Pack Rat

I don't know how it is I end up being such a pack-rat, aka slob. Just spent the better part of the evening straightening up my office and carted a full regular-sized garbage bag downstairs for the Monday trash.

Catalogs for stamp auctions I participated in and are OVER (again, I'll brook no ridicule that I collect stamps. I can live off them for a while if worse ever comes to worse. So wimp this, sucker).

Bits and sheets and napkins and notebook rip-outs I've used to write things on for stuff I am currently or want to eventually write. Worse because they've already long ago been put into the work and I don't need them any more.

More bits and sheets and napkins and notebook tear-outs I've used to give numerical values to baseball players for fantasy leagues, horse racing figures and notes I'll use for going to the OTB. Worse because I've used all the info already (and am ahead for the year, horse racing-wise).

Notes I've written to myself LAST YEAR about music I want to add to my holy iPod.

Recipes I've already transferred to my recipe book a long time ago, for Chrise sakes.

Unattended sheets from the tear-off daily calendar on my desk. Dude, seriously?

Plus all the usual whatnot.

Then there's the stuff I keep for whatever reason and just needed to organize.

My collection of anarchist publications and brochures which were all over the place. Including my correspondence with Fred Woodworth.

A list of places I'd rather be living in than the USA. I put this is my journal. Yes I keep a journal and, no, none of that ever sees the light of day here. Then I threw it away because I already know where I'd go if I ever could, because I love America but can't stand Americans. So never mind.

Movie and TV show CD cases that have been separated from their disks, plus the disks that wind up here and there. It's a pet peeve of mine - CDs not returned to their cases. And I - as it turns out - am the biggest criminal in that regard.

Mail that should have been mailed last week.

The cards from the 1911 baseball season purchased from Strat-O a couple years ago which, in the wee hours of some mornings as I live this insane schedule, sometimes gets its schedule played and games recorded, solitaire, and ends up here and there. Ty Cobb's Tigers on top of a history of the Negro Leagues. Oh the irony!

My 3rd grade reading book that I found on Ebay and won. I have no idea why it is under the stack of New Yorkers I subscribe to. Nor do I understand how my model train parts catalog ended up under all the Thrice copies. Sheesh.

Not to mention the Minutes from Western Yearly Meeting I've been bringing home and never reading.

More whatnot, of the keeping variety.

I look at this stuff and I wonder just who the hell I am sometimes. There's so much contradictory stuff.

Not only that, but I still think Spike Lee's Malcolm X is one of the best American movies ever made. Here's a scene near the end just before the Nation of Islam guns him down...