The invention of the junk drawer is right up there with calorie-free sugar, in my opinion. Maybe not quite as fantastic as, say, the polio vaccine but useful nonetheless.

I have had a junk drawer since about the age of five when there was a rumor let loose in my family that I liked clowns. Let me be clear about this. I do not like clowns. I have never liked clowns. Clowns are scary. There is a reason they end up in B-level horror movies and serial killer paintings. But somebody got the idea that I liked them, and for the next two years or so, I was given a plethora of clown-themed gifts. Most notable was the clown bolo tie, which featured a disembodied clown head for the sliding mechanism and clown feet dangling off the ends of the string. (Yes, really.) It went in the drawer, along with the clown head bank and the praying Jesus hand statue. It should be noted that I’d had the praying Jesus hand statue for sometime before I knew what it was. We were not a religious people, so basically, I just had these disembodied ceramic hands for no reason. Now that I think about it, there were a lot of disembodied parts in the junk drawer, which is a theme I can explore later in therapy.

And while I still have a junk drawer, it contains mostly useful things instead of the stuff I’m trying not to look at in the middle of night. There’s some string in there. Forty-seven pairs of scissors – unless, of course, you need some scissors. Then there are none. There’s eight brightly colored whistles, which is a whole blog post unto itself; some matches; packing tape, which I use all the time; and duct tape, which I never use, partly because I can’t tear it, which means I need the scissors and if I need the scissors…Well, it’s just a whole roundy-round thing.

Nonetheless, the junk drawer is darn useful. So I’m instituting a not-likely-to-be-at-all-regular blog feature that we shall call the Junk Drawer Posts. It shall contain updates and other helpful – or not – bits that don’t make up much of a post on their own but fit nicely into the drawer.

Let us begin. This will probably require the use of headers. Cue the headers!

CRAZY BERKELEY PEOPLE IN TREES
A while ago we chatted about the group of crazy, homeless people – er, ACTIVISTS – who had taken up residence in a tree on the Berkeley campus to protest the cutting down of the tree to provide more facilities for, you know, education. This despite the school’s promise to plant many more trees to replace it. The update is as follows: Crazy people still in the tree. For a year. Their stamina is impressive, so is the school’s lack of backbone. They’ve had a court order allowing them to remove the tree people for sometime, but they haven’t done it because they fear other crazy homeless people might be mad at them. Instead they’ve spent $370,000 on security and fencing for the tree, which doesn’t even require a punch line.

BEST TOOTHPASTE EVER
Write this down. No, seriously. Write it down. Are you writing? Crest Vivid White. This is perhaps the only toothpaste in the known universe that actually, visibly whitens your teeth. Holy freaking crap, a product that actually does what it reports to do! And it doesn’t even taste like kitty litter. Go forth and purchase.

CAFFEINE!
She is a strict mistress. I struggle. My resolve is weakening…Maybe if I just run more it’ll negate all the diet soda chemicals I’ve been pumping into my system for the past decade. Maybe? You think? No? Sigh.

“You’re right. You’re right. I know you’re right.”
(For all the guys, that’s a When Harry Met Sally movie reference.)