Pages

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

How Much Is That Chinchilla in the Bathroom Stall?

As proof of the promise made in the earlier post, I give you this:

UCSB chinchilla

Taken by Agent Prance Closer in a UCSB bathroom. Apparently bathrooms were tagged with this message all across campus by someone in such an urgent need to shed chinchillas that he was willing to commit vandalism. In case you’d actually like to shell out $200 for a chinchilla of likely inferior quality — I say this because Isla Vista animals often have mange problems and this would bode poorly for an animal for whom fur is pretty much the only selling point — email me and I’ll send the version with an unredacted phone number.

A point of discussion: Do you think the scratched-in animal face is supposed to be the chinchilla? Or do you think the face was already there and it made the would-be chinchilla seller that this particular spot on the stall wall would be a good place to write an animal-related message?

Also: Why do you think that the person who wrote this message chose to state the street he lives on? Why did he think that doing so would be helpful to customers? Why didn’t he think this was something he couldn’t communicate over the phone?

And something you can either discuss or not: College has changed since I graduated. In my day, most animal peddlers who’d post on bathroom walls were selling roosters.

No comments:

Post a Comment