Our Entropy

GRRR. I am happy these days, very much so, but I can see that transition is still really stressing me out. I am so sick of every time I eat something for the past few weeks feeling not quite ill, but just really really unpleasant. It’s like verge of heartburn, not enough to be in actual pain but just enough to be distracted by discomfort. It is really making me mad.

Roxy got her stitches out yesterday, yay.

I had to kill two spiders this morning. What did I do before I realized the best way for spider disposal is the vacuum?

I actually don’t totally hate Rammstein, that is a horrible revelation to me. I can’t decide if I actually like it, or it is a morbid curiosity, like a car crash, that you can’t look away from even though it freaks you out.

I want to see Burn After Reading this weekend. I also want to see Tropic Thunder. Both of those movies looked really stupid in commercials to me but I hear from people whose opinions I fairly trust that they are both very good. Burn After Reading isn’t too surprising despite the advertising, since it is a Coen Bros. thing, but Tropic Thunder genuinely surprises me. To me there are two groups of comedies these days; ‘good’ and ‘total utter useless crap.’ Most things are in the useless crap pile, and I definitely expected Tropic Thunder to be one of those. I can hardly judge it yet though, because a lot of things that people find really funny I find to be horrible. Are people just stupid, or am I just not funny?

I wish I had some fun or amusing content or photos to post in this entry but alas, I am lacking this morning.

Wow, that was a really sad attempt.

I will also share my favourite joke in elementary school:

Q: How do you make a Kleenex dance?
A: Put a boogie in it!

Aww that reminds me of my old favourite toy when I was a kid. We got it in Florida and I had to hide the precious cargo in my suitcase on the way home cause we were over our duty limit or whatever.

The Etch A Sketch Animator 2000 was a portable toy developed by Ohio Art in 1987, debuting in 1988. It is an upgraded version of the Etch A Sketch Animator. It used a stylus to draw on an interfacing pad, and the drawing appeared above on a low-resolution LCD screen. It had the ability to animate a sequence of frames as well as the ability to save animations on memory cartridges. The Animator 2000 could also play games loaded on cartridges. Three games were developed for it: Overdrive, a racing game in the vein of Pole Position; Putt Nuts, an 18-hole miniature golf game; and Flyby, a simplistic flight simulator. The Animator 2000 was discontinued shortly after its introduction, rendering copies of some of these games scarce.

I can’t tell you how many hours of fun I had making animations! Oh man. So awesome.

Ah yes, and that brings up one of my favourite video games, Mario Paint. I remember one year when I was 7 or so I was in my brother’s room in December sometime, and I looked in his drawer and I saw Mario Paint! I knew it must be a Christmas gift for me that they were trying to hide somewhere sneaky. I was so excited for Christmas as I was getting the gift that was on the very top of my list! Christmas day, every present that was handed to me, I kept thinking ‘This is it!’ When the last present was opened and it was not what I so longed for, I burst into tears. They must have bought that for some other kid! Maybe some underprivileged little jerk! When I explained why I was so upset my mom was like ‘OH SHOOT I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT IT!’ Lo and behold it was still in the same drawer. Christmas was saved!

I also really miss my two best friends:

Alphie

And Teddy Ruxpin, the one where you put the tape in his back and his mouth moved. Me and my brother had many hours of fun putting Micheal Jackson tapes in there. Until that fateful day at around age eight when I betrayed my friend. My mom was asking me to gather old toys I didn’t play with any more for a garage sale. ‘I am getting older,’ I thought, ‘I don’t play with this silly thing anymore.’ Put a masking tape price tag on him, put him on the garage sale table, and enjoyed a sunny day outside. That is until some kid picked him up to buy him, and his parents were paying… It was at that moment I realized I did not want to part with him, but it was too late my mom said, and I have lamented this day ever since.

Sorry, pal. Hopefully that kid enjoyed you as much as I did. The thing is, I would still fucking be enjoying you now!

HOLY SHIT I just came across the best website.

KNOW YOUR TEDDY RUXPIN

Who knew he has such a rich history, faced such adversity?

After Teddy Ruxpin was released, it became apparent that Teddy was prone to various conditions causing him to fall into a coma and not work. Worlds of Wonder was soon swamped with Teddy Ruxpin repairs in their Grundo hospital. By the time Grubby came out a year after Teddy, parents had already spent alot of money keeping Teddy going. Changes were made to Teddy Ruxpin in the next few years in an effort to improve Teddy’s reliability and decrease costs. That created the different generations of Teddy Ruxpin’s by WOW. The company went bankrupt and ceased production in the late ’80’s.

In 1992, Playskool took over Teddy Ruxpin production. Some of the early ones produced still had WOW patents listed on the boxes and tags leading to confusion over which Teddy you have and who made it. The Playskool versions were smaller. The vest is sewn in place instead of being separate like the first Teddy. Although they used the same stories, they were on a small cartridge instead of a cassette tape. The original Teddy took 4 “C”
batteries and the newer Playskool version takes 4 “AA” batteries. Their insides are totally different from WOW bears and not easy to fix. The cartridge player in the back had no door on it and quickly got so dirty that it no
longer worked. The facial features were all connected by pulley belts that stretched and slipped. Needless to say these were not made long and never really caught on even though there is quite a few of these are still around, most
of them inoperable. The third attempt to bring back Teddy Ruxpin was by YES entertainment in 1998. These were marketed to be able to work with your computer and with a VHS tape where Teddy talked with the Video tape.

Man, the fact that I actually do find that interesting makes me wish I had some kind of profession where I got to fix old toys or something. I hear that is a pretty lucrative business. Ha.

He operates on unresponsive Teddy’s and then he adopts them out! He also has instructions on how to operate yourself.

THERE HE IS ALL FIXED UP

Man, some people know what the important things are in life. Those things: Teddy Ruxpins.