A Lovely Harmless Monster

Editing: blog/weird-things-i-want

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title:Weird things I want
author:matt
tags:blog, books, GarbageDigest, tech
date:2025-06-03
mdid:114620206737096432
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## A personal codex

I was watching [a video by an ex-mormon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2tOMSZWWoU) about the [mormon cookie craze](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crumbl_Cookies), and at one point the host pulled out a copy of her personal LDS Bible. It's an impressively thick soft leather-bound tome officially known as the [Standard Works](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_works), nicknamed the "quad" after the four books it contains: *The Bible* (old & new testaments), the *Book of Mormon*, and two additional LDS books called the  *Doctrine and Covenants* and *Pearl of Great Price*. It has black thumb-index divots for quickly finding the section you want to reference.

![](https://i.imgur.com/ySlj91e.jpeg)

![](https://i.imgur.com/86DuGIz.jpeg)

Obviously I have no need for religious texts, especially one for a creepy cult, but there's something about a thick codex with thumb divots and tiny text on onion skin paper I find inherently appealing. It's such a dense brick of information! It looks so official and important! Maybe it's because I'm reading *Cryptonomicon*, so my current interest in arcane texts and esoterica is higher than usual, but it'd just be cool to have a big codex I can pull out and look studious and mysterious. But what would I put in it?

I think there should be a service that'll let you paste a bunch of links from wikipedia or project Gutenberg, it'll calculate how many of the ~2500 pages each text document will use at the requested font size, and print-on-demand a personal codex of your most sacred texts. Trying to figure out what I'd fill it with would be an interesting exercise. One could go with the top X wikipedia articles, or maybe a random selection from the "good article" category. This would be good if you want a book with a bunch of stuff you can learn about, but not very "personal". Maybe it could be half wikipedia and half fiction? I could type up a list of stories I'd include, but the number of "classics" I've read and enjoyed is shamefully low. There are a bunch that I bet I *could* read and enjoy if I made the effort to; maybe I'd be more willing to try if they were presented in a mysterious-looking tome.

What about if copyright weren't an issue? That's an easier list to build:

* Cat's Cradle
* The Crying of Lot 49
* The Dispossessed
* The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
* The Little Prince
* Moxyland
* The Pale King
* The Wee Free Men
* Winnie the Pooh (both books)
* A Wrinkle in Time

That seems like a lot, but most of those are under 200 pages. I think I could squeeze them into 2500 pages or standard paperback-size print. (Let's be real, if the font is any smaller I'm not gonna want to read it.)

[What would you put in your personal codex?](https://mattbee.zone/contact?subject=Weird%20things%20I%20want)

## A photovoltaic hat

I'm still trying to get my 10,000 steps a day now that it's getting a lot sunnier, and I realized that my head is getting all this direct sunlight that's just going to waste. Why *not* wear a hat that can charge my phone? Flexible solar panels are a thing, and a hatsworth wouldn't be all that expensive. A plain wide-brimmed black hat like the one worn by the Oats Quaker would probably be the most fashionable, but you could do a cowboy hat or sombrero for additional juice/shade if you don't mind some funny looks. A "stovepipe" hat would be the most thematically appropriate; maybe it's time to bring those back? All the kids these days love Lincoln.

You could put a power bank in the "bowl" (?) of the hat, but keeping a bunch of li-ion cells in a sealed heat dome next to your brain probably isn't the best idea. Better to just have a USB cable running from the hat to the phone in your pocket. It probably wouldn't be enough to *charge* it, not while the phone's on, but if it could help the battery drain less slowly, that's something.

Or wait, what about a solar umbrella?! That'd be rad. The "stem" (?) could have a built-in phone holder with a charging dock! That's way better. No unsightly cables, better sun protection, more surface area = more power, and you wouldn't have to wear a hat. I hate hats, why did I think of hats first? Solar umbrellas all the way.

## A phone case with like 20-30 fake cameras on the back

I recently learned about a depressing category of product from the early 90s: personal cassette players shaped like personal CD players. To make people who don't look too closely think you can afford a personal CD player.

>![](https://i.imgur.com/3uynA0L.jpeg)
>
>Vwestlife, [A Discman that plays cassette tapes - Suntone CD100](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCrBOX4IhcM)

My immediate thought was that the modern equivalent of this would be a phone case with a fake camera bump on the back to make people think your $30 TCL phone from Walmart is the latest $1600 apple phone. I can't find any examples of this (I'm having trouble even thinking of what search terms to use) but I'm sure this product must exist somewhere. It's probably something you can only find in signless mall kiosks that are mysteriously empty when you return the next day to demand a refund for your melted "USB-G Adaqtor".

But then I thought, why stop there? Recent trends have clearly demonstrated that more cameras = more luxury. Just cover the whole thing with fake cameras, of varying shapes and sizes. Make it out of thick enough plastic to include a fake cutout so it looks like the cameras are on the actual phone. You'd have to cover the real cameras to make it look seamless, but who cares about taking photos when you have the exclusive Mitsui Vuitton Optic Sapphire 24S to show off? It's the world's first biblically accurate phone.

>![](https://i.imgur.com/H2wo4Pw.jpeg)
>
>The Light L16, a camera from 2018 with only 16 smartphone lens modules.

Feel free to take any or all of these ideas on *Shark Tank*, just send me a freebie if it works $$pat$$

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