Lip balm mania!

Heh. I didn't realize there was a little club on Flickr that was as obsessed with lip balms as I am.

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(Gottfrid) Chair – a love story

I’m not sure exactly when we first met. I know it was after my first roommate moved out and took her re-upholstered kitchen chairs with her. Of course I was heart-broken. My roommate had lovingly repainted and refurbished two older chairs, making them cool. Making them comfy. But now she was gone and so were they.

Naturally she left me the broken kitchen chairs. The ones whose form matched the table perfectly but in function only had three working legs. I knew no amount of glue would ever fix our relationship, it was broken from the start.

So it was with a heavy heart I set out for IKEA, not really expecting to find much. IKEA is the bargin basement of pressboard furniture love. The kind of place where you find Ms.-right-now, not Ms.-I’ll-be-giving-you-to-my-grandchildren-someday kind of furniture.

Some people say love at first sight, but for us it was love at first sit. Oh sure, I had an inkling you were the one when I first saw your curved black form with u-shaped padding. But it wasn’t until I sat in you that I felt my back and my ass just scream with comfort “YES! YES! YES!”

Why do we love the ones they do? Why do we seek to find flaws in others that we miss in our dear ones? I don’t know. All I know was the combination of a curved padded backing, slightly downward titled seating that was wide enough and cushioning enough meant you were made for comfort but your sleek black&white design meant you were still pretty enough to bring home to momma.

There was one minor hitch in our love, we didn’t match styles. You were painted black and white, whereas my kitchen table was a warm chestnut wood. But no matter. I didn’t care if our styles clashed, I was taking you home.

Or I should have. In years since of course I would kick myself for not taking you right there and then. What can I say? I was young. You cost $80 + tax which I thought was exorbitant considering my first chairs only cost $15 at the Goodwill. At best I was only thinking I would be able to buy one of you, an awkward child that would never last in the long-run. The first “real” house or apartment I moved into, the single unmatched chair would have to go. But I wanted you so bad I was willing to buy only one, just so we could be together.

But I waited. Time passed. My fortunes rose and fell, and then fell some more. Spending $80 for a kitchen chair was impossibility when grocery money was measured out by $5 bills.

A turning point in our love

Then things changed. My 30th birthday comes and I am gifted with enough money to buy one of you. Still I hesitate. It feels like I’ve been waiting so long, what’s another few months. A friend convinces me to spend my money differently. To wait further.

And so it goes. I want to make myself worthy of you. I want my large ass not to crack your beautiful frame. I will get in shape. I will lose weight and only then will we be together.

As the date approaches however something goes wrong. Suddenly you are no longer at your usual place, IKEA. All the searching of the globe reveals is that while you remain in England and Canada, you have left America for good.

Heartbreak! It is over. My perfect chair love is lost forever. I consider trips to Europe and Canada. I’m suddenly willing to spend hundreds of dollars to achieve something that cost only $80 once.

Slowly I being to resign myself to our fate...we will never be together. I return to the scene of our first love, Ikea. I flirt with Henriksdal, he has been around forever and is dependable if not exiting. But no matter what I look like, I can’t match your beautiful craftsmanship. Your combination of padding and curves. My back and ass do no welcome other chairs with such job.

In a drunken daze I bring home a $250 filly, marked down to $20 in a liquidation sale. You would think I would be happy with such a high-class chair. One that is normally too rich for my blood.

But alas, all I can think of is you. How happy we would have been together. I weep for our lost love.

A miracle

And then the gods smiled upon us. An innocuous ad in craigslist. “Table and chairs for sale- $100.” How many ads like it have I not clicked on? I don’t know. But I was bored, searching, always searching. And there you were! A pair, bright as day! The ad crucially failed to mention your pedigree, but I knew you on sight. What was one out of reach, what once I would have been willing to shell out hundreds of dollars for was not ripe to be plucked for half price. A pair for $80! I would have even been willing to take the table if necessary to get to you.

And so it was. Your previous owner didn’t need you anymore and I reached her within 15 minutes of her posting her ad. My only concern was that somehow she wouldn’t wait a mere day or two for us to be together. Perhaps another buyer would snatch you out of my grasp once more.

But our love was bending fate to my will. My first paycheck in 4 weeks was direct deposited faster than I expected. I now had the means to buy you.

And so there you both sit in my dinning room. We are as happy as clams together. Although the waiting was cruel I now know that true love only comes from being tested. My back, my ass and your frame will live forever together in harmony.

Gottfrid chair come back?

About five days ago I noticed that the IKEA chair of my dreams, the Gottfrid, disappeared of the IKEA USA website (usually meaning that’s it for the item). I don’t think I can even convey how upset this made me. I’ve been dreaming about this chair for almost a year now. It’s become totally fetishized in my brain as the most perfect kitchen chair (for it’s price range). I was saving up to buy it but also it was going to be my reward for hitting my 10% goal.

So I’ve been randomly googling “Gottfrid chair” a lot the last few days, trying to see if I can find someone selling a used set at least. Apparently it’s for sale still in Canada and the UK.

Yesterday I found the IKEA Gottfrid chair link was working again (it had gone offline) and I managed to order two chairs. But then by the end of the day, IKEA sent me an e-mail saying the chair was out of stock and will not be shipped and so my credit card will not be charged.

Now I see the Gottfrid chair is back on the IKEA USA website, visible even when looking at all their chairs. It’s still out of stock for the entire IKEA USA stores (I looked up stock availability at each store just to see) but perhaps IKEA is thinking about bringing it back, hence why they brought the chair back to the website?

I can only hope.

You know I was reminding myself that I was becoming a lot like the main character in Fight Club by fetishizing home décor. Like that line where he says about his coffee table, “That’s it, at least I knew I had the last coffee table I was ever going to need.” I’ve been thinking how much I’m starting to resemble that character at the beginning of the movie.

UPDATE: I called IKEA customer service and the woman said IKEA is definately *not* selling the chairs anymore. And then I just started looking on craigslist and someone in my neighborhood just happens to be selling two of them and a table for $100. It's not even labeled "Gottfrid" I can just tell by the picture. I MUST HAVE THOSE CHAIRS.

UPDATE II: Check out the thrilling resolution, "Chair, A Love Story."

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More designing with food-Orbitz

This is part of my continuing series of decorating themes with food. Every once in a while you just find this perfect combination of style and cool and just works out better than you ever could have imagined. I've had this bottle of Orbitz (the drink) since at least 1997. I was living in a dorm room and noticed someone had placed a bottle above a swinging lamp that was in every room. Voilá, instant lava lamp.

So naturally I copied it for my own dorm room. After I left the dorms I just had this bottle hanging around. It still looked cool, but I didn't really have a way of duplicating the lamp in my dorm room. So for nine years I just have been carting the thing around, putting it on ledges and window sills for effect.

But last weekend at IKEA I saw these Kubbo lamps. It completely duplicates the instant lava lamp without actually having to sit on a real lamp. It's so perfect and cool looking its like the Kubbo lamp was made just for Orbitz bottles. That's actually a picture of my nine-year-old bottle sitting on the Kubbo lamp.

Oh yeah, I never ever tried the drink. Rumour had it as very nasty, like drinking something super-sweet with phlegm in it.

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Urban Outfitter-IKEA-Crate & Barrel style envy

So I finally got a temp job to start Monday at a large nationally famous non-profit known for helping people out in disaster areas (who's symbol and color is also its name). After not working for three weeks I was about ready to tear my hair out. Not that staying home and playing video games aren't fun. In fact I sort of settled into playing Civilization IV as my only means of keeping me from panicking about my financial situation. I also read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince for the fifth time. (Re-reading Harry Potter is sort of the equivalent of "comfort food.") As it is, I've already borrowed $300 from my family and will have to borrower rent money--but I intend to refund at least the $300 right after I get my first paycheck. I won't get paid until the same day rent is due so it's more about the timing than the money.

But I find it odd that my mind is already cashing checks I haven't even earned as I slowly start surfing furniture and design stores again. In supreme irony, Ikea seems to have stopped selling the Gottfrid chair I was obsessed over (and which I used my birthday money intended for the chair to sign up with Weight Watchers). Guess I'll have to find another chair to obsess over. I was planning on buying it when I hit my 10% weight loss goal (when you lose 10% of your body weight, which for me is 23 lbs.)

But now that I have a new roommate moving in, (if you read this blog all the way through, in March all I do is talk about my roommate search. I have a lovely girl who's 8 years my junior moving in but I don't intend to talk about her in case one day she reads this blog. But she was pretty much my first choice and the only one I felt in sympatico with when I showed the apartment off the one weekend. And I wasn't even stoned that day.) I'm becoming more and more obsessed with fixing up my apartment, style-wise.

My first roommate and I really worked together to come up with a kind of color scheme. We had a sort of gray, black, white, dark blue and red theme going on. I won't say it was perfectly designed or anything, but it felt like the apartment really "hung" together stylistically. Then when she moved out, she took out her art from the common areas (natch) and my second roommate, other than adding a broken clock and a Dali painting, never really tried to fix up the room. For her this was meant to be a temporary place (well 18 months). I'm not faulting her for it, but we didn't even take down the old picture hooks so we had these new pictures (and the clock) hanging half-hazardly wherever an old picture used to hang. I even resorted to hanging a poster on the wall just to fill some of the empty wall space.

So now that I will soon to earning income again I started to peruse Urban Outfitters and Crate & Barrel and to a lesser extent IKEA (sob! my chair...my perfect chair is gone!). Walking into Urban Outfitters especially makes me feel like a slob with no style. Everything they have looks so "cool" even though part of me knows that it's just mass produced "coolness." Buying fake crappy art to hang on your walls is bad, whereas at least hanging up old advertising posters you personally collected (therefore no one else has) is at least original. But I shouldn't sound too much like a snob about all these. I remember from my Critical Theory class we were talking about the concept of "original" and what does that mean when it's something like a photography or a reproduction. Unless you are hanging the only painting in existence with that particular image is why is "originality" important? What does "limited edition print" really stand for? (Except an attempt to raise the value of an image). I was so swept up into that theory that for my mother's 60th birthday I insisted to my brother we buy her one original painting because I wanted something unique and special in the family. We spent $1,000 between the two of us and bought a beautiful watercolor by David Yeh, a Detriot-area artist.

Currently the art in my apartment exists of my friend's black&white photos. I would like to link to his website because they are really good. For years he took concert photos around Seattle but I actually like his candid shots better. Just weird or interesting images or people. Plus I have another photo from another friend of Courtney Love playing a Christmas time concert (I think 1999). What can I say? It's Courtney and it's a really nice photo of her playing. I also have two badly framed Rolling Stones magazines, one with Courtney & Hole on the cover and the other is Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. NOT his first cover with the iconic "Corporate Magazines Still Suck" shirt (I want that cover) but his second one where he's wearing a suit. I found the magazines in a used bookstore in Seattle one day and framed them.

In my apartment I also have three Tim Wistrom prints as well as a framed Seattle Weekly cover with a detail of a Tim Wistrom painting. Wistrom paints nature landscapes, mostly of the Pacific Northwest but with a sci-fi-ish twist of either cities with a second-Ice Age or global warming. I just like the concept of nature reclaiming the cities images, although I do wonder what happened to the people?

Of course I also have the (now framed) Torani posters. I also have a steamer trunk that serves as a coffee table. I shellacked the top and covered it with multiple kinds of tarot cards. It actually looks really cool, one of the few art projects I worked on that came out well.

I keep looking over at Urban Outfitters to tell me how to make up my apartment. As if I can fix my life by buying a $100 shag rug. I don't know why I always fall into the trap of thinking that buying material things is going to "fix" my life. Make me cooler or happier. Frankly no one ever comes over here anyway.

There has to be some kind of connection between my materializing (ie, buying things will make me happy, looking cool will make me happy, buying things will make cool) and my actual lack of "coolness" because I'm going about it the wrong way.

Food advertising as art: Torani Posters

I suppose in a way this keeps with my blog's theme about "food" since this is essentially a post about food art since I've become obsessed with these old Torani Italian Syrup advertising posters lately.

You may have seen these posters before. They were pretty ubiquitous back in the late 1990s when Torani ran an ad campaign that played off old pulp fiction images. You can see tiny jpgs of their entire campaign here. Their website even had a "compose a Noir story using Torani syrup" contest where I believe each month the winner got a case of their syrup.

Anyway, around 1999 I ordered a set of the posters from Torani’s website and received four of them. Then maybe three years ago, I wrote an e-mail to Torani asking if they had any more of the posters from the old campaign (which they had long since stopped using) and some anonymous kind soul sent me the Soda 2000 poster.

But that still leaves me bereft of this one final poster which you can see here, Chocolate Fugitive. Until recently I wasn't even certain how many posters Torani had produced for the campaign. I owned five, and I remembered seeing Chocolate Fugitive hanging on the wall of a Seattle coffee shop/newstand called Bulldog News. I think I was tempted to ask for it, even back before I started collecting them. However after a little digging I realized there were only six posters produced: Soda 2000, Chocolate Fugitive, Soda Jerk, This Java's Jumping, Seduced by Flavor, and Sweet Nothings.

I got the above jpg only recently when in a random search for the old Torani posters I stumbled across this article in the Madison Avenue Journal written by Kurt Brokaw. It was the first good look at Chocolate Fugitive I’d seen in a while, (as well as a nice run down of the Noir aesthetic) and I e-mailed the author to ask about the image...basically where did it come from?

Here’s what he wrote me back:

I clipped the Torani ad from a magazine maybe five-six years ago....I'm pretty sure Torani borrowed the woman/car scenario from some 50s crime paperback, probably a [paperback] original from a minor imprint. I don't recognize the art from any well known crime/noir novel, and I know this material pretty well. Maybe Torani got the rights and thus the publisher/illustrator info, maybe not.

What Kurt Brokaw wrote fits with the little bits of information I managed to glean from the advertising agency that ran the campaign Gardner, Geary, Coll & Young (now known as Maiden Lane) that they used real pulp fiction covers and then clearly just altered the images. Perhaps the cover rights expired which is why GGC&Y was able to use them. Or maybe they just purchased them outright since I doubt Torani would have approved an advertising campaign if the ownership of the copyrights was questionable.

It may seem weird to hang posters for coffee syrups on your wall as “art” but in a way it reminds me of those fairly famous French alcohol ads from the 1920 you see hanging everywhere , including Trading Spaces episode.

So if anyone sees this Chocolate Fugitive let me know because I would love to have a complete collection.

Long lost cousin edition

I have a pretty unique family name. It's not hard to spell or even unusual, but I've always been under the impression that pretty much the only people in the United States who have my last name are related to me. The reason for this is because my paternal grandfather, and his two brothers, all changed their name at the same time in the 1930s. They basically "Americanized" their names. So while it's easy to spell and pronounce, it's also unique because it's made-up. I always thought it was curious that you have these three brothers sort of keep the bloodline obvious by all of them changing their names. Ironically however the family last name has pretty much only been passed on by my grandfather and his children. His brothers ended up having girls or boys who died too early to have kids.

I have a first cousin who had a My Space webpage and today she was contacted by another girl who ironically had the exact same last name and first name. The girl was eager to figure out if they were related because, like me, she assumed pretty much the only people with our last names were related to us.

My Aunt Annie figured it all out. The girl's grandfather is my grandfather's first cousin. We're third cousins and our parents (the girl's father and my aunt, plus my father) are second cousins. Apparently, unknown to most of the living members of my family, while my grandfather and his brothers all changed their names in the 1930s, his first cousin also changed his name, albeit not until the 1950s.

I still find that fascinating. Changing a family name is kind of a huge step. Sure we're Jews (and no, our name isn't and wasn't something like Goldberg or Silver) but the last name thing still means something. I find it odd that here's this guy, and he has a last name. Yet for some reason when he was in his 20s or so decided to change his name to the same name as his cousins, who had done this 20 years before.

Unfortunately this girl's grandfather passed away some time ago (the one who changed his name) but her father is around and apparently as interested in this as my aunt and my father are. My aunt gets really into family genealogy because my grandfather/her father passed away when she was 15 years old.

He was the only grandparent I never met, although I'm sad to say I just found out my last grandmother (maternal) has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. I'm not ready to deal with that yet. But over the years I've thought a bit about this "missing" grandparent a lot. I'm far more like my Dad than my Mom and I've wondered how much he was like his Dad. (I didn't really get along with my paternal grandmother all that much. Kind of your typical old Long Island Jewish woman.) I've often thought about how much I rely on my father still, for advice, for money, for conversation and I'm 30! I can't imagine losing his company when I was 22 or 15.

I've often thought my aunt has a little "daddy-shaped" hole in her heart where she lost hers so young even though she's in her late 50s now. I was even chatting with my Dad on the phone about all these long-dead (or missing) relatives and he started getting emotional (which he rarely does).

So anyway, there's at least one other set of people out there with my last name aside from the the people who are all related through my grandfather. This long-lost cousin--the first cousin of my grandfather-- apparently had two children, a boy and a girl (I think, I know he at least had a boy). That boy, my grandfather's first cousin-once removed, also has two kids. The girl is the one who contacted my cousin with the My Space page and she has an older brother. That guy, along with my brother and my cousin, are the only "males" of the next generation with that same last name (my brother, my uncle's kid, and this new long-lost third cousin). My brother is the only one of those three males who's married. The other two are in their mid-to-early 20s AND my brother does have one child, a 2-month old girl. I think this new niece of mine is the first of the new generation in the same family name in 17 years. But she's a girl so she really can't "pass on" the family name beyond her (of course, she's TWO MONTHS OLD, she can't even hold her head up.)

I was thinking how interesting it would be, one more generation out, and there could be an entirely new branch of the family that is unaware of "the others" with the same last names. I'm sure if my cousin, my uncle's kid, gets married I'll come to his wedding and when he has kids I'll be "aware" of it in that vague way you keep track of first cousins. But I bet before this guy hits 50 I will lose track of him entirely; basically after both our parents are dead. There are cousins I'm closer to, and with e-mail it's a little easier to stay in touch, but as the family spreads across the map if you aren't seeing these cousins regularly. If you aren't "growing up" with them or hanging out together the imperative to stay in touch basically goes away after your parents/aunt/uncle die. They become just people.

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Eat your face: A Food balm collage

I was at the mall today and I was a inspired either to collect or create depending on your definition of 'art'. I think the inspiration mostly came from looking at these creations. I was at Claire's Boutique and I noticed the Peeps-flavored lip balm first. I thought about buying it and then I decided I had to collect them all because they were just so bizarre! Popcorn flavored lip balm? Not just popcorn but "Pop Secret" flavored. Is there a difference between Soft Batch chocolate chip cookies and Rainbow Chip cookies? What *is* Vienna Fingers Cookie flavor?

I spent $37 buying the 15 lip balms but I didn't get anywhere close to all of them. They not only had Pepsi flavored, but Pepsi w/ lemon and Vanilla Pepsi! (Vetoed as too difficult to photograph because of the shiny package). Plus Moutain Dew and Muggs Rootbeer lip balms. There were Nerds and Sweettarts flavored lip balms that actually came with candy (Vetoed as too large a package).

I have to admit, I'm curious to try them, but I sense that these are going to be great collector's items one day, if only for the novelty value.

Why "Eat Your Face Off?" It occurred to me when I was in the store looking at them. There's something a little bizarre, if you think about it, about having food flavoring smeared all over your face. It doesn't just stop with lip balm these days. Urban Decay makes an edible body powder that they somehow manage not to mention in their advertising to that it should be used for sex. Since Urban Decay's market is mostly 14-year-old runaways (or those who just want to look like one) having them make a defacto "sex product" is even weirder.

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Blogging = writing?

One time I asked Dave Neiwert at Orcinus about whether I should make my blog “legit” and try to be a topic-specific blogger. Neiwert inspired the question because he wrote this post where he mentions he’s going to start talking about other topics besides right-wing media, Michelle Malkin and the Minute Men movement (at least that’s what I perceive his blog coverage mostly to be about). Neiwert was kind enough to respond and say that part of reason to blog is just to work on our writing skills.

I’ve wondered about that however because I often feel like when I write a blog posting it’s my laziest writing ever. I don’t think about an “audience” and I rarely try to focus my thoughts or organize them into a better structure. If you read my actual paper-version diary (which you’re not gonna) you would notice that my blog postings are written in much the same style my diary entries are. (Which is suffering these days because with the blog I don’t find as much need to write in my diary).

Back when I was still doing journalism internships for a now-defunct music magazine in Seattle, the editor asked me if I was writing in a journal every day just for “practice.” I saw his point, that for some people writing is so difficult that they need to keep “in practice” by journaling. But I’ve never been one of those people. I don’t have problems putting words on the page…I have problems making them interesting or just organizing longer thoughts into a complete story.

That’s partly why I started this blog (or rather re-started it) was that I wanted to talk about my Weight Watchers diet. I used to compose these long e-mails to friends that discussed tiny minutia of my life. I notice that I rarely get those kinds of e-mails back from them and I started worrying I was basically boring my friends with stuff they didn’t need to know. Hence, the blog where reading what I write is voluntary. I have no deadlines but no real structure either (also no readers).

However the downside to all this creative freedom, is that I feel like I’ve taken no consideration to structure my posts into coherence or interest. I still feel like this is the most lazy of lazy writing.

There is an upside to this kind of freedom, I have found something that I thought I lost. I actually enjoy writing again.

It’s strange. I used to be a reporter and I clearly recall a coworker, someone in her first reporter’s position, exclaiming to me “don’t you find it’s it just so cool we have a job where we get paid to write!”

I completely did not feel that way. As a reporter I stopped loving writing a long time ago. It felt like pulling teeth to write stories. I would just and most times I just gave up trying to make them the least little bit interesting. It was a tiny bit better when I was in charge of a weekly newspaper for a year. I got the chance to pretty much write whatever I wanted; columns, editorials, news stories, although I still had to keep to a kind of weekly newspaper formula. It was almost too much freedom. It was so heady I didn’t realize how good I had it until it was gone. As a regular joe (jane?) reporter for a nothing-daily newspaper in Ohio, I had to come up with exciting prose about the weekly County Commissioners’ meeting and I just couldn’t do it and mostly didn’t even try. I wrote the blandest, driest shit you ever saw. About everything. I always tell people it was the story about the Mayor’s prayer breakfast was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’m Jewish but also mostly agnostic. If anything I despised public displays of “official” piety. The newspaper bought a table at this breakfast and my managing editor was sitting write next to me during the entire event. He could have written the damned story. I deliberately turned in the most threadbare story I possibly could (it was an annual event, pretty much exactly the same thing said every year).

That was kind of it. I realized this was what reporting was going to be like for me for probably 20 years and if I was good I would get to maybe be a columnist by the time I was 40. I would never really like the stories I was writing. Writing stories about things I didn’t care about was like giving away little pieces of my soul. I don’t think I can adequately explain it but I’d rather do boring work than boring journalism. I actually quake a little inside when I think about going back to doing that kind of writing jobs and probably why I’m so picky about the kind of communications jobs I apply for. I really want to care about what I’m pitching.

That’s what I kind of hated about journalism was that it killed my interest not only in writing, but in being a good story-teller. I felt like I was phoning it in for probably more than half of all the stories I wrote. My creative brain probably atrophied.

So that’s why I was really amused by my little adventure with drugs this weekend. It may be a naturally funny story, but how you tell it that makes it interesting. I wrote this mea culpa on Craiglist for that guy. Sure I feel guilty about it, but it was also my way of sharing the “story” to the craigslist world.

And here’s the thing. I’ve gotten some e-mails from people reading my posting. One guy says I seemed “witty.” I can’t tell you how much that perked me up that I, Newscat, can write an amusing anecdote to keep someone’s attention.

Maybe Ornicus is right about this whole “practice” thing.

My new friend, Flickr

Every once in a while I get just *obsessed* about making things look good. For a while I was acting that about about downloading furniture objects for The Sims. I would just get obsessed about making rooms in my faux houses look perfect with matching furniture. It was crazy. I don't know how much I spent in subscription fees to Well-Dressed Sim, Sim Freaks and 8thdeadlySim. Even though I've bought Sims 2, and two expansion packs, I haven't bought the third and I'm trying to give up the game. It's just not that fun. It reminds me how when I had a box full of My Little Ponies all I would do half the time was brush their hair and "set them up" to be played with (which of course all they would do is fall over again).

Yesterday was one of those days. I finally took some decent photos of my apartment. I kept wanting to take shots of the place when it was a) clean, b) sunny out. Not just daytime, but actually sunny. I've looked at many a apartment photo and I can tell you I've dismissed places based on the digital pictures for merely looking odd. Even though I can tell that digital cameras shot by amatures just don't make for pictures worthy of Home & Garden.

So now that I had the photos I just drove myself crazy trying to find a site to host them where they would actually look good. I know craigslist allows you to host up to four pictures but I have 16 to show!

And I know there are plenty of free sites, not to mention Geocities and other free websites. But it seemed like every time I started downloading the pictures I would quickly run out of space after five, and/or the photos would all be kind of small.

I had found Flickr, which DOES allow for pretty good picture hosting but, here was my mistake, I didn't realize that they have a limit on how much you can upload a month. Not just host, but upload! I burned through my limit by constantly uploading and then deleting photos, trying to see which ones looked good. Waste of bandwidth space. Totally stupid on my part.

After messing with this project for about 3 hours (skipping dinner. I had even cooked some chicken and quickly forgot about it. Which is fine, I just save it for later meals), I got obsessed with making the images come out the way I want them to look so I finally shelled out the $25 for premium membership. Which I can just hear my computer-savvy friend telling me that it was stupid with all the "free" services out there.

But you know, if I look at the $25 as the cost of running a newspaper ad to advertise the apartment its really not an unreasonable expense. Plus now I get the service for a year. I *do* think it'll make a difference in the apartment search, weeding out people who aren't interested and helping stroke interest in others. I showed my place to at least 30 people last time. It was kind of exhausting and I'm just getting started with it. It's sort of the wrong month for this (September is probably the best time to look for a roommate), but I've got at least 10 people so far I'm showing the place to. (Although figure at least a 10% drop out rate).

Anyway I'm kind of loving Flickr. Another cool feature I didn't even think about is the fact Flickr shows you how many "views" a picture has. So I can sort of gauge how many people have been looking at my photos. A few times were probably me, and one never knows if one person looked at something a couple of times. Most views were for the room shot and a "sweeping" view of the living room, 18 views both. Interestingly I notice that my "floorplan with furniture" sketch got 13 views but the regular floorplan only got five. I just used Photoshop to sketch-in where the furniture would be on the floorplan. It's really crude and it was mostly a joke.

More craigslist scammer spam

I really don't understand the point of these. I know that somehow people sending you a fraudlent cashier's check allows them something, but how it works I don't really know. Odd as it is I think the better scammers are the ones that don't put the whole pitch in the very first e-mail. I think I've gotten a couple of others that were more borderline fishing expeditions.

I don't know why this both amuses and annoyes me. It's not like no one's gotten these scam e-mails before. I think it's more about the expansion of the scam into something like roommate ads.

By the way...I love that this one just says "hello owner" and her name e-mail is "honesty jenny." It could be a like some really good piece of satire except that it's real.

HELLO OWNER, My name is JENNY JOHN,am from NEW YORK,and will like to relocate, if is not even from NEW YORK and have been living there my whole life,my mum and dad are both from there,i live in chico in my
childhood life and later moved to oxnard where i stayed with my elders sister. A m a model by occupation and i mostly model cloths and other things like shoes and more,i have been modeling ever since i was 16 years but that was localy but now i model all over the state and sometimes move out of the country to model too. i am curectly in west africa ,nigeria to be precise ,and am there for my contract,modeling for issey miyake,is just a month contract,but i wont love to go back to my sister house when geting back to the state cus she is about preparing to get married to her husband ,so cus of this i will like to have my own room. i registered for roommate and i saw you advertising your room, that there is vacant there,i will love to know if the room can be given to me cus i will love to come there directly to stay when coming back to the state. About the payment that is not a problem I WILL tell MY LAST BOSS WHO I MODELLED FOR WHEN I WAS IN THE STATE TO SEND YOU A CHECK OF MY LAST PAYMENT WISH HE IS OWING ME SO THAT THE ROOM CAN BE KEPT FOR ME.AND YOU SEND ME THE REMAINING CHANGE SO THAT I CAN USE IT TO BOOK FOR MY
FLIGHT TICKET BACK TO THE STATE. I will be glad if you simply reply
me to my mail box. which is honesty_jenny@yahoo.com I will be so glad to rent your room and ,am sure you will be so glad to have someone like me cus i am a very kool and easy going person,am looking forward
for your reply YOURS
SINCERELY
JENNY JOHN

The new craigslist scam...on rent

Interesting. I just got a couple of e-mails from women in the U.K. saying they would love to become my roommate. One said she was a model. Here's the first e-mail she sent.

Hello, I am interested in renting your room. Here is a little info about myself. I am Donna and i am 29 years old.Am a Canadian but at present i'm in England,but I'lll be coming over to The United States in a couple of weeks. Consequent to this and in order to make settling in much easier and quicker i am searching for an accomodation early and i saw your ad on the
site and i want to make reservations for your apartment. I can assure you that you will not have any regrets letting out this apartment to me & having me as a room mate.I am an introvert by nature & i get along much easily with most people.I will be coming over alone,with no family or pets. I do not smoke and i drink very lightly. My reason for moving is because i have three job offers which i am undecided which to choose & the pay is very good. I'm a model and just got some new contracts and dont intend to spend more than 1-2 months in America. Please reply me as soon as you read this email.I ll be waiting to hear from you. Kindly contact me via email. Also if you have a yahoo messenger you could add me.My yahoo id is donnagill_1 and email is donnagill_1@yahoo.com so you could add me.Or call me +447024076192Thank you once more Yours sincerly Donna

I admit I was curious but it was like she hadn't really read my craigslist posting because I say in ALL CAPS "this if for MAY MOVE-IN." So I wrote "her" back saying "hey this is for May only, like I said, and it's a year lease, not just a few months."

This is verbatem the e-mail sent back.

Hello XXX (My name),
Thanks for your reply & agreeing to share room with me, I intend to move to the states in April 1st.I am willing to pay the $800 rental. Well i'll need your favour on something which would also serve as my means of payment. My Boss owes me some funds and i told him that i've secured a room ,he agreed to pay up and said he'll inform his partner in Canada to send a cashiers check to you. Send me your full names, address and phone number to send the payment get across to you. Once you receive it, kindly take them to your bank & have them cashed. From this you can deduct the total amount for the room & in due course of time i will forwardto you my name & address to have some of the balance sent back to me. With this i will be able to buy my ticket & pay for freight fee that will be bringing my things over. The remaining i will pick up when i arrive. I wont be bringing much over as i intend to buy most afresh there. But my PC will be coming with me surely & other personal belongings.Thank you so very much for understanding and the opportunity given me to be your roommate.
i hope to hear from you soon.
Yours with all sincerity
Donna.

Um...yeah. Okay. Fool me once on these things. I've placed my guitar up for sale on craiglist a lot (no one ever buys it) and every time I do you get those people who always send those really poorly written e-mails "Hi I will pay you for it. Im dealer in UK. Send cashiers check with expenses." If you haven't heard of these scams it's totally phoney. Right up there with the perenially Nigerian looting-the-country e-mail.

I just had no idea people were now trying to do it with RENT. I mean, unlike a seller selling an object where at least they expect to be paid, trying to get someone to mail you money so that they can become your roommate is even weaker. Why not just come out and say "I'm a Russian in the Ukraine and I need money because my economy is piss-poor. I could make a huge song and dance about pretending to be an African looting Nigeria or a Canadian model or I could just ask you to send me $500 American dollars. What do you say?"

While I'm sure people fell for the selling-things scam at first (or once in a great while) who in their right mind just sends money to a stranger who is then supposidly going to live with them? I guess it costs nothing to try but wouldn't it be better to put effort into cultivating this scam? The e-mail was written like he never read my ad, which I'm sure the scammer on the end didn't.

Then a few minutes later I got another e-mail that seemed like a pitch for the first. Of course it could be legitmate but again, notice she says she need to move in RIGHT AWAY even though I spell out it's a May move-in, and then says she only wants to stay for 7 months although I clearly say it's a year lease. My guess is that if I respond I'll get another one of those "oh and can you mail me airfare first. I will totally pay you back."

Hi, I saw your profile and I want to be your roommate.I am Rose Becca 31.I work in the UK for a footwear manufacturing company, I will be moving to the US to work on some project. How much is both the deposit and the first month rent I need to pay before I can move in? I want this space very urgent atleast before 28th of March. and I will like us to conclude soon so I can move in my things, I will be staying for 7 months, depending on how the 1st 5 months go. I will be moving to the US alone in the meantime, my family will not be moving in with me.Thanks, I awaits the price list of the deposits and and first month
rent.Regards,Roselin

UPDATE: So far this is pretty much my most popular blog posting. I posted one other example of this scam as well before I gave up. I think I got about 5-7 of these scammer e-mails when advertising my apartment. Although, it's possible at least one or two had been legit, they were just bruque people. Not all of them were as crudely written as the some. I too wrote back a highly moralizing e-mail to the first scammer about how theft is no way to earn a living, even if you are poor. I used to do that to the people who wrote who wanted to "buy" my guitar, but after a while you get tired of it. It's like shouting into a void. I don't know why these e-mails make me so sad about the human race. I guess it seems so personal yet impersonal. There's a human being at the end of that badly composed piece of writing. I do wonder a lot who that human being is and what his life is like?

Long live the messy roommate!

Heh. I've been getting some good responses to this craigslist manifesto I posted about wanting a a messy roommate (not a clean one).

Yes you read that right. I want a messy roommate, not a clean people. I'm one of those people who has a two-bedroom, and I notice that EVERY SINGLE RESPONDENT says something along the lines of "I'm clean but not a neat freak." Or "I like cleanliness but I'm not anal about it." (and yes, anal is usually the word they use). Is there really only two ways to be, a "neat freak" or a total pig?

Here's the thing, I'm *always* the messier of the roommates I live with. I'm not a total pig but yes, dishes sit in the sink for a few day but don't stack up. On average I'd say there's about 3-4 plates in the sink at any given moment. I'm good at taking out the garbage but not wiping down the counter. I don't leave plates out with food on them, but I've had cups sitting on my coffee table overnight.

I've never had a fight with my past two roommates at all about cleaning. If they asked me to specifically do something I would do it and not argue. But I never know how to present my level of being accepting of messes to others. I just can't keep a place spick'n'span all the time forever. A lot of my stuff ends up in the common area whereas my roommate's doesn't. I'd be fine if they left their jackets or shoes or books floating around in the living room. It really doesn't bother me. With only two people I don't feel it's as necessary to keep everything orderly the way that it is with 3 or 4 roommates.

Since I'm a girl does this mean I have to live with a guy to reach some happy level of dirt? Frankly I think it would be good for me to live with someone who admits they're not so concerned about such things and then I can *really* learn what's my level of cleanliness.

To clarify, I didn't meant to criticize people who say they are clean but not "anal" about it. I just thought it was interesting that over and over again you hear the same descriptive words, "anal" and "freak." We all know there are some people who would freak out to see my sneakers in the living room or a few dishes in the sink for a few days. But I do wonder how those people describe themselves? They also say they're not neat "freaks" who are anal about it. They probably think they just like things picked up and tidy.

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