Consuming Passion

Joel was busy, so I was going to have to hang out with myself again for the whole long weekend, and I got stubborn. "I am not going to lie on the couch all weekend watching Never Mind The Buzzcocks. No, I am going to concoct a reason to go into the city." (Never Mind The... really got through to me the new trend in gameshows. American ones are "how much will you humiliate yourself for money?" and British ones are "we'll pretend to play, but it is totally uncool to be seen to be trying to win, and we will devote most of our time being clever and humiliating everyone else, but it is totally uncool to be seen to be TRYING to be clever etc.") 

     I was MSNing with Troy about wanting to go on a fruitless mission to find Blades of Steel, the latest NES game that has been missed by people visiting who wanted to play it. Rave reviews about it by people who hate sports games, so I wanted it. Troy's wife is away, and he wanted to go look at games but had kind of promised not to buy more stuff, so he said he could lead me in the right direction for ME to spend my money. 

     We went to a game store and I got Blades of Steel and two Star Wars N64 games my friends and I used to play back in the day, even though I don't have an N64. Then we went to two different Value Village stores. Truly giant thrift shops. I got an N64 with a power cable but no controllers, and Troy fished the AV cables for it out of a bin of junk, and stole a little "memory card" door off the N64 beside it (which was missing its power cable) to replace the one missing from mine. 

    Then, as the gentle strains of Huey Lewis rang throughout the store, I tried on used men's sport jackets. Some were magnificently, appallingly 80s, with overwide padded shoulders, short waists, novel buttons and collars and so on. Troy tried to dare me into odd choices for teaching school in (light purple fuzzy, checkerboard, and avocado green) and saved me from a lovely suede-looking one that had a minor cigarette burn on it. 

     I ended up leaving with a grey corduroy one and the N64. We ate in the foodcourt of a mall, looking for N64 controllers fruitlessly. A "we sell rude t-shirts, penis-shaped pens and rock and roll clocks, mints and clock radios" store was going out of business and everything was half off. I broke my "trying not to buy t-shirts that say anything on them" and bought two black ones with white distressed lettering on them. 

    One says "I'm not paid enough to be nice to you" (for Fridays at school) and "Your Favorite Band Sucks" for everyday casual wear. The cool t-shirts with Nintendo etc stuff on them were all sold apart from the size smalls. Being a teacher, I did not buy the "I Only Go To School For The Girls" one.