We first listed the
item with an instant buy price of $950 and a starting auction price
of $700 over five days... seems simple enough right? WRONG. After
about two days we got a bid for the full nine-fifty and we were ready
to hi-5 and dance the funky chicken, but the buyer turned out to be a
fake account from Nigeria and the person behind the keyboard came out
with some “I'm just on holiday at the moment can you send it to my
home account” bullshit. Fuck off, I'd rather my money remain
un-grifted thanks. After the item was bid at the full price though,
Ebay took the listing down assuming that we had completed the
transaction and all was fine... even though it clearly was not
fine, and any cursory glance from the Ebay staff towards the
status of the transaction would have revealed this. No money changed
hands, and no sale was made. Nevertheless nine-hundred and fifty
chattleford noo-nahs were deducted from our Ebay account's selling
limit for the month (which starts at $2500 and can only be increased
by a rigorous proof-of-identity process which... well let's just say
we can't increase it) even though... ahem... NO SALE HAD BEEN MADE.
I relisted the item
(short note, I have noticed that I've been using that word –
'relisted' – an awful lot during this saga; on my phone, in gmail,
in word etc. and nowhere is it recognized as a word... I keep getting
the little squiggly red line telling me to hyphenate but GUESS WHAT –
I DON'T WANT TO FUCKING HYPHENATE!)... Ok I relisted the item a few
days later and surprise surprise the same thing
happened. Dodgy lady paying the full price of nine-hundred and fifty
imaginary moneys and then running her imaginary mouth about some
imaginary story of how she's on holiday and needs the money into an
overseas account and... well whatever. Of course, being the oracle of
foresight that I am I had thought to list my phone number in the
description of the item this time so that real potential
buyers could contact me directly and we could fuck off the worthless
middle-man that is Ebay and get this thing done right. So I got a
text from someone in Sydney asking about the MacBook and I feel like
we have developed some level of mutual trust in the concept that we
are both real people and not darkness, West African confidence
tricksters... but this (calm down Aidan, caaaaaalm... breathe) this
person still wants to complete the transaction over Ebay. I'm
assuming this is to ensure that his money is not made off with by me,
an untrustworthy foreign entity, and as far as he knows, a shady West
African confidence trickster.
Well here
la-di-FUCKING-da buddy. I'm SORRY I don't have FIVE GOLD STARS next
to my name when it comes up in your phone and my pleas for a PHONE
CALL are met with stunned silence and RETARDED REQUESTS FOR PICTURES
OF THE LAPTOP WHICH I AGREE TO SEND YOU AND THEN WHEN I DO YOU STILL
STUTTER AND STAMMER AND SIT ON YOUR FUCKING HANDS LIKE A LITTLE BITCH
NOT EVEN RESPONDING TO MY SUGGESTIONS OF HOW WE CAN FINALLY END THIS
DISGUSTING FARCE OF A DEAL FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKING FUCK KILL
EVERYONE...
Can you tell I'm upset?
Can you tell I'm upset?
Earlier today I was
walking down Swanston St in the middle of town and reciting the
speech for my new job as a walking-tour guide in my head. I was about
to cross over Collins St when I heard a lovely, clean guitar chord
amplified by a small, portable speaker that the girl playing the
guitar had mounted in her case. She started singing, and I forgot all
about crossing the road and turned back to watch her – the only
person in a sea of faces with nowhere in particular to be and nothing
in particular to worry about missing. I sat down on a seemingly
superfluous white, wooden block that I could only imagine was fixed
to the pavement four-hundred years ago with the sole purpose of
giving me somewhere to sit while this beautiful siren sang her songs
out into the world on this windy Thursday afternoon. She played
smooth and sweet as I rummaged around in the bottom of my bag for the
silver coins I knew rattled around in some obscure pocket... I knew
it wouldn't be as much as she deserved, but it would have to do.
I don't normally
give money to buskers – mainly because I don't normally stop and
watch. This girl though, and that moment, there was something about
the five or ten minutes that passed as I sat on my lonely chair in
the middle of the footpath... it was one of those perfect silences
that come around very rarely in life and must be savoured when they
do, no matter the surroundings. I knew the storm that was brewing in
the cables and hollow wires of cyberspace at that very moment when I
sat down and stopped my life for the girl with the guitar. I knew it
was there, but when I sat down I decided that for now, just for a
second, it could disappear. In these quiet moments when life stands
still, only a smile can intrude on my peaceful meditation. No
troubles. No worry. No scathing insults or fiery torment that grinds
inside my brain and threatens to boil over violently at any moment.
No jittery unease... just me, and the music.
I dropped the coins
in her guitar case, and she quickly said “thanks” in the middle
of singing. I smiled at her one last time, and walked off down
Swanston street, ready to swear at people some more and curse the
stupidity of creation. The MacBook is a long way from sold, but I
feel that the blood clots inside my brain have begun to slowly
repair themselves and I've stopped thinking about different ways of
killing people.
Smile.
Peace, Taco.
No comments:
Post a Comment