"He's got gnomes"

Movie: The Full Monty, 1997 (Simon Beaufoy, screenwriter, Peter Cattaneo, dir.)
Who says it: Dave (Mark Addy,) about the lawn ornament of his former boss Gerald (Tom Wilkinson)
The context: A bittersweet moment where Dave is both contemptuous and wistful about Gerald's bourgeois trinket, meant to show that he's fled a middle class life.
How to use it: to seek humor in the things we acquire and what they convey.

I've been wasting a bit of time on eBay lately. When Ellen visited several weeks ago (here's a good way to mark it on your calendar--around the day of her last auto mishap), she helped me pick out some useful mysteries from the basement. Hetchen worked at Kate's Mystery Books many years ago, and in fact that's where we met. So we have a bunch of old mysteries, not to mention some other clutter I've found (old Spy Magazines, Nancy Drew books, and other truck.)

But in the past few weeks I confess that I've spent as much time cruising around eBay, finding out what things sell for, discovering how "collectibles" attract so much currency, and thinking constantly about whether I really need to sell some of these items. In fact, the money would be useful, but this does dredge up very mixed feelings. Also, if I were to analyze how much I could actually be earning if I simply recovered the wasted time and used it for work I charge to clients, I'd probably break even...