.
That's a quote from P.T. Barnum, famous circus owner and all-around huckster.
It's as true today as when he said it several generations ago. My great-grandparents owned a circus until the depression, when Barnum & Bailey bought them out. The Floto Circus. Based in Wisconsin, I think, but they toured the entire country in their day. There are a few artifacts from their operation on permanent display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, so you can check it out -- I am not making this up.
About this time, the average reader may ask themselves, "What's this got to do with anything?"
Beats the shit out of me.
Oh yeah, I was thinking about eBay. I usually have a couple of random things up for auction on eBay, and lately I've been pretty busy selling and shipping all sorts of silly crap out to the hungry populace. People never seem to tire of buying stuff that I find basically useless. Pre-eBay, this stuff used to end up in our garbage cart. Sometimes so much of it that I had to tape an envelope with a $10-spot and a quick note to our garbage can. (This way Groot wouldn't charge me extra. My service plan used to be the "unlimited" plan. Turns out, the "unlimited" plan was limited to two garbage carts, or one cart plus two garbage bags. This didn't seem as "unlimited" as the name may suggest, so I switched to "basic," which allows only one cart a week. I soon learned I could leave a dump-truck full of crap at the curb, and as long as I tipped my collection dude, it disappeared without a trace. Imagine that.)
But as for eBay, I'm finding that every time I sell something, I end up buying something else, so I never seem to get ahead. And I never gain any space in my garage, either.
This week I "won" an auction for an electric ice-cream maker. But the picture didn't do it justice. Instead of a tiny little thing -- it looked pretty small in the photo -- it's the one-gallon model. About three feet tall, counting the motor. I left it in the breezeway while I looked for recipes on the internet, since it was too big to bring into the kitchen without some major counter-top re-arranging.
After a few minutes, Robin came home, passing the new appliance on the way in. She asked me whether that thing in the breezeway was a sump pump or a pool filter, or what? We don't have a basement, and unless we got a pool overnight, the filter thing didn't make sense, so WTF?
I explained my well-thought-out high-minded idea... I saw it on eBay and I was the only bidder, so I WON! Your husband's a WINNER!
And since she'll get some home-made ice cream out of this, I didn't receive the usual ration of shit that I get when I do something genuinely hare-brained (think buying a new snowmobile or the electric dog-polisher thing...) So we have a new toy around here. We'll try it out this weekend, and sooner or later, it will be back in the garage, adding to the general clutter.
And when the pile falls over, burns down or sinks in the swamp, I'll have another blog to write. I look forward to it. Now that my neighbor has taken to mowing his lawn regularly and taking his garbage cans up each week, the dick. You're going to be a good neighbor now? WTF? I need something to write about!
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The rambling musings of a 50ish construction superintendent. Schooled in the Midwest as a journalist, consigned to a career in construction by personal circumstances, our hero has a novel inside of him -- which is where it should stay. In its stead, he offers this blog to the thronging masses, both washed and unwashed.
