Stuck in Our Heads - Vol. 30 - January 2010

The new year is upon us, and, as you can see, I have been trying to be a little more circumspect, a little more deliberate in 2010. I am trying to find ways to put a little more effort and a little more time into the things I have generally taken for granted.

I have discussed before in this space the ebb and flow of my desk at home. While I am not exactly proud, I am comforted by the fact that the tendencies described therein continue. Unlike Madonna or the Executive Branch, I am not one to fundamentally reinvent myself. I'm a pretty stable guy, and, for better or for worse, you will probably get what you expect from me.

And, that is why I found myself earlier this month with four Waffle House coffee cups (and I mean the old-school kind with anemic handles and the brown scrollwork around the lip, not the new-school classic-diner-style with the updated logo, functional heft, and reasonable non-finger-burning properties) full of coins sitting on my desk. That's right. Four cups of change.

Four cups of change is surprisingly heavy. I guess it's not really surprising, what with coins being made of metals and all, but when you think of coins, as I do, as something that you carry around in your pocket all day, lifting that many of them at one time makes my belt tired.

(I should note that none of the following paragraph is based on any respectable research at all. That will not, however, prevent me from declaring it as though it is both scientifically and religiously unassailable.) A couple of years ago, there was a DC-area bank that spent a lot of money airing commercials crowing about their coin-counting machines. You could walk right in and dump your change in to one of their machines. The machine would count and sort your coins. It would then print you a ticket with your total on it, and you could take the ticket to a teller who would then give you that total amount in the kind that folds. The commercials made a big deal out of the fact that you could dump your change in to the machine and get the entire value of your coins whether you held an account there or not. The bank didn't take a percentage like those cheap bastards at the grocery store. In part, this ad campaign was targeting two-bit whores who, as we all know, are paid primarily in quarters and have limited access to coin wrappers. A slightly lesser-known reason is, due to fluctuations in the copper and zinc markets, the cost of making a penny outstripped the value of a penny. This tipping of the scale led to a widespread effort to get trillions of pennies out of jars and couches and loafers and back into circulation. Thus, the commercials inviting you to come in to see the wonders of the free coin counter.

They don't run those commercials anymore, but, as you can see, they made a pretty strong impression on me. Consequently, I went on a quest to discover whether or not the banks around here had abandoned the practice or just the ad campaign. I poured my four cups of change into a pillowcase, threw it over my shoulder like a Continental soldier, and headed out the door.

To make a boring quest short, there are several bank chains around here that have free coin counting machines, and I found a machine in the first branch I went to. I dumped my pillowcase of metal in to the machine. Hitting the button to start the machine was like flushing a slot machine's toilet. Every few seconds, the counter would hit a foreign coin and make a noise very similar to what hitting the machine with a golf club would sound like. Then, it would spit the offending coin into the reject chute and start spinning again. It was nothing short of mesmerizing, and I found myself scheming about where I might find another stash of coins I could take and dump in the machine again.

$53.00 and a new thrill addiction.

That's change I can believe in.


Title - Artist

Heaven - Bryan Adams
Please Forgive Me - Bryan Adams
I'm Only Sleeping - The Beatles
Hard Times - BlackRoc feat. NOE
I Haven't Met You Yet - Michael Buble
Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley
Larry - Buffalo Tom
Already Gone - Kelly Clarkson
Stillness is the Move - Dirty Projectors
Baba Africa - DJ Zebra
Inside and Out - Feist
Ghosting - Freelance Whales
No Reply at All - Genesis
Sweat (A la la la la long) - Inner Circle
Empire State of Mind - Jay-Z and Alicia Keys
Till There Was You - Shirley Jones
Tik Tok - Ke$ha
Ignition (Remix) - R. Kelly
For Every Drop - Sonja Kitchell
Bad Romance - Lady Gaga
Hip to Be Square - Huey Lewis and the News
Blinded by the Light - Manfred Mann
The Sandman and the Brakeman and Me - Monsters of Folk
She Wants to Move - NERD
On the Wings of Love - Jeffrey Osborne
Copying is Not Theft - Nina Paley
Moth's Wings - Passion Pit
Share the Darkness - The Saw Doctors
Hollaback Girl v. Give It to Me - Gwen Stefani and Rick James
Feel It in My Bones - Tiesto with Tegan and Sara
We Walk - The Ting Tings
Evacuate the Dance Floor - Toscada
Nobody's Fault by Mine - Traditional
Sing - Travis
Before He Cheats - Carrie Underwood
Parting Glass - Wailin' Jennys
Background Music from Prenatal Vinyasa Yoga (Short Forms) - Jennifer Wolfe
Long May You Run - Neil Young
My Shit's Fucked Up - Warren Zevon