Sitting on My Hands and Holding Out

...and yes, all you stereotypical accent lovers, that's a stereotypically Canadian "out" - pronounced "oot" as in boot or root or shoot or loot or fruit or flute or Beruit or hot pursuit - you get the idea, eh? Yeah, so stereotypical accent nonsense aside, I'd like to publicly announce that I'm holding out until I get "the" offer for the recording contract. Yes, I'm sitting on my hands. Now, there are plenty of amazing offers for the recording contract, but unless somebody makes me an offer on one of them so I can pre-trade it for the next, I'm really not certain that I'm moving up in the trading game with any of them. (Check out the current offers here) The two offers people tell me to take, The Mexican Bar and the Full Body Tattoo, are really choice, but I'm not so sure about re-trading them. Everybody says I should go for the Full Body Tattoo. Nobody is willing to make an offer for it. I think we can all agree that it'd be pretty awesome to trade for the full body tattoo, but it'll probably be that hardest thing for me to re-trade. Ever. (If you want a full body tattoo, send your offer for it to oneredpaperclip@gmail.com) The Mexican Bar offer is amazing, and I talked to Emilio on the phone and he seems like an awesome guy, but he still hasn't sent me any pictures of this "beach bar" in Acapulco. So as far as I know, it might just be a shack on a swamp. I'm getting heaps of emails from people who say that I should make more trades to keep things around here interesting. I'm also getting heaps of emails from people who say that I should hold out until "the" offer comes in. It's about 50/50 right now. Half of you are bored - half of you think I'll be an idiot to take anything I've been offered so far. Now, I'd like to make trades as quick as possible, I'm not trying to bore you. The bottom line is: boring is boring. But the other bottom line is: I'm trying to trade up to a house. It's come to the point where I've said it so many times and so many people know about it that I'll pretty much be a total chump if I don't trade one red paperclip for a house. An interesting predicament - not exactly the kind of thing anything in life ever prepares you for. So it's come to this: I can make lots of trades real fast for hard-to-re-trade things and swap myself into a corner, or I can sit on my hands and see what comes along in the offers department. My hands are really really warm right now and I wanna go for something, but I think we can all agree it'll be way more awesomer if I trade up to a house than if I screw up and end up with something that nobody wants and get left on the side of the information superhighway with my thumb out trying to score a ride. It's hard to screw up when you're trading paperclips and pens, but it gets really easy to drop the ball when you're playing around with stuff like cube vans and recording contracts. From here on out it's gonna take some shrewd trading to get to that house. Remember, I'm just a guy with an internet connection and a blog. That's it. I've got literally zero personal resources to put forward in order to make this happen faster. I am not independently wealthy and have no big cash savings I can pull from to get on airplanes and make tons of trades. The revenue from the google adsesne ads on this site covers my internet connection costs and pays a little bit of my rent. A very little bit. Every trade apart from the ones in Yahk has occurred in my spare time when I've been on the road with my part time job as a trade show rep for Table Shox. Yes, I've been really lucky. Amazingly lucky. I still can't believe this has taken off the way it has. It's totally mind blowing. But I think we can all agree it'll be a whole heck of a lot more mind blowing when I finally trade up to a house. The funness of that will be off the charts. So, can you help me spread the word about the project and the recording contract currently up for grabs? Your help will be MASSIVELY appreciated. The more people that find out about the one red paperclip project, the more awesome the offers will be, and the more radical it'll be for you to follow along with this site. Think of it as win-win! This site gets thousands of hits a day right now, but as the value of the items continue to increase it means that fewer and fewer people are able to get in on the trades. (I know, that really sucks. Big time. I'm gonna set up a sweet little web site where we can all start making trades for the kind of stuff we all actually have lying around the house. It's going to be so cool. Soon, soon.) If there's any possible way you can help spread the word about this recording contract (ie. calling up radio stations, talking to your buddies who have a band, text-messaging people who got axed from American Idol etc..) , please let 'em know. I've only made it this far because others have helped out and I'm counting on y'all to help me get to the house! Remember - there'll be an open invite to come hang out at the house when I get there! I'll even bake cookies for everyone! Yes, maybe even chocolate chip cookies! It'll be so win-win. You help spread the word so can I trade up to the house, and I'll bake you cookies! And yes, I'm still sitting on my hands, but I'll wash them before I bake the cookies. And make the next trade. Bye for now - Kyle