Sometimes you can feel a sense of excitement or anticipation at the prospect of purchasing or obtaining a new item. The following things have been examined for their likelihood to provide a momentary distraction and sense of enhancement, and found wanting.
A new Kindle. I have a Kindle. It shows pages of books. I’m sure there are versions that are brighter and faster. I’ve no need. It’s only for beach reading anyway, and those instances are far between. But, if I got the latest and bestest that had a screen that took more than .7 seconds to respond, and wasn’t a slug-on-a-glue-strip when accessing menus, I would, at some future point on the beach, be relieved of momentary irritation. So it’s in the running, but not likely.
A new Apple Watch. Mine is old, and the battery limps through the day. But it does what I want it to do, and there is nothing in the suite of abilities in the newer models that seems necessary. It can tell when you stop breathing at night! Oh don’t be such a nag. Eventually the battery will go, and a new one will step in, so it’s in the running, but not soon.
A new MacBook Air. It comes in blue now! And it’s thinner. I think the new one is so thin you can use it to jimmy locks, like a credit card. It also has the M4 chip, and I have the M2 chip. (I wonder if they’ll skip the M5 chip because it decides to use live fire during Federation battle simulations.) Speed is not a problem on my current laptop. It is snappy and brisk. But it is not light blue. I think this might produce at least a week of noticeable purchase-related satisfaction if I traded in my current laptop for the new shiny toy. Definitely in the running, I guess
A new TV. No, I’m fine. I’m sure I could find one that has blacker blacks, and enables me to see the filaments in the retinas of the actors if I get close enough, but no. Not in the running at all.
Recent acquisitions that did provide lasting delight:
A Sony Bluetooth speaker. It replaced a ten-year-old model whose battery relinquished the lemur, as the Romans might say. A ghost was called a “lemur,” you know. A not particularly helpful shade. They had a three-day festival to banish lemures, and according to Google, the anti-ghost rituals “included throwing black beans and repeating incantations, with the head of the household performing these actions.” I wonder if Dad was really into it, or just went through the motions for fun, gathering the children, encouraging them to throw black beans into the dark in the garden. You can just imagine Roman Dad picking up his little daughter and tousling her hair and being the Doting Model of Roman Fatherhood, then retiring to his study to read Pliny by candlelight before heading to the kitchen to have his way with a slave. Us moderns who study Rome and find the history fascinating would be disappointed on a daily basis. Don’t do that. Really? Why not? Oh, where do I begin. Never mind. Going back to my own time now.
Anyway, the Sony speaker is identical to the one that perished, with a few minor cosmetic alterations. It has a better activation sound, though - a deep ka-chunk that’s very satisfying. So that’s nice.
The car. A neighbor this morning said she loved the color, just loved it. The car sings a soft melody when I get in, and I find myself saying ‘Morning, darling in response. It is not as sporty and low-slung as the car my wife now drives, but it has more oomph and solidity, and get along very well.
Bottom line: my appetite for novelty is low. I wonder what this means.
We were trying to unmask a malevolent theatrical mind -eader who works large stadiums, and operated from a motorized platform, because he supposedly lacked the use of his legs. I took my dad along. Wee were standing up in the back of the auditorium stadium by the door, he dramatically pointed a finger at my father and demanded to know an answer to complete his routine, and my father refused to say anything, which threw him off. I had thought he was pointing at me and had ducked into the shadows. I was also trying to get a picture in my phone of an extremely vivid site many miles away in which the sky was intensely blue and filled with birds.
LANCE MEATJAW. I wonder if this is an early iteration of Tiny. And I'm not sure if they're smoking enough.
I suspect this relies on something well-known at the time that is lost to us now. No, I don't remember the solution! That's why we're doing them all again from the beginning.
Says Wikipedia: "Chocolate City is the third album by the funk band Parliament, released in 1975. It was a "tribute to Washington D.C.", where the group had been particularly popular. The album was very popular in the capital city, selling 150,000 copies alone there."
I admire Clinton but didn't particularly like his work.
RIGHT ON
Odd to hear Gary IN claimed with pride.
That will do. Another roller-coaster week of Rage, Depression, Numbness, and Indifference. Now for a weekend of the accustomed rewards, and the inevitable bleak moment on Sunday when I'm vacuuming and the rush of Monday intrudes, but I'll survive. How about you? Pancakes this weekend? No? Why not?
