Half-demolished Kitchen of the Soul

I am so evil

My usual unspoken reaction when someone announces a pregnancy is, "Oh, I'm so sorry." 

When I learned the next door neighbors I don't like much are expecting another child, my initial reaction was, "Oh crap, they're multiplying." 

But then I realized they might want a bigger house. They might move. Yes!

Oh, but they might add on instead. That would mean months of construction mess and traffic. No! 

Maybe I should start sending them information on how much better the schools are in some other part of town.

But wait, new owners might do what all the other new owners in the neighborhood have done—tear the place down to build a McMansion. No no no no no!

I'm screwed either way.

One of these things is not like the other

The canned music playing in the restaurant was the usual assortment of classic rock and pop. Comfortingly familiar. Easy to ignore. 

And ignoring it I was until... Huh?... Is that?... I know that song. It's on my iPod. I can't think of the title or artist, but it sure is out of the rut. Sort of trippy, jazzy, arabic bossa nova with a female vocalist.

So I had to go through my thousands of songs, alphabetically by artist, skipping the ones I knew it wasn't, playing snips from the less familiar artists. I was to the T's before I found it. Here it is:

Lebanese Blonde / Thievery Corporation

Elsewhere

Word of the day: magnanimosity

A combination of magnanimous and animosity, magnanimosity is hatred masked by artificial kindness or by self-delusions of goodness. Similar to benevilence, which is evil wrapped in fake benevolence.

My Cars: 1999 GMC Sonoma

When I got my fixer-upper house I figured it would be handy to have a truck for hauling supplies once the lease on the Honda expired. And for reasons I no longer remember, I sort of got caught up in truck customizing culture. 

I got racing seats, fancier wheels and wider tires, a performance exhaust and intake system, and had the suspension lowered. I was feeling really butch.

By the time I paid off the truck I realized I wasn't really a truck guy. An eighteen-year-old really really wanted to buy it from me. He was so eager that he couldn't wait six weeks while I went to work in California. His mother gave me a check with the understanding I wouldn't cash it until I got back. Meanwhile, the truck would stay at my place. Why not just wait until I returned? There was no good explanation except that the kid wanted to make sure he got the truck. All he needed to do was sell his Jeep so he could repay his mother. Fine, whatever worked for them.

But when I returned, the deal was off. The kid had wrecked his Jeep before he was able to sell it. I sold my truck a few months later to a guy who actually had the money.

(Oh, and that's not my truck in the photo. Mine was pewter gray.)

Ahoy from Key Largo

As you can see, not all dive trips are as miserable as the one reported last week. If they were, we'd all stop diving. Here we are heading out of port on calm seas with warm, clear water. Hurray for more southern latitudes. A non-diver in our group was the only one to get seasick.

An oddity of this trip (other than ourselves) was the Christ of the Abyss underwater statue. Wikipedia explains:

Christ of the Abyss refers to a number of bronze sculptures of Jesus Christ submerged in water.

The original sculpture, "Il Cristo degli Abissi" is in the Mediterranean sea off San Fruttuoso between Camogli and Portofino on the Italian Riviera. It was placed in the water on 22 August 1954 at approximately 17 metres depth, and stands ~2.5 metres (~8.5 feet) tall.

"Il Cristo degli Abissi" was created by Guido Galletti after an idea of Italian swimmer / diver Duilio Marcante. The statue was placed near the spot where Dario Gonzatti died in 1947. He was the first Italian to use SCUBA gear.

The statue depicts Christ in a pose offering peace. His hands and head are raised toward the surface (or the sky, when positioned above water).

A second bronze sculpture cast from the same mold exists off the coast of St George in the Caribbean. This was a gift of the navy of Genoa for assistance in rescuing the crew of Italian vessel Bianca C destroyed by fire in the port of St. George. The sculpture was placed under water on October 22, 1961.

A third bronze from the original mold was presented to the Underwater Society of America  in New York in 1962. On August 25 1965 it was placed approximately 25 feet off the waters of Key Largo, Florida. It is located around Dry Rocks, around six miles North east of Key Largo in the John Pennenkamp Coral Reef State Park.

When we visited the statue, Jesus looked like he was pleading to be delivered from sponges, coral and barnacles.

Time lapse

I was away for two days but it feels more like a month. On another planet. I'm having a hard time picking up where I left off. It feel like my brain isn't back yet.

Lord of the flies

Sorry there was no TED Tuesday this week. I just got back from two days in a jungle prison. At least that's what it seemed like. 

Actually, I was shooting a training video in a Georgia warehouse. Steel building. Hot and  humid, like ninety degrees and ninety percent humidity. No air conditioning, only fans we couldn't use when people were speaking on camera, which was most of the time. 

And flies.

So many flies.

And nowhere to sit except the floor. 

After the first twelve hour day, my feet felt twice their size. My legs were stiff, my back ached, I was sweaty and sticky. All I wanted to do was shower and go to bed.

I slept deep and hard, dreaming of Mick Jagger and Michelle Obama.

Then it was do it all over again today. And then drive four hours home in my fetid clothes. At least the car is air conditioned and has someplace comfortable to sit. And no flies.

Music Video Monday: Cheryl Crow & Stevie Nicks

My Cars: 1963 Cadillac DeVille

It could have looked like the top picture, but it looked more like the bottom one.

My then-wife and I got the idea to get some big old Caddy to use for road trips and other goofing around. Rather than pay serious money for a nicely restored one, I searched the classifieds until I found one that at least ran. The seller said it was his mother's old car and asked $750. Sure, why not.

I dove into fixing it up. New brake drums and shoes so I could slow the barge. A new exhaust system so we didn't gas ourselves. New shock absorbers, new tires, and a cheap Earl Scheib paint job that took it from faded "champaign" to glorious turquoise with a white roof. 

All the foam in the seats had hardened and most of it had turned to dust. I ripped it out and threw old bedspreads over the seat springs.

On a run to the store one evening, a link in the rear suspension that kept the axle from shifting side to side snapped off. I got that fixed.

And in order to start the beast, I had to pop the hood, remove the air filter, pour some gas down the carburetor. Every time. The heat and air conditioning didn't work, either. Neither did the radio.

A couple thousand dollars in repairs and restoration later, I lost momentum on the project. It sat parked at the curb, collecting dirt, pollen, sap and bird droppings, along with the disgust of neighbors and my wife, until I came home one day and discovered it had been towed away.