Another Car!

It's always a great day when I start painting a car. Today it's Olga's 2008 Honda Fit. I want to surprise her, of course. Or, no. Maybe it's more like I don't want her to see it until it's done because sometimes the journey isn't so grand. Sometimes it is the destination.

 

But check this out -- I had to buy six ounces of powdered aluminum. How cool is that?

In any case, this is the first and last photo we'll see until the car is completed, so you may as well enjoy it. I especially like the shadow show of the snake eating a tin of English Ovals. I welcome other ideas of what's going on there. I've painted a lot of car, given two dogs a bath each, comforted a post-surgery cat in the hospital and delivered another one to his home after a short stay, and I've done the dishes. I simply cannot be expected to do everything.

I've recently seen a couple of billboards that I find ... stupid. Yes. Just stupid, I guess. Someone's trying to be clever but it just isn't working. This travel agent's on the Obama bandwagon: Yes You Cancun.

Oh, please.

This next one is much worse, but maybe only because it's about cancer. It's a billboard, as I said, so there's not a lot of time to read. I think they're saying, "Hey! come have your cancer here, not there."

"You cancertainly choose," assures the billboard.

Gesu bambino! (I just read Fatal Remedies by Donna Leon. Her Guido Brunetti mysteries take place in Venice -- and I don't mean Florida. Well, I don't mean California, either.)

I wonder if the hopefully low-paid marketing people at that cancer place (wherever it is, whatever it is) think they're being edgy like the Snickers people with their Have a hungerectomy written in Snickers typeface. I hope not. I hope no one thinks it's ingenious. The only thing that makes the Snickers' ads okay is, like everything else where money's concerned: It's cool if rich people say it is.

Look, I have no idea where that last comment came from, unless I'm saying the cancer people are poor and Snickers is or are not, and even so, what am I saying? Hah. I'm probably saying it's time to shut up.