I have a few items that I’d like to get rid of and you, loyal Blogtown reader, could be the proud recipient. Just leave a comment with your idea for them as a group (or individually) and the best one will win them. Here’s what I’ve got:
Approx $5 in Canadian coins
Left over from a recent trip. My bank doesn’t want them. My laundry machine won’t take them. What would you do with them?
Approx 2lbs of Jelly Bellys
I promise they’re not poisoned.
20 little salsa bowls
Shown with a Canadian quarter for size. Could be used for salsa and chips, if you only had chip bowls…
22 pressed-wood salad bowls
They’re not dishwasher safe, they look like they might be used for tortilla chips, but you should have a better idea than just eating chips and salsa in a large group.
Obviously you could give out little bowls of Jelly Bellys to Canadian children with secret money prizes inside. But the winning idea will be better than that. I reserve the right to not give them away if there are no good ideas.
I offer to eat the jelly bellys, and throw everything else away.
A dare-based derivative of three-card monty. Under one salsa bowl will be a pile of jelly beans. Under another, a pile of Canadian coins. Under a third, a smaller bowl. A guesser must eat the item under his blindly chosen salsa bowl, regardless of which he chooses. Also works as both a real-life demonstration of the Monty Hall problem and as an opportunity for idiots to learn lessons while you laugh at them.
I’m going to Canada next week. I will spend the coins. I will recycle the bowls and I will take the jelly beans and put them in my desk drawer at work and share them with coworkers.
[I’m more than willing to do the following, but i wouldn’t be too upset if you took this idea and executed it yourself — you might even be able to arrange to get paid for it…]
1) Superglue a coin and a few jellybeans into each of the bowls.
2) Randomly place them throughout the city.
3) Take pride in knowing that you’ve been the cause of 42 instances of furrowed eyebrows/confused looks. (That is, 42 more instances than you normally cause on any given day…)
4) Stick around for a bit at some of the locations with a camera with good zoom. Document. Report.
Extra Credit: If you strategically place some of them near schools or parks, you might be able to make a few kids to cry. (That is, more kids than you normally make cry on any given day…)
This is a win-win: Along with the inherent fun in making random kids cry over stupid shit, you’ll also be doing them a huge favor by teaching them a couple of important lessons at the same time: Life isn’t fair and people are strange.
Give them to Graham Baas, I don’t know why he deserves these sorts of things, though.
I will take your coins and deposit them into a smelly old sweat sock and tie it off to form a cudgel. I will use this cudgel to protect myself from scary homeless meth heads and hobos near 82nd on my night rides on the springwater corridor.
If this proves to be ineffective as a physical deterrent and only serves to enrage them I will promptly toss the sack of quarters onto the ground and stealthily make my escape as they dive upon the jingling change and rabidly fight among themselves to determine the alpha hobo worthy of possessing it.
Glue the items to my body accompanied by handwritten copies of the original blog and subsequent comments. Go as Blogtown post for Halloween.
1. Coins
I will keep all but one of the coins stacked on my desk to remind me that I am lazy and would rather spend weeks on end playing a single video game than get out of Portland every once in a while like a good financially stable unmarried 30-something should.
The last coin will be used to show the scale of objects in photographs.
2. Jelly Beans
Pass. Joneser can have them because she said something nice to me one time.
3. Salsa Bowls
Two of them will go to my cat, I think she’d like them. Five will be used for cottage cheese or yogurt or ice cream or maybe some fucking salsa ferfuckssake. The remaining 13 will be placed around town, wherever I feel I’ve been wronged by somebody. I will call them Revenge Bowls. They will have nothing in them, because I feel that would add some suspense.
4. Salad Bowls
The salad bowls bore me. I’m bored now.