Toys-R'nt-me
Blahs tonight. Had to go to Toys-R-Us, to buy Christmas presents for the boys. Don't like the place - filled with crap - but I knew it would have one particular thing we wanted to get (cassette player with microphone attached - nothing like hearing faint strains of Elmo through the tuneless roarings of a toddler). In truth, I despise most modern toys and the mindset that produces them and the mindset that makes them profitable to produce. One thing did catch my eye, though; one toy that really stood out. It was a solid, old-fashioned, wooden abacus. I looked at it and it just struck me as such a thing of absolute beauty. There it was, in a sea of worthless, shoddy, utterly disposable junk, and I thought how cool would it be if you stripped everything else off the shelves and replaced them with that. Imagine a whole Toys-R-Us with nothing on sale but abacuses. How many heads would that mess with?