The “Garage Sale of Death” saga
So, there I was happily plotting the death and destruction of all the world’s rain forests and other sources of exotic woods with the intent of making salsa dishes out of them while using the last remnants of the earth’s fossil fuels to create toxic non-food-safe finishes…
It was at this point that 2 things hit me simultaneously, 1) the perfect plan for wood world domination and a split second later, 2) a brick to the head from The Princess.
Regaining what passes for consciousness, I wondered what had happened. As usual, the blow to the head canceled out any vestiges of what passes for coherent thought and brought to an end all thoughts of Wood World Domination. Standing over me hiding her “back-up brick” behind her back (Lots of cops have “back-up guns” – she feels safer and more in control with her “back-up brick”, which coincidentally is the name of her new band!!!) stated “We need to have a garage sale.”
* A note at this point for those who will, in fact, care enough to give a diddly damn one way or the other: Having recovered from the tender mercies of Dr. Neville and his gang, who incidentally, just happened to also be The Technical Advisers to the movies: SAW I – MMXXLL, Phantasm, Night of the Living Dead, The Zodiac Killer, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – the Musical, John Wayne Gacy – The Opera, etc, I have been out of work and the money tree was uprooted and destroyed in the last HaBoob we had. My last 3 day’s diet has consisted of a single peanut on a stale “nuclear” cracker. If not for the Pink Floyd music on my Ipod, my last living brain cell may have well been foreclosed upon. We need money in kinda a bad way…*
At first it didn’t register.
It was like someone walking up to you and saying “Did you know Hugh Heffner is gay?” or “Would you please turn off the sun when you are done using it?” or “Did you know Rosie O’Donnell is a Rhodes Scholar with an IQ 26.3 times that of Einstein and is the only true sentient being in the Universe?”
Unfortunately, the words started to sink in and at about the same rate that my testicles retreated up, in their entirety, into my body cavity.
“Garage Sale???!!!!! Are you out of your ever loving mind??!!!!! What kind of dumb drunk bastard do you take me fo-”
As, for the second time that day, I lost consciousness, it was her voice I heard but, somehow, I saw in my mind’s eye all those times I watched the TV show Cops as they beat the absolute dog snot out of some poor clown while saying “STOP RESISTING!!!!” which was the last thing I heard until some time later…
Later that same day…
I stayed up Thursday night staging all the “stuff” that was to be sold at a ridiculous discount. Thankfully I still had all the furniture blankets from an ill-fated ”stuff” run to San Diego when The Princess’ mommy, The Queen, wanted to get rid of a bunch of HER “stuff”. On that trip, the clowns at the truck rental place decided that we would be good victims to transport the one van they had with a leaking roof into the teeth of a rather severe thunderstorm with an eighth of a tank of gas… I felt that, once I had arrived home, soaked to the skin with a bad case of crotch rot, that taking the 10 furniture blankets, the engine and transmission, the spare tire, every light bulb the thing had (including the ones in the dash), was the least they could do for me… The Princess drew the line at removing the driver’s seat and replacing it with a milk crate and a piece of twine for a seat belt. Suitably chastised, I removed all the bolts that held the cargo bed to the frame instead.
Anyway, we ended up with a stack of books that we considered unreadable, an old vacuum cleaner, burping dolls that did not burp, my old lathe that made oval (not round) bowls, tools that even _I_ did not know how to use, my complete set of R/C cars and equipment ( sorry Michael), some of my wood work, The Best of Zamfir and his Pan Flute unlimited edition, 84 disc set with included life size poster (suitable for framing!!), a bunch of Jim Beam Bottles from the sixties and other dusty garbage…
Since I have been in AZ coming up on 6 years now, I am getting quite used to being shocked completely senseless by the muldoons they raise in these here parts. On this particular occasion it was the fine courteous folks who would comment about how gorgeous my wood works were right up to the point they asked “How much?”
An example:
“My God!! This thing is GORGOUS!!! Did you make this? This is fabulous! I have just the spot for this!!” said the ugly hag trying to look 16 which she may have once been 2-3 centuries before. “How much for this? I absolutely MUST have it!!!”
“$100.00″ I said, my mouth watering at the thought of literally running the 2 miles to Jack-In-The-Box for a #7 Combo (“no tomatoes, please”)…
“WHAT??!!! $100 for this peice of crap??!! Good Christ, God Almighty!! You’re an ASSHOLE!!!!!!” she said as she slammed it back down and stormed off to her Cadillac Escalade with wheels and tires that cost as much and were quite nearly as large as my house…
Quite crest fallen, I looked at The Princess who handed me a peanut on a nuclear cracker as consolation.
The strangest thing was we had scheduled this sale for Friday and Saturday morning. Anywhere else in the known universe garage sales are generally Saturday-Sunday ordeals. But, being this is Arizona (or as the locals call it, Land of the Lost), basically all the people with money hit us by 8:30am on Friday and we sold 90% of everything that actually was going to sell by then. After that, well…
The normal abnormally large amount of folks whose origins are south of Queen Creek, AZ did the normal drive by, back up, turn around and back up again (so the other side of the car can see) and then accelerated to a speed approaching mach 12, before leaving $371.12 worth of rubber on the asphalt as they locked up their brakes to make the turn out of the neighborhood. The end of our block looks like they held the NHRA Winter-Nationals there. Even The Princess commented that she had never heard so many exhaust leaks, engine squeaks, clunks, bangs, squeals and general vehicular death rattles in her entire life. I casually mentioned that she had only known me for a few years.
And BTW, YES!! Vehicular Death Rattle is the name of my new band!!
So, after all is said and done, we had expenses of $5.64, which included: a box of donuts, a black Magik Marker and gas money to go to the nearest freeway to clonk the homeless guy and steal his “Will work for food/Homeless Vet” sign. We then used the marker to advertise our sale by adding to to the “Will work for food/Homeless Vet” a addendum saying Garage Sale to aid victims of drive-by clonkings who “Will work for food” or are “Homeless Vets” and ending it with the customary “God Bless You” (We had to try to drum up the whole religous sympathy thing, don’t cha know…)
The Princess feels we made out like bandits with a whole $37.91 profit!!
That was before we got fined $50 for having an unauthorised garage sale by the HOA, Maricopa County sent a notice of taxes due on sales of more than $0.01 and the Obama administration sending us a bill for our portion of the inauguration, seeing as we were a “successfull business venture” !!
I figured “OK, that’s the last straw!!!”
I called Obama’s people and said “Hey!!! You rat bastards can’t do this to me!!!!”
Their reply?
“Yes We Can!!”