nancynall.com » Curse you, Craig.
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Curse you, Craig.

I’m in the mar­ket for a book­case. I’m always in the mar­ket for a book­case. If you have a book­case, call me and I’ll at least take a look. In this case, I’m look­ing for a tradeup — the one piece of fur­ni­ture that per­sists “above stairs” in our house from my salad days is an old par­ti­cle­board p.o.s. book­case, and I’m ready to be shut of it. I con­sid­ered paint­ing it — still might, if I can’t find a decent replace­ment — but would pre­fer to replace it with some­thing a lit­tle nicer. So I’m on Craigslist sev­eral times a day, get­ting reac­quainted with my Craigslist luck.

What is Craigslist luck? An exam­ple; here is a table Amy Wel­born found on her Craigslist (Birm­ing­ham, Ala.), for $50:

Look at that thing. It’s gor­geous. Maybe teak? Fifty bucks. Mean­while, I clickclickclick on lin­klin­klink adver­tis­ing “book­case! nice!” and see wrecks that make my par­ti­cle­board dis­as­ter look like vin­tage Stick­ley. They’re all ask­ing $80. Or more. And I’d have to drive an hour to find it. Bah.

In all fair­ness, I have to say all my Craigslist luck hasn’t been bad, but the good stretches were only when I was part­ner­ing with some­one else. Our film­mak­ing escapades have all owed a lot to Craigslist, but we must have been pig­gy­back­ing on some­one else’s good luck. I under­stand peo­ple use Craigslist to find jobs; the only writ­ing jobs adver­tised there are the ones for con­tent farms, where they pay $3 for 400 words. Sex addicts use Craigslist to find so-called casual encoun­ters; if I ever did such a thing, I’d meet an ax mur­derer.

I do two Craigslist searches when I check — “book­case” and “grosse pointe.” You never know when some­one in your neigh­bor­hood will be sell­ing some­thing inter­est­ing. And may I just say? Afflu­ent peo­ple are the absolute worst to buy sec­ond­hand goods from. They think every piece of crap they own is worth a thou­sand bucks, and all their prices are firm. I saw a woman a cou­ple years ago sell­ing a “brand-new” iPhone for $450. At the time, you could buy one in an Apple store for $400. I sent her an e-mail ask­ing — politely! — what the extra $50 was for. She replied, “Ha ha I already sold it ass­hole.”

That must have been some case.

Craigslist cut the legs out from under my indus­try, and now it curses me.

Blog­gage? Sure:

For the record, I think the FDA has bet­ter things to do than fret about sodium. How­ever, this line from a LGM post on it gave me a smile:

Con­ser­v­a­tives have evi­dently worked them­selves into some­thing of an inco­her­ent snit over the FDA’s plans to limit sodium in processed foods. If I under­stand the anx­i­ety cor­rectly, a coop­er­a­tive effort between the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, indus­try rep­re­sen­ta­tives and pub­lic health experts to grad­u­ally (and I would imag­ine quite mod­estly) reduce sodium lev­els over a ten-year period is pretty much the sort of thing that Pol Pot did before depop­u­lat­ing the cities and hav­ing every­one gouged to death with bam­boo.

Hys­te­ria on the right is going around, how­ever; Lance Man­nion finds a hilar­i­ous essay in Rea­son and runs with it. Back when past-life explo­ration was trendy among Shirley Maclaine types, I observed that every­one who claimed an acquain­tance­ship with prior lives was a princess or Cleopa­tra or the king of all druids; where were the anony­mous serfs and scullery maids? I believe the same afflic­tion exists on the right, too, as Lance points out:

You know, I always thought it was me and my bad habits of stereo­typ­ing and mak­ing sweep­ing gen­er­al­iza­tions about peo­ple, but it’s often seemed to me that there is a type of Con­ser­v­a­tive of the more cor­po­ratist and self-congratulatory “lib­er­tar­ian” bent who believes that the only rea­son he’s not a titan of indus­try is that Amer­ica has gone down­hill since, oh, about 1876.

This type seems to think that if he were sud­denly blown through a worm­hole in time and dropped in the Black Hills of the Dakota Ter­ri­to­ries just after the Civil War with noth­ing but the clothes on his back and a Swiss Army knife he’d show up back here a year later, rich as Croe­sus, hav­ing dug a gold mine out of the moun­tain­side with his spoon and fork and corkscrew attach­ments and inci­den­tally hav­ing invented the tele­phone, the elec­tric light bulb, the inter­nal com­bus­tion engine, and time travel.

Actu­ally, Lance is on some­thing of a roll of late. Today, the stunt restau­rant and why it’s bad.

Some­thing I’ve long believed about tele­vi­sion, Gawker speaks out loud: It’s time for TV’s old guard to retire. As some­one between the age of Mor­ley Safer and Lisa Ling, I’m of two minds. While I think it’s admirable many of these folks are still swingin’ decades past con­ven­tional retire­ment age, it’s unset­tling to turn on “60 Min­utes” and see Andy Rooney, still at it at 91. I thought that fig­ure — Rooney’s age — was an out­landish exag­ger­a­tion on Gawker’s part, but no. He’s really 91. Of course, I never liked Andy Rooney, and the com­pli­ment that always made me wince back in my colum­niz­ing days was this: “I like your col­umn. It’s sort of a com­bi­na­tion of Erma Bombeck and Andy Rooney.” Gee, thanks.

Hey, look — some­one just sent me an invi­ta­tion to a pre­miere screen­ing of “You Don’t Know Jack” tomor­row night, a lit­tle perk of being tan­gen­tially con­nected to the cre­ative com­mu­nity in the loca­tion where it was shot. Too bad I can’t go. Work­ing. To afford my HBO, where the film will even­tu­ally screen in my liv­ing room. Ah, well.

Posted on Wednesday, April 21st, 2010 at 10:35 am in Current events, Same ol' same ol'. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


44 responses to
“Curse you, Craig.”

  1. Sue said on April 21st, 2010 at 11:02 am

    Nancy, you’re only halfway there. Let’s retire the old guard, to be replaced by… Who? Andy Rooney is the worst exam­ple of what needs to go, but give me an argu­ment in favor of any new blood besides Rachel Mad­dow and maybe Ander­son Cooper. You can’t get the next gen­er­a­tion of old-guard real jour­nal­ists when the peo­ple who are mak­ing the deci­sions on who gets expo­sure are pick­ing gems like Rick “Ice­land is too cold for vol­ca­noes” Sanchez, oh and inci­den­tally fill­ing a lot of air time with viewer emails, which are exactly as pro­found as you think they’d be. Sure there’s qual­ity wait­ing in the wings but just sweep­ing out the old­sters isn’t going to bring it out.

  2. Jeff Borden said on April 21st, 2010 at 11:07 am

    I cer­tainly under­stand why so many con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­cans don’t want the gov­ern­ment mess­ing with their condi­ments. Have you seen the size of the peo­ple attend­ing the teabag­ger events? They clearly hit the all you can eat buf­fet at Golden Cor­ral before decamp­ing to yell at our slen­der pres­i­dent. Or the waist­lines on those men who gath­ered in Vir­ginia a few days ago to cel­e­brate the Sec­ond Amend­ment by car­ry­ing the big, long guns that help assuage their self-loathing at hav­ing teeny, tiny lit­tle wee­nies? No won­der they want to carry guns. They sure couldn’t out­run a mug­ger.

    These peo­ple need their calo­ries, dammit!!

  3. Dorothy said on April 21st, 2010 at 11:14 am

    I take it you’re not inter­ested in find­ing book­shelves at an unfin­ished fur­ni­ture store? Where you can see that the wood is wood and not par­ti­cle board? I know it’s some work to sand and then stain them, but it pays off. This way you get what you pay for. Then again I know price is a dri­ving fac­tor so I wish you luck in find­ing one (or more) at your price.

  4. Deborah said on April 21st, 2010 at 11:28 am

    Dorothy I just real­ized your gra­vatar is a real quilt square, instead of a dig­i­tal quilt square. Pretty clever.

    No mat­ter what the Obama admin­is­tra­tion does the the right wingers will find some­thing to scream about (reduc­ing sodium in processed food is wrong?). I hon­estly think if Obama sud­denly declared abor­tion ille­gal, they be against it.

    “Rick “Ice­land is too cold for vol­ca­noes” Sanchez” – good one Sue.

  5. nancy said on April 21st, 2010 at 11:51 am

    I must have missed that. Rick Sanchez said Ice­land is too cold for vol­canos? Ice­land IS a vol­cano. Where does he think all that scald­ing water comes from? Pre­his­toric under­ground boil­ers stoked by myth­i­cal Nordic crea­tures?

    When I was rid­ing, I used to get a cat­a­log annu­ally from an equestrian-themed travel agency. Most of the trips were pretty typ­i­cal — fox­hunt­ing in Eng­land, dres­sage work­shops in the Nether­lands, etc. — but there were two I really could kick myself for not tak­ing. One was a trip across the Mon­go­lian steppes on horse­back a la Genghis Khan and the Mon­gol horde, and the other was a cir­cu­lar tour of the Ice­landic inland, on native ponies. The Ice­land trip in par­tic­u­lar was heav­ily stick­ered with warn­ings. You had to be able to with­stand about 30 miles a day at a brisk tolt, the ponies’ fast-travel gait, and the lodg­ings were with local farm­ers, i.e., bunkhouses. “Expect to be served mut­ton at least twice a day,” the copy said. I didn’t care. The idea of see­ing nat­ural hot springs, gey­sers and the north­ern lights far from even mea­ger city lights sounded heav­enly. Alas, it became a one-of-these-days thing will likely not ever hap­pen. (I doubt I could tolt for 30 miles any­more.) Regrets, I’ve had a few.

  6. Sue said on April 21st, 2010 at 12:07 pm

    http://​won​kette​.com/​4​1​4​9​3​4​/​c​n​n​-​i​d​i​o​t​-​r​i​c​k​-​s​a​n​c​h​e​z​-​t​h​i​n​k​s​-​i​c​e​l​a​n​d​-​i​s​-​t​o​o​-​c​o​l​d​-​f​o​r​-​v​o​l​canoes

  7. coozledad said on April 21st, 2010 at 12:11 pm

    The Mon­go­lian ride sounds cool, too, but I don’t think I could han­dle the mare’s milk thing. Waverly Root says that’s why they were able to con­quer so much ter­ri­tory. They never had to con­sol­i­date their sup­ply lines.

  8. ROgirl said on April 21st, 2010 at 12:16 pm

    You know if we let them take our salt away they’ll come after our guns next. It’s a slip­pery slope, folks.

  9. beb said on April 21st, 2010 at 12:48 pm

    Sue is right that while it would be nice to retire some of the Old Guard of TV reporters, there’s no sense of qual­i­fied replace­ments stand­ing in line. Of course since the Old Guard seems to never plan on retir­ing there’s no expec­ta­tion of get­ting pro­moted to their choice spots, either.

    But there is, I think, a place to find good reporters — from the same pool that got us the guy that got Rachel Mad­dow hired. You know, Keith Olber­mann, who began life as a sport reporter.

  10. Joe Kobiela said on April 21st, 2010 at 1:07 pm

    Who says that you have to replace the old guard with left wingers like Ober­lin and Madow. Mabey its time for some new inde­pen­dent thinkers. Jeff B, any time you want to lace up your kicks, This con­servi­tive will be glad to run with you any­time and any milage right up thru a marathon,and Deb, if G.Bush had cured can­cer the left would have found fault with it some where.
    Pilot Joe

  11. Jeff Borden said on April 21st, 2010 at 1:14 pm

    Joe, my friend, I have read about your stren­u­ous runs and acknowl­edge you are a far health­ier spec­i­men than I, who prefers 12-ounce curls with a cold beer. Nor am I say­ing fat genes are par­tic­u­lar to teabag­gers given the fact that Michael Moore is large enough to qual­ify for his own zip code these days. It’s just the aston­ish­ing large num­ber of fat asses pic­tured in the teabag­ging events. And those open carry guys? Lord. The Daily Show had a field day with a few of them a few days ago, when they sent the young black guy out to hang with the fel­lows who walk around with their Glocks in a hol­ster. Every one of these guys was a good 250 and we ain’t talk­ing Stone Cold Steve Austin builds, either.

  12. coozledad said on April 21st, 2010 at 1:15 pm

    Well he cer­tainly killed a shit­load of peo­ple before they could develop can­cer.

  13. Dorothy said on April 21st, 2010 at 1:19 pm

    Deb­o­rah my gra­vatar is actu­ally a quilt I made last year for a co-worker. It’s a baby quilt, made to match the fur­nish­ings she chose for the baby’s room. She turned out to be a girl (they didn’t find out until she was born, which is my pre­ferred way to have a baby don­cha know). I thought it would be cool to do a lit­tle “play” on the gra­vatars that Mr. Burns has designed for nn.c

  14. Jeff Borden said on April 21st, 2010 at 1:21 pm

    Note to Joe:

    I will despise George W. Bush and his crooked, incom­pe­tent and unlaw­ful admin­is­tra­tion until I draw my last breath. The dam­age these jerks did to our coun­try will take a gen­er­a­tion or two to repair.

    That said, I have never been bash­ful about say­ing that even W., the worst of our pres­i­dents, did some decent things. His admin­is­tra­tion was very diverse, though Con­doleeza Rice, Alberto Gon­za­lez and John Yoo turned out to be utter fail­ures. His heart was in the right place on immi­gra­tion, too. No Child Left Behind is not work­ing out, but it was at least an effort to bring some account­abil­ity to our pub­lic schools, even if the unin­tended con­se­quences turned out to be teach­ing to the test. He was incred­i­bly gra­cious about Obama, not­ing what a beau­ti­ful sight it would be to see he and his fam­ily in the White House. He has acted hon­or­ably since leav­ing office, too.

    At base, I’ll always think of W. as some­one who was manip­u­lated by oth­ers, notably that fuck­ing bas­tard Cheney, who by all rights should be in soli­tary con­fine­ment await­ing a war crimes trial.

  15. Julie Robinson said on April 21st, 2010 at 1:33 pm

    One word: IKEA. They have par­ti­cle board but also wood. If you go with Billys, you can also buy some nice glass doors.

  16. MRMARK said on April 21st, 2010 at 1:39 pm

    I have sold a ton of good used fur­ni­ture and elec­tron­ics on CL (Atlanta) and I have some met some really nice peo­ple. Not one was an axe murderer…nor am I. A cou­ple have even writ­ten nice emails once they got the item into their home.

    My Pic­ture of the Day: Red Aza­leas at Smith Plan­ta­tion (Roswell, GA)

  17. Bob (not Greene) said on April 21st, 2010 at 2:09 pm

    Don’t sugar coat it Jeff B., give it to us straight!

  18. Peter said on April 21st, 2010 at 2:11 pm

    Pilot Joe, my son wants to become Pilot Mike, and he’s going to his first col­lege open house on Sat­ur­day (South­ern Illi­nois, home of the Salukis), cour­tesy of United.

    Any advice you care to share?

  19. alex said on April 21st, 2010 at 2:27 pm

    Dorothy, your gravatar’s show­ing up on my screen as a head shot with sun­glasses and some lovely body of water in the back­ground. That’s a quilt?

  20. Joe Kobiela said on April 21st, 2010 at 2:38 pm

    Pete,
    Tell him to get a b.a. in any sub­ject if he wants to fly for the air­lines, they look for edu­ca­tion. Get a job work­ing the line at a local fbo. Get­ting a job in this busi­ness is a lot who you know,and he can make alot of con­tacts work­ing the line. Become a flight instruc­tor and start build­ing hours,then beg bor­row or steal all the multi-engine and tur­bine time he can get. Hop along on char­ters and fly the empty legs,ect,ect. Never pay to work, build­ing hours,and realise that the days of mak­ing 100,000 plus a year are about gone. And if any­one tells him he shouldn’t get into this, tell them to F.O. and keep work­ing on his dream. I didn’t and it took me to age 49 before I could tell Dana corp, see ya. One other Thing, tell him to go to Pur­due!!!!
    Blue Sky’s and Tail winds to him.
    Pilot Joe

  21. crinoidgirl said on April 21st, 2010 at 3:04 pm

    OTOH, alex, I see a (real-life) quilt. hmmm

  22. judybusy said on April 21st, 2010 at 3:50 pm

    Dorothy, I see cute pup­pies. For real.

    Mr. Mark, thanks for shar­ing the photo–really nicely done!

  23. Beryl Ament said on April 21st, 2010 at 4:33 pm

    Mar­i­anne Frost (http://​busha​fullof​grace​.type​pad​.com/) recently wrote about her expe­ri­ence fur­nish­ing her new apart­ment from Craigslist:
    “And then tonight I was perus­ing craigslist and some­one adver­tised “1 night stand and dresser.” I wrote to them and asked them how much for a one-night stand. I really did. I won­der if I’ll get a response. I hope they laughed and I don’t get a knock on my door by some­one in uni­form accus­ing me of inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior. Maybe I’ll even meet the love of my life.”
    Hope springs eter­nal.

  24. alex said on April 21st, 2010 at 4:57 pm

    I’m seri­ous re: Dorothy’s gra­vatar. It’s a pic­ture (pre­sum­ably) of Dorothy. Why would it come up dif­fer­ently on dif­fer­ent machines?

    I uploaded mul­ti­ple pix to the gra­vatar site but only the ini­tial one appears, even though I made mul­ti­ple attempts to change it. Not sure what’s up with that.

  25. Little Bird said on April 21st, 2010 at 5:01 pm

    A note on the avatars. If it seems that every­one is see­ing a dif­fer­ent one than you are, clear your cache and refresh your page. It should clear things up. If not, I have no idea what’s up.
    I’m still laugh­ing about the “Iceland’s too cold for vol­canos” thing, this may be my new sar­cas­tic com­ment.

  26. Rana said on April 21st, 2010 at 5:32 pm

    Re: book­cases – I’m rather fond of the fold­ing ones from Tar­get, which you can order online and have sent to your door. How­ever, watch out for qual­ity con­trol – some of the over­seas plants that make them do a great job, and some… do not.

  27. Dexter said on April 21st, 2010 at 5:40 pm

    You never know what you might find when shop­ping for used or antique fur­ni­ture.
    My Chicago brother found a dresser at a garage sale a cou­ple years ago. After he paid for it the owner told him the dresser used to belong to Roger Ebert.
    I for­get how she got it, but I think she babysat the child Ebert and was gifted the dresser at some point.
    My brother uses it in their spare room now.

  28. alex said on April 21st, 2010 at 5:42 pm

    Now on my com­puter at home I’m see­ing Dorothy’s quilt.

  29. Kirk said on April 21st, 2010 at 5:48 pm

    I just see Dorothy, and I know it’s her because I met her once.

  30. ac jones said on April 21st, 2010 at 6:21 pm

    Re #14 Mr. Borden—”to see he and his fam­ily in the White House”? That’s a con­struct even your much maligned George W. wouldn’t have put together. You’re right about his gra­cious ways since leav­ing office, though.

  31. Jeff Borden said on April 21st, 2010 at 7:02 pm

    A.C.,

    Yeah, I heard the screams of that tor­tured syn­tax even as I hit the send but­ton.

  32. MichaelG said on April 21st, 2010 at 7:10 pm

    Peter, lots of pilots have made the move from the Air Force to the air­lines. I don’t know how things are today, but that’s an alter­na­tive worth explor­ing. Fly­ing C-17s isn’t a bad life.

  33. Dorothy said on April 21st, 2010 at 8:38 pm

    Well I am sur­prised by all the dif­fer­ent Dorothy gra­vatar sight­ings here. I have changed them a cou­ple of times – I started with the Florida pic­ture, taken in Feb­ru­ary, then changed it to the pups Augie and Husky. But I think I’m stick­ing with the quilt pic­ture for now. Until I win the lot­tery. Then I might just show a pic­ture of me sit­ting on a big old pile ‘o money.

  34. moe99 said on April 21st, 2010 at 9:11 pm

    Sit­ting in Ohare for 4 hrs wait­ing to fly to Lex­ing­ton to see mom (86) because she can’t travel and I can. This is the clos­est, phys­i­cally, I am with the major­ity here, until I return in July to attend my 40th class reunion at Defi­ance High School.

  35. Deborah said on April 21st, 2010 at 9:14 pm

    Moe, look east towards the lake as you fly out of Ohare. That’s me wav­ing fran­ti­cally.

  36. Joe Kobiela said on April 21st, 2010 at 9:40 pm

    Moe,
    this is why peo­ple char­ter for busi­ness, you can’t afford to have peo­ple sit for 4hr to take a 45min flight. I hope you get to Lex.
    Pilot Joe

  37. brian stouder said on April 21st, 2010 at 9:46 pm

    You know, I can­not decide how to take that Gawker arti­cle on the Old Guard and retire­ment.

    I kept wait­ing for them to men­tion Wal­ter Cronkite, and they didn’t. But the clos­ing para­graph was this:

    If only every­one else would fol­low her [Bar­bara Wal­ters' grace­ful exit from prime time] lead. We’re not say­ing there should be a manda­tory retire­ment age for news anchors, but after deal­ing with so many break­ing sto­ries, late elec­tion nights, pub­lic crit­i­cism, and per­sonal scan­dals, you would think that that they had their fill of work­ing. You’d think they might be tired. They haven’t, it seems, but the audi­ence sure seems to be tired of watch­ing them.

    I almost think that that ref­er­ence to “manda­tory retire­ment” was a nod Uncle Wally’s way…because I remem­ber the odd­ness when CBS forced him to retire, and paid him large money to keep him off other network’s air. It struck me as odd then, and all the more odd now – that a per­son with such a for­mi­da­bly large audi­ence would be pushed out the door that way, and remain very well paid to STAY off the air­waves, since (no doubt) that audi­ence would have fol­lowed him onto any other net­work.

    By way of say­ing – if an attrac­tive brunette with an unbut­toned blouse and a sten­to­rian voice has what it takes to read the news to me, so does some­one a half cen­tury older, who’s already seen every­thing that can pos­si­bly ever hap­pen (and who can tell you which son of a bitch did it last time)

    moe – a sen­tence I never thought I’d write: you make tak­ing a trip to Defi­ance, Ohio sound like a thing to add to the list!

  38. Dexter said on April 21st, 2010 at 10:23 pm

    It seems the air­lines are always in a state of tur­moil. My daughter’s S.O. is a Net­Jets cap­tain. He has had F.O.s in his plane with many more hours in the sky than he; some­times for­mer air­line pilots who used to fly the over­seas routes, even. Senior­ity rules, in some cases, and our guy is about in the mid­dle of the Net­Jets senior­ity list. A lot of the really expe­ri­enced United and US Air pilots who were laid off hired in with Net­Jets, only to be laid off there last year, too. It’s a really tough gig, but good work if you can get it. Pays well.
    Raytheon Hawker
    http://​cdn​-www​.air​lin​ers​.net/​a​v​i​a​t​i​o​n​-​p​h​o​t​o​s​/​m​i​d​d​l​e​/​8​/​5​/​0​/​1​5​3​3​0​58.jpg

  39. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 21st, 2010 at 10:34 pm

    You can have my salt shaker when you pry it from my cold, dead, mildly edemic fin­gers.

  40. basset said on April 22nd, 2010 at 12:23 am

    Peter, you might look at Mid­dle Ten­nessee State too… rep­utable flight pro­gram, half an hour from Nashville.

    Not much on Craigslist and don’t use eBay at all any more but I do try for yard sale luck every once in awhile. best catch so far was an old fish­ing reel (orig­i­nal made-in-France Mitchell 300) brand new in the box for $3, turned it on eBay for $105 if I remem­ber right.

  41. Denice B. said on April 22nd, 2010 at 1:25 am

    Inter­est­ing side note, Nancy. Craig New­mark of Craigslist lived in Detroit for 15 years before he moved to Cal­i­for­nia and cre­ated Craigslist. He ran around with our cir­cle of friends here. Back in the day he worked for IBM.

  42. Jolene said on April 22nd, 2010 at 7:53 am

    Peter: If your son is will­ing to shift his geo­graphic pref­er­ences, he should con­sider the Ode­gard School of Aero­space Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­sity of North Dakota.

    Like a lot of small and medum-sized schools, it picked an unusual area of spe­cial­iza­tion and built around it. Has many alumni employed as pilots and avi­a­tion man­age­ment. One of my brother’s friends went on to spe­cial­ize in avi­a­tion law.

  43. alex said on April 22nd, 2010 at 10:11 am

    Jtmmo @ 39–

    Ede­ma­tous.

  44. MarkH said on April 22nd, 2010 at 10:42 am

    Embrey-Riddle always gets high marks as well, Pete:

    http://​www​.erau​.edu/

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