Hood Ornaments

This collection was generously, and unknowingly, donated by Roger Newell. The mack bulldog is of course the hood ornament thief's dream. So stately. In my years of stealing hood candy from my dad's junk cars I've noticed that Buick ornaments are common, and Mercedes break easily.

Interesting note: I've never been injured during a heist.

Pumpkins

Tired once more of mowing the yard, and refusing to get sheep again (after numerous citations from the city for having livestock within the city limits), Rodgey decided to turn the yard into a pumpkin patch. He said we would sell them when Halloweentime came. He promptly forgot about that idea shortly after planting the seeds.

After giving a few pumpkins away, I brought the rest of them into the kitchen and made a pile (as I often do with things). When the above picture was taken, many of the pumpkins had started to...age.

And then punkin parts started going missing. My thoughts at the time: "a... rat... has been eating them. at least, we think it is a rat. really, right now, we're hoping it's a rat. if it's not a rat, we've got a problem larger than a rat. dear god, let it be a rat."

Vintage Bags of Fl'awful Chips

Sometime before February of last year a YMCA member donated 40 boxes of falafel chips to the East Valley YMCA. When I arrived the boxes were being used as back office clutter, though the obvious use should've been as cubicle dividers. The membership director began selling these chips for a dollar a bag until they expired in March, when they were marked down to "or best offer." I helped increase sales by sampling. The director was then told expired food could not be sold at the Y, so she began giving them away. The director was then told expired food could not be given away at the Y, so she gave them away discretely. Then the decision was made to throw all the boxes away. I ended up taking home 30 boxes, with 12 bags of falafel chips in each box.

I'll tell ya, I didn't like the taste of the chips. They were bland at first, and overpoweringly spicy at the final swallow. Though I was sure they'd taste pretty good with some hummus to cover up their taste. The sheer volume of chips was what interested me. By amount, this was the largest gross of food I'd ever pirated from a YMCA. I'm sorry, I wrote that wrong. I mean, the grossest large amount of food I've ever pirated from a YMCA. And while I knew I didn't want the chips at that point, I couldn't say whether or not I'd want them in a year, or say, a year and six months.

So I redid my room in fl'awful boxes. I made the shelf, a chest of drawers and a bedstead out of fl'awful boxes. I also ate many of the chips and forced them on others. I pioneered the fl'awful-chip-beef-jerky sandwich, a dish that has a combined expired age of 3 years, and is pretty much entirely sodium. Also, I moved a lot of product at home by sampling. Open up a bag, pour some chips on a plate at the kitchen table, done. Ooo! I should write an expired entree cookbook. That idea doesn't fit in this paragraph; I just thought it and typed it to remember.

I've brought at least one bag of expired fl'awful chips to each team meeting we've had at the YMCA since then. And we've had like 15 team meetings. My favorite idea to propose at a team meeting: "We should have another team meeting." Coworkers know that the chips are old, but someone else always eats the chips with me at these meetings. How do I do it? Easy. By sampling. I just take a paper plate or a napkin, pour some chips out onto it, and then start eating chips myself. The crunching and bag-rustling is too much for most anyone to deny.

A collage of collages

I can't take credit for anything beyond combining these two collages into one megacollage, and keeping them around for years. Mike Scott spent what I would call his entire adholescence creating the lower sports collages, and Leann made the Barbie collage while working at a fireworks outlet and then dumped it in a dumpster. Where I found it. One resolution I have is to put up a version of this in better resolution.

Interesting note: this cocollage covered a large hole in the wall in the wreckroom for quite some time.

Pocket T-Shirts

Pocket T-Shirts comprise the bulks of my wardrobe. They are reliable, versatile and easy to replace. Which is nice for that member of the family who regularly gets sentimental about inanimate objects. At one point I had around 40 pocket t's, and wore nothing else (on top or bottom). A head hole easily translates into a restroom hole when inverted.

Vintage Myspace Profiles

Years ago there was a social networking site called myspace. It was kinda like a colorful, badly-coded facebook. If you go down the dusty servers that house myspace today you'll find a dried-out husk of a site, populated by bands, artists and the occasional lost dog. But it had the opportunity to be as big as facebook. Tom politely declined this offer. One positive to myspace was, early on it was possible to create numerous profiles using any sort of email address (at a time when facebook only "liked" school addresses). Because of this, I ended up with 27 myspace profiles. Business Dan'l, Casual Dan'l, Business Casual Dan'l, Crazy, Sexy and Cool Dan'l, Sporty, Posh and Baby Dan'l, Gay Dan'l and even a profile of me as a woman. My friend and occasional enemy Leann created 16 of these profiles for me for Christ's Mass in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Six. A couple of fan profiles popped up later, including "Man'l" the machoest Dan'l of them all. Also, I don't know how The UnDan'l was on myspace 2 years before I ever joined with my original profile, Dan'l New'll. I find that to be one of myspace's greatest mysteries. I think UnDan'l was created by someone else, who I believe was located in Atlanta. But somehow I obtained the password for this profile and commandeered it. I love commandeering.

Childhood Balls

Luckily, I've never been one to throw much away. Here we have numerous balls from my childhood. Some I found under the porch, some in forgotten closets, and some I stole from neighborhood children because I needed to round out my collection. Whatever color a rubber basketball was originally, enough outdoor use will eventually bring it closer and closer to white. Outdoor use tends to turn me brown.

The light blue ball (front row, third from the left) is a Pinky and the Brain Ball my mom won at Worlds of Fun in Kansas City.

The red-black-yellow striped ball was not originally part of this picture. It bounced in front of the group like a poser right before I took this shot.



Vintage Kroger Unsweetened Orange Juice

Local foodstore Dillon's discontinued their sale of this delightfully grapefruity drink by putting it on sale. 99 cents for 1.7 liters of orange juice? Now I don't care how much I dislike the metric system, I'm still going to go for that kinda deal. And that price, 99 cents, I think that's the price that stores put stuff at to make me buy it. Just thinking about the hypothetical 99 cent stuff I mentioned in the previous sentence gets my brain wondering, "Ooo... do I need summa whatever that is?"

After I learned this product was being discontinued to death I decided to buy all of it, from the 7 stores around town. I ended up with $80 worth of product, and, we'll say about 80 cans of the unsweetened in my possession.

Also, I love a premeditated backdrop.