Secondhand Nation

Welcome to The Devil's Workshop, Now Exclusively Featuring Sustainably-Harvested Bamboo: The Perils of being a 'Lazy' Environmentalist

Figure 1:  "Thank god I didn't bother to recycle that dumb old plastic water bottle!  Think of all the time that would have taken me away from my main pursuit of concocting sustainable methods of being the hippest navel-gazer on the planet...!"

It's Wednesday and I'm feeling bitter as hell.  Perhaps it's the fact that we overslept and missed preschool.  Perhaps it's the lovely gray bullshit atmospheric aura that seems to hang around like a freeloading relative sleeping on your couch.  Perhaps it's because my blog is little, bitchy and fierce, all adjectives stemming from its intrinsic lack of cash-making and scene-stealing.

So, awash in all this dismality, I birth my irritation with a blog/book/phenom The Lazy Environmentalist.

I had heard tell of this book first from some green blogs, Treehugger, probably, and my first thought was, Great.  No matter that so much environmental degradation has come from our lust for convenience and easiness.  Let's just promote the idea that changing our habits for the greater good is yucky and hard and subscribe to the idea that we can fix things by buying some carbon credits or a sweater made by Tibetan monks from repurposed silk or, Cod forbid, by blogging.

There's something elitist about the New Green that bugs the hell out of me.  The insistence on having life exactly the same way, with the same conveniences and luxuries (which are truly the same thing in some instances) by just slapping some no-VOC paint on it and calling it Green, Sustainable, Eco-conscious, making it instantly Good.  If you've got enough money and style, you need not fuss your pretty little head about such mundanities, like basic materials recycling.  To quote Lazy Environmentalist founder Josh Dorfman,

"I won’t always place my empty water bottles in the recycling bin. Why?  Because, frankly, it’s a pain and there’s nothing fun about it."

In other words, let's do this green, earth-saving thing, but only as long as it's sexy and scintillating. 

What's that, you say?  It's made by Prada and a Swedish design team?  Fabulous.  I'll take three.  And hook me up with some carbon credits, while you're at it, Jeeves.

"No guilt trips," promises Dorman.  "Never any sacrifice." 

Yeah.  Because Maude knows that's what got us into this enormous ecological mess -all that sacrifice.

As demonstrated by many a mother, guilt is terrifically powerful and if it makes you recycle or use fewer resources, then I'm all for it.  I'm afraid the environmental situation requires folks to get past their personal feelings and buck the fuck up.  Toss your goddamned plastic water bottle (!) in the recycling, even if it doesn't happen to have a joystick that tickles your dick attached to it, and realize that nobody is blaming you for the situation of global warming.  It's been a long time coming, so the blame is rather diffused, anyway. 

Unfortunately, you are living in what the Chinese cliche lovers would call "interesting times."  So it's up to you to become a better planetary citizen - too bad, so sad!

Sorry, but you don't get to stay in a state of perpetual infancy anymore, even if it isn't your fault.  Thus, a bit of sacrifice, a loss of convenience and a decided lack of fun. Suck it up, First World Cry-Babies.  Because there's a whole lot more to unlearn. 

So chalk up my crotchety finger-wagging to the fact that, unlike some of my hip and sexy counterparts, I don't have a line of stylish sustainably-sourced furniture, a satellite radio talk show, a book deal, or even an income-generating blog.  But know this.  On the occasions that I deign to buy plastic, at least yours truly endeavors to summon every last bit of her human courage and triumphantly manages to toss it in the right disposal bin. 

Photo:  Idle Moments by M.B. Parkinson, New York, 1896.  LC-USZ62-83777

Once Upon a Christmas

You might not see it.  But it's there.

Lurking behind the Halloween decorations at your local Target...

Creeping up like a cheap pair of underpants...

Tis the season of giving, offering up obligations, dull church services and financial ruin...

The original season of giving, Christmas.

Season of giving, my ass.  When I think of the Christmas season, what springs to mind isn't dutiful servants of Christ handing out soup and blankets to frozen homeless people. 

No, the image I get is of discount-crazed shoppers trampling each other in the parking lot of Wal-Mart in slavering pursuit of low-priced DVD players.

So call me crazy if the humble Christ's birth in a barn doesn't inspire me to max out my credit cards or engage in hand-to-hand combat over a fucking Tickle-Me-Elmo. 

Still, though the vulgar transformation of this holy day into another notch on the retail calendar's belt makes me want to barf all over my socks, I can't totally give up on the holiday. 

The truth is, though I like to save money and reuse things, when it comes to others, I'm not known for being a skinflint.  I like to give gifts.  I like to decorate a tree.  I like to have snuggly snowy evenings with my family, where we all hunker down and watch movies from the 80's like or Girls Just Want To Have Fun or Uncle Buck.

So earlier this week, when I went to my local Once Upon A Child resale outfit to look for a car booster seat for my daughter, my Christmas season officially kicked off. 

(Long Rambling Aside:  If you aren't familiar with Once Upon A Child, it's a consignment shop that sells gently used baby and kid's items, including clothing, shoes and equipment like strollers, cribs and changing tables.  If you're looking for baby junk, stores like these are fabulous to visit because you can get good items for less - which is key, when the kid grows out things so quickly.  Right now, it's a really good place to go for toys, as most folks are thinking of new school clothes and giving the toys short shrift.  Though OUAC no longer accepts car seats - too many recalls, which causes too much hassle - so I didn't find a booster seat.  More baby thrifting tips can be found here.)

However, I scored a cheap Polly Pockets (Ye Toys of Tiny Microscopity Weeniness) magnet mat and two sets of jammies for 10 bucks - you gotta get new jammies for Christmas if you're a kid - so I'm feeling a little less quesy about the burst of consumption to come. 

I realize that for many Christmas is regarded as sacrosanct.  For others, it has become grotesque, anathema to the original meanings.  I fall somewhat in the middle.   While I don't bother with the trappings of theology anymore, I do remember fondly the gleeful anticipation of being a kid on a winter morning who was about to become hugely surprised.  And for that reason, I am maintaining Christmas traditions - to preserve this one magical aspect about the entire affair. 

Christmas resistance graphic by Nina Paley;  more fun for grinches and scrooges can be had at http://www.xmasresistance.org/

Archer Farms Is Not a Farm

Photo Credit:  Dorothea Lange.  Aged cotton farmer, Greene County, Georgia. He inherited his lands which are now heavily mortgaged.  Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USF34-9058-C.

Like many urban do-gooders, I've visited the Mill City Farmer's Market.    Founded by local food and vegetarian chef Brenda Langton, owner of Minneapolis vegetarian legend Cafe Brenda, the market is nestled along the Mississippi River between the new recently relocated Guthrie Theater and Spoonriver, Langton's newest dining venture. 

Mill City is so named because of its proximity to the industrial flour mills (the Mill City Museum, which is just a stone's throw from the market.)  It's a hip, happening place:  lots of Teva-wearing moms with babies in slings, lots of bike-riders and joggers and man-sandals, open air music and buskers.  Get locally-made pastries, produce, salad dressings and locally-made cheeses and breads. 

Delicious, fun, good vibes - what could be the problem?

Oh, nothing.  Just Target, stinking it up with their sponsorship.

It's nice that Target wants to associate itself with causes that make sense for the planet.  Fine.  Good.

But do they really have to hand out samples of their Phony Farm's gross food?   

Can't they just sit back on their porky corporate haunches and let the little people have their miniscule piece of the pie? 

Or is it that they fear backlash from people like me, who take every occasion they receive a survey generated on a receipt to give them the look-out-below on why industrial organic is counterproductive bullshit?

I certainly hope so.  Though the Mill City Farmer's Market is a bit out of my way (and requires too much parking hassle to make it my weekly stop), I think I'll pop in again just to take in the insipid Archer Farms booth and see if I can talk to the "Farmer" himself.   

Likes

Photo credit: Gordon Parks.  Washington, D.C. Firehouse Station No. 4. Sergeant Briscoe smiling at a good hand dealt him.  Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, LC-USF35-1326

There is a zine out there that is fabulous called Likes/Dislikes by Lacey Prpic Hedtke. 

Simple concept:  lists of things she likes and dislikes.  Perfect!  Funny!  Get it here!

In that spirit, I give to you my special blend of...

Secondhand Nation Likes / Dislikes

Likes

Indie kid cashiers at thrift stores

Coffee mugs with vulgar sayings on them

cookbooks by the Moosewood Restaurant Collective

People who have lots and lots of stuff in their recycling bin

Handmade soap and body products

Fresh homemade bread

Ellen Forney

Lava sculptures and coconut souvenirs

Empty cosmetic bottles and containers from the Ye Olde Days

Banks that look like droopy dogs or smiling pigs

Vulgar sayings on t-shirts from the 70's

Yard Sale Bloodbath

Photo Credit:  British Office of War Information.  Food in England. Smiling with health, this former London dressmaker who joined the Women's Land Army in Britain claims she won't go back to dressmaking. More than 100,000 women this year will be enlisted in the Women's Land Army. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, LC-USF35-1326

Curtains with pom-pom trim or swiss dots

Rocket Dog shoes

Amateur nude paintings or drawings

Shop Goodwill

Hanging laundry on the line

Lapis Lazuli

Silver

Poison rings

Old children's books with clearly sexist pictures

20 Mule Team Borax

Argyle socks

Evil eye talismans

Tomatoes from the garden with kosher salt and ground pepper

Farmer's markets

Fels-Naptha

Nag Champpa incense

Aprons with pockets for clothespins

Photo Credit: Sharpshooter. Smiling from behind the turret of a China Air Task Force bomber is Technical Sergeant Douglas Radney, whose record of one confirmed plane destroyed and three probables qualified him for membership in the China Skeet and Gun Club. Radney was a member of the Tokyo bombers last year and had already earned himself the.  Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, LC-USF35-1326

Thrift stores that have Columbus Day sales

Thrift stores / garage sales that are staffed by idiots who know nothing about true pricing

Eating on the picnic table

Kirk's Castile Soap

Garage sales full of housewares

Cobalt-glazed pottery

Full front aprons

Oaxacan tin work

Wall of grab bag items at Savers

The Smitten Kitten

free podcasts

Used craft items like paint, glitter, googly eyes, rick-rack & ribbon

Cake whips

Vintage Playboy magazines

Obscene playing cards

Hobnail milkglass lamps

John Thorne

Photo Credit: Nick Parrino.  Teheran, Iran. Smiling Polish peasant awaiting evacuation at a camp operated by the Red Cross.  Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-USF35-1326]

Pour Some Sugar on Me (But No Glass, Thanks)

This morning's shower made me want to snuggle up to the plastics industry.

My sugar scrub experiment came to a dramatic halt when the glass tub shattered all over the shower.

Completely my idiot fault for storing it precariously on the towel bar.  But still, it's rather hair-raising to be slipping around barefooted among bits of glass you cannot see.

So, in short, it was a complete cock-up and a terrible way to start your morning.  I need some hints from Heloise on how to handle this kind of accident - I'm sure back in the days of Olde when all shampoo bottles were glass, some eager-beaver housewife came up with a solution to this hazardous problem.  Readers?  Ideas?  Sympathy?  Anything?  Bueller?

Garage Sales: Days of Rage

I LOVE garage sales!

I LOVE them!  LOVE LOVE LOVE them!  I love garage sales so much that I want to hold hands with them, make out with them, go all the way with them in the backseat, marry them in Vegas, have their babies, divorce them in Mexico in a huff and then marry them again on a very special episode of The Love Boat, with Captain Stubing presiding as the minister. 

I find the best shit at garage sales!  Ugly lava idols from Hawaii, vintage hampers, an end table that looks like a leaf.  Marvelous!

   

But as anyone who's ever been in love can tell you, it's only those you truly love who you can truly hate. So it's unavoidable that I also have some pretty wicked peeves about garage sales and the people who have them.  (I'm not alone in categorizing them, either -- check out the Yard Sale Queen for more crazy stories!) 

Thank all possible gods that the following list of peeves represents the exception and not the rule, because it might involve me busting out in a days of rage style massacre of all the cheapskate buttholes who offend me.  Locally, there is hope, as this lovely operation demonstrates, even offering tips about how to go about having a proper sale.  Hats off to Anna Shelander and all her associates!

Secondhand Nation's Official List of Garage Sale Bummers

1)  Presence of Mary Kay, Avon or any other direct-selling wares.   These all indicate a type of cheapness that I'm not interested in being near, lest I catch it.  Even if one likes Avon, Mary Kay or Pampered Chef shit, you know that the failed-salesperson-cum-garage-seller isn't going to give you a good deal;  he or she is going to try for one last gouge in order to recoup some of the lost dollars spent on the rip-off starter kit.

2)  The presence or mention of Beanie Babies.  'Nuff said.

3)  Lack of price tags or pricing guides.  It's fine if you have a tagboard sign with a list price for the type of item -- that's a life-saver for all-volunteer sales where the volume of junk is too high to have time to individually price -- but goddammit, man, give your customers something to work with at all!  We don't really want to have much back-and-forth with you, the seller, and some of us like to think that even if we are at a rummage sale, there are limits.  It's bad enough we're considering buying your mangy used AbRoller.  Let us preserve our dignity by not stooping to haggling and negotiation. 

4)  High Prices.  Listen, if your stuff is so great, sell it on eBay!  I don't come to yard sales with the fucking Franklin Mint in my purse.  I come with a pocket full of quarters if I'm just cruising, and never more than $50 (and that's only if I'm looking for furniture).  If you've got good stuff that's worth a lot to you, why are you selling it?  And if you don't need it/want it, have a goddamned estate sale.   Put in the time and effort to make it justifiable that I would pay $25 for a vase.  Otherwise, you're just a money-grubbing dumbass in a lawn chair.  Have fun making zero dollars!  Enjoy your drop-off donation trip to Goodwill!

5)  Christmas decorations.  Our planet is being choked by mega-tons of horrible Christmas decorations.  When tooling past a yard sale to determine if it's stop-worthy, nothing makes me hit the gas faster than a monster display of Christmas crap.  I see no end in sight to the Christmas Craze, as consumerism and Christmas go together like stockings and sugarplums.  So this peeve is obviously limitedly to my own preferences, which would be to never have to look at snarls of gold tinsel, plastic Jesus yard ornaments, snowmen made out of cotton batting or clothespin reindeer ever again.   

Fuck Your Junk

A while back, my mother came up for a visit and we all drove out to the hinterlands of Long Lake (this is where red-state babies are born, for those of you who aren't local) so we could check out a sale at this place called Junk Market.  Needless to say, I was inspired.  But not in the way one might think.

If you're addicted to that ubiquitous type of Surprise! Home Remodel Porn television programming, perhaps you've heard of Junk Market. Founded by Sue and Ki, two scrappy, bottle blond extraordinaires, Junk Market is featured regularly on HGTV and has a column in Country Home magazine. They are also often featured on daytime TV talk shows (like the unfortunately cancelled Tony Danza Show) or radio programs where they preach the gospel of junk to people who have never had the privilege of awakening their own creativity.

Sue and Ki, both former hockey moms with a "passion" for junk, began their Junk Market enterprise by scouring flea markets across the country to come up with decorating ideas for bored rich people who have all sorts of leisure time but no brains and whose pre-fab decor in their pre-fab homes was just so...um, what's the word?

Oh, yes. Soulless? Lifeless? Dull?

Well, thank the deities for brave souls like Sue and Ki! They are willing to branch out from the Galleria, Pottery Boring, and Gabberts and actually, you know, buy icky things no one wanted before and make them, like, into vases to hold dried flowers! Or kitschy retro umbrella stands! Or candleholders! You know, the kinds of items that the public cries out for because what will we do with our excess dried flowers, umbrellas and candles!  Oh, thank you, Jaysus!

So to those poor, exurban souls wailing in empty finished basements with wall-to-wall carpeting and overstuffed sofas, do not despair!  Sue and Ki can find old vintage signs and discarded metal gears and broken cake stands and make you shit out of them! They also write about how they did this! (For money!)  Have a burning desire from deep within to make this lovely bench?   Buy their new book for project details!

Best of all, they have big sales where they mark up flea market finds for you so you don't have to, you know, have your own individual experience at a flea market! Oh, no! They bottle up this flea market experience for you in Cozy Long Lake, just a quick jet from your home in Edina or Orono, and you don't have to deal with any unsavory types who live out of their conversion vans and may not have all their teeth.

Intrepidly, in the spirit of Rachel Ashwell, Britney Spears' decorator of choice, the Junk Market gals have a Junk Bonanza  where they sell you all kinds of chipped paint and rusting metal in the hopes that their experience will somehow contribute to the character of your life. (Don't fret about the fact that you didn't have the experience, don't know where the junk came from and have nothing to do with it! You can keep living your same routine life without bumps or scrapes and have everything LOOK rilly rilly cool! Perfect!)

But say you can't find anything amongst their marked-up wares?  No worries.  You can always buy the "retro" signs they make that say "RESORT" or "COTTAGE" on them. You know, weatherbeaten painted letters on beadboard! It'll make your ugly McMansion house living room look like RESORT! Woo!  Then everyone will be fooled into thinking they are in a resort, when really they are just in your basement!  Sneaky! 

Just remember to inoculate guests for tetanus before they get too close to your rusty astrolabe and keep an eye on the children so they don't start licking the flaking paint on that Hoosier cabinet you keep your TV in. (Hide the TV. Even though you had to watch HGTV to get the fucking idea about hiding the TV.)

You wouldn't want your home to actually HAVE character, remember? That might not go with the white sofa. HAVING character would involve thinking of your home as art, as the canvas for your life. You might have to actually acquire or make your own tchokches which would involve, perhaps, thinking.  Or at least, taking a class at the nearest Micheals. But that's really not necessary, provided you have a wallet and have left your brain in a dish by your bedside.  Because Junk Market Stylists Sue and Ki are here, they are white and blond and upper class. Put down the smelling salts -- you won't have to leave the herd after all -- and psst!  It's not really junk if we can charge it on our AMEX cards, right?  Hee hee!