The Machinery of Night

Foto Friday: Kitsch Catch

In honor of kitsch and crazies, today's photo is the magnificent Humping Fish in beautiful downtown Issaquah!

Humping Fish, Issaquah, Washington, Sep. 2005

That's humping as hunched and jumping, pervs, and not at all because it seems to love the building very very much.

Issaquah is where we ended up after fleeing Hurricane Rita. Niles and I loved the Humping Fish. Unfortunately, getting a picture involved either crossing a scary intersection, or trying to shoot it as we drove through. We chose the latter, and it turned out pretty well, but you can see the motion blur in the nearer trees.

If this photo ends up in some future Charles Phoenix's collection, people will look at it and say, "Man, things were weird back then. Did giant inflatable fish really sell cars? And if it's Evergreen Ford, wouldn't an evergreen have been more appropriate?" Know, then, that Niles and I asked ourselves these very questions. Of course, there's not much scope for expression with an evergreen. You're pretty much confined to green with those babies. I guess you could give it eyes or something. That would be even more disturbing.

Also you can be sure that twenty or thirty or fifty years hence, people will be saying two things:

Look at those great old cars! Ha ha! Can you believe that? My dad had one of those! (Unlikely in the case of the white stretch Hummer on the right there, but still...)
Twenty-one thousand for a whole car?? I paid that for tires!

That is, if they don't print and frame it to remind themselves what fish, trees, and cars look like as they stumble through the lifeless radioactive ash. Of course, we're unlikely to have the internet still, in that case.

(I bring you this grim scenario because when I was a teenager we were all forced to join the Grim Scenario-Bringer's Union, Local 2525, which ensures that all descriptions of the future feature at least three of: pain, death, radiation, pollution, loss, despair, starvation, disease, and misery. So it's just a contractual obligation. That's how the whole global warming industry came about. Bet you didn't know that.)

Labels: Foto Friday, Washington