But, first, we have to begin with Sam Barris, who bought a brand-new 1949 Mercury at the close of 1948. He drove the car around stock as his daily driver, until he figured out how to chop the top on it. That was in 1949. His modifications to the '49 Merc hit such a sweet spot that they have been replicated hundreds (if not thousands) of times since then.
There is a saying on my "side of the tracks" in the car hobby. It goes:
Anyone can restore an old car; it takes a real man to cut one up!And so I think of Adam and Eve. Adam, being created first, was the "stock" model. I picture God looking at Adam and scratching His head, and thinking: Hmmm ... I wonder ... if I ... flared out the rear fenders a bit, shaved that annoying hood ornament, and put a couple of Gurney bubbles on the torso ... maybe slim down the jaw line a bit.
Voilà! Presenting ... Woman ... the Kustomized Man!
I'm just the kind of guy who can never leave a car alone. There is always room for improvement, whether radical or subtle. I will always pick the kustomized ride over the stock one.
One might even be tempted to say:
Any deity can make a man in his own image. It takes a real God to cut one up!
4 comments:
Can this be applied to customizing oneself?
Fr. Charles,
I knew somebody would go there. No, I am not condoning trans-gendering.
Just as the car has no choice whether it ends up a stocker or a kustom, so we do not get to choose our sexuality.
I will tell you, however, that I am tempted to get a tattoo.
"Me and my brother were talking to each other 'Bout what makes a man a man"
I am afraid that I mourn a bit whenever I see a car that has been messed up by seeking to improve it. I want to see what the designer intended, even if the modifier was very skilled at cutting things up and putting a new finish on.
After all, one of the things that the revisionists in liberal Protestantism are doing is extensive modifications to the original...
Charlie,
Some cars do get "messed up" by kustomizers. Others are improved immensely!
I differ from you in that I have not the least desire to see what the designer intended. I want to see excellence. To my eye, kustomized cars often exceed by several orders of magnitude the glory of the original design.
Recall that designers working for auto companies are under many constraints besides beauty and glory. To the automotive OEMs, those things are about 10th or 12th on the list, behind fuel economy, safety, cost, emissions, reliability, quietness, cost of repair, etc.
This is why there is so much compromise in automotive design. The kustomizer, on the other hand, has no such constraints, and is free to pursue absolute beauty.
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