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And, as per the previous post, I unbox a fine stainless steel Bavarian pub-mount corkscrew. Brand new. It's quality, how to price, say $20.00, put it on the shelf.
Later in the morning a box comes in, full of that dirty pressed-crystal, vases, canape and olive plates, straight into the garbage, we get so much of this, hundreds of pounds of it per day, it never sells, none of it. Even the finer cut crystal is a hard sell, can't give that stuff away.
But in with the garbage there's another freestanding corkscrew, with a price - $5.00 still on it, my handwriting, I remember this from last spring or fall...
On a hunch I check, the fine stainless Bavarian Corkscrew has sold, somebody is organized, bought the clearly better one, re-donated the old one. Garbage in, Garbage out.
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4 days last week, keeping up with the flow of garbage so we don't get backlogged. And doing pretty good until Friday, when I went in and discovered some 30 large UHAUL boxes, an older lady slipped on the ice at Wal-Mart, brought to Kelowna to be with her family. So her estate was packed up, all of it, no room in the home for it all. And what a lot of shit she had.
Baking pans, maybe 50 counting muffin tins, all in good shape, some used once if at all. Every conceivable kitchen appliance. A hundred electric labour saving carrot slicers, radish dicers, cucumber spiralizers, blenders, mixing bowls, coffee mugs, brand new in the case, quality shit, for sure it'll sell, only, only we already have a hundred more just like them on the shelves.
And so it goes, and I'm wondering, how does one person have so much kitchen shit? I mean, how many baking pans do you need? And gadgets, do-dads, what-nots, many never even used, straight from the Wal-Mart to us...
I'm talking it over with a friend, baffled by this consumerism without end, and she explains it well. That as the Matriarch with everything she's probably stumped her kids, grand-kids, great-grand-kids for gifts, what to get the person with everything, and so the things she once liked are repeated endlessly without end, the inanity of custom demanding acknowledgement of every anniversary, birthday, Xmas, and so it piles up and up..
And yesterday, watching the cars pull up and unload their shit, more shit, more shit, boxes and boxes of stuff that will buy a little time on our shelves before heading for the landfill...
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For those of you not paying attention, Ethan Crumbley was the Oxford, Michigan student who killed 4 students and wounded another 7 in a schoolyard shooting. Prosecutors later sought to hold the parents responsible.
Link here: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/oxford-school-shooting-ethan-crumbley-parents.html
And here: https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/03/us/crumbley-parents-michigan-shooting-prosecutors-sentence/index.html
Note the phrases "Chilling Lack of Remorse" and "Threatened Prosecutors".
Ethan Crumbley was the victim of incredibly negligent and indifferent parents. His mother too busy swinging with strangers to heed his pleas for mental help, his parents instead "placating" him by buying him a gun.
***
This is long overdue. While there are "Bad Seeds", Children who despite the best of parenting grow up to be murderers and monsters, this is the exception, not the rule. And just as those dog-owners who allow their animals to maul, maim and kill innocent children and elderly people, they should be held culpable. Ethan Crumbley was more a victim and his parents were the villains.
***
This case reminds me of the 2019 manhunt for Bryer Schmegelsky and Kam McLeod, the two young men who murdered 3 people across Northern BC, disappeared, and were found dead after an intense manhunt across 4 provinces.
You can read the details here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/northern-bc-murders-ito-1.5401732
And watch the interview with Kam McLeod's father here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HGJWr_Ycis
It doesn't take long to realize how this situation developed. Again, the fact that the young men were guilty of atrocities does not diminish the fact they were also victims of appalling parenting that should in some ways be held accountable.
But accountability is an idea so far beyond the pale of our judicial system it doesn't bear mention.
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And this, at the thrift shop, a donation of a hand painted door.
Kootenay Style, perfect for the "Budding" entrepreneur or your mushroom dispensary. Please, admire the detail. And Speculation as to what will end up going on behind the "Green Door" and suggesting perhaps a movie treatment when one of the older female volunteers assures me that it's already been done...
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The pendulum having swung to it's predictable seasonal low, money now completely evaporated and time to rein in the vices. Vodka, none. Cigarettes, none. Now these things, these are trifles, the empty fridge, well, less of a trifle.
Get off my ass, apply for a half dozen jobs I'm grossly overqualified for. And wait for no responses and a renewal of the adverts looking for staff and the inevitable complaints of businesses that they can't find anyone to work...
Not my problem, my problem is I'm more than a few dollars short.
The Vodka, this was long overdue to be given up and a few days in and I'm feeling like a new man. The cigarette habit is a bit harder to shake and so I pick up my vape pen, long ignored, and begin taking a puff on it once in a while when I'm feeling the absence of nicotine.
The Vape Pen, it's filled with some CBD/Sativa pot blend. I have no fucking clue, I'm not a pothead and have no pretensions in that department. And - for a while it eases the withdrawal.
The problem, of course, is that by noon I'm fucking zoodled, and pot doesn't agree with me. I get nauseous, or ravenous, often both, and there's no remedy. The initial "high", aside from making me incredibly unmotivated and wanting to nap (and I'm besieged with bizarre imagery, stoned imagery a-la marijuana, the imagery varying greatly depending on my mood, often more 'restless' than impressive, and I talk to pothead friends and they look at me like I'm crazy, because they don't get it...) is followed by an overwhelming anxiety.
This, I know, is a side effect of pot, for me at least, and from what I've read others get this as well, but...
Eventually the day is over, and the next day it begins again...wake up still stoned from the day before, take shallower and shallower puffs on the vape, I'm the lamest pothead out there but it's time to shake some bad habits, not acquire new ones, and the last thing I want to do is die a smoker or raging alcoholic, these things, they'll follow you into the next life and I'm at that age where it's time to begin preparations...
Anyways, there are people out here that live day to day 10X as stoned as I've ever been from dawn 'til dusk, and it helps me a great deal to understand how this economy functions...
Subcategories
Dating
OK. I've been on a few internet dates. I confess this with the same reluctance I would admitting to masturbating, adultery, or excessive drinking and drug use.
This is a list of some of my best -- AND WORST -- dates ever. Note that you gotta go on a lotta dates to get this kinda list, this kinda discouraged. And my online dating thing has been sporadic - an every few years kind of thing at best. Some of these dates go back 10 years, others are a little more recent. And to answer any people who might argue "It beats hooking up at the bar", well, you don't have to hook up at the bar, and at the bar you can see what your getting...
Anyways - apologies to the countless normal, decent dates that I went on but just didn't hit it off with. Memory is selective, it tends towards the extreme, and in this you will find the extremes...
Dear Osama
In which I write everyone's favorite advice columnist.
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