Three items, 'nuff said

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Just here on my computer desk at work:

  1. An origami frog made out of a one dollar bill,

  2. An envelope sent to my office by Pia Zadora (with return address!),

  3. (Taped to my monitor) Stamps from Uganda, China, Belgium, England, and Korea.

22

Here on my desk at work:

  1. My Catwoman coffee mug
  2. Not one, but two Transformer ripoffs (from Happy Meals)
  3. Kodak disk with dog photos on it.
23

My junk falls into two categories: (1) paper items – books, notes, manuals, random scraps of paper, things I’m going to read someday, etc. – and (2) expensive equipment that is obsolete – an old laser printer, an oscilloscope, a TRS-80 Model I computer.

At random I opened one of the drawers in the filing cabinet behind my desk. (All four drawers are full of old stuff I am “saving”. I can’t actually file anything, there’s no room. And there are four boxes full of stuff from the last time we moved to a new office that I haven’t opened. Three of those weren’t opened after the previous move.)

Here are three items from the file drawer:

  1. A videotape of some software we investigated five years ago but never purchased.

  2. Another dictionary. (That makes three here at work – more, of course, at home.)

  3. A map of Upstate New York Historic Sites of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints from a trip to Rome, NY a couple of years ago. Anybody want to know how to get to Joseph Smith’s house?

Okay. I’m going to throw away the dictionary and the videotape. I’m keeping the map – I might go back to Rome soon.

24

BTW, my grandmother was the worst (best?) packrat of all time. When she died there was no room in her house. Anywhere. There were literally stacks of newspaper (mostly) and other odds and ends covering all the floor, countertops, furniture, etc. There was a narrow path from the door to the kitchen (you could reach the stove, the fridge, the sink and the table), the bed, the bathroom, and a single chair in the living room. Everything else was buried under stuff she might need someday.

We did our best to keep her house livable (or at least to reduce the fire hazard!) but she was old and cranky and had raised a family in the Great Depression. Having stuff was good, not having stuff was bad.

As for unusual items – not three, but 1,000 of them: $20 bills. In a box. Under the bed. Wrapped in rubber bands that were so old they were disintegrating. She wasn’t going to put her money in some bank or some other place where they’d just lose it!

25

  1. A fragment of a coffee cup that an acquaintance of mine shattered in 1995, under somewhat dramatic circumstances.

  2. The label from a British pasta product called, I kid you not, “Wild Mushroom Fagottini.”

  3. A truly hideous cardboard plaque reading “IF GOD ISN’T A TARHEEL, WHY IS THE SKY CAROLINA BLUE?” (Left in my room by a previous inhabitant.)

26

(1) A small distorted human skull, “Freddy”, probably from a hydrocephalac child. Dated 1879, Cambridge Mass with a serial number. Given to me by a comparative anatomy prof.

(2) A tequilla favored lollipop with a small scorpion inside. From the “InsectInside candy company”.

(3) Three beautifully mummified mice in a cigar box.

27

Note to self: Never, ever, go to Inky-'s house!

28

Note to SouthernStyle–if you think a complete set of Monkees Trading Cards is bad, I’ve got a complete set of all the original 4 series of cards, plus the set that came out about 4 years ago; the complete video collection–including Head on VHS, laser disk and DVD; all the albums on vinyl, including obscure foreign releases that have alternate versions of songs (about 20 records); all the cds, including the just released Monkees Headquarters Sessions 3 CD (80 track) set, for about 30 total cd disks; a Monkees lunchbox; a Monkees wristwatch; a signed picture of the Monkees and several other similar items that slip my mind right now.

And I find none of this strange. Of course that could be because I have:

1 )A signed picture of Britney Spears

2 )Not one, but two dead horseshoe crabs

  1. A broken RGB monitor to a computer I haven’t had in at least ten year (A Tandy Color Computer 3)
29

Hm…sounds like I live at Irishman’s place (funny I’ve never noticed you about…probably lost in all the clutter).
Strange, eccentric things I’ve got?

[ul][li]A buttonhook for buttoning those old shoes from long ago. Souvenier from my days as a resident in a semi-famous house featured in a very famous comic strip starring a somewhat famous penguin and notoriously reincarnated cat with an amazingly freaky tongue.[/li][li]A safety razor blade sharpener. Put the blade in the holder and turn the crank. It strops the blade on a rotating leather disk, and after a few rotations, automatically flips the blade over to do the other side. Repeat ad infinitum. Found in grandparents’ attic, still in the original box w/instructions after sixty-some years.[/li][li]A handcarved ebony walking-stick from Nairobi.[/li][/ul]

30

Hey Jimpy, that’s pretty impressive. Since I’ve posted again, I guess that I need to enter 3 more items.

  1. “The Golden Gate Strings Plays the Monkees” album.
  2. A rubber baby’s pacifier in the shape of a penis.
  3. A $1,000 bill with McGovern’s picture on it.