Home with an upset stomach. Ugh.

A couple of things occurred to me today as I drove to the store to get some Pepto Bismol. First, if I hadn't mentioned it before, Minneapolis, for all its perks, is the city that actively punishes you for owning a car. The leaves have been falling since the beginning of the month, of course, and they're starting to pile up in the gutters next to the sidewalk. The city's going to clean them up, which is nice. However, what isn't nice is a consequence of this clean-up effort.

Every night after I get home from work and every morning after I drop my wife off at work, it's a struggle to find a parking spot. Usually I can find one, but only one, within walking distance of my apartment. On weekends, it's often worse. There are no public parking spaces in the area, and the apartment complex I live in has underground parking, but you have to get onto a waiting list for it (just being on the waiting list is a privilege you have to pay for), and we've been on said list for two months without getting a space.

So, now the police have put out signs forbidding anyone from parking on this block (or any of the surrounding few blocks, from what I saw) between 7 AM and 4:30 PM tomorrow. That covers my entire day at home. Heck, I don't even take the wife to work before 7:30! Not only am I wondering where I'm going to park, I'm wondering where I'm going to park after the 100+ people on the neighboring few blocks have moved their vehicles. Either I'm going to have to risk parking in the MCAD lot (risky, since I'm not technically a student until January), or I'm going to have to spend the entire day somewhere else. I guess I could just plan to browse the comics and games stores all day. I honestly don't mind doing this - I know for a fact that I can spend hours doing it - but I'm not crazy about the urge to buy I'm sure to feel, and I'd still like to have the opportunity to be constructive at home...

The second thing that occurred to me is a sense of compassion for kids these days. Their toys aren't as cool as the ones I had as a kid. Sure, some of them are pretty flashy, but have you looked at action figures? I'd call them inaction figures - they're all molded into "action poses" which render them really inert, because you can't pose them yourself. For example, there was a Jango Fett action figure. If I were a kid again, this is one of the ones I'd want. However, Jango is forever frozen with his arm across his chest, pressing the button on his wrist which launches his grappling line, while his legs are splayed and bent at the knee in a sort of fencing stance. Neat to look at, not so neat to play with - the arms move at the shoulder, and the legs at the hip/groin - you know, pretty standard for an action figure - but with the pose already set, moving any limbs at all looks pretty darned silly and awkward. When you consider that the original Kenner Star Wars figures (from the first time the original trilogy came out) were more poseable than these (even though they had the same moveable parts, they stood with arms and legs straight, at attention), you might wonder why action figure technology has taken such a big step backward. The height of action figure poseability was with the G.I. Joe action figures in the late '80s, when they had the standard swiveling arms and legs, but these were universal joints, allowing them the same freedom of movement, if not more, as a normal human being; they also bent at the knees and elbows, and swiveled just above the elbow to allow the forearms to rotate. All that and kung fu grip, too. When these came out, I knew that it could get no better. What surprises me as an adult is that apparently no one has made any effort to replicate this degree of poseability. They've made action figures less actiony.

Would it be wrong of me to blame toy collectors? I have a good friend who collects great amounts of action figures - Randy from Ask Randy at Action Figure Times, to drop names - but I know he values this sort of thing as much as I do. Most likely far more than I do. But I can't admit to complete innocence - I have an Elrond action figure, still in the packaging, up on my bookshelf. It was a wedding present, but I put it on the registry list. Like the unfortunate Star Wars figures, it looks far better in the packaging than it would ever look out of it, because it's just not poseable.

Well, look - I've gone on about this far too long for someone who, upon reflection, is realizing that it has little to no effect on me personally. Still - think of the children!

On the good news side of things, my wife just came home to tell me that she's been given a healthy raise - $39,000 a year, to be precise. This means I can work part-time - if at all - while I go to school and we'll be just dandy. Woo hoo! Praise God!