Laundryroom Swapmeet

Item:

A medium-sized black suitcase in good condition.

Why It’s Here:

I don’t know!  I mean, christ, it’s a perfectly decent suitcase!  I try to come up with reasons for this stuff, but c’mon!  eBay!  Craigslist!  This isn’t a half-emptied bottle of avocado-rum hair gel, people, it’s a freakin’ suitcase.  It’s got little wheels and everything!  You can sell this!  You can turn this directly into money with minimal effort!

Though maybe there were body parts inside or something.  I didn’t check.

Probable Recipient:

Someone who is going to be all “holy crap, I can’t believe someone was just giving this away!  It’s a sweet-ass suitcase!  They must be a real idiot, whoever they are!  Seriously!”  Seriously!

Or it might be a zombie suitcase:

You know, like in that George Romero movie.

You know the one I’m talking about.

Samsonite of the Living Dead.

Item:

A clear plastic box of potpourri with Target “HOME” branding on it. 

Why It’s Here:

There’s a couple on the fifth floor of the building; he’s Protestant, she’s areligious.  They love each other dearly, but he has such a temper when he reads the newspaper that she’s walking on eggshells some evenings just to avoid the insult shrapnel as he chews his way through the International section.

One recent evening, enraged as he was by news of recent Vatican declarations re: demoninational waywardness and the primacy of the Church, he could not contain himself and was heard to cry out:  “Goddam Popery!”

She misunderstood, saw this sitting unopened on the table, and dashed it down to the laundryroom in a panic.

Probable Recipient:

Rome, if someone doesn’t stand up to ‘em.  Opus Dei, amirite?

And now for some self-promotion:

I’ve recently started doing a new project.  It’s a sort of absurdist web comic made from baseball cards, but it’s not really about baseball, and it’s honestly pretty hard to explain so you should just go check it out.  It’s called bunt cake, and if you enjoy reading the swapmeet you’re probably the sort of weirdo who will get what I’m trying to do over there.  And I mean that very warmly.

Item:

A black and yellow floral print something-or-other from Briggs New York.

Why It’s Here:

Previous owner cared less about owning this article of clothing (whatever it is—a dress? a shirt? strange trousers?) than they did about showing off the epic markdown chain that got it into their hands in the first place.  $34.00!  $14.99!  $13.00 even! 

I guess that isn’t actually that epic.  The extra “$19.01″ made it look kind of exciting, but it turns out that was just math.  Maybe that’s why they got rid of it: they hate math!

Probable Recipient:

Albert frickin’ Einstein or something.

You know who else liked steep discounts:

Adolf H—[editor’s note: we apologize for the whole “You know who else x?  Hitler!” meme.  We’re trying to rein him in some, but he just thinks it’s hilarious and won’t stop using it.  He does it at the dinner table, he does it at shareholder meetings.  It’s insane.  You know for what other value of x he’s used that joke?  That’s right, Adolf H—{janitor’s note: I’m really really sorry about that.  They don’t pay me enough for this shit.}]

Item:

Two clay pots, of small and medium size and light and middling color respectively.

Why It’s Here:

Previous owner was going crazy trying to grapple with the paradoxical juxtaposition of dualism and unity.  For are they not both pots, both alike in essence?  Clay, the two of them, and of similar shape and purpose and hew. 

And yet!  Different colors!  Different sizes!  One new, one aged; one spotlessly clean, the other caked with the dirt of some now-dead or -transplanted floral occupant—how can we say these are the same, when they are so different?

Plus, dude probably forgot to water whatever was in them.

Probable Recipient:

A really cheap, really imaginative Primus fanatic.  She’ll use these and some tape and some pipe cleaners to make a little planter homunculus and put it up on a pedestal and sacrifice low-B bass strings to it and call it ‘Les Claypots’.

There are about five different ways:

that I could have gone with that Les Claypots thing, but that’s what I settled on because the rough draft in my head was the least stupid of the bunch.  Woe, woe unto the Being John Malkovich tourists in my mind who had to endure the brainstorming process.