By Tim Sanders

A few years ago my wife and I had a yard sale. We did not sell our yard, but we did get rid of a load of old cra–, by which I mean we sold a lot of top-quality, previously-owned merchandise. One gentleman said he was looking for 8-track tapes. He said he’d found a way to repair broken 8-tracks using rubber bands, and added that no matter how many cassettes and CDs flooded market, nothing would ever top the superb 8-track format, and 8-tracks were going to make a comeback. He said he had a dilapidated school bus in his backyard filled with old 8-track tapes and players, and was convinced that when they made their comeback, he’d be on the inside track to a fortune. We didn’t have any tapes, but we did sell him a nice pair of lady’s tennis shoes. He said he knew they wouldn’t fit him, he was only interested in the laces.

Which leads us to the subject of this week’s column: electronics and the Japanese plot to take over the world. When it comes to electronic technology, the Japanese are decades ahead of the rest of the industrialized world, by which I mean America. Had American scientists been alert, they’d have noticed this in the late 1950s. That was when talented, electronically sophisticated Japanese film makers were producing their classic science fiction movies. Not only did they bring multi-ton monsters like Rodan, Godzilla, and Mothra to life before our very eyes, but they also accomplished the nearly impossible feat of creating astoundingly realistic Japanese humanoids who had the ability to produce complete English sentences several seconds before moving their lips. Those Japanese monster movies were technological marvels. And of course they occasionally provided roles for out-of-work American actors.

DR HAIKU (facial muscles frozen): "Look over there!" (points) "It is headed for the Tokyo Tower! Oh, the humanity!" (lips move frantically)

GENERAL WASABI (gazing stoically toward where Dr. Haiku’s finger is pointing): "Our missiles cannot stop it! It is like something from another world!" (eyebrows rise, grimace appears)

CAST MEMBER FROM PREVIOUS GODZILLA MOVIE: "It is gigantic!" (lips appear to form words without any consonants)

DR. HAIKU: "It is horrible!" (subsequent lip movement)

RESEARCH ASSISTANT LOKU (from somewhere deep in her bowels): "IT IS RAYMOND BURR!"

ALL FOUR: "GASP!" (jaws drop in unison)

And in just a few short years, while America slept, 8-track tapes began to appear on our technological horizon, followed by digital watches, Pong, cassette tapes, camcorders, wireless phones, Nintendo, iPods, karaoke, and yes, the Toshiba 360-degree, helmet-mounted panoramic camera. So what’s so insidious about all of this fine, state-of-the-art Japanese technology, you ask? Well, it has to do with planned obsolescence, I answer.

Consider the camcorder industry.

No, really.

In the mid-1980s Marilyn and I purchased a new, high-tech camcorder. It was a VHS model, with a full compliment of additional acronyms. We didn’t know what VHS stood for, and we didn’t care. It came with a hard plastic case, lots of cables, two batteries, a charger, and a manual with more pages than the Birmingham phone book. It also came with a wheelbarrow, and a block and tackle to help load it onto your shoulder before taking those great amateur videos.We were in technology heaven. We took videos of weddings, family picnics, birthday parties, anniversaries, and reunions. Oh sure, some of the people at those gatherings may have wondered who we were, and asked us to leave when they learned that we were complete strangers, but that didn’t bother us. We’d found our purpose in life, which was to videotape everything that moved. Whether it liked it or not.

Eventually, inevitably perhaps, we became disillusioned. We were running out of space to store all of our VHS tapes, and were growing hump-backed from hours of resting that anvil of a camcorder on our shoulders. And that is when we discovered the new compact VHS models. They were half the size of our anvil cam, and used itty-bitty compact cassettes. Now those were camcorders, and so we got one. Sure, the old model worked just fine, but we weren’t about to let technology pass us by. We rediscovered the joy of videotaping. There were new worlds out there, and multitudes of innocent people to annoy. We had a 36X zoom, a 3-inch LCD screen and an AC power adapter, after all. New gadget: half the size, twice the acronyms.

But technology marches on, and time waits for no man, so soon more and more VCRs were being replaced by the younger, more versatile DVD units. I certainly wasn’t your average ignoramus. I convinced Marilyn that our two older camcorders could be sold on eBay, so that we could purchase one of those new, tiny DVD Handycams, with HQ, SP, and LP recording modes, plus AGC, CCD, EIS, SEG, CNN, MSNBC, MTV and so on and so forth; an alphabet full of initialed parts which would allow us to save our video memories for generations on the absolutely incorruptible DVD format. And we could play them back on our MOWYPDVDO (Machine On Which You Play Digital Video Discs ... On), which, due to the length of the acronym, will not fit under our TV (TeleVision) set. We got a Handycam.

Of course the eBay resale plan was foolish, because we learned that:

1. Given the fickle nature of electronic technology, by the time you get your brand new, high-tech camcorder home and figure out how to use it, 170 new models will have been rushed to market by that very same Japanese manufacturer. This will immediately render yours obsolete.

2. And unlike other popular consumer items, such as sofas, automobiles, and pork chops, camcorders and other electronic gadgets, even with all of those swell improvements, cost less, not more, each succeeding year.

3. Which leads to the jarring realization that the electronic wonder you now hold in your sweaty little hand costs one-tenth of what that stupid, primitive anvil cam cost you back in the mid-80s, and within a year will be worth one-tenth of what you paid for it a few hours ago.

4. And therefore, if you paid a thousand bucks for a camcorder twenty years ago, and it still works perfectly, you might possibly get twenty bucks for the thing on eBay.

So if you’re like the 8-track guy at the yard sale, you’ll start collecting those outdated anvil cams with all of those initialed parts, knowing full well that one day they’ll make a comeback. And if you have enough rubber bands and shoestrings, you’ll be on the inside track to a small fortune. And to help you start your collection, I have just what you need, at a reasonable price. I think that between you and me we can ensure that the cunning Japanese scheme of regularly improving their products and then selling them for less than last month’s model will one day backfire, and their stranglehold on the US economy will be broken.