blown a gasket

Today the weather is prankishly both sunny and chilly. Like Old Man Winter is sending reminders about how he is soon coming uninvited and boorishly dominate our human party.

Had an AFCS 100 bug repair assignment get sidetracked by a machine shelling out a bearing this morning.

Here is the last of the Space Cases, drawn a few weeks after the HP plant closing in Omaha. This one had a parody Verne vibe with a Victorian inventor with more screws loose than his invention. There's a bit of Terry Gillium influence here, but those beady little cartoon eyes set in big dark sunken sockets work better in his wonderfully bastardized paper cut-outs of old time photos. This also got a little over-involved with all that mock-19th Century hatching. Of all the drawings that I ever did, this is Pat Moriarity's favorite. More spoofing of hot rod monster convention since the engine is a cartoon spoof of a Corliss. Not to mention aeolipile spoofs.

Has anybody actually seen a real aeolipile, outside of some arcane etching in some dictionary or textbook? I've seen other arcane "roundy-round" devices like Wymhurst machines, Cooks tube radiometers, brass ball governors, cup anemometers, etc. in museums and the like, but never an aeolipile!