Would YOU sell all your stuff on Ebay? (we know the answer to that!)

I was shopping in a Davis Kidd for my dad's birthday about a month ago, and decided to go check out the humor section, as I'm an avid fan of Dave Barry and my dad is, too. While browsing through the messy shelves, I noticed All My Life for Sale. The title was written in the ebay colors, and I figured it way about ebay. My dad is a computer networking engineer, so this is definitely his kind of book, especially because he shops on half.com and ebay all the time. I flipped through it, and didn't understand, so I referred to the seven page introduction. It explains that All My Life for Sale is a book following John D. Freyer and his AMAZING project. He wrote this book after finishing it. You're probably DYING (ha!) to know what this project was... Here goes!

After coming back from New York to his apartment in Iowa City, John D. Freyer decided he had too much stuff. When he originally moved there, all his possessions fit into the back of his Honda. Now his apartment was FULL of junk that he had picked up at yard sales and thrift stores. He had a tagging party: He asked people to tag things they thought were representative of his life that he would sell on ebay. And he didn't stop there. In the end, he sold more than 600 items: everything from a dried cuttlefish to a 50s chrome kitchen table. This in itself is cool enough, but John had a great knowledge of consumer tracking. (He actually wrote his thesis on it.) He believes that you can find out a great deal about a person from their stuff, that a person is defined by what they own and the history behind it.

And he actually proved this, in a way. You see, the book's format is simple. On each page, an item is listed. There is a picture of the item, how much it sold for, how many bids there were and a description of it (I believe these are straight from what he had on ebay). But John will usually tell a story about something he did with the item, or where he got it, or who it reminds him of IN the description of it. Because of this, we end up finding out quite a bit about John: People he knows, that he likes making movies, where he's worked, how he grew up, and so much more. Truly, he was defined by what he had, because learning about his stuff let us learn about him.

Here's where it gets interesting: After selling his first item, a toaster, to someone in Indiana, John began to wonder what new histories his stuff would have. He decided that he wanted to visit his objects in their new homes, and he did just that. Pictures of his visits and the new owners accompany the item on the page, along with an update. The updates range from "I never ended up shipping this because it would have cost me 70 dollars" to "I visited this person and we had a blast. When I met her, she was wearing this and we went to her favorite bar and met her friends." The places he goes are very interesting to read about, and I really enjoyed finding out who invited him for a visit, who didn't, and who never ended up getting what they bid for.

The first items went mostly to people John knew in Iowa City, but as word of the project got out, people from farther and farther away started bidding: a brick was sent to the UK!

I love the format in this book, it's very visually appealing with pretty colors and great pictures. I'm going to go over what a typical entry looks like so it's as clear as possible: There's... *drumroll please* The name of the object, a description usually containing an anecdote (which I thought was antidote spelled wrong for years,) a picture that's *usually* related, the update, and the vitals: the tag number, how much it sold for, how many bids there were, and where it's new home was.

This is a really interesting book that would be a great conversation starter, (give it a home on your coffee table,) or some casual reading. (When you're in the loo, perhaps? :D) I'm recommending this, but be warned: It'll make you want to sell all your stuff, too.

To see the website he operated for this project, (that he auctioned off and is currently owned by the Museum of Modern Art,) check out allmylifeforsale.com!

Also, John D. Freyer appeared on an episode of MTV's TWISTED where he explained the project and how he came up with the project name, etc. etc. Most of the info is in the introduction, though, so it was nothing new for me. (However, the other story in that episode was how a Jewish girl came to be a Playboy Bunny- how very fascinating! :D)