Wreckless Eric _Le Beat Group Electrique_ / library CD sales

I love trawling the CD sections at library book sales. They're cheap, buying things supports the library, and sometimes they have great albums that were withdrawn after not getting checked out enough. Among them: Wreckless Eric's _Le Beat Group Electrique_, thanks to whoever purchased it for the Ledding Library. Great stuff, recorded quietly in a living room with a cardboard box for drums. Warm, low-stakes, charming:

 

Also useful: buying trashy 80s CDs that I want to listen to but that I know will follow me forever on the algo. So instead of having YouTroobpf keep asking me, hey, do you want to listen to Bleears for Flears's _Songs for the Big Blare_ again? Remember that time in August 2025 when you listened to it twice? Instead, I can put my laser vinyl into my laser vinyl machine and experience the shiniest version of that shiny 1985 sound without being hounded about it. It is weird to hear it at the correct speed - I was genuinely expecting the first song to be a full half-step lower, thanks to my crummy mid-80s tape deck and its unreliable dubs - but still kind of a pleasure, especially "Heed over Hells," whose bass line I had not paid sufficient attention to the first time around.

Things we can and can't have

Every year, the manufactured housing community down the hill from my house has a community yard sale. The sales tend to be highly underwhelming, but they're a good bike ride, and ever so often there's a gem, such as the quad receiver I bought a few years back.

This year's prize was an Atari 5200 game console, complete with some games and a couple of the 5200's infamous joysticks. Ooh, I wanted one of those back in the day (I can clearly picture the display in Pamida), and the price was totally reasonable (30 bucks). But I knew, based on my 1990s swap-meet days, that it would almost certainly not work, and it would definitely not fit in my bike bags (the console itself was comically huge). And so I went home without it. I hope some other nerd snapped it up.

I did, however, buy a Matchbox version of the Citroen Ami - the adorably funky small electric car/"quadricycle" that we can't have in the US, sigh - and brought it home for boyo.

Suburban Saturday

This morning we went to an all-you-can-eat pancake fundraiser at a certain local whole-grain institution. Out of the corner of my eye I glanced a mustachioed individual wearing a "Reagan Bush '84" hat. Instantly my early-aughts lizard brain started making calculations: is this an ironic hat? Said gentleman looked like he was in diapers at most when my boy Fritz lost the '84 election in a landslide. Anyway, we set up with our flapjacks outside, and dude and his family entourage coincidentally set up next to us. The matriarch figure starts telling jokes along the lines of "What do you call a man sitting in a basketball hoop? Duncan!!!!" and absolutely just losing it with laughter. Like, dozens of jokes of this caliber, each one causing more laughter than the last. It was like a performance art piece and I wasn't sure what to make of it. The wheat-free vegan pancakes were excellent though.

We stopped by a yard sale on the way home. One of the proprietors (wearing an NRA shirt) was going on at length about the evils of a certain ballot measure that I voted for and contributed to. By the time we finished looking at their stuff he was still going on about how it was going to be overturned by the Supreme Court. I kept my mouth shut and we bought our stepstool and guilty-pleasure 80s CD.

I rode my bike to another yard sale in an attempt to work off some of the carbs. They had an Inst*nt P*t upgrade model and ours is on the fritz (note the clever double fritzing). Realizing that this appliance would not fit in my bag, I told the seller that I'd be back in a more appropriate vehicle. I rode up the hill and realized that it would be funny if I came back with my cargo bike. So I did. The seller was amused and I burned off another quarter pancake or so. I bought an appliance and petted their pug.