Randy buys a bookshelf off Gumtree

all right here we go that guy's okay here we go okay walking to sky chapter one I bought a bookshelf on gumtree recently it was an amazing experience I'll quickly tell you about it that I read the book but I found it strange because it made me start to think about the way like our methods of communication have sort of changed over the years you know in the old days if you wanted a bookshelf you just go see Gareth the bookshelf guy cuz he was the dude in your tribe that made the bookshelves he had a little bookshelf cave he was reputable now any mad bastard can sell their on gumtree you know what I mean as a species we're sort of able to cope with knowing and and gossiping about around like 100 or 150 people that's like the limit of our tribe any more than that it starts to get confusing which is why we created an abstract constructs like territories and deities to unite larger groups of people under an imaginary common factor and it works a treat because we only really gather on mass on special occasions but I think like social media here and it's all that up you know I don't think we're we're able to deal with the thousands of people were connected to on a daily basis and as a result we neglect our immediate 150 you know that's why I never get invited to parties anymore it's not because I ramble on about veganism insisting old ladies it's because I'm not on Facebook and everybody just assumes you are I am so behind on the births deaths and marriages of my friends but I feel like The Time Traveller's wife every time I go to a party like this is dad Timmy is our son he's six now didn't even know you were pregnant anyway and you know smartphones aren't that great you know that right dinner they're not that great you don't need the internet in your pocket you work at Kohl's okay you're not working for the president but also what was the point of developing opposable thumbs for you to take a photo of your head post it on the internet and then just stand by for validation Val only validated in order to gain permission to post a photo of their own head on the internet and stand by for validation the people who give a about your head will at some point see it in real life your head and the neck it rode in on your vanity is set up my bandwidth yeah this is what's going through my head as I'm on gumtree looking for a bookshelf because you know when you put something on the bottom in like in the search in book through in book free what the but if you put something in the search on gumtree and having a stroke up here um yeah when you put something in the search right and and like there's always a couple of things that come up in the list that'll like the polar opposite of what you search for my get out of my head gum tree algorithms conspiracy no but seriously you tell you type it's like bookshelf and it's like bookshelf bookshelf bookshelf gramophone the shelf bookshelf bookshelf combine harvester with the it's actually a pretty good price anyway on this particular day I found two bookshelves that worked for me in terms of cost and more importantly geographical convenience because I'd be if I'm driving a Broadmeadows to pick up a book shut up right so I type in bookshelf and I see the two things and I'm like okay one seller is Cathy the other is Morgan I send them both the same text message hello I saw your bookshelf on gumtree is it still available Cathy text back straight away saying that's called Cathy on sorry I gave you an annoying voice in the retelling of this story Morgan's response came through a couple of minutes later and simply read it was my wife's bookshelf it doesn't answer my question he's use of past tense in that sentence unnerved me slightly I'm like oh I should probably just find another bookshop and then I noticed he lived in the suburb next to me so I replied is it still available he responded with the letter Y just - why is he asking me why I want to know if it's still available or is it a wifey yes and he's so in the throes of grief that he can't manage the e and the s I assume it's a wife or yes so I respond cool I'll take it when's a good time to come and pick it up no reply for 15 minutes I'm like guys forgotten about me it I'll find another bookshelf and then when his reply actually does come through I realize he spent those 15 minutes crafting his response because it's a thesis he must have felt so bad about only using a single consonant in his previous text that he just massively overcompensated with this one also for some reason felt that the use of punctuation entirely unnecessary so it's just one obscenely long sentence which reads you must come and pick up now I only have short time here at house and also it wide sir bring fan or trailer and their stare but I can help you carry downstairs if you can't park out front walk up past ring bell and I will help you carry it to trailer or van I only accept cash and if you do not come now I will sell it someone else again I'm thinking she just signed another bookshelf at this point but now I am fascinated by Morgan and I simply must meet the man I Drive over to his house before I've left by sending the Mystics I go I'll be there in ten minutes he replied okay but smelted okay iey which just fascinated me more that he is fallen has just found a to let a woman becoming one let is a spell a three-letter word and he's off the shine as I'm driving over to his house I'm trying to picture what he's going to be like you know his pidgin English might suggest ethnicity of some sort but I don't want a racially profile in maybe he's an old man who recently lost his wife and he's not that very good at texting or maybe and I'm really hoping this is the case Morgan is just batshit crazy so I get to his house and I go up to the head I park out front walk up the path bring down and i brace myself for the door to be opened by like an old man in a smoking jacket wearing fishnet stockings and suspenders just puffing on an opium pipe Walla but mud just creepily polishes a goldfish in the background and then a tiny pug dog wearing a fez hat just trots up the hallway sits on the mat looks up at me and says come to our lovely room and then the door opens and I am thoroughly disappointed before me stands an average Caucasian male in his mid thirties dressed casually hipster chic stubble glasses with designer frames expensive watch I immediately think architect but the house is too cheesy for that it's like a double storey doll's house with bay windows but definitely a designer of some kind maybe a graphic designer he's too skinny for manual labor he's too hip for the public center but this can't be Morgan because Morgan sticks messages would suggest that he's not that technically seven and then the man staying in front of me says hello my name is Morgan [Applause] he invites me in shakes my hand closes the door and 20 minutes later I will be witnessing Morgan perform some of the most aggressive acts of violence I've ever seen in my life and I will be speeding away in my car bleeding from the facts here's how this went down by going in the house and I noticed two things immediately one this is a house in the throes of renovation nothing too extreme but there's like drop sheets on all the furniture there's freshly painted walls there's a bathtub wrapped in plastic in the hallway awaiting installation someone's doing some work on this house the second thing I noticed on the way up the stairs to the second floor on the first floor landing is a wedding photograph featuring a very cleanly shaven Morgan with a very beautiful bride very much in love the photograph is very much on the floor and the glass in the frame is very much smashed she's not dead she's left him and the plot thickens a bit more for Morgan and that's morgan unceremoniously like kicked the photoframe to one side on the way up the stairs I really wanted to pry into Morgan's life and a escapes of inappropriate questions but he was clearly a broken man he had this terrible air of sadness around him so I didn't want to intrude luckily for me though I didn't have to because Morgan immediately began oversharing and told me the whole story ah Thank You Morgan I shall hang off your every word and then retell your tale to 200 strangers and recorded for a DVD he is a graphic designer yes and he's really good at it he does like massive rebranding campaigns for large corporations he gets flown all over the world doing this right about four years ago a woman hired Morgan to rebrand her florist business and he did such a great job she married him and he thought everything was just fine until about three months ago Morgan had to do a presentation in Sydney right but he was on his way home from overseas and he got stuck in Dubai due to a flight cancellation so rather than cancel the meeting Morgan suggested to these businessmen in Sydney that they do a Skype chat because he's so technologically savvy despite his baffling text message style so Morgan checks into a hotel cracks open his laptop and starts skyping with this roomful of businessmen in Sydney who are all watching Morgan on a massive screen on their boardroom wall right and everything's going great Morgan is totally nailing it until about halfway through he realizes that a file he wants to show these dudes he's on the desktop of his home computer back in his home office in Melbourne and he decides to live share the desktop of his home computer on the Skype chat he knows how to do that he can control his computer remotely from anywhere in the world it's not particularly new technology but Morgan makes it sound so impressive so this roomful of businessmen are all watching keenly like uh Margaret bringing some biscuits that's a newfangled going on in here as Morgan clicks a few buttons and brings up the desktop of his home computer on the Skype chat now what Morgan doesn't realize is that his wife has been using the photobooth app on that particular computer to take pictures of herself to take naked pictures of herself to take naked pictures of herself doing some pretty up it's embarrassing to say the least just as Margaret came back in with the biscuits or I've got you the world now those of you who are familiar with the photobooth app is it accesses the built-in camera in your computer and with a click of a button takes a photo of you when you're standing in front of the screen and if you know that you'll also know that if you leave that application open the camera also stays open witnessing whatever may be happening in front of the computer in real time such as your wife in your home office your best mate [Music] Morgan Bing goes on to tell me she's keeping the house his former best mate is moving in and while they're out for the day happily shopping for fittings Morgan must suffer the indignity of moving his out and selling the stuff they don't want on gumtree - this guy it's at this point of the story that Morgan starts crying he breaks down and I do not blame the man it's horrible and I just want to give him a big hug and say everything's gonna be all right Morgan but I am holding the full weight of a bookshelf halfway down a set of stairs and Morgan is the only thing stopping that bookshelf from caving my face in I was like [Music] and Morgan managed to pull himself together for about eight seconds and then just went and let the bookshelf gone I fell backwards it literally rolled over me and took out the light hanging above the staircase I'm now lying on my back getting showered in broken glass is the bookshelf turn end over end you just went strong right to a freshly painted wall at the bottom of the stairs [Music] I'm gonna tiny cut on my forehead which is just pissing blood for some reason apart from that I'm fine Morgan however he's not fine Morgan is the opposite of fine something happened when the bookshelf lodged itself in the wall and his sadness just went away in a second and he started pissing himself laughing hysterical and he had the creepiest blob I've ever heard in my life I'm standing on this he's weird and he's like like some sort of demonically possessed paratime kookaburras over can I still have the book Shelby's like we extracted from the wall the bookshelf incidentally shelling no sign that having just rolled down a staircase and smash through a wall we carry out to my cot we have to stop and that seeks times because mother was like I didn't we got to my table put it on the trailer and Morgan was in such a great mood he let me have the bookshelves afraid [Applause] and that's where the story shouldn't but there was something about the bookshelf going through the wall that flipped a switching Morgan's head and he is now hungry for more destruction so as I started talking the bookshelf to add to my trailer Mugen just strolls over to like an upright mailbox on the front lawn and just starts trying to wrench it out of the ground just really putting his back [Music] wheels it like a battle ax and just starts smashing up the front garden just be hittin the daisies up the lavender I'm like ah hey Morgan maybe you want to stop and think about that and he wheeled around and looked at me like Jack Nicholson chasing Shelley Duvall up the stairs in the shining and said now I like tying knots I'm quite good at tying knots if I tie something down I take my time because I want it to stay there but as Morgan nonchalantly strolled up the driveway rolled up the garage door and put the mailbox through the windscreen of an Audi I must admit I kind of rushed my knot-tying job I got in the car I'm about to drive off I'm like looking at the house going oh I'm sure it'll be fine and then an armchair smashed out of an upstairs window I just like doing doing doing throwing down the front lawn I was like what's my duty of care in this situation I didn't want to call the cops on him I didn't want him to trash the house I'm like dad I'm gonna have to talk him bogan so I got out I walked up the driveway myself you know when someone does something really violent you just like deaf we're not supposed to do like yeah he just yeah he feeling in my Tumtum and I'm standing there standing there in the garage and there's like an adjoining door in the garage that leads into the house I can see in through that through the door into the house up the staircase it's like a wooden staircase and I'm standing in the garage is going like I was calling a cat for its dinner and then I notice a small trickle of water start to come from the top step and then a little bit more water and then some and then quite a lot of water just piercing down the stairs like a shitty water feature I'm like hi that can't be right and there Morgan appeared on the top step holding a hammer like this run straight past me like where are you going is like bad made a beeline for my table like yeah that stuff is a stop it just stop he spins around guys are just checked my phone she texted me 15 minutes ago saying she'll be here in 15 minutes we've gotta go and gets easy Jesus I run down the lawn getting the driver's seat I'm like what was with the water he goes off I put plugs in all of the seats and turned all the taps on like that's he's like just drive I was like I took out some quick rounded the corner at the end of these straight and the book shelters Coosh and exploded against the guardrail just exploded in a shower of badly tied knots and broken dreams so man movies just it left it there like a little breadcrumb for his ex-wife to find on the way home to her destroyed gingerbread house I dropped Morgan at a train station I have never seen him again and that my friends is why I no longer shop on gumtree [Applause] you know my favorite bit of that story I just made it up yeah it's not true there is no Morgan it's very unsatisfying isn't it but I saw him in my head I saw Morgan in my head why is it we can feel so robbed when someone tells us a story we just heard isn't true and yet so satisfied at the end of the fictional level you know the other great thing about that story first draft [Applause]

Channel: 1234567890tgb

Views: 4,879,736

Rating: 4.9456258 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: Mq_wZE93ZAY

Length: 21min 13sec (1273 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 27 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/kickme2]

Who is this?! He's great!

[u/MyNameIsNotJJ]

Fantastic story telling and humor, shame about the bookshelf. I appreciate a good bookshelf.

[u/Itty_Bitty_BumbleBee]

I LITERALLY just watched this video this morning, I laughed the entire video, so great!

[u/Bumi_Earth_King]

Oh no, where's Sammy J? Don't tell me they broke up?!

[u/bendysmcgeeandthe-]

This guy has definitely just finished reading Sapiens by Yuval Harari.