Now Find A Garage to Put Your Car In

Garage sales fascinate me. The essential rationale behind a garage sale is the hope that other people will pay money for something you obviously think is too worn out or crappy to keep any longer. Strangely people do pay money for these things, then they hold their own garage sales to get rid of their stuff so they can fit in the things they just bought at a garage sale. A lot of effort would be saved if people just held on to their own rubbish. I can't help thinking this circular on selling of worthless rubbish is a beautiful metaphor for the financial crisis that parts of the world are still struggling through. I wonder if those in the financial services industry would receive quite as large a bonus if they admitted that their job is basically arranging garage sales.

Of course in today's sophisticated, high tech world you can conduct your garage sale online. This is the basis of eBay. It's so sophisticated and high tech you don't even need a garage any more. All you need is a bank account and a collection of worthless stuff. Most people have the first and everybody has the second. As I write this there is a sign a few short metres away from me advertising the traditional sort of garage sale. You know the one where you turn up at your neighbours house and have fun poring through their life and quietly laughing at their taste. One of the articles mentioned on the advert is a retro fishbowl. I was so intrigued by that one that I was tempted to buy it despite my glaring lack of retro fish. I suppose it would make sense to buy the fishbowl first and get the fish later. Alternatively you could just keep them in the freezer until you find them a home. Its all water after all. Retro fish will probably crop up in a garage sale before long and if not I bet I can find them on eBay.

What would a retro fish look like anyway? My first thought was a coelecanth, after all you don't get much more retro than prehistoric do you? But then I started thinking of the fifties, all angles and huge fins, so I've decided to get a hammerhead shark. I hope the fish tank is big enough because the damn thing won't fit in my freezer. At least not in one piece.

Environmentalists must love garage sales, they are the purest form of recycling around. With virtually no expenditure of additional resources items that would have wound up in a landfill instead wind up filling a garage. Since we keep producing new stuff as well it is only a matter of time before every garage on the planet is full and the global economy (what's left of it) will come to a screeching halt. Cars will sit forlornly rusting in the yard, driven from their rightful home by an accumulation of junk. EBay will burst at the seams as everyone tries to sell their stuff to everyone else. The only available jobs will be in printing fliers for new garage sales.

Slowly the human race will sink beneath a tide of unused exercise equipment and copies of The Celestine Prophecies (hopefully also unused) until there will be nothing but a collection of overstuffed garages to mark our passing. In time the fliers will peel off the telegraph poles and float gently down over the wasteland to form an appropriate shroud for us and our works. My this blog entry ended on a cheerful note didn't it?