ADVENTURES IN PROCUREMENT

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As a frequent reader of this blog, you've probably noticed that a disturbing trend is emerging in the world of Rubbish, as two of my previous two posts have developed under the inspiration of "look at this great material excess I bought!" sentiments.

First off, allow me to assuage your concerns by informing you that this blog has never, and will never become a blog focussed exclusively - or even primarily - upon the act of buying things that are neat, interesting, and/or catastrophically spectacular. The purpose of Good Rubbish has been and will always be to showcase the stuff that I've turned into crap, or vice-versa. The previous two posts were merely an aberration.

Secondly, what follows will be my third of three consecutive posts centered around neat stuff that I bought. Without further ado...

The holiday season is upon us once again, and the world of Rubbish is not immune to its excess, my friends. Oh no, it most certainly is not.

This is what Sears looks like at 9am on Black Friday. How would I know? Because I was there.

Take note of the complete and utter lack of shoppers, and then take note of the fact that, once again, this was taken at roughly 9am on Black Friday, the single busiest shopping day of the year. Hey Sears! Get it through your astoundingly thick skull, no one buys clothes from you anymore! Furthermore, NO ONE is going to buy an engagement band from your jewelry department!!! QUIT BEING SO IMMENSELY OBTUSE! JUST CLOSE THE TOP 3 FLOORS OF YOUR RIDICULOUS DEPARTMENT STORE AND SELL TOOLS, APPLIANCES, AND HOUSEWARES EXCLUSIVELY!!! IT'S YOUR ONLY REMAINING CHANCE TO RETURN TO A STATE OF SOLVENCY!!!

Sorry, that may have been a bit out of hand, but Sears frustrates me. Best tools money can buy in the worst run corporation money can't fix. Ridiculous.

That said, they did have some smokin' deals (and lots of elbowroom, but there's probably no further need to beat that already beaten dead horse) on Black Friday, so I picked up a few goodies for my war chest.

This 200 piece socket set was marked down 50% and comes with the Craftsman lifetime warranty (which I'm really hoping some other company chooses to honor after Sears inevitably goes belly up within the next 10 years). Took a pretty big chunk out of my checking account, but I think it's worth it. Barring theft, this should be the last socket set I'll ever buy.

I also got this big rolling tool chest, which is something I've always wanted to have, for 50% off as well. I would have loved to put my new socket set inside one of the drawers, but unfortunately I lack the necessary living space to actually use this tool chest for its intended purpose right now, so I'll be using it as a dresser/bureau until the time arrives where I actually have some sort of tool-holding workspace.

See? Tube socks. Pajamas. Bureau.

I had another absolutely epic thrifting run about a week ago, which netted me a number of wonderful treasures, but without a doubt the treasure-ey-est treasure of the bunch was this 1950's or 60's era Health-O-Meter bathroom scale, which only set me back 15 bucks and (somewhat surprisingly) TOTALLY works and is TOTALLY accurate:

How did this marvelous and ludicrously heavy thing end up in a crummy thrift store? I have absolutely no idea, but I'm thankful it did. Similar to the socket set, I don't picture myself buying another bathroom scale any time soon.

Goodness... so much personality.

Also, and in conclusion, my months long search for a sewing machine to call my own has finally (or at least hopefully) come to an end. This was quite the epic journey, as I'd settled on the sewing machine that I wanted to get some time ago (a Janome TB12 Threadbanger edition unit), but the machine was discontinued by the time I'd saved up enough money to actually purchase it. As a result, I had to go digging around for another machine that had as many of the TB12's qualities as possible:

- Metal casing

- Simple, straight-forward design and functionality

- Doesn't look like a bulbous, uninteresting pile of dogshit

Those don't sound like the makings of a very tall order, but let me tell you friends, they really are.

First off, since everything nowadays is made to fall apart about 3 and 1/2 weeks after its already meager warranty expires, no one makes much of anything out of metal anymore. Janome up until fairly recently had several sewing machines with metal casings, but as far as I was able to find ALL of them have been discontinued and replaced with plastic-surrounded models. Blugh.

Also, and this isn't the case with all manufacturers, but most companies seem to want as many selling points as possible for their plastic-lined crap, so they don't come out with sewing machines that sell under the heading of "it only does 3 things, but it does those 3 things really well and will continue to do them until the end of time if you maintain it properly" anymore. Double blugh.

And finally, almost all consumer-marketed sewing machines look like this, this, or this. Or, to put it more bluntly, almost all consumer-marketed sewing machines look like bulbous, uninteresting piles of our collective beige-toned corporate oligarchy of a future. Blugh city.

After doing some very frustrating research on the new model sewing machines available on the market, I ultimately decided to buy an older sewing machine - one from an era of time when important stuff wasn't made out of crummy crud.

Following several failed auction attempts on eBay, I ultimately won an auction for a Husqvarna Viking Classica 105. It was a bit of a leap at $120 after shipping, but it's a very high quality machine and it DOES work (though we'll see how marvelous of condition it's in for certain once I get it in to someone to have it tuned up). She's sort of pretty though, ain't she? At least in a utilitarian, Swedish sort of way...

And hey, it came in its original box, so that's a good thing, right?

And it came with this sparkley sticker commemorating Husqvarna's 300 year anniversary as a company (1689-1989... yeah, this machine's a little old). That's what we in the biz call a "Major Enron Selling Point."

Anyway, had I stumbled across it beforehand I might have given some through to this new Singer sewing machine, which to its credit isn't excruciatingly ugly and isn't made out of plastic exclusively (though there's apparently still a lot of plastic on it), but considering the $200 difference in price I feel pretty good about my purchase. Hopefully I'll feel REALLY good about it once I get it in to a sewing machine mechanic person who actually knows what the heck they're talking about.

I shall surely keep you posted. Adios!