Monday, July 5, 2004

You may think I wandered into the office like a dimwit today, gentle reader, and that I enjoy celebrating our independence by spreading advertisements across the Internet. You’d be dead wrong, of course, because I enjoy spreading advertisements across the Internet every day. I also wander into alleys and fjords, not just the office.

One-Woman Times relocated her page once again, but I’m going to retain the old link for its content. Besides, there’s a clear redirect at the top of the old journal, so if you focus really hard you should be able to click it. In her July 04 post she brings up the delicious wiliness of Argentinean furniture peddlers, which reminded me instantly of the guide I wrote. I christened the guide “Bargaining with Wily Argentinean Furniture Peddlers,” and it received high acclaim in numerous A-list periodicals. Don’t bother searching for it, though, because my publisher instituted a massive door-to-door recall when he realized that the guide was too powerful for public consumption. It’s like a national treasure coated in liquid value.

I’ll excerpt the book below. Pay rapt attention.

Aggressive Bargaining

You need to establish dominance by showing who the bigger furniture connoisseur is. Some call it being an arrogant sonuvabitch, but I call it savvy. Here’s a fine example I’ve transcribed for your reading pleasure.

“Alright, sir, that will be 200 pesos for the coffee table.”

“Excuse me, did you say 200 pesos?”

“Yes I did. Will that be counterfeit cash or credit?”

“200 pesos? You’re outta your mind. I believe the phrase you’re searching for is ’20 pesos for this pesoshit.'”

“No need to be rude, sir. This is a very high quality table.”

“High quality? Now you’re just lying. I bet I could whittle the stupid thing out of plywood and fancy.”

“There’s no need to make a scene, you know. And for your information, genuine natives made this table.”

“Oh, I have every right to make a scene. This is robbery! Genuine natives? From where? It’d probably be cheaper to build a sweatshop to make me a table.”

“If you don’t calm down, I’m going to have to call the police.”

“You know, I was thinking the same thing. Maybe they could put YOU away.”

“Look, we can talk this over.”

“You’re stupid.”

“You just made my inner child weep. Here, take the coffee table. Take it!”

Passive Bargaining

While the aggressive approach may prove endlessly entertaining, it requires a lot of energy. Sometimes indifference is the best approach. Show them you don’t care, that you have many options. I actually wandered over to another vendor at the same flea market after practicing my aggressive technique. The neutral approach worked like a charm.

“You picked out a fine umbrella holder, mister. 50 pesos, please.”

“Excuse me, who are you?”

“What do you mean? We were just talking furniture.”

“Is that so? Well, I guess I’m about 50 pesos shy of caring.”

“What did you say?”

“Oh, nothing. I thought I wanted that umbrella holder, but I don’t anymore. I’ll go back to that other vendor.”

“The one who’s five stalls down? Didn’t you buy a coffee table from him?”

“Yes.”

“Why is he crying?”

“Because I offered him a very generous price for the coffee table.'”

“Really?”

“Yes. He almost paid me to take this furniture, but I told him tears were enough.”

“Amazing! I’ll give you the umbrella holder for 5 pesos.”

“Deal.”

There’s another approach or two, but I’ll leave it at that. Above all, remember the cardinal rule for furniture buying: you’ve got to be the furniture to buy the furniture.

Friday, July 2, 2004

I’m watching everyone’s bona fide summer blockbuster this afternoon, gentle reader, so I’ve got nothing but action on the mind. I’ve heard from various sources that the videogame, whose release just happened to coincide with the film release, rises above its cashcow roots and really hits the spot. Apparently many of us harbor a secret desire to swing through a virtual New York City, foiling sinister plots as we administer evenhanded justice with martial arts and webfluid aplenty, and the game designers seized this desire and pet it like a tarantula. If you’ve got some money to burn, I’d recommend grabbing one of the console versions from this merchant, since they munificently throw in a free t-shirt to prevent you from playing in the nude.

If you’re like me, however, you’ll have neither the television nor the Gamecube to feed the Spiderman merchandising frenzy. Instead, you’ll have an aging PC filled with ancient parts just barely able to play yesterday’s games. But play it shall, and three gems I’ve managed to run in the past few months are Bioware’s superlative Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Microsoft’s infamous Halo, and the fun but flawed Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

I’m a bit late stepping onto these three boats, which simply makes it more imperative that I refrain from masquerading as a reviewer. It’s enough to say that Knights really does deserve all of its acclaim, especially since the quality of the dialogue is more than commensurate with its quantity. Halo, on the other hand, forgoes such contrivances as “meaningful dialogue” and heaps gobs of eminently satisfying gunplay upon your person. The offline experience gets a bit repetitive, even tedious at times, but there’s nothing quite like having a dozen bloodthirsty creatures charge at you while your ammo display drops from sixty to screwed in ten seconds.

The game I’ve taken up with recently, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, is a study in big budget Nazi-bashing. Like Halo, the gunplay has a good feel to it; all the reloading and the sprinting for cover creates a fantastic rhythm. On the other hand, the kitsch factor soars off the scale more often than not, and the game proves surprisingly difficult at parts. You can find Wolfenstein for as little as $1.99, though, so that pretty much carpet bombs my complaints. And if you look at the game box, you’ll see it boasts “a full-blown Fatherland graphically realized to Germanic perfection.” Mein Gott, what the hell does that mean?

Thursday, July 1, 2004

I made it out of Great America alive yesterday, gentle reader, and more importantly I savored about 250 seconds of pure joy as I rocketed around at unspeakable speeds. Batman, Superman, Raging Bull, American Eagle, Giant Drop, a very moist water ride–these were the ingredients that went into a delectable serving of adrenaline.

One institution that struck me as endlessly fascinating was the Fast Lane Pass. I’m told this curiosity is a new conceit designed to send other Six Flags patrons into a jealous frenzy. The Pass indeed functioned as advertised, and on more than one occasion an annoyed customer would ask us how we obtained such exclusivity. This makes sense, you know, because complaining about capitalism while you’re entrenched in a very bastion of capitalism is–wait a minute.

This is what I want to know: how much would it cost to recreate the Raging Bull or Batman in my backyard? Sweet Jiminey, I can still taste that first climb.