Wednesday's Emotional Setup: The Night My Record Collection Fell Down
We are, as most of you know by now, moving. Today we got a fair amount of work done, the bed and most of the kitchen and a bit of the living room and this computer and my record collection all upstairs to our new apartment.
Ah, the record collection. My mom (I believe - one of my parents, in any case, and I think it was her and Wayne) got me the CD holder I had always wanted for my birthday or Christmas or something similar a while ago. It's from Ikea, it's wall mounted, and it holds at maximum something like 454 CDs. Right now, just to my left in the nearly-empty room I'm sitting in, it's almost full.
That's kind of scary, I think. I will never listen to that many CDs on a regular basis. But that's not what's important about them right now. They're in random order.
Now, I'm not so incredibly anal that this fact alone distubs me, it's what caused them to be in random order. Dad initially put it up, as he usually does when I move, as I was moving boxes up here. We checked it out, it felt as solid as ever (the other four times, in other words), I slowly put all the CDs up there, checking it every so often, as I always do. It seemed solid.
And then, hours later as I was leaving this apartment with Dez to grab something or other, there was the most horrible noise I've ever heard. Not that I have a whole lot to compare it to.
My memory insists that first there was a big thumping crash and then a serious of softer, plasticy crashes and cracks aftwards, sort of a THUMP-ksshksshksshksshksshksshkssh. But that's impossible, the CDs didn't wait until the shelf hit the ground to spill out.
I come back in and there first thing I see is CDs spilling out of the door of this room. They're covering most of the floor, and even this computer.
After a few minutes of being aghast, I got down to cleaning them up. All I did was sort them into three groups: Basically undamaged, case needs replacement, and FUXXORED, to use the parlance of our times.
Only three fell into the later category, for which I was incredibly grateful. First I discovered that my copy of The Stooges had gotten completely trashed, the cash crushed and shattered, the disc snapped in two. Bizarrely, all I could think is "at least it wasn't Fun House", which is odd, as I like each album equally.
I think the next fucked one we found was New Order's CD single for 'Crystal', which I'd never actually gotten around to listening to. I'd just bought it (for $3) for the single edit anyway, so I can just Soulseek it. No big deal.
But the last one that got crushed.... I'd been searching for my own copy of U-Ziq's Royal Astronomy for years, ever since Pete got it. Almost all of it was on my computer, but I wanted a copy. I finally found it for $10 used a little while ago.
And then my falling CD holder crushed it. Fuck.
There is an upside to all this, though. The vast majority of my collection fell into the 'not damaged' pile, and of the two CDs I'll need to replace, one is easy to fine for about $10. That one is not Royal Astronomy. But in any case, I'd been meaning to go through the collection and sort out what I actually want to keep, and now I have to. I'm just going to start listening from the start of the random CDs and keep going all the way through. It'll give me something to do, if nothing else.
Also, strangely, my mental soundtrack for moving this time so far has been the New Pornographers' 'The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism'.
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Ah, the record collection. My mom (I believe - one of my parents, in any case, and I think it was her and Wayne) got me the CD holder I had always wanted for my birthday or Christmas or something similar a while ago. It's from Ikea, it's wall mounted, and it holds at maximum something like 454 CDs. Right now, just to my left in the nearly-empty room I'm sitting in, it's almost full.
That's kind of scary, I think. I will never listen to that many CDs on a regular basis. But that's not what's important about them right now. They're in random order.
Now, I'm not so incredibly anal that this fact alone distubs me, it's what caused them to be in random order. Dad initially put it up, as he usually does when I move, as I was moving boxes up here. We checked it out, it felt as solid as ever (the other four times, in other words), I slowly put all the CDs up there, checking it every so often, as I always do. It seemed solid.
And then, hours later as I was leaving this apartment with Dez to grab something or other, there was the most horrible noise I've ever heard. Not that I have a whole lot to compare it to.
My memory insists that first there was a big thumping crash and then a serious of softer, plasticy crashes and cracks aftwards, sort of a THUMP-ksshksshksshksshksshksshkssh. But that's impossible, the CDs didn't wait until the shelf hit the ground to spill out.
I come back in and there first thing I see is CDs spilling out of the door of this room. They're covering most of the floor, and even this computer.
After a few minutes of being aghast, I got down to cleaning them up. All I did was sort them into three groups: Basically undamaged, case needs replacement, and FUXXORED, to use the parlance of our times.
Only three fell into the later category, for which I was incredibly grateful. First I discovered that my copy of The Stooges had gotten completely trashed, the cash crushed and shattered, the disc snapped in two. Bizarrely, all I could think is "at least it wasn't Fun House", which is odd, as I like each album equally.
I think the next fucked one we found was New Order's CD single for 'Crystal', which I'd never actually gotten around to listening to. I'd just bought it (for $3) for the single edit anyway, so I can just Soulseek it. No big deal.
But the last one that got crushed.... I'd been searching for my own copy of U-Ziq's Royal Astronomy for years, ever since Pete got it. Almost all of it was on my computer, but I wanted a copy. I finally found it for $10 used a little while ago.
And then my falling CD holder crushed it. Fuck.
There is an upside to all this, though. The vast majority of my collection fell into the 'not damaged' pile, and of the two CDs I'll need to replace, one is easy to fine for about $10. That one is not Royal Astronomy. But in any case, I'd been meaning to go through the collection and sort out what I actually want to keep, and now I have to. I'm just going to start listening from the start of the random CDs and keep going all the way through. It'll give me something to do, if nothing else.
Also, strangely, my mental soundtrack for moving this time so far has been the New Pornographers' 'The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism'.
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