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By shag carpet bomb • May 24th, 2009 • Category: Belly Button Lintyesterday afternoon, we were laughing at all the sticky tags that had floated to the ground, stuck here’n'there to the driveway and garage floor.
a little while later, r peeled a tag off my back which said:
“Only worn once - $10″
*falls on floor laughing*
I don’t know if I was tagged or it was an accident, but funny either way!
Amazingly, as tired as I was last night, I just managed to get most the leftovers bagged for giving away to some rescue mission for “men in crisis” (according to the solicitation letter we rec’d in the mail) and then haul what we’re saving back upstairs to be packed away correctly. Then, I swept the hall and kitchen, r vacuumed, and — phew! — i even got the entire kitchen cleaned up and sink scrubbed. the floor could use a mopping but… not my favorite task.
weirdly enough, one of the reasons i didn’t sleep well was i managed to get some sort of blister on the bottom of my foot! never heard of that before. it seems to be gone this morning, so i’m not sure it was. i was so tired last night, i didn’t have the energy to do more than squint at my foot in the semi-dark (so lazy that i couldn’t be bothered to seek out a light switch), note that it looked like some kind of blister and hobble to the couch to wait for the pizza delivery dewd.
ha ha. last time i ordered pizza, i was waiting on the porch reading Outlaws of America. When I came back to the porch to pay him, I caught the guy looking at the book, head cocked trying to discern what the hell I’d be reading about given a title like _that_.
anyway, I’m going to go head out to the scandinavian furuniture place so I can put this garage sale money to good use: as a down payment or something on this totally rad bedroom set i saw. it’s totally gorgeous and expensive as all get out, but i am sick of buying crap that breaks down in two years and looks like shit.
as a sales rep told me at a furniture store, as she watched me rest my head lovingly on a stickley dresser: they’re investments. something you can keep in the family and pass from one gen to the next. or something.
wait. it’s the u.s. the next generation thinks the old stuff is crap and sells it at auction!
whatevs!
xo
p.s. I shit you not. we have 7 garbage bags of clothes, linens, towels, and blankets and boxes of household crap — enough to fill up a pick up — which we’re donating to the rescue mission.
p.p.s. as much as i said that i’d never do it again, I realized what having one means for a lot of other people - and this is something i should know, myself, having been an avid garage saler in my lifetime. There were at least three people who were here gathering up things with which to furnish their own homes. One young girl with some kids, her sisters and mom tagging along, who bought curtains for a buck or two, hardware for curtains and drapes for a few bucks, a mop for 25 cents, a phone for a buck, and a stereo for $2. Hell, I can’t remember all the stuff she bought. But damn if she couldn’t have found any of it at Sally’s Boutique or Goodwill for that price.
There was another guy who came Friday and returned Sat with a bike for the same reason. Currently, he’s in a home but will be moving out to a transition home. He needed a lamp and some curtains, and bought a bunch of sonshine’s old clothes. A quarter or two or a buck, prices he’d never see at a thrift shop. He was as happy as a clam in deep water, and brought along a friend who was, basically, toting along his life in a duffle bag. I think he lives in a shelter or something like that. He said he worked out in a city about 12 miles away, and we were talking about taking the bus and what that was like. Anyway, he was thrilled to death to get a bright green t-shirt. It had been sonshine’s, something he bought and then managed to never wear. (why he bought a green t-shirt — no clue. not his style). But dewd with duffle loved it, and it was 75cents. And, as I noted, it matched his bright green Nikes. He left, tossing the duffle over his shoulder, joking about being prepared for St Paddy’s day next year.
*grin*
Another lady showed up and bought an entire box of CDs. I asked if she had a small business or something. She said no, she just bought them up for her brother who was blind and loved to listen to music and such. I had to run out to a car parked by her’s, to remind this other lady she’d forgotten something. As I walked back to the house, I saw the blind brother sitting in the car, thumbing through this great pile of CDs — of all kinds of music — and thought: wow, that is so cool.
i suppose the coolest thing would be to be able to have a service where you could donate stuff directly to people in need like that, and they could get it for free.
There’s freecycle, to which we’ve subscribed (which is one reason we have so much crap!) but then that list is often filled with people who take advantage of it for their own small resale businesses. And the problem with freecycle is the number of jokers that put dibs on your free stuff and then never show up at appointed time to get the stuff.
anyway, i’m going to run, to go lust after my furniture! :)
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This comment has nothing to do with the post. Except after reading it, I feel like I should charging a quarter.
To get to the point, Nitzan and Bichler. Don’t read it. Don’t waste your time. Two basic problems. One you may recall I’ve ascribed to other folks in their line of work. They think that you can critique Marx’s ideas, especially those about politics, on the basis of the Grundrisse and Capital. When you would think it would be moderately obvious that you might also consider his political writing, not to mention his activism. Second. More important for these guys. I’ve read a few of their articles because they write about the political economy of Israel. Inside their model, I had two problems. One, they use the word power a lot, but if you can figure out what they mean by it, you’re sharper than I am. Two. When they applied their model to current Israeli politics, they concluded that high tech had become the dominant sector of Israeli capital. High tech had an objective interest in a rapid agreement resulting in a Palestinian state. Therefore, Israel will quickly agree to a Palestinian state. On the one hand, years have passed. No state. Not that Marxist predictions fare all that well anywhere. On the other hand, worse yet, a mechanical projection of immediate interests into state action. No mediation through consciousness, activities or institutions. Which sounds like what I assume to be the ‘theory’ they purport to criticize.
And right now, I’m reading an old East German history of Germany 1871-1897. During those years Marx, until his death, and Engels worked closely with leadership of the fledgling Social Democratic Party. Advising them on dealing with disagreements on principles in the party, their relationships with other parties, and the conduct of the parliamentary fraction plus relations with the government. Nowhere in there did they formulate a theory of ‘power.’ But if someone wanted to work the historical material through in those terms, there is certainly plenty to work with.