Post 464 - Collections

All my life I've been into collecting things. It started when I was a little kid and I used to obsessively collect stickers (not Panini ones, more like the ones you get from charity collectors, or the dentist - I had notepads packed full of them), badges and beermats - things you could usually appropriate for free. As I got older it became things like magazines, model cars, foreign coins and guitars. These days, more often than not it's centered around music, TV and film. The urge to starting collecting something just hits me out of the blue, and it hits hard - one minute I couldn't give a shiny shit about something, and the next minute all of a sudden I simply can't live if I don't own every film Bruce Lee was ever in, or every album by The Ramones, or every episode of The X-Files. If I buy one of something, ie one box set of The Simpsons, or one Kevin Smith movie, I get totally OCD over it, and I can't stop thinking about it until I buy all the rest of them to complete the collection and I can take the whole lot out of the cupboard and put it on display somewhere. On occasion I'll spend all my money buying a complete set of something at once because I just can't live with myself if I don't have a complete set. A few years ago it was vinyl records; last year I spent the best part of a week's holiday from work traipsing round charity shops trying to find every Stephen King novel. A few years before that I wandered around a car boot sale every Sunday trying to build up a collection of old WWE wrestling videos. In fact just two months ago I bought 8 years worth of Summer Slam DVDs because I couldn't bear the thought of just having one. Horror films, that was another one. Antiques reared it's ugly head a few years back. Most of these obsessions last about a month on average before I lose interest in them and move on to something else. My girlfriend knows only well when I've got a new obsession; the giveaway is that out of the blue I'll start talking endlessly and excitedly about something I may have never mentioned before, and talking as though it's something that I've had a lifelong interest in: be it Tarantino films, Dukes Of Hazzard memorabilia, stand-up comedy DVDs, Converse All-Stars, and she knows by now just to roll with it and let me get it out of my system. My current thing? Vintage games consoles. In the past 6 months alone I've shelled out for; 2 Sega Megadrives; a Sega Master System; a Nintendo NES; a Super Nintendo (with a Super Scope!); an Atari 2600 (which just arrived this morning); an original Gameboy; a Gameboy Colour; a Gameboy Advance; a Nintendo DS; and I already have a Nintendo 64 and a Playstation 2. I'm currently housing well over 400 games on all these platforms, about 90% of which I've purchased in the last 6 months, and about 5% I've actually played. For me it's not actually about playing the games, or watching the DVDs, or listening to the vinyl records - it's just about having them. It's as though I somehow think that being able to say "Yeah I have every episode of Red Dwarf / Futurama / Dawson's Creek / Frasier / The X-Files / Peep Show / The Office / Extras / The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air / Twin Peaks / Doctor Who / Friends / all the Nightmare On Elm Street films / all the Hellraiser films / all the Robocop films / all the National Lampoon's films / all the I Know What You Did Last Summer films / all the Back To The Future films" is somehow going to make me seem unbelievably cool and attractive. (I do actually have all of those by the way, and I'm currently working on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, Friday The 13th films, and Alfred Hitchcock films).

I don't think I'm doing anything bad, my weird little obsession isn't harming anyone. Some people rape, kill, sell smack, mug old ladies - I collect Dawson's Creek DVDs.

Actually that might be worse.

Song currently stuck in my head - "Come Back Brighter" by Reef.
ireallyhatelucky@googlemail.com