I'm paraphrasing, of course.

It's been a strange couple of weeks. As some of you might know, I'm a bit of a tiki freak. Munktiki sells an eBay-only tiki mugs that are some of the most original examples of the genre. I won his fine 'Poison' mug (pictured) last week, executing a lovely last-minute snipe using jBidWatcher.

A few minutes later, I received an email from eBay with the title 'Message from eBay Member: foo' (names changed to protected the l33t). Buried amidst several pages of eBay legalese and advice was the single line:

you got some nuts homey...enjoy the poison beaaoch

Indeed.

Our friends Ryan and Sara were in town visiting this weekend - we had a blast, as usual. Unfortunately, Ryan's team was in crunch mode, so he wound up working a bit over the course of the weekend, but we still managed to find the time to take pictures, drink beer and watch USC grind Arkansas into the dirt. On Sunday, we wandered over to Stacks for breakfast. On the way home, we decided to check out some of the ultra-expensive open houses in the area. After some uneventful house-browsing (guess a guy in an 'Ithaca is Gorges' T-shirt doesn't look like the typical buyer of a $2.5M home), we wandered into a house which I'll refer to as 'The Joke'.

First off, the living room in this house was as big as (and decorated exactly like, down to the pink carpet and window treatments) a Holiday Inn ballroom. It even had a large parquet floor for dancing! The house was enormous, had a pool with a slide and diving board (ah, the lawsuit-free 80's) and was far too expensive even considering all the space. Oh, and one of the kid's rooms included disturbing border featuring adorable children in semi-victorian garb and faces that could charitably be described as resembling an an Oompa Loompa with a history of heroin use.

The best part came when the overly-enthusiastic Asian realtor (yes, his race matters for the purpose of this story) was trying to convince me that I should buy the place. Among the usual patter of interest-only loans and zero down payment, He came up with:

bq: "This is a great neighborhood. All whites!"

It's worth noting that I was not wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood, nor had I made any comments about white power up to that point in our conversation. WTF?