the new beanie babies?

i still remember all the damn paperwork i had to do…

…i was sitting in my cubicle at dell when the fed ex guy walked up, and i had to sign for a package. and then sign again. and initial here…here…and here.

what the fuck?!?!, i asked the guy.

“i dunno”, he replied, and looked at the paperwork…”non-disclosure agreement”, “non-sale agreement”, “non-publish agreement”…and then looked at the little box he’d just handed me because now he, just like myself, was wondering what the fuck was in there.

so i opened it. and it was one of these:

and they’d sent it to me weeks before the public release, hence the paperwork. except this was in 2007…not 1997. was it really that big a deal? i mean, it was sweet of the ty folk to send it to me – i had just won back their business from apple to dell and had a great relationship with their i.t. crew, so it was a super nice gesture – shit, i still have the thing sitting on the bar in my home office. but now? nobody really cares, do they? the time of them going for hundreds on trader sites or ebay is behind us. shit, they have several variations of the irish bear, and they’re cheap enough i’ve thought of getting them all.

but while those AIN’T a thing, there’s a new thing:

that picture’s not from a toy store…that’s from a room in the tattoo shop. one of THREE shelves stacked that thick with these damn things, not to mention all the loose ones on other shelves and across work benches and counters…and he has more at home. and they’re in almost every room in the building. shit, i even have one at home – with plans on getting just one or two more. this one HAS to come home with me due to my phone phriendship with the guy in the late 90’s (when he was in his late ’80s):

tv characters, movie characters, cartoon characters, musicians, mythological creatures, even people who passed their fifteen minutes of fame ages ago (that gangam style guy got one). shit, at this rate they’ll start branching out and take it too far:

but i’ll guess we’ll see if it gets that bad.