You need a cable? No more shelling out 30 bucks at Radio Shit Shack for a cable you're only going to use one effing time. You come on over to the cable library.
Hey man, you got a male to male nine to six pin firewire?
Hell yeah. How long you need it for?
Aw christ, one day? Two on the outside?
Here. Take it for a week.
Thanks man!
Then the guy takes the cable, uses it for his data transfer and brings it back. How beautiful is that?
No more buying a new cable, taking it home, taking it out of the package real careful-like, using it, putting it back in the package real careful-like (so it looks like you never took it out), trying to return it, and getting busted by the snotty Radio Shit Shack clerk (not that I would know anything about that). We're talking a one hundred percent honor system cable library.
You go in your old cable drawer? You bring all those cables to the cable library and donate them? We'll totally give you a beer. Everyone at the cable library will be totally cool.
Not at the cable library.
We'll have stuff like a 2004 fishing calendar and pictures of people no one knows standing next to their cars. Maybe a special section where we can staple "paid return" slips from cable library users who actually got the Radio Shit Shack clerk to take their cable back. The cable library won't have your regular library smell either. It'll smell like a machine shop and have used mismatched display cases that are never locked and have tons of cables in them.
This is sort of pie-in-the-sky, but maybe there'll even be a picture of the ol' O'Brien with a scroll-type banner at the bottom: Our Founder.
Obviously, there's room for plenty of expansion here. I'm thinking outdated disk drives, power adapters, camera memory cards, chargers--anything you need to get something old to talk again.
You with me? You're either with me or you're not with me.
So, you with me?
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21 comments:
If I give you all of my accumulated crap now, boxes of shit I will never use again, can I take a charitable donation tax deduction for this year?
Fine post. I laughed and laughed. When I moved to my current residence back at the beginning of summer the previous owner left one those paper calendars hanging in the laundry room. It had a seasonal recipe theme with pictures. I only flipped it over a couple times and it is currently on November with a big ole juicy turkey picture I have become quite fond of. I think I'll just leave it there.
RJ
P.S. You get a beer alph. Pay your taxes. Hug a poor person.
Alph, the cable library is about community. You come in with a bunch of trash and your hand out, everyone'll snort and turn away, hunker back into their coffee in its chipped cup.
Now you bring in an old Selectric, set it on the counter and say, "You guys inneressted in anything like this?" then spy some old Betamax machine and say, "Good Christ, I thought I was the only one who still had one."
Then you start bullshitting with everyone and drinking shitty coffee. This is how you get on the cable library groove. Maybe we even get RJ to bring in some leftover turkey.
All right? Got it? You on the scene? You with me?
So what you're saying is, if I come in and dump off my old Commodore 64 and any other related stuff, I can drink shitty coffee, people will talk to me, but I get no tax deduction?
Yes, alph, that's what we're saying.
I'm not the only person with a 20-gallon tote of cables that I just can't bare to part with? Or two?
You just never know when you're going to need a 4-foot RCA cable (as opposed to the 3-footer, or the 5-footer).
Because, ya know... they don't make'm like that anymore.
Erin... warm my coffee up for me, would ya, dear?
The perfect location for this would be next door to the Knit n Shit Shop. Btw, what ever happened to that?
Hmm, get something old to talk again? Hey, you just did!
BTW, I have an entire room devoted to cables, zip drives, floppy disks, pentium II processors... name it, I probably have it. Where can I mail it?
Cool, I'll bring my 70's vintage realistic 8 track player/recorder, along with 20 or so blank tapes, still in the shrink wrap.
would you like some of the really old large "floppy" discs???
So just this morning I'm cleaning out the three moving/file boxes that have been sitting on my office floor since JANUARY and my undisclosed place of employ. I came across 3 cables and I don't know their intented use. It was harder than you'd think it should be to toss them in the trash can. If only there was a cable library...
Erin:
-This idea is genius. If I may suggest, instead of a machine-shop smell, we should try to generate that sickly-sweet, ozone smell generated by overheated electronic devices and/or burning wire?
-Anybody else nostalgic for the smell of a vacuum-tube television?
-It occurs to me that for those of us of a certain age, these items are a powerfully nostalgic reminder of the days when we were smarter than the technology...I don't feel that way anymore.
MR
wv: 'inessent'...Don't look at ME! I'm innessent!!!
I'm in. I can donate as well. So you can put a little sticker on the cables I donate...
wow , now I know where to go to get an adapter for my 8 track so I can move my Wilson Picket greatest hits, to cd. You don't happen to have a Tenderloin sandwich joint around there do ya?
James Old Guy
I totally love this idea. But will there be someone there to help me sort out which cable I need? I once totally blew up a laptop because I plugged the right cable into the wrong whole. Ooops! It was festive, with smoke and everything....but you don't really want to do that.
OK, it's time to get down to the serious stuff. Right now I am in dire need of a TIG machine. If you will expand your library to include tools that produce, I will donate my Millermatic *** MIG welder, plus my Commodore 64. But only if I can check out, for two days, a decent TIG welder.
How about it Erin, let's get some stuff in this library of yours that those who do, can do with.
WV: schiner-
a German black eye of course
My lovely wife will be pleased to know that in the historical section of the library her husband has a whole bin dedicated to the various cables/plugs/adapters used on phones/VCR's/tape decks, etc.
I have a yards and yards of old telephone cables and even more feet of "cable" cable -- as in cable TV.
We have a whole box of tangled adaptors and chargers that fit twenty years of various hand-held games/cameras/vcrs/who knows what they go to electronic crap.
Come and get it -- it is yours for the library.
Your humble hostess would like very much to be playfully cooing over all of the readership's thoughtful comments, but she is otherwise preoccupied trying to perform a function that the cable shown in today's graphic (purchased specifically for said function) has failed to perform.
Your humble hostess is contemplating using said cable either as a jump rope or to flog an Apple Genius Bar attendant.
Tie the cable into a noose for future effigies. Leave near front door for saleman and the like. Or wear around neck for next visit to Radio Shit Shack, may be effective.
How about a lending library for sponges? "I need one that can really handle some heavy grease... but just this week. I'm roasting a goose."
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