Sell-Crazy

I’ve become addicted to selling junk. As part of the ongoing storage shed cleanout (my little 2008 project to cut down costs and eliminate the enormous pile of trash I’ve stuffed into multiple storage units in the far-flung DC suburbs) I’ve decided to put up unwanted books and DVD’s at Amazon.

Here’s the link, because I’m a whore. Also, here’s a link to my wishlist, because I’m turning 34 in a month and nobody in my family buys me gifts. I get a card – with no money in it – saying happy birthday. Don’t send a 34 year old a fucking card. Hi! Just wanted to remind you! MARCH OF TIME AND ALL THAT! Doors closing, opportunities vanishing, hair thinning, women looking through you, fat forming!

Thanks, family!

I typically send a note back encouraging them to view my Amazon wishlist, so don’t feel like I’m singling you out. Yes, you, the one person who subscribes to the GS RSS feed. Whoever you are. Probably a family member who’ll read this then gleefully fill out a card. Happy birthday! Still alone? I was happily married when I was your age!

So, my Amazon storefront. I’ve got tons of books from all the different phases of my life. So far, in the last three weeks, I’ve moved a couple hundred bucks worth of old books. I should be charging more, because I take obsessive care of my paperbacks. Even in childhood, my only friends were books. Even if I never got around to reading them, I just liked having books around. Which alarms me now that I say it out loud.

My office has had a recent big turnover – a firing, and a couple people leaving – so I raided their desks in search of office supplies and loose change and, at one, found some old books.  They all sold within a few hours.

This has convinced me to up the ante a bit and just steal stuff to sell on Amazon. My current plan is to steal every motherfucking Bible lying around the department and sell them. There’s no money in it, I know, but it’ll be fun. I once stole all the common-room Bibles from the dorm buildings across my old college campus. The little West Virginia school was associated with the Presbyterian Church which, rumor has it, is a relationship about to end due to low attendance and terrible kids.

The chick who installed all those bibles was Laura Sugg, then chaplain of the school, and we even had a minor battle in the Op Ed section of the school newspaper. I don’t remember much about it, because I was always drunk, but I remember hating that freakish bitch. She was tangled up in some sort of nefarious love affair with the director of student life and, possibly, a student or two. Or so I heard. Stealing her bibles became my mission in life.

The Bibles I stole eventually ended up filling a huge bookshelf at my friend’s house in Baltimore. Years later, he drove down to my grandparent’s house and dumped them on the lawn, claiming that he felt guilty being part of such a horrible crime. I burned a few, tossed the rest, and may still have one or two examples deep in the storage units.

If I find them, I’ll mail them to Sugg. Or maybe just link her to my storefront where she’ll be able to buy them for a penny, plus shipping.

Having exhausted stolen books, and with nobody leaving the department in the near future, I’ve been trying to figure out how to sell the massive quantities of scrap paper I trash every day. I’m thinking I could make a killing if I appeal to the politically correct culture group-think in place today and guilt people to pay me for trash. Save a tree… Save millions of trees…all by sending me money for scrap paper. Then you can pulp it and reuse it yourself! Or maybe feed it to the poor.