Good little capitalist

[jere7my]

Sometimes, when I am sad, I buy things. Things that make noise or are brightly colored or are otherwise distracting are key. To that end, in the last 48 hours I've bought:

• The Runes of the Earth, the new Thomas Covenant book. I read the last one, White Gold Wielder, when it first came out; I was 11.
  
• Myst III: Exile and Myst IV: Revelation, both in one box for $40.
  
• Elvis Costello's latest, The Delivery Man.
  
• TMBG's latest, The Spine.
  
• The Return of the King for Gamecube.
  
• Paper Mario: the Thousand-Year Door, a Mario RPG, also for Gamecube.
  
• Tastycakes, honest-to-God, right here in Ohio. Butterscotch Krimpets. Mmm, baby.
  

K. and I were ostensibly out shopping for her niece Olivia's birthday, and we did indeed get Olivia some nice gifties: K'Nex for kids, including big googly eyes and wacky feet, and soap you can draw with. (I did not buy the $100 Lego Millennium Falcon, however sweeet it was.) We also got a new phone, since our previous phone's buttons required 800 pounds of pressure per square inch to depress, and a lamp you'd think would look tacky, but in fact fits perfectly with our living room decor. It has a wrought iron base and a deep wine-colored shade with little black jewels dangling from the rim. Sort of a bordello lamp, but somehow it works.

In other news, I finally fixed our futon frame. The problem was this: one rear strut was slowly being pushed backward by the weight of the futon (and us, when we leaned back), since the only thing resisting this weight was a tongue of wood glued into a slot in the direction of the applied force. (To recreate this at home, stick your own tongue between two fingers, then have somebody pull your head backwards while trying to hold on to your tongue. It's fun!) The tongue was slowly slipping out, a millimeter at a time, over the course of weeks. I hammered the strut back into place, drilled a countersunk hole down from the top, and power-screwed a long wood screw through the armrest and into the top of the strut—i.e., perpendicular to the applied force. (To recreate this at home, drive a wood screw through your tongue and your two fingers before your friend yanks your head back.) Seems to be holding nicely, which is good, since K.'s parents are supposed to sleep there tomorrow night.

Comments

[tirerim.livejournal.com]

The Falcon is indeed sweet, but it cannot compare to the Star Destroyer. Yum. I'm still half-considering getting it, on the grounds that I haven't bought any Legos in about eight years, so I could justify a splurge.

[miraling.livejournal.com]

I have one of those 3-D puzzles of the Millennium Falcon that I should try to put together, like, this decade (I never managed in the last one).

[irilyth]

You read the Thomas Covenant books when you were eleven? Wow. (That seems young to me.) Although now that I think about it, I probably tried the first at around that age, but I don't think I liked it.

I picked up The Spine recently, and can't decide if I like it.

My friend Erich has the Star Destroyer. Holy crap, legos.

The first tongue experiment sounds kinda fun. The second one, less so.

disjointed thoughts

[miraling.livejournal.com]

I do the same thing with buying things when I'm sad (this might explain why I have so much stuff, inc. so many video games and so many bright and/or shiny and/or noise-making objects, all of which are distracting), though there's a point where it crosses over into being too difficult to leave the house to buy things (but that I'd qualify more as depression).

I didn't realize there were so many Mysts. I never got through the first one, or the second one (don't ask my why I got the second one after I didn't get through the first one. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe I was sad.)

I really want to get one of those enormous lego kits. There was this really cool dragon-looking one that I saw at FAO Schwartz a few years back but they were all out and all of the websites were all out and I couldn't find it anywhere for less than a really large amount of money, so I gave up on that.

I have a super-enormous K'nex kit somewhere, and a super-enormous Erector Set somewhere, and I think I will dig them out and build things with them. Perhaps a Ferris Wheel.

<3L.

Re: disjointed thoughts

[irilyth]

Have you ever played with Zometool? I like those a lot. (I haven't tried K'nex or Erector.)

Re: disjointed thoughts

[miraling.livejournal.com]

I'm not familiar with Zometool -- what's it like?

Re: disjointed thoughts

[irilyth]

http://www.zometool.com/ is their web site, and http://www.zometool.com/about/what.html has some basic info about what the bits are. I like them because the things you build tend to have interesting and sometimes unexpected aspects of natural symmetry, which I always think is cool.

[(Anonymous)]

What do you think of Delivery Man? I've listened a couple of times and so far there aren't any songs I really adore. It's OK, and there are bits I like, but nothing knocked me out.

            ,
-Vardibidian.

[foxfour.livejournal.com]

as far as cyan goes, nothing beats riven. it was better than myst, and better than anything that came after. i say that partially because it's the only one i beat, and partially because it had the best graphics and most complete-seeming world.