Category: Life

I stopped by an antique mall yesterday. I’m not sure why I stop by antique malls, as I’m not one to decorate my home in antiques (except old books, of course). The only thing I tend to buy at antique malls is LP record albums, and the number of records of particular interest (1940 through 1960s jazz, big band, swing, and easy listening) diminishes as the houses of my grandparents’ generation empty out.

You don’t tend to find the things I like to collect in antique malls, and when you do, well….

I spotted the three Atari cartridges on a shelf with some old toys, so I flipped one over to see how much they were.

$3.00 each.

For Combat, Defender, and RealSports Baseball.

If they’d have been a quarter each, I would have bought them because I’m a hoarder as much as a collector, but $3.00 was a bit too much. That’s pricing for grandparents who think that their grandchildren might like them or for hipsters who want to repurpose (ahem, “upcycle”) them into art work or something. That’s not for collectors, who know these three cartridges are worth pennies each or two copies of Frampton Comes Alive.

I also passed up a couple of Coleco faux arcade tabletop games from the 1980s, Frogger and Ms. Pac Man, because they were priced at $48.50 each. Which is about the original retail price as I recall.

As you probably know, part of what I like in collecting is not just getting the things, but getting the things inexpensively. Which is harder and harder in the Internet age, brothers and sisters, since things tend to rise up to their market values on the Internet and in many garage sales and estate sales.

And beyond in formal antique malls and flea markets.

For a quick lesson in the subtle differences in the language of wives, one can do as I have done and suggest home furnishings found in this catalog.

“You know, we don’t really watch that television in the living room. If we removed it and moved that beat-up old trunk with the old magazines in it, we would have room for a Big Buck Hunter HD Super Deluxe instead.”

No.

“Honey, how about a Star Wars Battle Pod? They’re only $30,000. That Extultate Justi blog guy would envy us.”

No.

“What about a twin Mario Kart Arcade GP DX? The boys could play together.”

No.

“Did you know there’s an arcade version of Jetpack Joyride? You know the boys pester you all the time to play that on your phone? If we got one of those, they’d leave you alone.”

No.

Did you see the subtle differences in these examples? Maybe not, for Wife is very inflectional language. But rest assured, each of these Nos was subtly different, conveying different shades of meaning. For instance, I am pretty sure the No response to the Big Buck Hunter was, “Maybe, if you paint the living room first and sell enough QA magazine articles.”

I’ve been a bit of a gym rat, off and on, for fifteen years, and although I do just enough to keep myself sorta toned and in better shape than my chair-centric lifestyle would otherwise allow, I tend to think of my self as a, well, gym rat. Regardless of whether this is true or not.

Which is why I’ve begun to use the “And I can’t stop saying ‘bro,’ bro.” line from a recent DirecTV commercial as a personal motto.

I say it after sets at the gym. I say it as a greeting. Frankly, I find myself mumbling it to myself at other seemingly random times.

As an added benefit, when I’m mumbling this to myself at the gym, nobody asks if he or she can work in between my sets.

Also, as a side note, in written communications, I’ve generally used the more Californian “brah” spelling.

The New York Times covers the rise of competitive longsword fighting on the East coast:

Outstanding. And practical for the post-apocalyptic world.

(Link via Facebook feed.)

I recently received a large box of Atari 2600 cartridges from a friend who apparently got the box when a video game shop divested itself of its Atari 2600 stock. So I integrated the cartridges with my existing set, and I can say definitively that I own at least 350 Atari 2600 Cartridges.

I say at least because it’s entirely possible if not probable there are more cartridges scattered among the Ataris in their boxes.

If you’re a complete geek, you’ll want to see the list below. Continue reading “In 1983, This Was Unimaginable Riches” →

When I’m doing cardio work, inside my head, I’m saying to myself, “I need to run.” And when I rest, I say to myself, “I need a doctor.”

It’s from this old Budweiser commercial:

You see, not all of my jokes require an understanding of Gabriel Marcel’s basic philosophy and software development.

Buy in bulk and pay more at Walmart:

That is, a two pack for $9.58 or two one packs for $9.56.

I don’t know if it’s Walmart setting these prices or Land o Lakes setting this price (for I’ve seen the same thing at the grocery store, where the one pound four stick pack is a couple cents more than the one pound eight one-half stick packs).

However, it does rely on a certain inability to do basic calculations to make it work.

Or haste. Or trusting that big packs are cheaper than small packs.

But still.

People call me cynical. I show you the world, and it is often as I expect.

Ross Douthat discovers something I learned eight years ago:

First, a critic’s confession: Since becoming a father, I can no longer quite trust my emotional reactions at the movies. Parenthood stretches the carapace around your feelings thin, makes the lump rise more quickly in your throat, turns the waterworks on even when the material is maudlin, cheap, heavy-handed. It makes you respond too willingly to the movies’ reliable, predictable tricks — the soaring score, the swooping camera, the child in peril, the unlooked-for reunion. Your critical faculties remain — your mind still knows what’s cornball, still recognizes manipulation — but your heart becomes a sucker.

To be honest, I’ve always been a wee bit sentimental so that brothers in danger kinds of tropes connected with me–for Pete’s sake, were I to admit I saw Legends of the Fall, I’d have to admit that the scene searching for the brother on a World War I battlefield filled me with near existential dread (and I don’t even talk to my brother(s) often enough).

But having children did something else to me entirely. I found myself with a lump in my throat singing patriotic songs to my children, and I also find the Stephen King child-in-jeopardy trope more gripping.

A cynical person on the Internet might say fatherhood is just a scam perpetuated by society on men to sell schmaltzy, sentimental music and movies.

But a father would not.

The current issue of Forbes Life has an article about a Manhattan hat store:

This is such a dead art that all of the people who know how to do it are actually dead,” jokes Ryan Wilde, the director of millinery at New York’s historic J.J. Hat Center, as she adjusts a bright orange fedora. “There’s no one to ask.”

But as the 34-year-old Wilde explains it, that’s half the fun of her work. Her decadelong career has been filled with experimentation and boundary pushing. “I love when a client walks in here and they’re like, “What can we do?’ ” she says. “ I like making it happen. I like challenging myself. I like being afraid to make something.”

The online article doesn’t include the photos that the magazine does, but, Heavens to Betsy, it almost makes me wish I lived in NYC just so I could go to that hat store.

Here in the Midwest, hat stores are pretty rare; there’s one I visited in Kansas City last year that’s good, and Donge’s used to be good in Milwaukee before it closed up.

I’m sure I have previously noted I’ll buy shirts off the rack and slacks and jeans from the stack at Walmart without trying them on, but if I get into a hat store, I have to try on pretty much every fedora in the store before selecting one after much consideration.

So perhaps it’s best I generally have to order hats by mail these days. The actual elapsed time including days of reviewing options and several go-rounds of ordering, trying, and returning is probably more efficient than me going into a hat shop and browsing.

We like to save a little money, or enjoy the illusion thereof, by buying refill bottles of window cleaning products at the local warehouse club store. However, each of the refill bottles comes with a spray bottle of its own as though you were that excited about the product that you were going to try it for the first time and buy a bunch of it.

And, being as I am, I can’t throw out a perfectly good spray bottle especially since there’s likely to be a small amount of cleaning agent in the bottle and I have the means to refill the bottle.

As such, we have six partially filled bottles of Windex in various locations throughout the house.

Including two in the master bathroom alone

Face it, I’ve got more Windex now than Nia Vardalos’s father. I’ve got enough freestanding Windex bottles that, if a hockey team showed up and wanted to do my windows and mirrors, they wouldn’t have to share bottles.

And the worst part?

The more bottles I have to refill, the faster I have to buy another refill bottle…and its attendant new spray bottle.

They are working together and reproducing in their own fashion, people. Wake up before the Windex army makes its final assault!

This isn’t the 21st century juvenile science fiction of the middle 1900s promised us. No, this is the 21st century of custom fashion surgical face masks:

Oh, how I laugh about it now. But in a couple years, when the 21st century resembles the 21st century promised to us by post-apocalyptic 1980s films, I might very well wish I had something like it.

When I say funny little hats and tight pants, of course you think mime, but in reality, mimes already laugh at those other people in funny hats and tight pants, serious bicyclists. Now, the serious bicyclists have someone to laugh at: Elliptigo riders:

It’s a bicycle with pedals that mimic the workings of an elliptical. And this ad indicates one is expected to ride this on the street. Heck, even serious road recumbent bike riders are looking at this and saying it goes against the laws of nature.

But it’s a real thing, apparently. Briefly.

Some of you are asking “Isn’t your wife a serious bicyclist?” This is true. However, it is also true that she does not look funny in tight clothing. Also, she looks cute in hats of any sort except martial arts sparring headgear, in which she looks cute and like she’s going to punch one in the throat.

The very things that irritate me most in the day-to-day living are the first things I forget tomorrow.

I just wish knowing this would make me less irritated today.