So it’s 3:21 am, and I just awoke with a start, dressed, sweaty, and grimy, remembering I have a Cold Start to do. My condition is because I’ve been out in the desert all day with some of my other Autopians shooting something that I think you’ll be excited about. But I can’t really talk about it just yet. You can see hints of it on social media, and maybe I’ll embed one of the posts here to give you an idea. But for the moment, what you need to know is that I’m beat.
And it’s a special out-in-the-desert-all-day beat, where your whole body feels like it’s been sandblasted by the nonstop desert wind. My eyes are so burny and teary you’d think I was watching an Old Yeller marathon at an onion-cutting competition. Luckily, I finally get to head home tomorrow – shit, this – morning, and I’m very very ready for that. It’s been a long trip.
Anyway, I’m beat.
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I was going to blame this on a side effect of my fatigue, but if I’m brutally honest, I don’t really think that’s a factor. I think I’d see this anyway, since my pareidolia might just be my strongest sense. Oh, and by “this” I mean how this picture of some fitted luggage in an old Rolls-Royce sure looks like three fun-loving, happy entities of some kind, all crammed in there together:
See what I mean? It’s hard not to see this:
I think they’re having a dance party or something here, I’m not really certain. But I think you get my point.
The car they’re in is actually quite remarkable, even beyond how its fitted luggage resembles friendly, leather robots. It’s a 1938 Rolls-Royce Phantom III “parallel door” coupe, done by coachbuilder James Young.
Take a closer look at those doors:
Incredible, right? They’re not exactly sliding doors, but the effect is much the same, opening in a way that’s parallel to the body of the car, and not taking up hardly any room to the sides of the machine. This car, chassis number 3DL86, is widely considered to be the “ultimate Phantom III” and won Best in Class at Pebble in 2004. It’s a truly stunning machine, and these doors are really what makes it extra special.
This car is a legend, and somehow the context I chose to write about it was because I saw faces in the fitted luggage.
I gotta get to sleep.
Reminds me of the “emotional baggage” from the video game psychonauts. Weird game, probably right up Torch’s alley.
https://psychonauts.fandom.com/wiki/Emotional_Baggage
Sleep well whilst dreaming of smiling luggage watching peacefully on your supine form!
Sleep well and dream of large women…
https://i.imgflip.com/4v6bwp.jpg
Snu snu!!
The first expansion pack for Pixar’s Cars universe.
Bags
Finally, luggage worth waiting for.
Arriving in theaters Thanksgiving 2025.
I’m up at 3:21 four days a week. Most of my jobs throughout my life have started at 5am. My alarm’s set for 3:29 but I usually wake up 10 minutes before the alarm anyway. Fri-Sun I usually try to sleep in until 5am. Of course, I’m usually in bed by 8:05pm or so. Maybe 9pm on the weekends.
p.s. I love the music reference comments.
Congratulations?
Oh man, this is a relief. I saw the headline and thought you’d been kidnapped and were watching SpongeBob in a giant suitcase.
“My eyes are so burny and teary you’d think I was watching an Old Yeller marathon at an onion-cutting competition.”
This is BULWER LYTTON FICTION CONTEST-worthy and I may have to steal it for the 2025 competition.
And this:
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/pixar/images/e/ee/Mater.png/revision/latest?cb=20160221135852
I saw these:
https://media.kohlsimg.com/is/image/kohls/1882091?wid=805&hei=805&op_sharpen=1
While those doors don’t take up a lot of room, I would be interested in the amount of swing that linkage takes as it looks like it would actually require a lot of room to the side to operate.
maybe the plan wasn’t so much for lateral room to open the doors, as to lessen the indignity to your mother-in-law when she has to clamber into the back seat. An anti-bustle-bruiser as it were.
Well I didn’t see that before, but now I can’t STOP seeing it.
My mind immediately went “.50 cal”?
“Smile, Darn Ya, Smile!”
Schrödinger’s luggage: are the handles up in the frowny-face position when the trunk is closed?
There is a teeny tiny snag with those doors. Finding staff these days is difficult and coachmen are few and far between even in the depths of recession. I suppose that “Oi mate can yer give me door a shove” might work in certain circles.
Torch, pretty sure your lack of energy is due to your life force being drained by the ghost of Stan Lee who was standing behind you while your head was under the hood of that Cobra Concept. I can see a little of it in that blue Yeti he is holding. It is well known in these parts that Yetis are very good life force storage containers.
“I was going to blame this on a side effect of my fatigue, but if I’m brutally honest, I don’t really think that’s a factor.”
Ha, yeah, no need for any undue influences to see the cartoons. Heck, even I saw them despite just sitting on the couch with my morning coffee even as my cats headbutt me for *more* breakfast (unless cats and coffee count as undue influences) though I was already primed by the headline for sure.
Somehow those boxes are also reminiscient of the “squares that look round” in the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, at least with Joseph Schindelman’s illustrations, dunno about Quentin Blake’s illustrations (Blake was Roald Dahl’s favorite [okay, favourite] illustrator though Schindelman’s illustrations are great…except for some extremely problematic elements such as the original Oompa-Loompas, good grief.) One wonders if Dahl might actually have seen such Rolls-Royce luggage in period, since he was from an affluent family and grew up in the UK in the 1920s and ’30s, and gotten the idea for at least that particular creation.
Love those doors… and it makes me wonder just how much more complicated would they be than swing doors? Double the hinges and double the latches, but otherwise? Looks less complicated than gullwing and I see benefits over a sliding door (faster movement, no slide tracks integrated into the body panels) but with the same space saving opening feature. Call ’em “bike savers”
Sliding doors are objectively excellent, and suffer solely from their association with minivans. I wonder, if these were to be trotted out on some modern production car, if people wouldn’t line up and buy them by the boatload? Please not on some shitty little cute-ute though…
You can tell by their expressions they’re going on an ADVENTURE!!
COLLLBRAAAA!
(Said in my best Chris Latta voice)
And the alternative “Cobra-lalalalala”
Which if a car, would be something kinda weird yet compelling, but tinged with a feeling they’re doing this solely for the money…
100%
The first 5 minutes of ownership would be bliss just as you expected and then the rest of the experience would be strange and confusing.
Come to think of it, the GI Joe movie sounds like the film equivalent of someone’s first time.
https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/gi-joe-cobra-commander.jpg
So, you’ve been to the desert with a source you won’t name?
… It was good to get out of the rain.
But can he remember his name? There were definitely people there to give him pain.
If only you had waited for 9 days – Everyone knows that’s when the desert turns to sea…
Attendees to last years burning man can confirm.
Ah, good old America!
Your “out in the desert” thing gave me an idea. Hear me out:
New Top Gear featuring David, Jason, and Adrian. With guest star SWG as The Swig.
Adrian being the one with the fetish for American iron, right?
Naturally.
I can see it now, a race (to do what? still workshopping) between an Aztek, a Fiat Multipla, and a modern BMW: the bit is supposed to be that no one wants any of the cars, but they ultimately end up fighting over who gets stuck in the BMW. The producers at least make sure that no one ends up in the car they wanted.
So, does SWG just sit there “swigging” Stanley Tucci Negronis?
Either way, this is the show we all need.
Subscription to whatever streaming service…. Here I come!