cleaning_out_the_garage raze someday soon, this is going to happen. and what an adventure it's going to be. today's little precursory peak into the abyss was as tantalizing as it was frightening. who knows what's living in there... 130427 ... raze preliminary findings: toys. lots and lots of toys. plastic swords, ping pong balls, dart guns (with and without ammunition), squirt guns, propulsive airborne things (with and without attendant launching mechanisms), marbles, strange toy soldiers, and flubber that has lost all recognizable gelatinous properties, seemingly transferring them over to a few ancient elastic bands that have almost liquefied. a number of keys, from skeleton to house. what they once opened is anyone's guess. two old bibles, one hardcover, one bound in red leather. a few high school report cards. a few pictures, including one of my mother i've never seen before. old birthday cards. a few pins and arm bands. a broken plastic ruby necklace. a barbie doll. i have no idea where she came from or who she belonged to, but she's no ordinary barbie. she seen some shit. her hair is wild. it looks like she cut it herself, into her best approximation of an indie rocker style. and it looks dyed, with the remnants of brown roots creating the appearance of streaks. her clothes also follow the grubby indie rock template. there's a dazed quality to her smile, like she's a little drunk, or a little high, or both. i have an unexplained "indie rock party girl/groupie" barbie in my garage. i'm not even kidding. lots of baseball and hockey cards from more than twenty years ago. who knows if they're worth anything. winter boots. carved wooden ducks. a bowling ball made to look like a face, with adhesive label mustache. an old snow globe. fifteen hundred sheets of photocopying paper in unopened packages. AA batteries that expired twelve years ago. i haven't even scratched the surface. my fingers are filthy. tomorrow, i'm wearing gloves. 130731 ... raze high school notes/papers/tests/general silliness i wrote while pretending to do work. a student-of-the-month award for "thoughtfulness and politeness" from grade six (yeah...finding that one all this time later nearly killed me). a huge stack of batman trading cards. a catcher's mitt in perfect condition. various hats. many shirts and sweaters — some of them crustified, others surprisingly clean. a backgammon set. christmas and halloween decorations. a poster given to me by the mother and stepfather that says "i was dropped on my head as a child" (something she used to enjoy telling people about me). that one went straight into the garbage, because fuck her. a few old stories, but not the one i most want to find. not yet, anyway. i think it's in there somewhere. a few really nice quartz wall clocks. various office supplies. the old combination lock for my high school locker. the soft black five-star multipurpose binder that almost always shows up in my dreams when i'm at high school — and which probably has more lined paper within than what's available in those dreams when i tend to need more than i have. a jigsaw puzzle i never attempted. various books and magazines. a letter from my grandfather written entirely in french. a bicycle helmet that no longer fits. AA batteries that expired two years ago (we're getting closer!). the cloth work gloves served me well, but took one for the team when they encountered a melted candy cane at the bottom of a box. red sticky goo is not our friend. 130801 ... raze about six million magazines ("MAD", "national geographic", assorted keyboard and videogame mags, old reader's digests). almost as many YA/suspense novels written by jay bennett (not the guy from wilco). i guess i was really into his work when i was in grade school. forgot all about that. and some r.l. stine and spooky "choose your own adventure" books. always did like that spooky business. buried beneath all of this was james ellroy's "blood on the moon". no idea where that came from. who was into early ellroy while i was still in diapers? not the mother person. couldn't be. two "calvin and hobbes" collections ("the essential" and "revenge of the baby-sat"). i didn't think i'd ever see those again. i'd probably enjoy them even more now than i did before i could cultivate any facial hair. i think some of the subtler strips went over my head the first time around. floam, possible cousin to flubber, dried and green and caked to the container. some sort of hollow plastic rabbit contraption with many esoteric jellybeans wedged inside, all deadly by now i'm sure. a gigantic kite i remember flying once or twice, a lot of years ago. more christmas decorations. one really fun keepsake that caught me completely off guard: a t-shirt from grade seven or eight with the signatures of every single one of my classmates, including my own. it's even large enough that it'll still fit. the board game "sorry!", with all the pieces intact. a really cool blue-tinted (acrylic?) shot glass. two office phones, one brand new. my t-ball trophy from 1990. you couldn't get the ball past me. my old belts/sashes from kung fu class. i'm a little sad to say time has robbed them of the sharp scent of vinegar they once had. my dad's divorce papers in a manila folder, with a still-in-the-wrapper condom on top. it expired in 1999. he was divorced in '87, which tells me mr. durex came sometime later. i don't know how he ended up in there, or who he was meant to be used with. and if he was "thin" in his prime, i'm not sure i want to know what kind of shape he's in now. but he's there, all the same. i couldn't make this up if i tried. scores of drawings, all those DIY comic books, maps of places that never existed, and THE STORY I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR FOREVER. my unfinished magnum opus. (see: things_you_wrote_when_you_were_young). i think that covers most of the highlights. fun was had, surprises found, mysteries solved, hearts broken and mended...the works. next up, the dreaded basement. and then, the yard sale to end them all. 130802 ... raze the title of that long-lost story, in case you were wondering: "the deadly search for the nuclear bomb that almost caused world domination!" It's basically the hilariously overblown kind of pulpy thriller you'd expect from a title like that. there are two drafts, neither of them anywhere near finished. the second unfinished draft probably wins in a battle of drafts. it's better-written, and has this classic line to recommend it: "he had a large ego and a similar-sized erection of the sort that a man has." but then the first unfinished draft has chapter titles like "an unexpected amount of danger!" and "the final blinding hour, a dimming illusion", along with searing prose like this: "'that was the past...but i know where the coward is that killed charlie! he died of a heart attack.' his voice raspy...almost a growl. but he still made one heck of a cup of coffee!" and, of course, there's the question we all find ourselves asking sooner or later: "bosnetchek munos smarnetchien?" 130803 ... raze hey, unintentional uppercase "i". where'd you come from? 130803 ... e_o_i The "I" was from your inner capitalist! Ignore it! Seriously, I like this blathe, especially since there's been some basement-cleaning-up going on over at my neck of the woods. Besides, I was also dropped on my head as a baby - went to the hospital, hairline fracture, but no concussion. "That would explain things" might be the expected rejoinder, but my parents never thought of making fun of me for it. 'Twould strike me, so to speak, as mean. If I were effectively mean I'd use the incident to push their guilt buttons, but I've never been good at guilt-based manipulation. Or else I'd be all: "Jürgen, I blame you for the Holocaust. Buy me cookies?" See, not subtle at all. ...Except he's doing grad_school in Europe and can't buy me cookies. Sigh. Writing about high school in why_I_never_got_my_high_school_yearbook has made me randomly nostalgic. 130822 ... raze i've been having some random nostalgic feelings lately too, triggered by the most unexpected things...like a brown leather binder that's a veritable time capsule of the months stretching from the fall of 2001 to the spring of 2002. every single thing inside of it is from the time when i did satan's work as a telemarketer immediately after high school. it was my "work binder". there are pay stubs, call sheets, random doodles and lyrics, notes passed back and forth (in the spirit of friendship, contempt, lust), and even a blue earmuff used to cover one end of the less-than-comfortable headsets we were given. it's like the weirdest treasure chest in the world, and it wouldn't be treasure to anyone else, but for me it's fascinating because of all the relics it contains from what was one of the strangest and most interesting times of my life. it's a really nice binder, too, in perfect condition. but i'd feel wrong to gut it of its contents and use it for anything else. that'd ruin the time capsule-y wonder of it all. i'm really glad you were okay. the thing that made me swear and tear up the poster is that i was not actually dropped on my head. it was just something my mother told adult friends of hers as a way of preemptively explaining away any sense of humour or weirdness i might display. she thought it was funny. the joke backfired a little when i asked how a mentally handicapped relative got to be that way, and she told me they'd been dropped on their head as a baby. she was telling the truth, but i didn't believe her. now there's a whole new spin on the whole "boy who cried wolf" thing... on a different note, i forgot to add here that i unearthed my head gear from those bad old days of suffering through braces and retainers and all that fun. the wretched thing is still in its original bag, probably with documentation of when i wore it and for how long included too. it makes me laugh now, but i hated that thing so much at the time. 130822 ... e_o_i Yeah. Stock statements are weird. I remember when I was a teenager I was acting touchy, or more accurately non-touchy, in a group of friends, and someone asked me, annoyed, "Were you molested as a child?" and I thought: 'No, at least not in the way you mean, but if I were I think I'd hate you right now.' That said, sometimes parents can be clueless. It's hard not to be clueless in at least some area, and I'd imagine taking care of children is one of the harder things to do in life... I remember when I was nine and I kept waking up at night and/or having trouble sleeping. My parents worried: is it stress at school? should she get this checked? Eventually they realized they were sending me to bed too early - I couldn't fall asleep at eight anymore - so they moved my bedtime an hour back and I stopped waking up so much. But that is cluelessness under the subset of seeking complicated solutions for simple problems. It probably has nothing to do with what you wrote. Or with cleaning out the garage, for that matter. No retainer, though. I was lucky. Just glasses. 130822 what's it to you? who go blather from