Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want

For the last few years, I haven’t really WANTED anything. Throughout my teens and 20’s there was always something I was thinking about, saving up for, or berating myself for having recklessly purchased[1], but that’s tapered off in recent years. Maybe it’s maturity, or maybe it’s just that I have most of of the objects I’ve ever wanted. There are still a few guitars that I would go bonkers over, but they’re so rare that I’ll likely never come across them.

Lately I find myself wanting a particular guitar that I know I shouldn’t buy. It has nothing to set it apart from my other guitars save its coloring and scarcity. For the last year, it has been one of the only things I punch into eBay and actively search for with the potential intent to buy.

I think part of this psychosis is that I haven’t really particpated in active coveting for so long that I miss the process. I miss wanting things. It’s a terrible thing to say, really. I’ve never been a very good consumer of shiny things – it took me years to replace my crusty $50 TV and the stereo I’d had since high school, and my car is as utilitarian as it gets. But guitars are my single material vice[2]. I have so many of them that I tend to give them away, or at least loan them out indefinitely.

So after a year of half-heartedly looking out for a particular guitar[3], an gloriously tacky blue and pink Ibanez PGM100, I’ve discovered that Ibanez is reissuing it for its 20th anniversary. Clearly they did this just for me, so really, I have to buy it, right? The catch: it’s $2,000. That would be more than I’ve ever spent on a guitar. I’ve never felt like any guitar is worth that much.

I know I shouldn’t. I have too many guitars and this one is essentially identical to the one I already have, but for the paint job and limited edition status. It might be a collector’s item, but that trips me up because several of my guitars are collector’s items.

I’m going to be responsible. I’m going to be mature. I’m going to resist.

But that won’t stop the gnawing of the Gollum-like creature now living inside me. Maybe I can trade one of my other guitars in…

1.) These things tend, almost exclusively, to be guitars. This should surprise absolutely no one.

2.) No, music does not count.

3.) A guitar I once owned; I purchased it for $400 in Springfield back in 1998, but traded it in 2000 for not one but TWO other Ibanez PGM guitars.

Disorganized Post #327

Reading New York Magazine‘s cover article on Demetri Martin, this passage struck me:

“He’s that kind of person who’s always standing a little bit outside, with an awkwardness that’s born out of self-knowledge and a truly analytical point of view. People like that tend to be snobs, but a few gentle souls have the ability to be both self-analytical and really nice. Most analytical types are above it all. Demetri’s more to the side of it all.”

I hope people think the same thing about me, because that’s who I feel like. He and I also share an enjoyment of anagrams.

“there’s a part in If I where Martin talks about how, when he looks at signs on the street, the letters seem to rearrange themselves before his eyes, Mobil transforming magically into Limbo. He’s learned to believe that “there’s a parallel world right in front of us that’s revealed with a small shift in perspective.”

More new things I’ve written at OK Communicator:
Debbie Does America
It Came from Netflix: Emperor of the North

OK Things

Here are some recent entries I’ve posted over at OK Communicator for your enjoyment and others’:

It’s Getting Better All the Time
Man on Wire
The Decline of Western Culture

You might want to bookmark/RSS that site if you haven’t already. I’m still not sure how it is that I decide to post in one place or the other. There are more chatty strangers over there willing to argue with me, so there’s a certain appeal to that.

Also, check out Flickr for a video I took of Caroline’s baby kitties.

Obama Bits

Two tidbits of Obama that I came across this week on kottke.org:

First, the omnipresent Obama “Hope” poster by Shepard Fairey was adapted from an AP photo taken at a National Press Club gathering on Darfur, where George Clooney was speaking about his recent trip to that region. So the person Obama is looking at in the iconic poster is either Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas, shudder) or George Clooney.

Second, the new whitehouse.gov is up and running, with no apparent archive of the Bush-era website. However, Kottke points out that the new robots.txt file has changed considerably. The robots.txt is a small file that sits in a web server and tells search engines what to index and what not to. The Bush administrations txt file had almost 2400 lines of DISALLOW. Obama’s has one, the /includes/ directory, which contains no readable content anyway.

Oh, and there’s a White House blog.

The Unlikely Event of a Water Landing

Slade nails it to the wall and puts Christmas lights around it regarding US Airways Flight 1549.

I haven’t yet mentioned that I penned a rather lengthy screed for him just recently on the Joys of Metal. Check it out. I’ll be doing slightly more organized and considered[1] blog entries for him as soon as I come with topics.

1.) Maybe. Probably more so than this place, which really just serves as a silo for instant dispatches from my brain.

The Week in Death

I hope this doesn’t become a theme. A lot of things I’ve enjoyed died this week:

Andrew Wyeth – My first exposure to Wyeth came via the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock where they had some of his smaller works on display. This one, Snowflakes, completely captivated me, and represents one of the few instances in my life where I’ve gone to an art museum and had something completely imprinted on my brain for the rest of my life.

Circuit City – Given the choice, I’ve generally opted for Circuit City over Best Buy, and not just because I’m a inveterate underdogger. I was always impressed by the depth of their CD offerings. They’d have obscure side projects by my favorite artists, and they knew to file them under the name of the parent group, rather than the title of the project.

Zipper Factory – I’ve only been to this Manhattan venue once, to see David Mead, but I was quickly impressed and immediately knew it was a place I wanted to return to. Imagine a cozy theatre where the seats are a mishmash of conventional seating plus vintage bus and car seats, with cup holders. And the decor throughout is junk shop snazzy.

Virgin Megastore Times Square – OK so it’s crowded with tourists and insanely loud music, but its death is symbolic: the demise of the last bastion of retail music as something for tourists to do. The Union Square location, where I’ve been known to shop on occasion, may not be long for this world, either.

Z train – It’s an express train, so I can’t say I’ve used it that much, but as a Brooklyn institution, it made its mark. “Get on the JMZ” will have to become “get on the JM.” And if Wikipedia is to be believed, the JZ trains contributed to Shawn Corey Carter’s stage name.

Ricardo Montalban – “You see, their young enter through the ears and wrap themselves around the cerebral cortex. This has the effect of rendering the victim extremely susceptible to suggestion. Later, as they grow, follows madness and death.” ¿Quien Es Mas Macho? Adios, Ricardo Montalban.