January 2011 Issue
Given the rich potential for exploitation in the premise of the show, the crew from Hoarders comes across as remarkably compassionate and understanding of these folks (up to a point, anyway). The breakout fan favorite and de facto star of the show is a guy named Matt Paxton, an “extreme cleaning” specialist and the local incarnation of the voice of reason. Although Matt can be firm (“You can’t ‘donate’ that. It’s covered with black mold.”), his musings, often delivered while knee-deep in toxic “treasures” (“We’re all just four or five bad decisions away from pooping in a bucket”), provide a humane “there but for fortune” tone as well as the show’s best lines.
Apart from Matt, the show’s great discovery has been a certain marsupial known as The Possum from Hoarders, who made his/her debut in an early episode in the second season. Brief footage (literally a split second) of the critter leaping from the kitchen sink of a “hoarded” house into a mountain of garbage became so popular among show fans that A&E used it in promos and the possum soon had his/her own fan page on Facebook, where his followers live-blog each episode.
One might think that Hoarders would only motivate people with severe clutter problems to break out the Hefty bags, but, judging from the reactions of fans, the show spurs nearly everyone who sees it into cleaning up something. Of course, given the state of the economy, people who might otherwise be happily spending their evenings (and disposable income) trolling eBay for bargains will have to find another, cheaper outlet. Incidentally, one of the things you notice about 99% of the people profiled on this show is rarely mentioned on the show itself. In even the most severely “hoarded” houses, full of teetering piles of crap that would give the Collyer brothers the wim-wams, the resident always has a little spot cleared (often just one chair) where he or she eats, sleeps, and spends all day on the computer. As Matt would say, I’m just sayin’.
And now, on with the show….
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TC Brown:
January 29th, 2011 at 10:25 am
Well, thanks for the push. Had gone to bed last night with a self-promise to get up early and start digging out from under the piles of papers accumulated in my front room. Had found my free chair and was reading your January edition, only to feel rebuked from not having lived up to my self-promise.
Enjoy The Word Detective immensely.
~tcb
Charlie Nunzio:
January 29th, 2011 at 6:09 pm
Success is not measured by the position you’re in but by the obstacles you have overcome. Please know your TWD fans respect and admire you.
mariposaman:
February 6th, 2011 at 2:40 pm
You can make text larger or smaller by using Control key and your scroll wheel on your mouse. If you do not have a scroll mouse you can use Control key and the + and – keys.
The Readability app looks interesting.
You can also use text to speech programs. Highlight the text you wish to “read” and it will speak it aloud to you. Invaluable for long winded (and I mean that in a nice way, maybe I should say weighty) tomes your are wont to pen. It allows one to do the dishes or trim one’s toenails while enjoying your words. The free versions usually come with a robotic sounding voice that sounds like Stephen Hawking, but you can buy upgraded voices that sound surprisingly human, complete with sexy accents of your choice. You would think Hawking with his money could afford an upgrade instead of using the free Microsoft Sam voice to communicate.
I do watch Hoarders, and I have become convinced I am one myself. I think everyone likes hoarding, it is just these people are out of control. Museums and collectors of all kinds are refined hoarding in that they hoard stuff of perceived value and display it in nice surroundings, instead of accumulating garbage in a house too small to hold it all. Museums have dried dead bodies and preserved dead animals on display, while the hoarders discover their mummified kitty that disappeared years ago under a pile of garbage and we recoil in disgust.
steverino:
February 20th, 2011 at 11:03 pm
I use Opera, which among other nice features allows you to zoom pages with the + or – key, and reset to 100% with the asterisk (very easy on the numeric keypad). The best part of this is that is also has a feature developed for its mobile browser that will wrap the text to fill the screen. Otherwise, when you zoom, you will have to scroll side-to-side to read the page; the “Fit To Width” feature will eliminate that problem. Great for blog-reading, or newspaper etc. reading: at 100% find your articles, click on it, zoom to read, then back to the main site and asterisk to see the whole page again.
select wanna les miserables:
August 4th, 2013 at 4:07 am
Today, I went to the beach with my kids. I found
a sea shell and gave it to my 4 year old daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She placed the shell to her ear and screamed.
There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her ear. She never wants to go back!
LoL I know this is entirely off topic but I had to tell someone!