Laundryroom Swapmeet

Hey there!  You know what’s been kind of bugging me about the ol’ Swapmeet (other than that me-not-updating-it thing)?

Everything is out of date!  You might not realize this, but most of the photos that have been posted since, like August?  Were taken back in August.  There was a real big pile of action down on the swapmeet table around then, and as a result I got a lot of pictures.  And since I was doing one item at a time, those pictures lasted a long dang time.

As a matter of fact, I still have a backlog.  And it’s been killing my morale, and that’s just about enough of that.

So to heck with that!  Let’s jump to the present, dump the one-item-per-entry thing, and just see what’s going on in the laundry room, goddammit!  Are you ready?  Yes!  You are totally ready!  Let’s go!

Two decorative christmas-y wine glasses, and a small metal frying pan with a wooden handle!  These showed up independent of each other, I think, but they’ve been hanging out together down there for a few days now; seems like no one wants either.

Consider that those are not particularly over-sized glasses: that is one tiny little frying pan.  I’m thinking a dwarf got his second growth and is upsizing.

Detail shot of the pan.  I kind of feel like mocking its smallness and crappiness is the clear path, but for some reason I find the handle on this thing just plain charming.  And that little metal hook or loop or whatever you want to call it, on the end there?  I don’t know if it came standard or got customed in by the dwarf or what, but I like it.  Very rustic utilitarian.

Maybe it’s not a dwarf at all.  Maybe it’s a giant descendent of William Burroughs, and this is the belt-loop spoon he keeps around for cooking up–but he’s kicking, man, he’s kicking that dang old giant-sized horse and he doesn’t need this stuff anymore.  If a hypodermic the size of a turkey baster shows up, I’m going to consider it a closed case.

Ho ho ho!  It’s frickin August, okay?  Nobody wants a glass with christmas trees and snow on it.  It’s like stopping at a news stand in the middle of the Sahara and picking up a copy of Water Monthly.  No.  No thank you.  These glasses are going to sit on the table until at least Thanskgiving, if someone doesn’t destroy them in a fit of heat exhaustion first.

Oprah is just fucking thrilled to be Oprah.  In the mean time, Andre Agassi is just happy to be on a magazine cover.  You know what I miss?  The mullet.  That dang mullet.  That was a rebel, Andre.  That guy, over there, who you used to be.

And this happy crowd?  This is me giving back to the swapmeet.  We cleaned out the cleaning supplies last weekend; this is all the stuff we just don’t use.  The iron is fine, but we got a new one; the detergent is fine except it smells way too much.  (I put signs on both of those, since either could be conceivably mistaken for non-swapmeet laundry paraphernalia.) 

The spray bottles were occupying niches we just didn’t need filled; and I don’t need those Clorox things because I live in a state of constant, willful filth and it’d be kind of antithetical to have it around.

And what about that speckled-out blob in front of it all?  What, indeed!  Introducting a new feature: What the Hell is That?

The way WtHiT works is, I don’t tell you what it is.  And you’re all “What the hell is that?”  And I’m all, “nuh uh, not telling.”  And you’re all, “wait, I bet I totally know.”  And I’m all like, “yeah, well, leave a comment or something then, smart-face.”

Aaaaaaaaaaand scene.  There’s your first big old round-up digest-type post.  It’s a change–end of an era and all that, I know, break out the kleenex–but if it’s one of these every weekish or so vs. the old style with months-long breaks, I’m kinda leaning toward this.  Let me know what you think, natch.

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.

Item:

A sheet of glass, about the size of a piece of A4 paper, with some pressboard backing material.

Why It’s Here:

Once you’ve torn out the daguerreotype of your great-great-grandmother’s wedding day and used it as rolling paper, you don’t really need the frame anymore.

Probable Recipient:

Somebody who is out of green but has too many dang daguerreotype’s laying around beggin’ for framin’.

Who can spell daguerreotype, anyway?

I had to look it up like three times. And I have no idea how to pronounce it. At some point I’ll be put on the spot and I’ll be stuck either Elmer Fudding it into the ground or just shouting “DOGGERTYPE!!!” and punching someone in the face to change the subject.

Item:

A brown cardboard box labelled “spagetti maker”, with what looked like it could be a spaghetti maker inside.

Why It’s Here:

Have you ever been to a grocery store?  They have a pasta section.  You can buy spaghetti.  For like a buck.  And then you just go home and boil water.  It’s a modern goddam miracle of convenience—and on a tired-out evening, when you just want to kick back with some pasta and an episode of Antiques Roadshow, hauling out the Spagetti Maker starts to sound like a lot of work.  Crazy talk.  Nutso.  It’s like handwashing your underwear, not because the washer is on the blink, but just for fun.

A spaghetti maker is like touching dirty underwear, is what I’m saying.

Probable Recipient:

A panty-raider with tremendously bad eyesight.

I want to mock the spelling of ’spagetti’:

But it gets like 1.5M google hits to the 5M for ’spaghetti’, so it must be a pretty common variant.  So instead, I’m just going to suggest that people start using “rhavioli” to even things out a bit.

Item:

The base of a Kenmore 5-speed blender.  No glass pitcher included.

Why It’s Here:

Resident has recently discovered organic-friendly grocery store Whole Foods, is taking the name way too literally.

Probable Recipient:

Prince Charming, who has been all these long nights coveting the glass pitcher discarded in flight by the emotionally unstable but incontestably hawt belle of the ball.  Having fit that glass vessel into its rightful and destined place, he will make a smoothie.  Of love.

You know what Disney needs:

More blenders.  Beauty and the Beast had all this anthropomorphic furniture, sure, yay, awesome, but I don’t remember seeing a blender.  Shameful.  Makes you wonder if old Walt was an anti-Blendite.

“Kenmore”, he would shriek at some cringing young animator’s suggestion, letting backhand fly, spilling inkwells across drawing tables.  “Kenmore?  How about Ken less!  How about Ken not a chance in hell!”

Item:

A package of Super Bondex Iron-On Fabric, made of FINE QUALITY PERCALE.

Why It’s Here:

Someone clearly doesn’t see the value in MENDING, REPAIRING, or DECORATING.  They don’t appreciate the fine work being done by Good Housekeeping.  They don’t want to JUST IRON ON—they prefer, apparently, to SEW.

Jackals!  Philistines!

Probable Recipient:

I’m banking on supervillain.  A real crafty, DIY antagonist looking to build a Spiderman suit from common household materials.  You can almost hear the Jack Kirby expository monologue:

“‘He thinks he can escape me, but I will pursue him with the aid of my bondex gloves!*’

[*see issue #174, “Not All Who Launder are Washed” —ed]”

I see weird referrer log traffic already:

I already get—daily!—traffic from people googling the phrase “cellophane bondage” [for the most innocuous of reasons], so I can’t imagine what kind of additional weirdness “bondex” is going to bring.

Remind me not to make any “golden shower” jokes on the site.

Oops!

Item:

An e-solitaire handheld game, apparently manufactured by Excalibur.

Why It’s Here:

Previous owner found wall with drying paint on it, lost interest. 

Probable Recipient:

An incredibly disappointed ten year old.

“Mom, I asked for a Nintendo DS, not a pretendo POS!  I hate you!” 

At this one job I had:

there was this lady who had a little handheld video poker game that she would play all day long.  (It was the sort of job where you could do that.  For my part, I did a lot of writing and a fair amount of drawing.)

So she’d be playing and playing, hand after hand, and every once in a while things would be going really well and you’d hear her stand up and tell a neighbor about how much she won.

And if she had a really bad run, man, she’d curse a blue streak.  I’ve never seen someone more angry at a fake gambling game.  “Fuck,” she would hiss, “you fucking shithole.  Fuck!”

Item:

A stainless-steel butter knife and an orange-handled peeler.

Why It’s Here:

There was a terrible argument.  They became enraged.  They decided they could only settle things with a knife fight.

In the cupboard, they found a butter knife…and a peeler.  At first, he argued that a peeler was like enough a knife that the difference wasn’t an issue.  She objected: you could hardly stab with a peeler.  The knife was an unfair advantage.

So he offered to take the peeler.  Insisted.  She became suspicious, and accused him of intending to not stab but rather shred, an altogether more demoralizing martial tactic.  Tool-choice negotiations deteriorated, with shouted vituperations and threats renewed at yet greater volume.

Finally, she suggested they have a drawing.  They would put the names of each tool—”mr. knife”, “mr. peeler”—on slips of paper in a hat, and then each would draw a slip and be thus assigned a weapon.

But when they drew from the hat they looked at the slips and then at one another, shocked into the realization of what fools they had been:

Neither of them knew how to read.

Actually, that doesn’t really explain how these got down the laundry room, I guess. 

Probable Recipient:

Mr. Obsessive Utensil Collector.

Peelers are a serious health hazard:

You can really slice a serious chunk off with those things.  Ouch.

And don’t get me started about cheese graters.  More like hand graters.

Goddam cheese graters.

Item:

A canister of Faultless brand heavy starch, with a no clog guarantee.

Why It’s Here:

Whatever the reason, we can be pretty sure it’s not the starch’s fault.

Probable Recipient:

The can advertises an “extra crisp finish”, so I’m banking on a goofy, accident-prone neighbor whose poor decision-making skills are matched only by her inventiveness in the kitchen: extra crispy chicken, baby.

There’s a picture of a shirt:

and an electric iron, just in case you bought this on impulse and weren’t sure what it was for.  Thoughtful!

Item:

A white three-ring binder, with nothing inside.

Why It’s Here:

It’s a metaphor.  A metaphor for creative potential.  Because all of us, we’re like three ring binders of life.  We yearn to be filled with college- or wide-rule paper.  We foster within us a burning need to snap open, snap shut—but always by the end tabs, never by the rings, or they will get bent.  And nobody wants bent rings.  Nobody.

Or maybe it’s a metaphor for the new year.  Happy 2007: get to work on this binder.  What a dreary thought.

Probable Recipient:

Some jackass little kid who will bend the rings.  Goddammit.

May Auld Aquantaince Be Forgot:

And something something beer.  Here’s to regular updates, folks.