Toxic Waste
November 17, 2007
Sorry, Laundro, no pictures this time either.
I have an enormous media shelf that dominates one wall in our apartment. But still I have to look for other places to stash my DVDs and rapidly-approaching-obsolete CD collection. At first I was proud of this mess, but more and more it feels not only like dead weight but an embarrassment. Oh, look. Here’s a copy of Marcy Playground’s CD. They had that one hit some time ago, “Sex and Candy.” (Sounds like something you’d hear on Aqua Teen Hunger Force.) The song is cute, but the rest of the album is a loss. Yet I’ve packed it and moved it at least five times.
I have a few hundred CDs like that.
Deciding which albums to divest myself of has been very difficult. It’s hard to separate how I used to feel about the music from how I feel about it now. My strategy has been somewhat new-agey. I hold the disc for a few seconds and if the thought of listening to the album again makes me somewhat queasy, it’s gone.
Also, if I can’t remember any of the tunes at all, it’s gone. There’s a surprising number of those.
Looking over these purchases from the last seventeen years or so I realize I seem to have often assumed anything I found the slightest bit interesting I had to own. How else to explain the album of Beatles tunes turned into fugues?
And the “completist” bug had me good at some point. I loved DJ Krush’s first album, but didn’t much care for the others… so why did I keep buying them?
So, I’m cleaning out my CDs. Anyone know how to get rid of these things? Used CD stores just aren’t what they used to be. And now that I think about it, they were part of the problem to begin with…
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November 17th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
1. Target practice (fun, if you’re into such things).
2. Glue two back-to-back, string together in middle, hang on Christmas tree.
3. Goodwill, or something like it.
4. Stick a picture of Corey on the label side and send them out as Christmas cards (I’m not even kidding; a friend did this just with demo CDs she’d received in the mail).
No brilliant ideas (obviously), but I’m sure there’s some way you could get a bit more use out of them!
November 17th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
#1 reminds me of Shaun of the Dead, where they use LPs as anti-zombie projectile weapons.
November 17th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
You could slip the cds in the Netflix sleeve and let somebody else throw them away.
November 17th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
You could try e-bay. Maybe you could put together several “lots” and see if they sell.
If not, you could offer “free to a good home” random CD adoptions here on Thudfactor (recipient pays shipping and takes what they get). But that might involve a lot of unwelcome trips to the post office.
November 17th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
Well, since they don’t break down in the landfill, you can save them for when the munchkin gets older and do family crafts or you could give them away through freecycle.
November 17th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
oh, hey, I don’t suppose any of those are audiobooks?
November 17th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Don’t forget to rip ‘em before you get rid of ‘em. At least the “one good song.”
Donate to local library? Or eBay / garage sale / freecycle.
November 18th, 2007 at 12:40 am
half.com
i’ve sold sold hundreds of CDs there and i make significantly more money during this season for xmas…
it’s also mad easy!