On the Precipice

While attempting to research whether it is legal to resell Legos (er, I mean, Lego(TM) Bricks) as a set, with instructions that you yourself make up, I stumbled across someone who is making money with them.


I have begun doing more research into the acquisition of Lego bricks. Buying used pieces in bulk on ebay can get you prices in the neighborhood of $0.06 a brick, which unfortunately is still a bit pricey: 100,000 Lego bricks would still cost $6,000. I have not yet purchased any that I brought back to my apartment...yet. The rule about not keeping Legos where I sleep is, perhaps, the last vestiges of my sanity. I say this because when I see even the largest, most impressive displays of Legos on the internet, I think they are pathetic. A good, ugly start, perhaps. A creation that consists of roughly a hundred baseplates, a couple thousand dollars worth of Legos, and which consumes most of someones basement is an ok start. They usually have too few buildings though, and everything is all packed in too close, and they don't think about the colors. When I look at a Lego landscape, I want to think this is Bricktania. I don't want to think this is someone's ugly childhood lego collection all on one table. I want to create a city with multiple trains, monorails, airports, and sizeable marine areas--a creation where one's eyes could get lost among the streets--a creation that would make the more imaginitive of us worry that the little Lego people might get lost. If a tiny little lego person can walk from one end of your city to another in less than a day: its not a city.

Unfortunately, since my finances are still a minor disaster because of my flirtation with the world of aviation, I am still developing some kind of monetary scheme, or set of rules for myself, that will allow me to purches Legos at some reasonable rate that will not exceed my discretionary income. I currently have agreed to no such scheme with myself. If I, this instant, went on ebay and lego.com and began aquiring those lovely little bricks, I would, quite literally, attempt to purchase every lego on this planet. And those unwilling to sell would behoove themselves to keep a close watch on their toys. I mean, no one else is doing much with them. And it takes more than 500 trillian baseplates to approximate the Earth. That makes me curious: if I did make an entire planet our of legos, how big would the physical model be? If only I had some legos with which to establish a scale. Ah, got it. Google says the radius of the Earth is 6378.1 kilometers. I am seriously doubtful about the .1, but I digress. My lego planet will be 6000 km to make things easier. According to this calculator, 6000 "minifig kilometers" is...137.80 km in the real world. Well, that explains why anyone who even begins to use their legos takes up half the basement. 137.8 km is 74.4 nautical miles. Philly is cut off on all of my world aeronautical charts, but based on the measurements I just made, Philly to NYC is about 75 nautical miles. So my Lego planet I want to make would just fit there. I think even I can admit that won't happen, since I can't afford that much land, and 500 trillion baseplates don't exist, and I can't come up with that many interesting blocks anyway. Now, a small moon on the other hand....

My first attempt to make money with Legos is going to be a web comic. Or a traditional comic, with episodes, that is available primarily on the web. Some people call that a web comic too. I have a script for one episode. Or issue. Whatever. I intend to write more, and when I can prove to myself that I am serious about it (and come up with a budget) I will start acquiring the Legos. I was going to do this entirely on the computer with 3d modeling tools, but it is really difficult and annoying to create legos virtually. Every idea I have, I preemptively shoot it down because I just don't feel like trying to move all of those bricks around virtually. It is my hope that, besides the typical t-shirts and advertisements that people do, that I will be able to sell my own models, of things that appear in the comic strip. Oh, and maybe I can sell custom Lego directions for the Kindle! I would have to buy a Kindle though. I'm not sure if thats a good thing or not.

Anyway, I also went Salsa dancing tonight. It was pretty cool. Its weird, though, learning from someone that I don't exactly trust. The people I learned from in Philly were amazing and I ate up every word, every move. The moves that I'm learning in my current studio, though, occasionally feel a bit off. Like I'm not sure thats a real move. Admittedly, dancing, as in any art, need not adhere to some strict cannon of allowed and disallowed moves, and my love for East Coast Swing, with all of its dangerious tricks and dips, is proof of my agreement. However, when it comes to salsa, not a move is more than "I've never seen that before." Not a move means the move feels incredibly awkard, and things are being done on certain counts of the music that are normally not done on those counts, and we're off balance and hurrying to get through. Also, and I don't know how he does it, but my instructor manages to insult me when correcting me. I've been told point blank, and quite often, by many different instructors, that I'm doing something terribly wrong, and I've stared blankly as they've patiently tried over and over again to show me how its done properly. This guy though...he just manages to piss me off. Maybe I'm being prideful. Maybe I've just gotten soft. Whatever is it, I'll be getting over it because my moves have gotten stale and I need these classes.