Archive for April 4th, 2008

Embracing consumerism

Friday, April 4th, 2008

As our Fearless Leader GW Shrub says, the more we shop, the more we fight the terrorists. (Or something like that.) So I’m doing my part.

I have been buying a hella lot of stuff lately. I got two new lenses for my camera (a 55-200mm VR and a 50mm 1.8); a couple of sterling-silver rings that I can wear as long as I haven’t bitten my fingernails down (maybe the rings will be an incentive not to–I go in spurts about biting/not biting); a replenishment of my collection of Pogues CDs, which I was listening to on pirated copies and have been feeling bad about for ages so I finally decided to plunk down and get the real thing; and last night I bought a new guitar. Well, a new used guitar. My current old one is pretty junky and I wanted one I can plug into an amp. I got a lovely Washburn electric-acoustic. Nice bright sound. They had another one I also really liked but it had much more of a classical-guitar sound (even though it was steel string) and I wanted something more treble-y. And that one was 4x the price. I had a hard time finding one that fits because I have small hands and a lot of guitars have necks that are just too huge.

I got it at Cambridge Music in Cambridge. Mike was super-helpful. Didn’t even care if I bought the guitar there; just wanted to help me figure out what it was that I wanted.

They had a spectacular-sounding acoustic Gibson from the 30s–all beat up and glued up and it played like a dream. I wonder who owned it before now and what they played on it, and how it ended up alone in the store. There was no way I could buy it (it was far too expensive for me, and too big besides) but someone would be getting a piece of history with that one. Too bad guitars don’t come with a provenance record like a piece of estate jewelry does.