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February 27, 2016 7:07 PM   Subscribe

Mental Waste Collection and Disposal Service
The MWCDS turns psychic garbage into physical trash. A telephone landline (AT&T) and cassette tape answering machine (Panasonic KX-T 1920 EASA PHONE) is available 24/7 for waste drop off. All calls are confidential. All cassette tapes are sealed in concrete after recording. After the cassette tapes are sealed in concrete a site is determined for burial or storage. The placement into this site involves a ritual administered by the GROUNDSKEEPER.
Spoilers below the fold.

I'm not sure I fully understand, but it appears to be an art installation by Christopher Smith, where he posts craigslist ads, to get anonymous negative thoughts, and documents the process of destroying them.

PURGE ALL MIND GARBAGE

TURN BAD THOUGHTS INTO PHYSICAL TRASH
posted by cjorgensen (17 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
Even if it's an art installation, I find the concept to be weirdly soothing.

Dump your brain weasels onto a magnetic tape which will be sealed away FOREVER (or at least Yucca Mountain-type of FOREVER) for no charge!
posted by lineofsight at 7:17 PM on February 27, 2016 [2 favorites]


I give it 50 years of accumulated bad vibes before it'll have to be administered by the SCP Foundation to prevent them escaping
posted by BungaDunga at 7:19 PM on February 27, 2016 [18 favorites]


I find the concept to be weirdly soothing.

Yeah, I am not religious, and I for sure am not Catholic, but I've always been jealous of the confessional. The idea you can go in, unburden yourself, and have a way forward, someone to say, "Here's what you do to set that right," and you move on knowing you are forgiven. That's a powerful appeal.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:22 PM on February 27, 2016 [10 favorites]


Hunh, in Illinois?
posted by leahwrenn at 7:28 PM on February 27, 2016


Well, let's say this Twinkie represents the normal amount of psychic garbage in the New York area. Based on this morning's sample, it would be a Twinkie... thirty-five feet long, weighing approximately six hundred pounds.
posted by GuyZero at 7:34 PM on February 27, 2016 [15 favorites]


Isn't this the plot of a Jonathan Lethem book?
posted by miyabo at 7:45 PM on February 27, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yes, that is a Springfield area code.
posted by AlexiaSky at 8:08 PM on February 27, 2016


A while back, I had the idea of a kind of dump/archive where somebody will file away the stuff you can't keep, can't bear to toss in the trash, and can't donate because nobody else would want it. Mementos of lost love, greeting cards from relatives who died decades ago, the favorite toy of the pet you had to put down. Like, when your mom dies and you have to clear out her old place, there's some stuff that you just do not have room for in your life but it feels so wrong to just send it off to rot at the dump. I envisioned some vast warehouse where that stuff would all go, and I thought it was kind of a charming, Ben Katchor-esque idea.

I mentioned it to my girlfriend, and it turned into a nasty fight. She's always after me to get rid of everything, and I think to her this was kind of a gross, hoarder daydream. I don't know, maybe it is. My cat's been dead two years, and I still can't throw away his little pillow.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 9:14 PM on February 27, 2016 [16 favorites]


I like that idea, Ursula Hitler. What if instead of taking up space with graveyards full of buried boxes of mouldering organic remains we had parks or mausoleums full of little individual displays of keepsakes? You could go visit and spend time with your loved ones' meaningful things, and also just wander around and see all the stuff left behind by and for others. It's already fascinating and moving to walk around a cemetery and just look at the names and dates on the headstones, so imagine if you could see the prized possessions of your distant uncle, or a famous literary figure, or some teenager who died in 1832.
posted by contraption at 9:56 PM on February 27, 2016 [3 favorites]


Awhile back I lost a close friend to cancer. As I did a lot of solo camping in remote places, pain was a burden so I developed a ritual that worked for me.

On arrival at camp, after starting a fire but before doing anything else, I would go into the deep woods and dig a small, deep hole. Then I would lie down on the leaves and stones and scream, sob and shout my anger and pain and sadness into the hole until I had nothing left. Then I would fill in the hole. Often I would lay a nice stone on the spot. This way I felt that my rage and sorrows were contained, at least while in the forest.
posted by kinnakeet at 5:33 AM on February 28, 2016 [6 favorites]


Yes, that is a Springfield area code.

Also, Champaign-Urbana, home of the University of Illinois, which seems more probable to me.
posted by hwestiii at 6:01 AM on February 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


Also, Quincy, IL. Which is less probable than CU or Springfield, tbh.
posted by mmmbacon at 6:47 AM on February 28, 2016


It's a champaign number. 217 covers most of central Illinois, but 352 is a champaign prefix.
posted by 3200 at 10:46 AM on February 28, 2016


Metafilter: Champaign prefixes, arboreal screams.
posted by lhauser at 12:23 PM on February 28, 2016 [2 favorites]


while i love the concept of this, something bothers me about turning non-physical trash into physical trash, um, probably because we've got way too much trash to begin with.

I prefer the ritual of burning a piece of paper with the thoughts written on it; thoughts should be treated as ephemeral, impermanent things. Making them into permanent garbage actually seems like giving them permanence.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 3:25 PM on February 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


Miyabo: Only if a kangaroo is involved.
posted by 2 cats in the yard at 7:43 PM on February 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


kinnakeet, are you Bill Callahan?
posted by wyndham at 1:34 PM on February 29, 2016


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