Charlie Farquharson with Helpful Hints About Gittin Thru This Munth

Charlie Farquharson is a well-known (to Canadians) character played by comedian Don Harron.

Charlie wrote some interesting books when he wasn’t busy on the farm or spouting off on the CBC, including Charlie Farquharson’s Histry of Canada (listen up J., these books are required reading for all new citizens), Yer Last Decadent, Charlie Farquharson’s Unyverse, and Charlie Farquharson’s K.O.R.N. Allmynack.

I went to a thrift store today looking for items I can profitably resell on eBay and I found a copy of the Allmynack!

Like all good almanacs it has informative articles, horoscopes, weather predictions, helpful hints and ads for obscure products.

I'm going to sell it on eBay but in the meantime I'll be treating you to quotes from time to time. Maybe you better hope I sell it quick. Anyway, here’s what it says about January [Ed note: shamelessly copied without permission from Charlie Farquharson’s K.O.R.N. Allmynack.]

Helpful Hints About Gittin Thru This Munth:

Don’t take yer cold frame into the garden as yet. It’s a good time to think about fertlizing tho. Locate a good sorce of manoor. Try looking dreckly under a cow. This Back to the Land movemint is called Orgasmic Gardning. It’s the real thing, and garntees when it comes to city peeples in the summer, you will have one of the best spreds around. But fer now, keep yer feet in the stove, practiss tying yer own flies and wait to git sprung by spring.


Happy New Year!

There are scoundrels everywhere...

Not much to say, just this picture. Source is here.

Scary stuff, eh?

And yeah, I've been ripped off too, despite all of my precautions.

Whatever. The universe is a dangerous place.

Although, I must admit, the sorts of people who buy knitting pattern books and sewing patterns are pretty much an honest lot. And very nice too!

Podcasts and Other Boxing Day Distractions

I got a iPod (30GB, with video) for Christmas and am neglecting eBay in favour of hunting around for interesting podcasts and music and videos...

Guess what! There’s this whole other realm of fascinating stuff on the web that I haven’t looked at (or listened to) yet! This makes me think something profound is happening to radio. There are zillions of people out there who are producing this vast selection of audio content and making it all available for free.

So far I’ve subscribed to Doctor Who: Podshock, Science@NASA Feature Stories, the CBC Radio 3 Podcast (Canadian indie music) and a couple of others.

Now I need to go and (try to) hook up our VCR so that I can tape Doctor Who for J. She’s off to a hockey game tonight and won’t be near a TV when CBC broadcasts The Christmas Invasion. Trouble is, the VCR hasn’t been hooked up since before The Big Guy and I got our new TV three years ago and gee, I don’t know, there are already so many things hooked up to the TV and we have satellite not cable these days and I have to figure out again how to program the VCR and I have to find a tape that doesn’t already have a Babylon 5 episode on it that I need to keep…

Maybe it will be easier if I have lunch first.

The Big Guy’s gone off somewhere (“I won’t be long!” he just yelled up the stairs). It would be good if I can get the VCR situation sorted out before he gets back. I don’t like being the object of his sarcastic slurs about my technical acumen. This from a guy for whom I have to set the time on his watch every time we transition into or out of daylight savings time.

He’s probably gone Boxing Day shopping. This morning he was busy googling survival kit suppliers (we need to restock some of the consumables in our earthquake kits) and waving around some printed pages with detailed lists of all the sorts of things you need to survive after the Big One hits.

Here’s hoping for no Big One today. I really do want to catch this episode of Doctor Who.

The Big Guy Went Christmas Shopping

and he bought a Christmas Tree Stand from Canadian Tire (some assembly required) complete with a small bag of easily lost components vital for correct operation and a 14-page booklet with step-by-step instructions, diagrams and Limited Life Time Warranty in both official languages. But garbage collection day arrived before the tree did, so the booklet was gone by the time we actually put up the tree. Things went well despite the missing instructions (there aren’t too many technical problems a Professional Engineer and a Computer Science Major can’t solve) and we only had three little white knobby thingees left over at the end.

He also bought two strings of Christmas Tree lights, chosen to replace the perfectly adequate lights we already have. The new lights are State-of-the-Art “LED Technology”, “Virtually Unbreakable”, according to claims boldly proclaimed on the boxes. We’ll see.

Best Sellers on eBay

I got laid off from my last full-time job in Fall of 2002 and after a lot of serious but fruitless job hunting and a little part-time contract work decided to take a break and do something completely different.

So I started selling on eBay.

I began the way most eBay sellers do, with a wide variety of things that was just lying around the house and that my inner packrat allowed me to part with.

Occasionally, The Big Guy lets me sell some of his stuff. "These are really bad!" he said as he handed over a boxed set of Andy Sidaris movies starring Playboy bunnies. They were easy to sell. I think the photos I posted with the listing helped drive up the bidding. (Hey, they can't act their way out of a paper bag but they sure fill out a bathing suit nicely.)

I also offered to sell his radios but he said no.

These days I specialize in used and vintage craft patterns, things like knitting and crochet patterns, sewing patterns, etc. I'll never get rich doing this but, whatever, you gotta find something productive to do with your time.

Which reminds me, I was going to tell you what my best sellers were for 2005.

My Best Sellers:

(1) Quilling books - Quilling is a rather odd craft that involves curling up narrow strips of paper and sticking them together to make decorations for cards, plaques, boxes, etc. Also known as paper filigree. Go figure...

(2) Tablet Weaving books - Tablet weaving is a form of weaving done by turning cards that have yarn strung through holes in the cards. You make narrow strips of woven fabric with interesting herringbone-like patterns.

(3) 1940's Crochet patterns for women's handbags - Very retro, very chic!

(4) Pingouin Baby Knitting Pattern books - These always get bid up enthusiastically. I sold one lately for $96 (US). I suspect some bidders get overly excited by the auction process.

I have other things that sell well on eBay too and I'm sure all you eBay sellers out there want to know...

But I have to go now, I am summoned by The Big Guy. We're off get a Christmas Tree.

No matter where you go, there you are.

Last night I re-watched one of my favorite movies The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, Across The Eighth Dimension.

Marvelous fun!

I highly recommend it.

How will you know if you'll like it too?

Take this quiz.

QUIZ
1) You already have Buckaroo Banzai on VHS or Laser Disc and want the DVD Special Edition version for the alternate opening. (T) or (F)

If you answered (T), give yourself 100 points and skip down to "End of Quiz".

2) Your favorite TV series of all time is (pick one): (a) Babylon 5, (b) any incarnation of Star Trek except for Enterprise, (c) Lost, (d) The Prisoner, (e) MST3K, (f) Taxi, (g) Doctor Who, (h) all of the above, (i) none of the above.

3) You have at least 2 acquaintances who are "Browncoats" or you are one yourself. (T) or (F)

4) You know how to find all the Easter Eggs on the last DVD you bought. E.g., What's that watermelon doing there? (T) or (F)

5) You personally own one or more computers running (choose as many as apply): (a) Windows, (b) Apple(Mac), (c) UNIX/Linux, (d) Sun(Solaris/SunOS), (e) VMS, (f) FreeBSD, (g) DOS, (h) OS/2 (i) an OS you wrote yourself on the weekend

6) You possess a collectable item autographed by (choose all that apply): (a) JMS, (b) Joss Whedon, (c) Charlize Theron, (d) Donny Osmond, (e) Mr. Dressup

7) Your favorite artist is (choose one): (a) Frank Frazetta, (b) Todd Lockwood, (c) John Howe, (d) David Messina, (e) none of these but you know who they all are and can name a work by each without googling their names, (f) huh?

8) Last Friday evening you (pick one): (a) went shopping, (b) went out to a movie, (c) watched TV, (d) went someplace where beverages were served and loud music was played, (e) went out to eat, (f) went to a sports bar or attended a sports event, (g) read a book, (h) read a comic book, (i) went online, (j) called a chat line, (k) worked on your OS, (l) other

(Picking "other" is ok, I won't ask and you don't have to tell.)

9) You collect (pick as many as apply): (a) Limited Edition Franklin Mint Plates (b) license plates, (c) parking tickets, (d) points, (e) James Bond movies, (f) Spiderman comics, (g) lint

10) You believe: (a) the hoverboards used in Back to the Future II were real, (b) the Daleks were NOT actually all destroyed, (c) The avalanche has started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote. (d) In every generation there is a Chosen One. (e) hostile Martians actually did invade Grovers Mill, New Jersey in October 1938 but Orson Welles was later coerced by those same invaders into claiming the whole thing was a fictional broadcast (f) a tin foil hat can prevent the government from reading and/or controlling your mind

[End of QUIZ]
Those of you who have read this far and actually want to know your score can give yourselves an extra 2 points. Look for instructions on how to calculate your score in a future post.


Laugh While You Can, Monkey Boy!

The Big Guy Has An Overnight Inspiration

The Big Guy woke up this morning inspired by the overnight decision that it was now OK to drill holes into his truck, being that it's now officially 3 years old and no longer too new to tamper with.

He says he is not going to fool around any more with trying to run wires all over the place and holes in convenient places is a much better way to go.

What's this all about, you ask?

Amateur Radio Madness, which I will henceforth refer to as ARM.

Being severely afflicted with ARM, The Big Guy obsessively spends much of his spare cash and time on purchasing, modifying, installing, de-installing and repairing radios, radio antennas, and radio accessories. Plus the tools required for all this work.

1:10 pm and so far it's been not too bad.

The Big Guy has yelled at me only once for "sneaking up on him". Tyler and Andy, wise to the side effects of ARM, are staying out of his way. The ground is still pretty much frozen so the path through the family room (on the shortest route between the driveway where the truck is and the shed in the back yard where the tools are) isn't showing much dirt yet. There have been just two trips to the Land of Orange Aprons (for a bag of mysterious metal things and to replace a broken skill saw.) No demands to "come here and hold this". Yet.

This is Andy trying to retrieve a ball from The Big Guy's office.

How Pictures Work

Great! I just figured out how to upload a picture. Easy As Pie! Actually, pie is not that easy when you intend to make the crust from scratch. That cliche is probably from a time when everybody (every woman over the age of 12, of course) knew how to make a perfect pie crust.

I've read that good writers avoid cliches. Do you think that applies to bloggers too?

Maybe... afterall it could be anybody, anywhere who reads what I post and maybe the cliche is absolutely meaningless to someone from another cultural background and age group.

Hmmm, I suppose it depends on who I am writing for. Everybody? Just those I tell about my blog? Nobody? Myself? Does it really matter?

Anyway, this is the magazine I was scanning yesterday. I sell stuff like this on eBay and have found that the more pictures you have, the more likely someone will buy. At least, that seems to be true for crafty things like knitting magazines and crochet books.

But it's damn tedious scanning them all in!

Have to Start Somewhere

My best friend, let's call her J., says I write funny emails and should have a blog. I guess I've been thinking about it for some time too so here goes...

So far, setting it up and choosing templates and cruising around other people's blogs has been way more fun than the other thing I was doing this morning (scanning pages from a Vogue knitting magazine - more about that later) but I don't actually have much to say at the moment so I'll spare you the rambling and come back later.