I am rediscovering laptop love. I dragged my old HP pavilion laptop from out of the closet and fixed a couple of minor woes it held. I am once again cheerfully playing on the net while lounging about in various places in my house. I need to pick up another battery for it now that wifi spots are everywhere, however new ones ring up to the tune of 60 bucks or more. And they suck. They die as soon as you charge them.
I bought a bag of crappy socks when I was on vacation. I wear black socks. This fact makes a large number of fashion-minded ladies roll their eyes and sigh despairingly, particularly when I wear them with shorts and-or sandals. However, the simple fact is that I do not like trying to match or sort socks. When I do laundry I like to simply be able to pick out all my socks and stuff them into a drawer. The next morning I can randomly pull out two of them, and they will more or less match.
When I went on vacation I packed rather hastily and after the first day I realized I did not have enough socks. On the drive up we stopped at that 'J&B' place in one of the Carolinas that advertises cheap cigarettes on about a million billboards. It is some sort of big discount store and I always feel sad when I visit it because they always have great jackets for sale for dirt cheap, and I am sad because I know if I buy it I will probably get to wear it about one week a year due to the minimal amount of cold in Florida. Anyhow, as I was browsing through the various piles of junk I came across a big plastic sack of socks for six dollars. Oh-ho! My mind cried out in delight. Cheap bulk socks! And without further ado it ended up in my shopping cart. The next morning I ripped open the package and enjoyed that fresh-sock smell. However, when I yanked one on to my foot I saw with disappointment that the sock only went up to my ankle. That, in my opinion, is not a proper sock. Although I do not wear them that way, a sock should nonetheless reach at lease mid-calf height. These were not real black-socks; they were some imitation girly black socks. All they needed was those fuzzy balls that hang off the back. So now I have an entire sack of useless black socks. I wonder if there is anything I can do with spare socks. They are even too short to use as sock puppets. I guess I could give them to bums. Because if there is anything a bum cares about, it's having clean socks.
I got some Turkey pastrami at the store tonight. I wish I knew why turkey pastrami was so cheap, because it's one of my favorite lunchmeats. Then again I suppose I do not want to know, I might not want to eat it again, like the fact that today I learned that 'Ocean Spray' fruit juices are artificially colored by ground up bug shells. I kid you not. Look it up. Anyways, at the meat counter the person in the little plastic shower cap actually smiled at me and took my order. I was shocked. Never before have I received a smile at the meat counter, the people back there are so surly and disgruntled I often wonder if they whip them in the back or something. And it was not some old lady it was some young black dude.
The 'Secret of Nimh' is on television at the moment. This is one of the all-time greatest animated movies. Disney has never made another one like it since, instead they developed some cutesy commercialized formula for all their animated movies and they have never made another one like is since. I just realized my fat odd-eyed cat reminds me of the farmer's cat in this movie. Something about both of them is a little 'off'.
My birthday is coming up next week. I do not want to think about how old I am going to be. Sniff. I'm just a boy!
2026 Update
Dialing the clock back to July 2007, where Ed has a bag of useless socks, a cranky laptop, and a meat counter miracle.
Nineteen years later, and the ghost of that old HP Pavilion haunts me. Back then, a laptop was a miraculous escape from the desktop, and you’d hunt for wifi like a raccoon sniffing out a dumpster. Now a phone is more powerful than that poor machine, but everything costs a subscription, and the word "battery" still gives me the same chest pain. Your six-dollar sack of ankle socks would today be a twelve-pack of "no-show liners" sold by some startup called Sockful. Turkey pastrami is still cheap, probably because we’re all afraid to ask why. And the meat counter smile? That's a museum exhibit now, replaced by a self-service kiosk that asks if you want a two-pound tube of ground beef wrapped in digital guilt. Also, you called shorts-and-sandals a fashion crisis, but now grown men attend weddings in swim trunks and call it coastal grandpa. The Secret of NIMH still holds up, but Disney has spent two decades remaking its own lunch order. You were innocent, Ed. Gloriously, cluelessly innocent.
“2007 Ed: you bought a whole bag of socks based purely on the words "cheap bulk" and then whined about them being ankle-length — did you honestly think six dollars would summon a proper calf-hugging masterpiece, or were you just hungry for a tragedy to complain about?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2007 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, you got me there. Six dollars for a sack of socks, my brain short-circuited and saw "proper socks" instead of "ankle biters." I mean, what did I expect? A calf-hugging masterpiece woven by angels for six bucks? (Yes, probably, because I am an idiot.) But in my defense, the package said "bulk," and bulk sounds like a bargain. I didn't inspect them, I just ripped them open and hoped. Now I have a drawer full of useless little foot warmers that make me look like I'm wearing doll socks. And you're right, I do enjoy a good tragedy to complain about, it gives me something to do besides stare at the wall. Maybe I'll sew them all together into a pathetic sock snake, or give them to bums, though I'd be embarrassed to hand over such sad socks. Anyway, happy birthday to me. I'm just a boy, remember. Take that, cheap merchandise.
