i walk into a sketchy situation to buy a guitar amp

A few weeks ago, Jenn and I were in Sointula. I was looking on fb marketplace and saw a Boss Katana 50-watt guitar amp for sale in Port Hardy for $200. Ben has that amp and I like it, plus that’s a good price for one, plus I’ve been thinking about getting a little practice amp for a while, plus we were heading to Port Hardy that day for other stuff, so it seemed meant to be — except for the fact that the ad was a little dubious. It read a bit like a scam, like AI had written it. There was just something off about it. The seller eventually edited the ad, at which point I took a picture of it to document the experience. Here is the text from his edited ad:

Brand new, great 50 Watt Combo Performer or Studio Application. The Katana is a “Modelling” amplifier. Big enough to perform or fantastic in the Studio as an Interface, brand new, used it twice so here’s your deal. I’ll drop it off anytime that suits. I’ll require a e-transfer for any hold/pending arrangements, sorry, basically giving stuff away sucks, Amazon has this Amplifier, you’ll pay taxes and shipping unless your a prime subscriber, come on by and try it out, brand new amplifier just got no time. I sell minor it goes to the “Pawn Shoop” , I need to take care of business.

This version definitely has less scam vibes and more ‘sad desperate old addict’ vibes so I wish I had captured that first version. Anyway, regardless of the scam vibe I reached out to the seller. Here is our convo.

***

Me: Hi r u free this morning? I’ll be in Hardy from 10 to about 11.

Don: Yes, and quite frankly it’s become necessary for me to sell the brand new Boss Kantana Amplifier. I’m available as soon you require. My cellular number is xxx-xxx-xxxx, I’m at the Airport Inn and ready to make some arrangements. My name is Don, call me when you get this message and we’ll hopefully move forward in this first thing. Thank you, I look forward to hearing from you

Me: Ok sounds good. I’ll call when we get to Hardy

Don: Okay m, just had a party message me about the new Boss, I have a Gibson SG 60’s series guitar you can try the amp with no problem my friend, this other guy is in a panic so the sooner we get on top of this the better, again my cellular is xxx-xxx-xxxx my name is Don and I’m presently staying at the Airport Inn, room #xxx

***

At this point I noticed that Don had raised the price of the amp to $250 on the ad but hadn’t mentioned it to me.

***

Me: Hi I just noticed u changed the price of ur amp? It was $200 this morning so that’s what I grabbed at the bank

Don: Yup a guy offered me that but did not commit with the e-transfer, so I’ll reconfigure, I don’t have the time to make arrangements with no commitments, life is a busy place and time is a commodity that I have the least of.

***

This was when Don edited the ad and made it more ‘sad’ than ‘scam.’ He also stopped responding to me here.

***

Me: Ok. I just looked up the airport inn, looks like it’s just south of Hardy. Is that right? If so we will come by on our way back to McNeill. Probably around 11/11:30 but I will message when we r leaving Hardy. Does that work for u?

[no response]

Hi, I just called and left a voice mail. We r leaving Hardy now, Siri says we should get there in about 15 mins

[no response]

We r here

[no response]

***

I had looked at Don’s fb profile and there were no pics of him but there were lots of pics of Harley Davidson junk and motorcycle memes. These complemented the ‘sad old desperate addict’ picture of Don I already had in my head so I felt comfortable walking into Don’s lair at the airport hotel. Jenn and I got to the hotel and it actually wasn’t quite as bad as I had anticipated but I had expected utter filth so that’s really not saying much. I went into the hotel. It smelled bad. I found Don’s room. The door was open and a rough-looking, white, middle-aged female house cleaner was working in there. I could hear Don’s voice, he was chewing the cleaner’s ear off while she worked but she was largely ignoring him. And finally, I came around the corner and laid eyes on Don. He was exactly what I had imagined: 60-ish, vacant half-cut alcoholic eyes, dressed head to toe in biker shit. Bad teeth. Grey pony tail. He stood up to shake my hand and was incredibly sore and stiff, he moved like a 90-yr old despite having a thick build and being a bit overweight. He transitioned from chewing the house cleaner’s ear off to chewing mine off. He talked about how this amp puts the power in THE MUSICIAN’S hands, now you don’t need big fancy studios to get great sounds, every musician has access to it now with modern technology, etc. Talked about how he used to work in big studios, lots of experience, but the things these new amps could do really blew him away. He just kept going and I realized he wasn’t really too present so I was able to ignore him and just make occasional “mmm, right” remarks while I plugged in the amp and tested it. He barely took a breath the 5-10 minutes I was there. Talked about how he had moved to Port Hardy three years ago but things hadn’t really panned out so he was moving back to Ontario but he had a truck with a 6-inch lift and some kind of Harley Davidson bike and the bike wouldn’t fit in the back of the truck, etc. I figured once I pulled out the $200 cash he would finally come out of his non-stop talking trance but nope, it kept going. I basically had to shove the money into his hand and cut him off to say thanks and leave. As I was walking out I heard the house cleaner ask, “Don, do you want me to get rid of your empties or do you want me to leave them for you?” I wish I was able to hear his response. I could picture him asking her to leave them so he could get the $1.50 deposit back and put that toward his next booze purchase. Sad.

But I got a decent little amp for a great price, and another weird story out of it, so all’s well that ends well. Cheers to Don.

we get jacked up by a shitbag on marketplace

Because we’re moving soon and taking our sweet vintage clothes washer and dryer with us, we decided to get another washer and dryer set to take their place in this house — houses always seem more welcoming and probably easier to sell when they aren’t totally empty of necessary things and abandoned-feeling. We had been looking for a decent used set for a good price locally for a while but nothing checked all the boxes. Finally Jenn sent me an ad for a set that I didn’t love but I figured I was probably being too picky and we just needed to get this done so I said sure, let’s get those ones. Let’s start the story here.

The ad said the dryer worked great and was $200, and the washer worked fine but it was missing the front feet so it was free. Two details there were red flags to me: one, saying one is $200 and the other is free is kind of a greasy used car salesman way to put it, like “hey take this dryer and I’ll throw in a washing machine, no charge.” Two, why was the washer missing its front feet? Those things don’t just disappear. Also, why hadn’t anyone replaced them? I looked on Amazon and they were only $16.

But like I said, I told myself to knock it off and quit over-analyzing dumb little details. Jenn set up a day to go get the things. We got to the place and it ended up being a family I used to kind of know — I was friends with the daughter and had met the rest of the family a handful of times, but that was over 20 years ago so I was confident they wouldn’t recognize me. I had always got along well with the father of the family but I had heard from other people that he was kind of greasy himself, a bit of a shyster. It turned out to be my old friend’s brother who was selling the washer and dryer, so I worried about the apple perhaps not falling far from the tree — red flag #3. But at least I was right that he didn’t recognize me.

I hadn’t seen this house and property in a long time, and it had really fallen into disrepair. Junk everywhere, luxury SUV’s with tarps over them, an RV in the driveway someone appeared to be living in full time, stacks of firewood out in the open and soaking wet from the snow and rain, piles of inside stuff like board games and toys stacked up on the deck outside under the overhang — red flag #4.

While the guy helped us load the stuff into the truck, I asked “so the washer works ok?” The guy said “it’s not great but it works.” I figured working ok was fine for us but in hindsight I wish I had asked “what specifically do you mean by ‘not great’?”

We got the appliances home and set them up in our laundry room. I got new feet for the front of the washer. We did the first load of laundry and the washer squealed like mad, banged loudly, and walked all over the laundry room floor. I thought “oh it’s the feet I bought, they’re too slippery, they should grip the floor better,” so I bought some rubber insulating pads that go under the washer feet. Put those under the feet today and did another load of laundry. The banging wasn’t as loud and it didn’t walk around as much but it still did both, and the squealing was as bad as before. Plus this time it leaked a whole bunch of water all over our floor.

The dryer sort of works. It does get hot some of the time, but sometimes it seems to run without any heat at all, so it takes two 1-hour sessions to dry a load of laundry. I tried it on three different settings but it is like this on all of them.

We were obviously pretty unimpressed with paying $200 for this shit so Jenn messaged the guy. She was very sweet and after a long annoying conversation with him, the guy was miffed but said he would refund our money. We were pleased.

Then he messaged Jenn and said “whoops, my banks says I’ve already reached my e-transfer limit for today, guess I’ll have to try again tomorrow.” Red flag #5 — as if you don’t know that you’ve already spent $3k via e-transfers today? And if that’s legit, wtf are you buying, anyway? Then he told Jenn to remind him to send it tomorrow because he simply won’t remember on his own. Red flag #6.

It’s hard to know when you’re just being a miserable bastard who can’t trust anyone, and when you should trust your instincts. I obviously really fucked that up this time.

^{“Works great, $200!”}

people i see: weird cymbal lady

Victoria BC, dark January 2023 AD evening. I’m going to look at a cymbal that is for sale on facebook marketplace. The seller has been nice to deal with over messenger but when she gives me her address, I recognize it as being a low income housing development I have bought tacky old stuff from before. I arrive and yup it’s the same complex. I find the seller’s unit, ring the doorbell, and a 60-ish year old woman opens the door a crack. Eventually lets me in and I say hi to her very friendly dog. Then she politely tells me to get the fuck inside and close the door before the cat escapes, and then proceeds to spin some yarn about where this rescue cat came from. She and her place actually aren’t too sad, better than I expected for this place. She tells me to be careful not to slip on the stairs, how she had to remove the carpet from them and paint them when she moved in because the carpet was just so stained and smelly and awful so this is much better but it is a bit slippery so it’s a tradeoff, yada yada. We get upstairs and she explains how these cymbals belonged to her brother and he was a member of our local homeless population and he finally succumbed to his addiction, and shows me a family photo of the man. Ok. Eventually she leads me to another room where the cymbal is. I had asked on messenger if she had a drum stick I can use to test the cymbal, she had said yes, so I ask for that now and she produces what I learn is called a ‘tipper’ for a ‘bodhran’ — not quite what I meant but it will suffice.

I hit the cymbal on the bell and body. The woman makes some “mmm, mmhmm” sounds I don’t understand. Then I hit the edge and the woman makes a similar sound but I think this one is disapproving. Hard to tell. I go over each of the sounds again and the woman makes more sounds but they seem more agitated now. I hit the edge again and the woman quickly states that there are five young children in the unit next to hers. I look at the time and it’s exactly 6:00 pm. Not sure how many kids are in bed by 6 but I take the hint and stop testing her cymbal. I haven’t been able to really test it but from what I’ve heard I’m not nuts about it, and not nuts about the lady, plus she had listed it for sale quite a while ago but priced it rather high which is why it hasn’t sold yet. She recently dropped the price from $240 to $225, which isn’t going to convince anyone to finally pull the trigger on it, and indicates she doesn’t realize it’s not an especially valuable cymbal, and isn’t very flexible on the price. Even if I was interested in it I don’t know if I would have bought it from her.

Luckily for me, none of this matters at this point so I say thanks but I’ll pass. As I go to head downstairs, in my peripheral vision I see a man who I assume is her partner, standing in the kitchen facing me, not saying anything, looking like he might be a jump scare in a horror movie. Hadn’t seen or heard him, had no idea there was anyone else in here. Maybe my wild cymbal smashing woke him from his 5 pm bedtime. Whatever. I’m already irritated with this entire situation so I don’t look at or acknowledge him, can’t be bothered. The woman ushers me out the door just as quickly as when I came in, again due to the cat. I’m happy I didn’t buy yet another cymbal I don’t need. I get in the car and finish off my roasted milk tea with boba. I feel good now.

i buy an old tv from a piece of shit

Yesterday I bought a vintage tv off some guy. I arrived at his address and the place had a number of minor red flags — right next to a busy road, big cheap privacy fence, redneck vehicle parked in driveway, property had what looked like three different small houses/cottages and one RV someone was living in, the main house (the one I randomly went up to first) had the typical ‘dark grey paint with black trim’ wannabe fancy colour combination but it was all peeling, the stairs up to the door were rotten, and there was a bunch of junk by the door. Not a good start.

I ring the door bell. Little dog barking like crazy. Door eventually cracks open and a male redneck, filthy, big beard, balding but messy hair, mid-50’s, peeks through the crack at me but says nothing. We had messaged back and forth about this lots, including earlier that day, so I didn’t think I would need to say who I was and what I was doing there but he seemed so surprised and nervous that I had to. He mumbled something about “…the dog…” and closed the door. This isn’t what I was expecting based on the ad and our interactions. I am nonplussed.

A minute later, the redneck opens the door and brings me the little tv. I ask if I can test it, and he seems a little miffed. Mumbles some more, eventually opens the door and lets me in. The place is a dump, just like the exterior: lots of lipstick on a pig, some fairly recent reno’s but done poorly, the place is absolutely filthy, and the whole house is filled with a haze of marijuana smoke. This may explain the redneck’s odd behaviour.

The redneck plugs the tv in and then looks at all the knobs but without actually computing what he is seeing. If he did, he would have seen the obvious “turn on/volume” knob but nope, he just keeps turning the tv this way and that, inspecting things, low key panicking. Meanwhile, the tv isn’t turning on. After messing with all the knobs and nothing happening, I’m about to say “thanks but no thanks” and leave. Then he plays with the power cord plugged into the wall and I notice the power outlet is loose and rattling in the wall. After jiggling it, the tv turns on and seems to work fine. I say “ok I’ll take it” and give the redneck the money. Relieved, he starts to loosen up and chat a little bit. Starts telling me how his house was broken into and the original box the tv came in got destroyed then. I don’t understand the relevance of the story and am eager to get the fuck out of there so I say something like, “oh yeah. Well…thanks,” and leave, just as relieved to be out of there as the redneck probably was to sell his shitty old tv.

trying to make it easy

Right now, I’m trying to buy two separate ugly things semi-locally, online. Both interactions are going terribly. One is for an ugly vintage dish set:

The seller for this is in Vancouver. I asked if I could pay for it via e-transfer and have my friend there pick it up but the seller was like “no don’t pay yet,” which always annoys me. I know they are worried that I will then disappear for six months only to reappear randomly and be like “where are my dishes” and they’d be all “I sold them to someone else, can I refund your money, please don’t kill me,” and I know that’s something everyone does need to be careful about but I know they don’t have to worry about me in any of those regards so I just want to scream, “take my fucking money so I know you won’t sell these ugly dishes to someone else while we coordinate the pickup.”

Anyway, so they won’t take my money. They’re also only available in White Rock at this time, and downtown Vancouver at that time. How convenient. It’s been a headache trying to coordinate them meeting my friend, so my friend had me pass their phone # on to the seller, which I did but the seller didn’t contact them. After some more back and forth with the seller and reminding them about my friend’s phone #, the seller was like “what’s their #” even though I just gave it to them several messages ago. In their last message to me, the seller said “I don’t want to store these dishes,” as if I’m the one who is being difficult in this sale. Bitch, please. Text my fucking friend like I suggested and give them the goddamn dishes so I can give you your fucking money.

Other irritating seller: young surfer dude in Tofino selling a 4wd Tercel:

I contacted him, said I can come Friday. He says “no good, I work Friday.” I say ok, how about Monday, which works for him. I ask him if I can e-transfer him a deposit for the car, he says yes. I sent it but it doesn’t go through and he’s like, “oh try sending it to my phone # instead of my email address.” I do that, still doesn’t go through. Now I’ve spent $3 on e-transfers that went nowhere. I say what about paypal, he says sure. I do that and he declines it and says they wanted to charge him $3.50 for the service. Wtf. Of course there’s a fucking charge, nothing is free you fucking Marxist. He finally says don’t worry about the deposit, I’ll hold it for you.

Then last night I realize Monday is the Family Day holiday and all the insurance places in and around his backwater town are closed then. I let him know this and he says, “I’ll give you one more week and then I’m moving on to the next buyer,” as if I’m the one who couldn’t meet on Friday, as if I’m the person who fucked up THREE attempts to give this cunt a deposit, as if I’m the person who scheduled a holiday on this coming Monday, as if I’m not making an effort to come out to his remote fucking community.

In frustrating situations like these, I wonder if the universe is telling me something stupid like “I’m making this shit difficult and annoying because there are good reasons you don’t want this shit in your lift.” But then I think, maybe it’s the other way around and the universe is testing me, making sure I REALLY WANT this ugly car and dish set.

Then I remember there is no god, no grand plan, no forces driving these things. No one but me cares if I buy this junk. Life is just really irritating a good portion of the time, and that’s all there is to it.

I’m not going to publish this until both these sagas are concluded, just in case either of these dickhead sellers were to somehow stumble across the post and I were to end up shooting myself in the foot. Maybe I’ll have some exciting additional notes to add to this by the time I publish it. Talk more then, future self.

***Epilogue***

Huh. I was just checking my draft folder here and found this post. I’d forgotten that I’d written this. Well, I still feel the same about all that stuff, and remember not wanting to post it yet just in case. Wise decision. I did buy the ugly dishes but I haven’t got my meathooks on them yet, my friend picked them up and will get them to me when we next see each other sometime later this year. And I bought the Tercel too — the surfer kid was very dumb about cars so when I got it, it was almost completely out of both oil and coolant, and only one rear brake sort of worked. There were lots of other problems with it but those were the biggest ones. I can’t believe I got it home.

The end.

a case of the wednesday’s

I rant and rave a lot about how I believe approximately 95% of humans are dumb as rocks and shouldn’t be allowed to vote or procreate. Every now and then I question myself on this point, and wonder if I’m being a tad harsh.

Well, since I’ve been using facebook marketplace to buy stuff, I’ve re-committed to this stance. Yes, most people are definitely totally fucking stupid, thoughtless, short-sighted, superficial, filthy, quick to pick fights with one another over silly things, eager to hold strong but baseless opinions and be extremely loud about them, and wasteful as all get out.

And to what do I attribute my newfound re-commitment to my own strong, baseless, loud opinion? I look at numerous profiles of people selling random stuff on marketplace. It’s amazing how many people allow their entire profiles to be viewed by anyone (which is a red flag for narcissism right off the bat), and even more amazing how frequently I find myself aghast at what I see. I can’t count how many times I want to take screenshots of these profiles and send them to friends so I can be assured that I’m not crazy, that there really are as many bone heads out there as I think.

But I never do take screenshots of the bone heads and ask friends for assurance, because a) I don’t want to be quite that small a person, and b) my friends would surely block me for constantly spamming them with this shit if I did it every time I saw a profile that made me question humanity. So instead I just continue to shake my head in disappointment with the human race and emotionally isolate myself further and further.

^{It’s lonely in the pit but it’s still better than out there.}

I should probably stop using facebook.

a surprisingly nice day

I was dreading today because I had plans to go for brunch with my dad and the last time we did he really chewed my ear off about some boring stuff, and then I was going to Nanaimo (a place I have little affection for) to pick up a bunch of used stuff from facebook marketplace, which is usually a surefire recipe for much irritation. But it was good! Read on if you give a shit.

• Went for a run. That was nice, especially with the chilly temperature.
• Met my dad at the Cobblestone but it was closed (fucking incorrect times on the internet) so we went to the Doghouse in Duncan instead. Dad started in on one of the topics that killed me last time so I stopped him and was just honest, told him I don’t mind hearing a brief summary about these particular topics but that’s all I can take. He was totally chill about it, said “sure, no problem” and then moved on to some other topic we both enjoyed. The food was great too of course so it was actually a very pleasant breakfast.
• Realized I hadn’t got the full address for one of the things I was grabbing, and hadn’t heard back from another seller about coming today, and also realized I was now in Duncan and didn’t want to drive home to fuck around on fb to sort that all out. So I called Jenn despite knowing how much she hates it when I ask her to bail me out of situations that would be avoided if I just had a dang smart phone. So that was it, I decided I’m joining the modern world and getting a fucking smart phone. I hate it but I hate being in situations like I was today more, and bugging Jenn with annoying requests. Anyway, one of the sellers got back to me so I was still left anticipating a headache for one of the errands.
• Picked up something for Jenn in Chemainus, that was painless.
• Picked up xmas blow molds from the angriest older gay man I’ve ever met. He chewed my ear off bitching about how the internet has ruined collector culture and he refuses to pay shit for a swap meet table or any other scam, yada yada. He was an interesting character but talked way too much so I started getting in my car while he was still yammering on, then he got the hint and let me go.
• Lucky for me, that first stop was right by the only bubble tea place in Nanaimo I know so I grabbed one. Wasn’t the best flavour I’ve tried but I still loved having a bubble tea to soften the irritation of driving all over the frigging Hub City.
• Got mixed up trying to find my next stop. Figured out my error pretty quickly but was once again reminded why I should have a smart phone. Found the place, seller was nice and normal, yaayyy. Bought another cymbal for my drums.
• On the way to my next stop I thought I saw a 4wd Tercel parked in some woods and partially covered in leaves. I stopped, went back and looked, and yup, that was exactly what I saw. Jeez I have an eye for these things. Figured out which property it was on and went and knocked on the door. No answer. I’m going to check back next time I’m up that way.
• The last stop was the one I didn’t have a complete address for, and the item was the primary reason for the trip so I was expecting to be really pissed when I couldn’t find the place. It was in a weird apartment/townhouse hybrid kind of place so I walked around looking for #40. I got near the end of the building and didn’t think there was going to be a 40 but looked around the corner, and there it was, with the bag for my glitter lava lamp hanging on the door like the picture the guy had sent me! Praise be, praise be. I was some pleased.
• I was sick of all the driving by now but things had gone so well, I decided to stop at Canadian Tire and pick up a few plants I’ve been meaning to buy. Got them and felt good about it.

That was it! No disasters at all! Incredible, inconceivable. Then the rest of my day was nice too. Had a short nap, worked on the Tercel, took Stella for a walk, practiced drums, watched an episode of this garbage show Jenn and I are in the middle of, and now it’s time for bed. Wow.