Move Any Mountain

I learnt a lot about myself in the past few days.

1. I am cheap about hiring movers. Whereas I am extravagant and act like your asshole Italian/ Egyptian uncle who insists on buying everyone drinks (or meals, in Egypt's case) in other corners of my life. When it comes to movers, I feel competitive about hiring muscle because I (falsely) believe myself to possess muscle.
2. I have acquired a lot of crap in six years.
3. The kind of crap I have acquired lends some real insight into my character (or lack thereof): a yarmulke, a commodore 64, two Degas' 'The Thinker' book ends, a John Kerry for President 2004 sticker that reads 'Lick Bush and Dick in 2004', a very heavy electrical current converter, a shisha which, as far as I can tell, has never tasted coal or tobacco, an S&M gimp mask with a red ball to gag the mouth (don't bother to write and ask for it; the Salvation Army will be scratching their heads over that one...presumably once they take the mask off), a baseball bat, a 1983 Penthouse Letters edition, flag pins from every country at the 1998 World Cup, a bottle of hot sauce from New Orleans with a skeleton on it and a patient's gown and medical gloves, which I stole from my GP's office in 2002.
4. I have 852 books which I'm keeping (throwing out 76--mostly old almanacs, bad biographies and Time Magazine rip-off special edition IMPRESSIVE BUILDINGS OF THE WORLD and 2004: THE YEAR IN REVIEW) and 968 DVDs (and counting--since I moved out, I've bought another twelve).
5. I have shitload of clothes, including an Elvis outfit (I wear that for Halloween), countless bowling shirts, more puma sneakers than it is humanly possible to wear in a week, a frightening number of turtle necks for someone who considers himself to be on the cutting edge of what-the-kids-are-wearing, and a velcro-sided tracksuit bottom which, immediately upon stumbling on, my phone rang and a mysterious voice proclaimed itself to be 1993, asking for its sports fashion back.
6. I am covered in bruises. Apparently, my muscles (or whatever the hell they are) are structured in such a way that if one part were to engage in any kind of strenuous activity, another part breaks down from the strain and immediately becomes black and blue.
7. This is unrelated to moving, but it also came up during my move: according to a friend of mine who, rumour has it, is completely in love with me, I don't feel as well as other people. She claims the reason I'm so jovial is because I don't think anything is serious enough to be upset about (and if that isn't an abject lesson in not judging a book by its cover, I don't know abject lessons). I didn't argue with her, however, because she was helping me move and wrapping up my CDs in bubble wrap, and I was afraid of what she might do to them if I argued. Them shits are expensive..
8. Storage units are very sinister. Who are these people who need to store things away from their homes? I saw possible mob-types with clearly fake mustaches, single mothers with multiple kids, who had clearly been thrown out of their trailers...and me.
9. I am now homeless. Carmen has taken over my apartment and is presently re-painting it. I am staying with a friend of mine who has a very strange cat..


10. I am exhausted and kind of lonely; I have given away my dog, Mimi, for the next ten days, until I fly out of here: homelessness is no place for a dog. At least, not a cocker spaniel with a twitching eye and expensive tastes. As I was moving, I had the BBC 'Planet Earth' documentary on, and Mimi was absolutely fascinated by all the animals in it: