Seeing as I've been slacking lately¹, I'll throw a few bonus listing up. For starters, I really love how >>>TECHNiCAL ViRGiN--A SEXi LADiES BOOk<< - $7 (Normal Heights) "answers all questions you may be afraid to ask" in a mere 55 pages. I'll call that bluff anytime. I've also got to throw props to gaming rocker chair - $20 (normal heights) for magically combining something that was, until now, solely the province of the elderly with another thing belonging entirely to youth culture. Way to bridge that generation gap, rocking chair for Halo nerds! I wonder how she does out on the porch with the fella's?

And the daily Runner-Up-Second-Place-No-Prize goes to:

Canine Super Potency Megavites & Colostrum Chewables - $9

Dog 'roids. 'Nuff said.

I call him Barry Bonds!²

But the day's Big Winner (Receipient of The Bigger No-Prize) is:

6 crt monitors (normal heights)

Ode to Obsolescence³
In the span of one brief decade, I have
seen the state of modern tech advance to
such great heights that now we need not save
our cathode ray tube monitors. Do you
remember when they were somewhat expensive?
When weeks (or months) pay wold be spent
on just one NEC to better view your games and
all your spreadsheets; graphics too extensive
for an Apple II to ever try to represent?
Now, you can have a flat screen in your hand.

I kid you not, the other day my friend found
a SONY flat-screen at a yardsale for the price
of just one-hundred dollars. He talked around
the price point and he haggled it quite nicely
to a twenty dollar discount. My point remains
quite valid--tech grows swiftly obsolete until
you find six CRTs for free online. "Take them!
They do me no good--I try to lift them and I strain
my back! I don't want to send them to the landfill,
since my garbage just might be somebody's gem."

But, I digress, for though I might be so inclined
to prattle without end upon the merits and the failings
of the rapid wax- and wanings of the dead
and dying, up and coming, next-big-thing in tech; sailing
off on tangents is hardly my objective in this thought.
Let's suffice to say that, given time's swift progress
towards it's final (secret) end, the only thing complete
is the knowledge that all our tech is more or less
predestined to become (so quickly, so completely) obsolete.

Well, I has written poem for the first time in years. Crazy, no? I must say, I had entirely forgotten just how hard it is to make one's brain (or at least the part of the brain involved in writing) keep thinking "poempoempoempoempoem" for the duration of the process. The temptation to break into narrative is just so very, very strong. I should be set for another couple of years, poem-wise!

1. Apartment hunts, work, cleaning, leaky torture swamp fallout--I have my reasons.
   

2. I was torn between that and "Lance Armstrong," but I kind of hate that dude and I got no beef with Bonds. The picture of the beefcake whippet is actually kind of a relevant, albeit slightly old, news story. There's technology which blocks the protein myostatin and basically allows muscle growth to go completely berserk. Essentially, turn off the myostatin and get ripped like crazy. Some whippets are born with defective genes; they don't produce the protein and they become beefcakes just like little Barry.
   

3. Yes, Pike is well aware that he is not poet.