January 11, 2006

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  Obsolesence.
  I was watching a Modern Marvels show on the History Channel the other day about adhesives. Adhesives are used In the manufacture of automobiles to bond all the plastic and rubber parts together, and I sighed at the thought that most of these parts do come unglued after a few years, and perhaps this is one of the reasons why my five year old car is falling apart. It seems to me I shouldn’t be thinking about getting a new car already. I bought this one in 2000, and I shudder to think that it’s life span is only going to be about 100,000 miles or so.
  In the “good old days”, autos seemed to have been made to last, and in the early 70s, for example, when I was in high school and got my first car (a 1965 Dodge Dart GT) there were lots of 1950s cars on the road, and still some 1940s cars in good condition. Now, in the Aughts, you hardly see any cars from the 70s. They all fell apart a long time ago. However, I still see cars from the 50s. They’re usually restored, but they have lasted. They’re made of steel, and the parts are welded, not glued. By the late 50s, the postwar boom coupled with the new science of “advertising” created the concept known as “planned obsolesence.” Each year, styles changed radically, and consumers were goaded to “trade up” as much as possible. True, autos only cost a couple grand in the late 60s, but the minimum wage was under a dollar too. About the time that headlights started getting squarer, and foreign cars began to proliferate on our highways, cars seem to have been given “replicant” lifespans. After five years, usually the span of the loan one receives to finance the car, it’s time for a new one, and the “pre owned” vehicle, which cost $23,000 when new, now  Blue Books for about $5000. In other words, as soon as you pay off the loan, the car has depreciated to less than a quarter of it’s worth five years ago. Most of the systems need to be reparied or replaced, and the plastic parts that seem to be forever falling off have a hefty price tag if you want to keep the car looking “new”. I’d love to be able to afford a new car, but it pains me that my current one doesn’t seem to be even engineered to last longer than five years.

  Cars aren’t the only items that become obsolete rather quickly. Electronics have come a long way since the 40s when the “big ticket” item in every household was an AM radio the size of hutch. I don’t even seem to learn all the things my VCRs and DVD players can do before they are outmoded and replaced by something else. I was thinking about my first digital videocamera the other day. Bought in 1998, it was made before firewire or USB was invented, so the connections are all analog. Basically, it’s useless. There was a “control cord” that connected it to a VCR so that you could edit from the camera to the VCR automatically. You would insert electronic “setpoints” on the tape in the camera and then press “assemble”. Connected to the VCR (which of course had to be the same brand, or else it wouldn’t work) the two machines would “talk to each other” and footage from different places on the tape in the camera would be assembled on the VCR tape with digital wipes and fades. That was all fine and dandy in 1998. Now it’s five years later and the whole rig is hopelessly out of date. I only used it to make one movie, “Nantucket Holiday”, and it’s on VHS. If I ever want to create it for the internet, I will have to either remaster from analog tape to digital, which loses resolution, or start completely from scratch, and reassemble the movie in the digital realm.

  When you think about it, and I do all the time, obsolescence is just the “natural” order of things. Our bodies certainly get obsolete. Mine is falling apart much like my plastic car. Every year, there is another health issue, and each morning I seem to creak a bit more getting out of bed. I know people in their 70s and 80s and my mind can’t yet really fathom that this falling apart process is not going to get better, but worse.

  Plumbing the Depths of Disgust.
  I don’t really use our kitchen, except to grab a beer from the refrigerator, and if I had the room in my “media room” where my computer and HDTV are, then I’d put one of those small refrigerators in there so I wouldn’t have to go into the kitchen at all. Joel is not the greatest housekeeper. In fact, since I stopped cleaning the counters in the kitchen, they just don’t get cleaned at all, until, like right before the plumber and owner came over to inspect the place after our recent pipe breakage, I clean up so as not to be too embarrassed at the detritus of Joel’s inactive life. When the plumber “finished” his job , he didn’t clean up, and I was told that he’d be back, but this was almost a month ago, and I don’t consider the kitchen “my space” anymore, so I haven’t really concentrated on this space in the household. The tile is still peeled away from where the leaks occured in the kitchen floor, and there is still a pile of drywall and old pipes out in the back yard, looking even messier now, since it rained. On Sunday night Joel told me not to use the sink in the kitchen, because a pipe broke under the sink. Finally yesterday, I decided to do something about it, since Joel isn’t apt to. I had asked him if he had called the plumber. He said he hadn’t but had talked to “somebody at work” who had told him what needed to be done. Since our drain for the washer, which sits next to the sink, backs up, we route the drain hose from the washing machine into the sink, covered with a lint trap. Undoubtedly, the plumber’s hasty repair job, which was never “finished” didn’t last too long, and the inrush of water from the washer through the drainpipe caused the connection to sever, and a bunch of muck deposited itself on everything under the sink. I had to clean the area under the sink, which smelled like something had died in there, and then tighten the connections. Modern plumbing seems to be engineered for obsolescence too, as the pipes are all PVC, and the connections are made by hand tightening the nuts over the mating pipes. It looke “jury rigged” to me, but after an hour or so, I got the system working again without having to call a plumber. If I could afford to, I’d be looking for a new place to live. After writing about how “The Frat House” fell into disrepair, and looking around at our kitchen, I feel a strange sense of deja vu. I would really like to live alone, and my master plan has always been to buy a mobile home in a senior park as soon as I turn 55. I wanted to do more in the kitchen yesterday than I did, but when I think of making the place sparkle, it won’t last, because Joel, who uses it, doesn’t even wipe down countertops. So I just fixed the pipes. One wonders what system will fall apart next? Joel mentioned to me that he wonders about the connections on the pipes running through the crawlspace above the ceiling. If it starts to rain indoors any time soon, I guess the plumber didn’t make too fine of connections there either.

  Internet Island.
  I will put up another Topic Post this weekend for the blogring. The last topic post generated over 40 responses, and I’m still getting comments for entries. I’m not really blogging that much (writing or commenting) lately. My computer time at home is reserved for editing of my latest “MikeVideo Internet Movie”, “DooDah”, shot at the DooDah Parade in Pasadena. I upgraded to version 9.4 Premium of the Pinnacle Studio software, which has some effects I have not used, so I’m still learning the program, and it takes a long time to create one of my “movies”. I have received a few “when is the next topic” comment inquiries, so the answer is that there should be a new Topic Post this weekend. I really wanted to construct some blog entires concerning my “findings” for the first few topic posts, but haven’t made the time to write them. I’m still approving members, but haven’t even officially “welcomed” the last five or six members to the ring. Stay tuned. I’m mulling over two or three ideas for the next topic.

  Short Story Idea
  Most of what I like to write I call “reminiscences” and deal with my own rather interesting life. I’ve basically been journaling and outlining the events of my life, along with writing dozens of poems each year, which are cataloged  chronologically, since I was a kid, so delving into memory and material is somewhat easy for me. My chapter for “My Life With Bob” (previous entry) was written in about two hours on Sunday afternoon. I even plan to transcribe into the blog some more of my “autobiographical novel”  which I wrote at age 25.
  I used to write a lot of short stories, back in school. I still have two three ring binders full of handwritten short stories and novel ideas. Since I’ve been online, however, my writing has  basically been of the “autobiographical” sort. Since blogging is journaling, and journals are diaries, rehashing my previous reminiscences and writing new ones ties in very nicely with the blogging program, and I never seem to lack for material. However, I have been thinking about the idea for an actual fictional short story for over six months now, and almost set down last night to  bang out the first page. I have the first sentence already in my head.
  I won’t say anything about plot or theme, except to say that this is not autobiographical at all, and the main character is a woman in her 80s. Working title is “The Forgotten Locket”, but that will probably change. A lot of Xangans I read write about publishing. I’ve never had anything published, other than on the internet, and I simply find accomplishment in the fact that I am writing at all, which was my childhood dream. I still don’t see publishing as an end to my means, however. The fact that my work exists on my website, and can be accessed and read  by whomever wants to is good enough for me right now. I don’t read too may “short story” blogs, although I’m sure some exist. I used to belong to a short story group on Yahoo, but I posted poetry, and quite a few “reminiscences.”  I’ve got an itch to “tell this story” however, so I might be posting actual fiction some time in the future.

  Well, that’s all for this edition of News and Notes.

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