July 29, 2004

• sean asks why I love trashblog.

  The reason is that I have a deep and abiding love of discards and detritus.

  Back in the days when I lived in Houston, I would semi-obsessively collect things from the street. Not just anything, but things that were somehow poigniant or beautiful or ironic. The theme I kept with the longest was lugnuts, especially chrome ones.

  Somewhere in my storage unit, there's a wooden box about the size of a shoe box, and it's mostly full of lugnuts. I'd be wandering around downtown Houston, or wherever, and I'd see one and pick it up. Once I was in Sparks, Nevada, on my way to Burning Man, and I saw four identical lugnuts in one spot; obviously someone's car needed immediate mechanical attention.

  It isn't until you start noticing lugnuts everywhere that you really appreciate their importance, diversity, and, dare I say, beauty.

  

  A face only a mother could lug? This is one I found the other day while walking across Lake City Way. I see lugs in the street from time to time, but resist the urge to pick them up, since I have enough crap in my life already. For some reason I grabbed this one.

  Here's some other road crap I keep, because it was given to me:

  

  It's a metal number sign, and it had the card stuck in the corner fold when they found it. Somehow it ended up with me. The suck part is that I can't remember who gave it to me; it's one of two or three people, and I can't remember which. It's been sitting in a box in the storage unit for a really long time.

  So do I throw it away? Or do I hang it on the wall as art?

  Oh, and there's also the tale of the mystical Eazy Cheeze which I got a lot of mileage out of, but that's another 'blog entry.

  • 4:02 pm
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