The One Wherein I Flash You
Alright, so I pimped the bot & blog out on reddit, and got some traffic, which means someone I don’t personally know may actually be reading this. Better make it worthwhile… Man, the pressure is too much, I give up. Phew. Now that that’s over with, let’s take a look at the goods:
A lovely group photo of all the packages this time. I think this is the format we’re gonna stick with, because individual photos of envelops is tedious. It turns out packages aren’t as fun as the things contained within! I also noticed that a lot of people never actually looked at any of the posts, so I’ve put the cutoff point just past the image, to entice them in. Who wouldn’t want to know what’s inside the mysterious envelopes? Who can resist? Not me, that’s for sure! Not you either, apparently. Sucker. You may also notice a pen; I didn’t win that pen, though. The pen is there as a size reference. Are pens universal? Ah well, better than the nothing I was using before. Baby steps. Let’s check out the first thingy!
I’m not sure what the hell that is, a baggie of.. something. Can you smoke it? The answer is yes, yes you can, because you can smoke many things, but you really shouldn’t smoke these. Let’s zoom in:
Seeds! “ZINNIA SEEDS – POLAR BEAR WHITE 25 FRESH ANNUAL SEEDS” to be precise. Instructions printed on the little baggy and everything. Maybe I should stick ’em in a pot, add a little color to the pictures in the future. White is a color. White is all colors. Look it up. I used to help my Grandma plant flowers when I was younger, had a wicked green thumb. Few pills cleared it right up. Price: $0.99. For the seeds, not the pills. Moving swiftly along…
Another little baggie of… things! You probably shouldn’t smoke these either. The customs form declares them to be Beads, let’s take a closer look:
They kind of look like fishing weights to me, but I’m not going to argue with the seller, who calls them “120 Metallfarbe Doppel-Loop Verschlüsse Verbinder schmuckteil basteln TN0012”. That could still say fishing weights. Let’s hit up Google translate: “120 metallic paint double-loop closures connector tinker some schmuck TN0012”. That clears that up! I’m actually not sure how the bot ended up buying these. They appear to be in a German category, “Möbel & Wohnen > Hobby & Künstlerbedarf > Perlen & Pailletten” and they were 0.99 EUR when they were purchased. I ended up having to filter out foreign currency auctions after this, because the third party bidding software I’m using doesn’t pull the US amount for the final auction, and I didn’t want to have to handle some kind of crazy currency dance. Sadly this will probably mean no more Perlen & Pailletten in the future, but I think I have all the Perlen & Pailletten I’ll need for some time. Price: $1.28 USD (at the time). Next!
Screen protectors! There’s lots of these things on eBay, for anything you can think of that has a screen, and probably some things that don’t. These are for the Nintendo 3DS, apparently, and if they have any features, I’m at a loss to tell you about them, because the package isn’t in English. Which is odd, because the shipping location listed in the auction was “ca, United States”… Maybe they’re bilingual, let’s check the other side:
Yep, still not english. Looking closer, it does say it ships via “Economy Shipping from outside US”, although the return address said Kentucky. So… yay eBay! “Video Game LCD Screen Protector For Nintendo 3DS”, nice and straightforward. Price: $0.11. Less than the stamp it took to mail them! On to the last thing, the non-envelope package, I know you’re as excited to see it as I was!
A book! A highly reflective book! Seriously, the cover was made of some kind of outer space alloy. “Family Trade by James Carroll (1983, Paperback, Reissue)”. Not bad condition, the spine was pretty beat up, but that just shows it was well loved. Or hated. One of those. I’d love to say I’ll give it a read, but with all the blogging I’m doing, I just don’t have the time. The sacrifices I make for my ego. Price: $0.99.
So there we go! Once again, I’m behind by a few things, so expect another post tomorrow. Hopefully not everything will be blindly reflective next time around. (I Flash You, get it? Puns truly are the highest form of wit. Whoo boy.) I really need to grab a tripod, or learn how to use my camera, so I can stop using the flash but still keep things from looking like they were flying past the camera at mach 9. Thanks for reading, whoever you are, and please comment if you have any feedback, no matter how inane or full of praise it may be!
I just found this blog. It’s so very awesome. Keep it up!
Thanks, I plan to!
I don’t know if it’s the late night soda drink I just had…. but this particular post had me laughing from beginning to end. Don’t be fooled, though, I started reading your blog about 3 hours ago. Can’t stop now!
I appreciate the feedback, for sure. Although I aim to please, I sometimes wonder if I’m just pleasing myself. Nice to hear that isn’t the case!
Totally not just yourself. I’m finding this amusing (and the wife is insisting I code up a similar bot :) )
The paillen are pearls you put on a bracelet and it makes some kind of sound.
Schmuck means Jewellery in German if it helps. Actually schmuckteil means Jewellery pieces.