The way of the weasel

Spring has at last arrived, and with it the task of beating the great outdoors into submission. Please understand, I love Bag-End, my home, with all my heart. But it IS 5 acres. And that means mowing a big-ass lawn, one of the least fun tasks ever created. We were lucky that a riding mower came with the property. But mowing the verge takes anywhere between 6 hours and three days. At the poor machine is just not up to taking on the hills and muddy valleys so they often go untouched.

So I wheedled and whined and my lovely wife agreed to go look at bigger mowers. Powerful machines with engines that could power a small airplane and wide mowing decks that can cut a path of destruction through the ever encroaching greenness outside.

We looked at several models which looked nice and promissing.I will not bore you with the details of mower tech, suffice to say that I was slightly aroused by the power these machines possessed. Then the friendly salesman told us how much one of these things costs. Sweet Jeebus! And that's before you add any baggers, plows, heated cupholders or special mowing hats.

I was about to despair. It looked like I would be spending my entire Friday chugging around the back 40 on ole Betsy. But then I remembered a piece of my own advice. Front time to time some nice young person will come into my corset shop and poke around. When I approach and ask them if they want to try something on they smile and say "Oh, I'm just looking, I can't afford one of these."

I could just let them go and consider myself lucky that I didn't waste my time. But I don't, for several reasons.

1. They could well by lying.
2. They are depriving themselves of an opportunity.

I don't clue them in to No 1. but I do tell them that the last thing you EVER want to do is tell a salesman that you can't afford it. Once I know that you are not a viable customer I have little incentive to treat you with anything besides mild contempt. After all, you aren't buying. But I really have no way of knowing for sure if you are a struggling liberal arts major or a trust fund child. I tell these innocent persons that so long as I believe that I MIGHT be able to sell them something I will treat them like royalty. I tell them about the time that I got to go on a 60 mph ride on a $260,000 cigarette boat because the owner believed I just might be interested in buying it. If I had been honest, I wouldn't have gotten the ride.

So I followed my own advice and asked about the second most expensive model. Warranty? Financing options? Can I get spinners and ground effects? And then I simply said "Well, I'd really have to try one of these out at my property before I decided" And what do you know, they offer to deliver a demo model right to my house ... for free.

Sure enough, the mower arrived today and I finished the lawn in record time with only minor damage to some trees. Oh and there was that small accident at the edge of the pond, but Rossana helped me tow it out with the van and it seemed none the worse for wear.

The salesman called up to ask how it worked and I said it was great. I was about to tell him that we would "think about it" (code for thanks for the freebie but we're not made of money) when he said that the demo model was for sale at a substantial discount. Crap, I'd been trapped by my own sales kung-fu. You see, once I get a woman to try one of our corsets on, she very often falls in love with it and has to have it. The mower? Well, we're looking at what we can get for the old one. And maybe I can hold off on a computer upgrade and a few other things...

More gooder

I am by no means a music junkie, but I do like to 'rock out' now and then. This does not mean that I dance around the house in my skivies like Tom Cruise. Indeed that is a sight no one wants to see. But when I do hear a tune I like I want it NOW.
When some ditty catches my fancy I first track it down via the internets. Once I have a band name and song title I may wander through i-tunes. But 99 cents? Good heavens I'm no Rockefeller. I'm just an average Joe with limited moolah just like you. So chances are I'll cruise over to Allodmp3.com where I can download non DRM tunage waaaaaay cheap. And it's completely legal.

In Russia.

Maybe.

In any case I have been using the service for like a year now with no problems. To speed up the searching process they had a standalone music browser called the explorer. Each time you run the program it updates its catalog and allows you to search for and stream music before downloading your selections. Alas, this piece of software suffers from major usability issues. It works, but its no i-tunes. Well, imitation is the sincerest for of flattery and now allofmp3.com has a nice program called alltunes. It's in beta, but what isn't these days? I downloaded it and it is a far sight better than the explorer. Much cleaner interface, easier searching. Nicer layout, fewer dialog boxes when you decide to buy.

So go forth my flying monkeys! Go and seek the music you desire. Save you money for gasoline and liquor.

Goths to the Left of me...

Went back to New Orleans last weekend. This time it was all business. Convergence 12 is a large goth event. I've never done it before and was a bit apprehensive. The last goth event we did in New Orleans was fairly crappy. The hotel was crappy, the event was crappy, the location was crappy, sales...well you get the point. So I was a bit shocked when I arrived at the Hotel Monteleone and found it to be a nice place, very nice in fact. Maybe too nice. How could goths afford this place? Load in went pretty smooth and the dealers room was good sized. There were maybe three other corset companies or people selling corsets. Was I worried? In short, no. Saturday was a goddamn corset feeding frenzy. It was like I was the only dealer in a town of crack addicts.

Wait, did I just compare my product to crack?

Anyway, we kicked major ass, mostly because we were our usual pushy selves. We forced people to try stuff on. There was a booth near us and I could tell that they flew in, they shipped in their grid wall displays. They looked pretty spiffy, nice looking product. Too bad they then stuck tables in front of it all so people couldn't come up and touch. I don;t think I saw one person try one on all weekend. There were some pretties there and it was hard not to buy buy buy. Rossana did get a stunning hat, very Victorian.

Voltaire was there and even did a short acoustic number in the dealers room. Because goths do not do morning we had a chance to have a late breakfast and walk the French Quarter a little bit. Here and there you would see our black clad friends. But they looked oddly out of place because it was sunny and warm. I imagine that all that velvet and pvc was pretty hot. Even so the French Quarter is like Disneyland for Goths and it seems they had a good time. I didn't attend any of the evening concerts even though I recognized some of the names on the bill. I leave that for the young. Two good events in a row? What gives? I am vaguely suspicious.

Back at home now and we are faced with the very daunting tasks of working on the grounds and painting the above ground parts of our home. For a home that is entirely underground there is a lot of stuff to paint. My Mom is coming over tomorrow to 'help out'. I'm not sure what tasks I can safely give her. While Rossana has been dealing with green things I have been involved with grunt work, which involves moving heavy things from one place to another and hanging off of ladders with semi-dangerous equipment.

I can't see how this can possibly go wrong.

They shall know us by our tech

They shall know us by our tech
Originally uploaded by stevepack.

Our recent trip to Raleigh was an exercise in frustration, a journey into madness and anger caused by a road system SO fucked up that even locals have NO idea how to get anywhere. I would subject my worst enemy to these roads.



This may have contributed to our descision to buy a GPS navigation unit. We stopped at a truck stop and were idly looking at the cool arroy of gadgets on display when my hand brushed against the Cobra NavOne 4000. This activated a salesman. The gentlemans name way Bill. He quickly explained that he had an open unit that had been returned. There was also a $100 rebate. Rossana was strong, but the big, shiny screen called to me. Bill was merciless. We could try it for 14 days, it had 7 million points of interrest. My eyes glazed over.



Needless to say we got it. It turns out Bill spent 15 years working at a gun shop. Its a good thing he left that job or I'd be the proud owner of a bazooka and a few dozen rounds.



Not that that would be a bad thing...

Gods honest truth

We plan on merchanting at an event in PA next month. Being good little law abiding capitalists we applied to the appropriate authorities for our tax license.

Now, I know that state governments have to work with smaller and smaller budgets, but I'm not sure how this combination came about:

ATF rids Univ. of ninja threat

Making the world safe, from Ninja's

Too F-ing funny

Go look and laugh.

No worries

Over the past few years of posting here I suppose you have come to see that although I have a pretty cool livelyhood and I enjoy what I do, it certainly isn't all sunshine and lollypops or some kind of cakewalk. There are periods of intense work, ooften for little return. The economy continues to suck. Good shows are hard to come by.

But none of that was really the case last weekend. We drove down to North Carolina for the first weekend of their 2 weekend fair held at the state fairgrounds. The van worked fine, great weather going down. On arrival check in went without a hitch. Nothing was forgotten back at home. We were indoors, sheltered from any possible storms, but the weather was great. No sign of our nemesis, Beverle. We were across from a stage, but all the acts were good. The belly dance troups music was so good we found ourselves dancing around to it subconsciously. Sales were great for us. Saturday night we had dinner with the good folks from Griffin Works. Great Food.

On Sunday I walked the site and sat down on a bench to soak up the sun and listened to the birds singing. Just then a local choir did a warm up set nearby.

We enjoyed another great meal at a Mongolian Bar-B-Que called Crazy Fire and drove back on Monday. there was some rain, but nothing horrendous.

In short, it was a great weekend all around. I enjoyed doing it. I know that good story telling comes from conflict and adversity. There IS one more weekend to go and everything may well go to poop. But I'm happy to have had 2 great days. They remind me of why I love doing what I do.