I am a consumer whore. You all know that. You’ve been to my house, you’ve been with me on shopping trips. And at least one of you was around for my eBay obsession (electronic gadgety crap from Japan? Yes please!).

So why do I bring this up now? I have a little bit of cash I need to get off of a prepaid debit card thing. Now, I could do the sensible thing like withdraw it from an ATM and, like, save it. I should be in full blown hoarding mode now that I have a regular paycheck coming in (yes, I finally got paid. I fucking hate timesheets.), but it’s just a little bit of money. less than $200. So I decided to blow it on something really useless. Not a need, not a I’ve-always-wanted-one, but a truly “hey, that looks kinda neat and almost impractical” buy. I found it. The Polaroid PoGo.

“But, Topenga”, you cry “It’s a portable photo printer! How could that be impractical? You can print on the go!”. Oh my. It is a portable photo printer, yes. It has an internal battery! It weighs less than a pound! It usues special film! What? It’s a Polaroid. Of COURSE it uses special film! It’s a technology called ZINK: Zero Ink. Just like the old Polaroid we knew and loved, you buy film packs and it develops it on its own. Cool right? You can get packs of 30 prints ($9.99) and the charge on the printer lasts for 15. *doh*

But wait, there’s more! It can connect to your cell phone! But not your iPhone (I don’t have an iPhone, so, no biggie). And we all know about the stellar quality of cell phone pics. Not that great. The image size is another issue. It doesn’t print common 4″x6″ prints. It outputs 2″x3″ sticker photos. So know you’re thinking “why in the FUCK would you want that?” And I reply “I have bought stupider shit.” For instance:

1) The Polaroid i-Zone instant camera. It took tiny ass pictures. You might remember a commercial with a kid walking down the hall of a school, flashing the peace sign and later they reveal that he has a picture on each finger of…people. Yeah. I almost went so far as to buy the scanner that went with it. No shit. I, however, thought it was neat! Of course I did. It was an electronic gadget and I had to have it.

2) Next on the list: The Polaroid P-500 Photo Printer (seeing a trend?). It was a printer that took no batteries, no wall power, no nothing. Just the power of a Polaroid film pack. I could put my Smart Media (!!!!) card from my oh so hot 1.3mp camera in the slot on the side, select which print (no LCD screen, you had to do it by number or mark the image in the camera), and hit the button. It was like taking a Polaroid picture of a picture. It was weird. I played around with it, but, meh, it was not as exciting as the i-Zone.

3) A 35mm Pokemon camera. Really. It took regular 35mm film and when developed, a “cool” border appeared around your picture with all (at the time) 151 pokemon. Out of the one and only roll of film I used in that camera, one shot looked neat. It was of an ornament (maybe pokemon related) on the Christmas tree. It looked really cool. I might even have the picture still.

4) Sony Data Discman. It was one of the first eBook readers. Your books were on data cartridges, thicker than floppies. I actually bought TWO. One for the reader, the other because it came in a lot with like 8 discs. I used it, I swear to God, for all of 2 hours total. TOTAL. I can’t even remember why I got it. This was, again, during my “eBay is the BEST!” phase.

This is but a small sampling of useless crap I have aquired over the years. I might start a new page of obsolete, why in the fuck did I buy that, stuff. Because there’s more. Oh so much more.

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