PriorBlog

A few weeks ago my buddy Ricco came over to help me dispose of a giant couch.  My wife had called around and people were charging $250 to dispose of couches for you.  With Ricco’s help, I was able to take the couch to my work and dump it in the dumpster here.  Since it was a Sunday nobody was around, and it was cool because during the week I got to hear everybody say, “Hey did you see there’s a couch in the dumpster?”

It seems like somebody else has caught on to this little scheme.  This is not to say I’ve been uncovered, but that a fellow employee has realized the potential the workplace dumpster has in terms of ridding yourself of large amounts of unwanted material possessions.  And yes, I realize there’s some type of Marxist critique going on around here somewhere, but I don’t feel like sorting things out enough to explain it.  Plus, you’re smarter than me anyways so what good would that do.  On with the story. 

How did I discover this?  I was just taking some stuff out to the dumpster and while I was back there noticed a bunch of household items.  To be truthful, this wasn’t the first time I had seen somebody’s things in the dumpster, but it was the first time the stuff was interesting.  The best thing I found was a wedding album from the early 70’s.  I was all set to post all of the pictures on my blog with commentary, but before I started scanning them I decided to go back to the dumpster and dive a little more.  After moving aside a couple of filled Hefty Bags, I found two baseball gloves!  Total score, but then I noticed while trying them on for size, on the outside of the thumbs of the gloves the last name of one of the women that works in my building was written with magic marker.  Shit!  I had left the wedding album (which had its front cover ripped off) on my desk.  If she walked by, she would have seen her wedding out on display for all to see.  Considering that the marriage ended in divorce, and what remained of it (presumably, but for narrative effect let’s say assuredly) was a torn up wedding album, I don’t think she would be too appreciative of me finding humor in that part of her life.  Also, even though I didn’t recognize her in the album, she might think that I did recognize her, and was putting the album out as some way to personally make fun of her, when in fact all I wanted to do was to make fun of her in the most abstract way, as a person whose lack of identity imprisons them within a series of dated images.  I mean, that’s always hilarious, right?

I guess not.  Now that I feel bad about it, I am recalling those prison photographs taken by the Khmer Rouge before they tortured and executed people.  I always found them fascinating, especially the ones in which the subject appears to betray no emotion.  Did they know what fate had in store for them?

From the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota’s website, which has some of the 6000 pictures:

“By the time S-21 was discovered, most of the inmates’ photographs had been separated from their dossiers, rendering them anonymous. The majority of the people pictured in the exhibition are therefore unidentified by name.”

I think the worst part of being tortured to death would be right at that breaking point, when you realize your tormenters no longer have any regard for thresholds.  It must be absolutely horrifying, and yet it happens.  Piece by piece your body becomes absolutely useless for any purpose other than to provide pain.  Awful stuff.

How I got from dumpster diving to genocide is beyond me.