The Strange & Truly Odd on ebay

[Camazotz Automat]

Welcome to the STRANGE AND TRULY ODD on ebay.   I need help on finding interesting listings.  If you post an item, consider returning in 90 days and removing it, as it will become a dead link.


First up is the ever indespensable 8-track player for your automobile.

I don't know what is more enigmatic, the fact someone thought they could sell this in the first place, or the fact there is a bid on it.

http://cgi.ebay.com/8-track-car-player_W0QQitemZ170249043270QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item170249043270&_trkparms=72%3A1074%7C39%3A1%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

CAMAZOTZ  AUTOMAT

[Pirate King Atomsk]

This was one of the funniest ones I ever saw. I can't find the original sale..(they probably took it off ebay eventually)..but here's an article about it.

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/permalink/the_secret_of_invisibility/

[Max]

Welcome to STUPID THINGS ON EBAY.  First up is the ever indespensable 8-track player for your automobile.

I don't know what is more enigmatic, the fact someone thought they could sell this in the first place, or the fact there is a bid on it.

http://cgi.ebay.com/8-track-car-player_W0QQitemZ170249043270QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item170249043270&_trkparms=72%3A1074%7C39%3A1%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

CAMAZOTZ  AUTOMAT

dont laugh it has one bid :p

[MV/Liberace!]

actually, that 8-track player isn't too hard for me to understand.  i have a 68 firebird and for the purpose of nostalgia, i ordered a factory sealed 8-track player off of ebay a few years ago.  yup.  sho did.

[EvB]

actually, that 8-track player isn't too hard for me to understand.  i have a 68 firebird and for the purpose of nostalgia, i ordered a factory sealed 8-track player off of ebay a few years ago.  yup.  sho did.

I was thinking of something like that - but couldn't quite put the right words to it.  Yeah - i know - really fancy words like "restore classic car."  Geeze -- GN can say that.  But you see, I'm rolling into yet another final where i have to be able to explain things like "ecphrasis" (FYI: if you don't know what that is - i promise you that you can live a full and rich life without knowing ;-)) 

I'm also trying to figure out how to explain to the general public why software that is intended to teach "inquiry  learning" in topics like biology, emergency medicine, geology and the like is named for a 12th Century Rabbi.  There IS a reason - but honest to God I wish I'd been I the room when that one got presented.  Too obscure man, Waaaay to obscure.

But then, I suppose you could also say it's a form of ecphrasis.

[Camazotz Automat]

Nostalgia is fine in small doses.  You should see my house.  I really do have an OMNI collection that should be outlawed.

Speaking of OMNI, to push MV further, I will hit a different nerve.

Let's take a walk down memory lane with this 4Mghz, 64K monster, which was featured in various issues of the magazine - the keyboard usually manned in the ad by a clean cut Morman:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Eagle-II-CP-M-Computer-Z-80-Works_W0QQitemZ200241563754QQcmdZViewItem?_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116

This is really hitting where the heart is.  MV is a lover of tech but how will he ~process~ the asking price of the above item?

(Packing up all the 8-track tapes, now that I know where to send them.  Hotel California, Rubber Soul, KISS Dynasty, Zep IV, and OH, VAN HALEN.)

Seriously, at least the 8-track player was only $5 plus $12 shipping. (I actually considered bidding.  You know, just because.  Don't tell me you haven't done this before, people. It's like I'm thinking to myself Well, this putz doesn't deserve to get it THAT fucking cheap.  Think I'll bid on this shit myself.  That'll teach him a lesson.  If I win it, I can always resell it.  Maybe even to him.  Am I the only who has ever thought like this?) 

CAMAZOTZ  AUTOMAT

[Camazotz Automat]

* Free yourself from the confines of time

* Shatter the prison walls of your five sense

* Deploy the power of intuition to see the future

* Facilitate the power of lucid dreaming

It now becomes clear as to my ultimate goal in creating this topic.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Worker-in-the-Light-by-George-Noory-CD-Audio-book_W0QQitemZ150192562886QQcmdZViewItem?_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116

(we should petition Noory to put it on 8 Track.)

CAMAZOTZ  AUTOMAT

[Camazotz Automat]

Nostalgia.  I've wondered for years what defines this, regarding objects.  What are the limits?  I own old distressed items and use them for decoration.  While it might be aesthetically pleasing to display thirty pounds of 1919 72-key Victor adding machine on your business desk, will a 1970s TI500 LED calculator from Texas Instruments ever look "cool" lying around?

If a time traveler from the PAST visited, would he walk around my home and ask "What's with the old shit? Why do you have all this trash in your house?  Are you poor?  The future doesn't look too well if you're reusing our old crap.  What's with the wheelbarrow full of wisteria in the front yard?  Someone forget to dump it and things just grew?"

You may have seen houses in rural areas that put a piece of old rusting farm equipment in the front yard.  Looks like modern art.  The spikier the better.  (looks at Spikegirl) The more it looks like a torture device, the better.  (looks at her again) It looks like sculpture. (and again)

But can we project ourselves a hundred years into the future and watch a man place a rotting Snapper riding lawn mower in his front yard to evoke an old time feel?

One man's trash can be another man's art, but I do believe there are boundaries that will never be crossed.

I have a theory.  It has to do with lines.  The appreciation of lines.  Anyone can appreciate the design of the 8 track tapes themselves.  Retro Futuristic.  Hold the music in your hands.  Screw vinyl.  Go Star Trek.  The tapes came in bright colors bordering at times on the psychedelic.  The smooth edges evoke an organic aspect that can be appreciated by an infant or a 75-year-old Trekkie.

You haven't listened to Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy until you've heard it on an 8 track cassette with an International Orange plastic housing while blazing through Dallas, Texas in a '69 Cougar.  (two tone, red with black top, flip those spinning headlights...)

Will people one day look upon VHS tapes with nostalgia?  I don't think so.  The lines are all wrong.

Or, God forbid, will audio cassettes be able to attract the same attention in the future?  I HATE cassette tapes.  I hated the automobile industry for insisting on putting those damn cassette players in cars until fairly recently.  There is always a cassette graveyard in thrift stores, near the VHS tapes.  The never sell.    Peter Frampton LIVE will be on that shelf until doomsday, as will Foghat LIVE, and April Wine (Nature of the Beast album.) 

Trapped in cassette hell - their only hope perhaps, a crusty truckdriver who likes old rock and has a Blauplunkt cassette stereo in his rig.

CAMAZOTZ  AUTOMAT

P.S. It must be said I hold great affection for microcassettes.  Convenient, pleasing to the eye, and even a shade cartoonish, they represent the culmination in consumer audiotape evolution.  If early reel to reel represents Eosimias sinensis, surely the microcassette is Homo sapiens.

[danDNA]

too many time formats
cassette - c15, c30, c60, c90, probably even c120
VHS (or video as we say) - 60, 90, 120, 180, 240 minutes (never displayed the time in hours which confused the hell out of my kiddy brains, but taught me my 60 times tables i suppose)
CD - 80 minutes
so what was the maximum on vinyl? anyone? or Betamax? or 8 track? oh yeah, minidisc as well? why wasn't there a standard in time set years ago so you could put vinyl on cassette and not have to flip the tape over halfway through side 2 and then be left with about 30 minutes of tape to fill, probably with random songs that you now associate with hearing after the end of the Who album 'Live at Leeds'?

its too....illogical for such an industry!!

[Spikegirl]

Let's take a walk down memory lane with this 4Mghz, 64K monster, which was featured in various issues of the magazine - the keyboard usually manned in the ad by a clean cut Morman:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Eagle-II-CP-M-Computer-Z-80-Works_W0QQitemZ200241563754QQcmdZViewItem?_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116

Somebody better snap that up pronto-John Titor may need it.

[MV/Liberace!]

Let's take a walk down memory lane with this 4Mghz, 64K monster, which was featured in various issues of the magazine - the keyboard usually manned in the ad by a clean cut Morman:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Eagle-II-CP-M-Computer-Z-80-Works_W0QQitemZ200241563754QQcmdZViewItem?_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116

This is really hitting where the heart is.  MV is a lover of tech but how will he ~process~ the asking price of the above item?

(Packing up all the 8-track tapes, now that I know where to send them.  Hotel California, Rubber Soul, KISS Dynasty, Zep IV, and OH, VAN HALEN.)

tech relics seem only to resell for their intrinsic value, whereas things like vases and paintings transcend intrinsic value when subjected to the honesty and bluntness of a capitalistic free market.  in other words, an old computer, in my eyes, will only EVER be worth what it is capable of doing relative to what computers can do today.  the only exceptions would be obvious milestones or pillars of computing history.  unfortunately, ENIAC isn't for sale.  not that i could afford it.  yes, i know i own GNS, but it has yet to make me a millionaire.  i know you are stunned.  conclusion:  i wouldn't trade a used airline vomit bag for that computer.

cam, i would gladly accept your 8track tapes.  however, i must humbly ask that you retain the eagles, kiss, and van halen.  bring on the beatles and zep, please.

seacrest out.

[Camazotz Automat]

A spinning record cleaner vacuum.  He has THREE.  Check out which band is used as the vinyl model.

http://cgi.ebay.com/VINTAGE-RECORD-VACUUM-CLEANER-BY-RONCO-UK-NEW-FROM-1976_W0QQitemZ370077441881QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item370077441881&_trkparms=72%3A552%7C39%3A1%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C240%3A1318&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

Straker out.

CAMAZOTZ  AUTOMAT

[PhantasticSanShiSan]

Ahhhh.....The Classic 8-Tracks that I remember in the parents cars were - Harry Chapin (Greatest Hits?), Billy Joel's The Stranger, Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show(A few of them), Kenny Roger's Gold, one Kris Kristofferson, and probably a Three Dog Night.

[MV/Liberace!]

Check out which band is used as the vinyl model.

i am 28 years old.  math prohibited me from growing up with the music of zeppelin's era.  i truly discovered zeppelin when i was about 17.  the first album i bought was led zeppelin III.  i was speechless.  i had never heard zeppelin in album form.  then i bought led zeppelin II.  EVERY song on that album is, to me, an absolute milestone in rock history.  people always cite sgt. pepper's or the wall as the greatest albums of all time.  nonsense.  led zeppelin II is, imo, the single greatest event in the history of recorded music.  i'm sure many will disagree, but on this issue, i am deaf to disagreement.

addendum:  i saw jimmy page and robert plant in st. louis in 1998.  it was fine, and i couldn't believe i was actually looking at them.  however, the sound was horrid.  page's guitar work was buried in a sea of audio mud, as was plant's now inert voice.  i don't know if it was the sound man or the acoustics of the keil center, but a great opportunity was essentially ruined by the environment in which it occurred.  contrast that with the john paul jones (zeppelin bassist/keyboardest) show i saw in chicago, 2000.  there were about 1000 people in an intimate environment.  i was about 10 feet from him throughout.  it was THE most amazing musical performance i have ever been witness to.  the irony.  jones, the silent, shadowy figure from zeppelin who could anonymously walk around in public during zep's heyday is in 2008 the only member of zeppelin who is as proficient at his craft as he was all those years ago.  i always studied the intricacies of zeppelin's music closely and concluded zeppelin wouldn't have been a fraction of what they were without jones.  the chicago 2000 show solidified that conclusion.  to think page and plant are known not to return his calls!

[Camazotz Automat]

i always studied the intricacies of zeppelin's music closely and concluded zeppelin wouldn't have been a fraction of what they were without jones.  the chicago 2000 show solidified that conclusion.  to think page and plant are known not to return his calls!

The Rickles Effect = ON

Perhaps they are jealous of Jones being a "real" musician.

I'm kidding, Jimmy.  I'm kidding.  Hey, "In Through the Out Door," was that talking about what I think it was talking about?  I tried to convince my wife it was that.  And Robert, your hair.  It still looks like an ad for Herbal Essence shampoo.  Maybe it's time you went Bruce Willis on us and gave the world a heart attack. John Bonham, God rest his soul, were he alive today, would kill himself if he heard some of the current rock music.  I'm serious! You think I'm kidding?  Don't doubt it for a second.

Mr. Jones?  You should hook up with Paul McCartney, vocalist Ronnie James Dio, and drummer Ian Paice.  You can call yourselves "The Day of the Dead."

I'd buy that album.  And I'm 82.  You would release it on a collectibe triple set of acetate cylinders, right?  I could turn down the sound of Double Indemnity and listen to "The Day of the Dead" and look for clues as to who REALLY killed late night paranormal talk radio.  It would be especially eerie watching the scenes of Fred MacMurray speaking into the dictaphone.  Come to think of it, all Fred MacMurray scenes are fucking eerie. He was one of those silent types, carrying an axe in his coat. I digress.

Forget Paul is Dead.  CTC is Dead.

But we don't need to search for hidden clues for who killed late night para-radio, do we?  We don't need painted bass drum heads... or alternate soundtracks to classic films... or any weird artsy twistings. 

We know who killed it.  We know a murdering bastid when we hear the reversible phonetic:

I will cringe because I live with Noory. The one will be the sad one who makes me sad whose power is Noory.  He will give you shit shit shit.  Lord turn him off.

And you can reverse quote me on that.

CAMAZOTZ  AUTOMAT

[MV/Liberace!]

Hey, "In Through the Out Door," was that talking about what I think it was talking about?  

are you posing this question to jimmy?  you might be waiting a while for a response.  "i'm just sayin'."

[Camazotz Automat]

are you posing this question to jimmy?  you might be waiting a while for a response.  "i'm just sayin'."

Jimmy will come through.  He's never let Don down before. Though to be sure, despite his brandishing of a harlequin patterned tux and Lapis Lazuli facemask, and some herky jerky robot jester dance, Don is aware of the connection of said album title to sex magick in theory and practice and preys for a new Aeon. 

The unholy vessel as transport as it were.  Convincing the wife... that's a different trick.  Tough work for a comedian if you can get it.  Book ahead.

I'm sure someone here is closer by degrees to Mr. Page than I.  I am at least 4 or 5 degrees removed, meaning, I know a person, who knows a person, etc.  So whoever is closer, tell Page to get his Theremin ass over here.  We have a question about compromising the EXIT ONLY sign at the back of the Theater.

Which brings to mind those one-way hinged tire spikes at Drive In Theaters to stop cars from illegal entry.  Drive Way Dentata.

Freud spins at the thought. "Von must avoid Tyr punkture, jes? With those Lances of Loginis?"

Would that I knew Kevin Bacon, then I would know the world or at least North Hollywood. 

(Bacon's connections seem to be sucking energy out of him.  He appears zapped as of late.)

To see the official explanation of the album title instead of my esoteric rantings, go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Through_The_Out_Door

I don't particularly put much creedence in such a dull answer; however if Tight But Loose printed it, who am I to disbelieve?

CAMAZOTZ  AUTOMAT

[Camazotz Automat]

I appreciate art more than the average automat, but I don't appreciate crazy talk.

95,000.00 for a 36 inch wood wall sculpture.  I hate it when people look at art and say "I could do that."  But you know what?  I could make something like a Black Moon II on a slow Saturday with scrap wood, a Dremel moto tool, a jigsaw, and black shoe polish paste.  I'm just not feeling the attraction of the piece, but am tempted to make one and hang it in the dying room.  I'm offended they won't spring for shipping after taking my 95 grand.   

If I construct one, I will call it Green Moon Base

http://cgi.ebay.com/LOUISE-NEVELSON-BLACK-MOON-II-WALL-SCULPTURE-120K_W0QQitemZ180274709255QQcmdZViewItem?_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116

CAMAZOTZ  AUTOMAT

[MV/Liberace!]

jesus-h... that is some crazy talk if i've ever seen it.

[Camazotz Automat]

Want to construct your own pyramid? Curious about how Coral Castle was built by one tiny man?  Well then, have I got a deal for you.... and the bidding starts at only $2,300 for the PERPETUAL MOTION HOLDER SECRETS OF THE PYRAMIDS.

I like this quote from the seller: "Why am I selling this ? Quite frankly I need the money.   What use is there in being able to lift large objects when the rent is due?"

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260285438174

[Art is the Best]

Well, heck, that's affordable if you buy your house for a dollar

http://cgi.ebay.com/HOME-FOR-SALE-REGARDLESS-THE-PRICE-IN-SAGINAW-MI_W0QQitemZ230289831881QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item230289831881&_trkparms=72%3A1163%7C39%3A1%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C240%3A1308&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

[Caruthers612]

A spinning record cleaner vacuum.  He has THREE.  Check out which band is used as the vinyl model.

      1) You reminded me of the existence of Ronco--not that it's the first time in my life I've remembered them and those heady days of my yout', but you did, so a cream pie is headed your way.
      2) I can't make out the lettering on the Atlantic LP in the cleaner, but that and the colors of the famous label brought back a rush of happy emotion (seriously) from my years of listening to some of my favorite bands, the ones that helped form the many-splendoured external organ that I am, the organ that would later find itself lying awake at night, all alone, unloved, untouched (well...), listening to the deep, rumbling voice of our Art.
      3) Anyone taking a shot at Ronco will have to answer to me. Or my external organ if I'm not in.

M

[Spikegirl]

     
......many-splendoured external organ that I am, the organ that would later find itself lying awake at night, all alone, unloved, untouched (well...), listening to the deep, rumbling voice of our Art.
     
M

Nothing wrong with a little self love, M, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise!