Diorama Sale !

Here it is again! Our February Inventory Clearance sale of overstocked Dioramas! That’s right throughout the month of February *The Institute is making all of our Overstocked Dioramas available to the public at a vastly reduced price. Everything must go to make room for our new Spring line. We are offering especially low prices for all of our top sellers regardless of size or overall approval rating from the traveling public.

Shown above is our deluxe Spruce Tree House Surprise diorama from our exclusive Mesa Verde National Park series. One of our all time best sellers. This is an extraordinary 1:1 reproduction of one of the most scenic views from famed Spruce Tree House, a centuries old Anasazi dwelling normally off-limits to all but the richest visitors. You heard us right! That’s a 960′ wide by 1530′ high, 18″ thick exact copy of Spruce Tree house. Unlike the original you can walk right up to this reproduction and touch it without fear of repercussions or arrest from Rangers or others seeking to protect our National heritage. Avoid being Tazed or tear-gassed by over zealous authorities. With your own personal copy you could even tag it with your own slogans or art work using our own proprietary spray paint that washes off easily with a power washer and ultra-strength bleach. Make it your own by using your own designs or purchase, for a reasonable cost, our own patented stencils for fun and artistic display. Fix what the Anasazi left out. Add those missing items to your diorama like your street address, or personalized messages like “Emma’s Garden” should you choose to install it in your backyard.

We were able to get into the park late in the evening and pull rubber molds from the dwellings and rock face adjacent to them allowing us to get the realistic detail and character that you have come to demand from our dioramas. In fact, on some of the earlier serial numbered dioramas you can even find small pieces (not more that 6″ in diameter or less) embedded in our reproductions. Proudly show your friends bits of these unique pieces of dwellings from a World Heritage site. Note: we cannot guarantee that all dioramas will have these exclusive chunks of Anasazi history embedded in them so order soon to get the pick of the litter.

This beautiful one piece diorama is made from our own patented, trade marked, super-secret foam and pumice material guaranteed to last for months and months with little or no upkeep. Order it with our own optional specially formulated sealer that will protect it from the elements, bird droppings, rain, (acid rain excluded) sun, most unexpected mishaps, small children, civil disobedience, war, dog urine, and other acts of mayhem. Not suitable for Rock Climbers. Note: this is a non-smoking diorama, keep open flames, jerks smoking, and kids with magnifying glasses away. This puppy will go up like a Roman Candle if not properly protected. Burning chunks will stick to the skin if contact is made. Use at your own risk. The Institute is not responsible for any claims of damages or loss of life due to improper installation and use. Read and understand any directions included with this product. Dispose of packing materials properly. Installer is responsible for the placement of guide wires and other supports and all necessary permits.

As this may be your first exposure to our National Parks and World Heritage sites dioramas you might like additional background information on these wonderful additions to your State or County parks, or for that mega-mansion you’re building, or even to dress up that local trailer park, please see the following post for more information.

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/yellowstone-diorama/ 

We look forward to cashing your check and doing business with you. Remember order now and order often. We can’t do this all day.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.

Shadows Of Echoes

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It isn’t often that you can visit a place like Spruce Tree house at Mesa Verde National Park and have a large portion of it to yourself. You must go on a tour and they can be quite large and of course everyone is very excited and full of questions. The rangers guiding the tour do a good job of keeping the kids from climbing the walls or falling into the kivas. People are yelling to the others in their party to come look at this while they are looking at that. The experts within each group tell each other incorrect facts in a very authorative way. And of course because the structure is built inside an acoustically perfect cavern the noise is incredible. The slightest sound is amplified back to you as if your iPod was set on 10.

But every once in a while the gods take pity on you and you are accorded special privileges, like being in a tour with only three other people, and those other people were either very soft-spoken or mute. Consequentially it was quiet, so quiet that even footsteps made with rubber soled tennis could be heard. If you moved past the partial walls looking into the open rooms and floors that are no longer there, and thought about how it must have been to live here, you can imagine their movements and if you listen hard enough it’s almost as if you can hear those sounds, so faint it’s like you’re hearing the shadows of those echoes. The soft sounds of sandals against the rock floors and the rasping sound of a woven basket rubbing against the ladder as it is carried up to be stored away. They’re very faint sounds. In fact you may not be hearing them at all, but then again if your imagination is strong enough, you may.

There are legends and memories, and strange and wonderful sounds locked away in these stones and sometimes they come out. And if you get lucky and have your imagination set at full strength you can hear them. It doesn’t take much, just stand still and listen. You’ll hear them. Maybe.

Ancient Secrets

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I’m kind of mad at Europe right now. They’re always going on about how old everything is over there and how we don’t have anything ‘old’ because we’re such a young upstart place with no history and as such we don’t account for much. Well I call BullPucky on that. They might have some castles and aqueducts and old beer joints but they don’t have this. I was there, in Europe, I looked around and I didn’t see anything like this. I saw a bunch of old churches and I can tell you, making them big and old isn’t the same. You walk around here and you can feel the old just seeping out of the stone. I’m very sure, confident in fact, that our stone, besides being prettier, is a lot older than their old stone, plus it’s put in better places. They, the Europeans, stick their old joints out in a field or on a rock next to a river and call it the best. I say, anybody can pile up rocks out in a field and just because it was done a long time ago when they didn’t have anything better to do anyway, doesn’t make it the coolest. But you take those Anasazi guys who had to crawl up sheer cliffs holding their rocks in their teeth so they could hang on with both hands and make something like this, well it makes me proud to be an American.

So the next time you see one of those glossy brochures saying “Come on over , we got really old stuff to look at” I say, “Hey! look right here in our own backyard. Our old stuff is neater and probably older and you don’t have to go through customs with them dumping your bag out so they can look through your stuff either”.

There’s old stuff in practically every state in the Union. Even in Wisconsin where I’m from we had an old bar that had been around since the 1930’s called the ‘Blue Side of Nowhere’ where you could get a hamburger and a shot and a beer and a fist fight for under five  bucks!  Remember we got history and some old things that were ‘Made In America’ long before those uppity Europeans made theirs and thought they were so high and mighty. And if you think about it they don’t have one old thing that was ‘Made in America’, that’s got to tell you something right there. Just because their accents sound cool in the movies doesn’t make them any better than us, except for maybe Jean Paul Belmondo, and Dame Judi Dench because she was so good in Sky fall, and Jean Reno in The Professional but that doesn’t make up for all those years of listening to their bragging about how old everything was there. It helps some, but not enough. Plus you’ve got to remember some of those people thought that Jerry Lewis was funny. How can you take them seriously?

So before you get sucked in by some fancy brochure trying to lure you over to Europe to look at their supposedly old stuff, think about our old stuff right here in the good ol’ USA and spend those Eurodollars where they’ll do some good.