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National Old Stuff Day 2024
What’s old is new again on National Old Stuff Day. Looking at our old stuff in new ways for a fresh take is a great way to spend the weekend.
Fresh Eyes
The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement. ~Helmut Schmidt
Here we are at the beginning of March and the notion of Spring Cleaning jumps to mind.
It’s getting warm outside, although it might snow any time between now and Connor’s birthday in May. You just never know.
Even so, we’re close enough to springtime to take today’s event to heart. Looking at the same old, same old in a new way is the spirit of this.
Looking at old things or habits in a new way can serve as a kind of mental or spiritual spring cleaning.
Doing the same thing the same way may be a matter of habit. It may be the outcome of a previous optimization study. It might just be stubborn laziness.
One of the big buzzwords in business is Kaizen, which is a Japanese business practice of continuous improvement.
They study and tweak every aspect of a procedure until it is fully optimized. If you’re even slightly OCD, this could lead to a serious rabbit hole.
The key point is to sweep out the behavioral dust bunnies in our lives and get back on track with a renewed focus.
Spring Cleaning With Gusto
National Old Stuff Day with Amy Goodman
Who better than Kelly and Ryan to run a demonstration of the National Old Stuff Day concept?
Upcycling, donating, retooling, refinishing, optimizing, renovating all come into the spirit of the day.
For me, that’s a pretty big ask for the weekend. All things being equal, I’d rather be asleep or writing.
If you’re into doing, today’s your day. Me? I’m gonna go chill and watch Kelly do amazingly creative and productive things.
Seriously. She’s running around painting the house and what not. Wears me out just tracking her.
But that’s the point of marrying someone who has qualities that you don’t? Where’s the fun in that?
I mean, seriously, she makes me feel incredibly valuable every time she brings me a jar of pickles to open.
💙 Awesome Wife | Awesome Life 🤍
The Moral Of The Story
Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it. ~Lewis Carroll
I don’t know. That feels grossly overstated.
One of the big things you get from bookish people is a lot of examination of theme and message.
I’ve always found that rather annoying.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with telling a story for the sake of making a point, expressing an opinion, teaching a lesson or examining some philosophical or even a mundane point.
Do you really have to?
Honestly? Do you actually have to have a point?
Booksters really want you to, but I don’t know that it’s absolutely necessary.
The point of entertainment is to be entertained.
But, Rob, you might say, going back into the depths of human prehistory the storyteller relaying cultural knowledge over a campfire was fraught with meaning and important moral lessons.
Yeah, I’m so sure.
I’ve been many places. I’ve spoken with many people. I’ve heard stories that were told for the sake of having told them.
I suppose you could say the moral of such stories was that Bob’s a great guy or don’t mess with Steve or all these darn rich guys take advantage of the little guy, blah, blah, blah.
Fair enough. Maybe that’s why they were relaying those stories. Maybe not.
Maybe they were just saying, I found this thing interesting and you might, too.
What’s the matter with that? Sometimes you pass the time with someone you don’t expect to ever see again.
If you’re as gregarious as you are bored, you might fill the awkward silence with a comical anecdote, news of a place you’ve been, analysis of current events.
You may or may not mean anything by it other than to say, hey, you look bored. I’ve got some stories if you want to hear them.
Some people are moralists. They can’t help but share their personal wisdom with anyone in earshot. It takes all kinds.
One motive for story is not necessarily better than another. It really isn’t.
I love Dickens. Dude seriously had a broom closet full of axes to grind. The man had a message or ten he wanted to share. That’s great.
I love Star Blazers. I suppose that some people can analyze the crap out of it and hack morals out of it, but let’s be honest. A bunch of good guys resurrect a WWII battleship with the help of an alien queen’s tech library and use it to blast their way through bad guy territory in order to retrieve the stuff that will detoxify Planet Earth. Is there really a moral there? Really?
It’s a classic Hero’s Journey. One could credit that with an inherent collection of morals, but you don’t have to.
It’s actually okay to just enjoy the ride. It’s really okay to appreciate the character studies. It’s really okay to wait for the villains to get their comeuppance. It’s okay.
Whether it’s Desslock of Gamilon or Fagin in Oliver Twist. A villain needs to have his comeuppance. End of story.
If you’re Charles Dickens, your villains represent some existential social malady and the plot points that lead to their downfall are nuanced social commentary on the nature of this civic flaw.
If you’re Desslock of Gamilon, you’re literally space Hitler and you need to be thwarted because you are an evil alien dick. Point blank. End of story.
Both are legit.
I’m not a moralist. I don’t have some burning urge to pontificate about some social ill.
Well, not in story form, that is. If you get me going, I will go right the hell off.
But that’s on topic. If I’m on about something, I’m on about it.
I’m not going to make it a fable, a Super Friends or Fat Albert episode. I’m not going to make an intricate social commentary on the back of an interesting period piece like Dickens. God knows I’m not a 19th Century Russian.
It stands to reason that Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekov and all the classic greats of Russian literature had their own thing going on. I don’t know what got them on their soap boxes, but there they stood.
That’s not me.
For the present and probably indefinitely, I’m observational and investigatory. I’m not moralistic. I don’t need or even want to prove some point in story form.
I’m much more interested in the dynamics of personal interplay. I love the multidirectional chess matches of mutually thwarted goals, such as in The Wire.
Yes, I know that the 5 seasons of this splendid show examined what was wrong with various facets of society in Baltimore. It expanded from cops & robbers (drug dealers, actually) to cops & robbers & larcenous dock workers to cops & robbers & dilapidated school systems to cops & robbers & dirty politics that get upended by dilapidated school systems to cops & robbers & dirty politics & dilapidated schools & a foundering newspaper industry. The pieces interact like the cogs and gears of a Spirograph to make an increasingly interwoven and complex image.
That’s interesting enough on its own to me. That’s all the deeper I feel the need to go.
There are those who insist on it. They dig and pry and find a way to explain it where it may or may not be.
That’s fine. To each their own. I’m fine with the action, characterization and whatever chicanery is baked into the plot.
I suppose, as fan service, I’d better learn how to put some morsels of moral for those of my readers who insist on it being there, but it sure doesn’t come naturally.
I’ll have to work on that, maybe. Maybe. On the other hand, I can just let them dig and come to their own conclusions. They’re bound to anyway.
Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids: The Complete Series ()1972-1985
That’s it for today. If you’re not like me and you like doing things, today is specifically dedicated to that. More power to you. See ya Wednesday. Hopefully, that’s a more relaxed National Day Of…