{"id":2131,"date":"2008-07-12T20:03:17","date_gmt":"2008-07-13T00:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=2131"},"modified":"2008-07-12T20:03:17","modified_gmt":"2008-07-13T00:03:17","slug":"long-and-vending-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/long-and-vending-road","title":{"rendered":"Long and Vending Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a kid, my family took roadtrips down to Disney World around Thanksgiving. We rolled down the highway in a Country Squire station wagon, and I recall our two big stops being Pedro’s South of the Border<\/a>, where we bought fireworks, and one of the highway rest areas in Maryland, the name of which escapes me. Sadly, the only name I held onto from all those rest areas was the evocative and menacing Cheesequake, but that was in NJ.<\/p>\n

The one in Maryland was special, because it had a comic-book vending machine<\/em>. For geeks like me and my brother, this was gold. By the time we would hit Maryland, we’d have finished all our comics anyway, so there was a thrill to picking up something new, even if our choice was limited to the few selections at the front of each shelf. The only comic I remember buying from one of these machines was an issue of Logan’s Run<\/a>. Never any X-Men or Fantastic Fours, as I recall, but maybe I’m just rewriting childhood to make it seem like a life of privation.<\/p>\n

Why do I bring this up? Well, during last Wednesday’s Scavenger Hunt of the Soul<\/a>, I came across this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That’s right: an iPod vending machine. And I wasn’t even in Japan<\/a>! This was in the Macy’s department store at the Garden State Plaza here in NJ! I had to check it out, if only to see whether users are limited to credit\/gift cards, or if there’s a slot to put $100 bills in. Sadly, there were no cash purchases.<\/p>\n

Seriously: a vending machine for $300-$400 MP3 players, as well as high-end B&O headphones and the very camera I used to take this picture!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Living in the future sure is fun!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a kid, my family took roadtrips down to Disney World around Thanksgiving. We rolled down the highway in a Country Squire station wagon, and I recall our two big stops being Pedro’s South of the Border, where we bought fireworks, and one of the highway rest areas in Maryland, the name of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Long and Vending Road”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-suburbs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-yn","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4381,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/the-vending-machine-challenge","url_meta":{"origin":2131,"position":0},"title":"The Vending Machine Challenge","author":"Gil","date":"August 21, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm trying to get one of my coworkers to engage in The Vending Machine Challenge, but we need to round up enough cash for it to be worth his while.","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/the-vending-machine-challenge#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":643,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/update-4","url_meta":{"origin":2131,"position":1},"title":"Update","author":"Gil","date":"September 24, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Work's still pretty stressful, but it'll all be over at noon next Friday. We're heading down to the eastern shore in Maryland for a friend's wedding soon.I leave you with the Worthless Baseball Card Collection.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1235,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/cloudburst","url_meta":{"origin":2131,"position":2},"title":"Cloudburst","author":"Gil","date":"December 6, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"\"The things we crave are either near us or far, whereas time is about process. I have lived many years and I have learned not to trust process. Creation, destruction: these are not the real story. When we dwell on such things, we inevitably lapse into clich\u00c3\u0192\u00c2\u00a9. The true drama\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Comic books & strips"","block_context":{"text":"Comic books & strips","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/comics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":698,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/followup","url_meta":{"origin":2131,"position":3},"title":"Followup","author":"Gil","date":"October 14, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Sorry to cut out abruptly in my last post; the official VM brother-in-law-to-be walked in, so we talked about post-hurricane life for a bit. Now I'm being Uncle Gil for his three-year-old, whom I've previously noted sounds just like Meatwad from the Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I'll show him a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3002,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/lost-in-the-supermarket-the-imitations-of-crab","url_meta":{"origin":2131,"position":4},"title":"Lost in the Supermarket: The Imitations of Crab","author":"Gil","date":"December 2, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"For this week's installment of Lost in the Supermarket, I thought I'd hearken back to my doubleplusunkosher post by offering up . . . imitation crabmeat! Of course, it begs the question as to whether something this artificial is actually traife. As opposed to just a Bad Idea. This week,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Lost in the Supermarket"","block_context":{"text":"Lost in the Supermarket","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/lost-in-the-supermarket"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3238\/3077357340_e7a10ca609.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":408,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm","url_meta":{"origin":2131,"position":5},"title":"The BlockJust finishing up a\u2026","author":"Gil","date":"November 10, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"The BlockJust finishing up a pharmaceutical conference down in Baltimore today, before heading home to the palatial VM estates. I went to a hospitality event at the Maryland Art Place last night, which was fun. Problem was, the directions to the event just consisted of a map, not a \"stick\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}