File under “Coolness” – A daily reading of the superb semi-fictional (i hope) Acerbia lead me to the witty Stiletto Philosphy, whose top link is none other than The Go Fish, who i suspect could be the most read Philly blogger (she was mentioned in the Inquirer article i kvetched about on CK’s birthday). It makes me happy that TGF’s blogger has become known enough that i find my way back to her from blogs in completely other circles, which i suppose isn’t surprising given her mammoth reading list.
Archives for January 2004
Yo Joe!
There’s something inescapably magical about GI Joes; i never seem to lose the urge to play with them, regardless of my increasing age. Those three and three quarter inch warriors were the ultimate in playtime passtimes — cheap, (dis)poseable, and anonymous enough in design that they could play multiple roles in any story. Your Joes didn’t have to take on the roles outlined in their cartoons and comic books; they didn’t have to play themselves.
The times i most miss have an army of pint sized heroes and villains to play with is after seeing a great fight scene. After the Matrix movies i was jonesing for Joes, and after Return of the King i was practically frothing at the mouth, wanting to go to my mother’s house to dig the guys up. Some web investigation proves that Joes lend themselves to more imaginations than just mine… Joe fans all around the net create comic-style dioramas to tell their original stories to the world!
Finding things like these make me wish that the internet was around when i was a kid. For one thing, you can track down any figure you want in a matter of minutes, making it oh-so-tempting to rebuild your dream army for just a couple hundred dollars (especially with the new and apparently unlimited Funskool reprints of the 80s figures). I had never even seen the elusive Cover Girl before i found YoJoe a few years ago (to this day i have dreams about finding that figure in a toy store). Forget eBay for this; the best sites i’ve found include Guru Planet (a little pricey, but well stocked), Small Joes (good for newer figures), and Joe For Sale (which even offers its very own GI investment opportunity, which hits a soft spot, considering my Record Kingdom experience).
One element of the Joes that i always had a conceptual problem with the fact that Cobra Vipers were sold one-per-package; wasn’t the point that they were a single trooper in an anonymous multitude? I suppose i was supposed to buy four or five of each viper to construct a suitable army, but i don’t think my mother would have financially supported that habit. However, other Joe fans built armies in this fashion, and now Hasbro has released it’s first army building set of the popular Cobra robot BAT for less than the $18 it would have originally taken to buy these figures separately. These figures are a hit with collectors (especially since original BATS pull a hefty price on the resale market).
All of these online Joe-resources makes me want to blow a couple hundred dollars on some vintage plastic, but so far i have resisted. When would i find the time to play with them, anyhow? Surely it would only serve to take away from future Trios. But this exercise just left me drooling about all the childhood toys i could re-own via the internet; i could even get a new Bionic Six Meg, who played Madonna on her GI Joe USO tour!
Trio: Season 4, #3
Bucket Seat, I Think I’m Paranoid, A Long Time Since
My wants have always exceeded my needs, just as much as my reach has always exceeded my grasp. That’s the kind of person i am; always looking to the next step rather than delighting in the one i’m on.
I used to boast that i wrote so well because i wrote so much … 3000-5000 words a day. At the time it was entirely true; between blogging, record reviews, academic work, and personal projects i really was generating that much wordage daily, even if a lot of it was getting scrapped. It occasionally lead to a glut on this page, but i always had an easy time saying what i meant in a very assured voice.
Recently i’ve moved so far away from my three-thousand-word habit that when i sit down to write too much comes tumbling out. Each thing i want to say branches into five other things, and suddenly i’m creating more strands that i can plausibly weave together. I feel like the result is unfocused no matter how much i revise it because the intent is corrupt — i wasn’t sure what i wanted to say in the first place, so i never said it the right way in the end.
In a way this speechlessness posing as verbal diarrhea has expanded into my conversational life: i’m majoring in journalism, yet when people ask me what i want to do i hem and haw, eventually saying that i want to be in corporate communications. Do i? Well, maybe. But that’s not what i really want.
What’s completely shocking to me is that i’ve always known what i really want. What’s completely shocking is that it never occurred to me until about an hour ago. Elise went to bed but i wasn’t tired, and i eventually became engrossed in a very comprehensive X-Men FAQ. All throughout the FAQs explanation of dangling plot threads and character origins, i kept thinking Well, that was dumb; they could have accomplished it much easier this way. And, suddenly, there was a click.
Narrating. It’s as dumb and simple as that, and i have too many examples to even invoke here, including my seven-year-old propensity for authoring short stories on a manual typewriter, my oft-revised but never finished teenaged superhero novel, my late-blooming song-writing bent, and my college devotion of blogging. Narrating is what i’ve always wanted to do, but been too afraid to say. From an age as early as eight i secretly wanted to be a novelist, but knew i would be shot down if i ever mentioned such an artistic endeavor in the presence of my family. Ever since i started writing my own songs i’ve wanted to make my habit a professional one, but have lacked the time and the talent to do so.
I don’t have the plots to be a novelist, or the guts to be a singer-songwriter, but i still have my words. I’ve always said i want to appear in Rolling Stone once before i die, and not having accomplished it by the age of twenty-two doesn’t mean i have to submit to a lifetime of trolling my way into the letters column. For each of the endless times that i’m going to be asked what i want to do between now and June, i want to have the nerve to say “write,” and the backup of those three-thousand-words a day. I suppose we’ll just have to see where that takes me.
Shit, was that a resolution?
Resolving
I am at once against resolutions and constantly making them. One explains the other; i don’t believe that you can form a habit or make a decision solely because of a little bit of resolve, so i eschew typical New Years’ fare. On the flipside, you do need resolve to get something done, and it has to start somewhere.
I compromise — i resolve to do things in my head: drink less, do more, waste less, walk more. The interior list spirals into infinity, with each day bringing a new resolution whose name i dare not ever speak, less i infer that i might actually take action in its direction.
I don’t dispute that a new year offers a unique chance to put the right foot forward in terms of new habit; after all, one of the hardest parts of starting something new is starting. And, not coincidentally, i have stored up a few initiatives whose scope dwarfs my daily resolutions that have been waiting to get started. Of course, to resolve to do them would be redundant, as i already have done so on some level and have obviously failed. Still, i want to get these things done — they will make me a better person if i do them correctly. So, without further ado, here are some things which i am not resolving to do this year:
1. Know What I’m Spending – I am historically lackadaisical at best about tracking my monetary expenditures; i have a great idea of what i can and can’t afford, but if i had to cut out $50 a month of spending i would hardly know where to start. For years i’ve resolved to get such a project underway, but never bothered to form a habit that would last me more than a few days. This time i think i’ve done it right — little notecards in my wallet, and a meticulously synced up Quicken account. The method is there; all that remains to be seen is if i can remember to track everything.
2. Be Aware of What I Eat – Whether i choose to thinly disguise it or not at any given time, i have some very persistent weight and body image issues. Yes, i am one of those seemingly thin people who whines about “how fat i am,” and how i “just want to lose a few pounds.” I’ve tried to check this problem with exercise, but it’s a hard habit to form and one that easily indulges excessive and abusive behavior on my part. As such, my alternative is to understand what i eat — not just calories and carbohydrates, but serving sizes and recurrences. So far i’m having luck with Fit Day, which tracks a lot of detail without assuming any sort of diet or fitness craze. At worst i’m creating yet another echo of my life as so much electronic detritus, but at best i have the chance to learn how my twenty-something metabolism really works.
3. Use Time Smarter – I like to do a lot of things. I like to play guitar. I like to blog. I like to spend time with Elise. I like to do well in school. I like all of these things, but i don’t do any of them as well as i should because i am diluting them with each other. Tonight i spent three hours using the internet to catch up on current events when i really should have been doing any of the four previous things, but i hate to deprive myself of knowledge given the time to acquire it. The problem, really, is that i am too capricious with my time … i am most likely to do the thing i most recently resolved to do, even if i resolved to do something else all day. This is why i still don’t have a new album, why i don’t post every day, why i always have something to do when i’d rather be with Elise, and why i am always flirting with anything other than A’s. I need keep my overarching priorities in mind and not allow my current impulses to eclipse them.
In retrospect, these three resolutions seem like a quarter-life redux of childhood anal retentiveness, but in effect they’re my attempt to make a better use of my life. I’ve spent almost five years as a college student, to varying degrees of enjoyment and fulfillment, and the entire time i’ve envied people who enjoyed themselves more or fulfilled themselves better. This June i’ll become a real, honest-to-goodness adult, and i don’t want to go there not enjoying myself and feeling unfulfilled; i want to start on the right foot. And, to do that, i need to find out which proverbial foot that will be.