This morning between the parking lot and the shop, as a counterpoint to the white woman who was yelling "Beaners!" last week, a black man was yelling "Fuckin' nigger!" to every person passing him on the street corner.

He did not yell it at me.

Just now a man came in and told my compatriot that his wife had died and his daughter had gone blind. He said this while bargaining for an iPod Touch. A gift for his daughter.

Not asked was how the daughter could possibly operate an iPod Touch if she is blind.

maybe he thinks the 'touch' part of the name means it in braille?

The doctor was his mother!

A few good things happened today. First, a woman came in and just like LJ's We Buy Gold guy, told me her rings were silver and wanted to sell them. I took a look and they were 14k white gold. Light, but gold. Bought them for $40 instead of $5. She was astounded... and happy. Boss says to be honest about this sort of thing.

Second, a couple came in to buy a bass and bass amp for a family member for Christmas. I was able to help them work out which bass they should get, and then I could talk about the things intelligently and of course demonstrate it. That's about the happiest thing I could do here, sell someone a bass at a good price and really help them with it.

I hope you gave them a business card for the band.

This is becoming my Very Favorite Thread.

I used to have a lot of stories about the stupidity of the public-but, it's been so long since I've left my cottage made of candy in the forest...

I do recall a woman asking me if she should give her six year old child with a fever of 104 "some tylenol or something," or if she should NOT so that when the child came in to see the doctor he would have empirical evidence of said child's ailment.

I also remember a woman who was admitted to the psych ward on the day we Spring Forward the clocks. I worked 7p-7a so of course, at two o'clock am we put the clock to three o'clock a.m. She, naturally being awake at the time (hypomania) insisted we were all wrong and it was Spring Back, Fall FORWARD! until about 6 a.m. when she finally fell asleep.

I had a dude smear his own feces on the wall of his room. But that's for another day.

I need business cards for lessons, is what I need, except that there are not enough hours in the day.

Lessons?

Awesome reference. Best sketch comedy show ever.

Word. This is cool.
Nice reasonably lucrative side job, seems like a nice fit for you.

Advertise.

I've spent a fair amount of time in pawn shops in the Houston area, sometimes to shop or just kill some time looking around. I've purchased a few shot guns, some camera gear and an awesome recently stolen Toro self propelled lawn mower. I figure it was stolen because every other lawn mower they were selling burned oil really bad and this one looked brand new.

Once I needed a 6 x 7 format camera for a big photo shoot I had gotten and I was broke as it was just after my during my divorce I had sold mine. So I went to this one pawn shop that sold a lot of cameras and bought a nice Mamiya RB67, 3 backs and 2 lenses for a pretty good price and the job more then paid for the gear.

I've bought and sold plenty of tools, either ones I needed to do some work or to sell for cash when I was broke.

When my old favorite goose gun, my Spanish 10 gauge side by side began showing signs of barrel bulge from shooting too much T size steel shot I began to worry that one day the barrel would just explode so I took it in and pawned it since you get more for a pawn than selling it as I recall. The guy never felt the end of the barrel or he would have known something was weird about the gun and I think he gave me $150 for it. I threw the pawn ticket out after I left as I never had any intention of going back to get it and later that day I took the $150 and some more of my savings and bought a Ithica 10 gauge automatic which is about the best goose gun ever made.

I wonder if Craig's List has cut into the pawn shop's market share? Seems like you can get a lot of the same type of stuff for about the same prices. Of course it isn't like pawning which is sort of like a loan against an item, on Craig's list it's a buy sell market.

Haven't seen any pawn shops here in Australia, maybe they don't allow them.

We just had a woman come in with a full, bushy mustache.

carnival in town?