/ /
To start the year, we’re getting rid of stuff we don’t use in order to make room for the inevitable influx of stuff that’ll be coming our way–although we’re going to try our damnedest to keep it to a minimum. We live in a small, old house without a lot of room for storage, but we also know for a fact that the family here during the 80′s had two kids while living here, so it can be done. We will resist with all of our might the notion that a child necessarily comes tons and tons of material goods, so many in fact that you need to move to a big house in the ‘burbs to hold it all. Not only is that not our style, the mentality that you can’t raise a happy, healthy child without all the stuff seems to be largely confined to these shores—and confined to a certain demographic to boot. I always knew that marketing to well-to-do parents was a racket, but last weekend’s trip to Babies-R-Us rammed it home in nauseating fashion. The list of baby’s “needs” was downright laughable.

Having said that, empirical evidence suggests raising a small human to maturity does require a grand accumulation of certain items, and to that end we’re making room. To the shock and chagrin of a few of our (Luddite) friends, I’ve finally convinced Amy that we can live without our CD collection. She’s always hated the eyesore of the CD rack and, as I’ve pointed out time and time again, we almost never go to it anyway. I listen to music way more often than Amy and my favorites have long been ripped to MP3 and stored on my computer and iPod, and I connected our home stereo system to the computer. I’m also planning on getting a car stereo with an iPod jack to replace the six-CD changer in the Vibe, making CDs irrelevant. To me at least. A few of our friends think this is ridiculous because, what if we lose them? (they’re doubly backed up), or what if there’s a fire? (CDs don’t melt?), or they’re going to be worth money some day (not in the condition they’re in). Audiophiles may shudder, but a 192kb MP3 sounds as good as a CD to me, and if we can sell our collection of 400-500 for a couple hundred bucks, I don’t see the downside. The only problem has been that I ripped a ton of our CDs at 96kbs, and then you can tell a difference in quality, so it’s been a job to go through the never-ripped CDs and the CDs of too-low quality, but that’s a minor issue.

I’m also (shock! horror!) strongly considering offloading my comic book collection. I’ve looked around at various sites and have discovered that, even though everything in my collection is 15 years old or older, they’re worth almost nothing—pennies, is what one dealer told me. I’m reluctant to part with them on sentimental grounds but, in reality, they’ve been sitting in dusty boxes for the better part of a decade. They might—and I do stress might—spike in value in another 10 years, especially if casual collectors like me start getting rid of our inventories. Still, it’s pretty likely that I’ll find an out-of-the-way place in the attic to keep them, more because I had blast going through them again rather than any belief that I’m sitting on a potential goldmine.

For the curious, here’s an Excel spreadsheet of what I’ve got: comicbooks.xls

Current Mood: Fine |
Currently Listening To – Every CD We Own