do you own anything unusual in your home??

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I have a rock that is shaped like a watermelon. It has been in my family for 4 generations. It needs a new coat of paint right now. I am thinking about getting the names and dates of ownership etched into it. In a few more generations it may be forgotten.

I have a rock that is shaped like a watermelon. It has been in my family for 4 generations. It needs a new coat of paint right now. I am thinking about getting the names and dates of ownership etched into it. In a few more generations it may be forgotten.

gee, where to begin? some highlights below-

*a CEDAR DC-1 digital declicker that i got off of a hollywood audio restoration facility, via ebay- nothing else declicks crackly phonograph recordings as well.
*a Roland SN-550 Digital Denoiser i got from a new york audio restoration facility, via ebay- excellent a/c hum suppressor.
*several thousand LPs, 45s and 78s, and hundreds of reel tapes and cassettes.
*an original 4-channel "quadraphonic" sound system [4-channel amp/speakers] with original quad [Q8/4 chan. reel] media, but no tape machines to play them on. drat.
*a lump of artificial skin, i got from a [hospital] dermatology drug rep.
*a wrapper for a obstetric vacuum extractor, with a shiny gold sticker on it that says "35 millionth unit SOLD!"
*a neurophone, a device which purports to be able to enable sound sensations to bypass the aural system via the peripheral nerve network.
*a fine-condition gulbransen "theatrum" home organ, that in the hands of somebody [NOT ME] with actual musical talent, can make some gorgeously harmonic musical sounds.
*a pair of magnapan panel loudspeakers- nothing can image as well as these babies.
*a circa 1974 sharp microwave oven in useable condition, a daily servant.
*a box of 80s-vintage DOS software and pc to run them on.
*a happy yellow back-scratcher thingie with a red-painted nail "hand" and a "meow!"- producing sound piston in the shaft. i found it, lying grimy and forlorn, in a miscellaneous bin at the seattle goodwill store. it's hand was poking up out of the mess of stuff in the bin, as though to say "RESCUE ME PLEASE"- so i did. now it rests comfortably on a pillow in my living room, clean and happy.
*an audio cassette with "the sounds of mental illness" recorded on it. a p-med company was mailing these babies out back in the 90s, to anybody who asked. not for the faint-of-heart.

I have a spelling book from the 1840s. It even has the names of kids who used it. its in ok condition for how old it is.

Do my dog's ashes count? I got her as a puppy and I feel weirdly comforted that shes still near me. I miss her so much.

Purports? So it doesn't work? Sounds interesting though. You have some interesting stuff, I'd love to come round and mess with it all.

Can we mention odd things people we know have?
because my dads friend has, a human scull (never said how he got it), and he has his own big tow in a jar.

A dog that acts like a cat.

A reel-to-reel tape recorder, a DAT machince ( a digital version of cassette player), and a fossilized trilobite.

my sister could "hear" through it loud and clear, but for me all i "heard" was a faint crackling rendition of what source material i fed it. i hooked it up to a cd player and could "hear" recognizable music but it was crackly and thin. something got lost in my nerves on the way to my brain's aural processing center. but i suppose the fact that i "heard" anything at all in this manner bypassing the ears [i plugged my ears during use], is something. the fellow that invented it [at age 14, no less!] intended it to be of use to people with nerve deafness. since you are in england, and if you want to hear what a CEDAR declicker can do, you could pay a visit to cambridge university's audio restoration department, or an audio restoration studio facility [the beeb?] nearest where you live, as they will doubtless have at least one CEDAR declicker, it is a standard professional audio black box device.

I have spent this whole weekend feeling very nostalgic about old 80's and early 90s computering, going to vintage computer sites, thinking about Fortran, BASIC, DOS...I miss DOS. That was when I loved computers, and my Mac IIe and my Mac SE, and my first non-Mac PCs. I had hacking/PC geek buddies who I'd hang out with for hours, barely talking, just building computers or writing script together while splitting 12 packs of Mountain Dew. It was a different world. Computering today is so very different, it doesn't have the same appeal to me now. I am hardly a nostalgic person, but I get almost weepy thinking about that era of computering.


I used to have a lot of weird crap but I've recently got rid of much of it. Boxes of odd electronics, stuff leftover from my aquarium and herpetology days, odd obscure LPs, weird cast iron things. Weird crap I've still got, besides stuff relating to my Aspie interests

A cleaned ostrich egg shell from an ostrich as Black Beauty Ranch
The cleaned and preserved shell of my late leopard tortoise
Religious icons from an Russian Orthodox monastery
An outrageous collection of books and printed music for various instruments, including for some I haven't played for ages or no own any longer
two Renaissance lutes and a mountain dulcimer
An odd assortment of hand percussion instruments and bells
Children books in other languages (Gaelic, German, etc.)

Probably other stuff that I've forgotten at the moment.

"enquiring minds want to know" - what specific "odd electronics" and what specific "odd obscure LPs" did you get rid of?

Condoms. Get it? It's unusual because I never get laid. Ha! Ha! Ha!

*sound of crickets chirping

*Droops head and sadly mopes offstage*

not so unusual, in that you could always blow 'em up into little balloons and use 'em for parties.

Hmm... Well, I have an argentine black and white tegu, two leopard geckos, a ball python, a corn snake, a boa constrictor, a reticulated python, and two tarantulas. I have dead rats, mice, and rabbits in the freezer... Cups of mealworms and superworms.. Snake hooks and feeding tongs..