Interregnum

I've had this on my mind today. I think I know why.

I reckon I'm going to spend some time offline. Might be back here to post TGD updates, but probably not soon or often. Might update PotD if there's reason to.

Later, fools.

TGD Week 12

[Edit: oops, jumped the gun - we're not up to a quarter year quite yet].

Wednesday 10/29 - John Varley, The Ophiuchi Hotline is now the property of the PWC library.

Thursday 10/30 - Larry Niven and Stephen Barnes, The Barsoom Project, ditto.

Friday 10/31 - Bruce Sterling, Crystal Express, ditto.

Saturday 11/1 - Tossed out were a pair of underwear with worn out elastic and a book of Maleska-edited NY Times Saturday crosswords, obscure and unfinished.

Sunday 11/2 - Two very nice shirts which were nonetheless too uncomfortable to wear were donated to some charity which is probably a scam.

Monday 11/3 - A pair of gloves with worn-out fingers

Tuesday 11/4 - Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Oath of Fealty, "donated".

Then and Now

America, circa 1776

Circa 1942

Circa 2008

Doing my civic duty

Like the good citizen I am:

TGD Week 11

All books except Wednesday's were "returned" to the PWC library.

Wednesday 10/22 - A copy of Ten Tomorrows, Roger Elwood, ed., was falling apart, so I checked it.

Thursday 10/23 - I had been eyeing for divestiture another, much larger, old suitcase with broken wheels, but I thought The Boss would cling to it. Out of the blue, when we both happened to be in the unfinished section of the basement, she suggested that we no longer need the old critter. So out it went.

Friday 10/24 - "Minnesota Fats" on Pool was tossed in the garbage. Someone had drawn, with a black ball-point pen - long hair, a scruffy beard, and a Frankenstein scar on Fats' head on the cover. I don't think I was the culprit. You can see the book's cover on the wikipedia page for Fats. I hadn't known that he took his name from the character in The Hustler, whose author, in turn, apparently took the character from Fats' life.

Saturday 10/25 - Some IQ testing book called "How Intelligent Are you?" It was falling apart and seemed to be some kind of Mensa recruiting tool.

Sunday 10/26 - Gordon R. Dickson, some crap book about a dragon (Oh yeah - The Dragon on the Border, it was).

Monday 10/27 - several old magazines, mostly puzzle related.

Tuesday 10/28 - Harlan Ellison, Angry Candy in oversized paperback.

Sam & Max: Anarcho-Capitalists?

OK, the evidence is a little thin, but they do style themselves as freelance police. And then there's the below exchange from the fifth game in the series based on the characters:

(Three images in extended entry)
[Read more of this post]

TGD Week 10

We're getting down to the nut of the thing now. There's precious little - aside from the still decent-sized crap book collection - that's both logistically and emotionally easy to get rid of. The former will just take time and motivation; the latter is more difficult, but is also one of the main points of this exercise.

Some of these entries are pretty weak, but I think they all count. The books will last another few weeks, then we'll see what I'm made of.

Wednesday 10/15 - A make-up mirror that was sitting in the garage for some reason. Got The Boss's permission first.

Thursday 10/16 - The toe clips I took off my bicycle as soon as I brought it home and which have been just sitting around for no reason. I hate having my feet attached to the pedals.

Friday 10/17 - An old lampshade that was in the basement - I don't know where the lamp is.

Saturday 10/18 - An out-of-ink pen and a plastic tub that used to have cookie dough in it which we were keeping around for some reason.

Sunday 10/19 - Journey to the Center by Brian Stableford was left in a Subway.

Monday 10/20 - Ditched a couple of small cases that came with a bunch of tools in them, but since I never return tools to their proper place, these were pretty much empty.

Tuesday 10/21 - Tossed out a pair of old raggedy, depressing slippers. It was surprisingly hard to part with them, nonetheless. I kept imagining them at the landfill, forlorn, rebuking me. Why is some stuff so personal, while other items are just trash?

TGD Week 9

Wednesday 10/8 - A raggedy old suitcase with broken wheels and the last of the oil chage pans.

Thursday 10/9 - I got a package from Amazon with 5 books in it, so I'm getting rid of 6 to (over-)balance them. Oh god, the crap I used to read:
The Nonborn King, Julian May; The Elfin Ship, James P. Blaylock; Norstrilia, Cordwainer Smith; The Veils of Azlaroc, Fred Saberhagen; Patternmaster, Octavia E. Butler; The Cyborg and the Sorcerors, Lawrence Watt-Evans. Prepared them to be dropped in a library return box.

Friday 10/10 - Tossed out some old Games magazines and a book of Friday NY Times crossword puzzles, about 1/4 of them solved. They were from the Eugene Maleska era, hence full of annoying obscuralia from forgotten corners of the OED.

Saturday 10/11 - Four fluorescent light bulbs, crushed up real good.

Sunday 10/12 - An old bottle of windshield wiper fluid that was sitting around the garage. Split it between two cars. Also, trashed a novelization of the film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. It had Harrison Ford's image on the cover (which had come completely detached) and the film's name as the main title, with the book's original title as subtitle. I wonder if the meta-irony of treating Dick's fiction this way was intentional.
.
.
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Nah.

Monday 10/13 - Dug three books out of the "special reserve" crap blend box and set them on a shopping cart outside Shoppers. I meant to carry them over to the library drop box when I came out again, but when I did, I saw that they had fallen down inside the cart, which had then had another stack of carts pushed into it, so it was, like, twelve carts back. I didn't bother retrieving them:
Johnny Zed, John Gregory Betancourt
Citizen Phaid, Mick Farren
Heads, Greg Bear

Tuesday 10/14 - From the garage: A piece of red metal that used to be screwed onto something else red, but I don't know what. Also, some huge-ass sheets of paper - that kind that you might use in a lecture, or a serious game of pictionary that are several feet tall and proportionally wide, and you flip them over the stand as you write on them. I don't know where they came from, but we've been carrying them around for years. Probably should have asked The Boss first, but I can just buy more if she really needs some. Oh, also a mini-cooler that slugs have probably been screwing in.

TGD Week 8

Wednesday 10/1 - Oops, forgot to lose something today so I had to retrovest on Thursday. Another collection of novellas bound up into a novel. "3 to the Highest Power", it's called. "Edited" by "William F. Nolan".

Thursday 10/2 - Henry Grady Weaver, The Mainspring of Human Progress.

Friday 10/3 - A beat-up old faux leather attache and - in a fit of rage after it mangled Tut Taylor's "Dobrolic Plectral Society" on cassette - an old receiver/cassette/deck/turntable. DPS does not appear to be available on CD, but I did manage to find a vinyl copy on eBay, which I snapped up before remembering that I no longer have a turntable.

Saturday 10/4 - A symphony of crap books, too awful to even bother leaving on some bench somewhere: The Year's Best Horror Stories, karl Edward Wagner, ed.; Conquest of Earth, Manly Banister; Never Deal with a Dragon, Robert N. Charette; The Vang, Christopher Rowley; Maze of Mysteries, Ellery Queen, ed. Also, a 2006 yellow pages.

Sunday 10/5 - Some largish pieces of wood and what looks like part of the fluorescent light fixture I ditched earlier. The shed is starting to look kind of clean.

Monday 10/6 - Robert Crichton, The Secret of Santa Vittoria was left in the underground.

Tuesday 10/7 - Lin Carter, Ylana of Callisto. Left in the CC underground.

TGD Week 7

Wednesday 9/24 - Trashed a cruddy old coffee table top. Don't know where the legs are.

Thursday 9/25 - Man, I remember that I got rid of something but I didn't write it down and I don't remember what it was. Probably a book, or a belt, or something.

Friday 9/26 - Donated five ties to a clothes donation drop box. Don't know if they want ties, but now they have some.

Saturday 9/27 - Trashed an old lamp and a torn-up garment bag.

Sunday 9/28 - Left Philip Jose Farmer's Dayworld in an Arby's

Monday 9/29 - Threw out the remains of what might have been a mop, found in my shed.

Tuesday 9/30 - Some more detritus, also found in my shed, from a previous remodeling. Also a crappy mini-bookshelf which I was nevertheless really fond of.

TGD Week 6

Wednesday 9/17 - A box full of boxes (it was a big box, with a lot of boxes in it).

Thursday 9/18 - Martin Gardner, Mathematics Magic and Mystery was left in a filling station trash can.

Friday 9/18 - Tossed out some book on Learning MS Excel 97, or some such.

Saturday 9/20 - Trashed some book by Stephen Frey - might have been The Takeover, I didn't pay attention.

Sunday 9/21 - I'd bought this screen door closer, but it didn't fit my door and I didn't return it because lost the receipt and I generally just suck at returning things. Junked.

Monday 9/22 - Eco's Foucalt's Pendulum, hardcover. From the library it came (some kind of divestment sale of their own, prob'ly), and to the library drop box it was returned.

Tuesday 9/23 - Some collection of short stories/novellas bound up in a book with the title worn off. It looked something like Fantastic Tales 170 or something like that. It's the PWC library's problem now.

TGD Week 5

Wednesday 9/10 - Trashed: two old "audiovox" cell phones, two Delta Airlines business class goodie bags I was keeping because I thought I might one day use the socks, and another bottle of antique hot sauce ("Pain 100%", vintage ~2003).

Thursday 9/11 - James Blish, The Warriors of Day. Left in the usual place.

Friday 9/12 - Three broken and/or extremely crappy pairs of PC speakers and one pair of behind-the-head headphones because behind-the-head headphones suck.

Saturday 9/11 - Junked some miscellaneous garage detritus: odd scraps of metal and plastic, empty bottles, another oil change pan, etc.

Sunday 9/12 - The Provocative Puzzler, by Jerome S. Meyer. Left in Five Guys.

Monday 9/13 - John Saul, Creature. Left in the go-to book depository.

Tuesday 9/14 - A book twofer: Stephen J. Cannell, Riding the Snake and Thomas H. Block, Orbit. Put them in a priority mail box I had lying around and delivered them to my trash can.

TGD Week 4

Wednesday 9/3 - Some goofy book that was made from a TV miniseries - Amerika, by Brauna E. Pouns (seriously). Left on the VRE

Thursday 9/4 - Tossed King Missile, Happy Hour on cassette in the trash, even though it has "Detachable Penis" on it.

Friday 9/5 - Junked a semi-functional DVD player. Wound up leaving it outside of a dumpster in the hopes that someone might rescue it and get some use out of it. Unlikely, though.

Saturday 9/6 - There was a game called Loom I used to have. It was for the Macintosh computer, and it came on a floppy disk. Oddly, it had an associated soundtrack on cassette tape. I don't know where the game is, but I found the tape. Trashed it.

Sunday 9/7 - I had an old fluorescent light fixture left over from a remodel of the previous aerie. Not recessed, one of those goofy 1970s looking things that hang down from the ceiling and buzz and kind of remind me of venetian blinds for some reason. That thing was utterly useless and it is now junked.

Monday, 9/8 - A weird double novel: Run for the Stars by Harlan Ellison and Echoes of Thunder by Jack Dann and Jack C Haldeman II. Left for a VRE patron to find and sneer at.

Tuesday 9/9 - A CD titled "Ashgrove", by Dave Alvin. I bought it because I heard "Everett Ruess" on Back Porch Music, and I kind of liked it. I later decided that although Everett Ruess himself was a very cool guy, the tune was mediocre at best on repeated listenings. And the rest of the CD was much, much worse. So I mailed it to George W. Bush.

TGD Week 3

Wednesday 8/27 - E.J. Gorman, Senatorial Privilege. Gave it to a homeless man.

Thursday 8/28 - Some kind of manga sampler from Shonen Jump. I think I got it at the 2006 Go Congress in Black Mountain, N.C. Left it in an Onion newspaper box on top of a stack of The Onions.

Friday 8/29 - Roger Zelazny, Dilvish, the Damned. Trained.

Saturday 8/30 - Tossed out two old license plates.

Sunday 8/31 - Junked a non-functional stereo system.

Monday 9/1 - Left Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano in a Burger King.

Tuesday 9/2 - Richard A. Lupoff, Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure was left on the train. It had no cover and a color ad for Kent cigarettes in the middle of it.

TGD Week 2

Wednesday 8/20 - I hesitated to even toss this one because then I'd have to write its title here. Fred Saberhagen, The Holmes-Dracula File. Left it in a WaPo Express newspaper box.

Thursday 8/21 - Tossed an old wall-hanging phone in the trash. It was hanging on the wall in the laundry room when we moved in.

Friday 8/22 - Nicholas Meyer, The West End Horror. Put it in a library return box at the train station.

Saturday 8/23 - I took an old broom whose bristles had been worn down to the nub, put it in an old cardboard box that a radiator was shipped to me in, and tossed the bundle.

Sunday 8/24 - I took a clothes hamper full of scraps of drywall and sheet metal that I lugged over from the previous aerie for some reason and tossed it in a random dumpster. I think there were some plumbing repair supplies in there, too, but they weren't worth salvaging.

Monday 8/25 - Philip Jose Farmer, Inside Outside. Undergrounded.

Tuesday 8/26 - Tossed out three old oil change pans (sans oil) with the trash.