One of the many downsides of being broke

It's not just having to watch how much I spend on food lest I run out of money too soon and go hungry.  It's not just the looming possibility of becoming homeless.  It's not just that there's no way disability income can cope for current debt.  It's not just any of the ordinary facts of life.

It's also:

I've always wanted to do that, but I can't afford that many stamps.

That would be awesome, but it would cost way too much to get that many translucent marbles.

That other thing I can't afford the marbles for would be awesome but I can't afford the LEDs either.

That other thing I can't afford the LEDs for would be awesome.

I really like this idea and see great potential in it across a number of areas but there's no way I can afford an electronic edition of the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary or a computer with the processing power to do this in not-forever.

All I'd need to do is hire a programmer... with the money I don't have.

This might actually work!  Except I'd need to pay an artist and a storyboarder and ...

If I had an old typewriter, case included, one to three laptop screens (or eight but that would be so awesome it might generate a singularity) a massive hard drive, multiple processors set up to work in tandem, a keyboard ripped out of a laptop, an optical mouse encased in something sufficiently steampunk looking (Which I Could Make!), and a... who the fuck am I kidding?  I have no money.

I could feed the screencaps from the movie into a structure from motion program put that through a mesh making program, output the resultant geometry into a form a 3d printer can understand and then create an actual physical reconstruction of the movie's enviroment which would be way cooler than a lego playset.  Except to do that I'd need a much better computer, one which I could leave processing for days on end meaning it couldn't be my primary even though it would be way better than current primary, and I'd need the money to 3d print it, which I don't have.

I don't even know if James Killian Spratt is still alive and even if he is I can't afford his chess sets (his site, sprattart.com is no longer up, I always hoped to buy some of his sets one day.)

I also don't know if Patricia A. Shaffer is still around, and if she is I doubt I could afford to buy a copy of her unpublished book (Tongue of Angels: An Enochian Study) from her (an exercise that might be made more difficult by the fact that I don't believe in Enochian and view it the same way one views fictional world building.)

The kids would both like one of those.  I could buy them each one if I weren't broke.

Well that looks interesting....

Ok, so I'd need 256 mostly clear squares with a light refracting particulate distributed in it, 256 darker but still translucent squares also with the light refracting particulate, 512 blue lights, probably LEDs, 512 red lights, probably LEDs.  1024 very basic pressure sensors, something springy or squishy to make it so that the weight alone would trip one sensor but it would need to be actively pressed down on to trip the second, wiring to connect it all, a metal frame on which it is held up, a computer to control the lights, and ... no money.

And then there are good ideas that I have that I don't even remember because I know they're impossible because: broke.

If I could only have one run of injection molding...