Mood:
not sureNow Playing: 'First Spaceship To Venus' - ancient MST3K tape
Beloved Hubby took some time this morning and repaired six broken VHS tapes. Some got nibbled on by a repaired-last-month player, others had their cases broken, one simply snapped from age. He fixed them all - the really old one was so ancient, it required specialty tools. Ended up taking out the tape reels and trading them into a new case. Anyone here remember when one new VHS and Beta tape was $80.+, so you owned darn few of 'em ? And joining a video rental club cost $25. a month, plus rental fees...but you got three rentals a month, so it wasn't so bad. This one's a first-release of Electric Dreams, found in a Blockbuster Video bin for $5. The oversize box was so old, it was sun-bleached. As he put it, it's not a rare or especially fantastic film - but it makes us happy, so it deserves preservation. I'm glad. I've always liked it.
While it didn't require a cash outlay for the repairs, it did cost us a couple of home-recorded tapes we already had, that were culled from the 'keep' pile earlier. Various pieces of boxes hit the trash can afterward, but we got our tapes back. Watched several of 'em today. Dearest Son was especially happy to get Aristocats back ! I was just happy. We got some old faves back, and it didn't cost anything but old blanks and some time. Elegant.
I was thinking about his repair efforts as I read an article in an old Doll Reader. In addition to a photo essay of the special collector 35th Anniversary Barbie dolls (told you it was old) coming out, there was the story of how this couple founded their doll company. They couldn't afford the nice dolls they wanted for their kids (let's represent this with "$"), so they decided to open a doll shop ("$$"). Once they had their doll shop, they didn't get the discounts they expected, so they decided to get a kiln and produce their own dolls ("$$$"), but didn't like the eyes available. So they started a company to produce the eyes they designed ("$$$$"). They didn't like the porcelain dolls so much, so they started making them in vinyl, again, doing it themselves ("$$$$$").
I found myself shaking my head. While it was nice they had their own doll factories and everything, it seemed bizarre to me. I mean, the reason they started was because they didn't have the money to just buy what they wanted. Where did they get the cash for the shop, the kiln, the teachers, the production companies ? They turned a profit, selling the dolls and eyes to other doll companies, but WTH ? I still don't get where 'We don't have $100. for American Girls for the kids' becomes 'But we'll be able to afford them once we open a store and pay the porcelain slip bills and get our own vinyl extruders !'.
Maybe things are just simpler, more basic with us. If we don't have the funds to buy Lightning McQueen, we sure as h#ll don't have it to start our own Hot Wheels company. Ran into the same thing in the paper a few weeks back. After giving us this sad story of a family that had everyone working 24-7, sleeping on the floors in a mud hut, never enough to eat, wearing rags, they then gave somebody $10,000. cash to get the two oldest boys into the States. This attempt failed, so they gave another human smuggler an additional $6K, again in cash, for a second attempt the following week.
While I understand sacrificing for a goal, it doesn't seem to make much sense for a whole family to starve if they had access to $16k. In most places, that much can definitely get you beds and food. I can certainly understand wanting something better for your family, but I don't see how suffering to pay for something illegal accomplishes that. Especially when the cash vanishes, they get sent back, and they just do it again. I guess I'm simple, and would just do what I could where I am. If that cash'd get a child to a university, where he or she could have a future, well, that seems like a better goal to me. How good a life can someone have when they're constantly in fear of being found ?
I'm sure there's a lot I don't see and don't know about. But I read these things, and look for the rest of the story...and there is none. I know I'm supposed to have sympathy for one and marvel at the other, but I can't help but think there's more here. Maybe if I had more initiative - and was reporting on someone else's dime - I could find it out. Too bad the 'official' reporters didn't bother to do so. Both stories had a 'writing it from the news release' flavor. I hated doing those - my job was done for me, and I couldn't ask questions. Which made the resulting story shallow and one-sided. Useless. When I have advertising agencies trying to evoke awe and empathy from me over soda and cell phones, I'd like to not waste time and emontional value when there's no depth to the story. It's probably why lots of us walk around with guards on our feelings. We're tired of being played like Rubik's Cubes, and don't trust our own instincts about when to feel anything. Get sucked in enough times by ads and editorials masquerading as human-interest stories and news, and you start distancing yourself from everything, just to protect yerself.
Which is probably why we repair things. We just do the best we can with what we have where we are. What we have is what we worked for, and if that makes us 'the simple folk', I'm glad to be so. At least my story's not intentionally shallow ! It's probably very shallow, but it's not hiding much !
