before we get started this week i'd like to dedicate this entry to two of the sweetest dearest kids that i know, karen and colin. karen is, despite what she might claim under pains of torture, my sister in law and one of the dearest people to me in the world. she was kind enough to pack up and move down here to memphis with us for a good six months before she started college, and holds the third place world record for putting up with my shit day in and day out for the longest amount of time (behind my wife and my mom, respectively). colin is her boyfriend. don't hold the afro against him, please.
anyway they came along with me on this visit, to the mid-south outlet in the bloody beating heart of summer ave and i'll be honest i was grateful for the backup because i got all kinds of hornswoggled. looking at these pictures now i just cannot even make head or tail of what i was looking at or thinking, and i think that's actually a fairly accurate communication of what it's like to try and shop in this damn place...just stuff all every which where and who knows what it is or what you're looking at or whether you like it or not but you'd better grab it because there are nine mexicans trying to shoulder past you to go look at the tupperware and jesu christe you pinche guero you're in the way!
this is an insanely large sport coat. i am 6ft roughly 175 lb and i wear a loose 42 most of the time. this damn thing must be for shaquille o'neal. GIVE IT UP FOR THE BROTHER!
thermoses. thermii? thermeliums? ther.....ahh forget it
i recently got my hands on a (mostly) working vcr, as recent readers will recall i was struggling to find one in my price range that actually looked like it might work for longer than nine seconds, and i happened to stumble across a yard sale where these folks were unloading a five dollar vcr - problem solved, sorry salvation army. you lose. anyway so now i've been looking for vhs tapes again, after a solid five year hiatus from the medium, and let me tell you, it has been enlightening to say the least. i forgot about so many movies. "going bananas?" forgot all about it. dom deluise, jimmie walker, and the kid from "over the top?" sold. if i thought i could watch this all the way through without at least one of the lobes of my brain exploding and shunting bloody guts and brain based organ matter all over the walls of my apartment i would have snagged it but that would be a real drag for my wife to have to clean up so i passed. plus if she got caught in the explosion she might be injured by pieces of my skull fragments or at least covered in gore, and no one wants that. come on.
as much of a crowded inconvenient pain in the ass as the mid south outlet can be at times, i really do love it, more for the little idiosyncratic touches than anything else, although isn't that what makes all these stores so great when you get down to it? remotes. a whole shelf of remotes, just tossed in there with everything else. i don't know what i love more, the fact that they took the time to separate out all the remote controls and shelve them off away from everything else, or the thought that someone up there in the mid south outlet organization thought that there would be some small but somehow philosophically important cross section of the shopping public that was out on the prowl for remote controls on any kind of semi-regular basis, and that they would effectively be cornering the market if they just took a little time and care to organize their stock the right way. well, you know what? they were right. next time i need a remote control i know where i'm going.
these are the tapes i got. all hilarious, all stuff i wouldn't care to buy on dvd probably, and all under $2.
what are these? any thoughts? they don't stand up on the other end so they're not vases. what the hell are they? i was stumped.
and then smoothly segued from being stumped by two basically simple shaped glass object to sherlock holmesing my way through this giant collection of buttons and switches...do you know what this thing is? it took me a minute. it's a sound effects box for a miniature train set. there were two speakers attached and i think the thing ran off of AA batteries or something. look again, at the picture. those are all train noises. this is a tiny box with speakers that just makes train noises. why did i not buy this again?
good luggage. no idea why i took this picture. this is also what happens when i take 2 weeks off between entries. my bad.
by and large the books here are usually kind of overpriced and the selection's not that great (although this visit there were a CRAPLOAD of beatles-related tomes that were marginally tempting, although all over my $5 cutoff) but this was over with the random mechanical junk, i guess to appeal to the gearheads, and i thought it was pretty sick. some of these car manuals aren't in production any more so it would kind of be a find, if you happened to have one of these...cars...or something. jesus i'm tired.
all right god dammit home stretch time. what, you may ask, does a collapsible straw hat look like? well...
i'd be happy to show you. bought this, no doubt. even tried it on, for a quick second, although my ingrained shame at the ridiculous size of my melon (8, in case you're counting...find THAT at "Lids") prevented me from taking a picture. but it looks dope on my wife, trust me. when spring comes we will rock the collapsible hat. god i have been waiting forever to say that sentence.
all right ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls...time for another round of everyone's favorite game...
WOULD
YOU
BUYIT?!?!???!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
this is a macintosh performa 550. it was $3. it came out in i think 1994 if memory serves. i didn't have one (i was still rockin' the IIvx) but i wanted one. it was $3. it had no power cord. or keyboard. or mouse. or indication one way or another of whether or not it worked even in the most tangential way or if it was just a piece of sculpture. it was $3. i have $3. what i DON'T have, sadly, is the spare space in my apartment to store ancient technology that i am deeply and sincerely in love with while i look for the accessories that are necessary to determine whether or not it even works in the first place, let alone time to perform said searches, or the repairs that would inevitably become necessary along the line. but. i ask you, dear readers, once again...
WOULDYOUBUYIT
answers in the form of a rebus this week plz i am tired of reading your long winded essays
this explains itself or if it does not then i can not explain it
things i saw on my way out. no idea
did you know you can get pulled over and arrested on one of these things if you're intoxicated? i just learned that.
okay well this haphazard mishmash of gobbledygook and mumbledypeg is going to grind to a halt for this week. would love to make a bunch of grandiose promises about returning to a regular schedule or something like that but that truth is i don't know when i'll be back at it. i've got another entry or two's worth of pictures and (as i hope you would just assume by now) no lack of things to say about them, i've just gotta find two spare hours to crank it all out. fear not though, gentle readers. bitter/books is here to take care of you, ever vigilant, semper fi and all of that. my advice for the moment though is
catch you on the flip
love
d
i was actually thinking that maybe we should mention the smoking thing to the land lady. or string them upside down from the banister and put cigarettes out on their face til they swear a blood oath to stop smoking in the hallway. either way.
ReplyDeleteI think the strange and unknown item that was yellow and not a vase might in fact be a wig stand.
ReplyDelete