Embracing consumerism
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.