2001-05-12 - 1:24 a.m.

Disposable Toys

Token weird referral: "Guerilla pictures" led someone to Liralyn's home page. That had to be a let down for them.

I feel very eclectic today- I have Green Day and Spock's Beard in adjacent positions on the CD changer. Yay me.

I spent the entire week in catch-up mode and today went much the same. My particular favorite was the call from my boss to resolve an issue we'd been going round on for a while. His decision boiled down to, "Well, I've procrastinated until I ran out of time, so I guess I'll do it your way." Thanks, man.

Then, off to Dwinn's bachelor party, which was fun. The crowd was so large I hardly got to speak to the guest of honor, but hey, it's a matter of principle, right?

After that, gun magazine binging at the bookstore. I have a theory that if I read about enough swanky new guns, I'll be unable to pick one, and therefore safe from spending money. I'll let y'all know how that goes.

Larmouth and I had an interesting discussion about guns today, and there may be a point there even for the gun-impaired. I was rhapsodizing over the slick Parkerized pump-action I had an eye on, and he told me that he liked his Benelli autoloader too well to ever go back to pumps. I could hardly argue with him, since a nice autoloader delivers a great deal of satisfaction with no mess and no fuss. On the other hand, I pointed out that with a pump or a bolt-action, you felt much more of the mechanism. Working a truly nice machine delivers a sort of satisfaction that less involving equipment can't deliver.

I think we've lost a lot of that satisfaction in the last twenty years. Computer keyboards and mice, cd players, even our cars and airplanes have been cut back in price and equipped with computer-controlled electronic failsafes. We have cool stuff, but we don't have craftsmanship.

Every year we lose a little more of that. Consider books vs e-books. Neal Stephenson had Cryptonomicon published on rough paper with ragged edges to create the sort of arcane feel that fit the tone of the book. How would he make such a decision for an e-book? Put pictures of ragged edges along the sides of the screen? Feh.

I don't know if there's any way we can fight this trend. Nobody seems to be getting rich on good keyboards, although there are a few companies out there that still make keyboards that have the glorious feel of an old Selectric. Perhaps we're all doomed to life with disposable toys. I buy as many of them as anyone, but sometimes it bugs me anyway.

Previous entry: Poor Mrs Landingham

Next entry: Sit up straight!