Firstly, I’m old. It’s no longer “I feel old,” it most certainly is “I am old.”
Because I sure as shit don’t want to be considered young, and be lumped into the bullshit mess of humanity that today’s youths are finding acceptable to be growing up with.
Holiday shopping is a depressing endeavor that seems to get worse every year in regards to as it’s a great time to expose one’s self to the legions of mainstream shit floating around in today’s trends and commerce. I hardly go into shopping malls anymore these days, favoring to inhumanly shop for things online and have things delivered straight to me, but this time of year, it’s sometimes unavoidable to not go places, in order to instantly acquire gifts and wares. That being said, I found myself in a Spencer’s Gifts, a store I reminisce about having neon lights, and selling stuff more to the Hooter’s restaurants credo: delightfully tacky, yet unrefined. Now, I’d imagine Spencer’s Gifts probably more operating on a credo of “internet memes, vulgarity, and tasteless shit; if it hooks it, makes money.”
There’s an old saying that goes: “It doesn’t matter how much you polish a turd, because in the end it’s still a turd.”
Well, to update such a wise and clever saying, if you polish a turd, it’s no longer a turd – it becomes this.
An airsoft shotgun. But not just any airsoft shotgun, but a Chinese knockoff airsoft shotgun. That surprisingly, did not work at all as soon as I opened it up and gave it a go.
It was 50% off, so in the end it was $26. Now I can think of several other ways to drop $26, but I couldn’t resist having a cool looking toy shotgun that didn’t look like the kind of crap they sell at the Halloween stores. I kind of knew it was going to be a piece of shit when I bought it; it was obviously a Chinese knockoff, being sold by Chinese guys, at the sad shell of what was once a Borders, but even I didn’t think it was literally going to break, or was already broken when I took it out of the box. Another subconscious reminder was the obvious declining of plastic BBs for the gun; I had little belief that I was actually going to use it for shooting of physical matter, but it’s like I knew that this was going to be a piece of shit, and couldn’t justify the necessity for 5,000 pellets.
In the end, despite it breaking as soon as I opened it up, and taking about almost two hours to fix it back up, it’s still a cool looking prop, which would go great with the Gay Chris Redfield costume if I ever decide to bust it out again in the future. But man, does shit like this really sour me to even the most counterfeit of Chinese knockoff merchandise.
Now I’ve been assumed to be many different races in my life; Hispanic, French, black (yes, seriously), but this morning was a new one. Chinese or Japanese I can sort of get, but why black people don’t ever assume Korean as one of the first three options is completely beyond me. Stereotypically, Koreans are the ones who do all the grunt work of modern commerce – dry cleaning, manning the liquor stores, convenience stores, gas stations, delis; where they happen to serve black people on a regular basis! Chinese people seemingly solely work at Chinese restaurants or their respective areas’ Chinese regions. Japanese people are fewer and further but are a lot like the Chinese, except there are lot more doing pretty high-tech, high-importance stuff, because the rest of the world seems to think the Japanese can do no wrong and blows their culture like its shit don’t stink.
But I’m getting off the point. This morning, on a sunny beautiful Saturday afternoon, there’s a ring at the doorbell. Since I now assume all doorbell rings as a sign of casing the joint, I answer immediately. It’s two pleasant black women who are trying to spread the good word of Jesus Christ. I listen to their spiel for a few minutes, but then respectfully decline their literature, because I’m a soulless human being who doesn’t particularly care for organized religion. But before they leave, they ask me “where I’m from.” Since I know this is a pointless question, I tell them the truth – Virginia.
“Oh, well you look like my son in law. He’s half Laotian.“
So now, I look like a cross between Dikembe Mutombo and Kahn Souphanousinphone. Wonderful.
Secondly, I’m ashamed of these religious zealous. The ninth commandment states thou shalt not lie, but it seems like every single black person I meet who wishes to relate to me seems to have an Asian in-law, or they know an Asian closely, that they feel the need to tell me, as if I’ll suddenly allow them into my home or accept them more for disclosing this tidbit of information, which is as useful to me as an asshole on my elbow. I don’t go around bragging about the black friends I have in my life, why others feel the need to share their stories of the Asians they know is completely beyond me. Fuck that.
For my office’s holiday potluck party, I contributed a giant-sized side of chips and my homemade guacamole. I’ve been making it for a few years now, and all my friends and acquaintances seem to like it fine, and I happen to think it’s pretty decent too. But it was to the test, being served up to 30 or so of the people in the company I’m currently working for. It was during this test that I kind of learned that maybe it’s pretty good on a slightly larger scale sample.
One of the IT guys is Spanish. I have no idea to what his specific ethnicity is, but it’s clearly Spanish. At one point, as he was going through the line, he remarked about how there was guacamole available, and asked who made it. I said that I did, and watched as he took a heaping serving of it, with a fistful of chips. I told myself “man, I hope he likes it,” which was a relative feeling, but applied more to this guy because he was Spanish and much like people would assume of my judgment of Korean food, I was hoping my guacamole would warrant his seal of approval.
I was driving around one day, and I stumbled upon this black Santa Claus statue. I know there’s a defiant, black power kind of mentality that leads to creations like this, but typically, racial chips on the shoulder aside, Santa Claus has always typically been portrayed as a whitey.
I mean, lookit – Santa Claus, Jesus Christ, the Easter Bunny: all whiteys. Black people worship the same Jesus as all the other cultures and religions that worship Jesus, but they don’t see fit to alter his image. Why does Santa Claus get denegrated in the style of Blacula in this instance?
I don’t really get it, but whatever, it’s not my house. ‘Tis the season to spread racial agenda. Seeing as how I hadn’t seen this in any prior years, I wonder if some of the country folk living outside of the region will be offended by this statue. I wonder if it will actually make it out of December intact?
There’s really not a whole lot to do anymore, these days. If I don’t already have something to do, some chore, some engagement, or some task that already needs to be done, I’m typically crippled by boredom and not knowing what to do with my day.
This epidemic seems to be three times as bad up in Northern Virginia, in my old stomping grounds. There really isn’t anything to do up here, like at all. Maybe I’m at the age where there doesn’t feel like there’s anything to do outside of the house or work these days in general, but it seems compounded while I’m up here. So Huzzard and I decided to go talk a walk through Springfield Mall, which was the place to go throughout our teenage years.
I mean we all saw it happen, and we know how it happened and that it was happening, but damn, words can’t really express just how much the place has died. Thankfully, there are pictures. The fact that it’s still open at all is pretty amazing in its own right, but at this point, it would probably best if the place were humanely euthanized than go through existence like this.
I’m currently at my parents’ house in Virginia, and I was rooting through some old things in the basement. I stumbled upon this magnificent jewel of the past. My mom got this for me back in like 1989 on a cold Saturday morning after Korean school. It was purchased from a Kiddie City Toys. The original set of four AA batteries lasted all of three days as I, my sister and one of my cousins sought 100 lines in Tetris.
I can’t believe I remember all these little details. It’s also hard to believe that the handheld division of Nintendo started with this brick, which actually doesn’t feel so much like a brick any more. Granted, compared to an SP, it’s monstrous, but in my hands again, it didn’t feel like I was holding a hoagie or anything. What an amazing journey it’s been for Nintendo in this regard; what started out as the puke green brick, ended up being the only thing keeping the entire company afloat when Pokemon games continued to sell in the midst of the CD-based console wars, and now Nintendo is among the triple crown of game companies all over again. And now it’s called The 3DS.
But there would be no 3DS if not for this Game Boy. Funny how things work out.
