Blog News

Dear Readers,

In the next few days, I will try a massive (in terms of time, anyway) undertaking: two new blogs, maybe three.  So in addition to this site and my sports blog (where I babble mostly about baseball, baseball cards, and the sports world at large), please look at my American Horror Story: Coven blog, and my Walking Dead 4 blog, both via Blogger.  If they're not up when you check, please come back.  I'll put up the American Horror Story: Coven blog first, since the season's first episode has already aired.  Walking Dead 4's blog will go up tonight, or tomorrow--most likely tomorrow.

I may also start a blog, tentatively titled Steve's Sales, that will contain photos, descriptions and prices of things I want to sell.  This would be via Blogger as well.  So take a peek at that, when it's up, and let me know what strikes your fancy.  Just send me an email at the address on the top of any of my blogs, and I'll get back to you ASAP. 

As always, thanks for taking the time to peruse my meager scribblings.  I hope my readers, friends and followers like what is to come.

Sincerely,

Steven E. Belanger

How Bookstores Pay Us Not to Go There

Photo: Barnes and Noble icon, from twimg.com.  (Notice the brick and mortar name and the .com.)

So a few days ago I walk into the only large (chain) bookstore left in all of Rhode Island: Barnes and Noble.  I wanted to go there because a) I'd forgotten if I'd pre-ordered Stephen King's latest, Dr. Sleep, his sequel to The Shining.  (For the record, I'm a little concerned about how I'll like the motorcycle gang, but we'll see.)  I ask the guy behind the help desk to look it up in my account, and it turns out that I hadn't pre-ordered it.  I ask him if I can do so, using this 20% extra coupon I'd been emailed, and hoping I'd be able to use it with the 40% off new hardcovers usually come with, and maybe even the 10% off I sometimes get because I'm a member.  (I realize that hoping to get 70% off a new Stephen King hardcover is extremely unrealistic, but as my previous blog entry mentioned, these are some hard times.)

He says No, that Barnes and Noble doesn't offer discounts on the pre-ordered books through BN.com because new books ordered online are already greatly reduced.

"How much reduced?" My ears perked up, because I like things greatly reduced these days.

He explains that to buy it in the store, I'd have to pay the $28 (or so) price, plus tax.  That's over $30.  I'd get the 30% off, not the 40%, and I'd get an additional 10% for being a member, and that's it.  No other coupons allowed.  No 20% additional from the coupon.  I was about to start a discussion about the meaning of the word "additional," as in, the coupon says "get an additional 20% off," but instead I ask him how much it would be to just pre-order it online.

"Nineteen dollars," he said.

Huh?  I quickly figured that 10% of $28 was $2.80, and that twice that was $5.60, and that twice that was $11.20 (that's the 40% off total, for those not so mathematically inclined), and that $30 (with tax) minus $11.20 was $19.80--essentially what it would cost me to sit on my butt at home and order it from there.  Plus, I wouldn't have to pay shipping, because I'm a member and I get that for free. And no money spent on gas, etc.

This gave me pause.  I told the guy I gave him credit for bringing the whole online thing up to begin with, as I had been ready to buy it from the store the week of September 23rd.  I said it was especially good of him to mention it, since everyone who orders a book at bn.com, and not at the store, makes his job more and more obsolete.  It also would make obsolete the jobs of the cashiers and the cafe workers, and it would negate the sales of a great many other books and magazines that are sold to people who come into the store to buy A, and who leave the store buying A, B and C.  From my experience, people who go online to a bookstore website to buy A end up buying A and that's it.  ("From my experience" here means me and a few friends.)

He acknowledged all of this, though it was clear that he hadn't considered all this before, and nobody had had the gumption (or the arrogance) to bring all this up to him before.  Times being what they are, I pre-ordered the book and had it delivered for free to my house, feeling badly as I did so, but at least congratulating myself for not waiting a few weeks or a few months and then buying it for just a couple of bucks on Amazon or Ebay.

To make myself feel a little better, I looked for a baseball card checklist / price guide I needed, but I was told that they didn't carry it in stock, but that their website did.  Sigh.  I bought a couple of coin books I needed instead, feeling that Barnes and Noble was at this point working against me as I tried to buy something in its store.  I had to go through entirely too much hassle and brainpower to do so.

In the long run I'll have to admit defeat.  Before long, the workers behind the registers, in the cafe, behind the help desk, and in the rows of books won't have a job, and the stockholders and CEO of Barnes and Noble will make more money because they won't have any workers to pay.  And there won't be even one large bookstore in my entire state.  Somewhere in there (though Stephen King himself probably doesn't need the money) the writers themselves, and the book publishers, will end up somehow getting screwed, as more and more people buy "books" online and then read them on their electronic devices, never having to actually be verbal with another person as they do so.  For this, book-makers will disappear, as will printers, type-setters, and all the middlemen who are responsible for the sometimes high price of books--but who also keep the economy going by being a necessary worker, and by holding a job.  This in turn makes them money, which they would spend on things that would also necessitate the jobs of other people.  The economy is a house of cards this way, and it's all going to someday blow down.

People will wonder why the economy got so bad.  And there won't be any economics books to teach them.

Or the teachers, for that matter.  But that's another blog.

World War Z

Photo: from its Wikipedia page, here.  Go to it to read about this film's troubled shooting history.

A very good movie, a little bit more intellectual, directed, and written than usual for a summer film.  It's a constant moody edginess, a feeling that nothing extremely terrible is going to go wrong (or, actually, worse, since things go very, very wrong, right away, for everybody) for the main characters, but also that nothing much is going to lead to total salvation, either.  If you're looking for a zombie film with a specific end to the disaster, look elsewhere.

But that's not to say that things--good things--aren't accomplished in this film, because they are.  A family gets saved and (almost) permanently housed in safety.  The main character (Brad Pitt, in a solid, but not terribly demanding, performance) even keeps in touch daily with his wife (a beautiful woman who looks like Jessica Chastain, but isn't.  She's Mireille Enos.), which in one instance actually wasn't a good thing.  Anyway, there's no message, per se, here, but if there was one, I guess it would be: protect your family and honor your fellow humans.  This comes across in a sleight, non-preachy sort of way.

Everyone's heroic here, except perhaps for the scientist, whose end is somewhat vague, though obviously the movie has to swing to Pitt's heroics somehow, so there you go.  The soldiers and scientists and doctors are heroic.  The wife is heroic.  A little boy is heroic.  There's not one spineless person left alive.  There wasn't room for one in the script, anyway.

You'll be blown away (as many of the zombies were, he-he-he) by specific special effects that lead to some very specifically breathless scenes.  Unfortunately, you'll have seen them all in the trailer, and you'll be looking for them to happen during the movie, like I did, though if you're like me, you'll try very hard not to.  But it won't be possible.  You'll think: ah, there's the wall that millions of them will climb; this is the plane that will blow up and suck out a great many.  And so on.  Don't see the trailer, if you haven't already.  If you have, it's not the end of the world (sorry) because the scenes are great anyway.  In fact, the intensity and tension were picked up quite a bit because of the expectation.  Well, for me, anyway.

At the end, I think you'll agree that this was a movie that needed to be viewed on the (very) big screen.  The ending, such as it is, makes sense, and you won't feel cheated or disappointed.  You'll wonder about the lingering health of those who get administered at the end, and whether it would be worth it to live that way, until also getting administered something else.  And then what?  How will they be protected then?  (You'll see what I mean.)  In fact, you might wonder, as I did, if a simple cold will do.  Or how about a sinus infection?  I get those buggers all the time.

P.S.--While buying the obligatory popcorn (stale for the second movie in a row, by the way), I noticed that the calorie count for each candy item was on a small but official looking placard.  I know that some candy has more calories than do others, but aren't they all sort of equally bad?  You can't stay on a diet, or maintain perfect cholesterol or heart health, if you were to eat any of the candy sitting there.  So why the calorie count cards?  Did someone actually threaten to sue because they didn't realize the calories in their Reese's Peanut Butter Cups?  Speaking of which, a package of four Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, which sells for a dollar for most fundraisers, or $1.59, max, at your local store, was selling for $4.50 each at my local movie theater.  I can't tell which is crazier, the cards with the calorie counts, or the price.  I mean, isn't price gouging illegal?

Signs You Have Too Many Books

Photo: The Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library, Manhattan

I realized recently--okay, I've had this "realization" frequently over the years--that I have a book-hoarding problem.  You know, like those people on the show Hoarders, who have psychotic breaks when a professional therapist, visiting the squalid house, tells them that pooping and peeing on their stereo speakers because they have too much stuff in the way to make it to the bathroom is not a normal thing?  Well, I'm not that bad, as my floors and hallways are mostly bare, but I have lots of piles of books in the living room, on the table, and on the kitchen table, and in my office on my desks and chairs.  I have books in seven bookcases in the house, and in about nine boxes in the garage, and in a giant bookcase in the spare office/bedroom downstairs, which has ten deep bookshelves.

If this sounds like you, these are signs enough that you have a book-hoarding problem.  But here are a few more signs that you have too many books:

--You find yourself reading six books at once, and yet you still look for more things to read.

--You realize that fifteen bookcases are not close to enough to hold all of your books.

--Your reading material in your bathroom impedes your path to your "favorite chair."

--And you look forward to needing to go to the bathroom so that you can read.

--You read much more than you need to in order to research your novel or story.

--You have so many books that you actually consider opening your own free library, somehow.

--Except that you don't want anyone else reading your books.

--You have so many books that you end up getting duplicates at yard sales or library sales because you forgot you had them to begin with.

--You buy books that your friends want to borrow from you because you don't want them to read yours.

--You own every book ever written by Stephen King, and Robert B. Parker, and Jonathan Kellerman, and Mickey Spillane, all of whom have written at least 40 books each.

--You've forgotten which books are in the seven or eight boxes in the attic and basement.

--You have about fifty anthologies of short stories, poems and short novels.

--You still have all of the books you ever needed to read in college, and you majored in English and Philosophy.  That's a lot of required reading.

--You tell your friends that they should ask you if you have a book before they buy it, even though you have no intention of ever letting them borrow one.  (See the comment five bullets above.)

--You have to instigate a policy of no book-buying for yourself.

--You promise yourself that you'll just get new books from the library, so that you can read them without being driven to keep them.  And you know you won't follow through with this.

--You say to yourself that you won't buy anything new until you've finished reading all of the books you have, even though this couldn't possibly happen during what's left of your lifetime.

--You realize that you'd rather stay at home and read a lot rather than go to Disneyland or some such thing during your vacation.

--You think that the best thing about summers is the reading you can do on your house deck or in your house in the central air.

--Your favorite characters are more endearing to you than are your favorite people.

--You realize that you like more characters than you do real people.  And you're okay with this.

--You think that e-readers of any kind are blasphemous.

--You have books by Wilkie Collins on your computer desktop.  Unread.

--You think that one of the best things about finishing a book is the review you'll write on Goodreads.

--Or for the blog entry, of course.

--You've considered wall-papering a wall with small posters of your favorite book covers.

--You can actually tell someone why the white bookcovers of the post-1990 Catcher in the Rye is a sinful, crying shame compared to the classic red carousel horse and NYC skyline of the original.  And you sound like a lunatic doing so, and don't care.

--After you've recently shelved literally hundreds of books into your new library, someone says to you, "Are you actually keeping all of those?"  You say, "Yes," and don't realize their incredulity until over an hour later.

--You've been in minor branches of public libraries with fewer books than you have in your house.

--You have five favorite genres.

--One of your favorite places in Manhattan is the New York Public Library.  And an actual wish is to have one that's just as beautiful, if not a little smaller, in your house.

--You have three different editions of Shakespeare's Complete Works.  And you're not getting rid of any of them.

--You realize you have more books in your home than some of the more poor schools do in their classrooms, their bookrooms and their libraries.  Combined.

--You have over 30 bulleted reasons about why you have too many books, including this one.

The Last Ten Days--City Hall and Estate Sales

 Photo: Old glove from keymancollectibles.com.  The one I bought looks much like this one.  This one is in better shape, but mine's older.  Yeah, yeah, condition is everything, I know.

Sorry I've been gone for the past ten days.  I was really ill, and my PC is under plastic upstairs due to the constant (but very necessary and very well-done) renovations the last ten days, and plus I'm a bit behind on work for the job that pays The Man.  But some things have been happening these last few weeks, so here are a few quick shots:

--I went to an estate sale today, which is a great place to pick because the company gets paid more to get rid of everything and not as much to get the most they can for everything.  The family hiring the estate sale company usually just wants the house cleared so they can sell the house, and so they usually don't care how much they get for things.  The company will say prices are final on the ads, but that's never the case.  So the long and short of it is that I got about 100 CDVs and Cabinet pictures (pics from between 1870 and 1890), eight baseball bats from the 20s - 40s, a foot-powered scooter from between 1895-1905, a baseball glove that I confidently place in the 1910s (and maybe as early as 1905)--all for a hundred bucks.  I could sell each of the 100 CDVs and Cabinet pics for $5 a piece on Ebay or Etsy (which would be underselling many of them) and thereby make my $100 investment into $500, and that's just with the pics.  The bats would go for $15 to $50 apiece, as soon as I can date them, and the scooter would go for $25 to $40 by itself as well.  And the glove would go for about $35 to $50 because it is clearly very old.  All of these things are very highly collectible.  I might even keep the scooter for myself; I rode it up and down my street earlier.

The key is to bundle and buy in bulk, and then sell them piecemeal.  Not very sexy, perhaps, but this will help keep me busy during those winter nights and days, and make decent part-time money, too.

You would think that a man who had collected bats and a glove from the 1910s and 1920s, and who had a book about collecting old, vintage baseball cards, would've had old, vintage baseball cards.  But there were none, and I asked the people running the estate sale, and they'd never seen any there.  I left them my card and begged them to call me if they found any there.  If you've got bats and a glove from the teens and twenties, and if you've got a book about collecting baseball cards from the 1910s and 1920s, then you should have baseball cards from the 1910s and 1920s.  But, no.  Hmmmm.....I suspect someone from the family, or a neighbor, or someone, walked off with those.  I would've spent a very large sum for those.  I hope they call.

--My new favorite person is Jan, from my town's City Hall.  I needed to get a copy of a deed for a property of mine, and since this house is being renovated, I couldn't find the deed here.  (Truth be told, I probably wouldn't have found it had the house not been under renovations.)  So I had to face City Hall, which can be an arduous experience, not to mention an afternoon killer.  At work, I looked up my town's City Hall website and I found a department with a name that sounded like it might be what I needed.  I sent an email to the department, in essence saying what I was looking for, and mentioning that I hoped this was the right place to ask for it, and if not, where was the right place, and what did I have to do?  Here's the email response I got (sit down while you're reading this):

Good morning Mr. Belanger,

I’ve printed a copy of your deed for you and will leave it in the main office (Recorder of Deeds) in the main town hall.  It’s ready for you, so you may pick it up this afternoon.  There is no charge, I printed it as a courtesy for you.

Best,

Jan

Archives Clerk
My response to that (after I picked myself off the floor):

That's awesome!  Thank you so much!  I really appreciate it.   And now Jan the Archives Clerk's response to that: Most welcome sir! Is this woman awesome, or what?  I don't care if she's a 70-year old, wrinkled and frail-thin woman working part-time or volunteering at City Hall, I'm finding out who this woman is, and I am marrying her.

How I Almost Got Beaten by the Salvation Army Guy

photo: The Salvation Army shield, from its Wikipedia page

I had a successful yard sale this past Saturday.  I very impulsively decided to have one for many reasons psychological and emotional, but in the end it came down to needing more space in here.  I'm fortunate to live in an area that is inundated every weekend with yard sale fanatics, so all I have to do is post a few signs on the major roads that lead to the peninsula I live on, and then on the side streets to lead them to me.  I don't even have to advertise on Craig's List or anything.  A neighbor was coincidentally having one at the same time, so we told our customers to check the other sale out.  So a few interesting tidbits from this:

--If you're more interested in getting rid of the things, and less interested on making a huge profit, the best thing to do, from my experience, is to not put a price on anything (it's okay to price any huge, expensive items you might have)--but also don't let anything go for free.  If it's free, people will think it's junk.  If it's twenty-five cents, people think they're frugal and getting a bargain.  This is what I did, with most items selling for between $.25 and $2, and at the end I just had one SUV trip to the local Salvation Army store.  This was a unique experience in of itself, which I'll get into later.

--My friend was amazed at the things people bought.  He kept saying: "I would have just thrown that away."  But it's true: People will buy anything.  Never underestimate the hoarding tendencies of many people.

--If you have a yard sale, take down your damn signs.  They litter up the telephone poles and trees, look like an eyesore, and make wary yard sale customers drive aimlessly around a neighborhood that had a yard sale a week or two ago.  I can't tell you how many times I drive around following old, undated signs.

--Speaking of old, undated signs, do not make a sign that says: "Yard sale today."  When you're looking at it, "today" could mean any day, not just today.  Of course, this wouldn't be a problem if people took down their damn signs.

--And take down the nails you use, too.  I almost couldn't nail up my signs because there were so many nails on the poles already, my nails couldn't dig into the wood.  In fact, I told my friend that I wouldn't need any nails because I knew there would be so many there already.  I was pressed for time, so I didn't have the time to re-use all of the nails there, but I did re-use many of them.

--Someone's complete Community Service Hours could be spent taking down yard sale signs and removing nails from telephone poles.

--Speaking of that, awhile ago, when I volunteered for my local Historical Cemetery Association, the woman asked me how many community service hours I needed to do.  Apparently it's kinda creepy that I'm interested in re-finding my city's many lost historical cemeteries.  (I do have one re-find to my credit.)

--For the second time in a year, I decided very impulsively to have a yard sale the next morning, and it turned out very well.  Last year, I decided firmly at 2 a.m. to have one.  So I put up the signs by 8, for a 9-2 yard sale, and was still bringing out stuff from my garage when I got mobbed at 8:30.  I had to shoo people out of my garage; I even had to raise my voice at one lady.  When I had to put up another sign that fell down, someone watching the sale called and said that people were rifling through boxes in my garage.

--This year I had the signs up and I was back at 8:58 and kept everything in the garage until I got back, and still managed to bring most things out before people came.  But I forgot things in the attic, garage and washroom that I meant to put out, so it looks like I can combine that stuff, with even more stuff, and have another one this coming Saturday.  It's too late to reserve tickets for the newest Batman movie, anyway.  And who wants to see that with a ton of loud teenagers and mobs of other people?  I'll see it in a few weeks.

--Okay, so the surreal Salvation Army story.  My friend and I took my SUV full of my unsold yard sale things to the local Salvation Army, where I donated literally thousands of dollars of things last year.  Now, I know these guys have had a tough time, and I believe everyone deserves a second (and third, and fourth, and...) chance.  I've certainly needed several dozen.  And I've always had a good experience here.  These guys are usually very helpful, and normally sociable.  Sometimes they seem a bit morose and downtrodden, but that's expected of an ex-addict having a bad day.  (You should see me early in the morning when I haven't had my iced coffee.)  But this guy was just plain mean.  Not even rude.  Mean.  And he simmered with bitterness and anger.  His face was a bit pock-marked, round, and with scruffy facial hair that unfortunately made him look even more bothered.  So I back up the car and open the trunk door, and instantly the guy says, "We can't just take everyone's junk."  And he said it meanly, threateningly.  I was a bit taken aback, but I said that was fine.  How about I unload the car, and whatever he doesn't want, I just load back in?  He shrugs.  So I unload the car, and he says, "We won't take that," to many things, but with a bite of control.  Whatever.  No problem.  I wondered about a few things, like Christmas Tree tinsel, unused, still in the unopened box.  Nope.  "We won't take that."  Gruff.  Angry.  Fine.  I'm able to unload about 75% of the stuff I brought--first time it wasn't 100%--and I go into the store to fill out the form as my friend puts the other 25% of the stuff back in the car.  My friend told me later that they had this conversation:

Salvation Army guy: "You guys from around here?"
My friend: "My friend lives around here.  I spent some time here, but I grew up in Providence.  Now I live in Pawtucket."
Salvation Army guy: "I grew up here.  But I lost everything.  Now I have to live in Providence."

My friend tells me that he said this last part so angry and bitterly that my friend just shut up on a dime and put the stuff in the car.  So I return and the guy's just glaring at me.  I close the door and head to my side of the car when this woman approaches the guy and says she needs help unloading things.  He sort of glares at her.  She goes back to her car, a little gingerly, then walks back towards us with a box in her hands while her son backs up the car.  In her hands I see an Ionizer.  With zero intent whatsoever (Seriously.  I was in the midst of yet another sinus infection and my neighbor and I had spoken about our many infections the same day), I say to my friend, "I get around twelve sinus infections a year.  I should get one of those."  The woman immediately says to me, "Do you want it?  It's just been in storage for five years."  I'm flabbergasted.  I know the rule: Once it's on the property, it belongs to the Army.  As it should be: You can't have cars of people picking through things near the receptacles and just taking what they want for free.  And knowing how pissy this guy was already, I said, "I don't know.  I don't want to create any problems."  She said, "It's no problem.  I haven't brought it over there yet.  [We were about twenty feet from the receptacle at that point, and the thing was clearly in her hands.]  And I'm offering it to you.  I'd feel better knowing it's going to someone specific I know will use it."  (She says this like the thing had been her husband's, or someone, who had just died; she was emotional about it.)  I ask her if she's sure.  She says Yes.  As she's handing it to me, the guy twenty feet behind us bellows: "Once it's on the property, it's ours!  You can't take it!"  The thing's in my hands now as I look at the guy.  He is simmering with rage, and red in the face.  Before I can say anything, he said to the woman, "Did he take that from you?"  She said, "No.  I gave it to him.  It's fine; I want him to have it."  I felt terrible, and said to the guy, "Seriously.  She gave it to me.  I'm a good guy, really.  I wouldn't steal from the Salvation Army!"  I'm mortified and babbling at this point.

Now here's the worst part.  In the meanest voice I've ever heard (and I've heard many), and I mean the meanest--not sarcastic; not angry; not frustrated; but almost erupting with a flatlining monotone voice, I mean seething, like Tom's early male owner in the Tom & Jerry cartoons--this guy says to me: "Okay, you can take it.  You can take all your stuff back, too."  This is way out of control, so I put the thing on the ground near my stuff and say, "Hey, no problem.  Take it.  There's no problem here."

But the woman is so upset at the guy that she says to us: "Meet me over there in the Benny's parking lot," and picks the ionizer up off the ground, right in front of the guy (and maybe had a few words with him), as we drove away.  My friend's astonished.  So we park where she said, far away from the guy, and she gives it to me, after I asked her if she was sure she wanted to, and she said the thing was hers and she could give it to whoever she wants.

And that's how I almost got assaulted by an embittered Salvation Army guy.