Like many despondent basement dwellers too impoverished and socially majadjusted to move out, I have a room full of crap. Let me just take a minute first to turn off my Whining Self Pity Mode, so I’m actually funny.

So yeah, room full of crap. Last time it got even loosely tidied out, I ended up finding things that shouldn’t even exist anymore. A rubber from when I was in the Beaver Scouts, in 92. A rubber older than my little brother, who can now thoroughly kick my arse at Guitar Hero, and may well end up nerdier than I am. Also, coursework from Year Seven (no idea what that is in American, probably “Burgers”). And a bottle of beer that’s been growing some nice mould since before I went to uni. Yummy.

But since, unlike most basement dwellers, I actually have a girlfriend, and said girlfriend is spending the summer with me, fifteen years of crap had to be shunted into better organised places. Bank statements were organised by date on the statement, not date shoved into the big plastic folder. CDs and DVDs were arranged on shelves instead of piled on them. Shoeboxes were filled with manuals, little plastic men were ranked up, and beer bottles were recycled, and duct-taped up in the case of the aforementioned four year old bottle.

Naturally, this means that there’s some things I’ve found that may have made sense, if someone else brought them into my room and hid them to confuse me. So for want of some actual good ideas, here’s a selection of useless crap.

A coconut:
You all know what a coconut looks like, its like a giant straw-covered testicle. If testicles were made of wood, hollow, and filled with “milk” and stringy stuff that tastes like eating wood shavings. So, as the ancient pun goes, not really like a giant straw-covered testicle then. I think I know where this one came from, actually, I took it upstairs for an event which also featured a condom, a potato, and some ear medicene. Tragically, I’m not joking.

However, this does begat the question: why was there a coconut downstairs in the first place? Because someone bought a coconut. Dur.

Ear mufflers:
You know clay pidgeon shooting, I guess. Basically just firing clay frisbees into the air, then blowing them apart with shotguns. I’m guessing it was invented by the English aristocracy, who, having ron out of pheasents and other birds to shoot one evening, decided to give the local potter some work and shoot more things. Not the potter, mind.

At any rate, since shotguns, designed primarily to turn a man in front of you into a thin red mist and some lumpy bits, are very loud, one typically wears big padded ear muff things when shooting. And for some reason, I own a pair.

Annoyingly enough, I also know where these came from, seeing as one of my housemates in Hull used to do clay pigeon shooting. And since for some reason five tonnes of everyones crap ended up in my bag for no reason, this also explains the shotgun cartridge, and the Tom and Jerry SNES game that rests on my decidedly SNES-free shelves.

An African Blowpipe
It came from France, just in case there was any lingering sense of the “I don’t know where this stuff came from!” idea. For some reason, there’s lots of African stuff in French markets, and since I’m in France once a year on holiday, it seems inevitable.

Although it looks quite cool, I think the bamboo started splintering three seconds after I bought it, and its so long and loose you can’t launch a dart out of it anyway. Not a great use of money, but neither was the djembe I bought, and later sold on eBay. And neither was the bigger djembe, which is now wearing a St Patricks Day hat.

One model cloven hoof
Which would be much more useful if I knew where the other was.

…this would have been much funnier if there was a bit more inexplicable stuff. Ah well, come back in six months when I have to clear out the crap again, and find a stuffed zebra, or something. Cheerio!