Goddess Mephistaherodyphia - A Correction

The Book of Bartholomew, in the story The Consuming Fires of Gerald, mentions erroneously that Mephistaherodyphia is the goddess of beauty.  This is a partially incorrect statement. Beauty is just one of the qualities embodied by the great goddess Mephistaherodyphia.  Well, not beauty exactly.  Beauty is a rough translation from the original Greek: λαμπρός .  Upon translating many Greek manuscripts on the subject of the goddess, the German historian Albert Grothe once wrote in 1765, “Many quixotic attributes have been used to reveal Mephistaherodyphia, not withstanding: magnificent, refulgent, radiant, an overwhelming presence, feral, wild, emasculating.  There, one senses in the beauty and presence of Mephistaherodyphia, she is ascendent while the mortal is descendent.  One remains not in a locus ere the presence of Mephistaherodyphia, one moves lower, while she rises to a position of power and radiance.”

Of course, this statement was translated from old German into old English which was then updated to wording that can be understood by the contemporary reader. The German word used by Grothe for “refulgent” is “ungezahmt.”  He also used “entmannt” for emasculating, which is a little harsher than the Greek word.  But Grothe was a strict man, not one for partying or jokes.  His cousin, Ozoman, once said that Albert was like “ein Pflaume in einem Topf pissen.“  One would then have to take into account that Grothe's translations might be a bit, as the Italians say, 'aspro.'  The great Japanese  historian, Jacob Stankowitz, also once alluded to Grothe's translations as being 臭いおならのような.  There cannot be much argument when someone of Stankowitz' stature speaks so openly about another's ability. 

Mephistaherodyphia appears in many cultures throughout history.  In the third symphony written by Sibelius, the great Finnish composer, Mephistaherodyphia appears in the third movement, when the leader of the Finnish Socialists proclaims: „repiä sydämeni minun ammottava rinta, oh Mephistaherodyphia. Minä en ole kelvollinen istua teidän ulosteet saastuneella paska potin.”  Of course, in the contemporary art scene, her grace and beauty has adorned many cd covers and she is one of the few gods who has been able to crossover to the hip-hop audience.  Dr. Djwuan has based a trio of popular works around the phrase ”Mephistaherodyphia, I've found you got so much life in ya, bust it up, bust it up.”

Mephistaherodyphia's actions in The Book of Bartholomew, not allowing someone to be born for an entire year, is consistent with her character.  She was one of the jealous gods.  In fact, due to the great work of Lithuanian historian Angus Tarshanty and his research into gods and their sport, it was discovered that when playing team games, the gods often divided themselves into ”jealous” vs  ”genial.”  Finally, due to some questionable research techniques employed by the infamous Scottish archeologist Shikrat Mokatoglu, it was determined that the day Gerald was momentarily free to graze upon the women of the world, Team Jealous won the game of kickball 1,567 to 1,498. 

The Consuming Fires of Gerald - Illustrations

This story was a lot of fun to illustrate!  Who doesn't want to illustrate people running in mortal fear?

I wandered through the annuls of art history to paintings about people being attacked. I looked at some battle scenes, murders and the like, but then I remembered, from an art history class, some kind of hullabaloo about a painting called Rape of the Sabine Women.  So, I Googled it.  This painting by Peter Paul Rubens is the first painting I came across of many versions on this theme.  Apparently, just after Romulus (no, not the Star Trek character) founded Rome, the Romans needed some women to be their wives.  They had tried to bargain and debate the merits of matrimony with Romans to the local people, the Sabines, but the locals were not willing to give up their women.  So Romulus held a festival to which he invited the Sabines and the Latins who lived in the area.  Once at the festival, with their young daughters, the Romans grabbed the women who were virgins and took them away to be their wives.

I find it a bit appalling and a bit fascinating that master artists would create giant paintings of such an incident.  Well, Gerald is not quite a Roman, but he does end up with only forty-five minutes to find and mate with a partner.  With that forty-five minutes he ends up fathering four children from four different women.  We don't have details about these unions, but obviously, some of these women were not looking to Gerald for a life-long relationship and may have been forced into an unwanted interaction.  Gerald is despicable.  To express something about this...this...moment, I chose a cropping of the painting by Rubens as the basis for my cover illustration.

This Rubens' scene is of three women running from the Romans.  One woman is being held back by a Roman.  I converted these people into four women running from the consuming fires of Gerald, with one looking back in horror.

I wanted a wood block effect, so, after drawing the women, I filled in the line and some shapes with the blue.  I was happy with the Photoshop coloring of the line, but I wanted something warmer and more complex and luminous for the coloring on the women.  I painted their coloring with oil paint on canvas (see below) and then overlapped it with the drawing.  I was happy with this approach because now the women seem aglow with the consuming fires of Gerald.

The Consuming Fires of Gerald will be published this Friday, April 12, 2013.

Bartholomew Asks... What Do You Think About Swearing?

Gerald has a habit of swearing when he is mad. He doesn't just swear a little, he swears with every word he can think of and then moves onto body gestures.  His swearing would definitely offend most people.  But some people don't mind swearing, I know, I asked.  Here is a video of people responding to the question: What do you think about swearing. 



To sample Gerald's swearing, read The Consuming Fires of Gerald, published this Friday at The Book of Bartholomew..

The Consuming Fires of Gerald - The Story

I have been talking with a friend lately about displaced focus and being true to who we are.  How easy it is to become distracted from what we really want to do and be.  This is Gerald's problem -- or at least one of them.  He just can't seem to focus on what is really bothering him. 
Have you ever been mad, but not sure why?  Then Gerald is just like you, except he doesn't question why he's mad. 
Have you ever lashed out at someone knowing full well that they are not what's bugging you?  Then Gerald is just like you, except he doesn't know it wasn't the other person's fault. 
Have you ever thought you were doing the right thing, only to realize you were doing something that was completely wrong?  Then you are just like Gerald, except he never realizes he is wrong.
You and Gerald are a lot alike.  I would be careful if I was you.

Here is an excerpt from The Consuming Fires of Gerald:

It had not been a good day. Everything seemed to be bothering Gerald. He thought everything and everybody was out to get him – to ruin his day. It had never occurred to him that if everything seemed wrong, maybe there was something wrong with him. 

He walked barefoot out of the foyer of his huge multi-roomed maze of a mansion and into one of the living rooms. There, on the floor, was a broken vase. “Khua! Mo! Xavier!” Gerald yelled. No response. “You better get in here and clean this up or I'm going to beat your collective asses!” No response. No one was home. Where was The Butler? “Ah,” Gerald remembered, he had fired him that morning – the eggs were over-cooked. What about The Nanny? She now lived out back by the pool in a new combination cottage/cabana. She probably never saw this. Gerald wondered why he ever hired her in the first place. Maybe he should fire her. She can't even keep track of Geraldine, his daughter. Gerald then remembered Geraldine was missing. That made him even more mad at everyone.

“How could Geraldine be missing? That is so irresponsible,” he said to no one. “That's when this all started, when things started going downhill.” He headed to the first floor kitchen. Mumbling to himself, “Someone wants to make my life suck. That's why they kidnapped Geraldine. I own half this town and most everyone hates me because I'm successful. As if I care? But they are all trying to ruin me.”

He opened the refrigerator to find some dinner. “And now I'm looking for my own food. Fuck, I hate this.” Gerald contemplated going out to Donkey Burger where, being the owner, he eats as much as he wants for free. Instead he grabbed a cold container of something and went to look for a fork. Gerald was unfamiliar with the kitchen. He never cooked for himself, never knew where anything was kept. He thought of himself as the most powerful man in town. He was also the most helpless in his own home. He never found a fork, so he ate what was in the container with a pair of tongs.

Gerald went to look for the dining room. He never found it. He finally came to eat sitting in a chair that was in a hallway. He didn't know if the food he was eating tasted good or bad. Gerald was not concerned about things like flavor. His only concern was that the slight pain in his stomach went away. He could have eaten cardboard or slugs; he wouldn't have noticed. His only driving force in life was to address, in the moment, what he considered inequities for himself.

This style of behavior made him very decisive and pro-active, which led to his wealth. But along with these positive traits came the burden of negative traits, such as an uncaring nature toward others and himself, a pervasive valuing of objects ahead of people, a consuming competitiveness, a heightened sense of paranoia and a serious lack of aesthetic judgment. But lately, it seems that another log had been added to the pile of difficulties: he has been lonely. Gerald is so emotionally incapable of dealing with loneliness that he simply gets mad – at everything else.

#21 Charlotte Unfolding

          

            “Can you hand me the kale?” asked Bartholomew as he grabbed a colander from the counter.

           

            Charlotte handed over the kale and continued mincing garlic.  Bartholomew ripped the big rough leaves, stem and all, from the stalk, placed them in the colander and washed them in the sink. 

            “You sure you washed them enough?” asked Charlotte.  “They can be pretty dirty inside all those bumps.”

            “This is how my mom used to do it. It should work,” said Bartholomew with confidence.

            “So you used to cook with your mom?”

            “No, I never really did. Both my parents were really good cooks.  They would buy fresh and organic vegetables and things from the farmers’ market and the co-op and  they would cook really amazing meals.  They were so tasty, but for some reason I didn't feel like I should cook with them.  It kinda seemed like something they liked to do together – just the two of them.”

            “Didn't they want to teach you to cook?”

            “Yeah, they asked me all the time.  But I just didn't want to do it.  What they did was so delicious and magical.  I didn't even want to know how it was done.  That would have ruined the magic.”

            Charlotte tossed the minced garlic in a large black cast-iron skillet to saute in some oil.  Bartholomew kept piling more and more kale into the colandar. 

            “How much do you plan on eating?” asked Charlotte.

            “Oh, it cooks down a lot,” said Bartholomew.

            Charlotte removed a lid from a pot of soup she had made the day before and stirred it around with a big plastic spoon.  She made the soup by chopping up vegetables and cooking them in a couple cans of tomato soup she bought at the grocery store.   This was Charlotte's general method of cooking. She would purchase pre-made items at the store and then add a few of her own ingredients to make them better.  “Charlotizing” food made her feel good about her cooking skills.  Topping knew how to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, hot dogs and a bowl of cereal but not much else.  In exchange for Charlotte doing all the cooking, Topping would help set the table and clean up afterward – and always tell her he liked her cooking.

            “He sure is quiet back there,” said Bartholomew about Topping who was in the bedroom working on a design for painting Bartholomew's car.

            “Yeah, he wanted to finish it before you got here tonight but had a little more to do.  He has a hard time finishing it, he doesn't know when to stop.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Oh, you know. Topping is just so intense and such a perfectionist about stuff that he always sees something else he wants to change or correct.”

            “Really?”  Bartholomew said.  “I always thought he was just winging along and having fun.  I didn't know he was a perfectionist.”

            Charlotte felt like sharing her thoughts about Topping with Bartholomew, but worried it would be inappropriate.   But she felt she could trust Bartholomew.

            “Yeah, well when he is at a party he is really enjoying himself.  And when he is designing a paint job, he is really designing a paint job.  He is very intense about what he is doing.  Lately, I think because he hasn't had a job, he has been filling all of his time with projects.  Did you know he designed the garden you want to plant?”

            “He has designed it?  Wow, great!  I really haven't thought about any kind of design yet,” said Bartholomew a bit relieved.

            “No, that's not great.  He should be out here talking with us and helping us and being a good friend – and a good boyfriend.”

            Bartholomew said nothing. He didn't want to be in the middle of Topping and Charlotte's relationship.  He washed a few more kale leaves.

            “I'm sorry,” said Charlotte, “I shouldn't have said anything.  You’re his friend, I shouldn't be sharing this stuff with you.”

            “No, that's okay,” lied Bartholomew.  Changing the subject, he asked, “Is the garlic done?  The kale is ready to be cooked.”

            “Oh shoot, it's getting a little burnt,” said Charlotte.

            Quickly Bartholomew threw a heaping pile of kale in the skillet and stirred it all together, hoping to prevent the garlic from burning more.  Charlotte pulled some bread out of a cupboard, removed it from the bag and started slicing it.

            “Did you make that bread?” asked Bartholomew.

            “Yeah, I did,” said Charlotte.  “They have the dough already made in the freezer section at the Food Barn.  I just pop it in the oven and forty-five minutes later it’s bread.  It's pretty good.”

            Bartholomew changed the subject again, “You hear about Claire taking those spoken word classes?”

            “Yeah, I think its great!  I just love how she says what's on her mind.  You should have seen her stick it to Mayor Dick at the Earth Day Celebration.  It was so cool.  I really admire her.  I'm glad Topping met you and Claire.  You guys are good friends.”

            Noticing that she didn't mention Ned, Bartholomew said, “You, too.  I mean you two, too. Both you and Topping.  And Claire.  I like her a lot, too.  And Ned.  He's great, too.  Ned is always coming over to my house.”

            Charlotte continued, “We should go to Claire's performance.  She has one in two weeks.  It would be great to go support her.”

            “Definitely,” said Bartholomew.  “That would be fun.”

            “Hey, when is your garden planning meeting?”

            “Uhmm,” Bartholomew glanced at the calendar in his head.  “On the last Wednesday of the month.  I have you two, Claire and Ned, Aunt Josephine and Uncle Jeffrey and maybe Mr. MacBardon, my neighbor, all planning on being there.  I'm really looking forward to it.  I haven't thought at all about the design, but I know what I want to grow in it and am ordering some seeds this week.”

            “Could we order some seeds with you?”

            “Sure, you can...”

            “Wow, that smells great!” interrupted Topping as he walked into the kitchen.  “Is it almost ready?”

            Bartholomew, who had forgotten about the kale while talking to Charlotte, jerked his head around to see that the kale had indeed cooked down quite a bit.  He stirred what was left in the pan while Charlotte went back to cutting bread.

            “Yes, it’s just about done,” said Bartholomew.

            With that pronouncement, Topping went to the cupboards and started pulling out plates and set them on the card table.  He came back, put his hand gently on Charlotte's shoulder to move her slightly so he could reach the glasses above her head.  He placed those on the table and then did the same with utensils, napkins, salt and pepper and the butter dish.  As Charlotte placed the slices of bread on a plate and Bartholomew scooped the kale into a bowl, Topping grabbed three beers from the refrigerator.  Then they all sat down on three of the four folding chairs around the table.

            “Would you like to give thanks?” Topping asked Charlotte.

            Charlotte was a little annoyed at this.  She liked to give a silent “thanks” before each meal, but Topping would never join her.  He would simply sit and wait.  Now he was asking her to give thanks with a guest, as if this was something Topping always took part in.  A little embarrassed, she turned to Bartholomew and explained, “I only give thanks quietly.  Like a moment of silence.  We don't actually say a prayer or anything.”  With that, she bowed her head and was silent for a moment.  Bartholomew bowed his head, too, but kept one eye open just in case he had to cross himself or mimic some other ritual he was unfamiliar with.  He noticed that Charlotte bowed her head and gave thanks while Topping just stared at her and waited. 

            “Amen,” said Charlotte.

            “Amen,” said Bartholomew.

            “Let's eat,” said Topping as he grabbed the soup and ladled it into his bowl.  Then he chose a piece of bread and scooped some kale onto his plate.  He started devouring the soup.

            “Mmmm.  This is really good!” he said to Charlotte.

            He then buttered his bread, dipped it in the soup and ate half a slice in one bite.  With his mouth   loaded he mumbled to Charlotte, “Whoa, this is great bread.”

            After finishing his soup and bread, Topping turned his fork upon the kale.  He took a big mouthful of the limp green mass.  He chewed it a couple of times.  Then a couple more times.  Bartholomew was waiting for the inevitable compliment, but one never came.  Topping kept chewing and chewing.  Before Topping was done, Bartholomew and Charlotte had taken a forkful of kale, as well.  They chewed and they chewed.  Then they chewed some more.  The texture was rubbery, soggy and crunchy all at the same time.  Bartholomew didn't think that was possible with any food.  Topping finally swallowed.

            “That's... what is that?” asked Topping.

            “Kale,” Bartholomew said while still masticating.

            “Is this how you always eat it?” asked Topping.

            “Well, yes,” said Bartholomew.  “But my mother used to make it ten times better.  I don't know what she used to do.  I wish I knew.”

            Charlotte finally swallowed her mass of goop and said, “I think you need to take the stems of the leaves out.  They really... well, they...I think you should just take them out.  Cut them out and just cook the leafy part.  I think that would be better.”

            No one ate any more kale.  They had ice cream for dessert.  After Topping cleaned up the kitchen, he showed Bartholomew his designs for the car.  Upon seeing them, Bartholomew just laughed.

            “Don't you like them?” asked Topping somewhat unsure.

            “Like them?  I think they're fabulous!”  Bartholomew was looking at three sketches of his car, each with a different flame design.  One design had flames that were more symbolic of flames than actually looking like flames.  The second was more flame-like as the shapes licked down the side of the car from the hood to the back.  The third had what looked like actual flames over the whole front of the car and then disappearing down the sides.

            “Wow, can you really paint these on my car?” asked Bartholo

mew.

            “Well...,” said Topping, “the first design I can definitely do. The second one I could do but it is a technique I haven't really done before.  But I'm sure I could do it.  The third one is probably beyond me. I can draw it, but Uncle Cy would have to help me quite a bit...and that one would take a long time.”

            Bartholomew surveyed the drawings one more time.  “I think we should try the second one, then.  It will give you a challenge and I like it better than the first.  That third one I'm not sure about.  I don't know if I'm that excited about flames to want that.  But the second design would be cool.”

            Topping was a little disappointed to hear Bartholomew say that flames aren't what he is really excited about.  He wanted this paint job to be something Bartholomew really wanted, that expressed something about him.

            “Are you sure?” asked Topping.

            “Yeah, I'm sure.”

            “You really want flames?”

            “Yes,” said Bartholomew grimacing at Topping.  “Yes, I want flames and I want you to paint them.”  

            “Okay,” said Topping.  “My Uncle said the shop would be available starting the first week of next month.  You're going to have to leave the car with me for three weeks.  I hope that's okay?”

            “I'll just walk, or bike or use Uncle Jeffrey's car.  That should be fine,” said Bartholomew.

            “Okay, then.  That's settled,” said Topping, knowing in the recesses of his mind that the design was going to change again before he painted Bartholomew's car.  He would find just the right design for Bartholomew even if he had to work on it every day for the rest of this month.  He wanted it to be perfect.  Charlotte sighed knowing what Topping was thinking.

            Bartholomew looked over the drawings one more time.  “These are really good drawings.  You ever think of just making art?”

            “Nope,” said Topping.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

Charlotte Unfolding, is the 21st story in The Book of Bartholomew. The story, written by Mark Granlund and illustrated by Raighne Hogan, tells of an evening with CHarlotte and Bartholomew cooking together.  Charlotte opens up to Bartholomew about her relationship with Topping.

Charlotizing Your Food - a Video

Here is a video about a feature of this week's story.  What do you "Charlotize?" Charlotte likes to buy frozen pizza and place her own toppings on it.  This makes her feel like a chef.  Charlotizing is the act of improving existing food by adding in your own twist.



 What do you like to "Charlotize?"

Bartholomew's Parents and Cooking

     Bartholomew's parents liked to cook. They liked to cook with fresh vegetables and would often buy organic at the local food coop. They wished they could plant a garden but their backyard was too shady from a giant oak tree and the front yard was really too small to grow much. They helped Aunt Jospehine and Uncle Jeffrey with their garden, and in exchange, received some of the produce.

Both of Bartholomew's parents were good cooks. Father was especially good at developing menues of interesting flavors while Mother was especially good at spicing and flavoring different foods. In all, the meals Bartholomew grew up with were beyond describing. His palette was naturally developed without any work on his part. And this was one of the two sad aspects of his parent's cooking. Bartholomew had developed such a discerning palette, yet he never learned how to cook the foods that he loved to taste. His parents liked cooking so much that they would make meals without Bartholomew's input. Once in awhile, they would invite him to help them cook. But Bartholomew, by that time, had considered cooking a magical experience and felt that he should not be involved. When he was older and his parents were gone, try as he might, he never could discover the right spicing or the right way of cooking food

     Kale is about the blandest food you could imagine. It is also the healthiest – and isn't that ironic? Somehow, Bartholomew's mother would make amazing kale. She would saute it with other items; sometimes nuts, sometimes other vegetables or even berries and jams or chutneys. She was quite inventive. Every time Bartholomew tried to cook kale it was a disaster. Even worse, when Bartholomew cooked kale it was a taste-bud Armageddon.

     The second sad aspect of Bartholomew's parent's cooking is that it eventually lead to their death. Not being able to have a garden in their yard drove Bartholomew's parents batty. There was no way they would chop down the family oak tree, that was planted so many generations ago, to provide sun for gardening, so they became inventive. Bartholomew's parents started harvesting from the neighborhood. If a neighbor wasn't going to eat all the apples on their apple tree, Bartholomew's parents offered to harvest the rest of the apples. They started finding mulberries and raspberries in the parks and along the railroad tracks. They discovered a pear tree in a ravine not far from the house. On any given weekend they would harvest Morrell mushrooms, fruits, berries, spices, nuts or even some greens and vegetables. As the food source became more wild, Bartholomew's meals became even more wild with flavor. Spices would explode in his mouth or, on occasion, they would blend and slowly reveal themselves – a different flavor with every chew. It was a world of discovery that enthralled and scared Bartholomew. How could he ever attain the skills that his parents had? How would his meals ever be even one hundredth as amazing and complex? He dared not even lift a paring knife for fear that his fears would come true – for fear that his parents would find out that he was a food dunce

     It was this thrill of cooking that eventually led Bartholomew's parents to scour the countryside for more wild food. Some days, his parents would be gone from sun-up to sundown wild harvesting. They would come home with boxes of items Bartholomew had never seen or heard of. It was on one of these far flung trips that his parents died.

 

     Bartholomew is now caught between a world of desire and a world of ineptitude that has been frozen in place by a horrible mistake. He would love to cook amazing food but, cooking amazing food could lead to death. Perhaps he was a good cook. Maybe Bartholomew's failed attempts were him being afraid of the consequences of success. What does one do when one wants to be like one's parents but one is also afraid of being like one's parents?

Charlotte Unfolding - Story

Who do you talk to about life's problems?  That can be a difficult decision.  What happens if you start to share your private thoughts about your boyfriend with one of his best friends?  Charlotte is becoming tired of being quiet about her disappointments.  In Charlotte Unfolding, Charlotte begins to trust Bartholomew and share her disappointments about her relationship with Topping.  Should you share your private thoughts with your significant other's best friend?  This could lead to many unwanted scenarios.

Here is an excerpt from Charlotte Unfolding, to be published July 17, 2011 at The Book of Bartholomew:

“You sure you washed them enough?” asked Charlotte. “They can be pretty dirty inside all those bumps.”

“This is how my mom used to do it. It should work,” said Bartholomew with confidence.

“So you used to cook with your mom?”

“No, I never really did. Both my parents were really good cooks. They would buy fresh and organic vegetables and things from the farmers’ market and the co-op and they would cook really amazing meals. They were so tasty, but for some reason I didn't feel like I should cook with them. It kinda seemed like something they liked to do together – just the two of them.”

“Didn't they want to teach you to cook?”

“Yeah, they asked me all the time. But I just didn't want to do it. What they did was so delicious and magical. I didn't even want to know how it was done. That would have ruined the magic.”

Charlotte tossed the minced garlic in a large black cast-iron skillet to saute in some oil. Bartholomew kept piling more and more kale into the collandar.

“How much do you plan on eating?” asked Charlotte.

“Oh, it cooks down a lot,” said Bartholomew.

Charlotte removed a lid from a pot of soup she had made the day before and stirred it around with a big plastic spoon. She made the soup by chopping up vegetables and cooking them in a couple cans of tomato soup she bought at the grocery store. This was Charlotte's general method of cooking. She would purchase pre-made items at the store and then add a few of her own ingredients to make them better. “Charlotizing” food made her feel good about her cooking skills. Topping knew how to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, hot dogs and a bowl of cereal but not much else. In exchange for Charlotte doing all the cooking, Topping would help set the table and clean up afterward – and always tell her he liked her cooking.

“He sure is quiet back there,” said Bartholomew about Topping who was in the bedroom working on a design for painting Bartholomew's car.

“Yeah, he wanted to finish it before you got here tonight but had a little more to do. He has a hard time finishing it, he doesn't know when to stop.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, you know. Topping is just so intense and such a perfectionist about stuff that he always sees something else he wants to change or correct.”

“Really?” Bartholomew said. “I always thought he was just winging along and having fun. I didn't know he was a perfectionist.”

Charlotte felt like sharing her thoughts about Topping with Bartholomew, but worried it would be inappropriate. But she felt she could trust Bartholomew.

“Yeah, well when he is at a party he is really enjoying himself. And when he is designing a paint job, he is really designing a paint job. He is very intense about what he is doing. Lately, I think because he hasn't had a job, he has been filling all of his time with projects. Did you know he designed the garden you want to plant?”