The Adventures of LitBoy: Bill Brent's Blog

COMMERCE REDUX, or REDUCTIO AD COMMERCIUM

So I had a rather radical response to the events surrounding THIS POST, and I thought I would follow up a bit.

I was all set to go to Traffic Court to fight my speeding ticket, using the strategy outlined HERE and HERE.

But then I got cold feet.

Well, not really. I mean, yes, I was scared enough that I was rehearsing at least some bit of my court appearance on a daily basis for weeks. And then I realized it was keeping me from writing. A lot of my creative thought was diverted into how I would stage what would probably end up being a two-minute appearance at the local police station in the town that issued the ticket.

I had backup strategies, even. I was all set to spend an afternoon touring and photographing signage for all the other school zones I could find in Puna and South Hilo districts, thus creating documentary evidence that the stretch of Hawaii State Highway 139 where I was busted did not display sufficient posting for a school zone. Aside from one easily missed speed limit sign, there is NO signage depicting kids in a crosswalk, the words "SCHOOL ZONE", or any such warning. No blinking yellow light. None of that.

But then I learned from the District Court here that I could not subpoena the traffic cop until after the judge had heard my case. In other words, I was not allowed to demand that the officer who had clocked me and pulled me over be brought in for questioning and made accountable, with full documentation supporting his evidence against me, until after an uninvolved third party (the judge) had most likely already ruled against me, based on my testimony at his hearing, which would be, in effect, bearing witness against myself. So I thought, "This system really sucks! And I could be writing instead."

And then I got the wild idea to put away the minivan.

In other words, to simply pay the ticket without:

- enduring bumper-to-bumper traffic on the one-lane highway leading to my appearance at the Kea'au police station on a Friday morning between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m.,
- spending an afternoon taking photos (and then an evening selecting, cropping, and printing the pics via computer),
- continuing to waste valuable writing time rehearsing my appearance,
- and, most importantly, suffering further anxiety and anger attacks.

It embarrasses me a bit to admit that I'd been having those attacks. I wasted my partner's time, and my weekly consultation time with my writing coach at least once on this stupid ticket matter. I tried detachment, afformations, conscious breathing, taking naps, going for walks, and still I felt rage and panic. Helpless anger. So maybe that's a personal limitation, but it's well within the range of ordinary human behavior.

A lot of my outrage had to do with the outrageous fine. If I had been knowingly breaking the speed limit, I don't think I would have felt quite so incensed at having to pay a $172 fine for a harmless infraction. I didn't damage anything or endanger anyone. This was a cut-and-dried case of a local gendarme ringing up the register for the county coffers. Based on my monthly disability income of less than $800, which goes for my rent and utilities, as well as occasional incidentals like, um food, this was a heavy hit to the checkbook.

Garaging the minivan, on the other hand, would allow me to save:

- roughly $100 on the vehicle insurance, given as a refund for the current six-month period,
- roughly $500 per year on fuel costs (averaging $40 per month; no, I don't drive much),
- the annual $500 for my bare-bones vehicle insurance before the inevitable rate increase;
- the annual $100 DMV vehicle fee,
- any risk of an accident in the vehicle.

So that's a savings of roughly $1,200 per year, based on my meager use of the minivan.

The real reason to fight a ticket, as many of us know, is to avoid taking the hit to one's insurance rates. Since I have such bare-bones coverage, mine would not have been too bad, but still would have cost me an additional estimated $330 over the next three years. Plus, the infraction appears on the insurance industry's database for a total of five years, which increases my rates if I want to switch insurance carriers, or need to, such as in the event of a move to a non-covered state.

Now, unlike many of us, I have the luxury of living with someone who drives, has a working vehicle, and already has me listed as a secondary driver on the insurance policy. So it's just a matter of my continuing to minimize my driving trips, pitching in for gas or the like now and then, and I'm covered.

So I paid the ticket at the District Court office in Hilo, using my credit card (might as well rack up a few air miles), just after the card's monthly closing date, so at least I'm getting the maximum cash flow possible before the pay-off hits. Meanwhile, I've already banked my policy cancellation refund check from the insurance company, which covers half the ticket's cost. The same day I got that check, I also made roughly $60 from unrelated, unexpected income. So, in other words, the fine is more or less covered.

The real lesson here extends beyond my rather trivial tale of woe. It's really about how each of us does business with the world, and how you can become more aware of the real cost of doing your business. Better awareness for you equals better choices on how you spend your money.

Now, I'm not saying all of us should rush out and garage our cars – for most of us, that would still be impractical – but it's important to recognize the hidden costs of ownership. Most of us, I believe, give far more of our paycheck to banks and insurance companies than we need to.

You see, the real cost-of-living increases for most Americans over the past three or four decades have come NOT in the area of consumer goods, but in two major areas: INSURANCE (health insurance, mostly) and HOUSING (mortgage payments, largely). You can find out about that HERE, on YouTube, in an informative presentation about the collapse of the American middle class. [NOTE: You can skip the first six minutes, since that is the introduction of the speaker and other formalities.] The speaker is Elizabeth Warren, who teaches contract law, bankruptcy, and commercial law at Harvard Law School.

- Health coverage goes to an insurance company (before I bit the bullet in 2003 and declared disability, I was paying about $600 a month in group coverage), and
- Mortgage payments go to a bank (in my case, I pay housing rent to someone who has a monthly mortgage to pay).

If Americans plan to make it through the next decade or so of economic woes with any semblance of our current quality of life intact, then we need to start looking now at how to cut back on ALL our costs of living, not just the obvious ones. Garaging my minivan seems a bit extreme, but so far, I've been making do without one for a month, and it hasn't significantly affected my quality of my life. On the other hand, once I factor in my estimated rate increase, I'm saving about $1,500 per year by NOT running a vehicle I was only getting minimal use from anyhow. That may not seem like much to someone who considers himself in the middle class, but for someone with an annual disability income of about $10,000, that is huge. I've just slashed my annual cost of living by 15 percent!

That is 15 percent per annum that I can now grow a bit of interest on, and which will enable me to travel from Hawaii to the mainland, whenever I need to. Yes, it would be easy to settle for being "poor," and to state that there is nothing I can do about it. But that's a defeatist perspective. I'd rather reframe my situation and state, "Okay, I'm going to adopt a Southeast Asian Immigrant Mentality." Here are some examples of how I am doing that, and so can you:

- keep rent cheap;
- cut expenses to the bone (especially any recurring ones);
- buy fresh or grow your own (it's healthier and cheaper);
- stay home (don't spend money on "keeping up appearances");
- keep your work ethic strong;
- develop your skills so you can make better money;
- remember that your opportunities here are better than elsewhere;
- eschew instant gratification for the promise of a better tomorrow;
- don't pay retail; shop in the discount markets when it saves you money;
- keep money circulating within your own community.
- and save some for a rainy day, preferably in an interest-bearing account, where it's not too easy to withdraw.

Remember when we used to call this Yankee frugality?

It's worth thinking about.

---

Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

[this page last updated: 2008.06.01, 2:55 a.m. Hawaii time]

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

20.00 / $200.00 (10.0%)

This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars and my annual goal of $200. Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution on my next blog post.

All original materials here on LitBoy.com (writing, photos, drawings, graphics, etc.) belong to Bill Brent. If you want to re-use something here, please ask. Higher resolution images are available.

But why bother with the coins...

...when they could just build the pawn shops right into the gas stations?

It's so much more efficient.

To view this video, you must: CLICK HERE.

---

Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

[this page last updated: 2008.04.16, 8:50 p.m. Hawaii time]

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. Keeping it online costs me $200 per year. That's before paying me for my writing, photography, or anything else I do here. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

20.00 / $199.90 (10.0%)

This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars (after the funds processor takes its cut). Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution on my next blog post.

All original materials here on LitBoy.com (writing, photos, drawings, graphics, etc.) belong to Bill Brent. If you want to re-use something here, please ask. Higher resolution images are available.

OUR SAD COMMERCE

Earlier this week, I spent the entire day, and a fair amount of the night (blessed be insomnia) doing online research to debate a speeding ticket I got in mid-March.

When A Highway Is Not A Highway

I got my ticket on Hawaii State Highway 139, better known as Old Keaau-Pahoa Road. The posted speed limit on that road is 25 MPH, a fact that is easy to miss when you turn off Highway 130 (the main highway, speed limit 55MPH), drive around a 20 MPH bend (see picture 1), and onto a wide straightaway that looks very much like a busy, mixed-use street in California that would have a speed limit of at least 35 MPH. (See picture 2.) In fact, it is difficult to drive on Highway 139 at 25 MPH. In order to maintain such a slow rate of travel on this road, one must use the brake pedal nearly constantly to compensate for the inherent forward momentum of most vehicles.

A school sits quite a distance back from Highway 139, and is therefore hard to see. The single northbound speed limit sign is small and white, and likewise terribly nondescript. By contrast, there are two speed limit signs in the southbound direction, and they are much harder to miss.

The weather was dry and clear. My time of travel was mid-morning. There was not a pedestrian in sight along the entire corridor. Thus, no one was in danger from my rate of travel, which was commensurate with every other car on my side of the highway.

Of course, none of this common-sense judgment counts when you are cited for a speeding infraction. Issuing a ticket for a non-harmful moving violation is an example of an absolute remedy. (Click HERE to see what I think of those.)

So what we have here is the classic speed trap. Now, most of us have been caught in one of these at some point in our driving history, and we've wished that the attending officer would have a heart and let us off with a warning. No such luck, in my case. I was issued a ticket  for driving over 40 in a 25 MPH zone.

And he got me, fair and square, right?

No. It's completely covert, and completely unfair. The whole vehicle industry is in on the chase. It's all about the money. This sad commerce encompasses everyone from the municipalities to the judicial system to the insurance corporations to the car manufacturers to the law enforcement agencies.

You and I, whom they treat as people (i.e., citizens and customers) when they want to sell us their products or collect our taxes, are actually, in spirit, the pigeons in their sights, the dumb clucks in their slaughterhouse, the innocent ducks in their shooting blinds. Pulling over motorists like us, who have unknowingly run afoul of the law, and penalizing to the tune of $172 for a first offense, is unconscionable.

But that's not where it ends. According to my insurer, it will cost me an additional estimated $330 in increased insurance rates over the next three years if I do not fight this ticket and prevail. So now we are over $500 in total losses.

How cold. But them's the choices.

A rather novel option, and an extreme one which I am likely to take regardless of the outcome, entails removing my plates from the vehicle and tendering them to the folks at Hawaii DMV. This allows me to cancel the policy altogether. It also uncomplicates my life yet again, because when I choose this option, no longer will I have to buy gas for this vehicle, pay its annual registration fee, finance its maintenance, or support Hawaii's hefty insurance premiums. I figure that this can save me roughly $1,500 over the next eighteen months. End of the chase.

So perhaps one absolute remedy deserves another. Any tax that is applied absolutely, regardless of income, is a REGRESSIVE TAX. This applies to the issuance of speeding tickets, a great example of how absolute power corrupts absolutely. When the remedy is handed down to us from on high, as if it were our heads on a platter, an absolute remedy is probably the only way to fight back – from the bottom up. Opt out.

But back to the present case. I have spent over twenty hours this week studying various defenses against the court's upholding the validity of this ticket. It would certainly be easier to pay the $172 and the increased insurance premiums, and get on with my life. For "my life," however, the total penalty is equal to one month's rent, which is also 60% of my monthly disability income.

Now, many people could not afford to take the time off work to go to court and fight this ticket, and their chances of prevailing would be slim at best. So perhaps I should be grateful for the "option" of disrupting my sleep over the next five or six weeks while I rehearse my day in court. Well, no. I'm not grateful for yet another "learning experience" that has nothing to do with safety and security, and everything to do with PREDATORY CONTROL

.

In fact, I was only on Highway 139 because I was running an errand as a favor for a family member. So much for good deeds, eh?

Nah. I'm not  really bitter, just wiser. Society's questionable institutions just keep pushing me further and further beyond the margins of ordinary social reality, and into a strange and lonely limbo. Fortunately, I am content for now to keep my own company. I am also lucky that our family has another vehicle I can use on the rare occasions henceforth when I need to venture out of my reclusive residence here in the forest primeval. So we'll go with that for a while and see how it works out.

Besides, one less car on the road means one less tiny contribution to the oil crisis, and global warming, or whatever you want to call it when GLACIER NATIONAL PARK is well on its way to losing its namesake glaciers and becoming merely a generic "National Park."

But I digress. The real point is, our society will have one less player in the sad game of commerce that passes for our authentic experience. Let the freeze-out begin. May the glaciers prevail

- - - - -

1. My related links:

   (a) UNCOMPLICATE MY LIFE, part 1

   (b) UNCOMPLICATE MY LIFE, part 2

2. Other related traffic citation links:

   (a) This page provides an introduction to laser technology, as used to clock moving vehicles. The TIPMRA site is broad, and apparently one of the few legitimate sites to help prepare a defense against a speeding ticket. Surf around a bit and read at least this and the next two pages. (TIPMRA is "armpit" spelled backwards; thus it's a play on the phrase "the long arm of the law.")

TIPMRA has a for-pay section as well. My own opinion is that TIPMRA has its bills to pay; however, if the basic information you need is widely available on the Web for free, then you should not have to pay for it. Buyers beware any emotionally based appeals to your pocketbook. You're in deep enough already, right?

- NOTE: I paid for what appeared to be the best of these fee-based services and was not impressed. I have since requested a refund of my $19.95. Most of these sites will also try to sell you a radar detector, which will do little if any good to protect you against a laser-emitting device. Plus, they can't really keep the information current and locale-specific anyhow, particularly for laser-based citations, as more and more states grant "judicial notice" to laser citations. ("Judicial notice" means: evidence beyond dispute). It's all spy versus spy, it all costs money, and thus it all will complicate your life. So why bother?

    (b) SPEED TRAP EXCHANGE is a site run as a service by the National Motorists Association (a fee-based membership organization starting at about $3 per month) where visitors can post what they believe are speedtraps. Check out SPEED TRAP LISTINGS to read up on speed traps in your area, listed by state, then click around on the rest of the site. NMA also keeps a blog, which you can read by clicking HERE.

- Read it and weep -- however, forewarned is forearmed.

P.S. "An ounce of prevention" advice: If you get a traffic ticket, start shopping around for competitive rates on your auto insurance. The insurance industry's databases are connected nationwide, so if one company knows you are looking, they all do. So if your insurer knows you are looking for a better deal, it may prevent them from increasing your rate.

---

Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

[this page last updated: 2008.03.30, 12:45 p.m. Hawaii time]

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. Keeping it online costs me $200 per year. That's before paying me for my writing, photography, or anything else I do here. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

20.00 / $199.90 (10.0%)

This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars (after the funds processor takes its cut). Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution on my next blog post.

WIN-WIN: Thinking My Way Outside the Economic Box of the American Artist / Entrepreneur

Want to make an easy $25 and help support my work?

Through October 30, Capital One, my savings bank, is offering $25 to anyone I refer using the following code:

AM3Y4KYDF

You can open a High Yield Money Market Account:

- online HERE,
- or by calling 1-800-555-4904

Simply provide the code AM3Y4KYDF when you open an account online or over the phone. I get $15 per referral, so actually, you get the better part of the deal! And CapitalOne pays a great rate on savings accounts regardless of balance, currently 5.00%. More details at: CAPITAL ONE .

Normally I would not make a commercial announcement like this via my blog or email newsletter list, but I have been extremely satisfied with my CapitalOne savings plan. Plus, at this point I am doing my darndest to think creatively about how to stay afloat in the current economy. So I don't mind trading a tiny bit of pride and running the risk of offending someone here in order to help make ends meet. We all know friends, family, and colleagues who've taken a hit. I have, too. So this is one small way I'm fighting back. I don't intend to do this kind of thing very often, but I've decided that Fall, starting this year, is going to be my annual fundraising drive.

Not to worry — I'm not in dire straits at the moment, but you know what they say about an ounce of prevention. And, as a disenfranchised artist in this culture (please note the clever double redundancy in that phrase), I am choosing to be proactive rather than reactive with regard to my financial situation.

Typically, the last year of a President's term is bad for the stock market. I have managed to save a couple hundred dollars each month over the past several years by starting a ShareBuilder plan. Right now, I'm looking at cashing out a couple of very small but somewhat volatile investments while the market is still strong, and placing the proceeds in my savings plan.

Meanwhile, I'm doing my best to paddle against the stream in other ways:

- I'm clearing space by donating items to my local thrift stores and selling the more valuable stuff on eBay starting next week, HERE.

- I have been keeping a tiny little online bookstore at Amazon.com for five years now.

- I'm rewriting MAKE A ZINE!, my very first book (1997), for a second edition release next year from Microcosm Publishing.

- Royalties from my how-to book on sex are lagging a bit, and I'm taking up the slack by helping to produce a second volume of stories from the Literotica.com website.

- Paddle faster. I'm getting older, so I'm trying to work smarter, not harder. However, I just took on a small gardening job, just to make sure I can cover a bill or two.

And I'm still finding time to write:

- I'm a featured contributor to the seven-author anthology, ENTANGLED LIVES, just out on Alyson Publications. Details are HERE.

- I've just completed the first draft of a novel of modest length (about 50,000 words);

- and I'm about seventy percent into a second, longer novel.

- I've just signed a contract for a new short story to appear in a big-time erotic anthology. Due to the publishing industry's volatility nowadays, I don't pre-announce things anymore, so details on that to come, once it goes to press.

Here are some other ways to lend support:

- by donating via the Tip Jar to MY BLOG, RIGHT HERE. The Tip Jar is in the upper left hand corner.

- or by purchasing a gift from me for yourself or someone else via Amazon, HERE.

- or from me via eBay, HERE (opening by Sept. 20).

- And, of course, you can buy a copy of ENTANGLED LIVES, if that's something you would enjoy. You can send me a ten percent commission via Amazon by using THIS LINK.

Finally, any other Amazon.com purchases you make (aside from links via this blog) can also help me out. You can file the following code for future reference and paste it in at the end of whatever Amazon URL you are using:

/tag=billbrentauth-20

...and then reload the page, so that Amazon knows to send me a commission. (Now how's that for trickle-down economics?)

Thanks so much for reading this, and I truly appreciate your support of my work, whether or not you can help with the financial thing at this time.

---

Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

[this page last updated: 2007.09.13, 8:25 p.m. Hawaii time]

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. Keeping it online costs me $200 per year. That's before paying me for my writing, photography, or anything else I do here. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

53.06 / $199.90 (26.5%)

This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars (after the funds processor takes its cut). Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution on my next blog post.

All original materials here on LitBoy.com (writing, photos, drawings, graphics, etc.) belong to Bill Brent. If you want to re-use something here, please ask. Higher resolution images are available.

NOVEL-WRITING LOG: 16 days and counting

Someone wants to republish the first book I ever wrote in a brand-new second edition. This is extremely cool. I sure hope it happens.

Work is going okay. I am burnt-out on both novels at the moment, but of course that will pass, and meanwhile I continue to write anyhow. What, you thought I was a big baby or something?

Don't answer that.

But you could pay me an allowance anyway — why, the Tip Jar is here at the top of this page. [cue Dr. Frank N. Furter: "It's just a click to the left...."]

Meanwhile (as I'm holding my breath), here's the tally to date:

Bill's Left-Brain Novel,
as of July 1, 2007:

69,829 / 90,000 (77.6%)

Bill's Right-Brain Novel,
as of July 1, 2007:

23,685 / 50,000 (47.4%)

Just a reminder that my birthday is on the 17th of this month, and that's my self-imposed deadline for the first draft of at least one of these muthas.

---

Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

[this page last updated: 2007.07.02, 12:25 a.m. Hawaii time]

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. Keeping it online costs me $200 per year. That's before paying me for my writing, photography, or anything else I do here. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

43.55 / $199.90 (21.8%)

This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars (after the funds processor takes its cut). Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution on my next blog post.

All original materials here on LitBoy.com (writing, photos, drawings, graphics, etc.) belong to Bill Brent. If you want to re-use something here, please ask. Higher resolution images are available.

Do-It-Yourself Social Science: Pix taken not of, but by, celebrities

One way to grab a snapshot of current celebrity cachet might be to peek in on the current fundraiser for MixNYC, the annual queer film festival, and to browse the finishing prices for rolls of film taken with disposable cameras by various celebrities and artist types.

Anyone can see the auctions that are still running at eBay, but you will need an eBay account to log in and see the completed auctions.

Now, of course, we're not talking high-quality professional photography here, since these are disposable cameras. Thus, making some allowance for the potential porn-factor value of certain rolls, we can assume that the purpose of the purchase, aside from helping MixNYC to raise money, is to acquire an object handled by someone famous.

But the highest bid to date went to the roll taken by the current Guns 'n' Roses lead guitarist, at a whopping $2,024.00...

[or try clicking on this long URL version]

…suggesting that there is still nothing in America with a higher cool-factor than being a rockstar.

Even Norah Jones, the next-highest celebrity photographer with a completed auction as of this writing, fetched a measly $676.00!

You can click on eBay's "Price" column to see the totals in ascending or descending order. Enjoy!

---

Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

[this page last updated: 2007.06.09, 2:30 p.m. Hawaii time]

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. Keeping it online costs me $200 per year. That's before paying me for my writing, photography, or anything else I do here. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

43.55 / $199.90 (21.8%)

This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars (after the funds processor takes its cut). Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution on my next blog post.

All original materials here on LitBoy.com (writing, photos, drawings, graphics, etc.) belong to Bill Brent. If you want to re-use something here, please ask. Higher resolution images are available.

[Celebrities scheduled to participate in the MixNYC auctions include: Bobby Abate, Mark Adamo, Ricci Albenda, Joan Allen, D-L Alvarez, Gregg Araki, Penny Arcade, Miguel Arteta, Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Charles Atlas, Julie Atlas Muz, Franko B, Lindsay Beamish, YES Man Andy Bichlbaum, Cass Bird, Mary Birdsong, Bitch, Nayland Blake, World Famous *BOB*, Justin Bond, Kate Bornstein, Jay Brannan, Lynn Breedlove, AA Bronson, Kurt Busiek, Jonathan Caouette, Michael Carbonaro, Ryan Carnes, Walter Cessna, Patty Chang, Liz Collins, Dennis Cooper, Brady Corbet, Catherine Coulson, Cary Curran, Dangerous Muse, Paul Dawson, PJ DeBoy, Donna Deitch, Abby Denson, Morty Diamond, Todd Downing, Zackary Drucker, Bradley Eros, Barbara Ess, Patricia Field, Robin Finck, Jenna Fischer, Colton Ford, Eve Fowler, Eytan Fox, Jared Geller, Andrea Geyer, God-des & She, Anthony Goicolea, Julie Goldman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Sam Green, John Greyson, Kathy Griffin, James Gunn, Miss Guy, Fritz Haeg, Anne Hanavan, Bibbe Hansen, K8 Hardy, Neil Patrick Harris, Mary Harron, Tyger Hudson, Scott Hug, Phil Jimenez, Michael Formika Jones, Norah Jones, Lloyd Kaufman, Liya Kebede, Kaki King, Theo Kogan, Harmony Korine, Bruce LaBruce, Sophia Lamar, Lesbians on Ecstasy, Lez Zeppelin, Hanna Liden, Lovett/Codagnone, Michael Lucas, Guy Maddin, Ann Magnuson, Shelly Mars, Chan Marshall, Galadriel Masterson, Tara Mateik, Patrick McGuinn, Patrick McMullan, Tara McPherson, Jonas Mekas, Kenny Mellman, Leah Meyerhoff, John Cameron Mitchell, Slava Mogutin, Meredith Monk, Billy Name, Tommy O’Haver, Tara J. O’Neil, Jenni Olson, Tony Oursler, Joe Ovelman, Peter Paige, Joe Phillips, Pierrot, Amos Poe, Wakefield Poole, Spencer Product, Tracy Quan, Vanessa Renwick, Hunter Reynolds, Rob Roth, Viva Ruiz, Eve Salvail, Tura Satana, Kenny Scharf, Daniela Sea, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Eric Shanower, Linda Simpson, Casey Spooner, Annie Sprinkle, A. L. Steiner, Todd Stephens, Brent Stewart, Peter Stickles, Bec Stupak, Chris Tanner, Jeffrey Teuton, Mark Tewksbury, Scott Thompson, Betty Tompkins, Rose Troche, Guin Turner, Mark Tusk, Mark Verheiden, Jim Verraros, Rosa von Praunheim, Dee Wallace Stone, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Joe Westmoreland, Jake Yuzna, Zaldy, and Mirah Zeitlyn.]

WHY MY LITBOY.COM BLOG IS NOW A MARKETPLACE TOO

INTRODUCTION

I have a lot of fun and unusual vintage items, mostly authentic retro bowling collectibles from the Fifties through the Eighties, that I need to sell in order to make more space in my home.

I planned to re-open MY EBAY STORE this month, but then I remembered how eBay had bullied me with legal threats back in 2004, when I wanted to become a Trading Assistant. A "TA" is an experienced eBay seller, acting as broker and working on commission for folks who don't want to set up and run eBay auctions themselves. This gives many more sellers access to the eBay market and generates more revenue for eBay. So I chose the supportive URL, HoorayForEbay (dot com), but then eBay swiftly sent me a cease-and-desist order alleging trademark infringement and warning me not to use the URL. So I decided not to become a TA. Lose-lose.

While I have remained on eBay for the past three years, I felt blocked when I tried to re-start my store this month. So I went online this week, searching for "eBay alternatives," which led to blogs decrying eBay's controlling and manipulative tendencies. It was déjà vu all over again. Their bad behavior hasn't improved since 2004: with several rounds of big eBay fee hikes, "fixes" to things that weren't broken, and failure to fix things that were, eBay appeared worse than ever.

Then it came to me in a flash: eBay is the ultimate alcoholic parent.

— Forever greedy, self-absorbed, and unhappy with itself;
— Bent on punishing others for its own defects of character.

So I realized that, in good conscience, I cannot support eBay as a seller, at least not for now.

Here are a few examples:

WHY I'VE LOST THAT EBAY-LOVIN' FEELIN'

Craigslist would have been a logical alternative, but I live on the Big Island of Hawaii, and the Craigslist market here is teeny-weeny. So here we are. Welcome to my online store!

SO WHY HERE?

Logically, I'd put my odd and interesting vintage items up for sale on their very own website — yet even more logically, why not put them right here, where there is already an audience?

— I don't have enough stuff to justify the expense and maintenance of a merchant website (which would be best suited for mass merchandise anyhow).

— I'm not interested in starting up with one of the eBay competitors such as Yahoo! auctions, since now I'm looking for the exit door.

— I also thought about paying an extra monthly fee to start a second blog for my items, but this blog already keeps me busy. Plus, it has yet to earn steady enough Tip Jar contributions to be self-sustaining. So why not help subsidize this blog with a few sales?

And here we are.

HOW TO BUY MY STUFF

I have created a new subject tag here: FOR SALE. Just click on the "FOR SALE" tag in the sidebar to see what's currently up for grabs. Most of my items are priced between $30 and $100 — postage, insurance, and tracking included, so there are no hidden costs. You can be assured of my honesty, integrity, and extensive experience with online sales by visiting my eBay and Amazon Marketplace feedback pages. Here are those links:

[ eBay ]

[ Amazon ]

Then, if you see something with the "for sale" tag that you would like to own, please go to The LitBoy Store in the sidebar of this LitBoy.com blog to order, or for further details.

Then, if you still have questions, please post a comment to that item's blog entry. That will send me a private email, which I will reply to ASAP with easy instructions on how to complete your purchase.

(Since I moderate all comments to this blog, your comment will not ever post for public view. Transactions are private and completed via PayPal. (Yes, I know that PayPal is an eBay-owned company, but that's the best I can do for right now.) Or, by special arrangement, I can accept a US Postal Service money order if that works better for you.

Any questions? Have I left something out? Just holler, please.

Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

[this page last updated: 2007.12.19, 12:15 p.m. Hawaii time]

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. Keeping it online costs me $200 per year. That's before paying me for my writing, photography, or anything else I do here. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

80.99 / $199.90 (40.5%)

This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars (after the funds processor takes its cut). Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution on my next blog post.

All original materials here on LitBoy.com (writing, photos, drawings, graphics, etc.) belong to Bill Brent. If you want to re-use something here, please ask. Higher resolution images are available.

Pointless Remorse 101

"Some must die so that others may live in peace."

Has been true.

Will always be true?

Here's an extremely trivial example of this principle. Earlier today, I killed a mosquito that was flying around the living room. When I squashed it, it was juicy with my blood. I remembered one hand itching when I had awakened in the middle of the night, so it had probably gotten me by then.

Within ten minutes of squashing it, a second mosquito had bitten me. It is still at large.

It's just a consequence of the rain. Whenever it rains off and on a lot, the mosquito population increases.

Supposedly garlic is the best overall repellent. I looked for garlic capsules at the drug store the other day, but the only kind they had were rather expensive and, having taken them before, I wasn't convinced that they had really done me much good. Maybe the garlic content needs to be higher, or maybe I need to take a rather large amount of pills for the effect to occur. I'll go back to cooking with garlic, instead. I don't know if any of this really does any good, but at least if I'm doing something proactive to repel the mosquitos, then I don't feel as sorry for killing them.

So yeah, I admit to feeling guilty about killing mosquitos. I know it's irrational, since we have a mosquito zapper in the front yard that kills them all the time. But is it really completely irrational? It's unfortunate that they like to hover in doorways, where it's cool and dark, and then they waft into the house as we come and go. I don't like killing things. It seems wrong. Intellectually, I know that's just my illusion, or perhaps my subscription to our mass delusions about death in a death-averse culture. When a friend was visiting last week, she grabbed one out of the air, carried it outside, and set it free. This did not make me feel any better about killing them. On the other hand, neither did I change my ways.

On the other other hand, neither were they stinging her.

I know I'm spinning on this. Negative emotions and confusion tend to kick in when I'm under stress, and I've been under a lot of stress recently. Some of it has been rewarding and beneficial stress, but it is stress nonetheless, mostly due to being removed from my usual routine, doing a lot of driving around the Big Island, and thus being out in public far more than typically.

Plus, I've been sleeping in a dry, overheated room for the past two nights, and waking up with a headache. I took a long nap today, in a cooler room, which got rid of the headache. Furthermore, I haven't been eating as well as I could. It is hard for me to stop myself long enough to do good self-care when I go into hyper-creative mode, and I have been really hard at work on some intense writing projects since I resumed my regular schedule Thursday. Also, due to the frequent rains, it has been a bit hard to go for a cool-down walk.

And instead of my usual walk, I fairly well wasted over three hours Thursday evening, driving to and from Hilo amidst heavy rain and sitting in a rather dreary computer room with a volunteer from a local program designed to help low-income people prepare their taxes and claim the Earned Income Credit, which it turns out I do not qualify for because I have royalty income from book-writing, which the IRS classifies as passive rather than earned income. They should have caught this over the phone when the intake clerk scheduled my appointment, or at least within the first half-hour of my visit. It shouldn't have wasted two hours of two people's time to realize that I didn't belong in that chair. It was tough. I ended up guiding her a lot since her ability to navigate the browser, locate the forms she wanted, or find the right spots to fill in some amounts (in other words, various forms of logical and observational power that I take for granted) were, frankly, rather limited, especially after she made a mistake that lost a bit of data. She seemed to grow more self-conscious after that.

The night before that, I had insomnia, during which I posted a long reply to an email list that was, in retrospect, more of a writing exercise for myself, and probably a way of testing out how I seek guiding principles through my sometimes unorthodox form of logic. But it was probably a form of attention-grabbing as well, and I am wondering a bit about the wisdom of having done that.

That's a lot of "ands".

Oh, and the NPR station in Honolulu just interrupted its regular program (highly unusual) to announce that the current rain is stationary. So it will  sit overhead for a while. There are flash flood warnings. This may result in loss of Internet or electric power for part of the weekend, so I'm posting this now, while I still can, and then I will get some food. Maybe I'll fix something with garlic.

This is a bit off-topic, but everyone likes free money, right?

Make sure you claim your $30 to $60 Phone Tax Rebate on your 2006 tax returns!

This arrives just in time for my appointment with the IRS income tax accountant trainee next week. Lovely.

Yes, I was skeptical too, so I even checked it out for you on Snopes (a great site to bookmark):

Claim the credit on line 71 of your 1040 for 2006.

I've been taking some time off from the blog, but I will be back shortly with more news and new pictures from around the Big Island of Hawaii.

Coming up the next two weekends: more hilarious but true gay sex stories from my archives! Please bookmark me and tune in then.