Getting by on eBay and Half.com is frequently a question of a few cents here and there, and volume.  Here are some tips.  Subscribe to this post’s comments as I come up with more, or post your own (non-commercial, please, although paid advertisements are accepted.)

1.  If you can find a mailer that weighs less than 3⁄4 oz., normal CDs in jewel cases can ship for the 4-oz. First Class Parcel rate ($1.64 at the time of this writing) rather than the 5- or 6-oz. rate ($1.81 or $1.99).  Uline Bubble Mailers, model S-5897, are 9 lbs. per 200 units.  Dividing that gives you a weight of 0.72 oz. each, and that 9 lbs. is probably rounded up, and includes the weight of the box.  Envelopes are self-sealing, so you save on tape weight.  One case of 200 is $51 ($0.255 apiece) plus shipping.  This can make a huge difference on $0.75 CDs with small shipping allowances.

2.  Large shipping labels are expensive; at their cheapest, one- or two-per-page labels are about $0.28 a sheet.  Try printing on normal printer paper, and spraying the back with Elmer’s Craft Bond (~$7 per 11 oz. can, lighter and cheaper than tape, and lasts seemingly forever.)  Apply paper to mailer within 15 seconds of spraying for permanent adhesion.

3.  Addressing small envelopes?  Use cheap labels, and don’t worry about your printer gobbling up your expensive envelopes.  Buy Avery 5160-compatible labels in quantity, then use OpenOffice.org’s templates (software and templates free) to print a couple at a time (templates here.)  Buy them 3,000 at a time from Uline and pay 6⁄10^ths of a penny apiece (don’t worry, it’s exactly the same price as 300 will cost you at Office Depot.  Hard to believe…)  Keep running the same sheet through your printer as you need new labels, just change the positioning on the page.  Want POSTNET barcodes on the labels to speed them through the mailstream?  Give me a couple weeks.  I’m writing software to do that, and I’ll make it available for free on this site (haven’t decided whether it should be a web app or a downloadable executable).

4.  For items 13 oz. or lighter, use PayPal to print out a First Class Parcel label at the 1 oz. rate, regardless of what the item weighs, and pay the $0.18 for Delivery Confirmation (always splurge on this, it’s the best investment out there.)  Use the printer-paper-and-spray-glue trick above.  Make up the remaining weight ($0.17 per ounce, as of this writing) with discount postage (valid, legal U.S. postage from stamp dealers in non-current denominations, available from Henry Gitner for 93% face postpaid, or at your local free-admission stamp show for 88% – 90% face.)  On an 11-oz item, you save $0.17, which just about pays for the Delivery Confirmation!  Print up little decorative labels (less than a penny apiece, remember) that say something like “Collect Stamps: It’s Fun!” or “Philately: The Quiet Excitement!” and people will actually thank you for saving yourself money.  Everyone likes pretty stamps on their mail.  If you have time, to speed it through the mailstream, ask the clerk to count the postage and put a $0.00 label on the package for you.  They will happily do this if you’re humble.  Try something like “I’m not sure my postal scale is accurate at home, would you mind weighing this for me and seeing if I have enough postage?”  And while you’re there, ask nicely for hand-cancellations on the stamps to make the recipient even happier.

5.  Buy a laser printer.  They cost pennies on the dollar to operate, compared to an inkjet.  Even if you have to put it on a high-interest credit card, do it.  It will pay for itself so quickly it takes your breath away.

6.  Go to “Printer Settings” — whatever it’s called on your Operating System —  and set everything to print as “Grayscale”.  Save your expensive color toner for times when you’re printing for yourself, not printing packing slips.

7.  Use Auctiva to list on eBay.  It’s easier to use than eBay itself, offers any number of free pictures, free super-sizing of images, a “store window” applet to increase additional add-on sales, easy re-listing, free scheduling, automatic feedback settings, convenient “Profiles” for commonly-sold items, free professional templates, and tons more.  Don’t waste your money on Blackthorne or pricey eBay “listing upgrades”!  And remember, very soon, eBay Gallery for your item ($0.35 per auction, and essentially required for successful sales) is going to be free.

8.  For stamps, avoid eBay entirely and go to StampWants.  StampWants is so cheap it’s almost free, it’s designed specifically for stamps, and is so inexpensive you can sell items for a dime and make a profit (just try that on eBay.)  Have more than 50 items to sell?  Get a store at StampWants!  It pays for itself with lightning speed.

9.  First illegal one: selling miniature liquor bottles?  Try it, it’s a high-margin item.  You aren’t supposed to send them through the mail, but the clerk can sometimes feel the liquid sloshing and will ask.  Mark them “Fragile: Snow Globes”.  I’ve never met a clerk so mean as to keep little ol’ snow globes from collectors’ hands.  On eBay, to sell the bottles, cut-and-paste exactly the “collectible container” text that you can find under “Prohibited Items”, and (they don’t tell you this) add a line that says “Sorry, I can only ship to the U.S.  eBay’s rules”.  Don’t offer any international shipping rates.  In my experience, overseas bidders will ask you anyway.  Use your discretion on what you want to do, but one possibility is to tell them to inform eBay, if they ask, that they’re using a U.S. address (I’ve never had them ask a bidder.)  Then go ahead and charge them $7.99 (most happily pay this rate) and ship the bottle overseas.  Everyone loves Snow Globes! 

10. Set a reminder for yourself — an alarm in Outlook, a cronjob, a Yahoo! alert, or something — to fire some time during the first week of each month.  Then download the previous month’s PayPal history.  Save a copy, print a copy, and upload a copy to Google Documents.  Come year-end, when the tax man comes knocking, you will be startled that PayPal only offers 90 days’ worth of account activity to download.

11. Keep a mileage log, to and from your post office and PMB.  Don’t have a PMB?  Again, it’s a great investment.  Don’t, under any circumstance, use your home address on eBay or on whois pages.  If you’re doing this daily, you’ll have hundreds of miles to deduct as a business expense at the end of the year.

OK, there’s eleven to start with.  Please contribute.

(Note added 26 February 2008: Instead of selling on eBay or Half.com to make money, of course, you could do what “Max” did, and repost my selling tips and ask for donations!  Oh, right, we’re paying for his research!  Silly me.)

Ooh ooh ooh — sneaky!

There is a TV spot running now to “help” consumers.  It’s paid for by the Cable Television industry.  It tells consumers that beginning 17 February 2009, all broadcast stations will stop broadcasting in analog, and only broadcast in digital.  It tells the viewer that all televisions hooked up to cable service will continue to work.  In a slightly-overplayed “reasonable” tone, it tells the viewer that “If you receive your television through an antenna, your television can still work with a converter box.”  It directs you to dtv2009.gov, and tells you you can “apply for a coupon” there.  Then the guy folds his arms, looks smug, and the cable logo comes out.

A bit more background: the man is walking across salt flats as he speaks.  He passes a 1960s furniture-size television with a flickering picture that finally resolves.

Implied:  Broadcast TV is a barren landscape
Implied:  Broadcast TV is antiquated
Implied:  Broadcast TV flickers
Implied:  Satellite won’t work either
Implied:  Applying for the coupons is a government program, and as much of a hassle as going to the DMV
Implied:  You will still have to buy something, it will just be a little cheaper with the coupon

OK, the facts.  Yes, on 17 February 2009, analog TVs will not be able to receive broadcasts without the intercession of a converter box.  But:

Satellite works just as well as Cable during the transition
The coupon application process is simple, and can be accessed online, by phone, or by mail
The coupons are for $40 apiece, and every household is entitled to two for free
Converter boxes are expected to cost no more than $50, and I’d bet anyone that ten dollar difference that Walmart will have one for $39.99 before the switchover date

This is, essentially, a push-poll in television advertising format.  It pretends to be benign or even helpful, while in fact it is intensely devious.  Shame on the cable industry, preying upon one of the least-empowered sections of society: those who generally cannot reasonably afford cable or satellite television.

I’m looking for a stationery embosser / book embosser.  This Acorn Pocket Library Embosser looks pretty good.  Anyone own it?  Anyone know of a cheaper and/or better one?

OK, not “The Amazon”, but Amazon.com.

I just got email notification that my order has shipped.  At a quarter to ten.  P.M.  On a Sunday.  What sort of crazy deal does Amazon have with UPS, anyway?

Serious question.  Anyone know?  They have to be sending thousand of tons — more — of stuff a year to all over the globe with this carrier.  UPS must be wetting itself.  What’s it offering?  24/7 pickups, huge price breaks, what?  There has to be something screwy going on for Amazon Prime to be profitable, for instance (Two day shipping, for free, on anything, for $70 per year?  It can’t all be the Costco/Health Club algorithm of “they’ll pay but not use”, can it?)

OhForTheLoveOfAllThatIsSacred.  WTF?  A “commemorative” “9/11″ “coin” clad in silver recovered from Ground Zero? (Warning: link contains sound, moving graphics, and extremely bad taste).

I think I’m going to actually vomit.  I don’t fucking care that they supposedly give 16% (not counting handling charges) of their proceeds to charity.  These people need to be flogged.

OK, so you or a kid outgrows a garment — or, I guess, you come to loathe it and replace it, although I’ve never done that in my life.  Easy: craigslist, Goodwill, whatever.  Your choices are manifold.

Let’s say a seam opens on a perfectly functional garment, or a button comes off.  Again, easy: make sure that in every extended family there is at least one person skilled with needle and thread, and if that person’s not you, make sure you have no shame in asking for free tailoring.  No reason to get rid of a perfectly-fine bit of clothing for that.

But let’s say there’s a structural failure in the clothing.  For me, in denim jeans, it’s frequently a weakening around the seam at the seat of the pants, that begins as thinning and fraying, and finally opens.  It’s a structural failure of a whole panel, and would be very difficult to patch.  I suppose some people are skilled enough to remove and replace the panel, but I’m not.  What to do?

In a “use every bit of the walrus” sense, I hate throwing that stuff out.  In one long-distance sailing book I read, they talked about the ecosystem of a boat.  Textiles begin as clothes, then traverse the path of galley rag, deck rag, head rag, engine rag, overboard.  That’s wonderful.  Each time a piece of fabric is demoted, until it’s literally stiff with congealed grease, it has a new life, and then even after that, it presumably can be consumed by bacteria and oceanic microfauna.  But what do we, on land, do?  We throw it in the trash.

I had a book as a kid, a really fantastic, life-changing boy’s book entitled How To Do Nothing With Nobody All Alone By Yourself.  It’s essentially a rambling train of though by a man, Robert Paul Smith, who grew up during WWI and the Roaring Twenties, writing a book for the children of the late 1950s about how easy they have it when it comes to commercial toys, unlike when he was growing up and they had to make their own.  Transposed another 30 years into the 1980s, it was even stranger for me, and Niall’s copy, in the second decade of this century, will probably strike him as alien as will Chaucer.  I’ll tell my own story regarding the book some time, but don’t wait for that: check the aftermarket: sometimes sellers don’t know what they have and you can pick up a copy of this treasure for ten or twenty dollars.  It should be in every boy’s library, but I’m sure there are not enough copies extant to make that possible, even, say, for California, and as far as I know, it’s never been reprinted, which is preposterous.

Anyway, that book implied that when a garment was worn out, his (Smith’s) mother would cut all the buttons off before discarding the garment and put them in a drawer, was sure the reader’s mother would be doing so, too, and just assumed there was a drawerful of buttons lying around, next to the Borax and dad’s wooden cigar boxes.  My mother, it’s probably obvious to say, did no such thing (unless I’m wrong?) and we never had a drawerful of buttons in our house (nor Borax, nor cigar boxes, much to my dismay.)

So we don’t even do that.  We don’t even save buttons.  Let alone natural fibers.

OK, so I have a terminally-ill pair of jeans.  What to do with them?  Surely the rag industry could use the fiber?  They’re dyed, the jeans, but so?

I’m amazed Jenn hasn’t killed me.  In the “Recycle, Reduce, Reuse” thing, I don’t tend to Reduce, I try to keep everything for its potential for Reuse, and I cringe any time I can’t Recycle what Jenn makes me throw out.  She would have a fit if I started cutting up my old trousers to use as kitchen towels, even though I think that’s completely sensible.  Ever see Jamie Hyneman’s warehouse on TV, with bins labeled stuff like “Bungee Cords”, “Action Figures”, and “Cardboard”?  That’s my dream, except I wouldn’t have the discipline to keep everything so nicely sorted.  I’d just know that I had kite string “somewhere in there”.

So what to do?  Anyone recycle denim?  Can we do something other than throw it out?  In the sci-fi novel I’m kind of writing, there’s a reference to the lucrative occupation of landfill-mining, with old landfills being some of the most prized property.  But we can’t wait for that renaissance, because the cotton will have decayed by then.

So, what to do?  Who wants it?  Is there anything other than overboard?

(It’s wrapped around my body…)

No, seriously though, that’s not an option, is it?  ‘Cos you can’t buy string any more.

I’m going crazy.  It’s supposed to be there.  It’s part of our culture.  “Brown paper packages tied up with string.”  “Tie a string around your finger.”  Every single children’s craft book published before the 1970s.  But walk into a store today and ask them if they have string, and they look at you like you’re from Mars.  As far as I have been able to determine, the 99 Cent Only store, K-Mart, and Target are devoid of string.  Granted, I don’t even really know where to look.  I can buy sewing thread at Joanne’s.  I can buy hemp twine at Home Depot.  But what about simple string?  Does it even exist any longer?

In the late 1980s, I found a KayBee toy store that was having a clearance on summer and fall toys in winter.  I bought two or three reels of kite string, and they fulfilled my string needs for the next 15 years or so, until I lost it in a move.  I’m going crazy.  Somebody send me string!

I’ve contracted an artist for a small logo job.  I got several responses, and wanted to thank them by posting them here:

http://www.whitneystudios.org
http://www.jendiamond.com/web
http://soulstarisborn.deviantart.com/gallery/
http://www.barneda.com/
http://www.coroflot.com/abimage

And last but not least, the one I hired: http://www.justatoilet.com/portfolio

I have been making up my worldwide stamp albums, at long last, and by far  the 4″ D-Ring binders at MyBinding.com are the best deal I have found.  The company is great, the shipping is free, the customer service can’t be beat, and their binders are top-of-the-line.  I also ordered a paper trimmer, which arrived perfectly, and I expect everything else you order would be perfect, too.

When buying products from GoDaddy, always choose, initially, the smallest-possible duration or unit size.  Then wait for them to offer you a special price for a longer term via a checkbox.  This will not only be lower than the smallest-possible unit pro-rated, it will be lower than the price you would have gotten by choosing that duration or size in the first place.  Make sure you use the checkbox they offer you.

Yes, it’s slimy, but all of GoDaddy is slimy.  People don’t use them because they’re classy.  They used them because they’re bloody cheap.  So if you don’t mind feeling like you have to delouse, go ahead and game them back.

Bzzagent.  And Tremor.  And others.

Word-of-mouth advertisers that allow you to sell your soul for free product samples.  Talk up products on your website, at work, at parties, and earn points to get, say, an iPod.  Free mint samples to turn yourself into a corporate shill.  MetaFilter addresses here and here.  More than a year ago.  I’m out of touch.

The Nostalgia Factory.  Buy original movie posters and press kits for surprisingly little money and with low shipping charges.  Also, the official provider of poster images to IMDB.

Hello Associate,

We noticed that you were accepted to the Amazon.com Associate Program several weeks ago but have yet to refer an order.

Yeah, thanks.  Rub it in, why don’t you.

It doesn’t really matter.  I didn’t expect it to be a revenue stream, I just thought it would be very helpful on my Recently Read Books page.  Check it out and let me know if you like it more than the old list.

For Magic players, CardShark seller greggo4randy is donating all proceeds on card sales to “relief efforts for the people affected by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina”.  He has 9249 cards in stock.

I opened a corked bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape this evening. This time it was an inexpensive wine, but last time it was a $135 vintage Jaboulet Hermitage.

From wineanorak.com: “A slightly dangerous response is that in old world wine countries there is less emphasis on product quality and greater tolerance of what could be considered wine faults by consumers and even the wine trade. The fact that the wine industry trades heavily on tradition may imbue it with a degree of inertia, and thus a significant change such as changing closure type is perceived as more problematic than a 5% taint rate.” This from a very interesting article on screwcap closures.

Neighborhoodies.com. Custom-lettered clothing, no minimum order, lots of choices in clothing styles, real designers designing every piece. T-shirts are about $20. Looks wonderful. Anybody have experience with the company?

(Coupon code “BLOGGER” for 10% off, according the the ad on MeFi.)

Another Magic post. In 1994 I was trading cards on Prodigy, but I didn’t have very easy access to information on the rarity of cards. I offered my Demonic Tutor for someone’s Demonic Attorney. The Demonic Attorney was rarer, and I’ll never forget the response I received from the guy, namely, “Yeah right! What are you smoking and where can I get some?!”

Today, the Demonic Tutor is worth $7.23 and the Demonic Attorney is worth $1.52. I still have, and play with, the Demonic Tutor. It’s very nice.

But I won’t mention the Mox Sapphire I sold for $15 that same week.

Joel has some interesting ideas on software pricing.

I made a $60 eBay error. I listed an item as “immediate payment required when Buy It Now is used,” not realizing that that forces the item to be “ship to U.S. only.” Be warned of this.

The local 99¢ Only store has a range of Ajax-brand liquid dishsoap in different citrus aromas.  Bizarrely one of them is Ruby Red Grapefruit.  Even more bizarrely, it smells great.  Updates to follow on its grease-cutting ability.

I received a junk fax today advertising an undervalued stock. The disclaimer at the bottom of the fax informed me that the company sending out the faxes had received $219,965 to produce and distribute the “newsletter”. Good grief. If it’s not making the spammers rich, it’s making the telcos and the USPS some nice money.

You may have a spare key for your Kryptonite-brand bike lock (or your automobile ignition, or your vending machine) in your pocket or purse.

Pizza Hut: Helloandthankyoufuhcallingpeezahuthomeofthefourallwillthisbefordeliveryorcarryout?

Josh: Delivery.

P: Wouldyaliketohearourspecials?

J: Sure.

P: Twoonetoppingbuffalowingsnineteenninetynine.

J: What?

P: Twoonetoppingbuffalowingsnineteenninetynine.

J: One topping buffalo wings?

P: Twoonetoppingandbuffalowingsnineteenninetynine.

J: Oh.

I usually order online, but they have recently “improved” their web app to the point at which it is completely unusable.

In November 2003 I was in a traffic accident. I had to come to a quick stop, but the two people behind me didn’t react fast enough. I was hit by the car behind me, which was in turn hit by the car behind it. I ended up in physical therapy for a month. One of the cars was insured by the relatively expensive State Farm, who have been nothing but professional through the whole process. The other was car was insured by fly-by-night “specialty insurance” provider Viking, part of the Royal & Sunalliance group, where “specialty” is a euphemism, according to their website, for “mandatory coverages for customers who are less able to afford auto insurance”. Viking has had three BBB complaints in the last 12 months, which the BBB lists as “satisfactory”.

There’s one more piece of data you need to know. A while back I ran into a fault with my Audi. There’s a design flaw in which front bumpers will get caught on parking lot obstructions and tear off (I mentioned this problem here.) Audi quoted me a price of $1300 to repair it, but shortly after I received the quote I received a letter from the lawyers pursuing a class action to get this very issue resolved, so I held out. When the accident occurred, I was missing a front bumper, but this had nothing to do with this case. I wasn’t making a claim for this damage. The insurance adjuster estimated the damage to my rear bumper at $700.

I have been in communication with adjuster Dawn, who has been out of the office for long stretches of time. I got in touch with her today, and these are the highlights of the conversation, from memory. It’s surreal.

Dawn:  We’re offering you $x.

Josh:  That’s lower than what State Farm offered.  Lower by 100%, actually.

Dawn:  But this was a minor accident.

Josh:  Well…

Dawn:  This was a minor accident, and you had previously been in another accident that damaged your front bumper.

Josh:  That wasn’t an accident, that was my bumper getting caught on a planter in a parking lot while I was backing up.

Dawn:  But it did more than $1000 damage to your car.

Josh:  Yes.

Dawn: It was obviously more serious. It did $1000 damage to your car, and you weren’t injured, but you were injured during this $700 accident? I don’t see how that could be.

Josh:  You’re not making any sense.

Dawn:  Well, that’s your opinion.

Josh: No, that’s not just my opinion. Look, if a baseball hit my car and shattered my windshield, and the windshield cost me $1000 to replace, would you consider that a more serious accident than the impact?

Dawn:  You’re comparing apples and oranges.

Josh:  Exactly.  You’re comparing apples and oranges.

Dawn:  But you did $1000 damage to your bumper.

Josh:  They’re completely different.  In one I was driving, in the other I was backing up in a parking lot.

Dawn:  But you weren’t driving when you were hit [by our insured].  You were stopped.

Josh:  The other guy sure as hell wasn’t stopped!

Dawn:  Well, he was coming to a stop, and didn’t brake fast enough.  At least that’s what you told us.  [Switches to dramatic voice:] Or is that what happened?

Josh:  No, that’s what happened.  We’ve been over this, lots of times.

Dawn:  OK, then.

[more bizarre exchange…]

Josh:  [Starting to laugh:] Look, I know full well that you may know what you’re saying is nonsense and that you’re just trying to screw with me, and that’s fine.

Dawn:  [Getting flustered:] Well, what do you want?  Let’s talk about that.

Josh:  $y [where y = 2 times x; that's the amount State Farm paid]

Dawn: Well, I don’t have your file right now, it was taken by an auditor. But call me back on Monday, and I’ll see what I can do.

Josh:  [Laughing:] OK.

Dawn:  Bye.

Josh:  [Still laughing:] Bye.

For the Scotch collectors, Specialty Bottle has 50 ml glass sample bottles, with caps, for $0.28 apiece when you buy eight or more 12-bottle cases at a time. This quantity discount essentially means you’re getting 96 bottles for the 75 bottle price. The price for eight cases, including shipping to California, is lower than the price before shipping and handling if you were to buy them from Essential Supplies.

(Scotch collectors use them to trade samples with friends or take specimens home from tastings.)

Overstock.com’s prices on books are amazing!  They undercut Amazon on every item I wanted to buy.  I thought that there would be no way they could undercut $10.50 for Eats, Shoots & Leaves (that’s 40% off list), but Overstock just wants $7.87 for it (55% off list).  Unbelievable.

I had a notable experience at Home Depot today. I had to pick up some things for work (yes, I know, I write software) and thought that as long as I was there, I should pick up some poultry staples. I didn’t actually know what they were called, approximating them as “U-shaped nails with a point on both ends that make an eye when you hammer them into wood.” Lame explanation, but I used my thumb and forefinger to help, which is a technique I use frequently at Home Depot.

(It’s also fun to describe something that you aren’t sure exists but have a need for, e.g., “I need something to plug into my power drill to turn it into a sander.”

“Oh, right over here.”

“Thanks, and, uh, I need something to plug into my power drill to let me cut things.”

“Well, that doesn’t actually exist, you’ll need a Dremel tool for that.”

“Oh, OK.  Jenn, can I get a Dremel tool?”

“What would you possibly need a Dremel tool for?”

“Uh, to cut things.”

“No.”)

I was led to them (we’re back to the poultry staples) and put a 1 lb. box into my orange shopping bucket. I used the self-checkout because, let’s be honest, it’s lots of fun. First I rang up all my modeling supplies for work, and used the corporate credit card to pay for them. I then set those items aside and scanned my 1 lb. box of poultry staples.

The price came up as $0.01.

That was unexpected.

I called over the sales associate who supervised the four self-checkout stations and explained the situation.

“Perhaps you can buy them individually, and that’s a per-staple cost?” I asked.  “But surely they’re not one cent per pound.”

She took the box over to her station and rang them up there.

“No, they’re ringing up as $0.01 over there, too,” I suppose suspecting it be a per-station bug, “so I’d just take it. They’re probably liquidating them or something.”

I always feel a little bit awkward in these situations, as I’m not sure her manager would agree, but hey, I had the blessing of a clerk. I was setting them down onto the scale (there is a digital balance on each station, and presumably an associated weight for each item in the store on a server, and they check to make sure the weight matches what they’re expecting) when she said “no, no, don’t put them there”, took them out of my hand, and put them on the top of the machine, above the touchscreen display. OK, that’s fine, I’ll swing with it. I take out one oxidized penny, dropped it into the coin slot, and received my receipt for $0.01.

So if you need poultry staples….

Following the TV recommendations from a few days ago, it turns out that Mythbusters was a repeat and Crossing Jordan is still as crappy (sorry) as it used to be, except now it seems to be missing perhaps its best actor, Ken Howard (how this will affect the “mythology” episodes about Jordan’s mom is unclear.)  At least it’s on twice a week now, though (Sundays and Fridays), so you can at least see more of it.   And it still, of course, has Jill Hennessy, the reason I watch the show, as I mentioned on the discussion page.  As much as I want her to be, however, she’s still not a very good actress.  Not Elisabeth Röhm-bad, mind you, but not very good.

Alias was good, though.  If I felt guilty about my pleasures, this would be near the top of the list.  By almost every metric I should hate this show.  My brother and I have talked about this.  “It should suck,” as he says, “but it just doesn’t.”  I will complain about the horrible, embarassing, complete sell-out product placement in the episode, however.  They’ve always had a sweetheart deal with Nokia, it seems, and I’m fine with that: the copyrighted “Nokia tune” plays every time Sydney’s phone rings.  But this time was an order of magnitude worse.  The agents were pursuing villains through a parking garage.  The latter jumped in a Mustang to speed off, and our heroes have to nick a car to follow.  They have a split second to decide, and Sydney hollers (yes, hollers) “the F150!”  Not “that one!”, not “the truck!”, not even “the Ford!”, but “the F150!”  Then they cut to a close-up shot of the logo on the vehicle’s side and hold that for a bit.  The heroes begin to drive (no indication of whether the keys were in the car or whether they hot-wired it in approximately 0.3 seconds) but, Oh No!, the truck is boxed in.  That’s fine, “the F150″ pushes the other cars out of the way, then races down the helix of the parking garage, cornering at speed, and generally looking like a car commercial.  When the villains get away (not due to a failure of “the F150″, but because they tried to go out an entrance and were gracious enough not to want to push the innocent occupants of the other car into traffic), we cut to commercial.  There is a still graphic on the screen and a voiceover says, as if we hadn’t gathered, “Alias is brought to you by the new F150.”  And then — wait for it — there’s a commercial for “the F150″.  Presumably this technique is used to combat TiVo users, and presumably we will see this more and more of this as time goes by, but let me state for the record that this sucks.

Not Crossing Jordan-sucks, mind you, but it sucks.

Diageo has backed down in the Cardhu fiasco.  Now let’s all watch the “Pure Malt” become an $800 collector’s item.

Luoyang City in Henan Province, China (see map below) is where I am sending a $1 book for which the recipient is paying $9 shipping.  Amazingly small world.