Mystery Solved.

Remember a few posts ago, I told you that I received a strange but interesting package from someone in the military who is apparently stationed in Israel? Well, it turns out it was actually intended for me after all.

About 3 months ago, I stumbled on an old action figure in my basement. The figure was called "Erik the Viking." I can't remember if he belonged to me or The Snitch, but I had no emotional attachment to him, since I was more of a Major Matt Mason / GI Joe kind of guy. Unfortunately for Erik, for reasons that are known only to the long-dead executives at Marx Toys, he was sort of an unmanly teal color, so I never played with him much. I didn't have any of the rest of the set, and he really didn't go with the Johnny West and his Indian sidekick. Never bring a viking sword to a gun fight, I always say. And never fight wearing teal.

Here he is on my kitchen counter with his (and I quote) Mighty Viking Horse {tm}:

The other thing that made Erik sort of unappealing to me was his Mighty Viking Haircut. He rocked a pretty serious pageboy:

We did sort of have that haircut in common, now that I think about it:

Anyway, to make a long story boring, I posted Erik up on e-Bay, where he sat, neglected for six days. On the seventh day, he received a bid. He was now worth approximately $3.00. And that was with his horse. So the auction ended, and I contacted the winner because the shipping was going to be twice as much as the merchandise, and I wanted to make sure he was OK with that. The address was to a military base, and so I asked him which branch he was in. He didn't really tell me specifically I don't think -- he just said he had a collection of Marx action figures back at home, and wanted to have a couple with him as a little reminder that real life was waiting out there somewhere.

I thought that was awesome, so I told him that I was sending Erik out as a gift, and throwing in a copy of my book as well, just to thank him for his service. Then I promptly forgot about it -- until today, when I logged into e-bay and saw his name on my list of shipped items and recognized it.

Since there was no note inside the package I received, I am assuming it was sort of a "thank you" for sending the stuff out. That's pretty cool, if you ask me.

Also, when I was looking for that pageboy picture of me, I found another picture of The Snitch, Houdini and me when we were in that whiteboy rap group that one time:

The next Mexico post is about half way done... hopefully I'll finish it up Friday if I don't have a dirty martini and fall asleep.

Word.