A Walk-through of an American Garage Sale: Humanity's Trail of Tears

A Walk-through of an American Garage Sale:
Humanity’s Trail of Tears

Pre-Sale

I was tangentially part of a Garage Sale this past weekend.

Somewhere between my delusions; elaborate and detailed daydreams of a future life of luster weaved with an influx of 500 wind-fallen dollars and waking up at 6 A.M. on a Saturday to stock my inventory of chattel for the municipalities’ Mexicans, I found myself questioning the notion of this whole Garage Sale business.

The whole rigmarole is insulting. We scour our homes for items that we deem unfit for our households; us civilized and sophisticated square feet barons of urban sprawl. With the exaggerated promises of riches we recruit our family members into a hunting party to help us undergo the tiring expedition to locate, extract, and gather any and all of the out of date, unfashionable, ratty and tattered, blemished, broken, stained, abused, and otherwise neglected bullshit that we have been too lazy to artificially inflate the value of, and haul off to, Goodwill. That’s right; we would rather publish our home address and aim it towards the poor and criminally inclined (statistically speaking, of course) and commit a weekend to the practice of broken Spanish with strangers, in the heat, than to cheat on our taxes. You know, Civilized and sophisticated.

(After constructing our great pile, naturally, in the middle of our living room, the patriarch, like a worker ant carrying five times his body weight, loads up with broken electronics and hole-ridden-clothes, carrying the kill piecemeal to the garage. Since, inevitably, the actual sale will keep getting delayed, the hauled carcass’s will fester and (eye) sore from sitting stagnant and being too long in the way. But, that’s okay; we have a few extra inches of closet space and you really can’t buy that kind of real estate! I digress…)

Like a Jewish jeweler of the Upper West Side we scrutinize over each and every item in its entirety, all the while mentally calculating worth. We inspect everything that we ourselves don’t value to keep and, like an insurance claim adjuster, we arbitrarily set a price. We compare against fair market value (of which we are hopelessly unaware) and try and rack foggy memories for what was paid when purchased new (as if one could actually account and depreciate for the value of crap) and then we list the price- We are exceptionally proud of this part. Like kid’s playing dress up in Daddy’s clothes, we are participating in the American economic model and imagining ourselves profitable business men.


The Actual Sale

In the morning, invariably, the first two customers of any respectable garage sale will be black and they will not buy anything. That’s okay; we will see many people on the sale’s first day and will need the energy our first dark and bitter guest will provide us. After pouring a second cup of coffee we prepare to face our second patron; the depressing darkness of early morning that reminds of the precious and much needed sleep that has been nailed to a cross made of mismatched wood, sacrificed for a few extra bucks.

Then, like a biblical omen welcoming the holy morning, the sky opens up and glorious and optimistic light shines. We are committed, refocused and ready- We will have a great sale!

What we aren’t prepared for is that, en masse, people will come and treat our backyard’s like a Ross or a Marshall’s. The invited attendee’s will rifle through our things, disorienting the gypsy-like displays, shoplift and only want to buy the few things in the actual garage, within eyesight, that are not actually for sale. Who signed me up for this? Is that part of my probation?

For all of that, the actual interaction is the worst part. Believe it or not, great anxiety is caused by having someone rummage through your offerings. We immediately second guess our economic acumen and being reevaluating prices.

Is it too much?

What if they balk?

Are they putting that shirt back?

Motherfucker, you’re gross and your clothes suck, you better buy that tattered polo I ruined and no longer want!

I am a pretty fashionable and good looking man. Again, I digress…

Finally, when a customer has tired of wiping Cheetoh’s over the linens they will then send a diplomat, their 7-year old son, and lowball an offer in an attempt to open up negotiations (as cash-only race’s are want to do). We will stand proud.

“Prices are firm”.

Not only do we have the conceit to believe that our contemporaries, our neighbors and peers, will want to buy the hopeless junk that we do not want, but we are wholly insulted that they would have the gall to try and cheat us by countering with such predatory and cheap counter-offers!

At what point did the human principles of commerce and exchange become lined with such bulky arrogance?

I’m not sure how this backwards and unbecoming human behavior pattern came to be. I think with my newly minted $400, I am going to get a booth at TGI Fridays and really investigate these profound academic questions.

by Jonathan Gonnet

You know how shit is.

He reached for the toothpaste and remembered he squeezed the last of days ago. He eeked the last of out of the cap and rubbed it on his teeth with his finger. Bar receipts and random shit from barely remembered nights littered the resting place of where a toothbrush used to lay. Hygiene had been disturbed.

A dream

I walked unobstructed from the entrance of the cave, low hung and rounded at the top like that of the typical door of a house, where it opened up like a bottle, refracting light impossibly (in my science’s mind eye) like a bottle too, to what I imagined had to be the earthen core. Bright white snow made up of the ground, beautiful white, undeterred in keeping its cherry no matter how many people walked on her.
“Why have I never seen anything like this!?” I thought to myself as I scanned the den from left to right and up in an effort to take all the sensory shrapnel in, it was like being at a 21st century rave party on ice (hosted by Disney, no doubt).
“Because you have never been invited to anything like this.” Came an audible answer from a beautiful woman clad in a bikini and gloves. She had the long flowing brunette characterized by the Italian Rennaisancial beauty with a body imagined by those perverted with lust for Mermaids, curvy and busty, with contoured, smooth legs in the place of scaly fishparts.
“I’m sorry, what?” my irrational and surprised reply at this psychic womans terse reply.
“Why, simply, because you have never been invited to anything like this.” Parroted the would be talking fish mermaid thing, with the sweet innocence and naaivety of the snow around us we inhabited.
“Well, I can’t imagine you are speaking to me, as you would have no reason to assume I have never been to a party such as this and I neither initated a conversation or look upon you in demand of a reply.”
“You can imagine, which is why you exist and why we are here. It is becoming clear to me why, exactly, you have never seen anything like this, hehehe”
“Be off, reprobate promotional booze woman and speak when spoken to!”
It was at this overture that I decided to take my leave and walk about the biosphere, explore where exactly I am and the consistency of that around me, hoping that a rapp upon the walls would not be answered with the thunk of hollow glass.

Michael Vick: Pariah or Messiah?

Michael Vick: Pariah or Messiah?
A critical look at the interrelationship between society and the Original Man.

I was doing some light reading as I watched the game last night when I stumbled upon a clue as to why I root for, am fascinated by, and thoroughly enjoy (if not completely identify with) the much-maligned, beaten down, and flawed entertainers of our generation. Michael Vick and his ilk, in your humble author’s perverted opinion, embody the tragedy that is the flawed Human Condition. These fallen and, sometimes broken, angels are the tragic characters in our weak and misunderstood script.

Ah yes. I know you, noble reader, and I know that as soon as the above premise, emotionally swollen and thoughtfully tangled, is revealed and allows you to slowly gain understanding, your pupils spreading across the whites of your eye like a droplet of wet ink on a fresh sheet of paper, scribbling your thoughts to me, that you will turn your head in disgust. Humor me, your old friend, and sneak a peek out of the corner of that little orb and let me show you what I mean.

These unfortunates I spoke of earlier, they are all creatures of an extraordinary talent. Sometimes the result of a rare and innate gift and other times the calculated result of hard work, focus, or determination, but always the reality is of an excellent ability that is unknown to the vast, vapid majority. What separates the graceful heroes of antiquity and our befallen contemporaries, beyond the luxury of time, which is extremely adroit at refinishing written history through expertly applied glossy coats of perfection over the chipped and grainy reality, is the bad luck of living in an overpopulated world where the majority of it’s denizens can only be classified as ignorant and weak.

This army of the weak strives to mute the individual, who is often viewed as an antagonist due to the nature of the organizational structure created by the weak masses, and conscript him to their ranks. We, the persecuted belligerents (ah, now you see how, by betraying my orientation, I can shine such lucid light on this unique perspective and motives therein.) - We, the persecuted belligerents- aggressive, open-minded, curious, courageous and all together truthful (to a clear fault) - while providing the fuel to move the machine forward, are, sometimes, beaten to dust and ash by the brute force of billions of agreed upon judgments, opinions and moralizations.

Now, how do these cheap and timid souls conquer the cutting edge? Good question and I am glad you asked. Let me first unsheathe for you a weapon in your fight to understand:

Any action in the name of morality, no matter what the driving emotion, is really just an attempt, varying from the thinly veiled to the obfuscated, to impose the will of the weak over the strong.

You see then that the ubiquitous moralizations drawn, like brackish water from an underdeveloped well, from our societies pervasive folk lore and (Christian) godly traditions, are released upon the dominant and truly noble men- those who act with an accurate sense of self worth, who do not need, nor seek, the herd’s approval, but instead act in accordance within his own self-subscribed values based in real time and couched in positive incentives- to drown them in negative light.

It is my position that, for the sake of the humanity I love, my befallen idols deserve the deepest of sympathies. In spite of, though admittedly, sometimes purposely, finding the course to be against the grain of societal pressures, they have the strength and integrity to define their own rules- to legislate their own personal laws- and the courage and the sense of purpose to Execute and Live. They have not only been overpowered and slain by our weak society, but, like Achilles’ dragging of Hector’s body around the walls of Troy for nine consecutive days, they are desecrated by our faux moral and chicly-Christian society.

This is why I rooted for Mike Vick yesterday. By rooting for those who You are told to hate, standing by the bewitched as You attempt to tie up and burn their careers, at (a) stake- for what? There is nothing of substance to gain. (see what I did there? That is tricky and a bit of written gymnastics). My vocal support for Michael Vick is not an admittance that I could give half a shit about fighting inferior animals, as some have surmised, but, simply, a show of solidarity for and support in an ever-evolving society of Masters.

Ookie- Get well soon.

I Remain,

Jonathan Gonnet, Original Man.