Shake-Man
November 26th, 2002, 9:59pm
Last week, we had a Dirt Cheap open in town. Being such a small hole-in-the-dirt town, it was bigger news than some farmer announcing the birth of two headed sheep...well, almost. Anybody not from the South might not know what a Dirt Cheap is. Hudson Salvage opened up a chain of "burnout" stores a few years ago called Hudson's Treasure Hunt. Basically, any stores that go bankrupt, are burned out by fire, destroyed by flood, flattened by tornados, overrun by fiery locusts, etc. sell whatever they have that is salvagable to Hudson Salvage. It's more than likely part of the insurance settlement that the destoyed businesses get to rebuild their stores; to get the settlement, they have to liquidate everything.
Anyway, Treasure Hunt sells everything for practically nothing. There's no warranty, and once you buy it it's yours. Whatever crap doesn't sell at the Treasure Hunt stores eventually gets bumped down to the even crappier Dirt Cheap establishments, where it's marked down to really comically low prices.
I said all that to say this. Sometimes it's good to live in a "technically challenged" town. The one shelf in the store where they keep the computer components is barely touched. The boxes are all ripped open, crumpled, covered in soot, you name it. Half the boxes don't even have the right stuff in them. For example, I saw a box for a sound card that had a modem in it. It can get really confusing, even for a totally hot genius like myself. I started going through the boxes, and whatta ya know, I find myself a Visiontek GeForce4 128Mb Ti4200 graphics cards. Seeing how these sell for upwards of $200, I felt pretty fortunate to grab one of these babies for $15. True, it may stop working tomorrow (which I doubt, considering all of Dirt Cheap's stuff is guaranteed to be new and that the thing looks untouched), but, being that it's new, it's covered by the manufacturer's warranty. Isn't that special?
Anyway, I thought I'd just brag a little. Considering that I almost didn't muster up the horsepower to drive over there tonight, I feel pretty lucky. All I need is to be announced as Iwon's daily $10k winner, and the day will be complete.
Shake-Man, a pioneer in dumpster diving in hick towns everywhere
Anyway, Treasure Hunt sells everything for practically nothing. There's no warranty, and once you buy it it's yours. Whatever crap doesn't sell at the Treasure Hunt stores eventually gets bumped down to the even crappier Dirt Cheap establishments, where it's marked down to really comically low prices.
I said all that to say this. Sometimes it's good to live in a "technically challenged" town. The one shelf in the store where they keep the computer components is barely touched. The boxes are all ripped open, crumpled, covered in soot, you name it. Half the boxes don't even have the right stuff in them. For example, I saw a box for a sound card that had a modem in it. It can get really confusing, even for a totally hot genius like myself. I started going through the boxes, and whatta ya know, I find myself a Visiontek GeForce4 128Mb Ti4200 graphics cards. Seeing how these sell for upwards of $200, I felt pretty fortunate to grab one of these babies for $15. True, it may stop working tomorrow (which I doubt, considering all of Dirt Cheap's stuff is guaranteed to be new and that the thing looks untouched), but, being that it's new, it's covered by the manufacturer's warranty. Isn't that special?
Anyway, I thought I'd just brag a little. Considering that I almost didn't muster up the horsepower to drive over there tonight, I feel pretty lucky. All I need is to be announced as Iwon's daily $10k winner, and the day will be complete.
Shake-Man, a pioneer in dumpster diving in hick towns everywhere