Monkey business.

X-E is the ultimate nostalgia website.  Anyway, here’s more stuff about my pet crab.

It cost 85 bucks to provide George with an adequate home, and I’m not exaggerating in the slightest.  (Though I do admit to buying more decorations than were feasible to fit in his tank, so let’s be fair and say 70 bucks.  It’s still an awful lot of money to spend on such a tiny crab.)

It all went down yesterday night.  I was a man obsessed.  While at work, I actually sketched out what I wanted the tank to look like, and because I know that sounds made-up, I snapped a pic of the sketch with my phone’s shitty camera.  It sounds mundane, but it was actually mindblowing action.

We shopped at the same Petland where George was purchased, and the staff kept trying to tell me that the tank he came with was totally fine.  Part of me wondered why they were trying to talk us out of spending more money, but it was pretty clear that George needed more than a dinner plate covered in rocks and water to enjoy life.  Really, if giant aliens from a distant galaxy scooped me up and kept me in a tank, I’d hope for more than rocks and water.

Researching moon crab habitats is frustrating.  Google didn’t give me a lot of options, and every new site I came across seemed to contradict the previous.  Caring for a moon crab can’t be that subjective, can it?  I’m sure there’s a correct way to go about it, but there’s no way to tell which “experts” are on the up and up, and which “experts” are just lameass griefers who get strangers to kill their pet crabs for kicks.

I decided on a middle ground, and built George’s home to a hodgepodge of specifications set forth by at least a dozen online strangers who so generously took the time to write random guides on keeping crabs happy.

First up, the floor layer isn’t actually sand, but rather a very fine gravel made to look like it.  Real sand would’ve been a better choice, but Petland had none for sale.  (I love George, but I’m not going to two stores for him.)  Near the back of the tank is George’s coconut hut, where he’s free to map out his wayward crab schemes in total privacy.

Water is important, even for land crabs.  Aside from keeping the sand moist and chewy, I’ve also provided George with a pool.  The pool isn’t filled with regular water, but rather with Petland’s special “hermit crab water.”  George isn’t a hermit crab, but I must assume that hermit crab water is better for him than people water.  PS, if you think shit like Dasani is expensive, get a load of hermit crab water: $5 for an eight ounce bottle.

There’s also a little bit of fencing held up by suction cups, so George can give into his primal instincts and climb around.  He may be disappointed to learn that the fence doesn’t actually lead anywhere, but truth be told, this probably isn’t an issue…because George does not move at all.  He is a stationary crab. [more]

The woman returned to the car, fresh from Petland, carrying whatever ridiculous cat-related thing that simply couldn’t wait until tomorrow.  “You’re going to wish you wore your shoes,” she triumphantly blasted.  See, the woman has a habit of announcing ludicrous “urgent” errands on a daily basis, and to keep these errands from growing into full-blown shopping trips, I started driving without any shoes on.  This limited the swag from her adventures to whatever she could carry, instead of whatever we could both carry.  No shoes, no service.  Plus, I like AM radio and that’s the only time I get ten minutes to listen to it.

You may think me wicked, but please understand, I am dealing with a person who will gladly purchase four 18-packs of paper towels if there’s a “sale” sign anywhere within a two mile radius.  We’re talking about a woman who literally tears up if we drive past a Costco.  The no-shoes thing isn’t an act of spite; it’s pure preservation.  We have rent, we have bills, we have Ninja Turtles figures.  I need to keep us on budget, even if it means disgusting wet socks.

I’m sure the woman has a different understanding of this no-shoes ploy, which is why she so gleefully informed me that my lack of footwear had ruined the chance of a lifetime: “They’re selling a moon crab in there for ten bucks.  With the tank and everything.”

It seemed like years, but it honestly couldn’t have been more than nine seconds later when I returned, now armed with sneakers and camera.  A moon crab?!  I had no fucking idea what a “moon crab” was, but clearly I had to own one.  Heck, at ten bucks, I wouldn’t have cared if it was a dead moon crab.  This was all for the sake of owning something, anything, called a “moon crab.”  We are all conformists in our own ways, but deep down, everyone wants to be part of a fringe demographic.  What could be more outskirtsy than being among the six people in the universe who have ever owned a moon crab?

I didn’t even give myself a chance to properly digest Petland’s display of designer dog hair products before darting for the you-know-what.  Petland’s latest thing is a shelf full of ready-made pets right near the register — meaning they sell fish, frogs, lizards and other simple, “easy” pets, all in complete tank setups, with all of the needed baubles.  (We could spend another fifty paragraphs on how the shoddy plastic tanks with no light, heat or any other life necessities put you on the fast track to dead pets, but let’s keep our inner animal activists in check so I can enjoy my god damned crab.)

In the midst of this madness, there he was.  I could barely see him behind the giant sign reading “MOON CRAB $9.99″ (which I am saving forever), but I saw enough to know that $9.99 was a ridiculously awesome price for a moon crab, tank, gravel, food bowl and dirty water.

I didn’t expect many graces from today.  I really didn’t.  Fresh coffee was looking to be the standard by which all of the other good things about today would be measured.  Then came the moon crab.  THE MOON CRAB!  I own a MOON CRAB!

I OWN A MOON CRAB! [more]

Happy SNT.  I’m going to spend it trying to dust off the ancient X-E Summer Jukebox.  This could take days, but maybe we’ll get lucky?  I mean, how am I going to bring the site back to its former glory without an assist from pirated Lionel Ritchie songs?

I don’t know how I missed this, but Playmates has re-released several classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures in what’s gotta be the best retro revival I’ve ever seen.  If you’re gonna bring back old toys and cater exclusively to nostalgists, this is the correct way to go about it.  No lame upgrades, no new molds, no fancy celebratory packaging — just give ‘em to us the way they were.

I won’t say that they’re 100% identical to the figures we played with in the late ’80s/early ’90s, but they’re 99.9% identical.  What’s more, Playmates only indulged in very slight packaging modification.  Unless you look really close, they almost appear to be old store stock, yanked from the bowels of TRU’s storage warehouse.

When toy companies do these retro revivals, they often hedge their bets.  The toys are usually based on the classics we grew up with, but upgraded so that young kids without any rosy memories might still be interested.  That strategy sucks.  It pisses off old-schoolers who distinctly remember less points-of-articulation on their Nien Nunbs, and besides, it’s not like kids are going to pick slightly-remodeled toys that made their mark 20 years ago over the advanced playthings made for today.

I don’t know if Playmates is smart or just cheap, but like Solid Base almost said, this is how you do it. [more]

Tuesdays make me want to throw up on you, but I’m here to finish what you started.

Smack by the registers, Dollar Tree had a ginormous display filled with dozens of mystery bags.  I won’t lie: I’ve purchased them before, and while I wasn’t sure which exact treasures would come from this particular batch, I had every reason to suspect that they’d be sucky treasures.  And they were.

It’s a time-honored tradition in the dollar store industry.  When wares break and when sets are separated, they don’t throw the remnants away.  Instead, the stores fill small paper lunch bags with what’s almost literally garbage and sell ‘em off to thrillseekers-on-a-budget.  Not a single person alive or dead has ever been satisfied with the contents of their $1 mystery bag, but we keep buying them anyway.  It’s not that we want what’s inside; we just can’t stomach the idea that we don’t know what’s in them.

Dollar Tree’s mystery bag business has grown so successful that they actually have “themed” bags, with some marked as “boys’ toys,” others as “party goods,” so on and so forth.  While perfectly serviceable as a rough barometer, I must remind you that Dollar Tree is pretty casual about which items fit a particular theme.

I picked up five bags, and if we’re going on value, there’s nothing to be offended about.  Even trash is worth five bucks if you add enough of it.  Take a peek inside the brown paper, and decide for yourselves if I should’ve bought five scratch-off cards instead. [more]

UPDATE: I thought Part 2 was running a little short, so I added a few new items.  If you’ve already read this, read it again.

Moving right along…

“Ring Toss” and “Strong Man Game” Circus Toys: Nah, I’m not looking to rail on these — I think they’re pretty cool, all things considered.  Dollar Tree had a huge assortment of sideshow and circus-themed mini-games, all packaged like these, all in the same scale.  There were enough sets to fully recreate the Big Top on your dining room table, and I would, but the last time I did, things didn’t pan out so well.

I like these.  The packaging is inspired, and the toys are about as well made as you can expect for things that were produced with dollar store landing points in mind.  Plus, they’re the correct scale for use with most action figure sets, and who wouldn’t want Darth Vader and Duke to settle their crossover differences with a spirited round of, um, Strong Man Game?

The toys are on the cheap side, but that’s no surprise.  They do actually work, though.  Hit the target with a plastic mallet in “Strong Man Game,” and a ball will fly up towards the…hey, where’s the bell?  How can you have a Strong Man Game without the damn bell?  What’s the payoff?  While we’re at it, I’m having a little trouble deciphering the units of measurement as listed on the tower of power.  They appear to be measuring strength in quarters.  Why?

The Ring Toss game is cute.  There’s a little flipper gizmo to propel the rings to their posts, and it’s challenging-but-not-impossible, like all games should be.

I wish I could remember which other sideshow games were on sale, but my Dollar Tree visit has become a bit of a blur.  I have the distinct recollection of a Skee-ball set, but that doesn’t make sense, because why would I go home with Ring Toss instead of that?  Incidentally, if you transcribed this paragraph in cursive using a pink-inked pen, you’d have today’s entry in my secret diary. [more]