so I really need to get this miniature diorama finished so I can pretend.

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25 August - A Doll A Day 2024:

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Surf Forecast

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There's still a long way to go on the surf shop diorama project, but the needle on the stoke-o-meter is beginning to quiver.

[Alliecat]

Yay.  Hope you'll be able to get into the project with some momentum and enjoy it.
As I scrolled the top of the photo I thought she might be holding a surf forecast for Hurricane Hone!  I saw the best "Hawai'i hurricane preparation" photo -- a family's-worth of slippas taped down on a lanai 

Yeah, no tropical getaway this coming winter, so I really need to get this miniature diorama finished so I can pretend.

>cough<  Maybe you should join Trusted Housesitters!  I have a discount code 

[davidd]

I saw the best "Hawai'i hurricane preparation" photo -- a family's-worth of slippas taped down on a lanai 


Maybe you should join Trusted Housesitters!

Dat so "da kine!" 

D'you think anyone on that site would want to house sit a couple of cats for three weeks, or six weeks, or nine weeks in mid-winter? I've been looking at "discount cruises" online, and it turns out that one of my "life goals," an around the world cruise, might be more affordable than I ex-pected. Well... not exactly "affordable," but "less hideously ex-pensive."

The house-sitting website is a little vague. I gather that generally sitters are not paid, per se. Are they provided a meals allowance? Are they usually provided a car to use? Is anyone willing to "pet sit" in a kinda dumpy lower-middle-class place, or do the McMansion owners keep 'em busy? Plus, I'm a good four-hour drive away from the nearest airport. I mean, sure, I could pick up the sitter, but then I'd need the sitter to drive me back to the airport, then drive home, and then... yeah, nothing is easy when one lives in the middle of nowhere; as you well understand

One example of a "sitter" that I read said she only accepts pet-sits that are beachfront in tropical locations. If I were still in Hawaii that'd be swell, but I'm not in Hawaii. And if I lived "beachfront in a tropical location" I would be less inclined to want to go anywhere.

Whatever... just random nattering... at the moment.

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26 August - A Doll A Day 2024:

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Janie is not entirely happy about being pulled away from full-size projects to work on a dollhouse.

Although I suspect that she might find the precision aspects of the project interesting, and the creative make-it-up-on-the-fly aspects stimulating.