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I looked around my corner of this dumb dorm room the other day when my friend
visited, trying to see it through someone else’s eyes, and wow! I’ve got a lot of junk.
My corner isn’t exactly a Mecca of pop culture, but it has its share of brightly colored,
shiny, half-ironic clutter in it. The most striking is my new collection of records. I’m on the lookout for colored 7”s by bad bands. I stick them on my wall. It looks excellent and reminds me of The Record Player Night Club in Lynda Barry’s novel, The Good Times Are Killing Me. -We acted like we were inspectors from England and walked in and out of the room over and over again, pretending we had never seen anything like it before in our lives. We would point to the records hanging on the nails and go -I say my jolly old chap.” We wanted to know exactly what a person would think who was seeing the room for the first time, and we decided they would think it looked incredible.” That’s what it’s like. I’ve also got a tiny Star Wars collection going on in here. The sheets started the whole ball rolling. I was downtown, looking around in this vintage clothing shop and I found a pair of old-school Star Wars sheets! They rule the world. So then I had to buy this picture book from the movie that I found at a Goodwill in Vacaville. The dialogue is among the worst I’ve encountered! Take a gander: “Leia’s heart filled with emotion at the sight of her blinded lover. She loved him partly because of the way he laughed at danger. But to see him like this, so helpless, made her care for him even more. “We’ll make it,” she said softly.” And just now my friend and sister brought me a Taco Bell meal box (you can stick the fighter planes on the sides) and also the toy that came along with it: The Millennium Falcon! It, um, “flies.” Yeah. My most prized tacky object is the bottle of Orbitz soda that my sweetheart Chris sent me. In case you don’t know, it’s this rad-looking fruit soda that has these exciting brightly colored balls of something floating in it. I’ve got raspberry citrus flavor and I haven’t even had a sip, ‘cause I’m keeping it as a conversation piece. People come in and shake it around with their mouths hanging open. Awesome. I also have a few kool record-related items. First is my little 7” rack. Mom found it for me at a garage sale, and it has an upper section and a lower section. I think it holds 120 records. Then I’ve got an even smaller 7” rack. It holds exactly 40, so I put my new ones and my “frequent play” ones in it on my desk. Most thrilling is my new 7” box! I’d been looking for one forever at all the thrift stores and just finally found one. It was so ugly, all fake wood-grain style plastic. And one of the sides was bent out. I fixed the side, then covered it in this rad silver glitter stuff. It’s like this 6” tape, but silver and glittery. And then I stuck some band stickers on top of that. So now I have the coolest glittery box ever! The clasp was broken, so I cut two holes in it and tied it with a cool shoelace. Oh boy. In the interests of conserving space, it’s time for a top ten of the rest of my items, in no particular order:
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