From (and about) the Desk of Rob E.
I'm doing it because you said I can't
The year: 1993. The place: a subleased townhouse in Columbus, Ohio. I had just moved in for the summer with my a friend and my girlfriend(whether or not this was a wise decision is something we can talk about later). I took the third floor attic bedroom. Sure it was a hike(a small set of steps to the front door, a second flight to the second floor, and a third, steep, narrow flight to the third floor), but it was big, and it was my own room, which, after dorm living, was a welcome change. E. (my girlfriend at the time--initials are being used to protect the "innocent," which is ridiculous because if you know me, you know exactly who I mean, and if you don't know me, I could give you her full name and it wouldn't mean a thing to you) and I went across the road to the Salvation Army to see if we could flesh out some of our furniture needs. My quest: to seek the perfect desk. I found it, too. Big, wide, metal, with a neato file drawer and everything. It was love at first site, but I wanted to introduce the other love of my life to it and make sure there were no personality conflicts. "What do you think?"
She took one look at it and said, "You'll never get it upstairs."
"I think it'll fit."
"No, it's huge, it's heavy, the stairway is too narrow. It'll never go."
Now I consider myself to be a rational person(no matter what anyone else says), and I still maintain that I could have been talked out of purchasing the desk if E. had reasoned with me, but the "never" was just too much for me. There was no give and take. A line had been drawn and there was only one way to settle our dispute.
"We'll see." I told her, and then to the person at the counter, "I'll take that big, ugly metal desk over there."
In the end, with some grudgingly given help from E., we managed to get the desk up the first flight, into the front door(which required removing the legs), and a few steps up the second flight. When my friend and new room mate, S., got home, he and I got it up to the third floor. Now I'm not saying it was easy, but I still count it as a success. And besides, while the room mate has gone off to California, and the girlfriend eventually moved to Alaska(why, after living with me, people then feel to need to go to the furthest corners of the continent is also a topic for a later time), the desk and I still live together quite happily.I was glad to help, but don't ever ask me again.
E.'s rebuffing of my purchase was the first, but by no means the only time my beloved desk has been the source of conflict among my family and friends. You'd think such an unassuming, inanimate object would not be capable of arousing strong feelings of any nature, but you'd be wrong. Here's the problems: It's big, it's heavy, it's ugly(I admit it, but it does have a great personality), and I move around a lot, and always without the benefit of professional movers. I've found that on average I can sucker my friends into helping me move one(1) time. After that, the conversations go pretty much the same: "Sure, I think I can help you move. What day do you need---Wait a minute. Do you still have that desk?" It's an incentive to keep making new friends, and it seems to work because the desk has lived at three addresses in Columbus, plus one storage unit, then Cleveland, plus a storage unit, and is now moving to it's second Raleigh, North Carolina address, and, if memory serves, only one person, other than myself, has ever moved it twice. That one person is my friend, H., and as to how he agreed to it a second time, I think it was just a memory lapse. On the way down the steps taking the desk out of the apartment he had helped move it into over a year before, he paused in his moving and said, "I don't know why I don't remember bringing this up these steps before." Good thing for me he didn't because I'm moving more frequently than I'm making new friends these days.
Open the pod bay doors, HAL
Two days ago, in preparation for my latest move, I had to upend the desk to remove the legs. The desk was in my bedroom. The bed was already gone, and I was sleeping on my futon on the floor. As I drifted to sleep that night, I was very conscious of the monolithic, upended desk looming over me and blocking the streetlight that usually shines in on me as I sleep. Laying in its shadow, I was reminded of certain scenes in Arthur C. Clarke's 2001. And I don't think the resemblance was entirely superficial, because in the morning I found that I was capable of using simple tools.
Will you be my friend?
I love my new apartment. Mostly because it is not my old apartment, which hopefully means that people will not feel that they can break in and relieve me of my belongings on a fairly regular basis. Still, I foresee that I will not be able to stay there forever with that tiny kitchen and bathroom and the wallpaper that's so old and tacky that its only redeeming quality seems to be that it's falling off the wall, so it's time to start making new friends. So if you live in the Raleigh area, you should drop me a line. Me: Aquarius, heavier than I ought to be, older than I used to be, likes live music, Buffy on Tuesday, walking with no destination, cheesy musical soundtracks, science fiction, and blogging at work. You: good upper body strength. Owning a pickup truck a plus...
posted 3:19 PM
Howard the Duck
I don't know what it was about that duck. I just loved him. I didn't read Howard's comics when they first came out, as I was only recently out the egg myself, but somewhen in the early 80's I stumbled upon some of the comics and got hooked. My one lament was that, when reading those old issues from 1976, I knew I wouldn't be able to send in my dollar with a "Self-addressed, Stamped Envelope" to receive a Howard the Duck campaign button. The campaign was over, Howard had lost, and even his comic had been canceled (more or less) by the time I was reading it. Later, when I had moved to Cleveland, I was able to reread the comics, this time with a new appreciation for Howard's primary goal in life: to get out of Cleveland. But I still haunted by the ads for the campaign button, so wonderful yet so unobtainable...
Enter "The World's Online Marketplace."
It's my aunt's fault. At least she's the one who introduced me to that and many other of my favourite vices. Granted, I would have stumbled on to Ebay eventually, every collector does, but my aunt gave me my first glimpse. "Just try it," she said from behind her laptop. "Think of something you'd like to buy, but don't know where to find it." At that moment my collecting urges were focused towards the Magic: the Gathering card game, and my desire was to locate one obscure and somewhat silly card. I knew she wouldn't find it on her silly auction web site, but she wanted a challenge. "See you can find the 'Infernal Spawn of Evil.'" She wouldn't find it. It was an obscure game, and the card was not only obscure, but also useless in the game since it was basically a joke card. Still, she had wanted a challenge, so I let her look... "I found five of them."
It didn't seem possible. These days I and the rest of the web surfing world take for granted the fact that almost any item, no matter how obscure and useless, will eventually end up for sale to the highest bidder on Ebay, but at the time I was in awe. My next request didn't require much thought at all. "See if you can find a 1976 Howard the Duck 'Get Down America' campaign button."
The fact that it wasn't there didn't disappoint me too much. I was impressed enough with the success of the Magic card to keep going back to Ebay. Some months later, that campaign button did show up, and for about fifty times its original cost, I bought it. Also I bought Magic cards, comic books, out-of-print books, old toys, CDs, clothes, movies, etc....
Critical Mass Achieved
I think it's a kind of mania. Collectors in general have it, I think. And I believe it's the driving force behind Ebay's success. Logically speaking, once you're outbid, you should think, "I guess it costs more than I was willing to spend." and get on with your life, go bid on some Weebles or antique weathervanes or something. But it doesn't work that way, because as soon as you put in a bid, you start thinking of it as yours. Once you're outbid, it's like someone just took something away from you, now it's not just an idle purchase, now it's personal. I would "reason" myself into a higher bid all the time:
"Well, I bid $10, and now it's at $15. In my mind, I've already spent that $10, so the question is, 'Is it worth $5 dollars more?'"
"Well if it was worth $10 before, then it must still be worth at least that much, so I'll bid another 10."
"Rats, now it's at $25. What to do? Well, I've already committed $20, so what's another 10 at this point, right?"
and so on and so forth until poverty ensues. Still, what a rush when you win. But eventually I had more junk than I needed. Actually I started out with more junk than I needed. Eventually I had more junk than I had room. Then I discovered that it's just as fun in reverse. You put something up for sale and watch the numbers climb. Where will it stop? Ten dollars? Fifteen? Do I hear twenty? It was too exciting. I found myself at the store buying things I didn't want. "Seven dollars? I bet I can get ten for it on Ebay. I'll take it."Step 13-repeat
But I'm past all that now. "Hello, I'm Rob E.-" "HELLO ROB E.!" "-I'm Rob E. and it's been 8 months, 3 days since my last Ebay transaction." But this month I'm moving, and I found pile of Magic: the Gathering cards that I haven't touched since I moved them into my apartment. "Well, I could pack them up and move them to a new place where they'll stay stored until I move to a new new place, or I could just post them on Ebay, get rid of them, and never have to worry about them again." Good thinking, but now I'm off the wagon. What else do I have? Why do I have a degaussing coil? Get rid of that thing. Now what else? I'm doing okay though. The only other things I put up were a Groo and a Superman lunch box. But I notice I've been looking at my apartment with new eyes, everything I see brings up a series of questions: "How much do you think that's worth?" "Would anyone buy it?" "How easy would it be to ship?" It's only with effort that I remember to ask one more question: "Do I still want/need it?" Yesterday my computer looked like something that would auction well, but from the depths of my psyche that oft quiet voice of reason piped up, "But then you wouldn't have a computer, right?" "Oh, right. Good thinking. I wonder what this alarm clock would fetch..." And worse yet, just being on the site makes me think of other items to look for. I may not want the plush Sandman figures, but somehow I know that just because I don't want them, it doesn't mean I don't need them...
posted 5:40 PM
My co-worker comes from Eastern Europe, and while her English is very good, she occasionally says things that are a little off. Sometimes I think she’s trying to translate sayings from her native language into mine. The other day she saw that I had brought leftover pizza to work for lunch. It was part of the same leftover pizza that I had eaten for lunch the day before, which was of course left over from when I had ordered pizza the night before that. She said, “How can you eat pizza every day? Doesn’t it make you…um…cry in the bathroom?” A little off. I’ve never heard it put quite like that, but I can guess at what she means, or maybe I’m guessing wrong. Maybe she means when I get on scale. Either way, the answer is no. Eating pizza for three days straight does not make me “cry in the bathroom.” I cry there because I like the acoustics.
posted 11:00 AM