The Diving Bell and the Walrus

Our friends Robert and Jaki have been amazingly generous in sending Linda and me a deep-fat turkey fryer. It surely makes us just about the only people in Oz who can (and would) just drop that big bird in a bubbling pot of oil and pull it out fully cooked a little later.

And as long as I can continue to cope with the side effects of my cholesterol medication, I think we can anticipate being the envy of our friends who may eat healthier, but seldom happier.

But there is another side of Robert that is starting to worry me. You may recall that he and I were going to explore starting a new website that would make great use of his talent for solving and inventing and my talent for blathering. Kind of like the Mythbusters show only he does all the work and all I do is stand there and point at him yelling, "Hey, look at that."

Our first project was to solve the problem of how to get me under water with them when they come out here. It's a problem because the last time I looked the Big and Tall store had run out of XXL wetsuits. And even were I to find one, I cannot but imagine that every shark in the Pacific that got a look at me would think their most secret walrus dreams had come true.

To tweak Robert's inventiveness, I proposed that he make one of those old-fashioned diving suits. You know, the kind of suit Cuba Gooding wore when he played the first African-American to become a US Navy diver. (Which also proves that Hollywood will make movies about just about anything they hear of. By the way, the Oscar-winner Gooding rescued this bobble in his career by subsequently appearing in such hits as Pearl Harbor, Snow Dogs and Norbit.)

Anyhow, back to Robert. That picture at the top of this post appears to be the best he can do as a suggestion for a helmet. And although he swore to me that he really is quite good at building things and inventing solutions to mechanical problems, I am fast losing confidence. This is how he suggested getting around the "drawbacks" of diving with a fishbowl on my head, especially one that measures less than six inches at the open end:

I think we can solve this problem

Option 1 - By having LK work some of her training procedures on you. As she should be able to convince you that with a little lubrication your head will go in the helmet (fish jar).

Option 2 would be to have a shrink work on you, you know the kind of guy that does the shrunken heads. I think you have a tribe in Australia, if not we can get one from the Amazon to come in to do the deed.

The air supply (fish tank pump) will limit how deep you can go under water. LK will have to find an extension cord long enough to plug in the air supply. Her option, will the cord reach the dive site?

I would say "Back to the drawing board," but this seems to have never even made it to that stage. Of course, I could just use an ordinary wet suit if I lose weight, but I have as much confidence in that happening as George W Bush getting his face on the dollar next year. And eating deep fried turkey isn't helping the cause one single bit.

But thanks anyway, Robert. And by the way, you really should get out here soon before our native head shrinking tribes disappear.