And why, pray tell, would I buy crap? And further more, what kind of crap did I buy? I think you might need a little back story to answer that question.

There is a little website called Woot.com. "What kind of name is woot" you may ask? I don't feel like explaining it, so read the link. Anyway, Woot.com is a website which sells only one item a day at bargain basement prices. That's it. One item. Once they sell out, they're done selling for the whole day. The next item is placed up for sale for the next 24 hour period at midnight central time. You get the picture. One item at a great price every 24 hours. A very good explanation of the site can be found over at Wikipedia.

Well, they have these special events periodically, and one of them is called a BOC - short for Bag of Crap (or Bag o' Crap if you're so inclined). A Bag of Crap is just what it sounds like. Woot finds random items lying around their warehouse that they want to get rid of; typically junk or old, worthless inventory. One dollar per piece of crap, three max per customer at a time get put up for sale. When you order, you get a bag of some sort (generally a computer bag) with one to three random items of dubious value. So, for $8 you get a bag and three random items from Woot.com's offices ($1 per item, $5 shipping).

Why would I want to buy Woot.com's crap? Ahhhhhh, here's the fun of it all. Some of the BOC's actually have valuable stuff in them from past items that did not sell out. Stereos, speaker systems, juicers, what not. So for $8 you may get a true Bag of Crap, but there is the possibility that for $8 you will get something much much better. A Bag of Cool Stuff if you will.

BOC's are naturally very popular at the site. They don't come along very often, and the lure of getting surprised with something super cool for $8 is evidently tempting to many people. You don't know when the BOC is coming. You don't know what will be in the BOC. And if you're one of the lucky ones you get something worth much more than $8.

Phew! OK, so now that we're all on the same page, here's what happened today. Woot.com had a BOC for sale and as difficult as it was (their servers get swamped whenever a BOC is put up for sale) I managed to get through and order one. 4500 BOC's went in 45 minutes. You do the math, but that's a lot of users trying to access their shop to plop down their $8 for a Bag of Crap. Somehow I managed to get through all the server errors with my crappy Iraqi internet connection at the last moment before they sold out.

Now, I wait. Will I get a good BOC? Will I get run of the mill crap? If so, what kind of crap? Is it crap but still cool crap? Who knows!! That's the fun of it. For the cost of a movie ticket you get the fun of anticipating your BOC for the 3 or 4 days it takes to ship to your home.

So stay tuned. I'll let you know what is in the Bag of Crap when it arrives. Maybe if we all think really hard on it our combined mental energies will cause them to put something good from past sales into my BOC. Back me up people!! I need your brain waves . . .