rangerBlog - April 26th, 2007

03:37 pm - Idle Hands are the Devil's Photoshop

Once I got to school today, I drove around for a half hour looking for a parking space with no luck- one of the nearby museums was holding an Event, which took up all the parking. Rather than be pissed, I decided this was God telling me it was time to do a project I'd been putting off.

You see, I am not an analog boy, and when I see blogs showing off awesome kitbashes and modelwork by fans, I become both ashamed, and jealous. I want to make things with my hands too! I cry, though I have no real interest in painting toys.

Unvented creative urges will bubble up in the strangest ways. While doing research about extreme interpretations of the second amendment for my screenwriting class (I needed to capture the Texan 'voice,') I stumbled on a tangental body of thought generated by a hardline ACLU faction- "don't let cops fuck with your rights against search and seizure," documenting the many ways, legal, illegal and semi-legal that law enforcement tries to get you to give up your legal protections. Being a staunch defender of all forms of civil liberties, this pissed me off.

Amid plenty of anecdotal encoutners with law enforcement was a tale of protesters being run off by cops while exercising their legal right to self-expression. The wonderful twist on this tale was the group that wasn't run off... see, the girl who talked to the cop was a lawyer, and she had her license in her wallet, which the cop saw when he asked to see her ID. Unlike the other groups, he bid them good day and let them go about their business.

The implications of this are both troubling... and awesome. Why, cops avoid lawyers when given a choice! Not worth the hassle. A law license in your wallet is like bright colors in nature, warning predators you're poisonous!

Man, I've gots to get me one of these!

Wait, wait I says to myself, forging a lawyer's credentials is probably illegal. On examination- the goal is not to posses false ID- the purpose is to appear more threatening to a predator, like a cat raising up its hackles, or a blowfish inflating. Shit, I don't need a fake ID! All I need is a business card! Business cards aren't a form of legal identification!

And so today, after being unable to find a parking space, I drove downtown to my state bar Association headquarters and picked up a business card.

This was surprisingly easy as digi-bashing goes. a 900ppi scan caught the logo well enough (though I needed to redo the colors from scratch,) and the rest of the card proved to be done in a variety of the Garamond font. Re-creating the card from the scan, and fiddling around to put my name on it took about 20 minutes. Some heavy ultra-bright cardstock and a Konika printer- and viola! Instant business card!

Isn't it pretty? And I'm not even claiming to be a lawyer! Why, for all someone knows, I'm an IT consultant! "Oh yes, I do some work for them..."

I have one of those plastic credit-card sleeves at home- I think I'll put the card in with my driver's license so I can't help but hand them over together when a cop asks for ID. This should be a most interesting sociological experiment, to see what happens!

So yay! This is Derik's craft project for the day! Try it yourself at home!
See? I can be creative too.

Current Mood: smug