Laundryroom Swapmeet

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 bottle of cyan-colored AIRWICK EM5014 Inspiration perfume.

Why It’s Here:

Previous owner has a rare dissociative disorder that has crippled his mind such that he can only recognize objects by vague descriptive properties.  He saw “blue and sloshy” and thought, okay, I guess I do need mouthwash.

Probable Recipient:

Distraught, panicky members of Chicago, glad finally to have relocated it after a long period of meaninglessness.

They wanna have it near them.

I like the phrase “toilet water”:

It really kind of brings the whole cosmetics industry back down to earth.

Item:

The World’s Most Beautiful Jigsaw Puzzle, dolphin edition.

Why It’s Here:

Because it was just.  too.  beautiful.  Too much to behold, too much to fathom; the dolphins glistened so brightly, the airbrushed waves swayed preternaturally even in the dim tungsten light of the previous owner’s studio apartment.

Whole, it taunted them with its beauty: and so they broke it into a thousand pieces!  But shame overcame them, and so they created this box, as both house and explanation, confession and container, and left it in the laundry room for another, stronger soul to piece back together.

Probable Recipient:

Some old lady with too much time on her hands.

And the thing is:

that you just know it’s missing like three pieces, but you don’t want to sit down and count out the pieces one by one ahead of time—a thousand of them!—and so you just try to put the damn thing together, and all the while it’s there in the back of your mind, itching at you: there’s going to be a piece missing.  There’s going to be a piece missing.

Item:

An orange beaded necklace with a fake flower for decoration.

Why It’s Here:

Let me put it this way. Luau? More like Luout. As in of fashion. OMG.

Probable Recipient:

Someone looking for something a little different in a garter.

Is this really a necklace, though?

I’m not very good at this sort of thing. Maybe it’s a headband? I can’t remember how big the thing was.

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:

It’s a pair of black shoes, dressy and in good condition.

Why It’s Here:

Because this is the laundry room.  This is the table where people put things.  The table where, in theory, I take pictures of things and post those pictures on the internet and say funny things about them.

Probable Recipient:

Someone for whom they are the right size and to whom the look of the shoes is appealing.  Will they try them on in the laundry room, or just eyeball the size and test the fit only later, in the comfort of their own apartment?  And if the latter, then if the shoes turn out not to fit, what then?  A stealthy return?  Into the wastebin?

So it’s been like months:

And a few of you have left nice comments saying, “hey, update!”  And so, here we go.  I’m going to try to update.  It won’t be daily like it used to be, unless I really feel like it that week etc, but I’ll make an effort.  I’ll even try to be funny; consider this a sort of deadpan peace offering while I stretch my legs.

So hi, again.  How’ve you been?

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 framed print of a painting of a bored (or possibly wistful) angel.

Why It’s Here:

Previous owner got sick of all the eye rolling.  “Damn you,” he said to the painting, “why can’t you just give me a straight answer for once?  Just tell me!  Tell me!  Do these pants, or do they not, make me look fat and oh don’t you roll your eyes at me you chubby little son of a—”

Probable Recipient:

Local budding Christian Bebop artist Cherub Checkers, pen behind the recent godpop hit “Do the Twist (in His Name)”.

Fats Domino, Chubby Checkers:

These are names that would just not fly these days.  Alternative Bodystyle Backgammon, maybe, but don’t push your luck.

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:

A black molded-plastic bucket chair.

Why It’s Here:

Remember the episode of Seinfeld, where George talks to a security guard in a store and asks if he gets tired of standing all day, and they sort of discuss the relative merits of sitting versus standing, and then George ends up buying the guy a stool and the guy nods off and hijinks ensue?

I think this is sort of like that except without the guard or the store or George Costanza.

Probable Recipient:

The new laundry room security guard that we might get if we decided to get a security guard for the laundry room for some reason.

I’ve been dying of the flu:

and that’s why I didn’t update the last couple days.  I’m feeling a bit better now, and also intensely (read: “very mildly”) guilty about my first failure to update since 2007 got kicking.  Mea culpa.  Mea maxima culpa.