Call Me Mr. Clean

I am a packrat. I am also a slob by nature, although sometimes I put on a good show of being organized when it counts. I spent the weekend cleaning out my small room upstairs and thinking, “Damn, I’m a packrat.” During my long years as an amateur geek/professional gadget junkie, I have accumulated enough electronic parts and contraptions to completely fill a six-tatami room. I’m talking boxes haphazardly stacked to the ceiling. This is a room you do not want to be in during an earthquake, which isn’t really a joke since this island was the epicenter of the largest quake in Japan in recent history. A hundred pounds of shielded cables crashing down on your leg would be a lousy way to wake up, methinks. Anyway, regarding this room – basically, I have been promising my girlfriend that I would clean it up and organize my CDs for the past three years. I think I decided to clean it up this weekend just to show her that my word is good. Also, I there was a steady list of “lost” things that I strongly suspected were hiding in that room somewhere – company health insurance card, backup software for my cellphone, ADSL line filters I promised to give to my manager, etceteraetceteraandsoforth.
So. I didn’t finish. Mainly because I started out by trying to organize my CDs. That was a mistake. Let me be clear – when I did my half year of duty in Canada five years ago, I took two weeks and organized all of my CDs into binders. I did this by lining up every CD I had (about 600) and entering them into a spreadsheet (Lileks would have been been proud at the hours of effort I spent on creating the perfect system), then breaking them down into genres and putting them in color-coded Case Logic CD notebooks (the BIG ones). I then placed all of the empty cases into boxes and stored them at my office on Gastown (where they remain to this day for all I know). This was a major accomplishment in my life and every time I DJed after that, I thanked God for giving me the foresight to organize those discs (of course, He decided to relieve me of foreskin so I guess I deserved something in return).
My problem as is related to this post is all of the CDs I have since acquired. Many, many. Between DJing and my lifelong quest for decent tunage (needle in a haystack warehouse if you know what I mean), the amount of CDs I bought in the past five years have been a boon to the music industry. Don’t get me wrong, I was on the empeethree bandwagon before most of you knew that your computer could make more sounds than “beep”, but I like CDs like most audiophiles claim to like records (Yes, I have records too but gimme a fuckin’ break. I drive a sports coupe and have a hard enough time carrying my digital gear around.). I like jacket art, CD-quality sound, and the warm fuzzy feeling I get by filling the pockets of old white CEOs and black street thugs alike.
Well, I forgot where I was going with this post, but I suppose that’s the point.
Oh yeah.
In the grand scheme of my 2nd Grand CD Organization (2004), I am exactly 1/3 finished. Which means my bedroom, where my girlfriend and I usually sleep (Sa-priize!), is filled with boxes and boxes and bags and bags of Compact Disks, CD-Rs, DVDs, floppies (many varieties including “TRON” disk size), Iomega media (both Zip and Jaz. Or was that Jiz and Zap? Ziz and Jap? Wuteva.), and several proprietary media types from various failed loser companies that tricked me into buying their shit and then went tits up. I mean, it’s a fucking joke. Don’t forget, this is just CDs and other assorted media – the small room I’m trying to clean out is probably only 1/10 finished. And now our bedroom is also unusable, almost unenterable. I just called Nam during lunch and without even a hello, she started cursing me out. She was upstairs despairing about where to start cleaning up because she doesn’t want to sleep on the couch again. I forgot what I called for, so I got an earful about what I will be doing when I get home tonight instead. Oh, and I got hung up on. Girls, man. Peh!
I gotta take some pics of the destruction I’ve caused so far. It’s hard to believe it will ever look clean in either of the two rooms. Then again, it’s gotta get better than it is now, or I’ll just burn the whole damn place down after the neighbors next door move to their new house next month. One of the scientists at Peenemunde (where they built rockets during the great war) was reported to have said somthing along the lines of “every fifty years all the factories should be burned down” in order to stimulate technological progress. Exactly what the hell that has to do with burning down my apartment, I don’t know. I just work here, fella.