BABY

This is one of those things you get in thematic packets especially for enhancing scrapbooks. To scrapbookers, there's nothing creepy about an empty pair of blue pajamas wearing a bib. However, to me, I thought it was vaguely unsettling to find this carefully stuck to a fence post on my way to work. I like how the bib says BABY, in case there was some doubt as to who should be wearing it.

Ruby Reeboks

These are quite possibly the awesomest shoes ever made. I found them on trash day near my house on the way to the train. There was a silver shoe exactly like these, but I could only find one. These shoes look unworn. How could someone throw them away? They are awesome! They would have even been awesome in 1987! They are a little too long for me, but they otherwise fit quite nicely. I love them!

Roadkill

I found this skunk in the road outside the Avon, MA Newbury Comics. Both of this poor skunk's eyes have been ripped out. Aside from that, though, he's in pretty good shape. He smells much better than your average roadkill skunk! I like the way he sassily has his hands on his hips, as if to say, "Car, oh no you di'nt just run over me! Oh no YOU DID NOT!"

gbfb.org

This attractive button is advertising the Greater Boston Food Bank.

I found it on the ground near Park Street Station in Boston. Park Street is one of the major stations in Boston for both visitors and locals alike, so I always find the most dropped items there.

I'm a walking Nike ad

That bicycling guy who got his balls chopped off from cancer started the whole trend of wearing silicone bracelets with some kind of affirmation to raise awareness on them. The originals said "Live Strong," and the proceeds went to some charity. However, in the years since he started it, many thousands of different plastic bracelets have cropped up. These range from the ones I got out of the gumball machine at the local drugstore that say greetings in Mexican slang (I've gotten "¡Oralé!" and "¿Que Honda?" so far) to Archie McPhee's own collections which raise awareness of concepts such as "misanthrope," "ennui," and "apathy." There are also a whole host of religious type ones as well as bands for sports fans, bland people who just want to have something trite to say, vacationers, dead people, and to raise awareness of princesses. You can even get your own bracelets made in bulk! Whoa. This site even gives suggestions which colors can raise awareness for what (i.e., yellow is for "general cancer," dark blue is for "child abuse and colon cancer.")

Anyway, I found this lovely unblemished white bracelet on the floor of the store where I work. I've been wearing it ever since I found it a couple of weeks ago because it cracks me up so hard. No, I'm not suggesting you go out and buy Nike products right now. I just find it really funny that there is an actual bracelet that says, "ONCE I GET THE BALL YOU'RE AT MY MERCY." There are even quotation marks around the saying on the bracelet itself. It has a little Nike logo guy on it, which is how I realized I was a walking Nike billboard. The little guy with the basketball is Nike Air Jordan, right? Or is that something else?

Had I written the sentiment, I would have put a comma after the "ball," but I don't think it's 100% necessary. I think I want to get a bunch made up that say, "ONCE I GET A COMMA, YOUR GRAMMAR IS AT MY MERCY!" perhaps I'll just get some to raise punctuation awareness-- with various punctuation marks on them that say "SEMI-COLON POWER!" and stuff (the colon one would be dark blue, har har!). Wouldn't that be geeky and annoying?

P

I found this bright yellow foam P on the ground on the way to the train the other morning. It's nicely textured on one side; it looks like it may be from some child's puzzle or some other toy. Hah! This kid will never learn how to P! (hehehe). I like how the P is yellow. How very fitting!

Test Tubes

I found this Ziplock bag of centrifuge tubes in front of my apartment building when I lived in Allston. I thought it was an odd thing to be lying around. The bag contains one cryo-marker, 2 dry-erase markers (red and green), 2 centrifuge tubes, 2 ... oh crap, i can't remember what they're called-- test tubes of some sort, and a bunch of small sample tubes. The sticky note on it says:

017-07-vx1
CORJ 44
04/09/2005

What's it all for? I have no idea. Everything was completely unused and unlabelled. I used to work in a lab, but I still can't imagine why someone would take this stuff home! Unless, of course, they're a freak like me who really likes lab equipment. This isn't even the cool stuff, though. Since it's Allston, I thought maybe it was for a drug lab. However this stuff is all plastic; it wouldn't make very good cooking equipment.

<-- there's all the stuff laid out.

This is the note on the bag -->

Knave of Smokes

Whoever owned this ashtray decided it was too cool to trash, yet too lame to keep. It was sitting outside the dumpster on the ground behind my apartment in Allston for a few days until someone moved it to the landing of the back stairs where it stayed for a few weeks. I picked it up even though I don't smoke, figuring I could find some use for this wonderful object that was "Made in Japan." It's interestingly made-- it's completely hollow. It was obviously molded, as there are chunks that are stuck to the side, and you can see the seams, but it's made from very hard porcelain. I wonder if it came in a set of all the card suits, or if there's something special about spades?

Mini Fake Grasshopper

Walk to train carefully, grasshopper! Today was a major score on my way to work. I found this little plastic grasshopper on the sidewalk in front of the Chinese-owned Thistle and Shamrock convenience store. It's very small (see quarter for scale), but the underside is impressively detailed (well, sort of).

I'm rich, Beeyotch!

I found Ten Thousand dollars today on my way to the train! A couple of weeks ago I found this poker chip. Apparently the red ones are normally worth $5. So, I'm $10,005 richer just from my morning commute! Ah yes, the Game of Life. I always hated that game--it seemed kind of stupid that whoever had the most money in the end wins. I mean, we all die, don't we? That's why I made up my own edition in high school, called either "Death" or "Get a Life." I never decided on a name, but in this game you get sex changes, lose kids in accidents (you can only gain kids in Milton Bradley's world), and in the end everyone dies. Basically nobody wins the game, you just play it for kicks (kind of like real life).

Anyway, back to the subject-- the design of this money is pretty grim. I mean, come on--the "10,000" fading into the bottom? It looks like some reject printing from a former Soviet Union satellite. I had a 10,000 whatever (dinar?) note from the former Yugoslavia sometime in the early 90s when I was there. I'd scan it to show you what I'm talking about, except some douchebag broke into my apartment last year and stole all my completely worthless foreign money, much of it from countries that no longer exist.

Here's a bank note from Latvia -- this is sort of what I'm talking about:

Cell phones are SO COOL!

Whenever I get lonely, I just click open my Lizzie McGuire talking phone, and Lizzie says, "MMmmphhhhgp ppmmmmmggphh mmm phhffnsd." A few short months ago, she would say, "you're SUCH a great friend!" and my heart would warm up and I would realize how much I am uh, friended in this world or something.

Alas, Lizzie's batteries are running down, causing the fairy-like jingling noises her phone makes when you open it to go off at random times. They also interrupt themselves to start over, so it sounds kind of like early 80s rap music when were just getting into skratching and sampling. It goes

jingle jingJingJingJingJing jingle JingJingJingle

for a while and then stops for a couple of days. Today, however, you can make out Lizzie's voice as she says touching things like "K.I.T.-- you know, 'keep in touch, OK?' bye." as well as philosophical ponderers like, "cell phones are SO COOL." However, when you punch the number buttons, instead of a cheery beeping, they make the sound of a tape deck just after someone has pulled the plug. On the tape whose plug was pulled was a recording of a dying goose.

Since this is a "camera" phone, you can "take pictures" with it. This means that when you push the big round button in the middle, it makes a camera shutter clicking noise, and the "flash" on the front (see picture, left) is supposed to flash. Alas, there will be no dirty fake-photos looking up women's skirts on the subway today, as the battery is dying.

My favorite feature of this phone is the fake battery pack (see picture, right). Doesn't it look like you should be able to open up the back and take out the battery by pressing down on the tab near the top? PSYCH! That's just there to *look* like a real cell phone's battery pack. The real battery is stored in a chamber beneath that panel; one that you need a tiny phillips-head screwdriver to open. Such attention to detail!

I stuck this phone in the front pocket of my purse after I found it lying face down in a muddy patch of ground in Allston last summer, and haven't remembered to remove it until now. Several times my real cell phone has rung (kept in an identical pocket next to the LizziePhone bearing one) and I have answered Lizzie's phone by accident. I kind of wish I had a hot pink and poison green cell phone. Well, I'm SUCH a good friend to Lizzie, maybe she'll give me one for my birthday, because after all, cell phones are SO COOL!

Trash Picking is Number 1!

I found this number one on the sidewalk in Ithaca, NY a number of years ago. I had incorporated it in a mobile, but it has long since fallen apart. I'm still looking for something cool to do with this small red one.

Rusty Metal bolt

I like rusty metal things. I found this in Allston, where one usually finds broken beer bottles and syringes and the like. I have no idea what it is from; maybe from the train yard? I found it by the train yard in Lower Allston. You are probably not very excited by this bolt, but I like it a lot.

Swimming Medal

I found this swimming medal on the ground when I was in elementary school. I kept it in my "treasure box" with other things that could double as either pirate booty, hidden chests of riches belonging to rightful kings of the land, or other imaginary worlds that have need for lost treasure. I liked the laurel wreath on the back; it looked very Greek and stately to me.

Look, medieval coffin nails!

In Ireland, graveyards were often used over and over, people being buried on top of each other without rhyme or reason. This was the case in one little churchyard in Kinfenora, Co. Clare. There had been a recent burial, and the archaeologist who was leading my group around stooped down to examine the freshly dug dirt. "Look, medieval coffin nails!" he said, and held one up. I kept 2 as a souvenir. The chunks at the top of this picture once looked like the bottom nail; in the 9 years I've had these, they have crumbled to bits.

Andy is a Safe Driver. Unfortunately, he is also a forgetful driver. So forgetful in fact, he managed to lose his name tag in the snow somewhere in Oswego, NY in the winter of 1994/1995. Hell, it could have been spring or autumn-- Oswego gets snow pretty much 8 months out of the year.

I always hoped that Andy was a Manager In Training or some other such thing, and not that he had gone to MIT and this was now his reward.

Croagh Patrick Rock

Croagh Patrick is Ireland's holy mountain. It is said that St. Patrick fasted for 40 days on its summit, and that it was from there that he drove the snakes out of Ireland. For millennia, pilgrims have climbed this mountain, often with barefeet, or on their knees (these practices are discouraged, though).

I found this rock on one trip climbing the mountain (climb is an extreme word, it's more like a brisk upward hike). You can't tell too well from the picture, but it has a cross on it where two veins of quartz (?) intersect at right angles. You can only see the cross when this stone is wet. As I was descending the mountain, it had begun to sprinkle, and I noticed this stone.

I'm probably the least religious person on the planet, though I do have a healthy amount of superstition. I've kept this as my lucky rock ever since I found it (in the mid-90s sometime).

Headless Action Figures

Last year I walked or rode my bike to work every day the same way. The walk took me past a church that is known for youth outreach programs. They have punk shows in the basement and festivals for all sorts of diverse peoples I didn't even know had a significant presence in Allston (like the recent Hmong Weekend). On two separate occasions, a few months apart I found these headless toys. I thought the genie guy was Jafaar from Disney's Aladdin, but a co-worker corrected me; it's a Yu-Gi-Oh guy. I'm not sure who the dog is.

Someone on that street must enjoy ripping the heads off action figures!

Army Surplus earring

I just found this; I had no idea that I still had it. I found it in the pocket of a jacket I bought at an army surplus store when I was about 15 (ca. 1987). It just turned up again in the bottom of my hardware drawer. Go figure! The jacket is long gone, but the earring remains.

I was always intrigued by this really ugly, cheap earring. The "diamonds" are really bad imitations in plastic, and the gold colored sheen on the metal was wearing off in many places. Was it part of a pair that a soldier bought for his wife/girlfriend? Was it leftover from a night on the town? Was it the incriminating evidence from a cross-dresser?