Pastime of the Past

Two incidents in only a day has brought me to the conclusion that collecting is either a lost or dying pastime. Which makes this a perfect subject for Tasteful Thursday. I have made good progress on obtaining all the Garbage Pail Kids cards. There is still a long way to go with them but I am happy to say I now have more than half of them. It's tricky. I have been trying to get the sets through online auctions and have found I am not the only one out there trying to get them. But it's been fun trying to find the best deals and it is a joy when they finally come in the mail. I've been putting them into card holders and feeling like a proper dork doing so. But it is fun looking at them and sharing them with others who can appreciate them, which for the most part are only guys who fall between the ages of 26 and 30.

It's this whole business of collecting cards has sparked some interesting reflections on today's youth. When I was purchasing the card holders, the young clerk asked "Do you have baseball cards or something?" "These are for a collection of Garbage Pail Kids." "Is that like a card game?" "No, they are just collectible cards, like baseball cards but fun and enjoyable to look at." "Oh I see, so these are an investment." "No, I don't want to sell them." "Then what do you do with them?" "I enjoy them. They're just something fun to look at and collect. Like a hobby. No games, no money, just something to enjoy and maybe share with a future son or friends." At this point I literally got a stare, so I told him to have a good night and he broke out of the stare and wished me the same and I left.

Then I showed them to Sarah, who likewise was having difficulties. In this case she never experienced collecting. Her older brothers never collected anything. And she never had a doll collection or anything like that. I pointed out that while I also did not have any collections as a child, there were many things I enjoyed and this happened to be one of them. Like I didn't have a comic book collection but I enjoyed reading them. But collecting can be enjoyable and relaxing. And I think that's lost on many people nowadays. With everything going electronic, it's hard to find many physical objects that people would think of collecting. People don't need to collect the albums of their favorite singer when they can just purchase everything in a digital format. And some people will say that's great, because it saves space, and most of those collections just collect dust. Well that's true, but in moderation having a few special items to share with others is nice. No one wants to go to a home where there is nothing of interest to be seen. So I have my cards. Put them on a coffee table and you've got a great accenting piece.

Now this is Tasteful Thursday, not Terribly Cluttered Thursday. There is a good taste limit to how large a collection can be. In my opinion I think that limit is when you can no longer appreciate the individual aspects of the collection. For example, take a comic book series. If you have 1,000 issues in that series, it would be very difficult to enjoy them as individuals. It has likely gotten to the point where you are collecting the comics for the sake of collecting the comics. The enjoyment of them as individuals is gone, because there are too many to enjoy. It's the point where to basically everyone else the collection has become too big but the collector can't come to realize this. My cards are going to fit into one manageable binder. They aren't going to fill 100 of them.

If you noticed I mentioned Sarah saw the cards. Yep, we are still hanging out. In fact we even hung out a few times since she saw them, so they didn't chase her away! And I happily think she liked looking at the cards I had to show. The idea of collecting was foreign to her, but I think she was able to come to an appreciation of the enjoyable nature of it.

Cuddly Canines and Ferocious Felines

Recently I have been learning how not to talk to girls. Sarah has been my primary tutor in this very difficult subject area. A little research for this post, has taught me she prefers to use operant conditioning. Respondant conditioning is used to modify a reflexive behavior. Whereas operant conditioning is when the stimulus is applied to modify a voluntary behavior.

There's an important difference between voluntary and involuntary behavior. Both for the person exhibiting the behavior and the person observing the behavior. For the person exhibiting the behavior he could be easily mis-diagnosed if the person observing the behavior is not professionally trained. And it is entirely possible the observer may be the exhibitor. Like a person who scratches a mosquito bite so much that it breaks open. That may be an involuntary or a voluntary behavior depending on the situation. And so a mis-diagnosis could lead to greater frustration if little progress is made at modifying the behavior.

And then for the observer the two types of behavior can lead to different emotions. For example, it is easy to have patience with someone who involuntarily has difficulties with a behavior. Like no decent person is going to scream at someone with someone who has tourettes and has trouble finding the will to keep fighting it (if that is even an acceptable treatment which it probably isn't). But it is easy to get frustrated with someone who voluntarily behaves a certain way and decides to stop trying to change.

Finally all of this can be terribly frustrating for the person who is mis-diagnosed and doesn't know it. For example, pretend a person with an involuntary behavior is said to voluntarily exhibit that behavior. And then the exhibitor gets weary of trying to change that behavior. The observer will likely get frustrated, and the exhibitor may be reduced to shame, when in actuality the exhibitor has nothing to be ashamed of and the observer may have nearly infinite patience if it was known the exhibitor was only involuntarily acting.

So when Sarah tries to help my speech towards ladies we first must determine if my behavior is voluntary or involuntary. What I'm doing here is trying to turn this around. And for some reason I do not think I'm winning this argument. And I admit I have learned some lessons. In particular, I have learned you must not poke fun at girls. Not directly or indirectly. Now they will say that this is nonsense. You just have to not tease them in an offensive manner or about a sensitive subject. However, I have found girls to find all things sensitive and touchy. So it is best to just not tease them in any manner whatsoever. You would fare better teasing a pit bull with a steak.

As for Sarah, she is using operant conditioning, and so far she has continued to stick with me. Now a rule of the universe seems to be that a man will find no end to the ways in which he can test a woman's patience. And so far Sarah's has held out. Let us pray it continues to stay strong.

Card Collecting

After getting that marvelous book, I've been thinking about what things I consider treasures. These don't have to be monetarily worth much. Instead I'm basing my decision on things that don't get old. And I am purposely leaving living things and food out of this.

So far my list is rather small. But in some ways I think that may be a good thing. If I took great joy from a ton of objects it could mean several things. First off, it could mean I'm overly sensitive. I would rather not shed tears of joy everytime I see something I like. We can call this the double rainbow mentality.

Second it could mean I'm just way to attached to material objects. If I everything I have would be lost in a fire, hopefully the only things I would be upset about losing are things that relate to my family or friends like photos or letters. Now I actually fall into this second category a bit. Because I would be upset at losing my book, and the other few treasures I have. But I think so long as I don't mind losing something like my TV (although I do sort of consider that a treasure due to it's rarity), that is pretty good.

Third it could mean I don't have enough friends. I once went to a house that held a number of college students. One of them lived in the basement of the house. I never met him but for some reason I had to go in the basement, and I saw many of his belongings. It was a little boy's dream come true. I about fainted. It was full of all my favorite video games, and legos. I remember actually gaping in awe at the site. Then I got sad, and I told my friend, whoever this person is, he doesn't get out much does he. And my friend said yes. The owner of all those amazing things had very few friends.

But I'm sensational and those three categories don't apply to me. So let's get to the fun stuff, at least for me. I thought about listing all the things I have that I consider to be treasures, but thought that might bore you. Then I thought about making it general in scope, like what I consider to be the things that others should treasure. But that seemed like it would take to long and this also isn't Tasteful Thursday. And then I came to my decision. Since I've already talked about the book, I decided to share one more new treasure that I'm currently working on obtaining.

As a small child my Aunt introduced me to my older cousin's card collection. And I thought it was about the most wonderful thing I ever saw at that young point in my life. And since then I've always thought it would be wonderful to make a complete collection of that particular type of collectible cards. The art design is top notch, with creatively short clever titles. For example here is a picture of the card entitled 'Babbling Brooke'.

I think there is no disagreeing how incredible those cards are. Unfortunately there were 15 original sets, with about 88 cards each, and getting all of them will be challenging. But I'm trying.

Swans Are Hard To Name

Growing up, my friends and I had a favorite book.



I think we enjoyed it so much because we really didn't want to read much and this book has fantastic illustrations that contain clues to a mystery. The puzzles are straight forward to solve, but require a good bit of time to both figure them out and even find them since they are hidden on the pages. When we were in the fourth grade, and discovered this book for the first time, it was really fun for us all. There are other books that use the same formula. But the puzzles are meant for adults and are much harder. So hard the fun aspect is sort of removed due to the sheer difficulty.

Despite liking it so much, I never owned a copy. Well the other day I was in a book store and I noticed my childhood page turner on display and was curious to see why this book out of all the others in the store was on a special display. I noticed right away it looked like an old copy, and when I flipped to the beginning I saw that it had been signed. It was a first edition signed copy! For me this was like finding a treasure.

Later I found out that maybe it's not very rare. But nevertheless I am still really happy to have it.

A Whale of a Story

A few weeks ago I purchased a bottle opener. I've never had one before and had a hard time finding one in the stores that I was pleased with. But eventually I found the one I know have. It's a whale whose mouth and tail can be used to open bottles. After purchasing it I discovered this whale was more about form than function, but it can be used, with a little effort, to open my pop bottles so I guess I'm okay with it. Part of the reason I got it was because I think it's really cool looking. Like if you were to just put it on a table you might not know right away that it is supposed to be used to open bottles.

I brought it home and hung it on my wall by putting two nails in the wall that the whale's tail can hang from. And there it sat, occasionally taken down when I needed it for my pop, or when I showed it to others. The last time I had it down was two weeks ago when I showed it to Sarah when she stopped by for that piece of apple pie.

So two weeks later, last night, I am in my apartment waiting for my stories to start, and just flipping through channels to see if anything interesting happens to already be on, when I come across a show on exorcisms. I never watch those paranormal shows, but for some reason I decided to flip this on and see what it had to say. And I was pleased with it, mainly because they were only interviewing Catholic or Greek Orthodox preists, and despite all the bad press I still trust them more than pretty much anyone else I see on TV. So I figured this could be a legitmate show on exorcisms. And I recalled reading a few months back that the Church had been working with Discovery on such a show and I thought this might be it.

After one particularly creepy segment I called home to tell my parents they might want to turn it on. I find myself a little skeptical, especially of anything on TV, but as I was sitting there in my apartment, alone at night, the show was sufficiently creeping me out. And I wanted to share the experience with others. So I call home, and my Dad picks up. As I start discussing the show with him, I hear a loud bang in the kitchen and then a couple seconds worth of loud constant noise, followed by silence. It was loud enough that my Dad heard it too.

As I've previously mentioned, lately I've been working out. I attribute my running to the fact that I did not have a heart attack last night. Because when I heard that terrible noise, in an already creeped out state, my heart started pumping a mile a minute and I broke out in a sweat. To me it sounded like my ice-maker had decided to drop a ton of ice into the bucket, and that bucket then fell through the freezer down into the refrigerator where it crashed into my food and shelves. But then I thought of two things. One, my ice-maker was turned off. Two, that was a completely insane idea.

Heart racing, I decided to peek into my kitchen. Doing this I noticed something black and small on my floor by the laundry doors. My laundry room happens to be directly attached to my kitchen. Think of my kitchen as a long skinny rectangle with three openings. You have one of the smaller sides as an entrance, the laundry doors make up the other smaller sides, and then on one of the longer sides by the laundry room doors you have another entrance.

It turned out that small black object on the floor, against my laundry room doors was my whale. The thing is that I have it hanging on that little piece of wall on the next to the opening on the other side of the rectangle. So it had managed to fall off the wall, and then slide across my entire kitchen floor until it hit the doors and stopped.

Now it is entirely possible that I did a poor hanging job and that due to the vibrations that occur on the wall do to doors slamming and people walking that the whale naturally fell off. That is what Dad said and that is what I said in order that I might go to sleep. But still, I find it is a noteworthy coincidence, that after hanging there for two weeks, the whale happened to fall vertically straight down in such a way that it generated enough momentum to then slide horizontally across the length of my kitchen, all while I happened to be watching for really the first time ever a show on exorcisms.

Rationally I think this really could be explained away by simple physics and odd timing, and I simply hung it back up. Nevertheless I also took a bottle of Holy Water, yes I have some, and squirted a whole bunch on that whale. Then thinking about it I poured some on my hand and made the sign of the cross just for good measure.