163 posts from 2008

I don't sell things that are broken. I'm up front about the quality of my items. I don't think I charge much, either, and that's why I get more sales than I ever expected! People offer the same things for 2-10 times more but I notice I'm the one moving inventory, so I keep selling.

I've never had a bad review, but I'm also not a bulk-seller. I'm just a person.

Here we go:
Somebody buys a multi-CD audio book with an additional DVD in it -- a bigger than normal type of sale. I just got a notice that the first CD skips and she's displeased.

Well, it didn't skip for me... I refunded that last "buyer remorse" or whatever was going on. I don't want to do it again.

I'm not sure what to do. I think this lady will just have to give me shitty feedback because that damned thing worked with it left my house.

Maybe it's her CD player. Maybe it's that the disc was damaged in transit. It ain't my fault.

Any advice other than Plan A, which is to say, "It worked for me...Sorry."
????

I keep hearing smack-talk about this film, so I loaded up the home-girls and did the rush-hour tour.

Okay, first of all: expect broad humor.

Next (supporting the broad humor thing), it's just stoopid. Get over it. Laugh or groan, there's booger and fart jokes throughout.

The most enjoyment for us: loads and loads of self-help and pop culture references. We howled with laughter. Me, with my

minor in Psych and my friend who has a degree in it.

One friend's favorite line (when the East Indian assistant answers the phone):

"This is Dell computers. My name is Chip. How may I help you?"

I didn't say anything about maturity -- I warned you.

My friends were already laughing and I, in my horror, still sat with my jaw dropped open before contagious, guilty laughter took over and who knows what they said in the movie for the next 20 seconds because everyone was guffawing.

Every frickin time Mr. Kingsley was on the screen, I giggled my head off. I mean, well...Look at him for gods-sake.

Justin Timberlake? I had no idea he was in it (I don't watch television) so my friend told me it was him when I cracked up, "Who is that?"

Talk about brave. That was out there, man. Doing the Sprinkler? Let alone his prosthetic...

Are reptiles animals? I could never remember the order from eight grade science.

Kingdom> Phylum> Class> Order> Family> Genus> Species

If that's helpful to you, knock yourself out. I hear "Kingdom" and I think lines on a map. Phylum? Obviously, that's a medical term for where they store test results. Class? Regular readers and neighbors know by now that I know nothing about that. Order? We had a Parlimentarian in National Honor Society but I always cut-out thirty minutes early to attend Art Club. Where were we? Family. Ugh...Don't get me started. Genus? That's the Trivial Pursuit box in the closet from 1980-something. And everyone knows Species is a crappy movie with Sir Ben Kingsley. Now, that's done! Back to my topic.

Reptiles, snakes in particular, are animals. Sir K is also an animal but I'm in no way implying he's a snake.

Black snakes are all over the farm. They eat rats, so I like them. I also liked to catch and "pet" then release poor grass snakes when I was a kid.

This reminds me of a farm-story.

MT was coming back from either the lean-to on the Old Barn or the shop one evening around this time of year. It was that never-never-land kind of darkness that falls after the sun has gone to sleep but the stars have not yet wakened and you're walking under tall cedars in the Ozarks. I caught a wiff of something slightly unpleasant: reptilean by nature. Let me say I have friends who keep reptiles as pets and they tell me that they give off no odor. I posit that people who keep reptiles keep them because they don't pick up on said odor or they have become acclimated and forgetful in their states of adoration and exuberance.

Me? I smell reptiles.

I couldn't see very well what-with the shadows and darkness sliding down like an over-turned honeypot -no, not that kind of honeypot (5th paragraph up from the bottom, flat-landers) but an actual pot for honey.

I leaned over and squinted through the darkness, sniffing. I noticed a mass, shall we say, and backed off. I gave it a wide berth (it was a rather large mass, after all) and came at it from an opening, so whatever light the peeping stars gave off could help me better view the snake and/ or largish reptilean-smelling object.

Sure enough, there it was. A big-arsed black snake. Relief passed through me and I headed back toward the house when I saw a slight movement of blackness from the dark.

I whipped my head around to see a second big-arsed black snake coil up around the balled up mass of snake I already decided was okay. To this I yelped. "Yipes!"

Pa Kettle was apparently taking a pee off the deck (who could see?) because a male voice called, "Hwot hya goht?"

"There's two big-arsed black snakes fightin!"

A pause preceeded, "They're not fightin'."

"Oh." See heading "Reproduction."

maura_ea 's qotd and other stuff made me want to post:

I'm so boring and live in the middle of nowhere... My commute takes up all the time I'd have for doing anything and if I moved into town, I wouldn't have money to do anything...At least I live surrounded by beauty and no neighbors (Vox Neighbors are GOOD, real neighbors, not so much)!

That means I don't have many face-time friends. So, if anyone is passing through my area, let me know! I'm too far for passers-through STL-proper to count (downtown or airport) but if you're passing through the many Interstate exchanges, I might be close enough to meet you! :)

Share a song you listened to in 6th grade.

Originally released a couple of years earlier. This was on heavy rotation in Young MTs bedroom. Live Aid was a few years after, so they even out.

Boomtown Rats, live

Remember the photo project where my stuff got noticed by TheGuardian and the nice reporter asked me bunches of questions and I got all excited because I was going to be cited in a national, perhaps we can say international, newspaper?

They went with another artist. That's okay.

Now, from the same photo project (I was a single artist amongst many, so it's not like it was "my project" but I had "my part"), I've been contacted by a web-based printer to use my photos in an exhibit. For my troubles, I'm to receive an 8X10 of each photo (mine) and a sample of the finished product. I'm all for it, I just hope that give me attribution because I'm like that. What-with paying my own way through uni and all. Still trying to hit the...well, at least the small time, come on.

Any one hear these people are scammers and they just want my art for advertisement and not a single exhibit? Any opinions on doing it or not?

I curse so much and with such abandon that it seems to put others at ease about it, in general. There's a super-churchy lady who walked through this morning and told us something personal. I gave the equivalent to a "low whistle" in MT-speak:

"Ooooh, shit." -not such of a bad thing

She said, "Yes. SHIT!" and ran out. She came back and said incredulously, "I don't use curse words..."

One of the artcoworkers keeps telling everyone who stops by, "MT made M curse!"