Category: Life

Jack Baruth has a photo of a guitar he bought on eBay in its shipping container, which is a box with some peanuts that could not accommodate the guitar properly.

About fifteen years ago, I was embarking on my video game collecting bit (and by video games, I mean the full size arcade games, not just consoles and electronic games). I got my first two from eBay: A Thunderblade (which featured a suicide battery that has committed seppuku in the intervening fifteen years) and a bartop Trivia Whiz IV.

The Thunderblade came crated and strapped down, shipped via a freight service that required me to get a friend with a pickup truck and a strong back to pick it up at the airport. It was a professional job.

The Trivia Whiz, on the other hand….

It was shipped UPS heavyweight. In a cardboard box. With some bubblewrap pressed against the glass and wrapped with pallet wrap and a half box full of peanuts that had settled, of course.

It arrived with the whole heavy wood case akilter, especially the glass and framed front with the controls and glass that covered the monitor. I complained to the seller, who suggested that I take it up with UPS. I didn’t bother because the fault lie not in the shipping but the packing.

I did my best to straighten the case out, but it’s still a little wonky.

And it’s still cluttering one of my desks in my office. I should try it out one of these days to see if it still works.

Those were the only two games I bought off of eBay; the others I got at in person auctions. Video games are one of those things I’m wary of ordering online.

(Not that I’m planning to do that any time soon, honey. Although our youngest son has informed me there’s a spot of room in the office in front of the filing cabinet. I don’t need to open those drawers as much as I need another video game in my office.)

So as I was organizing my comic book collection (finally, at the age of forty-something), I came across a couple of sixteen year old playbills from a performance of David Hare’s Skylight at the St. Louis Reperatory Theater:

I have no recollection of this play.

The fact that I have two programs indicates I took my beautiful girlfriend to the play. Perhaps that’s why I don’t remember; the play was overshadowed by the woman with me.

I went to a lot of plays in the 1990s, first at college and then a few after I returned from college to Missouri. I saw the Norman Conquests five times: Round and Round the Garden, Living Together, and Table Manners (2x) in Milwaukee (with three different young ladies, I add) and once at the Chesterfield Community Theatre at the YMCA out in St. Louis County. I saw Sight Unseen and The Visit in Milwaukee during college along with some collegiate productions like The Marriage of Bette and Boo and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. I saw The Ghetto at the backdoor theater of the St. Louis Rep because I was kinda interested in the one young lady in it. I saw a play at St. Louis Community College-Meramec because I was dating a girl in the theatre program there. I saw Dancing at Lughnasa at the St. Louis Rep. Was that the winter one, where I took Amy on college break? I saw Picasso at Lapin Agile and some other oddity at the Clayton Community Theatre because my beautiful by then wife knew someone in the troupe. I also saw an awful lot of Ragged Blade Productions because I volunteered with that group. Well, I was at a lot of Ragged Blade Productions or rehearsals. Maybe I didn’t see that many plays there.

But Skylight? Even reviewing the rep’s production notes or the Wikipedia entry leaves me no closer to a memory.

I prefer to see this as a mark of my sophistication: That I have forgotten more play performances than most modern people can remember.

But it is probably more the case that I’m getting old and/or that I’m overwriting previously used blocks of memory with Imagine Dragons lyrics.

in tsundoku.

As part of my job, I find myself scouring eBay, Etsy, and Amazon and doing semi-random searches. This morning, I searched for zaxxon, and I came across something that triggered my memory: Topps playable Video Game Cards.

What do you mean, playable?

Each card had the game board like the arcade game:

You would then scratch off dots mimicking the moves you would make in the video game. It was like a scratch-off lottery ticket, except you didn’t win anything.

Of course, then you would scratch off the rest of the spots to see how many ways you could get to safety or achieve success on the game board.

Each pack came with a stick of gum, a sticker, and two such games.

If you didn’t have an expensive game console (the Atari 2600 at the time) or regular access to a video arcade or a convenience store with an actual game (or even if you did), you were the target audience for this.

I don’t remember how many packs of these I bought, but I had pages of the stickers in my sticker collection. Sadly, I’m not entirely sure that I still have those pages of stickers–which means probably not.

If you look on eBay and on Amazon, you’ll find unopened packs for maybe five bucks each and unplayed cards for a buck. But I’m not even tempted. Because these are ultimately collectibles with one use (at which point they become relatively uncollectable) or you can have unopened packs as collectables themselves, but this goes against my basic collectable philosophy: You’ve got to be able to enjoy that which you collect. I mean, I acquire books, comic books (suddenly, as a result of an occupational hazard, I’m into them slightly again), record albums, old video games/computers/electronics, and so on, but I collect them for the joy of using them (or thinking I’ll use them someday), not because I want some pristine, untouched thing that I can’t enjoy (or at least I get a reading copy).

So I don’t expect I’ll suddenly begin collecting these video game cards. I can see them listed on eBay and think back.

Just don’t tell my beautiful wife that this vicarious collecting enjoyment is a remote possibility, or she might insist I enjoy it more often instead of bringing home another box (or more) of things to stuff in the closet.

It’s a sad, sad day when you realize that you’re as old as Les Nessman was.

Thanks for the blog post that led me to that reflection, Steve.

Sometime over the weekend, my Google Pagerank must have gone through the roof, as suddenly the number of hits via Web search went up fifty-fold.

So I feel compelled to add something fresh all the time to keep the robots happy.

Here’s a bit I did on Facebook:

Brian J. Noggle: If I got Heather a set of nice mixing bowls for Christmas, do you think she’d suspect I’d gotten them so I could use them?

Brian J. Noggle Because, honestly, I would. I’m getting tired of mixing in dog bowls.

Brian J. Noggle Oh, nuts, I just realized I’ve now got Springfield people on here who’ve eaten things I’ve baked.

I just want to emphasize the DOGS BOWLS WERE CLEAN.

Brian J. Noggle The dog’s tongue is like the cleanest animal tongue there is, you know.

That ought to get me some sweet Google hits for “mixing bowl” and “dog bowl”. You can buy them on Amazon:

Which is funny, actually: Missouri is one of the states where Amazon killed its associates program, so know, gentle reader, that I provide these links for your convenience, not my own remuneration.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to plot a science fiction story about an intelligent search engine that alters its pageranks to get bloggers to post more because it uses new content from small sources to learn about the human race and it trusts bloggers more than premium and often link-baiting Web sites. Go back to the ancient texts Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Short Circuit. The prophets warned us that the machines would manipulate us to provide them with input.

It’s August, and I just put on a sweatshirt.

I blame Climate Single Data Point in a Large Dataset That Nevertheless Only Captures A Small Sample of Data From A Short Interlude In A Very Long Time Series.

So I was cleaning out my car from a couple weeks’ worth of accumulated detritus, which typically includes a large number of children’s books, a stray article of children’s clothing, a child’s lunch box, wrappers from children’s snacks, children’s artwork/papers, and water bottles, when I uncovered this:

A Powerball ticket from October 9, 2004.

How did that get there?

It’s a bit of a mystery, considering the following:

* We did not own this vehicle in 2004.
* I have cleaned this vehicle out before.

I probably did pick up the occasional Powerball ticket in those days; I have certain ebbs and peaks (pardon the mixed metaphor) as my interest in the lottery waxes and wanes. The text on the ticket promotes watching the lottery on a St. Louis radio station, and I was living in the St. Louis area 10 years ago (as these very blog archives will attest).

Of course, I can’t look to this without reminiscing where I was ten years ago. It was on the eve of George W. Bush’s reelection. I had just started working from home as a computer consultant. We lived in Casinoport, and we did not have children. I was driving the pick-up that I still have, but my beautiful wife had not yet traded her Eclipse for the family SUV. I suppose I could go back to this blog’s archives for a day-by-day of what I was doing then, but I’m too lazy for that.

But as to how it got into this vehicle ten years later, I have no idea. The best theory I can come up with is that someone used it as a bookmark and that it fell out of a book; however, it wasn’t from a book I was reading. Perhaps a book my wife was reading? The vehicle itself is a 2004 model, and we bought it in St. Louis, so it’s possible, I suppose, that its first owner lost this ticket somewhere in the cabin infrastructure and it only now has resurfaced. But we bought the used truck from a dealer, so they cleaned it and polished it, and we’ve cleaned the interior ourselves, and we’ve had the car cleaned at least once by professionals. The ticket would have to have been lodged somewhere special to hide out for a decade in the SUV.

I don’t know. There is no clear explanation for it. This being the Internet, I’m going to have to guess something implausible, like a microwormhole.

Also, I’m pleased to note that it is not a winning ticket. That would have been too much.

6.8 Million People May Soon See Obamacare Rebates

More than 6.8 million Americans will get a refund from their health insurer this summer.

Total value of the rebates will be $332 million, with an average of $80 going to each family. They’ll be issued by August 1.

Thank the Affordable Care Act for the windfall. Under one of the law’s provisions, insurers must issue refunds if they spend more than 20% of what customers pay in premiums on administration and marketing expenses, instead of medical care.

Yeah, I got my $36 check with a letter mandated by law to remind me that Obama’s got my back.

Strangely, the letter from my insurer that said my health insurance was going up $200 a month did not mention the ACA.

I’m sure that’s an oversight.

10 Things Americans Waste Money On:

Things I do in italics:

1. Credit card interest (I pay them off monthly.)
    
2. Deal websites (Meh, never interested in them.)
    
3. Appetizers (Not often, anyway, but sometimes I’m hungry enough to eat the free bread, the appetizer, and the entree.)
    
4. ATM fees (Not often, anyway. Once a year when I’m away from my bank? And not recently, since I’ve forgotten my PIN.)
    
5. Overdraft fees (I have overdraft protection and pretty good cash flow these days.)
    
6. Speedy shipping (Faster than Amazon Prime? Who needs it? Also, I buy most of my music with AutoRip, which is instant.)
    
7. Designer baby clothes (No babies currently, and pretty much relied on Walmart and garage sales when I did.)
    
8. Unused gym memberships (An underused YMCA membership currently, but I’m nursing a strained adductor just like Grandpa.)
    
9. Premium cable packages (Here’s where the .5 comes in. I pay $10 a month for a sports package so I can see ball games. No movie channels or other tiers though.)
    
10. Daily coffee trips (Although I used to be guilty of daily coffee runs when I worked in downtown St. Louis, I work from home now, and the coffee trip is to the counter. I do spend a lot on K-cups, though. And Gevalia premium coffees.)

If this quiz were 10 Things Brian J. Wastes Money On, it would be:

1. A large garden that doesn’t yield more than it costs and that doesn’t really count much as a hobby because I don’t spend as much time as I’d like working in it.
2. Instant music purchases that get lost in the existing library and get listened to once or twice or when I remember them.
3. Buying new books when I have stacks of books to read. Also, buying (albeit cheaply) stacks of books when I have stacks of books to read.
4. Adopting and pampering pretty much any stray cats that come along. Although it’s not as bad as that, we have acquired four in the last year and have taken them to the vet multiple times.
5. New hats. I’ve spent $130 on Panama hats over the last year. I spent $40 on a fedora the year before. I am out of control.
6. Subscriptions to periodicals that come faster than I can read them.
7. Too frequent visits to Ziggie’s for breakfast.
8. Supplies for hobbies I might take up one day, but don’t. Although this was more of a problem in years past, I still sometimes pick up supplies for a hobby right at the time I end up putting the hobby down for a while.
9. A refined wine palatte. As the cash flow has improved, my taste in wines has gone from five dollar wines to ten dollar wines and beyond. I could curtail the wine ration and go back to the Yellow Tail now that the hideous 2012 vintage has passed from the retail scene.
10. Expensive coffees with Chock Full O’Nuts. I go through cost-cutting phases where I cut the coffee budget to the core. This is often followed by a ‘Hey, we’re doing okay, why don’t I get better coffee?’ period. We’re in the better coffee period now.

So how do you do on wasting money like most Americans or like Brian J.?

If you’re trying to give directions about a location in Branson, Missouri, if you say, “It’s on 76 by that tattoo parlor with the General Lee out front,” you’ll have to be a tad more specific.

Also note that it’s faster to travel down Highway 76 in Branson on Google Maps than it is to travel down Highway 76 in Branson itself. Unfortunately, both of the tattoo parlors with the General Lees we saw this weekend (which represents only 67% of the General Lees displayed on Highway 76 this weekend, which according to scientists is actually more General Lees than were present on the set of Dukes of Hazzard on any given day in 1981) did not have them out front when the Google Maps cars went by in 2013, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. And, hey, I’m some guy on the Internet. You can trust me.

I haven’t done one of these posts in a while, and although my desk is far cleaner in 2014 than in 2012, I still end up with an eclectic collection of odds and ends on it, including:

The April 28, 2011 edition of the New York Review of Books:

A number of years ago, when I was looking to publish my novel, I researched places that reviewed books and bought a number of magazines off the news stand for ideas where to send review copies of my book. Many of these languished in the magazine rack beside my reading chair for years because I don’t tend to read magazines in my reading chair. So when I recently came up with a job task that requires my computer’s full attention for a couple of snippets of minutes per hour, I brought this into the office for something to look at while my computer processed. Unfortunately, the essays are pretty in-depth, so it takes me a while to get through the ones I want to read.

A cape from a set of Superman pajamas, sized 4T::

This came from a set of pajamas my children wore when they were younger; sometimes, we removed the capes and threw them into a separate drawer. This one got orphaned when the boys outgrew the pajamas and we passed them onto someone else. Of course, I can’t just throw it out because it’s a perfectly good tiny cape. I was going to write a post about it as a future personal relic, but now I think I’ll use it in a craft where you’ll have to tug on it to ring a bell or something.

An annual pass to the Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield (expired):

We live a mile outside this national battlefield (less, actually, but there’s no gate at the closest point). So I always want to think that I’ll go there fairly often for walks or to enjoy its amenities, so every year (almost), I go up and buy an annual pass for $20. At that time, I might or might not actually go past the visitor’s center and into the battlefield itself. And then I don’t end up going again for another year or year and a half. I took this pass out of my wallet because it expired (last November), which means it’s time for me to go spend the $20 again. And perhaps go twice in a year. Some day.

A broken wind chime:

I picked this up at some garage sale or another some day in the past, and the twine holding the wind chimes on broke. Eventually, this migrated from the work bench in the garage to my desk since it’s a little string project that I could do quickly as a work break or something. Yeah, about that: I didn’t. I’ve misplaced the missing chimes, and the heavy decorative relief at the top serves as a paperweight that keeps credit card receipts from blowing all over the desk and office when I have the window open. So don’t expect it to be fixed any time soon.

One bottle of kitty downers (inverted):

We’ve found ourselves with yet another kitten, which means weeks sequestered in my office. The new kitten got a bottle of downers to calm him and keep him from jumping around madly while healing from the declaw operation. I’d put them in a cabinet, but taking something from the cabinet caused them to fall to the desktop upside down. I’m going to put them up again, but for now they’re on the desk.

Also often on my desk: Aforementioned sequestered kitten whose predations are rapidly shifting the items that can be classified as Things On My Desk and Things On My Floor.

To my cats, I’m a LEGENDARY HERO. When the eldritch and unholy vacuum cleaner, the chupagato, emerges from its primordial lair, I always meet it on the open plain of the floor to struggle and wrestle with the beast until it retreats again into the darkness of the hall closet.

Without me, surely they realize, the chupagato would suck them up.

Which is why they tolerate me.

As part of a Father’s Day craft, my six-year-old was asked a series of questions about his father which someone transcribed onto a piece of paper which my son decorated with stickers and his handwritten name.

He got the name and age right for me, and for my job, he answered “Office” which is a pretty fair description as I am not a professional hockey player.

However, when asked the question If my Dad was a superhero he would be[sic], my son replied Robin.

Now, it’s bad enough that my son did not choose a respectable Marvel superhero like Spider-Man, The Thing, Iron Man, Captain America, Quasar, or Speedball. No, he chose a DC superhero.

Worse, he chose a sidekick. A DC sidekick, I’d like to add. Not a respectable Marvel sidekick like Nomad, the Falcon, or Bucky.

But the unkindest cut of all: My children know who Nightwing is.

That’s right.

Not only am I a DC sidekick, albeit the best known sidekick in the entire DC galaxy (I refuse to call it a universe or mythos (which I call the Marvel milieu to put it on par with Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Norse mythologies, all of which the Marvel mythos has subsumed)).

But I’m not even the best Robin there is. I’m not the Dick Grayson Robin, I’m the Jason Todd Robin.

I don’t know what I’ve done to turn the child against me so.

Behold, the cartoonish Maison Martin Margiela Artisanal corset and veil embroidered with found objects featured in the most recent WSJ magazine:

It looks like that poor girl was first dipped in a glue vat and then fell into a junk drawer.

The model, the beautiful Sam Rollinson, looks as though she’s in on the joke with us.

Nobody would really buy something like that and wear it, ainna?

I don’t go dancing much these days, not that I ever did, but I really had only one set of moves.

I called them The Azathoth.

Because I danced like A GOD.

Also, because humans who viewed the eldritch and inarticulate gyrations to the unholy beat of the indifferent cosmos instead of the music tended to be stricken with madness at the sight of arms gyrithing like tentacles and a head nodding and grinning like an arisen Great Old One.

I was literally a terror on the dance floor.