Life

Consume. Consume. Consume.

  • by Drew

Hmmm. You don’t see people telling you to buy a new hammer every four years. Like the old one is all banged out and you need a new one. Or a ballpoint pen. You use it until it is dry. THEN you get a new one. What about restaurant aprons or nursing scrubs. Until you get holes in the garment… o you simply can’t get out those blood/spaghetti sauce stains, you keep wearing them, right. You don’t see Marcus nursing uniforms telling you your lab coat is obsolete without the new lapel touchscreen with onboard stethoscope app. Sheesh. We’ve really taken consumption to new heights. Sadly.

Life

Insidious

  • by Drew

Thinking about my obsolete old scanner, I am reminded of this current personal computer ad campaign. There is a person who doesn’t think they need a new computer for whatever reason – mine is fine, new computers are the same as my old one, whatever – and so they turn that person’s home into a ‘computer store.’

I hate this campaign for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the series of smug annoying douches who are converted by this idiotic rip off of those stupid ‘while you were out’ type shows. I noticed subtleties early on that made me suspicious. They had people with accents, possibly in other countries. They have people of various ethnic backgrounds. They are clearly trying to hit us at a subconscious level with the concept that their product appeals to people all over the world from all types of backgrounds, whatever. But it’s all done in such a way that we can all feel comfortable in our bling-oriented America.

What really gets to me now – in the most recent commercial in the campaign, they have started aging the machines. It is no longer ‘my old computer’ but ‘my 4 year old computer.’ In other words, if your computer is 4 years old it is a piece of crap and must be replaced. And the fact of the matter is that most people are just fine with an old machine. They don’t need a bunch of new bells and whistles or a touch screen to navigate facebook. Sure it is nice ot have a new machine regularly, but we can’t let the guy who makes the profit tell us when to upgrade. Otherwise we’d all be driving a new car every 6 months.

Life

Scan this

  • by Drew

I have this great old scanner. It was truly a piece of work back in the day. Top of the line, commercial quality. Not like the standard residential nonsense ten or so years ago – you know, free with the purchase of a desktop type scanners. Thing is, the residential scanners these days are pretty much just as good.

So I tried to unload it at the tag sale we had a few weeks ago. I really would have been happy to just give it away. It needs scanner software, but really just the drivers. A few years ago I upgraded to a new machine and couldn’t find install disks. So I just searched around and found the drivers online.

Man, I hate to even think about throwing this thing out, but old tech gets obsolete so fast. I mean, its barely old and its obsolete. Bummer.

Booze

If its worth the going…

  • by Drew

Some people want fame and fortune. They want attention, to be hounded by the media. They want their picture to be taken incessantly, their name to be a household word. Many of those people have never had anyone interested in taking your picture, and that’s why they think it would be great. But there are those who used to have a name bandied about the suburban dinner table who’ve now been exiled to fringe obscurity. Perhaps they crave the attention most of all. Need in the wake of loss.

But then there are people with simpler desires and goals. They want to do honest work for an honest wage. They want to find a great wine to celebrate with. They want to get off work in time to pick up the kids and go to the drive in. They want a good new book or cheap trucking stuff or an ice cream sundae or a car with decent gas mileage.

Some people just want to be left alone.

Booze

Someday I Suppose

  • by Drew

Someday I’ll have a rustic cabin in the woods. I’ll write and drink homemade mead and have back porch concerts for the local wildlife. I’ll live on nut and wild berries and fresh made bread and imported cheese. (Can’t be 100% self sufficient). I’ll keep my gear in a white cedar chest and wash my unmentionables in a nearby creek. Every Wednesday I’ll take a drive to pick up provisions… and new comics. I’ll take up nude painting. Not the painting of nudes, but rather painting while nude. I’ll have lots of privacy, right?

Actually, I think I’ll skip the nude painting bit. There are lots of bugs in the woods.

Life

Are you tee-sing?

  • by Drew

If you are fans of Skateboard Heroes, you know that along with printed copies of the super-sized Issue 0 we also have t-shirts available. I was at a comic shop just the other day and someone said “hey, those are funny shirts.” Honestly, I didn’t get the comment. He was not a reader (or should I say not yet) and I don’t think he understood what it was about.

Is the logo funny? Many ironically so in that it is somewhat stiff and serious. But, that would really only be funny to a fan, right?

Did he find my stick figure skaters funny? I mean, they’re stick figures, but are stick figures inherently humorous? I think not. Maybe if there was a skateboarding stick figure saying something like “M.r Speedy’s got nothing on me!”

PS Blog

Hitchin’ Post

  • by Drew

I think I’m going to be pricing curt trailer hitches in the very near future because my father in law is building me a trailer. Yup. He built a frame, welded it all together, thought it out like a champ. No more driving across the bridge with a hand holding plywood panels to my roof as they billow up like boat sails. I mean, most of the time when that happened, I wasn’t actually on a bridge. Just that one time…

Well, looks like maturity is coming my way. Finally, I can tow Home Depot purchase behind my Subaru like a real citizen. Becoming a man, indeed.

PS Blog

Head Gear

  • by Drew

Working on the next Skateboard Heroes story I had to go BMX. Yup, kids on old school dirt bikes, raising hell. It just makes sense, right? Kids on skateboards versus kids on bikes. Could I really have gone in any other direction?

Thing is, I was having a hard time getting good helmets. I wanted old school dirt bike helmets for the photography and modeling, but man, those things are expensive. I mean, I wanted something that looked good, but high end gear like shoei motorcycle helmets was a little priced out of my league.

Life

Burning it up

  • by Drew

So, while ruminating about the crack issue in my parenting life, I thought of something interesting. Once in a while I read do-it-yourselfer handyman type magazines, mostly because I like cutting stuff with power saws. Something like 10 years ago I saw this ad all over the place for a special t-shirt made just for plumbers. It had an extra long back/tail area so you could tuck it in and never show crack.

Around that time we redid our bathroom. We had this huge plumber who was like 6 foot 6 inches tall. When we were putting in the new toilet, I realized that I was seeing a huge amount of blue t-shirt… I was like ‘holy crap, he actually has the plumber t-shirt!’ I thought it was pretty cool.

So fast forward to now, after nearly a decade of parenting… a decade of seeing mothers totally owning the crack. I don’t even think of it as plumber crack any more. It’s totally Mom crack now. It makes me think now is the time to throw the old shirts in the outdoor firepit and start selling the special Mom shirt with extended rear coverage. Seriously. Come on ladies, can we just cover it up. I wouldn’t want to see your split if you were skinny, twenty and hot, so I sure don’t need to see it now.

I keep mine covered, after all.

But then… I’m neither a plumber or a mom.

Life

Cracking Up

  • by Drew

A little while ago I made a plumber’s crack joke. Pretty funny, right? Then I spent a week and change in Raleigh, NC, visiting my brother, and we had an interesting conversation. We were at the exceedingly awesome Marbles Children’s Museum where we spotted a Mom squatting and chatting with her kid. She was late 30s or so, not too far out of shape, but her shorts were hanging low and there was some serious visible crack.

This was the conversation inspiration – the visible crack, I mean. See, I told my brother just how much Mom crack I’ve seen in 9 or so years of parenthood. Seriously. I don’t know what it is, but a lot of women, when they become Mom’s, seem to lose all sensation in their buttocks. I mean, that must be it, right? I know that I am very aware when my rear is exposed. And I admit, there have been a couple rare circumstances when I had to let my own crack show.

For example, one time I was cutting wood. I had the chainsaw halfway through the downed tree, about 8 inches to go, and my jeans started to slip. I was in the woods with no one around for hundreds of yards. Totally invisible from the street. And still,I was aware of my visible crack. Like, maybe my wife would come calling for me because lunch was ready or the sweepstakes people were on the phone. And I actually remember it. Yes, I actually can remember individual instances over the last 38 years when I momentarily bared the top couple inches of my butt.

So how can so many people just let it go? It’s a little depressing. Like, when do you just give up on being aware? When do you get your degree in not caring? Are there graduation announcements for it? Somebody, please just whack me with a mallet if I ever stop caring about my visible split.

I thank you for your support.

© 2026 Drew Bancroft. All rights reserved. Totally.