The Great CD Purge

As part of our house cleaning slash clearing slash purging of our mostly unneeded possessions, CDs happen to be an issue.  Between the two of us, we've got close to 600 from just about all genres... no polka, unless you count the polka stuff on the Weird Al albums.  Not really any opera, except for The Phantom of the Opera.  Lots of country.  Lots of rock.  And lots of Christian, both good and bad.  For every dcTalk I own, The Lovely Steph Leann has a Petra CD somewhere.  For every awesome GRITS album I have, she's got a Kim Hill CD on the shelf.

But alas, our CD wall is too big.  On the left here, you'll see our CD collection, minus about 125 or so, which were taken downstairs for uploading into iTunes, followed by selling and/or purging.

We decided it would be good to buy one of those big CD books, one that holds like, 350 or so, and dispose of the plastic cases that are taking up so much room.  We could keep some CDs in their cases, but agreed that we could not keep any CDs that would not fit into the racks on the far left, which will hold a combined 152... yes, I counted.

So, the process began.  Two waves of looking over the CDs produced the ones to get rid of... the first wave, it was easy to dispense of DJ Maj or The Smalltown Poets or Pax 217 and other albums I had not listened to since perhaps the day I acquired them... the second look over the collection resulted in getting rid of the last two FFH albums (keeping the first few) and the last two Point of Grace CDs and a Ginny Owens CD and some Starbucks Pop/Rock collections and such.

So, finally, I had the pile of CDs that were leaving The Cabana forever.  Well, except for those that come back... here are a few of the gems unearthed...

This is one of the many CDs we have two copies of, which is why its in the "get rid of" pile.  We'll be giving
this one to someone in the family.  You know, even if Jennifer Knapp now attends the First Lesbetarian Church,
that doesn't change the fact she was awesome back in the day.

Starbucks sold this.  We all admired The Reverend Al Green's great expression here.

So, I have a ton of Christian music CDs, and many of them are these kind of promos.  Usually they ran around
$1.99 to maybe $2.99, but if you bought one of the CDs represented , you got the promo CD for free.  And
from about 1998 to about 2002, I purchased a ton of those albums that would get me the free CDs.  

Ever heard of Katy Hudson?  No?  Well, ever heard of Katy Perry?  Yes?  Then you've heard of Katy Hudson.
Same chick.  This is her early Christian rock effort, and its just not very good. 

So, I consider "Jagged Little Pill" to be an incredible CD.  Ten years after its release, in 2005,
Alanis released an acoustic version of the album... and its just not good.  She sounds fine, the
music is fine, but by 2005, she was married and happy and content and so on, ruining the rage
that made her first album so awesome.  If you want great acoustic from Alanis, get her MTV Unplugged
CD.  Currently, I'd like to give our spare copy of JPL to our 14 year old niece, as I think she should
know Alanis.  The Lovely Steph Leann disagrees. 

Remember when Christian Rock was awesome?  Yeah, I miss it too.

Not even his first CD.  Somehow I ended up with his 2nd one and I bought it when Coconuts was still open.  The
price?  99 cents.  Not sure I'm going to turn a profit when I sell this one.

 

This is a 2 part set... and I don't know how and when I got these.  Whats
even more remarkable is that the Lovely Steph Leann has these as well, and
she can't remember where she got them.  And even more, we have a THIRD
set of these two CDs, and I have no idea how they came to be in our home.

And so, this is everything I lugged into 2nd and Charles.  Some of these are even unopened. 

I took all these CDs to 2nd and Charles tonight.  For everything, including some movies we tossed in there to sell, we had a choice of about $35 in cash or $71 in credit.  I took the credit, though The Lovely Steph Leann sighed, "With $25, that's two movies we could have gone to."

I retorted, "Well, with $71, that's about 10 movies we can buy."

And tomorrow, I'll sift through the rest of the CDs, make some more hard choices--like, do I need to keep the Natalie Merchant "Tigerlily" CD or John Mellencamp's Greatest, or can I get by on having them in iTunes?

These are the hard decisions that have to be made.

The Summer of Blogging Day Sixty Four

Barnes & Noble: A Photo Essay

So, after a hard day of Magic at The Happiest Place in the Mall, then an hour donating blood at the latest Red Cross blood drive (25 pints lifetime!), where I had a drink with Kristi Arze at the Holiday Inn, I came back to The Cabana to see The Lovely Steph Leann on the couch, relaxing in front of the tv.

Gave it a little while, and decided that we needed to get out a little tonight... so she and went to The Barnes & Noble Cafe. And this is what I came up with...


I refuse. I absolutely refuse.



This is where you'd most likely find The Lovely Steph Leann



This is my favorite book as a kid... its a funny story, its a sad story, its a boy-and-his-dog story. I've got my original copy somewhere, saved in a box. Its got my badly written name on the spine, its leaf paged, its yellow, and I love it.

You know what I also loved? The Bunnicula Series by James Howe. I had the first five books, but I let Melanie Jackson borrow them. She never gave them back. Similiar to when I let Liz Malphras borrow all six individual novels from The Green Mile (which you can now only find in a single volume). Sigh.



I'm a big fan of trade paperbacks. The one on the left is a regular sized paperback, the one on the right is a Trade. Its slightly bigger, and you'll notice that most of the books on my shelf are trades. It just feels better when I'm reading it. Perhaps it makes me feel like I'm important enough to be reading a hard cover, yet, its not as heavy. Perhaps.



This is one of my favorite books as well. The Sports Guy, Bill Simmons, is a brilliant columnist, and with both of us essentially growing up in the 80s, I can relate to his pop culture references. And if you are familiar with his work, and read this blog and think "Ya know, d$ steals some of The Sports Guy's mannerisms" well... you'd be right. But only a few.



This is the first, and quite possibly the only, time I've ever taken a second look at a math book, and have considered its purchase and reading. Before you jump to conclusions and think, "Oh, he just likes the hot chick", I say to you that yes, it helps catch the attention of any male passers-by, but the fact that its Winnie Cooper is what really caught my attention. Winnie Cooper. Perhaps my first TV girlfriend.



This picture cracks me up. Yes, I said it.



I've taken an affinity for crossword puzzles lately, but I do love me some mazes. Always have. Probably because I'm good at it... now minesweeper and sudoku? Those are two games I refuse to do. Why? Because I don't know how to do them. Yes, yes, I'm sure its easy, yes, I'm sure you could show me, but I just don't care. And refuse to learn. So there.



Just finished reading "Carrie" for the first time, and "The Green Mile" for the second time (though not since 1996). My favorite Stephen King novel is "It", the daunting and thick paperback on the left. Its just amazing. However, I'm scared to death of "The Stand", the one of the right--not because of its content, but because it would probably just consume my life for a month. Do you, the Clouds in My Coffee Drinkers, have books like that? Books you want to read, but are just afraid to start, because you know what it might take to finish it?

And for whatever reason, I picked up "The Shining" again. Scary book.



They serve Starbucks Coffee. But they aren't a real Starbucks. Wanna know how to tell? Look for the gift cards. If they don't sell them, chances are, they aren't a real one. They'll make the drinks, they'll serve the coffee, but they get paid by B&N, not Starbucks Corp. Its a licensed store.



Because the Old New Deal works so well. Hello Social Security and Welfare.

Holy crap, there were "Love Me Some Obama" books everywhere. I told The Lovely Steph Leann that if McCain had won, the magazines would have had titles like, "Too Old?" or "How Can We Make America Great Again" and the books like "Palin Sucks!" and "How You People Are Too Stupid to Realize that America Is the Cause of ALL The World's Problems So We Need to Vote In Someone Blindly that We Know Very Little About To Fix Everything".

Then the guy came and told me I had to quit taking pictures. So I did.