The site enables people to trade all manner of goods, absolutely anything you have lying around or might want to cook. If somebody likes what you posted, they send you a message and the bartering begins.
This was my first post:
Posted by Michael Murray
Toronto Division
Genuine Sialkot Pro Field Hockey Stick
Made in India, this vintage field hockey stick is a real gem! Nicknamed “Sally,” it was used by high school Goddess Victoria Reid during the season that saw her team, The Lisgar Lancers, win the Ottawa city championship in 1983. Victoria scored a record 36 goals with Sally!
The stick, which feels solid and sure in the hands, is also rumoured to have been used as a murder weapon. So if you’re looking for a little bit of security around the house and are still unsure of guns, this is what you’re looking for, as the stick’s hooked nature guarantees that irregular and jagged wounds would be cut into any invader. I hate to give up this wonderful piece of history, but my wife insists, believing it to be cursed. Ha, ha. Let me assure you, Sally is not cursed, just brutally effective, as many squirrels and at least one homeless man rooting through our garbage for empty wine bottles can attest. It is also important to note that Sally never has conversations with me. I don’t get “different” around her, and you won’t get “different” around her either, just stronger, more violent and a little unpredictable!
All reasonable trade offers will be considered. #Sports #Hockey #Vintage #Murder #Weapon #ProbablyNotHaunted
Response from Dealer Dave
Toronto Division
Bullshit.
I don’t believe your story for one second, but I need something to use for my son’s birthday pinata and your field hockey stick sounds like it would work. I have a Chinese bootleg CD of the U2 album How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, would that work?
Response from Michael Murray
Toronto Division
No, a crappy U2 CD will not do.
Do you have any wine?
Response from Dealer Dave
Toronto Division
No, I am not giving you wine for a piece of wood. I have a CD by the Tea Party, would you prefer that?
Response from Michael Murray
Toronto Division
No deal!! Sally says no!!!
Response from Cindy84
Toronto Division
Your dog is super cute! I also like your carpet. Would you be willing to trade either one of those instead of the creepy stick? I have gift cards…
Response from Make$2000AWeekFromHome
Toronto Division
I’m impressed, I have to admit. Seldom do I come across a blog that’s both equally educative and interesting, and without a doubt, you have hit the nail on the head. The problem is an issue that too few folks are speaking intelligently about. I’m very happy I found this during my search for something relating to this.
Response from Redrum
Toronto Division
Interested in the weapon.
Do you know what became of Victoria Reid?
Response from Michael Murray
Toronto Division
Heard it was a suicide, but even after all these years there’s still a lot of controversy surrounding her death. Th CBC is said to be making a mini-series on it called, “The Possession of Victoria Reid.”
Sometimes she comes to me in my dreams.
Response from Redrum
Toronto Division
I work at a packing plant and have meat to trade. Lots of ground beef. One pound of ground beef for the weapon?
Response from Michael Murray
Toronto Division
I’m worried about food safety. I got Listeria once and will not go through that again. Do you have any wine? Sally likes you and wants to serve you.
Response from Redrum
Toronto Division
I have a half-full box of Jackson Triggs Merlot.
Response from Michael Murray
Toronto Division
Deal!
]]>He was one of the boys I grew up with in Ottawa, and he was a great guy. Modest, kind and good at everything, he was well liked, the sort of person you always wanted around. Parents watching him grow felt proud, confident and happy in the future that was unfolding before him. He was like all the other pure and wonderful boys we grew up amidst, and whenever I saw him, I saw the happy reflection of all of us who grew up together in that neighbourhood, smiling back.
He jumped from the Alexandra Street bridge last week, falling 120 feet before landing in about six feet of water and then pulling himself to the rocks along shore. Using the word miracle, the police officers said that they had never seen a person survive such a high fall into such shallow water.
The Alexandra Street bridge, which was built around 1900, connects Ottawa to the city that lies directly across the river, Hull, Quebec. I cannot express to you just how important Hull was to teenagers growing up in Ottawa during the 1980’s. At the time, Ottawa was a very conservative, even timid place. There were rules that governed everything and an almost soviet conformity enveloped the city like a cloud. However, in Hull the drinking age was 18, you could buy beer at corner stores and bars stayed open until 3:00am. We flocked there by the thousands, crossing the Alexandra bridge like we were a part of some migratory pattern.
For me and my friends, sheltered, underaged kids who only knew optimistic, suburban existences, the unfettered liberty of Hull was a small glimpse into what we imagined the realm of adults could be. It was a place full of potential. Every time we crossed that bridge we felt that a “first” might take place– the narratives of our lives just then beginning to take shape. It was a never-never land where we could dip our feet into the future, while still returning home each night to the safe nest our parents had constructed.
To this day the bridge has the steely permanence of an antique.
Cantilevered, it vibrates when you pass over it, as if an echo of all the trains that once crossed. Our transits, often by foot or bike, were always made at night. With the water in view beneath the cross-hatched metal and the wind, now feeling slightly alien and hostile pushing at you, a feeling of vulnerable and solitude presided. With untethered blackness above and beneath, and the ghostly hum of the bridge moving up through your body, you were in limbo, as if moving from one realm into the next.
It was here on the Alexandra bridge, perhaps feeling lost between these two worlds, where our dear friend decided to step off. He did not do it at night, but during the prosaic, naked day. What was taking place in his heart at that moment must have been indescribably mysterious and painful, a motivating state of mind that’s bleakly impenetrable to the rest of us, who only by the grace of God, have remained on solid ground.
May he forgive himself everything, and find peace in this living world where he will be forever loved. And may he always remember that he pulled himself to shore. The miracle of his life was of his own creation.
]]>SWORD FOR SALE—WARNING—MIGHT BE HAUNTED–$150
This sword is from the 1700s. I got it at an antique store in my memaw’s hometown back in 1984. The person who sold it to me told me to be careful because there is a 90+% chance that it is cursed. Since it’s been in my house my life has descended into pure chaos. My knitting group came over and they all said they could feel a strange energy in my sword room (I have a collection of over 100 swords. This is my only haunted sword). Since I got this sword, about 3 times a week a crucifix will fall off of my wall for no reason. I am 76 years old. I cannot have this cursed item in my house anymore. Please take it off my hands!!
This is my response:
I am very intrigued by your sword, but unfortunately the $150 asking price is far too much. Instead, I would like to offer a trade. I have two unique and haunted pieces that I think might exceed the value of your haunted sword, and which you might then trade or sell, thus allowing you to acquire more non-haunted swords for your knitting bunker.
The Haunted Painting
It is called The Green Man and is about 8 feet by 5 in size. It darkly looms. I had a heart attack in its presence, and then fell into a black and murderous depression as I sat beneath it working on my graphic novel about a green man who goes on a killing spree. If it wasn’t for Netflix, I’m not sure I would have pulled out of that spiral. The paintings bold use of colour and the ominous unsettling mystery that it projects, one that seems everywhere at once, but mostly, in a threatening way, above and behind you, ensures that the Green Man will always make for an amazing, if chilling conversation piece.
The Haunted Squirrel
The squirrel is called Mr. Peanut and he was found hanging from a hydro wire in front of our apartment. It was as if he had just committed suicide. I have no idea why, but I was compelled to bring his carcass down and stuff it. Since then, he has lived on our mantelpiece, but occasionally we find him in different parts of the apartment as if transported by mystical elements we do not understand. For instance, I once woke up from a nightmare yelling ‘SKY DEATH’ with Mr. Peanut on my throat. It’s truly unique piece.
I will trade you both the haunted painting and the haunted squirrel for the haunted sword. It is a good deal.
Let me know.
Michael Murray
]]>One of the repeating themes I’ve encountered is that people cannot believe that somebody who made them laugh so much could possibly have such a sad and broken interior. There’s an obvious lack of empathy in such a position, in that these people cannot see a life beyond the surface one that they so greedily absorbed. To be a celebrity in our culture is to give up one’s interior, becoming a vessel in which the schizophrenic projections of the public push everything else out. It must get awfully stormy in there, and in the end celebrities exist as sacrifices to our need, the actual person (or self) tossed beautiful and adored into the raging, all-consuming volcano of our culture.
Williams himself said that in America they really do mythologize people when they’re dead, and prophetically, he’s now being mythologized. His death means whatever we need it to mean. For some people, it’s a clarion call to awaken the public to the insidious dangers of depression, to others it’s about the dark weight that many comedians carry with them on stage. Everybody seems to have something very real and personal that they feel in his death, but usually end up cannibalizing Williams in an attempt to find some sort of meaning, and perhaps even redemption, in this small, solitary and very sad act.
However, the one thing that seems universal is that everybody is declaring Robin Williams a genius. Although I am of the right age to have experienced the full sweep of his career, I was never much of a fan. I mean, I don’t have a favourite Robin William moment, and like a lot of people I saw a riot of pathology in his performance rather than genius. His need was so great and his onslaught so relentless, that I found it completely exhausting to watch him. He drained me, and I just wanted to hug him into stillness, letting him know that everything was going to be okay, even if it wasn’t.
His comedy was based on recognition rather than content. Middle-of-the-road and Baby Boomer friendly, he was an unfiltered convulsion of mimicry and pop culture references. He was elliptical, swinging from one character to the next before you could think about what he was actually saying, apparently being content in simply getting a reflex response from the audience instead of a contemplated one. You laughed because you recognized his characters, not so much because of what they were saying. It was nostalgic, even old-fashioned, and in a weird way I think Williams would have made for a fantastic silent movie star, so exaggerated was his stage personality. Creating the manic illusion of edge, Williams was safe and not very challenging. He had kind and vulnerable eyes, and always seemed to want to please us, for us to feel good about ourselves, and I think we loved him for that rather than his talent.
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R: Oh Pickle, I just saw the worst thing!!
R: A man jumped from the Lawrence overpass onto the Don Valley Parkway and I saw his body, pinned underneath a pick-up truck. Just horrifying.
R: Sorry?
R: Oh, I see, your lunch was horrifying.
R: How sad for you that you had to eat the leftover lasagna I made the other night.
R: You’re very brave to endure such brutality.
R: You’re right, I should call it Pink Slimeasagna.
R: Regardless, imagine being behind the wheel of that truck, seeing a man jump and then running over him? Good God, that person will never be the same.
R: No, I don’t mean the person who jumped.
R: The driver.
R: No, I am NOT taking video of it!!
R: It would be awful for the driver to live with that, it would be a life-altering event.
R: Ha-ha. Yes, I’m sure that my leftover Pink Slimeasagna was a life-altering event, too. You’re very funny today, dear.
R: You had a coffee, didn’t you?
R: Sorry?
R: Well, I had never thought about it until now.
R: I suppose driving over a person who had just committed suicide would be more traumatic than seeing a UFO abducting a cow for probing.
R: How would you know?
R: Oh, that’s right, you have lucid dreams!
R: And in these lucid dreams you see UFO’s and drive over suicides?
R: I see.
R: Right, right, Night Time is Mike Time.
R: Did you really have that printed on a T-shirt in high school?
R: Very cool, I bet you were very popular with the ladies.
R: Sure.
R: Yes, I know, you were good at sports, too.
R: Now tell me, back in high school when Night Time was Mike Time, did you wear a Breathe-Rite strip to bed?
R: A Lucid Dreaming sleep mask.
R: It all makes sense now, you know.
R: Me?
R: I could dunk a basketball in high school.
R: And I had many lovers, some of them black, black as the night, Pickle.
R: I’m not being racist. I’m just stating a fact.
R: I never told you this, but I had a baby, a black baby.
R: Because I gave her up for adoption.
R: I was young, that’s why.
R: Her name is Jada.
R: Her father?
R: We haven’t seen one another in months, but we’re Facebook friends.
R: I think he knows about you.
R: Yeah, I think so. Maybe.
R: Not sure.
R: What does he do?
R: Well, he won Survivor: Fiji, but he’s really an entrepreneur, philanthropist, producer and advertising executive.
R: He looks a bit like Marvin Gaye.
R: But that’s all in the past!
R: You wrote a letter to Erin Collins from Survivor: Thailand?
R: You admired her grit?
R: Did she ever write back?
R: Oh, that’s too bad, Pickle.
R: Tell me about some of your high school sweethearts!
R: Oh, well I’m sure playing the field was a very good strategy for you.
R: Yeah, keep your options open.
R: What was high school like in the 50’s, anyway?
R: Okay, see you soon, xox
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