Now your Billy Joel and Shania Twain CDs can be cool, even if you can't be!

November 18, 2006 6:57 PM

Your real name and all ten of your aliases are on the AOL mailing list. Or you’re an extreme computer geek and your mother is getting quite irate about the hundreds of used CDs cluttering up her basement. (And your non-payment of rent. And the smell…) Or your alternative-punk-Celtic-rap band’s release was tragically unappreciated by the public. Whatever, you have piles of CDs sitting around. You’ve followed this advice on how to minimize CD use and know that recycling CDs is not as easy as it should be, and maybe isn’t even possible in your country. What options do you have? Well, these people are collecting a million AOL CDs and intend to dump them off at AOL’s corporate headquarters. These people make clocks from them, and you could too. Or you could use them to make an ambient floor or table lamp, a throne, a photo frame, a really huge mobile, a disco ball, shingles for your tree house, or quite a few other things, ranging from postcards to bowls to spinning tops. Or you could play a quick game of disk hockey with a friend (that is, if you have time before your mum gets home).
posted by orange swan (11 comments total)

Incidentally, AOL is "ending its marketing efforts to sign up new subscribers," including mailing out these CDs...
posted by sdrawkcab at 7:20 PM on November 18, 2006

See this prior post as well.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 7:47 PM on November 18, 2006

Hmm...here's a thought. I've been considering an alternate insulation for the cordwood house I'm planning on building. My current plan has been to use non-asbestos-containing vermiculite. I wonder if it would be possible to build something to create spiral shavings off a CD/DVD and use those for insulation. Partially compacted, it would probably do quite well. Though I wonder how flammable it would be.
posted by Kickstart70 at 8:03 PM on November 18, 2006

Dumping a million CDs at AOL headquarters sounds like a good idea to me.

As for recycling CDs, one thing you see a lot of here in Japan is folks hanging them from the eaves of houses or from trees as reflectors/sun catchers, to scare off birds, keep them from nesting. They also hang them around rice paddies to ward off the crows.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:09 PM on November 18, 2006

Give them to your favorite 4-year old to use as super-secret-agent throwing stars/lasers/other deadly weapon.
posted by thekilgore at 10:32 PM on November 18, 2006

We hang them in the apple tree (we do not have any rice paddies). We thought they did a good job of repelling the squirrels until we realized that squirrels don't like apples.
posted by Cranberry at 10:48 PM on November 18, 2006 [1 favorite]

Kickstart70: I've been considering an alternate insulation for the cordwood house

I'd say think bigger. If you glued/stacked them, couldn't you use CDs as structural members, like a log cabin?

You could solve the whole waste CD problem building a score or so of houses.

Go for it - save the planet, dude!
posted by Meatbomb at 6:09 AM on November 19, 2006

In addition to the bird repellers, my neighbors here in Japan hang them in their gardens to scare off stray cats...because, presumably, nothing disturbs strays more than a distorted reflection?

(I think the same logic is supposed to apply to the ridiculous 2 liter bottles which line many garden walls to defend against the intruding felines.)

I do like the rainbows that the cds bounce off the walls as they spin, though....
posted by squasha at 7:30 AM on November 19, 2006

Give them to your favorite 4-year old to use as super-secret-agent throwing stars/lasers/other deadly weapon.

Assuming your favourite four-year-old lives in the house of someone you don't like, right?

[Imagining the busted lamps, the dents in the walls, the terrified pets...]
posted by Zinger at 7:56 AM on November 19, 2006

We thought they did a good job of repelling the squirrels until we realized that squirrels don't like apples.

Tell that to the squirrel I once saw run by me with an apple in its mouth.
posted by cropshy at 9:10 AM on November 19, 2006

A few of my favorites:

Donate them to your local high school astronomy class. You can safely view a lunar eclipse through the hole in the center of an AOL CD.

Shave your head, hang one CD around your neck by a thread, and go to the airport and start handing out the other CDs to passengers as they get off their planes.

Skeet shooting. Twister. Kickball bases. Go-cart hubcaps.

Rub two of them together until they erode into nothingness. Repeat.

Use a yellow-hilighter pen to disable the write-protection and store some files on them.

Say "lets flip a CD" to settle a dispute.

Travel back in time and give one to various historical figures and see how history changes (suggestions: Helen of Troy, William Blake, Louis Pasteur, Davey Crockett, Joseph Smith (someone may have done this one already)).
posted by straight at 7:38 PM on November 19, 2006