Knees Weak, Arms Heavy, Cable Spaghetti

Hello! It’s Colin. This is the first time in some time you’ve received an email like this. But, every two weeks (hopefully more often), I’ll send more like it: stories on things I have formed a compulsive obsession with, ideas that wrack my brain until I have no choice but to learn about them, talk with people who know more about them, and write about them.

If you like what you’re reading, I’d encourage you to share a link to IMBOT (I Might Be Overthinking This) with people who might also enjoy it. Just a quick text or email.

Just one more time, here’s the link: https://imbot.beehiiv.com/subscribe.

_{Cheers,
Colin}

Outside our apartment building, cords, wires and cables hang from an open electrical box. This box has been open for as long as I know or have noticed.

I used to be scared about their exposure—they’re gonna buzz some shit up, cause a fire, no? But enough time has passed, and to me, the cords (the simple term for the long, power thingy) are just a part of the building’s facade, as impenetrable as the brick and cement.

The remains of telephone cords in the building’s basement are a maze of a different kind, of no use whatsoever, a graveyard. As of 2023, nearly 75 percent of American adults live in households without a landline. Given the state of these cords, I don’t think anyone in our building has a landline.

When we moved in, the previous owner left sticky notes taped to different parts of the apartment: low- and high-powered outlets, the landline connection, where we should plug in the internet modem, the intercom. The note for the AT&T internet connection, located under the headboard of our bed, is still there, though the A&T internet does not work. Instead, our Xfinity internet comes from a separate source: behind the wall in another room, which leads outside to the vine of wires pouring out of the open electrical box.

Inside, a 20-foot-long cord containing the internet's beeps and boops snakes around the room to where our modem is plugged in. Those familiar with the cable management business would call this a “cable raceway” (you may have heard of its cousins, the “cord clip” and the “coiled power strip.”)

These solutions promise to hide and keep cord messes at bay and make them inconspicuous with their environment.