Never sort your CD collection.
I discussed this problem with the woman on the check-out at Coles Supermarket last night when I went there to buy 20 Jewel Cases. I had just finished sorting my CD collection and came up with about 20 CDs without cases, and 4 or 5 cases without CDs. She said it happens all the time.
But, in the immortal words of Julius Sumner Miller, "Why is it so?"
I moved into my little house in November 2003. So, that must make it eight years since I've even thought of sorting my CD collection. Prior to moving here, my music collection had been in a storage shed for a number of years, although I did carry some of my favourite CDs around in one of those carry cases which seem to be designed to allow one to take ones whole collection, sans cases, to a party.
"Hey, listen to this!"
I reckon those carry-cases were designed to make one as popular as the host of a slide night showing 'our latest holiday snaps'.
Last Christmas my daughter Julia gave me the vinyl record of Chris Rea's On The Beach to go with the tape I bought more than 23 years ago, before she was born, and to match the CD I had bought later. There must be something left of the hunter and gatherer in this old tjilpi, for I was pleased to have a complete "set" of vinyl, tape and CD. It meant I could put the same music on three times in a row and pretend it was different. It was something like the slide show host: "Here we are at the beach, and on this slide there is more of the beach, and here is some more looking in a different direction. You just wouldn't know how good it was to be there."
I like the way some people tell you how "you wouldn't know" or, even better, "you wouldn't understand" how good some things are, or were.
Last night I discovered that my "complete set" of vinyl, tape and CD has a serious flaw. The crystal case of the CD has gone AWOL. My collection is broken. I'm heartbroken. Of course you wouldn't understand what that means to me. The check-out lady suggested I look in the car for the missing parts - she said that is where she finds a lot of her CDs. But, that's not going to work for me. In the car, I've only ever had 3 burned copies of music which isn't missing.
The CD case had the same cover as the tape and record covers, so I've got as consolation the two remaining beach umbrellas, blue skies and white clouds.
On a postive note I found I have two copies of Santana's Abraxas, and two copies of Tom Waits' The Heart of Saturday Night. One copy of each is, of course, without a case. I guess I'll never work out where the extra CDs came from. On the other hand I can explain the multiple double ups of the works of Beethoven and Mozart which are all neatly arranged in cases. I reckon I simply forgot what I already had in my collection, and snapped up what looked like bargains in the "Record Shop".
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