Selling Your Entire Life – How Much Is It Worth??

How much is your entire life worth? Your home, your car, your job, your friends, your lifestyle. Just as a guess, what price would you put on it? Priceless? Maybe not.

A man in Australia recently sold his for approximately $400K.

Seriously.

The person who purchased it has his three-bedroom house, his 19-year-old Mazda, a motorbike, a boat, his job as a rug salesman, and an introduction to his friends. Apparently, the man realized that after a divorce, his entire life reminded him of his ex-wife. His solution? Start a new life from scratch and sell his old one on E-Bay.

Apparently, this is legal.

Which has got me to thinking. . . .

How much is my life worth on the open market?

Let’s see. . . .

I’m a graduate student – so the buyer would have the opportunity to try out the academic life and relive his/her time as a student. Limitless lattes and reading of highly intellectual books. Good conversations about “things that really matter” throw in for good measure. Heated debates over whether or not Foucault is still pertinent.

I’m getting married – but I’m not sure how my future husband would feel about a stand-in bride. Especially if a male won the bid.

I’m a writer – and the person could take credit for my novel and my articles. That’s something. I could change the author’s name on the book. That’s neat.

I have a ton of clothes, shoes and jewelry.

And two adorable cats. I can’t forget them.

And my friends – scattered all over the world. Perhaps they could host the new me in cities like New York and Hong Kong and Dublin.

What’s all that worth? $400K? Or less?

What a crisis it would put someone in to know that their entire life was only worth $12,650, more or less. Wouldn’t that suck? To know that other people thought your life was too boring to buy? Or too sad? Or too weird?

The man – who lives near Perth, I think – told the BBC that he “has no regrets”. The money will allow him to travel for awhile, and to fulfill his list of things to do. Then, I suppose, he will settle down again and build up another marketable life somewhere. If it’s on an island and he sells 10 years from now, I’m maxing out my credit card. You can bet on it.

Full story at: Man sells entire life

I’ll miss George Carlin’s caustic sense of humor.

My dad and I didn’t agree on much when I was growing up. He liked things like the Patriots, the Sox, the Bs and the Cs. He liked skiing and smoking and going to Hampton Beach. He liked going to the track and racing horses. Most of these things I did not like – even the beach part of the deal (my dad smoked so much that he managed to make even sea air smoky).

But, the one thing I did share with my father was a dark sense of humor. He had been in Vietnam; in fact, he did two tours as an infantryman in the army. He was Scottish and Catholic and grew up in a questionable Boston neighborhood with people who probably eventually did time for participating in a variety of illegal activities. In other words, for my dad, life was not a joy ride. In this, we agreed wholeheartedly.

I remember hearing George Carlin’s “7 words you can’t say on television” routine, and his take on driving, with my dad. My dad didn’t bother about swearing in front of me, which is probably why I still swear like a sailor on shore leave. Happily.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my dad and what I’ve inherited from both of my parents. From my father, it was definitely his cynicism and his sense of humor. When I read that George Carlin had died, it brought back a lot of memories of my own father. I miss them both.

George Carlin on death:

The famous driving routine – in 2 parts:

New middle-aged men on the block . . . .

OK, I’m not proud of this, but I actually owned the CD “Hangin’ Tough” in the late 80s. I never admitted to anyone that I was a NKOTB fan (New Kids on the Block, yo), but I was. Of course I was. The formula works, for better or for worse, because girls need something to fantasize about. If high school boys were sexier and widely available, then we’d never need another boy band. I don’t, however, see that materializing anytime soon.

Today, when I logged into i-Tunes to download my latest podcasts for the gym, I noticed that the new New Kids on the Block video was one of the most downloaded videos on the site. And I thought – Really? No, seriously, really really?

So I had to check it out on YouTube to have a look and a listen. I HAD to do it, people. Forces beyond my ken made me do it, I swear.

And, honestly, it was exactly like I expected it to be. It starts out with the band members getting a text message (natch), then deciding to meet up on a beach with their shirts off (duh), with a lot of half-naked women with their tits out onscreen as backdrops (well, yeah, thanks for the detailed description Ms. Obviously). And the song is catchy is a pre-produced pop kind of way (which I generally like, in pop culture’s mass produced defense).

But, in the end, I had to laugh out loud.

The ending shot is them all dressed in matching white suits (WHITE SUITS!!!!) doing an updated version of their old dance moves. Seriously. I think Donnie has a fedora hat on, too, but I only watched the video once, so I can’t be sure.

The commentary on the YouTube clip is also classic, and devolves into three categories:

1. Hard-Core Fan: “These guys are still great!” “OMG, they look hot!!!” “I love this song!!” (Picture a lot of 30-40 year old women typing these comments and wishing their husbands looked more like Joey McIntyre).

2. New Fan: “This song isn’t bad. I like it.” “This is good.”

3. Hater: “These guys suck!!!!” “OMG, these guys are totally old and look like pedophiles next to the girls in the video!” “They blow, but the girls are smokin!!” (Picture husbands of the women above typing in the room adjacent to their wives and wishing their wives looked more like girls in bikinis.)

At any rate, the NKOTB are back, they are touring, and they started the summer off with a retro bang. Or maybe a loud snap, like from those small firecrackers you throw at the ground to pop them.

Here’s the vid – for as long as it lasts:

My Marilyn moment. . . .

Because it can’t all be about the kids. . . .

A new photo for a new season. . . .

Obviously, I’ve decided to update my photo on the site. Not that I didn’t think that the other one was great – clearly, I did. But, I’ll be teaching this fall and even though people assumed I was naked in the other photo, I can’t afford for my future students to think so, too. Has anyone ever heard of band bikinis, people? Honestly.

That being said, I’ll probably keep switching out the photo from now on – it’s more fun this way. For instance, I have blond hair now, but no good photos to share. It’s sunny and 90 degrees here in San Francisco today (if you can believe that), so I’ll have plenty of opportunities to play model.

And, as promised, I’ll be writing about Hong Kong soon. But who can write on such a gorgeous day, when the beach is beckoning? I think, however, that I’ve learned my blogging lessons about bikini photos. Mostly.

Hong Kong is rainy this time of year. . . .

Well, I’m back from Hong Kong. After living there for nearly 3 years, you would think that I would be able to remember what the weather is like in summer. Luckily, I packed an umbrella, because we definitely needed it. It rained everyday. Actually, rained is a pleasant way of putting it for some of the days. At one point, we encountered a “black rain” day. Basically, this means run inside and stay there, and don’t come out until we tell you to. The rain was so bad that it made news headlines for days afterward, with dramatic pictures and roads completely washed away. It turns out that the Midwest is not the only place being drenched. (Though Hong Kong is mostly prepared for this in a way that the poor farmers simply cannot be.)

In the next few days, I’ll be retelling and reliving my trip in snippets on this site, with accompanying pictures.

In a stroke of luck, I managed to be in Hong Kong when an outbreak of bird flu was occurring. Thus, I got a firsthand experience and access to things that I wouldn’t have dreamed of back in Berkeley. This will help my dissertation project as well as my thinking through the issue of public health, prevention, and the cultural significance of disease surveillance. What fascinated me the most was that no one local seemed all that worried. People still purchased fresh chickens, people still went to the markets, and life went on as normal. Only with a lot of dead chickens in one market in Sham Shui Po.

Stay tuned for more. . . .

OK – we’re off to Hong Kong

I might not get the chance to write for the next two weeks. I’ve decided not to bring my computer (too much hassle), and the days of internet cafes are nearly done with in any modern city. So, that being said, I’ll just catch everyone up with a blog-a-palooza upon my return – with pictures as promised.

We bought a new camera, one of those things that are so tiny they can fit in your pocket easily, so there should be a lot of them. The quality? Who knows. Not as good as some, better than most.

It should be strange to visit HK again. There are a lot of ghosts in the streets for me, not all of whom are good spirits. That being said, I think that I will have a better, more pleasant, experience of the city. I think I read somewhere that we all leave pieces of us behind in the places that we have lived, and that upon our return, what we really feel when we return to them is that we are reconnecting with the ghosts of our former selves.

I think that’s true. I fully expect to see a version of myself walking along Wyndham Street to yoga class, or refilling my octopus card in the station.