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Name: MICHAEL
Interests: Cooking | Hiking | Giving tours | Photography | Carving fruit salads | Collecting over-sized objects | The Food Network | Aerobics Kickboxing & pilates | Apologetics | College admissions | Scrabble & Bohnanza | How people grow | Fighting postmodern relativism | The end of the world as we know it
Expertise: Bad puns | Proper use of "air quotes" | Making "stuff" | University of California |Tying Ties | Financial Planning: Investments - Insurance - Retirement
Occupation: Consulting
Industry: Banking/Finance
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
3/12/2003
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| Hello old friends... In case you do not already know, I now have a Facebook Page and a Blogspot. You can find me at: > www.facebook.com/MrMichaelLin
> thirdworkshop.blogspot.com Hope to see you there, if I've not already!
ML | | |
| ...I'll miss you, and all the fun times we had. | | |
| The "New Toy Chair-O-Meter"
{|$0 ------- $25 ------- $50 ------- $75 ------- $100 ------- $125 ------- $150 ------- $175|} My quest to raiser funds for the replica Eames chair continues. (see previous post) So far, I have found a buyer, "Tony" for my Marvel Universe Series I & II cards. $55 combined, which is a decent deal, I think. Strategically, I think I will see the less desirable comics first. Even though they will not fetch as good as sum, there are more of them- and they take up more space.
The fund raising goal, as you can see, is $175, which is a bit more than the cost of the chair. But there's tax and shipping, etc. Plus, I've decided to allocate 10% of earnings from the comic sales to charity, which seemed like a good and proper thing to do. Bye bye Marvel cards! 
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| As many of you know, I'm rather fond of collecting oversized
objects. Over the years, the collection has expanded beyond the
6' Converse All Star shoe to include a 3' Champagne bottle, a 2.5' Pepper
mill, a 3' metal key, 12" comb, 8" bottle opener, 12" pens &
pencils, 8" tennis ball, 8" light bulb lamp, 7" Clothes pin, 6"
paperclip, etc.
Meanwhile, I've kept the collection largely free of
miniatures. I didn't want to dilute the focus of the primary
collection. But now... oh, but now... I'm smitten:
That's right ladies and gentlemen- the Eames DCW, a 20th century icon in
design, a minimalist chair now prominently used in those Ameriprise commercials. (It
represents the anti-rocking chair, they say). The hand crafted
miniature pictured above is about 4.5" high, and made from the same
materials as the life-sized chair, which retails for $600 if it's a licensed
Eames reproduction. An original will run you $1,200 easy.
So this is the problem of having once been an architectural
student. Yes, yes, I appreciate the good design... but it's such
an expression of western excess and extravagance. So you figured
out how to bend wood to make cool looking stuff... big deal. On
the other hand, it's so darn cute.
Still, there's the whole fight-the-power side of me that is trying to
keep from the pollution the rest of the consumerist world... As such, I
have decided to purchase this chair (which costs about $130, by the
way) - BUT - I will not spend new dollars on this chair. New
dollars are going into the savings/investments accounts, committed
expenses, discretionary living expenses and charitable giving.
In
keeping with the "one item in & one item (of equal size) out" -
anti-cluttering rule that Kim and I established, I have decided to sell
of parts of my toy and comic book collection! And so, Goodbye
(unopened set of) Beatles Yellow Submarine action figures... so long, first appearance of
Spider-Man in black costume (Amazing Spider-Man #252, N/M - $50 if you
want it)... farewell Image comics mini-series #1's... auf
wiedersehen Marvel Universe Series I & II (complete 162) card
sets!
Mikey needs* $130 + tax & shipping for a miniature replica Eames DCW!
*By "needs," Mikey really means "wants."
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| Re: the incident at Virginia Tech.
I too was struck with great sadness at today's terrible shootings and killings at Virginia Tech.
I was further saddened and frustrated by questions posed to variouspeople which seem to seek to assign 'fault,' particularly when detailswere unclear and confusion abound.
Where as many asked why the whole campus was not notified, and why theschool was not shut down, I was impressed the the University did manageto send an email to everyone within two hours of the initialshooting. The efforts of those responding were ultimately unableto save the lives of the 30some dead. But it seems to me, ratherungrateful to begin citing their inadequacies before the dust settled.
In short, in the days ahead, people will ask questions like: What couldwe have done, how can we prevent this, who is responsible, why didn'tthey do this, why didn't they stop that?... And while thesequestions have merit to help evaluate future similar incidences, theonly real person at fault is the shooter.
Perhaps the reports ahead will reveal a broken family, a psychological disorder, a cheating girlfriend, a homogenous community, an overbearing cultural paradigm... but in the end, there is no way to fully prevent such acts. Efforts to wall off this, or metal detect that will only bea further addition and continuance of the alarmist, fear-based,litigious society which we more and more are bullied into living in.
Let us support the friends, family and community of those who were hurtin today's event, and thank the students staff, administrators andpublic servants who did what they could.
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