Oh, before computers took over...

...the Hallmark store used to be one of my favorite places to window shop as a teenager.  They were full of cute stickers and stationery and funky pens.  Now they seem to have nothing but dumb greeting cards, candles and plush toys.  I still occasionally write actual letters, mostly to my aunts, although I wish I wrote more.   My in-laws give great gifts, and they twice gave me boxes of personalized notecards.  But most of the second box has been used, and the remaining pieces are in a desk at the wasband's house, I don't feel like requesting that stuff right now (even though it also holds all my origami paper).  So I have been looking for some nice stationery.  There is a bit of expensive not-so-useful stuff at Barnes and Nobel.  The drug store has almost nothing.  None of the places I "happen to be" had anything I wanted, so I decided to make a special trip to the Hallmark store, I was so excited.  And I found...nothing.  Okay, that is a bit of an exaggeration, but I think they had about 20 choices of mostly odd sized, all ugly, overpriced boxes of stationery that I never would have bought if I wasn't getting desperate to thank my aunt for a recent gift.  When I was young, I bought stationery just to have it, we traded it at school, you could often even buy it by the sheet or the pound.  Now the girls trade and collect napkins???!!!!??

And we all know why: the evil computer.

I may blog, but I hate the computer.  Like the way I would guess most people hate fast food restaurants - I use the computer, it's fun and easy, and it is no good for almost anyone and it certainly made my life much worse and I wish most of them were never built.  An especially evil computer used to live with me and the wasband.  Several years ago wasband said he was planning to request, as an anniversary gift from his parents, a new scanner for the computer (remember, at that time, a scanner was more expensive than it is now).  I was furious, "We are not using our anniversary, to get a new mink coat for your mistress!"  (Aside: the wasband also thinks fast food tastes GREAT.)

I'm not sure what I think about my blogging.  I have several drafts unpublished because I don't think they are appropriate for general distribution, but I like them too much to get rid of them.  Yesterday I wrote a mild indictment of a local educational institution, and a harsher criticism of current educational philosophy in general, but I don't think this is the place to air that grievance, since this blog is not really anonymous and many people would know who I was talking about.  So I think often of creating a new blog, to be totally anonymous, and all just to vent all my hostile feelings about how stupid and selfish are all these idiots in my life.  You see how evil computers are?!


By the way, I believe Miss Manners says ladies' personal correspondence is supposed to be on double sheet white, ecru or light pastel paper (don't quote me about the colors).  I looked for some of that at the Hallmark store - zilch.

So here are some things people did with their free time before computers, but that I probably would not be aware of without the computer:

Why they decided to spend their time this way is beyond me, but apparently poodle bottle toppers are appealing to at least a handful of people.

This one does show a weird creativity that I would appreciate at someone else's home, not so much my own.  I don't think it was made with a computer though.