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George Carlin did a routine about his “stuff.” It’s really funny and I can’t even hope to improve upon his master class on comedy! But I have to talk about my stuff. I have accumulated a lot of stuff in my life. I know I needed that stuff when I bought it, but most of the time, I can’t even find my stuff! How is it that when I’m in a store, I see stuff that I must have! I didn’t know I needed it until I saw it in the store. I look at it, I analyze it, I decide if it’s worth having more than having the cash in my pocket. I realize I deserve to have this stuff! I work hard for my stuff! This stuff will look awesome on a shelf in my home! I will buy it, put it on the shelf, and never touch it again. That’s my stuff!

My most frequent frivolous purchases are DVDs. Now that the price of Blue-Rays are coming down, I’m buying them too. Sometimes, I’ll see a Blue-Ray version of a DVD I already have and I decide to buy it anyway! It’s in a shiny new box with all these extras I’ll never watch. I must have it! I have enough movies to watch one per week for the rest of my life and never watch one twice! I have the complete Monty Python’s Flying Circus series. I have the original Planet of the Apes box set with all six movies. I’ve watched the first one – the other five are still shrink wrapped. I have Ghostbusters 1 and 2. I have Saturday Night Fever next to Schindler’s List on my shelf. That’s right – I alphabetized my stuff!

I have books I’ve never read. Half Price Books is both a blessing and a curse. The bargain aisle at Barnes & Noble calls my name. I have two different baseball encyclopedias given to me as gifts. I have a book with four complete novels by Mark Twain and another with six stories by Douglas Adams. I’ve read the first 100 pages of Atlas Shrugged. I can still see the bookmark sticking up as it sits there on the shelf. I now have a Nook Color, so I can have a virtual library! I bought the digital version of The Corrections while the hardback copy was on the coffee table. I finished reading it on the Nook. Speaking of digital, all the hundreds of CDs I bought are still in a box while my online collection of music grows. Soon, my stuff will need bigger memory cards!

So I have shitloads of stuff and then I decide to move. Now comes the tricky part. What stuff do I bring with me to my new home and what stuff do I throw away? At first, it’s easy to decide. I box up the important stuff with care, and throw away anything that’s broken. Then things get a little tougher. I look at the remaining stuff and decide if I want it badly enough to put it in a box. So, to be on the safe side, I put it in the “miscellaneous” box. You know that box. That’s the box that you put in a closet at your new place, only to find the same unopened box the next time you move! Well, shit, I guess it’s just easier to move it again than to go through it and keep what I really want! In my most recent move, I was too tired to unpack everything so there are a few large boxes in the storage space in the basement. Alana has lots of the same stuff I brought with me, so we’ll just use her stuff. I know I have a really nice watch somewhere in a box. I haven’t worn it in years so I haven’t gone looking for it. I have pots and pans and kitchen utensils still packed up. I have tools, a printer, a blood pressure monitor, and a handheld device that measures my body fat percentage. I really don’t know what else is in the boxes but it’s my stuff!

I guess I could hold a yard sale. Yard sales suck! I don’t know which is worse, holding your own yard sale or going to someone else’s. Having strangers go through your stuff that you no longer want, and having them try talking you down from $1 to 50 cents is depressing! Then, what do you do with the stuff that doesn’t sell? Put it back in the closet! Looking at other people’s shit at their yard sale is never a good thing. Inevitably, you end up buying something you don’t really need just because you can get it for a quarter! Yard sales are a complete waste of time. That’s what Goodwill stores are for!

Paraphrasing Mr. Carlin – “Have you noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff?” My stuff is the shit!