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What's Of What With My Magic What?

Starting the day off with a Barnacle:

Knotts Berry Farm - $40 (Normal Heights)

Been seeing this one up for at least a month now. Kind of ironic that the guy goes out of his way to let people know that the tickets are available if the "add [sic] is up," what with how they haven't sold considering almost daily postings for the past four weeks (at least). Somebody go to Knotts and help a brother out! I'm sort of suspecting a failed scalping operation, considering the presence of other posts with the same Word Choice Fail.

Got an amusing Runner-Up today:

New Lover = Bigger Bed - $275 (Normal Heights)

Honesty = The Best Policy.

As far as the day's Big Winner is concerned, I only have this to say:

Singer sewing machine - $80 (Normal Heights)

Just look at it...it's so...fanciful. It makes one want to...

Rumplestiltskin 2009

Once, three weeks ago and not so far away in the mystical land of 35th and Monroe, there was an unemployed girl named Lola. Lola was not a lazy girl, her unemployment was rather the consequence of a crippling economic downturn from when the kingdom's coffers ran out of fairy gold and magic gemstones. One day (Tuesday two weeks ago, or therabouts), Lola's Crazy Uncle Charlie Who Drinks Too Much and Works Too Little (not unemployed due to the recession) came by Lola's lightless torture dungeon of an apartment. Lola had always had a soft spot for her Crazy Uncle, even going so far as to forgive him the constant reek of gin and 7-Up, the slurred words, and the periodic, slightly-unsettling comments about her bosoms.

"Lola" Charlie said. "I have a hair-brained scheme that can't possibly fail! Want to hear about it?"

It was Charlie's (decidedly misguided) forthrightness that Lola had always appreciated. Valuing this characteristic so much that she was wiling to overlook his disdain for hygiene and his tendency to steal small valuables he thought she wouldn't miss.

While more concerned with hitting the "refresh" button on Firefox in order to get the first crack at the new job ads on craigslist, Lola indulged Charlie in her usual fashion, letting him tell her about the hair-brained scheme (in which she had little real interest) while she wrote down the details to various and sundry menial jobs for which she was overqualified yet forced to viciously compete for in the face of the Kingdom's Disastrously Empty Coffers.

"...and then I told him you'd be more than happy to get right on it!" Charlie said, suddenly taking Lola's attention away from job listings and to the conversation, her half of which had thertofore been egregiously vacant.

"Wait a second, what did you say and who did you say it to?"

"You know that spooky old warlock who lives in that vacant warehouse down on El Cajon?"

"No."

"Oh, well, there's this spooky old warlock who..."

"I heard you the first time. What do you mean, 'warlock?'"

"You know, warlock, magic, incantations, curses, necromancy, the whole nine yards."

"I really, really don't know, actually!"

"It's not important anyways. You'll be meeting him soon enough. I told him that you can sew Shirts of Invisibility with your magic sewing machine."

"What's of what with my magic what?"

"Shirts of Invisibility with your..."

"You don't understand rhetorical questions, do you?"

"Not really, no."

Not knowing whether to be baffled or enraged, Lola stormed out of the living room and got herself some GORP because, when she was upset, she snacked. She knew it was a problem, perhaps not the healthiest of behaviors, but she was too mad at her Crazy Uncle Charlie to care. When she got back into the living room, she caught Charlie slipping her much loved Boondock Saints DVD into one of his grimy pockets. He clumsily pretended that he had been reading the back cover (an awful ruse, considering his known illiteracy) and put the movie back on top of the TV.

"Why would you say something like that?" Lola yelled, her words muffled by the Good Old Raisins and Peanuts.

"Well, I owe him some money from a card game, a few card games, actually, and not really some money so much as a lot of money, and you know how these magical types get..."

"No! I don't know how these magical types get! Does that look like a magical machine to you?" Lola gestured towards her old, Singer sewing machine, sitting quietly in the corner of the lightless torture dungeon she called home. She had used it to patch and modify the occasional garment. She might even go so far as to call herself an adequate seamstress, when the chips were down. Cursing herself for inadvertently making a gambling pun and interrupting her own train of thought, she ejected her Crazy Uncle from the house. He slunk away without objection--crazy isn't the same as stupid, after all.

Fiendishly depleting the world's GORP supply, Lola vocally cursed her Crazy Uncle's latest hair-brained scheme. What if this warlock character really was in possession of powerful magic? Would he turn her into something...unnatural when she proved unable to stitch up a Shirt of Invisibility? Who ever heard of such a thing, anyways? What's next, Pants of Serenity? Wristbands of Proclivity? Neckerchiefs of Incivility? Come to think of, she actually might know a few people who owned that last one. But, seriously, what was she going to do about this lunacy?

"Well, I could help you" said a hideous dwarf, stepping paradoxically out from behind the couch. "I can sew a Shirt of Invisibility for you in no time."

Lola blinked once, twice, shook her head, blinked again and stared at the tiny, gruesome man who had just emerged from the nowhere behind her sofa. He smelled strangely similar to Uncle Charlie, but was ultimately much less pitiable due to the look of hateful malevolence burning in his fearsome little eyes.

"It's really no problem" the offensive little creature said. Then, with great drama, "my name, well, you won't have to worry about that..."

"Rumplestiltskin" Lola interrupted him. "What, do you think I've never read a book? Have you never heard of Google? Wikipedia?"

"Hey!" the scrofulous little troll pouted. "You're not supposed to know my name."

"Why not? You think I'll agree to let you make magical shirts for me in exchange for a price to be named later? I'm not in a position to be extorted, Rumpy."

"First the printing press, now computers and "Wikipedia," whatever that is; how's a malicious, Old World folktale supposed to get on in this day and age?"

"Not my problem, Stilts. You can either be with the haters or get in line with the rest of us. Either way, you're not doing it here."

"Schlampe" Rumplestiltskin said, and disappeared behind the couch.

Cramming a fresh fistful of GORP into her mouth, Lola decided to just sell the sewing machine and give the money to Uncle Charlie, let him deal with fallout of his hair-brained schemes for once.

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Starting the day off with a Barnacle:

Knotts Berry Farm - $40 (Normal Heights)

Been seeing this one up for at least a month now. Kind of ironic that the guy goes out of his way to let people know that the tickets are available if the "add [sic] is up," what with how they haven't sold considering almost daily postings for the past four weeks (at least). Somebody go to Knotts and help a brother out! I'm sort of suspecting a failed scalping operation, considering the presence of other posts with the same Word Choice Fail.

Got an amusing Runner-Up today:

New Lover = Bigger Bed - $275 (Normal Heights)

Honesty = The Best Policy.

As far as the day's Big Winner is concerned, I only have this to say:

Singer sewing machine - $80 (Normal Heights)

Just look at it...it's so...fanciful. It makes one want to...

Rumplestiltskin 2009

Once, three weeks ago and not so far away in the mystical land of 35th and Monroe, there was an unemployed girl named Lola. Lola was not a lazy girl, her unemployment was rather the consequence of a crippling economic downturn from when the kingdom's coffers ran out of fairy gold and magic gemstones. One day (Tuesday two weeks ago, or therabouts), Lola's Crazy Uncle Charlie Who Drinks Too Much and Works Too Little (not unemployed due to the recession) came by Lola's lightless torture dungeon of an apartment. Lola had always had a soft spot for her Crazy Uncle, even going so far as to forgive him the constant reek of gin and 7-Up, the slurred words, and the periodic, slightly-unsettling comments about her bosoms.

"Lola" Charlie said. "I have a hair-brained scheme that can't possibly fail! Want to hear about it?"

It was Charlie's (decidedly misguided) forthrightness that Lola had always appreciated. Valuing this characteristic so much that she was wiling to overlook his disdain for hygiene and his tendency to steal small valuables he thought she wouldn't miss.

While more concerned with hitting the "refresh" button on Firefox in order to get the first crack at the new job ads on craigslist, Lola indulged Charlie in her usual fashion, letting him tell her about the hair-brained scheme (in which she had little real interest) while she wrote down the details to various and sundry menial jobs for which she was overqualified yet forced to viciously compete for in the face of the Kingdom's Disastrously Empty Coffers.

"...and then I told him you'd be more than happy to get right on it!" Charlie said, suddenly taking Lola's attention away from job listings and to the conversation, her half of which had thertofore been egregiously vacant.

"Wait a second, what did you say and who did you say it to?"

"You know that spooky old warlock who lives in that vacant warehouse down on El Cajon?"

"No."

"Oh, well, there's this spooky old warlock who..."

"I heard you the first time. What do you mean, 'warlock?'"

"You know, warlock, magic, incantations, curses, necromancy, the whole nine yards."

"I really, really don't know, actually!"

"It's not important anyways. You'll be meeting him soon enough. I told him that you can sew Shirts of Invisibility with your magic sewing machine."

"What's of what with my magic what?"

"Shirts of Invisibility with your..."

"You don't understand rhetorical questions, do you?"

"Not really, no."

Not knowing whether to be baffled or enraged, Lola stormed out of the living room and got herself some GORP because, when she was upset, she snacked. She knew it was a problem, perhaps not the healthiest of behaviors, but she was too mad at her Crazy Uncle Charlie to care. When she got back into the living room, she caught Charlie slipping her much loved Boondock Saints DVD into one of his grimy pockets. He clumsily pretended that he had been reading the back cover (an awful ruse, considering his known illiteracy) and put the movie back on top of the TV.

"Why would you say something like that?" Lola yelled, her words muffled by the Good Old Raisins and Peanuts.

"Well, I owe him some money from a card game, a few card games, actually, and not really some money so much as a lot of money, and you know how these magical types get..."

"No! I don't know how these magical types get! Does that look like a magical machine to you?" Lola gestured towards her old, Singer sewing machine, sitting quietly in the corner of the lightless torture dungeon she called home. She had used it to patch and modify the occasional garment. She might even go so far as to call herself an adequate seamstress, when the chips were down. Cursing herself for inadvertently making a gambling pun and interrupting her own train of thought, she ejected her Crazy Uncle from the house. He slunk away without objection--crazy isn't the same as stupid, after all.

Fiendishly depleting the world's GORP supply, Lola vocally cursed her Crazy Uncle's latest hair-brained scheme. What if this warlock character really was in possession of powerful magic? Would he turn her into something...unnatural when she proved unable to stitch up a Shirt of Invisibility? Who ever heard of such a thing, anyways? What's next, Pants of Serenity? Wristbands of Proclivity? Neckerchiefs of Incivility? Come to think of, she actually might know a few people who owned that last one. But, seriously, what was she going to do about this lunacy?

"Well, I could help you" said a hideous dwarf, stepping paradoxically out from behind the couch. "I can sew a Shirt of Invisibility for you in no time."

Lola blinked once, twice, shook her head, blinked again and stared at the tiny, gruesome man who had just emerged from the nowhere behind her sofa. He smelled strangely similar to Uncle Charlie, but was ultimately much less pitiable due to the look of hateful malevolence burning in his fearsome little eyes.

"It's really no problem" the offensive little creature said. Then, with great drama, "my name, well, you won't have to worry about that..."

"Rumplestiltskin" Lola interrupted him. "What, do you think I've never read a book? Have you never heard of Google? Wikipedia?"

"Hey!" the scrofulous little troll pouted. "You're not supposed to know my name."

"Why not? You think I'll agree to let you make magical shirts for me in exchange for a price to be named later? I'm not in a position to be extorted, Rumpy."

"First the printing press, now computers and "Wikipedia," whatever that is; how's a malicious, Old World folktale supposed to get on in this day and age?"

"Not my problem, Stilts. You can either be with the haters or get in line with the rest of us. Either way, you're not doing it here."

"Schlampe" Rumplestiltskin said, and disappeared behind the couch.

Cramming a fresh fistful of GORP into her mouth, Lola decided to just sell the sewing machine and give the money to Uncle Charlie, let him deal with fallout of his hair-brained schemes for once.

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