Centerfold

November 20, 2008 8:30 PM

We had a tale of time travel getting a man out of a speeding ticket. (Previously) Now we have a man trying to pay a bill with a spider drawing --not a speeding ticket this time. (He mentions time travel as well.)

Today he sold the spider on eBay for $10k. J. Giles unavailable for comment.

Neil Gaiman thinks selling 7-legged spiders is fine if they are not sold in quantity.

posted by cjorgensen (23 comments total)

$10,000? Should I believe that?
posted by grobstein at 9:07 PM on November 20, 2008

I don't know why, but it really bugs me when people sell things like this on ebay.
posted by robotot at 9:08 PM on November 20, 2008

Interesting dataset to collect: number of paid vs. unpaid winning bids on eBay, grouped by price.

Or, turning off the nerdspeak on preview, I'm not sure I believe that.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 9:09 PM on November 20, 2008

I don't know what to think about the auction so I'll just point out that the best part of the email exchange is the different brush used for the eighth leg.
posted by danb at 9:11 PM on November 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

Somehow or other it's become a photograph.
posted by tellurian at 9:24 PM on November 20, 2008

Hey, now there's a drawing of the drawing of the 7-legged spider up on eBay for just ten bucks! Should I ... nuhh.

And the email exchange was very funny.
Break a leg, off a spider!
Your fan,
Lazlo Toth
posted by not_on_display at 9:25 PM on November 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

Give it another week or two and it will be on all the breakfast tv shows.
posted by robotot at 9:28 PM on November 20, 2008

I knew I should have tried to pay my credit card bill with a drawing of my cat.

DAMMIT.
posted by louche mustachio at 9:37 PM on November 20, 2008

Seems like a pretty easy purchase on Ebay, just send him a picture of a half-toed sloth and you should be square.
posted by SomeOneElse at 9:41 PM on November 20, 2008 [1 favorite]

So my photo of a spider at Ruby Falls ought to be worth at least 20k, right?
posted by empyrean at 9:44 PM on November 20, 2008

One night when I was feeling punchy, I made some silly ASCII art in Notepad and emailed it to MoMA. A woman responded that they unfortunately didn't accept online submissions, which I thought was awfully tactful of her.
posted by danb at 10:00 PM on November 20, 2008 [2 favorites]

The winning bidder, Patrick Munoz, told ninemsn he originally placed a bid for $99,000 — but that it sold for $15,000 because only 18 other people placed bids.

He now says the hapless graphic designer won’t be seeing a cent.

"I was just having a laugh about this," Mr Munoz said.

"I used my normal eBay account too — eBay is going to have the sh**s when they find out."

eBay spokeswoman Sian Kennedy said the photograph’s seller could take Mr Munoz to the police for breaking the "contract he made when he won the item".

"People need to be careful when doing this — Mr Munoz is taking the money away from the person who the sold the item," Ms Kennedy said.

"He should be ashamed."

Mr Munoz scoffed at the suggestion the bid was a binding contract: "eBay has to say that".

[via]

Figures.
posted by niles at 10:26 PM on November 20, 2008

This is wonderful!
posted by serazin at 11:06 PM on November 20, 2008

You people are morons. This thing is a HOAX

Do some research already. Geez.
posted by shockingbluamp at 11:22 PM on November 20, 2008

The man behind the drawing, David Thorne, said he was unfazed.
"The internet is a playground and I would not have it any other way," Mr Thorne told ninemsn.

You just know that anyone who tries to pay a bill with a drawing of a spider is going to have a good sense of humour about it all. (Heck, as tellurian notes, it was just a photo of the spider being sold on eBay).
posted by eye of newt at 11:25 PM on November 20, 2008

Oh, and read the link. It was not a hoax. He really did try to pay his bill with the spider. Of course he's a prankster, but that's rather obvious.
posted by eye of newt at 11:28 PM on November 20, 2008

Why is she a "mega-bitch to the Nth degree"? She humored the guy by adding a leg to a picture of a spider and emailing it to him. That's above and beyond.
posted by DU at 4:39 AM on November 21, 2008

J. Giles (my link), J. Geils (the band), Jane Gilles (the recipient of the email). Joke fail. Man, I need a fact checker!

And for the record, I didn't see this on Digg or Fark, though I read it made both.

I was originally going to just add the link to the exchange in the comments to the "time travel ticket" story, but when I read the eBay one decided to make it a FPP.

I feel a bit dirty that this guy is just a prankster! You have to be nine kinds of an ass to do something like this. Man, what an idiot.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:34 AM on November 21, 2008

[insert joke about Chris Anderson finally making money from the Long Tail by shortening it]
posted by [user was fined for this post] at 6:34 AM on November 21, 2008

Was he the guy in the bear suit on the beach in South Carolina during the hurricane?
posted by doctorschlock at 8:58 AM on November 21, 2008

Q: Have you got a 27 B stroke 6?

A: No. Go away.

(Clicking on the middle finger will open David Thome's original 7-legged-spider page. Which will lead you to plenty of other shit he's stirred up.)

And to think I was going to use the 27-b-stroke-6 link for the FPP on pneumatic tubes!
posted by not_on_display at 11:13 AM on November 21, 2008

David Thorne, and at the time I posted the links I didn't realize he was the originator. The eBay story made so many sites yesterday, but most didn't even mention him.

He many be my new hero. Him or Astro Zombie. It's a tough call.
posted by cjorgensen at 12:12 PM on November 21, 2008

(I need a new pair of glasses or a different font.)
posted by not_on_display at 9:32 PM on November 24, 2008