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Garbage in, Garbage out
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
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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.
Garbage at the Thrift Shop
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 303
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...
Kelly Shpeley
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Other
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A local artist of some considerable talent, showing now at the Cantina on Baker.
View more of her work here: https://kellyshpeley.com/previous-work
She'd be an interesting person to meet, were it not for the fact I'd probably enquire about rhyming her first and last name and that would not endear me...
OF Wasp nests and Jellyfish on Kootenay Lake
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
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I'm walking on the shore of Kootenay Lake with JR (the infamous son of the last restaurant I worked in...). It's a beautiful day, the sun is bright and trees hang their branches over the sandy shore. JR, he's finding these little grey paper wasp nest submerged in the lake, just beneath the surface, and he's telling me that sometimes wasps survive the freezing of the lake (?), and he's taking them out and gently hanging them from trees, and I'm wondering why?
I'm walking in the water, noticing strings of algae, when one begins to move, pulsate, and I recognize that it's some form of jellyfish, and there's another one, clearer, transparent, with tentacles like an octopus...
(Dreams lately restless and largely inexplicable)
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