Laundryroom Swapmeet

That’s a pillow.  It’s red and sort of mottled with a sort of goldish leafy organic patter on it.  I’m guess it was left on the table because someone had given up sleeping.  That is probably not a very accurate guess.

I feel kind of awful about not updating the swapmeet.  Fact is, I’ve been distracted by some other web stuff (e.g. my new Q&A project Big Big Question, which you should, incidentally, check out), and some recurring technical difficulties a while back really took the wind out of my sales regardless.  Also, further excuses A, B, and C.

And now we come to a strange place: I have a small backlog of remain photos from a while back, but that’s not enough to really keep this place going, because something fundamental has happened:

The swapmeet table is gone.  New building manager is pretty anti-swapmeet, apparently.  So it is gone.  Adios.  No more table — and folks have pretty much done no dropping of stuff on the ground where the table used to be, which practically speaking probably just means they’re respecting the anti-swapmeet directive, but I prefer to think that it reveals a sort of magic contained in the swapmeet table itself.

I feel absurd about this, but it’s making me a little sad just to write about it.

So I don’t know what this means for the site.  It’s been seven months since an update as is, with a string of prior gaps before that, and it looks like gap city up ahead unless something changes.

I’m testing out the Akismet plugin to see if it’ll filter out blog spam as well as it’s reported to do; this probably means nothing to you, but if you feel like being helpful, drop a comment onto this post so I can be sure I don’t get any false positives.  

 Thanks!

There’s a small tale of mystery in this question over on Ask Metafilter—laundry gone missing from a communal laundry room!

Into the dryer went ~8 polos, 2 pairs of jeans, a couple of T-shirts, and some socks & underwear. Out came 4 polos, 1 pair of jeans, 1 T-shirt and not as many of the others.

Bizarre!  I’ve worried now and then that I’ve documented (and, worse, someone else has swapped out) what looked like swapmeet donations that were in fact stray articles of clothing forgotten mid-laundering; it seems an unlikely thing, but who can know for sure?

But I’m pretty sure I’ve never accidentally photographed the inside of a dryer, so I think I’m cleared on this one.

The swapmeet, along with a bunch of other things, has been rather mussed up by a recent Dreamhost security gaffe and ensuing hack.  That sucks, but it’s (hopefully) the past; in the present, I’m bootstrapping things as best I can, but the site may look odd for a bit.  Apologies!

Also, hacker nazis must die, kthx.

Glancing through my referrer logs this morning, I saw that folks got to the site by searching for, among other things, “what the shit”—a phrase you may recognize from the top-right corner of this page.

Well, that’s understandable: the swapmeet is the top google hit, baby.

Mostly I’d just like to thank the Academy is all.

Who’s this scrappy redhead, this metal wallflower?  Why, I believe we’ve had a visit from Mr. Handtruck!

He was here and then gone again—to return, perhaps, some day?  I do not know.  But here he was, and we will always cherish the memory of that happy day.

Man.  I think I should start updating again.

Is a little happiness too much to ask for?  Mr. Stroller had only just found some joy and companionship, and now, so soon, he is alone again.

Why, Ms. Stroller?  Why did you leave?  Can’t you see what a state you’ve left this poor vehicle in?  He sits in the dim corner, capable only of wondering how he ended up in such a sorry situation.  What, he wonders, next?

It’s been a while since we checked in on Mr. Stroller (who was introduced in this post).  In the interim, I’m happy to report that he has stuck around.

And it seems to be paying off.  Who is this lovely lady, strollering beside him down in the laundryroom?  Is it too presumptuous to refer to her as Mrs. Stroller?  Perhaps.  We’ll see what happens with these crazy kids.

I’m so happy for Mr. Stroller.  He’s such a great guy.

I’m pleased to announce that I have completely and totally caught up with my old backlog of swapmeet pictures!  Happy day!  The old backlog, she is dead!

The only problem is that I now have a new backlog of like three dozen items that have shown up while I was working through the old backlog.

Dammit!

When I first conceived of the swapmeet, I imagined it as a real-time proposition, more or less—each evening, I would take pictures of anything new on the table, and post that in the next day or so.  And I still like that idea, but the backlog continues to be of considerable size, so it might be a while before I’m actually genuinely caught up.

Alas.  And some of you may have been presuming that this was a real-time feed.  Apologies for shattering the illusion.  There’s tissue on the coffee table—take your time.  Let it all out.  That’s it.  That’s okay.  You’re gonna be okay.