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The bathroom in our new apartment is rather small, with a sink and a toilet directly to your left when you enter, and a radiator on the right close enough to warm your knees while you’re on the toilet. The bathtub is a part of both side walls and the back wall of the bathroom, which happens to be the front wall of the apartment building. And, for some inexplicable reason, there is a window looking in over my tub.

I hadn’t been to this apartment too many times, but had seen identical ones in the same building, so this morning when we arrived i had already described the general setup but was having trouble recalling where the phone jacks and closets were. However, i remembered an abundance of windows. Many, many windows. Seven in all, as it turned out, contained in two rooms.

And, of course, one in the bathtub.

The middle window of the third floor of 3604 Spring Garden street is done up in sea-life. Giant, vivid fish slide in and out of plankton and seaweed against a deep blue backdrop.

The scene is rendered in the medium known as “vinyl shower curtain.”

(This is a story, told backwards.)

(If you read down from the top of the page this is the end).

The result of all this bitching about my cd collection is twofold. One is that people often express surprise or jealousy of my racks of cds. Really it’s rather unfounded, because it’s not as though a spend a significant amount of time or cash on my collection; it’s at least a third comprised of singles and has been accumulated over nearly six years. Given those facts and my obviously love of music, i don’t think someone whose favourite artist is “umm… probably Nirvana” should begrudge me my collection.

The second is that when browsing through through my cds see absolutely nothing they’re interested in listening to aside from Alanis Morissette or Madonna. Earlier this summer evilViktor and another OL were polling my cd collection for something listenable and came up emptyhanded. The random OL naively asked me if i had any Whitney Houston and i nearly kicked him out of the room. Viktor then discerned that Garbage was tolerable, but was baffled to find that i had 22 of their cds when they only had two released albums. I didn’t even bother to try to explain Ani DiFranco to him.

I know people who have so many varied cds that their entire rooms are devoted to them. On the other hand, i know people with a cherished few who don’t buy very many other ones at all (or who just use Napster like the selfish whores that they are). I fall somewhere in the middle, with a largish but unvaried collection. Ani DiFranco, Tori Amos, and Garbage count for aproximately a third of my cds, and my not many of my other ones range far afield from the artistic ground covered by those three. I have never waited more than two weeks to buy a cd that i’ve truly wanted. Call me spoilt, but i call it budgeting; as soon as i learn a release date i schedule the $15 into my monthly wages as if it were a utility bill. Very rarely am i scraping the bottoms of my pockets for cash for cds. The downside of this is that i don’t have very much of a classic collection, especially when it comes to classic rock and early alternative. Adding Weezer to my collection (finally) was a huge step considering that i only own two Nirvana albums out of the big three of Seattle (N, Pearl Jam(blah), and SoundGarden (yum).

I wish i could describe to you the amount of stuff i have. It’s unreal… well, the unreal bit is that i refuse to leave anything behind when i move from one place to another. And the worst part is that mum bitches me out about it constantly when she’s been known to bring a car full of stuff with her for a three-day vacation. I’m simply very materialistic and it has an effect on the things i consider essential to my life. Before anything else, i need my computer, because every piece of important information is on it. Next comes my guitar (which is equivalent to my sanity). After that it’s a mish mosh of CDs, important papers, and clothing. I have quite a bit of all three, though i certainly know plenty of people with CD collections dwarving my own.