Craigslist Ad #6

Wanna Wait A Few Hours Tomorrow Morning For Toast?

One vintage Proctor Silex Toaster Oven. 

Vintage means old, right?

This toaster oven was from when my brother was in University and since then I've inherited it.

Inherit means steal, right?

So what can I tell you about this toaster oven? It has some sweet-ass levers and knobs on it. No chance of malfunctioning electrical gadgetry here! Phewf. Did you know that suicide rates have gone up 13% since they started using electronics in small appliances? Shocking. Well what's really shocking is that I totally just made that up to make you want to buy my old toaster oven over splurging on a new one with computerized presets. I am so ashamed, who misrepresents them-self on craigslist?? Clearly I am morally bankrupt. And also financially bankrupt. Which explains stealing a toaster oven from a loved one and hocking it on the internet. Ha! Just a little criminal humour there. My brother has been graduated for like 8 years. It was in my parents house. Just sitting there. Waiting for someone to come along and fill it with joy again. And small muffins.

Everything works great on this toaster oven. Why am I selling it you may ask? Well for starters, who actually uses toaster ovens? In theory they seems like a good idea. A teeny tiny oven. But then there comes a day in which: "hey guys, I finally figured out what this big white box in the kitchen that gets really hot is - a BIG oven!" And then you wonder why the fuck you have a teeny-tiny oven. And then you take some pictures of it and post it on craiglist and count the days until you can be rid of the thing thats been taking up valuable counter space. Don't worry, at some point you will do this too. It artfully demonstrates the beautiful circle of life (of toaster ovens). But, you know, its important that you learn this lesson on your own. So pay me money in exchange for my toaster over and get started today on your journey of self-awareness (and acute awareness that you don't in fact need, nor will you ever need, a toaster oven) and reflective postulation (about how you really shouldn't have paid someone $15 for a bloody toaster oven!).

Some things that you wouldn't use a toaster oven for:

1. toast (thats what toasters are for)

2. a turkey

3. a tray of cookies

4. a cake

5. a pie

6. ribs

7. a salmon

and the list goes on. Just to clarify, your BIG oven can do all these things. Your toaster oven can do none of them. And please don't argue #1. We both know that toast made in a toaster oven takes well over an hour and ends up more like stale bread than toast.  

In one of the pictures you will see an apple. That does not come with the toaster oven - I was merely using it for scale. And plus I already ate it. Un-toasted. An example of yet another thing that you wouldn't put in your toaster oven. But this falls on deaf ears. I can already see that you have your mind made up. I happily await your email.  

Craigslist Ad #5

Have A Special Someone You Want To Take Out?

2 Admit One Cineplex movie tickets. Only $7 each. So you can spend your money on what really matters:

Roofying your date.

Craigslist Ad #4

Juicer For Easily Manipulated Health-Conscious Person

Would you consider yourself a healthy person? Well chances are if you don't own a juicer, YOU'RE NOT. As countless late-night infomercials have taught me, the only way to be a happy, youthful person bursting with vitality and zestful energy is to consume all your food through a straw (which ironically is also how toothless old farts bursting with incontinence and racist slurs eat their meals).

C'mon! Join the Juicing Cult! Once you own a juicer you will seek out all sorts of juicing propaganda from credible sources on the internet i.e. Linda from Vermont. Doesn't she sound reliable? Who WOULDN'T believe everything a rich housewife suffering from apathy, owning too many porches, and a botched Botox job has to say about the "science" of juicing? You can spend HOURS lecturing and indoctrinating your friends, making them feel stupid and outdated for using their teeth to manually (not to mention savagely) grind up their food. With the revolutionary new technology of 'squeezing things until they puke out liquid' you will BE the Jones that everyone is trying to keep up with.

After just a week of exclusively ingesting juiced foods you will see the following results:

- diarrhea

- more diarrhea

- a rosey flush in your cheeks (from running to the bathroom from even MORE diarrhea)

- weight loss (from the inability to keep anything you eat from shooting out your ass 3 minutes later )

- improved intimacy with your partner (from the explosive diarrhea you unfortunately experienced on the couch while watching a funny movie together - now he knows EVERYTHING about you....)

- noticeably firmer gluteus maximus (from extreme butt cheek clenching while frantically searching for a restaurant and convincing the host that although you do understand and respect their No Public Washroom Except for Paying Customers policy, this really IS an emergency...)

- a deep connection with God (from the many conversations you had with him while on the toilet "Oh Dear God! Please make this stop! I promise to start going to church, and to volunteer at places that usually make me really uncomfortable, and to help little old ladies cross the street even though I know they're going to want to then chat about their grandaughter, Mackenzie and how lovely her 4th grade tap-dance year end concert was for 2 hours! PLEASE GOD! JUST CLOSE THE PORTAL TO HELL THAT MY ASSHOLE HAS BECOME!)

Sounds like its time to make that $100 investment in a juicer. Welcome to whole new way of life my friend.

Worth $199 for newest 1000 model. Since mine is a bit older and used, I'm asking $100 OBO

Please e-mail if you're interested or have any questions. Please refrain from sending pictures of your penis. Why do you think that's an appropriate way to respond to a juicer ad?!

Craigslist Ad #3

Typewriter for Aspiring Kerouac-ian

You: silly hipster with a penchant for writing pained prose on the topics of unrequited love and obscure metaphysical curiosities.

Me: Owner of a typewriter which would make writing those inspired musings seem infinitely cooler.

The typewriter: tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-DING!

A bit more about the typewriter:


- great condition Olympia SG-3 manual desktop typewriter - the VERY same make and model that Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist James A. Michener used (see picture below from museum)

- grey with sea-foam green accents (or in more pretentious language: "art deco colour scheme")

- relatively new ribbon and a free replacement ribbon that i special ordered from a crotchety old typewriter repair man who had since retired from the "biz" but still had a basement full of overstock. He sent it in a bubble wrapped envelope. You can have that too if you like. I may have popped some of the bubbles already. I'd say more than 70% remain. Estimated value of ribbon: $7.50, envelope: $1.75, hours of childish entertainment: unprice-able

- QWERTY keyboard layout making for an easy transition from your MacBook Pro

- portable! - weighing in at 35.4 lbs (thank you bathroom scale) this baby can be hauled around to any number of bleeding-heart communist GenX/Y hangouts that make you feel like you're "part" of the "cause" by ordering overpriced beverages and overly dry baked goods (100% gluten/flavour free).

There you have it. Looks like you can still spend every Saturday morning sitting in your favourite moonbeam/hippy-voodoo cafe smugly drinking your shade-grown organic coffee, while wearing your dark rimmed glasses sans lenses, all-season scarf, and ironic t-shirt, as you write your tragic dramedy screen-play in which the protagonist (insert Indie character name that is both quirky but believable i.e: Igby, Large or Gilbert Grape) comes to find meaning in his life after making sense of his dysfunctional upbringing in midwestern America with the help of a quirky yet troubled girl who will ultimately end up breaking his heart only AFTER teaching him how to use it. Shit dude, I think I just stole your screen play. Hey, but don't worry. There are 700,000 other hipsters in this very city writing the exact same movie. And besides, isn't the art more in the process and not the end result? Making money off your dream would be selling out, right? I get you. Deep stuff.

So c'mon hipster. Make the plebs in your hipster herd jealous and buy my typewriter today. They may have the same dark rimmed glasses, the same all-season scarf (my god, do you never get over-heated?!) and the same (albeit with a slight variance in smug humour) ironic t-shirt, but I can guarantee they won't have this typewriter. You will be the Hippest Of Them All (at the Hipster Ball).

$75 and you can be well on your way to the Cannes Film Festival where you will modestly shrug off all praise for your critically acclaimed film and be quoted as saying "I never wanted fame, just a medium to express the beautiful yet tragic nature of the human condition."

*Note: don't bring your fixie to come pick this beauty up. Its HEAVY. Or on second thought, do. That's exactly something a silly hipster would do......

Email me if you're interested or have any questions. I can also give you some suggestions on how your dramedy should end if you need them (how do you feel about land mines.....?)

Michener

Macnabb

Craigslist Ad #2

Looking For Agoraphobic To Buy My Bike Trainer

Afraid of fresh air? Potential human interactions? Zombie apocalypse?

But...

...still enjoy taking long bike rides? Well look no further! Instead of scrubbing tire marks from your hardwood floors and patching drywall where you took the corner from the kitchen a little too quickly, why not set up a bike trainer which would give you the experience of pedaling like you're in the Tour de France without the the inconvenience of leaving the house. Plus you can quit, shame-free, whenever you get tired with a bike trainer which is something they frown upon in the Tour (even if you just survived cancer and only have one remaining testicle. They do not suffer wusses gladly in the sport of cycling....FACT. )

But I digress.

So, this bike trainer is a Blackburn Basic TrakStand Trainer. I bought it some years ago with great intentions. Turns out I'm not quite the dedicated athlete I had imagined and plus I actually enjoy the great outdoors. I can even tolerate the Pacific West Coast perma-drizzle. Barely. But maybe you would rather train inside your cozy dry apartment while watching the 6th Season of Lost on DVD. That is definitely something you can't do on a bike that's pavement-bound. Unless you have a REALLY long extension cord.....

Due to hardly being used, this trainer is in great shape and ready to go to its next home of great intentions.

$100. Firm.

Here's a link to a well written write up on the performance of this trainer. Its full of all sorts of information that is not currently in my brain.

Blackburn Basic Trackstand Trainer

Craigslist Ad #1

Excellent condition Staples Executive Mesh-Back Manager's Chair for sale.

Paid $229 pre-tax, selling for $120.

Pickup only as I do not have a car. And past attempts to deliver large objects by bike have failed miserably. Hilariously entertaining for those stuck in traffic watching me try to balance a chest of drawers on my handlebars and NOT meet certain death from oncoming cars. Yes, HILARIOUS. But entirely unsafe. And who wants to put that sort of worry on their mother? Not me.

The chair is a goodly one. I'll be honest with you though, it didn't get a lot of use. This is because I sit on the floor a lot. Using cushions or kneeling. That is because my computer is only 2 feet off the ground. And because sometimes it pays to be that much closer to the floor - like ACTUALLY pays - I found $2.38 in small change when I was down here. So this chair just sort of sat in my home office to make me look more credible and "managerial." Alas, it is time to sell it as I am looking to move in the near future and hauling a manager's chair to a new location where it will NOT be sat on seems ridiculous. Not as ridiculous as say, a monkey wearing a hardhat and building low-rise apartment buildings (they're taking our jobs!) but enough to warrant mentioning.

You can either look at the chair's specs at this link:

Manager Chair Specs

or I can tell you a bit about it:

Its black. And rolls over hard surfaces. It has adjustable height AND adjustable recline tension (oooooooh). The armrests adjust up and down and the mesh backing keeps you cool when you find yourself sweating profusely while sitting. Perhaps you have a high stress job (investor? broker? customer service for a cell phone company?), or maybe you live in a hot climate (in which case why are you looking for chairs to purchase HERE? the shipping cost will bankrupt you), or maybe you are one of those hard core athletes that strap a chair to your back and do the Grouse Grind every morning at 6:00a.m. (in which case we say this mesh fabric "breathes" and "wicks moisture away"). I wouldn't presume to know anything about your life. Nor am I judging. Maybe you just sweat a lot. Is it glandular? Could be. All I'm saying is that the back of this chair is mesh and therefor allows for maximum air flow to keep YOU comfortable.

So there it is. You get a $229 (pre-tax!) chair for $120 (no tax!) (I think there's someone else selling one on craigslist for $160. His is "mint" condition. Which means that he's even less managerial than me. Or maybe he collects chairs and keeps them in mint condition and then trades them for other chairs in mint condition. Again, I make no judgments on what people do in their lives) and I get to go about my life on the floor but with more space in my office and less hassle when it comes time to pack. And to show my good faith, I'd even let it go for $100 and a bottle of wine. I have low standards in that department. And if the wine you pick is rubbish I'll use it in a stew. So if you ARE thinking of going for this option, make it red and I'll celebrate my new chairless-ness with a beef bourguignon.

Talking To Ralph On the Great White Telephone

Life is busy. Spring is here. Rodents are mating in my walls. Giant raindrops are splattering against my windows. My students are determined to kill me by touching every square inch of my piano with their little disease-impregnated fingers. So, long story short I'm feeling a bit sleep-deprived, sun-deprived and health-deprived.

But what's funny about that? Sounds like a bunch of whining to me. And if I read one more person's blog about the "trials and tribulations" of their daily life followed by some cheesy quote I will barf. Probably not actually barf. More a metaphoric barfing. Its been years since I did a literal barf. YEARS. And I think tequila shots at some sort of Western-themed bar back in University may have been the culprit. Mind you, does it really count as a barf if you don't remember the act itself, but instead hear a description of the act second-hand from a witness who wisely had one less tequila shot than you? That's a cheater barf I think. For it to be legit you have to be be able to recount the details in the first person. Whoah. How did this turn into a post about barf?? Ok. Enough. There are fucking children who read this blog.

My point: being short on time and energy but still wanting to put up something so Katy doesn't halt her daily visits (thus devastating my hit counter and making it appear that no one reads this thing) I'm posting an interlude of craigslist ads that I actually have taken the time to write. Turns out I can be motivated to write when there's the potential for cash at the end of hitting the "publish" button. It's the delusional way to call oneself a paid author. A paid author with a lot fewer belongings.....Hey! let me know if you want to buy anything! The Friend Special means not only do you get to pay the full asking price, but you also get to bring me a sandwich when you come pick your purchase up. Because that's what friends do for friends who are selling all their belongings. Right friend?