Blindspots

EgonSpengler

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Jun 26, 2014
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Do you ever find yourself thinking, "How the [bleep] did I not know (about) this?" However geeky we are, however up-to-date we try to keep ourselves, however deep in the weeds we consider ourselves to be, there's always something we miss. Something our friends didn't tell us about. Something that slid past us in all of the hubbub. Maybe you're a sucker for cop shows, and have never seen an episode of "CSI." Maybe you're a history buff and know nothing about The Cuban Missile Crisis. Maybe you're a film buff and saw your first Kurosawa movie just last weekend.

We all have blindspots. What are yours?


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Just recently - like, in the last month - I've been listening to Clan of Xymox.

You have to understand, back in the mid-late 1980s, I was a pretty serious fan of goth music. Bauhaus, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Sisters of Mercy, Joy Division, The Cure, Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, Fields of the Nephilim, Christian Death, The Swans, This Mortal Coil, Ministry, 45 Grave, Killing Joke. In the ensuing decades, I've stopped wearing all black, smoking clove cigarettes, and dating girls who cut themselves, but I still try to keep up with the music. And yet, somehow, some way, I swear I'm hearing Clan of Xymox for the first time.


Link to video.
 
There is something similar I remember. I have been a computer gamer for longer than most computer gamers have been alive. I've been fortunate that for most of my life I had the where with all that I could just wander the aisle and buy whatever game caught my eye, and I did. So I have a lot of games, and have played all kinds of games for, really, as long as there have been games.

So one day I look at some stupid "best games of all time" list on some PC gamer website. It limits itself to one representative from a franchise. I'm congratulating myself that I've played most of these games extensively and at least recognize them all and I'm critiquing their placement on the list when I see among the top five "this is our choice to recognize the franchise as we think it is the best one, but..." and they go on to say how every game in the long lasting franchise is certainly a candidate for a more open top games list because they are all great and on and on. I'm thinking how I've seen every game in that franchise on the shelves and come close to buying every one of them more than once, but somehow have managed to never actually buy a single one.

I bought "Eras" that day and spent a large part of the next year playing Total War games.
 
I didn't know that corrugated cardboard was a thing. I thought it was just called cardboard and that's it.

Or rather I was under the impression that putting "corrugated" in front of cardboard was overkill, since all cardboard is corrugated. And in fact at that point in time I did not know what "corrugated" meant even, so I had to question that as well. I could guess what the word meant, it is semi-obvious if you really think about it, but at first glance it was like - corrugated, what?

This happened a couple years ago, a coworker asked me to take something to the "corrugated cardboard" bin. It was something on my desk and/or I was asking her about it. Well, she's all "Put it in the corrugated cardboard bin in such and such hallway"

"What the F is corrugated cardboard?" I asked?

"Dude.. it's like.. man.. how long have you been in this country? It's this" - points to my cardboard.

"That's just cardboard! What is this corrugated cardboard nonsense?"

"It's corrugated cardboard you fithly immigrant. Go look at the corrugated cardboard collection bin yourself"

"This has got to be some sort of a stupid joke. What I am holding in my hand is cardboard, it doesn't need any sort of prefix, it's just cardboard"

But sure enough, I checked out the bin, and corrugated cardboard exists. And that's what people call it. I even checked google.

See, in my mind, non corrugated cardboard is not cardboard. But I'm not from round these parts, so what the hell do I know.
 
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