This Old House

Mmmmmmm. Can you smell that? Other people’s garbage. Unwanted wares, plopped unceremoniously into a yard or garage in hopes that someone with too much money to waste (although frugal enough not to buy things brand-new) will want to part with a quarter or a dollar for the honor of bringing home your rusty old fishing poles, or perhaps your fifth-grade art project.

The 2012 yardsale season starts not with a bang, but with a “Hey, is that a yardsale?” The weather report was calling for rain, so I’d assumed sales would be light-to-nonexistent this Saturday morn’, but lo: on the way to the supermarket, we found it. The season’s first sale. An estate sale, in a house that, from the outside looked nice, although from the inside, it appeared as though one errant stomp might send the whole thing crashing down.

We trod lightly.

re: My Life, Completed

No new yardsales yet (in fact, I haven’t been to a single one since I found naked Batman and “homemade”  bread back in October), but I wanted to bring to light something that came in the mail the other day. Something that—I’m not overstating things when I say this—will change my life forever. Take a look:

YES YES YES YES YES YES YESSSSSSSSSSS! Forget that stupid statue; I now have, nailed to my hot little wall, an original “pear of sheep” art masterpiece, courtesy of my friend Shannon, wife of my friend Nathaniel, fellow GameCola writer and co-proprieter of the geek blog Exfanding Your Horizons. I was speechless when I opened the box; I took such a sharp intake of breath that I thought it might stab right through my esophagus, killing me before I got to raise my fun meter by just spam-admiring it all day. This is just beautiful. I’m not sure I’ll be able to tear myself away from it long enough to go to any actual yardsales this season; I don’t want to leave it alone.

re: Pear of Sheep

Sorry, I know I promised over at that other website that the next three posts here would all be about videogames…but I came across a phenomenon today that just has to be documented—something so disturbing yet, in a way, enlightening that it’s kind of a tragedy that there aren’t books on the subject already.

Are you ready for this?

The “pear of sheep” statue is not an isolated incident.

I was searching for “pear of sheep” on Google to try to get an idea of my new blog’s search ranking, and I came across dozens of items with the same theme. Dozens. I’m serious! The “pear of sheep” statue isn’t just one item some crazy person convinced a gullible manufacturer to mass-produce; it’s a veritable motif! My life is now dedicated to finding out why.

Regrets.

If this were a LiveJournal post, my current mood would be “despondent,” and my current music would be anything by Dashboard Confessional.

I’ve recently discovered that I’m too gun-shy about yardsaling. I spend so much time hemming and hawing over 50-cent items—”but do I really want this? Where would I put it? What could I possibly do with so many binder clips?”—that I think it takes some of the fun out of it, and I don’t end up turning my apartment into a prime candidate for Hoarders, which is of course a shame.

Yesterday, I passed on two items that would have unquestionably changed my life for the better. The first was a computer game called Dairy Queen Tycoon, in which you—and this is from the back of the box—”become the manager of your very own Dairy Queen,” something all little boys dream about. I’m a big fan of goofy sim games like that, but after spending several minutes poring over the box, the manual, and the disc, I couldn’t tell if it was an actual sim game, or a time-management game, which is a completely different type of videogame whose name is derived from the fact that, if you’re playing it, you aren’t doing it. Ultimately I passed on it, but the stupid thing only cost 50 cents, so I really should’ve just taken the chance. I could be mixing my own Blizzards right now!

The other item I passed on is going to keep me up at night for the rest of my life. I feel like my world is a little less magical because I don’t own it. I didn’t take a picture of the item at the sale, because I still don’t have the guts to do that, but amazingly, I came across someone else’s via Google.

Pictured below: the cause of my sorrow.