Buried in a Pile of Bricks

Lego.   What can I say?  It's sheer genius.  Inject a lump of hot plastic into a square mold and, viola, cash.

It's been around for a while too and it's not your 1970s play toy anymore. Nope. They've cut deals with major creative enterprises to now bring you Lego toys that are intricate, functional and quite expensive.  Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Ninjago, just to name a few.  They've got theme parks and retail stores.  They sell all sorts of advertising clothing and kitschy knick knacks.

Originally a Danish enterprise, they've expanded to an international conglomerate-sized organization with over 10,000 employees and some sort of retail outlet in the most unexpected of places.  While Kodak, Xerox and other former industrial giants shrink, Lego keeps the engines of commerce humming.

We have literal bins of Legos and Lego products lying around the house.  We've gone through two vacuum cleaners and countless "OWW, S%&Ts!" as unseen sharp cornered blocks are stepped on by bare feet.  The dog loves Legos too.  No trip to the vet yet, though, thankfully.

We've visited Legoland California and the Amazing World of Legos at the local museum.   I was particularly impressed with both because, being a man of limited patience, I can't imagine the time it took to build an exact replica of the US Capitol, New York or Darth Vader.

Now a retail store is opening a quick 3 miles from our house.  As if pointing and clicking on an online retail site wasn't convenient enough.  Now we have another excuse to buy more colored bricks.  I take pride in knowing that, based on our Lego spending habits, that many a happy Dane or other Lego employee is well compensated for his or her work.  

I don't think these things biodegrade all that quickly either.  In some future time, many years hence, alien geologists or anthropologists chiseling away at ancient earth rock formations will come upon the fossilized remains.  They will be amazed at our technology and the models made of who and what we were, snapped together out of countless colored shapes.

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