A Place for My Stuff

"CDs! Get your CDs here!"

Before I get into my recent dejunking accomplishments, I'd like to say a couple of things about buying and selling CDs.  A lot of this applies to DVDs too.

• Good news: CDs are cheap!  I remember the days when CDs were pretty much a luxury item.  Those of you who've seen Wayne's World might remember the scene where Wayne puts a disc into his dashboard-mounted discman, and his girlfriend Cassandra excitedly asks, "When did you get the CD player?!?"  When the Wayne's World DVD finally came out, Director Penelope Spheris had to explain that scene in the audio commentary.  I remember my first discman that not only required four AAA batteries, but would skip if you practically just breathed on the thing.  These days you can walk into a drug store and buy not just a discman, but a device that additionally plays CD-Rs filled with mp3s.

CDs themselves are cheap and they've been cheap for a number of years now.  We're already WELL past the point where you'd get those AOL CD-ROM discs as junk mail.  I've never really bothered buying CD-RW discs instead of CD-R blank discs, because if I screw up when I'm burning something, who cares?  I just toss the disc and start with a new one.

Why are discs so cheap these days?  First of all, manufacturers have simply gotten better at making discs for less and less of a cost.  Second of all, CD burners and mp3 players have been common house-hold inventions for a long time now.  Many people have just ripped their CD collection to their hard drive (if not gotten their music illegally in the first place) and are getting rid of their original CDs.  With internet speeds always getting faster and hard drives always getting bigger (I've already seen the 2 TERAbyte hard drives in the stores), I imagine movies are going to go the same way.

Personally though I have no plans on selling my original CD collection even after I've ripped the files.  There's always the chance I'll want to rip them in a higher format, or want the whole CD for some other reason.  Never mind the fact that I'm a collector when it comes to my favorite bands. 

If you're looking to buy a CD or DVD, I recommend going to half.com.  They're owned by eBay, but they're not an auction site.  They're a site that lets you buy or sell directly to individuals, and they only carry CDs, movies, games, and books: the big 4 groups.  Since it's not an auction, you don't have to keep on checking in to see if you've been outbid and what not.  You can also look at the used stuff sold by individuals through Amazon.com.

• Bad news: CDs are cheap!  If you think you're going to get a good amount of money from selling your CDs, think again.  Certainly there are going to be those rare CDs which will get you more dollars than you thought, but these are far and few between.  Fortunately, it's not impossible to sell used CDs.

So, how can you get rid of unwanted CDs?  There are a few options, each with advantages and disadvantages.

• Used CD stores.  There are a number of used CD stores out there willing to pay you cash for your used CDs.  They'll ask for an ID, just in case they get a call from the police an hour later saying somebody's 500 CD collection was just stole.  Seems like a nice deal, but there are a few catches.  They won't take just any CD.  For example, if it's some promo CD you got at a club without a cover, or some local band's crappy demo CD, they probably won't take it.  They might also not take a title that they're overstocked in.  (True story: I bought the Led Zeppelin complete studio box set used for about $80, and the clerk said "Oh man, a guy came in here yesterday wanting to trade his in, and I said 'We already have two of them sitting there, and they've been sitting there unsold for over a year.  So I don't want to take on a third one.'  But you bought it!")  And more often than not, unauthorized bootlegs and home-burned CD-Rs are out of the question.

Another down side to selling your CDs to a used CD store is the same down side that comes with selling any sort of used items to a store: they won't give you much for it.  Yes, I know it's not fair that you're only getting $10 for a stack of a dozen CDs that you paid well more than $10 EACH for.  But that's the way the cookie crumbles.

Yesterday I brought about two dozen CDs to the store.  They only took half of them.  But they paid me $23 cash.  It was more than I expected, actually.  If your real main goal is to just get rid of the stuff, then the amount of money you get shouldn't bother you that much.  Think of it as a bonus.

• Selling on-line.  A nice advantage of this is that you have a better chance at reaching a person who really wants what you have to sell.  I'll never forget that moron I once saw posting to alt.music.black-sabbath (that's a newsgroup, for those of you who've never used the internet outside of a web browser before).  He said he had the debut solo CD of Black Sabbath singer Tony Martin, and tried selling it to some used CD store, and the clerk laughed at him.  So assuming the CD was worthless, the guy just "threw it away".  And I rightfully call this guy a "moron", because if he had done even a minimal amount of asking around on-line, he would have found out that the disc was fetching an average of $50 on eBay at that time.  Bye-bye, fifty bucks.  Schmuck.

So before you assume "Nobody wants a CD from [insert obscure band here]", try doing a little search on eBay or Half.com to see if it's in high demand.  It can't hurt.

Unfortunately, this is more of the exception than the rule.  Sometimes you'll bring a CD to one of these sites, only to find out that 20 other people are selling the same CD for a mere dollar or two.  Sometimes you'll even see "1-cent sales".  This is when somebody sells the CD for a penny, but charges a little extra for the shipping and handling, which is where they get the profit.  But for some CDs, it's the only way to make a profit, so if all else fails you could try that.

Another disadvantage of course is that unlike going to a store, you have to make the effort to package the item for mailing, mail it out, track feedback left on the site, etc.  If you're planning on doing a lot of on-line selling, I recommend buying a little weighing scale to help calculate prices.

Could I have perhaps gotten a little more money from my CDs if I sold them on-line instead of taking them to the store?  Maybe, maybe not.  But instead of keeping track of a bunch of different auction listings, some of which I might have had to pay money for even if the item didn't sell, I was happy to just make one trip to the store and get it over with.

• Give-it-away, Give-it-away, Give-it-away now!  Yes, you can give some of these discs away as gifts.  But don't just dump your CDs of unwanted music on some friend who doesn't like it either.  That just says "I'm a dink" and "I'm too cheap to buy you an actual birthday gift."  Unless maybe you give it to them as clearly a gag gift, in which case I think you should additionally give a serious gift too.  Instead, give the stuff to somebody who will actually appreciate it.  I had so many versions of Black Sabbath's Paranoid album on CD: the original release (distributed by Castle in Holland), the 1996 remaster, the box set version, the new 3-CD special edition, etc.  At some point I was playing with a band who was covering "Hand of Doom", and one of the band members didn't own a recording of it.  So I said "Hell, I'll just give you the CD."  Likewise, I've run across young music fans who are looking back and just discovering the classics.  Why not help them along?

• If all else fails, there's the thrift store.  This goes for practically ANY type of item in your home.  If you've tried everything else, you can always donate it to a thrift store.  You won't get money, but they will take anything, AND you can typically get a tax write-off.  They'll give you a slip of paper to fill out where you briefly mention what you gave them and the approximate worth.  This amount is usually left up to you to fill in, but be realistic.  Don't kid yourself into thinking you can tell the IRS you donated two pairs of jeans and five CDs worth $10,000!  Just hold on to your copy of the slip and get ready to dig it out come next April.  You'll need to include Schedule A of your 1040 form.

Money House Blessing Spray and other Recent Oddities

Some oddities I came across, just looking behind my couch.

• Business cards from Canadian strip joints and other sex services, circa 1993.  Some time in the early or mid 90s I went to Canada with my family.  At some restaurant I saw these cards so I took some of them.  I know they were from this Canada trip and not any of the later ones, because they were mixed in with circa-1989 Batman cards and a long since dried and rotted rubber band.  Another amusing thing about that Canada trip: being 18 but still a non-drinker (I was a complete teetotaler by entire life, up until around age 28) I was old enough to buy beer at Expos stadium.  Which of course came at the request of my younger brother, who drank them.  It was certainly odd hearing the Canadian national anthem AFTER the American national anthem at a game.  Anyway, I threw the cards out.  After my last time in Canada, I've developed a hatred for all things French anyway.  (Yet for the record, I am ethnically French-Canadian.)
• Money House Blessing Offering Spray.  Picked this up at Spencer Gifts, probably in 1989.  It was the only one in the store, and I've never seen another can since.  I've always been conservative with it, so there's surprisingly still a lot left.  It has a fruity smell to it, somewhere in between fruity candles and grape soda.  Note the disclaimer at the end of the directions.

• Denis Waitley on The Psychology of Winning (cassette tape).  I think my dad got this for free somewhere.  And no, my dad wouldn't have given it to me saying "Billy, you're a loser.  Listen to this."  He probably just threw it in with the rest of the family's tape collection and somehow I ended up with it. I'll add this to the New-Age tapes I've been selling on eBay.
• Clay Veggies flyer & ticket.  Ah yes, my first real live band performance.  I was a junior in high school.  I hooked up with a great guitarist named Barry Munsterteiger, who somehow put up with my enormous musical ego at the time.  We managed to get a drummer at the last minute (B.J., who was Sanesthesia's percussionist) and a singer named Jim.
• Hat from some training class. I got this ridiculous waste of fabric at a software company I worked for, about 10 years ago.  It was from some training class for one of our products.  I don't even remember what it was or what it did, or if we even kept the same name for it after 6 months.  These hidious things did decorate many a cubicle at the time.  Who in their right mind would wear such a thing?  Maybe I should take this and the other most ridiculous why-do-I-still-have-these clothes I can find in my place, and take a photo of myself wearing them all. 

• Iron Maiden, "The Trooper" statue.  Great statue!  I love Iron Maiden.  And I got a great deal on this when I bought it at Spencer Gifts several years back.  Too bad I never had the room to display it somewhere.
• A small red metal pail of Bonkers tickets.  Bonkers is a local Chuck E. Cheese sort of place.  I still like playing 80s video games and games like skeeball.  Unfortunately, if a creepy looking 30-something year old guy like me went to a place like this, I'd be suspected of being a pedophile.
• The Scream - inflatible sculpture.  Knowing that I loved the original painting so much, my brother got this for my 18th birthday.  And honestly, I thought it was a great gift, and I still do.  It sure got a lot of positive comments in the dorm room and fraternity house.  Though one not-so-bright woman I was fooling around with at the time said "Dude, what is that?  An inflatible fuck doll?"  I'm sure that mostly was her alcohol talking.  Though what I found most amusing about it was the disclaimer to not use this as a safety flotation device.  Could you imagine being on a ship where somebody was overboard, drowning, and you ran below deck to come back with this and yell "Here, catch this!"

The Best of Craigslist

Craigslist.org, a great on-line want-ads site, certainly has its share of weird ads.  They've taken advantage of this to create a "Best of Craigslist" section.  Readers give the nominations.  Though the site warns that "postings may be explicitly sexual, scatalogical, offensive, graphic, tasteless, and/or not funny."

Here are a few samples that amused me.  And again, these are actual ads that people have posted.

Wanted: Taxidermist who watches a lot of Kung Fu.  I am looking to hire someone with the means to obtain and stuff animals in fashions I choose, which will be Kung Fu for now. When I was younger I convinced a friend of mines dad to create two squirrels Kung Fu fighting. I still think about it from time to time and have decided to get my own Kung Fu animals, I understand this is a bizarre request. Serious inquiries only, please E-Mail me the species of animals you commonly hunt or can obtain and your rate for taxidermy of each in various Kung Fu poses. Mounting preferred. Once again I feel I must state this is serious. If you can show any of your previous work it will probably give you an edge on the competition. Please respond via/e-mail. Thank you.

Cabana boy NEEDED - Start ASAP.  In general... on hot days like these we need some support while we relax out in the sun... Job Duties and Requirements:
-Must be able to operate a blender
-Must be experience with working iPod's
-Good with oil and sunscreen
-Must wear uniform
-Must enjoy sun and water
-Hand grape feedings necessary
-Be willing work at moments notice
This is an excellent position for anyone that needs to get a little Vitamin D and enjoy some sexy ladies' company. This is a non-paid internship, but the perks are excellent: drinks, company and laughs! Please send picture and measurements (don't be disgusting!). SERIOUS INQUIRIES ONLY.

Mow our lawn for a date! Hey boys. 'tis the season for lawn mowing and new love. These are the only two things missing in my life. First order of the business: the lawn. Our small front lawn, and largish back lawn have grown out of control after all the rain we have had as of late. It's about 1.5 feet tall, and growing taller by the second. We are four lovely ladies lacking a lawn mower. This is where you come in.
Second order of business: you and me. I'm a sexy young 20 something lady offering a date (my treat) in exchange for a mowed lawn. We will also offer homemade baked goods to sweeten the deal.
However this lawn may be more than you can handle alone. For this reason, my sultry single roommate has graciously agreed to offer the same deal for your friend who helps you out with the task. Let's go on a double date! You are also welcome to mow the lawn on your own, and pick a lucky friend to come on the date.
Who knows, maybe one date could turn into two (lawn mowing optional *wink wink*)
Serious inquiries only, we need this lawn mowed, BYOLawnMower!!!
No photos of your weedwhacker please.

Husband wants a rusty trombone for his birthday. My husband has asked for a rusty trombone for his birthday, which is Wednesday. I've scoured the pawn shops and music stores, and I haven't found one. I am guessing that rusty ones will be cheaper than new ones, and I don't know what the big deal is, but it's what he wants and he is very specific about it. I could have bought a dozen new ones at this point, but he says that a rusty trombone is nostalgic for him, so I suppose it will mean more. If you selling (or even giving away) a rusty trombone, please let me know what you have, how much it costs and how I can get it (will you deliver it, or will I have to go to you?). Also, suggestions on how to wrap such a thing? Please help, I am down to the wire on this thing and I don't like being this late with a gift!!!

Free Box of Magnum Condoms. I swear to whatever it is that i believe in, if i get any emails offering the use of this offered item with me..... i'll fill all 33 condoms up with yellow paint, and pelt every guy who looks like he might be the kind of douche bag who'd send such an email.
That said, it would be great if you were a chic or had a chic pick them up. I'm a girl. The box is a 36 pack with 3 missing and the rest are totally fine and untampered with, i just don't want a box of condoms too big for most guys sitting around reminding me of yet another failed relationship and my renewed sense of not getting laid. Not that I'd like to be, so don't offer.

Magic want to solve life's problems. If anyone has a magic wand that will solve all the problems in life, I'm interested in looking at it or buying it from you. 

1970's Avocado Green Toilet. This 1970's beauty will take you back.....sit on it while leafing through a Reader's Digest, smoking a cigarette, watching Chico and the Man, and dropping the kids off at the pool~ you'll think you are in a time warp! It works fine other than the 119 gallons it uses to flush, and there are no stains or streaks. Come'n get it! 

 

I'm sure I could sift deeper and find even better ones, but you get the idea.

Taming the Paper Tiger

Before I get into today's subject, let me just ask: so as far as the lay out goes, what do you readers think?  Too many links?  Too few links?  Not enough features?  Too many features?  I've been actively using the internet since 1993, but when it comes to making websites, sometimes my mind is still stuck in 1994.  I'm used to just whipping open Notepad, and typing pretty straight-forward HTML code.  So in a strange way, handling every new widget that comes along is somewhat new to me.  Oh well, you know what my email address is.  If not, uh...look to your left.

And now, on to the subject of paper.  More specifically, SAVED paper.

THE PAPER

The title of this blog entry was taken from a chapter of Don Aslett's Clutters Last Stand.  I've seen some people give this book bad reviews, whining that it didn't present too much for ways of organizing stuff.  I have seen those sorts of books that do that, showing a lady proudly standing by a 10-foot tall stack of cardboard file drawers marked with a Sharpie.  However, Aslett points out that this really isn't getting rid of clutter; it's just a way of creatively hiding it from view.  To quote the book:

Files are one of the greatest repositories of "invisible" clutter going. Just because it's alphabetized and tucked away in a drawer doesn't mean it isn't junk.

And another quote:

Locked or hidden away, collections can be a mental drain to their owner, because they generate no love and appreciation, yet the owner has to store, insure, clean, and protect them.

(On a side note, this is why I have my autograph collection framed and on display along my living room wall.  I'm sure I'll get into more detail about "collections" on another blog.)

To say I have a tendency to save papers would be a gross understatement.  Here is an example of what I saved:

• School papers.  I have saved every single piece of paper from high school, college, and graduate school.  No lie.  Every note taken from every class, ever quiz, every homework assignment, every exam, you name it.  Pretty much the only things I didn't keep were the final exams at the end of the year, because quite simply they never physically gave them back to students.  If I stacked it all up, I know it would be much taller than me, if not twice my height.
• Pay stubs.  Every pay stub to every job I ever held.
• Utility and other bills.  Every mailed bill or receipt from every phone bill, electric bill, heating bill, car payment, health insurance, 401k, and who knows what else.
• Bank and credit card statements -- and receipts.  In all fairness, I am very organized with this!  I don't think I have every checking account statement since I got my first checking account at age 18, but certainly every one from the last 12 years.  I save every debit or credit card slip so that I can balance my checkbook and verify my credit card statement.  Then I fold the statement around these slips, staple it shut on either end, mark the date span on the outside, and toss it into the pile.  But that's still a lot of paper.

I have plenty of other things too: movie ticket stubs, concert ticket stubs, losing raffle tickets, and then some.  But the ones I've listed above are the significantly big collections.

WHY DO I KEEP IT?

I certainly know why I've been reluctant to ever throw this stuff away.  For the school papers, that's easy:

• The school papers represent a major part of my life.  I worked hard through a private prep high school, then went on to get Bachelor's and Master's degrees in mathematics.  With all of the countless time and mental energy spent on this stuff, it's hard to just toss it like junk mail.
• School was expensive!  Wouldn't it feel like throwing out something myself and my parents paid many tens of thousands of dollars on?
• "Hey I might want to read up on this some day!"  Though as I've said before, if I haven't gotten around to doing something in 15 years, chances are I'm NOT going to get around to it in another 15 years either.  Is there REALLY any value in the notes I took in my sophomore year of high school for Julius Caesar?

For all the rest of the stuff?  That's easy too:

• "I might need this information for something!"  The fear of course is that I'm going to have to solve some financial mystery involving something major I bought in May 2003, and neither myself nor the bank will have a record of that.  Or some collector will claim I didn't pay my bill when in fact I did, but I don't have the confirmation number anywhere.
• The popular scare stories out there about identity theft certainly makes me a little more reluctant to toss something with my social security number into the trash.

And there's also an excuse that applies to all of the above: "I have such a complete collection here, and such a perfect record of keeping 'everything'!  I'd hate to break that record.  I can't claim that anymore if I get rid of something."

HOW CAN I DEAL WITH IT?

Here are some things I've thought about.

• Scanning.  At first, this seems like a good solution.  Just scan everything and save the images to my computer, thereby reducing all 10 miles of it down to a couple of DVD-Rs.  Unfortunately, I don't think this is practical.  I have a LOT of papers.  From experience, I know how long it takes to just properly scan ONE document whose size and resolution I'm happy with.  Even if I paid some broke college student to sit there and do it, it could take years.  So as awesome as having digital images of everything would be, I don't think this is going to happen.
• Shredding.  I bought myself a small paper shredder.  And guess what?  It's still in the box.  Since you can usually only shred a few pages at a time with these things, I should probably find some service who can do it for me in bulk.  Though I have to wonder if, ironically, criminals work or go to these places to gather stuff for identity theft.  Maybe that sounds silly and paranoid on my part, but it's still a pause for thought.
• Burning.  This might prove to be a quicker way to deal with it.  And a good excuse for a party.
• Photographing.  A simple idea I picked up from Aslett, and I wonder why I didn't think of it before.  I might be happy with just taking pictures of myself standing next to my huge stacks of school papers, then getting rid of the stuff while keeping the photographs.  This gives me the "proof" I want to keep for myself while getting rid of the volume.
• Something ritualistic.  See blow.

I have always been a very ritualistic person.  I've always had a love of symbolism and ceremony.  People into metaphysics would argue that these things I've amassed have a special "energy" to them.  Whether it's metaphysical or (as I more suspect) purely psychological, I'd have to say they're correct.  What would be REALLY fun, I think, is giving this huge mass of things to a really keen artist who can create a real statement with it.  Or, again, having a bonfire party but filming it too, complete with introductions and speeches and what not.  Could make a great YouTube clip.  We'll see.  In the meantime, I'm open to hearing ideas.

Oh what the hell: comments open! And Rice Krispies

I decided to open comments on the blog for now.  If you have an account with Typepad you can just log in with that, otherwise all you'll need to supply is your email address.  We'll see how it goes.

Also from now on I'm going to try to have an entry on this blog every day, published by 4:00 AM.  That doesn't mean I WROTE it at 4:00 AM.  In fact, I write just about all of these blogs in advance of when they actually publish.

As for today, let's take a comedy break.  Another routine that shows up George Carlin's A Place for My Stuff album is "Rice Krispies".  He also made a slightly varied and written version of it for his second book, Napalm & Silly Putty.

Somebody has taken Carlin's recorded version from the book, and added visuals.  Check it out: