Outbid Again!
I can't afford this cold snap, long days spent searching through eBay, so many items....
I flag the ones I want, bid at the last minute, increase my bid (beyond my means, but that's the point of auctions, isn't it?), am the high bidder, but only for 3 seconds, am finally outbid and DAMN IT I've lost another auction.
Small consolation, it was nothing I really needed, it was far more than I intended on spending, I was more caught up in the desire to spite the other bidders, I should get a premium, my involvement in this auction (as in so many others) doubled the final selling price....
Bastards.
There are more auctions today, maybe I'll win, if not there's always the small consolation of the "Buy It Now" button, 3 "Buy It Now"s = 1 lost auction.
On a happier note the accordion sold, up on Craigslist and Kijiji for under 12 hours and the buyer showed up, paid cash, the accordion is gone for surprisingly more than I expected. The Blowtorch, the Painting have as well been sold, although payment and pickup is delayed by travel/the weather, all sorts of obstacles, the Harp promised last week to an interested party, the reminder sent out today:
"Oh, Where is the bard that would strum my strings?
There's only Jack Frost and his icy fingers;
An aeolian harp on who's antique frame lingers
His Frozen breath. ..."
I couldn't be bothered to write a full Icelandic epic like some scholars I know, it's a swap after all and there's only so far I'm willing to go for a hand carved dolphin or porpoise.
Now on to Absurdistan, the novel of choice at the moment, 6 pages in and it's delightful, possibly (and like the auction let's not get our hopes up..) fine recompse for the last 2 books I've suffered through. We'll see.
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Vintage Hohner Accordion
Playable, generally makes a braying noise like a dying donkey but I'm not sure if that's the instrument or the way I'm playing it.
Now the kid want's an electric guitar for Christmas, and you, the loving and doting parent, are contemplating buying it for him.
Probably the electric guitar is your way of apologizing for the lack of time you spend with him, you rationalize it by saying that maybe he'll do well and learn to play and be the world's next Kurt Cobain or John Lennon, but let's be real, he probably won't. Maybe he'll play it a few weeks, maybe, if he's determined, he'll learn to play the first few bars of "Stairway to Heaven" or "Smoke on the Water" before getting bored with it and putting it in the closet, to be dug out and sold at a loss at next years garage sale.
Or maybe he will do well at it. He'll take 1/2 hour lessons every week ($35.00 per lesson, $1470 per year...) and in a few years be hanging with the popular kids at school, smoking crack or pot, drinking, getting piercings and tattoos and fathering illegitimate children all over town while you work even longer hours and see him even less because there are that many more mouths to feed ("and where does the money go?" you wonder, but he's gotta pay for that drug habit somehow) and you just want to help out while the kid gets on his feet. finds a job or a band and makes his way up to becoming a famous rock star.
At night, you'll poke your head in his bedroom, there will be the Jim Morrison or Marilyn Manson posters over the futon on the floor, dirty laundry everywhere, blackened sheets or a Union Jack hung up over the basement window but he won't be there, he'll be in jail or at the bar and so you'll just have to say "I love you, son" to an empty room.
And it'll all be because you bought him that Electric Guitar.
Or maybe you could buy him an accordion.
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Alexandra David-Néel
OK, the Travelers Tales Tibet book wasn't a COMPLETE waste of time (close, though). One story piqued my interest - by Alexandra David-Néel, a Belgian/French woman who made her way into forbidden Tibet in the 1920's, and wrote a variety of books about her experiences. Which look to be very interesting, although I now have to bide my time while they're delivered (an early Christmas gift to myself, what can I say...).
Read more about her here: Wikipedia on Alexandra David-Néel or take a peek inside Magic and Mystery in Tibet on Google Books. A bit of searching might even find you a .pdf version of it, but really, who reads books that way?
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Travellers' Tales Tibet, 101 Most Influential People who never lived
101 Most Influential People who never lived
It's purpose "to provoke debate and discussion."
It's real purpose is to fill what the authors perceived as a publishing niche with things like "academic" discussions of the importance of such characters as Kermit the Frog, Charlie Brown and Tom Sawyer. Absolute rubbish, best read on the toilet; probably, in fact, written with that in mind. A shame, there is a market for a dictionary or guidebook to fictional characters in literature. This isn't it. Note to publisher: Print next edition on Toilet Paper.
Travelers' Tales Tibet
There's something about Tibet that spurs the imagination. That used to spur the imagination, I'm only half through this book yet I'm beginning to feel that I've had one too many Yak-Butter Teas, and I've never been. The multiplicity of points of view are homogeneous, most of the writers going out of the way to get off the beaten track, record their adventures, and yet somehow there's a dull repetition in it that accords badly with their mission. What was I looking for? I don't know. Tales of levitation, of enlightened monks and hidden monasteries and esoteric manuscripts and teachings, not another soul-searching trekker, mountain biker or land-roverer talk about how bloody cold it was and how it's not how it used to be and how bad China is to have taken them over. I wondered about this - I mean, how can you write a boring travel article about Tibet - and then it dawned on me. There are no Tibetans in the book. I mean, there are the stock descriptions - the "Color" that serves as a background to the western searcher's spiritual awakening, but there are no Tibetan characters.There are some good writers - Heinrich Harrer, Wade Davis, yet it just doesn't come together in a way that makes for a great or riveting read. And the format of the book, with the little inset quotes and blurbs (designed to look like a travel guide, presenting you with factoids and other author's opinions, always as boring as the author your currently reading...). Give it a miss. There are much better travel books out there. And if you're going to Tibet I'd request that when you're done you please don't write about it. Or if you absolutely have to I challenge you to see if you can do it in an intelligent way that doesn't make the Dalai Lama or the Tibetan cause the backdrop of your spiritual journey, I challenge you to do it without talking about Yak-Butter Tea or how cold it is or how badly you're feeling the effects of altitude sickness. It's all been done, we know.
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