One partiuclarly ironic tragedy in clutter combat is the hoarding of cases and containers. Yes, "ironic" is the right word because these things are normally used to keep clutter contained, and although you buy them and hang on to them with that purpose in mind, they end up becoming part of the pile.
So here are some items I found among my stuff that fit that description in some way or another, along with a few others that happened to be in the photo.
Checkbook covers. The one I have works fine, but they still send a new one when you order new checks. Yes, they're perfectly new, but do I really need 5 of these damn things? I think I know the answer to that.
Empty packing tape dispenser from Staples. One of two. The idea is that you buy the cheaper refills, then put one in this. But when I get new packing tape, the self-contained spool kind is usually cheaper anyway.
Also featured in this photo: a ratty pencil that's older than the Ronald Reagan administration, and some small containers of paint that I used for a project in 2001.
Directions to a restaurant that no longer exists. Back in my college days, I was in a band, and we had a gig somewhere around the same town for somebody's birthday and/or graduation party.
Somebody's phone number. I didn't know whose at first, but now I remember, mainly because I found it with the restaurant directions. She was the person whose party we played.
The lyrics to the song "The Secret Marriage" by Sting. Why I wrote it out, I'm not sure. Maybe I just felt like being poetic or something. Or maybe I was preparing it for a girlfriend at the time. Regardless, I ended up marrying somebody who hates Sting. Go figure.
Print-out of an incredibly perverted short story that a classmate emailed me in 1994. I guess being new the internet at the time, it was normal to stumble across something that was the sickest thing you'd ever seen at that point, and send it to your friends for the shock value. What was it about? All I'll tell you is that the title was "horse". And that now I feel like I have to wash myself in a long, purging shower. Let's move on before cause myself any more insomnia.
Home address and phone number of somebody from college who ended up dropping out anyway, probably isn't even at the address, and I'd be happy never ever seeing again anyway.
"While You Were Out" pad. I have NEVER used these. I don't mean just these particular sheets, but these types of note pads in general. Maybe they still sell them in one dusty corner of Staples, but unless you're a secretary, then I don't know who else uses them in this age of cell phones, voice mail, and email.
When I started this blog over a year ago, I had no idea that hoarding would become its own sort of well-known cultural phenomenon. How do I know when something has become a cultural phenomenon? When it's being satired by major comedy sources. In this case, I'm talking about South Park episode 14-10: Insheeption. I finally got around to seeing it last night.
I've been a fan of South Park ever since I saw their pilot animation The Spirit of Xmas in 1996. It was a popularly mass-forwarded internet clip. Like any video clip, it took forever to download it back in those days of the 56k modems. But it was worth it. Then by 1997 news went around that the makers were going to turn it into a regular show on comedy central. Ever since then, their comedy has remained hilarious and cleverly exposing the hypocrisies and stupidities of human culture, whether it was from the left, the right, or neither.
And now, South Park addresses hoarding. Thankfully they didn't rely on the overused and oversimplified observational humor of, in this case, "Just throw it away! Duh!" (and I wouldn't expect any less from them -- they're smarter than that). But at the same time they also showed the sort of rationalizations hoarders make, and some of the questionable help methods. The revealed source of Mr. Mackey's haording had me laughing my ass off. I'm not giving any spoilers, though.
Limewire has been shut down. Quite frankly, I'm happy to see this.
I'm against the piracy of music and movies that one could otherwise purchase. The bottom line is that it is stealing, and stealing is illegal. You can try to rationalize it however you want, but it does not change those two facts.
I guess to many it many not FEEL like stealing or breaking the law, because it's not taking a physical object from a physical store. But you still got a product without paying for it. And don't even try to give me lines like "Everybody does it" or "I don't have the money". Those are bogus excuses, not justifications. Ditto for "Well I want to hear it before I buy it". You can go to places like Amazon.com to hear a 30 second sample, and I really don't know anybody who'd buy a song after they already have the bootlegged mp3.
Have I ever gotten copies of music before without directly paying for them? Sure, back in the '80s, when that consisted of taping a few songs off FM radio, or dubbing a friend's cassette tape now and then. But there's no comparison. To tape off the radio, you had to at least wait for the song to come on the radio, which was being played by a station who got money for playing advertisements that you'd hear along the way. Never mind making sure the station was tuned in, and starting and stopping the tape correctly.
As for dubbing tapes, you had to first find somebody who owned the recording you wanted, and trusted you enough to loan it to you. Even then, you had to make sure it would all fit on your blank tape. A lot of times the 60 minute blanks were too short, and 90 minute tapes were too short to fit everything on one side or left you 20+ minutes of blank on either side you had to fast-forward through. And of course there was the loss of quality, plus the fact that a dubbed cassette wasn't as great as the store-bought one with all the pictures, lyrics, and liner notes you could immerse yourself in.
Compare this to what you could get from sites like Limewire: access to just about every recording you could think of, at any hour of the day, from a complete stranger you didn't even have to meet, in a matter of minutes, and all from without getting up out of your chair.
And this isn't anything new. 10 years ago, I remember hearing about a rather new internet program called Napster, and the band Metallica raising a fuss about it. I got on there and saw what all the fuss was about: the complete Metallica catalog, being available for free download to anybody, without the band getting one cent for it. That also wasn't fair to rest of us fans who actually saved up the money to buy the albums the first time around.
I could see this piracy being relatively harmless if people used it to get a dozen or two "free" mp3s on their hard drive. But that's not the case. Since the 1950s, teenagers have made up one of the biggest demographics of album buyers. But currently there's a whole generation of teenagers who, in too many cases, have an entire music collection of thousands of songs that they never paid a cent for. The act of actually buying music and supporting the artist seems like an arcane thing to them.
I see them making excuses too. "Well I can't afford to pay a dollar or two to iTunes for every song I want." Oh what bullshit! I managed to buy literally hundreds of albums on cassette tape when I was a teenager in the 80s, on not much more than my $10 weekly allowance money. My parents likewised amassed hundreds of albums on vinyl. And I know people younger than me that started collecting music by the time the CD was the standard medium of choice, and own hundreds of CDs. We couldn't get every single recording that we wanted, but we sure found a way to buy a lot with little money. Further factor in the fact that we now live in an age where inflation is higher and yet the price of music is the same or LOWER; a CD that used to cost $18 in the early 90s can now often be bought for about half of that on iTunes. So what's their excuse?
And people wonder why I have no regrets for not pursuing a full-time career as a musician...
Some more items that found a new home in my trash can:
Magic marker. Well it's not so magical anymore.
Lucky Rabbit's Feet (2). I know I'm not the first person to make this joke, but...how lucky can they be if the rabbit had 4 of them and still got captured and killed? These seemed kinda rotting too. Bleaghh.
Book of Matches which can be replaced by a lighter, which I have even though I don't need it because I don't smoke.
It's sometimes needlessly condescending and needlessly jesus freaky...but still, a great book for what it is. Buy it used and insanely cheap on Half.com
