The Wheels of Retardation

[rain_gryphon]

Every so often I wonder why Meijer's is always in financial trouble. It's a great place to shop, almost as cheap as Wal-Mart but with much better selection and merchandise. Then I remember that I can get a one litre bottle of cola there for 69 cents, or a two litre bottle of the same brand for 58 cents. The wheels of retardation keep on turning.

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Meijer's has the old-fashioned C7 blinker bulbs. No one else ever seems to carry those. I've stocked up on those for Christmas. They also had a pretty good looking LED set. You get a nice assortment of six colours (including blue, which is missing from the older LED sets) but the white isn't really right. It's a very blueish white, not the warm white of an edison bulb. I passed on the LED set.

I'm going to probably go for a mid-60s look for Christmas this year, with the transparent blinker bulbs and lots of shiny plastic ornaments. It's kind of sad that I've got so much Xmas stuff that I can pick and choose 'theme' setups like that, but I enjoy it :)

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I see they finally managed to convict that Peterson fellow, but only after tossing out all the members of the jury that disagreed. This is going to keep many lawyers employed for many years.

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I'm watching the French debacle in the Ivory Coast with great satisfaction. There's some heavy poetic justice here. The Ivorians are already talking about charging the French with 'war crimes' in that UN kangaroo court that the French were so enthusiastic about establishing. I'm sure we're urging them on from behind the scenes. >:D

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Patch Bunny relates that there exists a Donnie and Marie Star Wars Special. I'm finding that hard to even imagine. I'm hoping he'll give it the 'Mystery Fandom Theatre' treatment.

One of the problems I've always had with MST3K and derivatives is that they're lampooning movies that I actually like. I always end up wishing they'd shut up and let me watch the movie, which rather ruins the point of the show. There's a sincerity to the old SF movies from the 50s that's completely missing from the modern product. Something like 'Robot Monster' is enjoyable in a way that the standard Star Wars clone isn't. It's the product of a vision, rather than a targetted marketing decision. If they made MST using the latest special-effects extravaganza that's out in theaters, I'd probably love it.

Comments

BLINKIES!

[mejeep.livejournal.com]

While I've never memorized the light bulb specs, I inferred from context that C7 are the 7 watt "night light" bulbs. Ya, I still have a lot of those, and I also prefer the clear or transparent colored ones. What the heck is happening to night lights: they're down from 7 to 4 watts!

I just acquired a 25 bulb light set, still new in box. The neighors here just don't keep anything that "old". But the bulbs are all steady, frosted colors. The box got warm after just a few moments, those could help heat the room!

re:old movies: I gotta agree with you that some old movies really had "heart" even if the effects are dated. Ed Wood is still hearalded as the WORST movie maker but they're WATCHABLE! Similarly, many anime pioneers (like me) watched horribly botched versions of good shows (Battle Of The Planets / G-Force instead of the original Gatchaman) but ENOUGH of the original goodness came thru to hold my interest and captivate my imagination.

1 for 69, 2 for 58

[mejeep.livejournal.com]

Lewis Carroll had similar logic in his Alice books: in a store, 2 eggs cost less than one egg, but you had to EAT THEM BOTH. Alice was not that hungry and was happier to pay more for the one.

If I were to teach math, I'd make homework assignments from graphing the prices of parking lots ($10 for the first 30 minutes, $w for the next x hrs, $y each additional z hrs up to ...), soda cup prices ($1 for 12 oz, $1.25 for 16 oz, ...) etc. to demonstrate non-linearity!

CompUSA does similar nonsense: old products gathering dust on the shelves retain their high prices just waiting for the sucker to buy that old model "for compatibility". A friend relates how a 50 speed CD reader is usually under $20 but the 8x, 4x ones are still marked $100 and remain on the shelf forever.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

I liked the MST3K episodes that were done of actually watchable movies -- which IMO was usually the newer ones, which were cheesy instead of just boring. The old 50s movies were so boring that not even MST3K could save them. }:P

So, strangely, I think we might have liked the same episodes, but for completely differnt reasons.

[tirran.livejournal.com]

AS I recall from discussions, Best Brains did want to do more contemporary films, primarily because so many of them were so ming-bogglingly awful that they virtually begged for riffing. Unfortunately, between the cost of getting appropriate rights, and the difficulty of getting permission to mock them in public, well, it just wasn't gonna happen.

In fact, the litigious atmosphere was so bad that Web Site Number Nine (wherever it's gone) wouldn't accept fan-MiSTings of current films Just In Case. So much for 'fair use,' eh?

[xolo.livejournal.com]

Not more than two hours after I originally posted this, I saw a commercial for some current SF film-product, the name of which I've already forgotten. What stayed with me though was that one of the selling points was 'all new special effects'. The point is just so being lost with movies these days.