Item Number 21: Clay Blob Sculpture, Handmade

Time in possession: In excess of 7 years. That's so very depressing.

Description: Handcrafted clay sculpture, glazed blue, yellow and green. He looks pretty shocked. Part of one the right eyebrow has broken off, sadly. Maybe that's why he's shocked, who knows.

Cost: Made in a grade 9 art class, so as free as free can be. That's right, I'm not even going to assign a random cost to it, such is it's material value. ... okay .05$

Story: In junior high I used to doodle all the time, and one of the most frequent characters adorning the margins of my notebooks would be the blobs: A bunch of squishy little characters who consisted of a couple of big bulbous eyes, accompanying eyebrows and a small squishy body which usually housed simply a moth, although occasionally arms and the like would poke out as needed. My buddies Jason and Joel and I eventually started making blob versions of all our classmates and soon they were pretty much everywhere. For a quick visual reference, I've doodled out a quick blo

There you go, a standard blog, startled by a spider (I don't know why, but blobs were frequently surrounded by spiders. Probably because they are very easy to draw).

So, when I had pottery in my first year of high school with Jason and Joel, what did I do but decide to immortalize our creation in clay. I did a pretty good job, considering, although you will notice that the colour scheme is a little funky. This is because I had no idea at the time that firing the glazes would change them from their initial colours. So, the body should be blue, eyes white and pupils and eyebrows black. Oh well.

I still draw blobs from time to time, as does Joel, although I'm not sure if Jason does, having lost contact with him after high school. Still, it's nice to have this little memento of those younger days, happily drawing with friends and just having fun.

Item Number 12: Cactus (Milhouse)

Time in possession: At least 5 years, although it could be as much as 6 or 7.

Description: Mostly alive cactus plant held in a coffee tin, painted red. Black label, with the name "MILHOUSE" printed on it. FULL OF MYSTERY (and dust).

Cost: A gift from Erica. Shall we say 3$ for the plant and 1$ for the can and the paint and the label. Okay, 1.13$.

Story: Erica (my former girlfriend of five and a half years) bought me this cactus plant for a birthday years ago, and named it Milhouse after the Simpsons character of the same name, as in "Everything is coming up Milhouse!". He's lived in the small basement window of my room ever since.

Milhouse is a trooper. I constantly forget to water him and I'm pretty sure my window is a shitty spot to get light, yet he has continued to live for years now, something which is pretty damn impressive considering. He's been dropped multiple times, forgotten for many long months at a go and generally abused and neglected in all the ways one could do such a thing to a plant. (Wait, imagination kicked in. There are many ways I could abuse poor Milhouse which had never crossed my mind until this very moment, and I will emphatically never partake in them. I mean, in the first place, he's a CACTUS for crying out loud!)

It's nice to have a plant in my room, and I'll be kind of upset when Milhouse finally kicks the bucket. You can see that his lower extremities are starting to lose the lush green colour, so it might be any day now. I hope not. I'm kind of attached to the little guy.

I wrote a poem one day inspired by him, although more about a girl. The girl wasn't Erica by the way, although I suppose the poem wasn't really about the girl I was thinking of when I wrote it in the end so much as a fictional amalgamation of girls which is generally the case when I try to write about people I know. I actually read the poem at an open mic night days after writing it, something I hadn't really expected to do when writing it, but I suppose makes sense in hindsight. I mean, why would a performer go to an open mic night unless he takes his turn on the stage? I think I might have a problem.