Arts and crafts

So the one thing you're obligated to do when you leave a company is steal stuff, right? It's an unspoken rule. And don't sit there looking all holier than thou shaking your head - I saw you emptying boxes of propelling pencils and paper clips into your bag on your last day.

Anyway, so while the average person might raid the stationary cupboard like biro-hungry locusts (and in hindsight I should've gone straight for the post-it notes because lord knows I actually had to BUY some this week; on the plus side - tax deductable!), I pinched something a bit different.

I stole a tranny.

And no, I do not mean a transvestite. I mean a 35mm slide - you know, a photograph.

While looking through the thousands of images we had a couple of months back, I found a picture of William Shatner taken during the filming of Star Trek VI that I'd never seen before. Which is pretty remarkable because, trust me, I've seen A LOT of Star Trek pictures in my time. There wasn't anything particularly special about this image - from what I can tell it just shows Shatner chilling out between shots - but I liked it. I thought it was cool.

Here's Shatner on the set of Kirk's quarters, chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool; possibly about to go shoot some b-ball outside of the school.

So anyway, as I was boxing all the Star Trek stuff up a couple of weeks back I came across the pictures again (not literally; I don't like it *that* much). My first instinct was just to scan it in so that I could use it as a desktop image on my computer or iPad, but then when I mentioned it to a friend, who will go unnamed to protect her identity (it was Yazzle Dazzle), she said "why don't you just take it? It'll only go into storage otherwise."

She made a good point, so I stuffed it in a little bag and nicked it.

Since finishing work, however, I've been looking at the sad little tranny sitting in the bag and thinking 'what the hellpiece am I going to do with that?' I mean, it's not like I can pop it in a frame because a) it's tiny, and b) being a tranny it needs light shining through so you can actually see what's on it.

But then during one of my increasingly frequent and in hindsight somewhat ill-advised when you have no income shopping expeditions I found the perfect solution: a freestanding solid glass lump frame that you slot your picture in the middle of. PERFECT! So I bought one, some black card to engineer a framework to hold the tranny in, and a new scalpel to allow me to precisely cut the card.

And in BONUS NEWS FACTS, lady on the till confessed she almost asked me for ID before she let me buy the scalpel; you have to be over 21. Utter, utter WIN, I think you'll agree.

My first attempt at my arts and crafts project was mounted on Friday evening. Unfortunately I was a little bleary eyed because I was tired, so my efforts were little more than an unmitigated failure. On the plus side, I managed not to chop off any fingers with my awesome new scalpel, so there's always a positive, eh?

Attempt number two took place this afternoon, and was considerably more successful.

Admittedly there's a bit of a bigger gap around the tranny than I'd hoped (which is mystifying because I took really precise measurements; I know this because I stuck my tongue out the side of my mouth while I did it), so I might go back and have a little fiddle at some point to try and rectify that, but I think you'll agree it shows the image off way better than a manky little plastic bag ever could.

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In all seriousness, I think I do know why I like this image so much. There's a scene in Star Trek VI where Valeris is looking at a painting hanging in Spock's quarters and she says something along the lines of "I don't know what this painting represents," to which he replies "it's the depiction of the the expulsion from paradise - it's a reminder to me that all things end."

Dear non-Star Trek fans: yes, it's the slaggy one from Sex and The City.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record as I harp on about leaving my job, I think this image - of Shatner on the set of the last original series movie - serves as a reminder to me that, indeed, all things do end. It's healthy not to get too comfortable doing the same thing over and over, so with a bit of luck every time I look at this transparency it'll spur me on to do new things and 'boldly go' where I've never been before.

Jesus, that was such a wanky sounding sentence, wasn't it? Let's just stick with 'I thought it looked cool and I wanted to steal something,' eh?