The Land of Obsolete and Forgotten Things

For as long as I can remember, I have always had a soft spot for things that everyone else cast away as unusable trash. My quest to save obsolete goods started early in life. I can remember shimmying my way up into the attic as a wee lad of five to recover a Sony Turntable that had been packed away and rendered obsolete by the advent of Compact Disc. Oh, it was a glorious feeling, the feeling of rescuing an artifact, I was like a little Indiana Jones recovering precious chunks of history from the hands of evil. Here in my possession was a completely functional piece of electronic equipment that was tossed aside simply because of a technology that was newer and more exciting. After I hooked it up to an old analog stereo receiver, I loaded up an album (a Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass album to be exact) and dropped the needle on that spinning black disc of vinyl. Nothing could match that crackle and pop of the needle tracking dead grooves on it’s way to the first track. Once the needle tracked and fired off the sounds of Herb Alpert’s brass ensemble, I instantly fell in love with vinyl. Still to this day I maintain a record player and a selection of classics on vinyl. Something about the crackle of dust hitting the needle and the variable pitch of a warped record brings me back to a childhood spent watching records turn and turn as they pumped the sound of Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band out of a pair of grotesquely large and out of style Kenwood speakers.

Ol' Herb the Lady Killer

But vinyl was merely a gateway drug for me. It led me to a harder lifestyle of preserving Betamax players and tracking down Beta tapes from any thrift store accessible to a child via BMX bike. Later on in life, when Laser Disc fell out of favor with the techno-snobs, I scooped up a player and as many peripheral goods as I could get. Soon after that I was onto vintage video game systems. Ataris, Sega Master Systems, NES, any old console and game I could put my hands on was happily hoarded away in my room, which at that time served as the Land of Obsolete and Forgotten Things. Even when I got a drivers licence, my car choice was impacted by my desire to save the cast off and unwanted. I bought a 1980 Ford Fairmont Futura that had a date with the crusher. Yep, I rocked out a 1980 Ford Fairmont from the junkyard. Yep, it had a functional 8-track player. Yep, it was a chick repellent. But it was another thing saved from the jaws of destruction.

My old 1980 Ford Fairmont. Photo circa 2002.

I wish I could say that I grew out of this compulsion to save obsolete goods, but you will find my home no better off than my old childhood bedroom. I have a whole room cluttered with old Polaroid Land Cameras, 35mm cameras, video game consoles, typewriters, musty old books from the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, old comic books, and ac adapters of every possible voltage and current. I can’t drive by a trash pile or a garage sale without having to slow down and visually inventory possible scores and saves. Fuck. I just realized that I am one of those people you see on Hoarders. Well, I guess if you don’t hear from me for a couple of years, send a camera crew, a psychologist, and a crew of shovelers to dig me out of my mountain of saved treasures. How ironic would it be to have been killed by the very items you sought to save from destruction?

Can it be saved?

The Golden Treasury of Knowledge

Before Wikipedia, before Microsoft Encarta, and way before Google, my scientific, historical, and trivial queries had to be answered by my sole source of reference material, a set of texts that were recovered from a yard sale by my mother. It was a sixteen volume set of books collectively titled The Golden Treasury of Knowledge. And what a treasury it was. From the history of the firearm to Genghis Khan, almost anything you wanted to know was covered in an abbreviated fashion somewhere in these sixteen volumes. Emphasis on almost. You see, these books were published in 1961 so some things like space travel were mere speculations according to the Golden Treasury. This only presented a problem with roughly 25% of subjects I had to write reports on during my formative years of education, but by glossing over some of the finer details, chucking in some info gleaned from general knowledge, movies, and television, I could usually bullshit my way to victory. Last minute reports researched entirely with woefully outdated reference books aren't as hard as you would think. Official educational use was really not the forte of these books, I will admit that. However, they were perfect for recreational forms of education. The abbreviated nature of the articles and the wonderfully expressive illustrations were perfect for short bursts of information consumption. In other words, they were perfect crapper books. I can attribute roughly 90% of my trivia inventory to these books. In most cases, the information is still accurate. In cases where it is not, I can usually pepper some outdated info with some good old fashioned bullshit and fight my way out of a trivia pickle. I still have possession of four volumes, I have no idea what happened to the rest. I would love to piece a set back together for the sake of nostalgia, but I don't know if the cost to nostalgic entertainment ratio warrants the purchase. Oh well. There will always be the fond memories.

Kali Ma, the Xiphoid Process, and Batman's Fabled One Touch Insta-kill

Nothing strikes fear in the heart of a young child like the threat of instantaneous death. In my case, this fear was embodied in three recurring concepts or ideas: Kali Ma, the xiphoid process, and Batman's fabled one touch insta-kill. There was no better way to reduce me to a blubbering pile of tears than to even mention in passing that you were capable of inflicting any of these upon me. My brothers knew this well and used this knowledge as the ultimate tool in the big brother arsenal. Let's take a look at the origin of these fears, shall we?

First, we have Kali Ma. If you watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom on BetaMax religiously as a child like I did, then you know full well the power of the phrase "Kali Ma". It's what those creepy skull-hat  wearing fuckers in the Temple of Doom chanted as they pulled the still-beating hearts from the chest cavities of hapless victims of ritual human sacrifice. For some reason, I reckoned that the phrase "Kali Ma" was the source of the power it took to plunge one's hand into a chest. It was simply uttered and some spell was cast upon the flesh of the recipient so that the fingers of a heart snatcher just melted right past ribs and skin, right to the cardiological jackpot. Still, to this day, you are not gonna press fingers to my chest and utter the phrase Kali Ma. I will bludgeon you to death with a tube sock full of tangerines before that goes down. I am a man of science, but I don't fuck with that Kali Ma business.

I don't fox with that Kali Ma business

Number two on the list, which is actually a direct result of number three on the list, is the xiphoid process. This, my readers, if you are unaware, is a small triangle of cartilage that dangles ever so precariously from the base of the sternum. I will admit to you now that I am somewhat of a dunce when it comes to physiology. What I know is very basic. Food in, poop out. Oxygen in, carbon dioxide out. There are some humors that must be balanced, Chi is lingering somewhere about the aura, and diseases are cured by blood-letting. This is my very basic understanding of the human body and it's processes. So, with that in mind, when I was told that a direct poke to the xiphoid process would cause it to dislodge, rupture your heart, and cause instant and excruciating death, I believed it wholeheartedly. I tried to confirm this fact, but my queries led me to multiple Kung-Fu forums which left me with more questions than answers. For the time being, just to be safe, avoid my xiphoid process or you risk the same tangerine sock bludgeoning described in the previous paragraph.

Why is it so goddamned sharp?

Lastly, the basis of my belief in the xiphoid poke, was the Death Touch described in an episode of Batman the Animated Series. In this episode, some ninja dude with mad ninja training is going around Death Touching people (drawing strictly from memory here so don't hit me with crazy accurate Batman hate mail) before Batman intervenes. If I'm not mistaken, there is some wicked sweet scroll with Death Touch instructions, like a papyrus death wikipedia or something, that Batman intercepts in order to fashion a piece of armor that protects the vulnerable chunk of flesh affected by the Death Touch. But, as a child, one needed only to use two fingers and jab about my ribs and torso to instill the fear of instant death in me. Again, crippling tears result. Although, as an adult, I don't really fear the Death Touch of the Batman variety. So, no death by sock borne fruit if you attempt it on me. I mean after all, that is fiction. Batman isn't historically accurate like Indiana Jones. I don't believe any of that Batman hype.

Memories of a Fecalcentric Youth

It’s always a strange realization when you look back on your childhood and finally come to understand that you were an odd little kid. Actually, looking back on it, I ran with a whole pack of odd little kids who, when assembled, would feed and thrive off each other’s weirdness. So that atmosphere of oddballs, in conjunction with my natural compulsion to do off the wall stuff, meant that my childhood shenanigans were not quite what I imagine other children of similar age doing. Sewer fishing is one notable example of our strange hi-jinks. When I was around the age of 6 or 7, we somehow developed a game that simply entailed breaking the arm off of an action figure, lashing it to kite string, gently lowering it down the vented opening in the manhole cover, and collecting any detritus that would happen to flow by and catch itself on the crooked arm. Once carefully extracted from the sewer, you would swing the arm about your head a-la helicopter rotors, and chase other children. For some reason the game caught like wildfire and soon every boy in the neighborhood was having to explain to his mother why his action figures had no arms and why he smelled like putrid sewer water. Now that I look back, we spent a whole summer obsessed with that sewer. We would lay in the street peering down into the dark caverns of municipal waste water and attempt experiments to determine how fast the water was, or how long it took for things flushed in our homes to reach our subterranean peepshow. So, many a flashlight was absconded with and many a brightly colored Lego block was flushed in hopes that we would be able to see it rush by on the watery interstate of waste. We never saw any of our flushed items, and even if we had, I don’t think we possessed the mathematical wherewithal to even calculate the speed of the water nor the scientific discipline to even care about results. None of that mattered to us and for some reason, it was our greatest hope to one day gain access to the sewer and explore its tunnels for lost treasure and gators, all of which we KNEW was there (we watched way too much Goonies). I can remember breaking at least two broom sticks trying to pry the manhole cover up to unlock the doorway to our adventure. We never did gain access to that subterranean wonder land, but it wasn't due to lack of trying. That was how we spent a whole summer though, watching turds, flushing toys, planning what we would buy with our sewer treasure, and generally being odd kids. Fecalcentric. That his how my brother and I describe our childhood upon retrospective reflection. Yes, fecalcentric.