Bad news for all you kids who thought steampunk is the cool insider cult thing. It's gone mainstream.
How do I know? What's my proof?
Judge the evidence for yourself.
Steampunk is costume idea #8 in Value Village's Alter your Ego campaign. It comes with its own little info sheet on a rack in between "Cowboy" and "Ninja".
There are many signs that our society has become too materialistic.
The top-rated show on A&E is Storage Wars where we watch a group of colourful characters buy and sell the contents of storage lockers whose owners have defaulted on the monthly rent.
The top show on History TV is Pawn Stars where we watch a colourful Las Vegas family buy interesting items from people who never admit they're desperate to pay gambling debts.
History also has American Pickers and Canadian Pickers which each follow two guys who drive around buying stuff that fits the expression "one man's trash is another man's treasure."
Spike's highest rated show is Auction Hunters, another storage locker buying show.
A&E's Hoarders is also doing really well. If you're like me, you watch Hoarders and say, "at least I'm not that bad."
There are many more shows about acquiring stuff. The ones I know about and usually enjoy include Hardcore Pawn, Antiques Road Show (UK, US, Canada), Auction Kings, What the Sell, the very weird Oddities, and Pawnathon Canada.
But here's something that hit me this morning when we were on Catherine Street dropping Zander off at the bus station. See this storage locker building that is a block from Bank Street:
It used to be a bowling alley.
I'm not saying that a bowling alley is the absolute best use of downtown real estate, but it makes me sad that it was more economical for the owners of 270 Catherine to rip out the lanes, pins and ball returns and put in storage lockers.
Shouldn't we be bowling instead of acquiring so much stuff that it won't fit in our homes so we have to rent storage lockers?
One of the things that has distracted me from blogging for the past two months has been all the work being done on the ScrimChateau and Manonsion.
Last week, three projects got finished. The one that has made Manon the happiest is our porch. As you can see it is not just a porch. It is a screened-in porch. And it has been finished in time for her to sip tea, read a depressing novel and enjoy the sunset before winter sets in.
The carpenter who did the work is Kevin Miller. Lots of people, especially other trades workers, who have seen the work have told us they're really impressed. One element of craftmanship you can see in the photo - notice how the wood next to the wall matches the curves in the stucco? I don't know how he even did that.
Do you have a screened-in porch? It's a big deal in certain circles we hang out in.
The box of binder clips Real Grouchy gave Manon and me for our wedding was an excellent gift that keeps on giving.
What makes it especially good is that they were free binder clips. Real Grouchy has a relative who works somewhere that receives lots of documents. Apparently even though they tell the people submitting the documents not to clip them together, the submitters ignore the instructions and send in their documents with all manner and sizes of binder clips attaching them together.
Instead of throwing all these unneeded clips in the garbage, the relative saves them for Real Grouchy and he was able to spare some for us.
At his workplace back in May, Real Grouchy had an identity card machine. This meant he was able to make Manon and I official wedding cards.
I carry mine in my pocket.
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