She’s a Brick

June 26th, 2008Blog2 comments

It’s the 50th Anniversary Year of LEGO and there’s been a lot of great coverage on Gizmodo.

I used to play with Legos almost exclusively when I was a kid. I had the Space sets and various second-hand assortments of generic bricks. My favorite pieces were the little four-way maneuvering thruster pieces that came with the Space set — facsimiles of the thrusters on the actual Apollo command module.

An interesting thing I read in the above Gizmodo article: There’s an internal corporate law that states that no Lego sets are allowed to include guns. I had never known that or even thought about it. But it’s true — I can’t recall a Lego set containing a gun of any sort. Cannons yes (Pirate set), guns no.

So that’s where this brilliant company called BrickArms comes in. All they make are tiny guns for your Lego minifigs. So you can finally reenact WW II in Lego form. But the best thing — the very best thing — is that they make little Lego Terr’ist minifigs that you can order:

They’re called “Lego Bandits”, but we all know they’re ready to join the Lego intifadah and get their jihad on.

What would be really neat is that you could have them be arrested by the Lego CITY FBI, swap out their bodies for orange minifig jumpsuits and put them in your own little Lego Gitmo. Fun!

Boolean: I like Facebook a lot, but the relationship dealies (“In a Relationship”, “It’s Complicated”, etc., etc.) are things I don’t like. You’re taking human relationships (friendship, romance) and making them boolean. “Are we friends — YES or NO”. Honestly, some people are more acquaintances than friends. Some people I would call up because I want to see Wall-E with them. Some people I don’t. There are a lot of shades of gray. By proclaiming you’re in a relationship/not in a relationship, you’re taking an analog situation and making it digital — taking something qualitative and making it quantitative. That’s creepy to me.

I think using Facebook to specify whether you are married is OK though because marriage is boolean. You’re either married or you’re not. It has very state-specific connotations. But even then it’s very weird to me because you’re taking a private joy (or private humiliation in terms of a breakup) and making it public. As public as a blinker on a car signaling that you’re going left. Why bother?