TGD Week 11

All books except Wednesday's were "returned" to the PWC library.

Wednesday 10/22 - A copy of Ten Tomorrows, Roger Elwood, ed., was falling apart, so I checked it.

Thursday 10/23 - I had been eyeing for divestiture another, much larger, old suitcase with broken wheels, but I thought The Boss would cling to it. Out of the blue, when we both happened to be in the unfinished section of the basement, she suggested that we no longer need the old critter. So out it went.

Friday 10/24 - "Minnesota Fats" on Pool was tossed in the garbage. Someone had drawn, with a black ball-point pen - long hair, a scruffy beard, and a Frankenstein scar on Fats' head on the cover. I don't think I was the culprit. You can see the book's cover on the wikipedia page for Fats. I hadn't known that he took his name from the character in The Hustler, whose author, in turn, apparently took the character from Fats' life.

Saturday 10/25 - Some IQ testing book called "How Intelligent Are you?" It was falling apart and seemed to be some kind of Mensa recruiting tool.

Sunday 10/26 - Gordon R. Dickson, some crap book about a dragon (Oh yeah - The Dragon on the Border, it was).

Monday 10/27 - several old magazines, mostly puzzle related.

Tuesday 10/28 - Harlan Ellison, Angry Candy in oversized paperback.

TGD Week 8

Wednesday 10/1 - Oops, forgot to lose something today so I had to retrovest on Thursday. Another collection of novellas bound up into a novel. "3 to the Highest Power", it's called. "Edited" by "William F. Nolan".

Thursday 10/2 - Henry Grady Weaver, The Mainspring of Human Progress.

Friday 10/3 - A beat-up old faux leather attache and - in a fit of rage after it mangled Tut Taylor's "Dobrolic Plectral Society" on cassette - an old receiver/cassette/deck/turntable. DPS does not appear to be available on CD, but I did manage to find a vinyl copy on eBay, which I snapped up before remembering that I no longer have a turntable.

Saturday 10/4 - A symphony of crap books, too awful to even bother leaving on some bench somewhere: The Year's Best Horror Stories, karl Edward Wagner, ed.; Conquest of Earth, Manly Banister; Never Deal with a Dragon, Robert N. Charette; The Vang, Christopher Rowley; Maze of Mysteries, Ellery Queen, ed. Also, a 2006 yellow pages.

Sunday 10/5 - Some largish pieces of wood and what looks like part of the fluorescent light fixture I ditched earlier. The shed is starting to look kind of clean.

Monday 10/6 - Robert Crichton, The Secret of Santa Vittoria was left in the underground.

Tuesday 10/7 - Lin Carter, Ylana of Callisto. Left in the CC underground.

TGD Week 2

Wednesday 8/20 - I hesitated to even toss this one because then I'd have to write its title here. Fred Saberhagen, The Holmes-Dracula File. Left it in a WaPo Express newspaper box.

Thursday 8/21 - Tossed an old wall-hanging phone in the trash. It was hanging on the wall in the laundry room when we moved in.

Friday 8/22 - Nicholas Meyer, The West End Horror. Put it in a library return box at the train station.

Saturday 8/23 - I took an old broom whose bristles had been worn down to the nub, put it in an old cardboard box that a radiator was shipped to me in, and tossed the bundle.

Sunday 8/24 - I took a clothes hamper full of scraps of drywall and sheet metal that I lugged over from the previous aerie for some reason and tossed it in a random dumpster. I think there were some plumbing repair supplies in there, too, but they weren't worth salvaging.

Monday 8/25 - Philip Jose Farmer, Inside Outside. Undergrounded.

Tuesday 8/26 - Tossed out three old oil change pans (sans oil) with the trash.

TGD Day 7

The end of the first week, and the last of the daily updates. No sense listing title and author and drop spot for each book I ditch, and I think we've determined that books are going to be the bulk of the GD.

Most likely I'll post weekly summaries from here in.

Jack L. Chalker, The Web of the Chozen. Left it on the counter at Potbellies as I walked by. I didn't even eat there.

TGD Day 6

I guess books are going to have to be a main staple if we're going to make it through a year. I expect junk will often get thrown out in lots, not piece by piece just to stretch out the process. I plan to sell a few things, but you can't schedule when someone will want to buy.

So the one reliable source of TGD fodder is the vast collection of cheesy dreck weighing down my bookshelves. Better to discard them un-re-read than to page through them again and realize what truly awful junk I've been boxing up and hauling around for 20 years.

Clive Barker. The Books of Blood Volume 1. Left it on the table where I ate my lunch.

TGD Day 5

I put an old, small Daewoo TV (manufacture date: 1993) in a contractor bag and carried it out to the trash. The bag looked a little empty, so I also threw in some miscellaneous junk from the garage: a torn-up old bicycle tire, a rusty old plumber's snake, a Washington Post newspaper box, and an old, small electric fan.

Man, I've been carrying that TV around for years.

TGD Day 4

I folded up five shirts that were too ugly and/or uncomfortable to wear, put the shirts in a plastic grocery bag, tied the bag tightly shut and carried the package down to a donation drop box outside of the local Wal-Mart.

The box had the name of the charity on the outside, but I don't remember what it was, exactly. Something to do with cancer research, so I reckon they sell the donations somehow rather than distributing them. Doesn't much matter to me, long as I'm shut of those shirts.

We're already over 1% through the year, hoo-ah. Ought to put up one of those goofy thermometer-looking graphics charities use to track how much of their goal they've achieved. Except mine would start out full and gradually get empty as the G.D. continues.

TGD Day 3

Tossed out five obsolete technical books and a Games magazine from October, 2004.

Books are easy to grab on the way out the door, so they're a good fallback choice. Maybe Saturday's item will have some more thought put into it.

TGD Day 2

I threw out a bunch of old phone books and a binder of notes for some goofy training class which were sitting in the basement. That seemed kind of insufficient, so I left Cormac McCarthy's The Road on the DC Metro when I rode up to meet T. and W. for lunch at Tivoli.

A year is a lot of days, but I'm sticking to my resolve (for now).

UPDATE: Threw away a pair of socks with a hole in them.

The Great Divestiture

I have too much stuff.

I'm not really anti-stuff - I just don't like having to worry about all the junk I have, lurking, waiting for me to have to box it up and move it, or to sift through it looking for some other worthless crap that I don't remember why I need.

I'm going to get rid of at least one thing per day for one year, starting today. At least one thing. Toss a CD off a rooftop, throw away some junk in my shed, sell a car, something.

For today's TGD I grabbed a random cheesy book off one of my bookshelves. Turned out to be The Man Who Had No Idea, by Thomas M. Disch. Pretty crap as I recall, though I hesitate to say it so soon after Disch grew weary of the world.

Left it on a bench in the Crystal City underground.

Updates to follow.