trash = treasure

Numerous others have written on the phenomenon of "garage sailing," the weekend pastime of roving from house to house in search of elusive bargains, kitschy collectibles, and scads of decorabilia. Girlfriend and I traipsed across town this very Saturday, and encountered some depressing scenarios:

1. The estate sale chock-full of bad art, including yellowed Japanese prints, clowns on Prozac, and decorative swords.

2. The move-92-year-old-grandma-out-of-the-house sale, with enough meaningless knickknacks to fill a Goodwill store.

3. The "HUGE neighborhood sale, bargains to the right and left" that came with a map.

4. The line at Goodwill, where leftover garage sale merchandise miraculously transformed into tax deductions.

As a francophile might say, "C'est la vie." All in all, this sailor snatched up a copy of Bill Cosby's Fatherhood and Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities for a cool four bits. What this says about American society, or my own personal idiosyncracies, I leave to you, gentle reader.