The home front of the never-ending quest for meaning
Honor, glory, and a fulfilling sense of purpose can be found just outside your door.
We've gotta squeeze into the Freddie DeBoer September Subscriber Writing call, and I guess the most interesting thing in my life is this:
I was talking to a friend a few days ago about the unending quest for meaning, and how some are content to bring their creative works to fruition in a quiet corner of their room, never discussed, never shared. A poem here, a painting there, a small sculpture, or a 3D printed knickknack that was carefully modeled over days. Others are a bit more loud, their endeavors a bit more social, but here we're thinking of a blog published, but never linked to, or a open-source repository that sits public on github with decent documentation and no publicity. And, for those like me, there must be an audience to witness the unrivaled majesty that I can create. There is a clear and explicit part of it is that I want to be showered with accolades for my efforts, I want to be known for my intelligence and wit, to have my skills recognized widely and my name to be known and renowned.
And, in this grand quest for meaning, I certainly look out to the internet, socializing on AIM and IRC and DC++ and reddit and discord and Twitter... but this time I'm taking on the homefront in my irl neighborhood. All of my years of training have been spent working towards this. So many pieces of my past are combining in novel, unexpected ways to be incorporated in this: my greatest battlefield.
To put it simply Halloween is next month, and I've got big plans in the works. They're coming together nicely so far, but we've got a ways to go.
Here's the plan. My toddler son is obsessed with our Roomba. It is the first place he goes when he comes home from school. If left alone while cooking dinner or cleaning bathrooms, he will happily play with it for hours. He'll push it around the house, tangle strings in it, trap it in corners, or simply run around it as it goes about its duties. Any wheeled object (trucks, trains, strollers), and even non-wheeled objects, can become makeshift roombas and are bonked along the walls, doors, chair legs and people legs as they go about the house "cleaning" together. And so, he gets a Roomba costume. (Apparently, not the most original, but should be a fairly rare thing in our local area)
This is a relatively simple thing. Because we have a lot of kids toys, we have a lot of AA batteries, and because we have a lot of AA batteries, we have a lot of rechargable AA batteries. Back in my Arduino days, I acquired various LEDs, resistors, motors, switches, and we're just pulling them out of storage and putting together a simple circuit. Forgive the simpleness of the sketch, but I actually don't know what some of these components are, so just put whatever resistors and LEDs you manage to find together if you're trying to replicate this.
The english version is that I found a holder for 4 AA batteries, and so I've connected the power to a switch. The power will go through a little resistor and a red LED on the "Normally Closed" circuit. This part of the circuit will be behind a small "Battery" symbol, because one of the most common sounds to hear in our house on the weekend will be "PLEASE CHARGE ROOMBA" accompanied by the red battery symbol. I've been thinking of maybe not having this on the Normally closed circuit, and perhaps having another switch turn on the "low battery" light, so that the battery doesn't slowly drain all night, but we'll have to look at the battery life later on in a time-trial or something. If you press down the switch, it'll power a green LED and a motor. The motor will spin the Roomba's sweeper. On a real roomba, you press the button once, it plays a little song, and the light and sweeper stay on until you press the button again. However, I don't have that kind of switch, don't want to make the equivalent in software, and as an added bonus, running a motor drains the battery faster than just an LED, so forcing the kid to hold down a switch will save energy.
Here's what the Roomba looks like so far, but at some point it'll get a little bit of a glow-up. Probably a fresh coat of paint or construction paper, followed by cleaner cut-out of the batter symbol and power button to match.
And, for me, I was going to become the epitome of cool: a cybergoth raver under a bridge
Having visited this video for the first time in many years, I'm shocked to say that the video comments are almost uniformly positive in their appraisal of these guys, and I want to just come out and say I was ahead of the curve and I thought that when "Everyday I'm Shuffling" came out and the electro-swing was popping off, I was sitting there like a grumpy old man saying "back in my day we did jumpstyle to Calabria and thought those cybergoth ravers were cool". And they were cool, and now that I'm an old man with a real job and money, I can afford some cool clothes.
Well, sort of. I was going to get some bonnafide Tripp pants, but they're like $120 and I'm not really keen on spending that much on something that only makes its way to weekend wardrobe. Although I might. I guess I really shouldn't. Well, maybe...
In my waffling around, google ads directed me to gothbb.com. Google, you sonuvabitch, how do you know me so well? Look at this cool shit, it's like they distilled all the things that I think are cool, and made them into real life clothes that are probably cheap chinese knockoffs at massive markup. they've got "Reflective Technology Combat Pants" to turn all your late-night dreams into reality, they've even got "Ninja Pockets Belt Cargo Pants" with more straps, buckles and pockets than Sora could pull off, and the model for “Damond's Tactical Pants” is so cool that he's not only wearing fingerless gloves, be he's also got a full-arm bracer on only one arm that seems to have absolutely no functional value, unless he's trying to carry a row of shotgun shells to the rave.
Anyway, for the top, I was never that into the fishnets, but I was always into the fingerless gloves and armsocks, but I think I threw out my pair several years ago, and either way I'd need a shirt or trenchcoat or something, so I went to the local Goodwill for some inspiration. Unsuprisingly, I saw neither Tripp pants, nor fingerless armsocks, but I saw a fluffy hooded vest that also met the criteria for "the epitome of cool" and a Naruto Hoodie. A bit more browsing lead me to reconsider what I might be looking for.
You know who took cool to a whole new level? The designers for Kingdom Hearts.
That shit was cool. They've got chains and pockets and belts and buckles and hoods and buttons and zips and it's just awesome. It's baggy here, and urban there, and slim cut over here and excessively layered there. Anyway, I saw a slim-fitting black hoodie with an uneven hem on the bottom that looked somewhere in the zone between "tattered trenchcoat from a postapocalyptic future" and "Official Organization XIII (Kingdom Hearts Badguys Club) Loungewear". Hanging up on a wall, it looks like this: https://archive.ph/LX1X2, but on a manniquin (or on myself) it looks more like this: https://www.thredup.com/product/women-cotton-xcvi-black-jacket/126162914
Yes, it's a women's jacket, but I'm just about slim enough to make it work, and the future is always slim-fit in movies anyway. So, the new plan is that we're going to be a Kingdom Hearts knock-off built around a $6 Bargain Bin find. All the best costumes either start there or with a cardboard box, so we're off to a great start.
As a side note, Gothbb's got a jacket that's even more Organization XIII than the Goodwill Special
The only problem is that Halloween is a night-time activity, and as cool as edgy anime trenchcoats are, it's not cool if you don't get seen. So, maybe we should sort of dabble into cyberpunk ninja and slap on some reflective tape highlights. $11 at Amazon for multiple colors should do it
Next we need to head back to GothBB and agonize over which particular fancy pants are going to fit the bill. Well, sort of. First I go through a little trip through google and reddit to determine if GothBB is a legit website that won't steal my info and sell it to sketchy Russians on the darkweb, which leads me to some lackluster reviews and complaints about the massive markups compared to factory-direct suppliers on Alibaba or TaoBao, along with suggestions on using reverse-image search to go straight to the source, especially on any brands that try to bait you via instagram.
The amusing thing is that this "reverse image search" trick works not only for everything for sale on GothBB, but also for individual parts of outfits on GothBB. Like the shotgun shell bracer, or the gloves paired with it. I actually have no idea whether GothBB is a retailer downstream of the AliExpress shops, and all pictured models are just "hottest guy in the sweatshop to show up to work on pictureday", or if there's a company running the entire show that tries to price discriminate the "English-speaking and lazy" crowd by setting up nice storefronts on their own domains, or if some unnamed 3rd party designs the clothes, and everything I'm seeing is so far downstream that I don't even know the name of the original source. Anyway, considering I'm going for "can actually be seen in the dark" flair, I went with yellow Highlights on the "Patchwork Multi Pockets Cargo Pants" also known on AliExpress as "Streetwear Joggers Pants Men Hip Hop Loose 2020 Harem Pants Male Ankle Length Trousers Casual Sweatpants" It's not bargain bin, at $18, +$5 shipping, and I'm sure the quality will leave something to be desired, but we're certainly outside of "totally ordinary clothes".
The next part of the plan will be a bit more complex. I've got old khaki pants to carve up that can become some sort of highlight strips or bracers, but the more important thing is that I'm trying to match with my kid. So, I've got this plan to open up the seam of the pants, use one ankle on each arm and go around my back as a sort of Bane-cables with glowing LEDs, and then have a switch on one hand that holds another roomba-sweeper-motor. You press the button and the lights on the back dim down and then blink out as the power is "redirected" to the arm/motor assembly. There lights charge up in sequence as the ultimate move charges up and after a second of "charging" the sweeper spins-VOOOOOM.
My first design of this was soundly rejected by a couple of Electrical Engineers who flatly told me that "capacitors don't work like that" and I was told to just use a microcontroller if I wanted to do some of this timing stuff. Fair enough.
We just need to find the time and put it all together.
Here’s a few other things I think look cool, from Magic the Gathering:
Enjoy your Halloween. I might post pictures if it comes out well.