New Features to End a Long Weekend

After a grueling weekend (see Friday’s post), it is time to catch up on the weekly features.

This week’s top five list consists of the items in my garage sale that I cannot believe did not sell:

5. Old comfy couch – My neighbor even sat drinking beer on it through most of the sale which I thought would have made it look more appealing.

4. Retro Audio Visual Starter Kit – A product of my own design, this 1980s RCA video camera with a ten pack of blank VHS tapes and a VCR was a steal.  To tell the truth, I would have been willing to through in one of the old TVs as a video monitor to a savvy enough haggler.

3. Classic typewriter – My greenish-bluish Underwood Olivette obviously couldn’t be appreciated by the clientele my particular garage sale attracted.  I suppose I need to buy an ad in the Wall Street Journal next time around.

2. My sons’ bicycles – Lightly ridden and then outgrown immediately after they learned how to balance, they caused several people to stop and peruse the rest of the items, but no one ever committed.

1. Fisherman’s desk lamp – The base has a molded tackle box with fish and nearby foliage and the stem leading up to the bulb is a fishing pole.  How awesome is that?  Of course, maybe it didn’t sell because I snuck it back in the house while my wife wasn’t looking.

This week’s  cool-ass thing you will never own is a funnel cake maker.  It’s not so much that it’s that far out of your possible price range, but when are you really going to use this thing.  Or, if you are likely to use it every day (as I would) you probably have a spouse or significant other who keeps your spending in check.

This week’s sign you are a nerd is that you have stood in line at a carnival and commented to the person near you on the use of centrifugal force and reduction of humidity in the cotton candy manufacturing process.  It’s a carnival.  Nobody wants to put that much thought into it.

This week’s nemesis is the carnival barker.  “Step right up and spend your parents money to win a crappy, dusty toy that they could buy at a fraction of the cost.”  How do guys who travel around the country with rickety mechanical rides, scamming people out of cash manage to make you look like a terrible parent?

The Tilt-A-Whirl is an entirely different animal before and after eating.  The ride that your child handled with grace and courage earlier in the day might result in their face turning green and you trying to jump clear of projectile vomiting after they have something in their bellies.

This week’s equation is a very simple inequality brought on by my sales pitch to a recent garage sale customer.  I offered the price of five dollars per bag of baby clothes and there were six bags.  The offered was countered with forty dollars for the whole lot of it.  Apparently, the buyer did not realize the following:

The Star Wars quote of the week is, “Noooooooo!”

Thanks for reading.  Sorry it’s been such a busy week.  I hope to get back to writing more quality posts now that the craziness is over.