December 16, 2003
THINGS I'VE BOUGHT ON EBAY
I've bought some, well, strange stuff over the years. One gets locked into a desperate bidding battle for some innocuous gimcrack of suspect worth, and logic and sanity become mere spectators, marginalized qualities of equally suspect worth. To wit:
Popeye stuff: I have that filthy little handpuppet from the thirties. At the time I proclaimed it the best five dollars I'd ever spent. That particular claim may still be true, but it signifies little. I also have two Popeye Christmas tree ornaments. Why two? Hell, I didn't want the first one to be lonely. The Stooges ornaments would never socialize with a Popeye ornament. Breeding, you know.
American Tourister luggage: I bought my daughter 8 or 9 pieces of that Marlo Thomas cherry red Tiara hardshell stuff from the sixties. The shit the gorilla threw around the cage (baggage handlers as APES?!? Make that commercial today and see how far Jesse Jackson is up your ass).
Tres chic, though. And tres pain in the ass when you're slogging through Miami International with five pieces of it lashed to your body in traditional Thai yak fashion, while your daughter pulls your two-suiter with her pinkie and gabs on her cellphone.
Service manuals: I'm the putz who buys these things. I'll get the burr up my ass and decide I can make that 1948 Keystone 8mm movie camera work if I just have the manual. Great. I have the manual. A bargain at $23.99 plus $9.95 S&H. I can now divine the camera worked all along. I just didn't realize the On button was that reverse swastika symbol.
Now go on Ebay and find some 8mm film, because Walgreen's isn't stocking it this millenium. Hint: you'll have to buy it on the black market in Juarez, and half of it will already be exposed with images of a wizened abuela power-milking a burro. Then find some dessicated fossil from the cinematography department at United Artists, who was forcibly retired in 1959 for blaspheming Panavision, to develop it for you.
Ebay. What you see is, unfortunately, so often what you get.
I've had some good luck picking up books there. It gets harder all the time to find bargains, though. The heyday was about 2 and a half or 3 years ago. But if it weren't for Ebay, I could never have afforded my limited, signed first edition of "An Odor of Love".
Posted by: Jack Straw at December 16, 2003 10:18 PMSigned by yourself, as I recall, Jack.
Posted by: Velociman at December 16, 2003 10:25 PMEbay is no longer about bargains. It's about finding things that are hard to find.
I went to Ebay this week looking for a bargain earbud and mic for my cellphone. I bought it at Cingular Wireless because it was cheaper than Ebay.
Posted by: sugarmama at December 17, 2003 5:10 PMI don't believe I've ever bought anything from ebay.
Posted by: Geoffrey at December 17, 2003 8:05 PMHard to believe, Geoff, considering the run on leather codpieces lately...
Posted by: Velociman at December 17, 2003 8:14 PMThat's all well and good there, Kim. But the question that begs to be asked is "what did you buy for meeeeee?"
Posted by: Da Goddess at December 18, 2003 2:33 AM