Year: 2015
Monochromatic Miatas
We still don’t have all the details on the US version of the new Miata. We’ve got most of it, but there isn’t a configurator online to start building your ideal car yet. What we do know is that the color palette is pretty monochromatic. There are seven “colors”, including a white, a pearl white, a white-ish gray, a dark gray and a black. There is a blue, but it is really a medium gray with blue undertones, leaving the only real color something called Soul Red. And it is a metallic paint, so on cloudy days or in the shade it will darken right up.
Taking a cue from our German friends, (cough, cough…BMW…cough, cough) Mazda is going to start charging extra for metallic, mica & pearlecent paints. In the UK the Soul Red is a thousand dollars extra. The only color on the chart that is free is the Arctic White, the rest are an extra $800. I have seen on the Miata.net Forum that the Soul Red will be extra in the US, but not sure if the other paints will be more too.
Once these 7 colors were basically confirmed as the ones the new car would come in a thread appeared on the forum on the lack of real sports car colors. This thread has peaked at 32 pages compromising of 778 posts. The agreed upon solution to fix this – vinyl wrap your new car. So don’t forget to add about 10% to the cost of your nearly thirty thousand dollar new car to get it in the color you want. Your options are now wide open, take your pick from this chart of over 60 colors, including several hues in the now trendy matte finish. If you are buying a car for wrapping, here is a hint, buy a black one. This way when you open the doors or hood or get a peek inside a panel gap, the original red or white original color doesn’t pop out.
Me, I’d more than likely go for the Gloss Intense Blue (CB-169) or the Gloss Metallic Bright Blue (CB-162).
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1474
Forget Fortitude
Forget Fortitude. Episode 9 was so graphic that Donna left the room and there were even a couple places where it was so creepy/gross that even I fast forwarded through them. We started watching episode 10 after work today and it wasn’t gross, but it did kind of veer into slightly ludicrous territory.
Episode 11 solves the opening episode’s original mystery, leaving us now with the secondary mystery of why there were some folks on the island going bat-shit crazy. This too gets revealed in #11 near the end in an X-Filey way. We are left with a cliff hanger of a cast member doing something so stupid that it could only happen in a TV show.
Episode 12 opens with our cast member being saved by something that could only happen in a TV show, filling the room he is trapped in, that is also full of what is causing the madness, with oxygen and hydrogen and having him ignite it by flicking his lighter. The ensuing explosion knocks out the glass wall in a ball of flames. When the dust clears, the 2 folks who pumped in the gas, then stood outside the glass and watched, stagger to their feet and drag our cast member out alive.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was the lighter, we had never seen said cast member with it until episode eleven where he is sitting in a bar nervously flicking the Zippo open and closed as the camera slowly zooms to a close-up of it. Three minutes into the season finale, we stopped watching the show.
As a pallet cleanser, watch this short video of scenic arctic beauty, this time from the antarctic:
httpvh://vimeo.com/124858722
Welcome to Fortitude
In my never ending quest to watch every obscure, but critically acclaimed, television shows, I’ve found another, Fortitude. It starts out sort of as a north of the arctic circle Broadchurch as a murder mystery with an outsider cop arriving to help, but we are about 3/4 of the way through watching it and it seems to have morphed into an X-Files like show about a maybe thawed out wooly mammoths with polar bears.
It is jam full of people with questionable origins and motivations. The cinematography is stunning like Utopia, yet totally different in its beauty. While it is “set” in the town of Fortitude, it is really sort of based on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.
Where can you watch this you ask, where else but on the cable channel called Pivot. What never heard of it, neither have I, but I have heard of Amazon Instant Video.
Miata Profile Icon
For the longest time I have been using a Mad Men style profile picture for my user login on Win7, both at home and at work, but after viewing those line art ND Miata images from the electronic owners manual I posted the other day, I thought maybe Mr. Miata should have a Miata as his profile picture.
I couldn’t use one of those as I don’t have a 4th gen car, but I did have a plain line art image of a NA (1st gen) that I made when the MMC was thinking of redoing the club logo. I re-colored it to resemble the previously owned Laguna Blue car and used it for a day. Didn’t feel right, so I made up one of the NB2 (face-lifted 2nd gen) an colored it in like the Emperor.
Here are large white versions of each generation for you to color and use as your own: – NA – NB2 – if you don’t have a paint type program, special requests accepted.
The Back Porch Is Open For Business
Finally got around to washing off the screened porch last night. It goes like this: 1) remove all the knick-knacks from horizontal wood pieces, 2) cart out the 13 pieces of furniture and place them on the deck, 3) vacuum off the area rugs, 4) roll up rugs and carry them out onto the deck. Fifth is to drag a hundred foot of hose from the spigot on the left side of the house all the way around through the door on the right side of the porch, 6) spray through all the sections of screen and 7) thoroughly spray down the floor from the back left corner to the door on the right washing all the pine pollen and moth carcases out onto the deck and 8) turn the two ceiling fans on high and go inside to eat dinner.
After eating, go back outside to 9) bring back in and unroll the 2 area rugs. Next 10) individually spray and wipe off the baker’s dozen pieces of furniture, 11) shake off the excess water and place them back where they belong on the porch and then 11) repeat with the similar amount of fru-fru decorations.
Today I took all the cushions that I removed last fall back out and velcro’d and or tied on the furniture.
As a reward for reading all the way through that boring recitation, High Diving Giraffes:
httpvh://vimeo.com/76684408
Happy Four-Twenty Day
Because today’s date has become some sort of marijuana holiday I discovered several pot themed article in my usual internet surfing today. I was also relieved that in the 3+ decades since my last personal brush with the stuff, the top 3 names were some I used to use; 1) Weed, 2) Pot & 3) Bud. But I was also not surprised to find that three others that I commonly used were now near the bottom; 29) Wacky tabacky, 30) Grass & 31) Dope. Most deserved nickname: 8) Miley Cyrus. Weirdest: 32) Hit by a Bus.
For your 4/20 day reading, here is Mashables mashup of Mary Jane (#21) stories: WEEEEEEEED which included the handy guide to choosing your strain of chronic (#12) by your desired after effects.
This last link is here because of this site’s electronic memory usage, so that some day when Sticky Icky (#16) is legal for personal use in South Carolina (probably never) or we retire to a more Cheech and Chong (#20) friendly state (more probable) I can look back to find out how to make Donna’s awesome Chocolate Chip Cookies even awesomer: The Secret To Perfect Weed Butter