FISCHER: My soul is weighed down by the gravity of consumerism

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

Well, that didn’t take long.

Last week I wrote about the temptation of delving into a new hobby of putting together Gundam models and how the all-mighty algorithms that rule us all have been waging a campaign against my willpower.

My social media feeds and targeted web ads have been a non-stop reminder of how sweet it would be to have a collection of brightly colored plastic war robots standing around in my apartment.

Even while writing last week’s column, my “research” into the many different kinds and sizes had me just a few clicks away from making an order, but I prevailed… for a while.

I did, however, decide to dip my toe into the water.

At some point on a whim, I picked up an entry level model kit on clearance. I’m pretty sure it spent a full year in the trunk of my car before I brought it into the house, and has since sat on one shelf or another across two moves into new housing.

“Some day,” I lied to myself. “Some day my internet will drop and I’ll have read all of my unread books, watched all of my unwatched movies, played all of my unplayed games. That will be the day I will be glad to have model kit to consume an hour or so of my time.”

Sufficiently motivated to end that delusion, I dug out the model kit on Saturday and carried it over to the Charles City Arts Center, which has flat tables and bright lights to aid in the model crafting experience.

About an hour later, the model was assembled. It can now join a similar, though slightly different, version of the same robot on my little display shelf.

It was a nice way to kill a bit of time on a Saturday afternoon. So nice, in fact, that I’ve since been planning return visits. The rest of my Saturday afternoon, prior to writing this column, has been scouring the web through a multitude of retail sites, picking out which models I want and comparing prices from one vendor to the next, of which there is a surprising variety.

I have a spreadsheet.

Of course, some restraint is still warranted. While I was tempted to dive right into the larger 1/100 scale Master Grade models, I decided to pick a smaller 1/144 High Grade model to start with.

After making my list, checking it twice, I ordered a new kit to assemble on some other weekend in the future.

Well, okay, I ordered three.

They were on sale!

— Travis Fischer is a news writer for the Charles City Press and may be found at the Arts Center on one or two Saturdays a month if anybody wants to hang out and build models.