Okay.  So this is vulgar.  This is profane.  This is is funny.  Cause when it comes right down to it, don’t we  love our shit? Don’t we all want to have the latest shit? And don’t we all swear as we’re trying to get the goddamn technological shit to work the way the commercials and shit have led us to believe it would?

This made me laugh.  The fact that it was sent to me by my husband, the original Shit-O-Phile, made me laugh harder.

I’m in Chattanooga, Tennessee (the ‘nooga as us hep kids call it) at a combination writer’s retreat and birthday celebration (not mine, but our host’s, Mary Robinette Kowal.) It just so happens that her BD is one day (and fourteen years) after mine.

I was supposed to be the offeeeeeecial photgrapher for the following event but one of the Team Mary’s sous chefs came down sick and I was roped in.

Nobody really lost, especially all of us who got to eat it.

At midday on Friday, June 19^th, 1987, while en route to a convention in Minnesota, Barb and I stopped in Clear Lake, Iowa. I had just started writing my second novel, Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede, and Clear Lake was a logical place to take some pictures and do a little research. It was the town where Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson had played their last concert on February 2, 1959.

At the Clear Lake Public Library, a helpful librarian told me a story about Buddy’s glasses. It seems that someone (the county coroner?) from Mason City (the county seat) had taken the glasses from the site of the plane crash . . . and as far as the librarian knew, they were still locked up in a desk at the courthouse. Buddy’s widow, Maria Elena Holly, had even asked for them – and had been refused. The county, for some odd reason, thought they should hang on to them . . .

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It’s an actual toy.  The Playmobil Security Checkpoint*. Probably made to work with the Playmobil airport (now with extra delays and no in-flight meals!) and the Playmobil terrorist detaineecenter.

Actually, they do have a Playmobil Police Checkpoint and Playmobil Safe Crackers advertised on the same page.

I don’t know which is scarier.  The fact that this exists, or the fact that they’re charging $62 for the set.  I realize that Playmobil toys don’t come cheap, so maybe I shouldn’t fret about that.  But the fact that we’re now elevating All Fear All The Time to the same bracket as playing grocery or school makes me queasy.

But don’t just take my word for it.  The Customer Comments on this page are to die for.  Just note how many people have tagged the product under “Facism!”

*Found via Making Light