Tedium - The Gift Of 2020 🎁

Today in Tedium: It’s sure been one hell of a year, hasn’t it? The good news is that we’re less than two weeks away from the very end of this most distressing 366-day period. (Yes, there was a leap year this year, because we couldn’t minimize our 2020 impact.) But now is the time we look back on the horribly tedious stuff we wrote about this year, add some affiliate links, and call it a last-minute gift guide for people at the bottom of your list. We love and appreciate you sticking with us during a year when we got more exposed to information about airborne viruses than anyone outside of the CDC ever should. (And, just a quick reminder, anything you buy from these picks supports this newsletter, so I hope we weren’t on your naughty list this year.) So take a deep breath as we relive our year in Tedium. Cheers. — Ernie @ Tedium

Today’s issue is sponsored by Vinyl Moon—read on to get a discount!

For the person in your life who seems to struggle with their grasp, we recommend taking a look at the O’Connor Tweezer Dexterity Test, a real standardized test of dexterity that was featured in our blowout feature about tweezers back in September. Six years ago, if you told me I would write the phrase “our blowout feature about tweezers” with complete sincerity, I would think you were totally pulling my chain, but the truth is I have slowly been pulling a chain all this time … using a tweezer.

(Evan Amos/Wikimedia Commons)

Now, 2020 was a big year for fans of new video game consoles—with the latest versions of the Xbox and the PlayStation hitting physical shelves and grayed-out digital “sold out” buttons faster than you can say “Cyberpunk refund.” But this is Tedium—we’re not going to tell you to buy a new Playstation 5 (though we won’t stop you). Instead, we’re going to suggest that you buy a used PlayStation 3 for your favorite Linux nerd on eBay and give them a few links to YouTube videos telling them how they can hack Yellow Dog Linux onto it. Hey, it might be some extra work, but it’s more likely to show up before Christmas than a PineBook Pro.

If you have $1,600 lying around to purchase something for a loved one, you might be thinking … laptop. But I’d like to make a case that you should be the person who buys The Doors’ 12 disc Infinite Vinyl box set that is currently sitting on Amazon Prime as we speak. The reason for this is because your purchase will ensure you get the highest-quality masterings of “People Are Strange,” “L.A. Woman,” and “Hello, I Love You” that a regurgitant record industry can produce for a band that hasn’t been a going concern in its original form for roughly 50 years. (We don’t talk about the Morrison-free Other Voices and Full Circle, which don’t make an appearance here.) Infinite is an example of what the music industry does when it doubles down on superfans who are still willing to spend money on music.

This is a real thing you can buy on eBay right now.

Our fast food chains have become extremely adept at making a lot of collectible stuff that you might want to get your hands on later—something that McDonald’s only seems to have properly figured out this year when it started collaborating with major pop stars on merchandising. I crossed paths with this topic in October as a result of my interest in McDonald’s plastic pumpkin pails in October, which has led me to suggest the ultimate gift for fans of Mickey D’s: The $9,500 jug of McJordan BBQ sauce, as used in a Chicagoland promotion of Michael Jordan nearly 30 years ago. It’s still on eBay!

The death metal band Carcass, circa 1992. From left: Michael Amott, Jeff Walker, Ken Owen, Bill Steer.

And of course, this year brought together a whole bunch of Tedium contributors, who offered up pieces as diverse as David Buck’s ode to the NES Advantage, Karen Corday’s analysis of OK Soda as marketing trailblazer, Calvin Kasulke’s insights on whether basketball shoes could go indie, Andrew Egan’s no-name Canadian fakes, and Michael Bentley’s discussion of how awesome quiz bowl is. One particular standout I want to highlight is the work of Fahad Sperinck, who wrote an amazing piece about the challenges death metal musicians face with normalcy after the fact. (Now might be a good time to get into Carcass.) We had so much Tedium to go around this year—and I’m surprised we had room for it all.