Missed Connections, M4WW, Woodbridge, Va

I had an experience today that broke up the monotony of my weekly rounds.
I was sitting at a traffic light, waiting to make a left turn and then a right turn in order to enter the parking lot of my next stop, with my arms crossed behind my headrest, sitting back listening to a live Comedy Bang Bang episode, relaxing because I know this light can take a while.
To my left comes a car, excitedly honking at me. What's going on?
Occasionally a fellow driver will honk to inform me of something important, like I accidentally left the back gate open, or my keys were sitting on the back plate, or a homeless guy was hitching a ride.
I rolled down my window, fumbled to pause my podcast, and expected to say something to the people in this car like "what's going on?".
Instead, these people decided not to communicate directly. They rolled their car forward so that our windows were no longer even. The turning lights were still red. They sort of seemed to gesture from within their car but like, they had a chance to talk to me, and actually they STILL have a chance, since I'm about to park at my next set of bins, but no, these people were not about to actually converse with me as a person.
So I go back to how I was, arms crossed behind my head, kicking back at this light nice and comfy since it apparently never changes.
I should add, the people in this car are two girls, right about the age that I think of myself as, which is of course, about ten years younger than I actually am (I stopped checking in with life). They appear collegiate. Short hair, thick rimmed glasses. I sort of wonder if these are some displaced Baltimore kids who know someone who knows me, and I'm trying to place it but I'm horrible with names and faces of people I hardly interact with.
But then I see they've passed something back and forth between themselves, from driver to passenger, so I look toward them again.
They're holding something to up to their window that appears to say "CULI".
This means nothing to me. Is this a French word? Some funny internet accronym (ugh the fucking internet!)? Were they making fun of how I was sitting in the truck? Really I'm at a loss.
Then they pass the paper back and forth and back again.
They fixed something up so I could read it better, mind you they could have spoken to me OR kept their vehicle in line with my own.
Now the paper appears to say "CULT".
Huh? Oh. Oh THAT.
That's it?
The light changes to green turn lights and I think they did a U-Turn, like they made some special trip to pass along this information. I turn toward my destination, knowing precisely what they were indicating. I immediately wish I could have said ONE thing to them at least to demonstrate that my reaction would have been "yeah, I know. What of it?".

My company, as it has been blogged about elsewhere, is apparently a subdivision of a conglomerate run by a European educator's cult, who under the guise of a philanthropic effort, make themselves nice and cozy, to a much further degree than putting their arms up behind the headrest of their cars at a stop light.
"CULT" these Buzzfeed certified mega-sleuths wanted to tell me.
They memorized one headline and they're geniuses for life, I guess.
I suspect this pair of truth-shedders didn't even click into the article. Why bother, when regurgitating the one takeaway of a headline is so satisfying???
If they'd read the article they would have had even more ammo. Nuggets such as our founder being an extradited criminal on the lam somewhere in South America, for starters, await within! Several other board members live in a commune somewhere in Florida! The charities we claim our proceeds go to are PROBABLY scams! This is the cause of the criminal charges that have all these board members on the run, after all.
You say "CULT" when the weightier word to use is "FRAUD".

I freely admit to my awareness of the dirt on my company (LOOK AT THE IMAGE AT THE TOP OF THIS BLOG! !...maybe they were fans?!). 

How I wish I could have talked to these people.
I was itching to ask them "who is your employer?" because I guarantee that if you Google your employer+controversy, something WILL come up. Unless you're self-employed, then you should already be familiar with the kind of shit-bag you are.
Then I realized what parking lot I was headed towards. The anchor store was Hobby Lobby, antagonist of women's rights on the Supreme Court level, and financial backer of ISIS.
Then I think about how the president of our country is a fraudulent serial-molester directly representing the interests of the Klan, and a LOT OF PEOPLE ARE OKAY WITH THIS.
And I think about how in our general area people work for Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman and BAE Systems. Manufacturers of weapons used to kill the poor all over the world. And the people working for them sleep at night! In the biggest houses imaginable!
You wanna say something? Go ahead. You can memorize a Buzzfeed headline but it won't grant you critical thinking skills.
Stop being so naïve as to think the majority of employment in the USA doesn't come with a moral cost.
Almost everything we were surrounded by when you honked at me was an employer that refuses to pay their employees a wage that they can live on.
So let's talk about how the gravest concern you have is to tell me "CULT"

I belong to the cult of people looking for a steady paycheck, who decide for themselves what is and isn't too much to turn a blind eye to, who know when a controversy on another continent is a snooze-fest compared to anything going on in our immediate vicinity.

I applied to my job believing that I would collect clothing donations and put them back into circulation. At my end of things, this contract is fulfilled.
I'm a guy, at a job he enjoys, spending time outdoors, seeing weird shit, listening to music and podcasts, and generally not interacting with a single person for about 95% of the time. THAT is MY cult.

____________________

Aside from that, I'm still compiling photos of the crazy things I come across on my day-to-day travels. Sorry for the lack of updates on that end, I tend to upload in batches, so it's either a lot of updates or a dryspell. I miss you all and think about you frequently. 
Much love, 
the In-A-Bin team.

NSFW

WARNING

TODAY'S POST MAY BE CONSIDERED NSFW. THE PROCEEDING IMAGES WILL BECOME SAUCIER AND SAUCIER UNTIL THEY ARE SIGNIFICANTLY SALACIOUS. DO NOT VIEW THESE IMAGES IF BEING SFW IS OF A CONCERN TO YOU.DID I DELIBERATELY POST THESE ON A MONDAY SPECIFICALLY TO PUT YOU IN THIS SITUATION OF SPLIT SECOND DECISION MAKING? THAT IS ONE THEORY.

It only figures that eventually some more scandalous items would make their way through. Some of them general, some of them personal. I see the occasional sex toy. A glass dildo here, a fleshlight there. Not terribly noteworthy, unless I see them together, in which case I have promised to conjoin them to commemorate the occasion.
So, dipping our toe in to today's post of scandalous imagery, here is a picture frame featuring it's default placeholder image.

Kinda racy, and I'm not talking about the bike amirite?!

Let's take a closer look shall we? 

I mean, it's not exactly revealing but it's 9/10 of the way to an upskirt. That's one way to make your generic picture frame stand out from the rest. 

Here's a horrible shirt. Wait did I say horrible shirt? I might have meant handy chart.

What's odd about this is ever since I encountered this shirt with a chart of breast shapes and their names, I have seen similar charts posted in meme format around the internet featuring similar but different drawings, and generally all the same nick names. However, this shirt is the only one featuring "WATERMELORS".

So it turns out I meant horrible shirt all along. 

Here's a few examples of cards from a card deck featuring sexual acts.  A holdout from a time when most men would only masturbate while gambling.

And lastly came this incredible beaver shot. A picture of a young lady, revealing her lack of underwear. Held by a hand, photographed again, and THEN PRINTED AGAIN, and once more, held by my own hand and photographed.

 I am honestly surprised that I haven't encountered more intimate/candid shots such as this, but what's striking about this is that I received this second hand. Literally. It's almost as if somebody found this photo of his buddy's girl in a compromising position, but he knew he couldn't keep it for himself, so he took his own picture of the picture. Not only that, but this perving friend had a specific attachment to the photo in physical form. And then one day, it wound up in a donation bin to a clothes recycling company.

Here it is, scanned, presumably for better quality, although I think the size of my photo of the photo is physically larger. The photo itself seems so relatively timeless. An old looking couch, could be from the 60's onward. A pack of Marlboro cigarettes, a design practically unchanged since it's inception. The woman's clothing style, nonspecific. Her hair style, just a little long, not seemingly from any exact era. No DVD's or remote controls scattered around the couch area to help pinpoint the place in culture. This could be a person holding a photo he had found of his own mother from decades previous. There's almost nothing to go on other than that this photo was taken after the advent of color photography. And maybe the 60's.

It's hard to tell, but the subject may be holding up drug paraphernalia.

The utter lack of pixel quality was helpful in deciding to post this. The pelvic area is just kind of a non-specific blob of brown nothingness. It makes you wonder if the person who got rid of it did so because they realized the overall shittiness of the quality.

Notable Notes (1)

Here are a few intercepted notes I've received over the years.
This job feeds into the perfect level of voyeurism without causing me to feel like too much of a creeper.

I believe there may have been jewelry with this:

I hope (she) does too, Andy.

Brace yourself for some racy innuendo!

"Lunch time"

Meanwhile, Sydney awaits in he qoumroom.

Do you think she'd let me?

Here's a conversion attempt that seems like it didn't quite play out.

Sorry Kirstin (sp?), it seems like your feminine wiles were not quite enough to ensnare Adam into your cult! Keep practicing though!

 Elsewhere in the world, an unavoidable system of communication has been established by a couple with substance abuse problems...

 Wrap your angry message around a tall-boy and it is sure not to be missed. The recipient may even respect this tactic enough to drink the beer without removing the note!

When I tell people about the crazy things I've seen, this beer can is up there in the list. I LOVE how the note SEEMS to pick up mid-idea, like there may have been more objects with angry notes around the home leading up to this conclusion(?!). I LOVE how you see this angry note, wrapped around a beer can, containing an accusation of theft of methadone, and after all that is the realization that IT'S WRITTEN ON CUTE ANIMAL STATIONARY.

I love that this person does not default to ten-digit phone numbers like the rest of us in the 21st century (thereby allowing me to publish it unedited.)

Ms. Jessica Gugel, you are one in a million.

The Baby Laffin' Mystery

Here's some videos from four years ago from the course of a day when I was trying to track down the source of some demented laughter...

The solution to a mystery is seldom as satisfying at the course taken to arrive at it.

Dumbness Returns: Revenge of the Dumbness

And then there was the day when I received numerous bags of plastic bottle caps.

 Does this person believe they are recycling? What did they do with the bottles? Probably sent them to an actual recycling operation. But they saved the bottle caps separately as though they needed to be recycled through a different process, namely through a clothes recycling effort.

Here's a video to demonstrate the sound of thousands of plastic caps (where available): 

So generous. 

Gesundheit, Elsa.  

 Here's a waste of manufacturing, as evidenced by a person ridding themselves of it:

 We have a thing against single-purpose appliances in our household. Things like this are just clutter. How 'bout you just not leave the dip out as long? Is that so tough?

Here is a returning product, with more elaboration. You may recall a bag declaring "Baby Bullet" from a few posts back. Here's the full product, and yeah, this one's useful.

However, that NAME.

 Y'see using the word bullet has certain connotations and designating that it is to be used on a baby is even more problematic...

...because I DO get those, too.

Ain't Nothin' But a Vulture Par-ty

I have come to love vultures while working this job.
They clean up our messes, they appreciate a large social network.
I count myself fortunate to ever find myself near one of their Vulture Parties.

Look at that dude living it up.

Corner to corner party roof.

This was the first Vulture Party I ever had the pleasure of crashing....

What a swell bunch.

Even more dumb stuff.

Here's some more examples of the excess of our culture.
Let's start out with this pair of boxer shorts. They are themed boxer shorts. They have Angry Birds on them. But they are not just Angry Birds, they are Angry Birds themed to resemble Star Wars characters. Do you think this pair of boxer shorts is up to the task of being all things to all people? Godspeed to you, boxer shorts, there's a lot riding on your mission.

Here's some dumb shirts. Look, if I photographed every dumb shirt I ever saw I would never make it home. These are just particularly dumb. Starting with the shirt equivalent of those shorts we just saw...

This just makes me angry. Yeah I see you over there, avoiding copyright issues by slightly changing Shrek characters and pretending like ANYONE would be really into the idea of seeing them depicted as dogs. It finally eases the one question that was on everyone's minds as they watched the Shrek movies, what would they be like as dogs? Thank god this shirt came through.

Yeah, I know, bagging on Twilight is passe. But seriously, "I just like watching over you"?!?! I JUST LIKE WATCHING OVER YOU

WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME TO LEAVE YOU ALONE

I JUST LIKE FIXATING MY DESPERATE GAZE TOWARDS YOU

DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT I LOVE YOU SO MUCH THAT I JUST WANT TO STARE AT YOU WITHOUT INTERACTING

...and then someone wants to wear that codependence on a shirt? 

 I read this as "girls who resemble this" and I guess the shirt wearer is giving a thumbs up to girls who have the bizarre forearm musculature of Popeye. Check for yes.

 "Good news, mom. I've completed my education!"

 ...for all I care!

Things on the ground and in the vicinity of my bins also serve to document the excess of human manufacturing.
I've seen these in a lot of the gas stations I go to.

 I guess somebody's a customer for life.

Maybe I did, maybe I didn't (I did).
What's it to ya?

And then there are just the sorts of things I see scrawled in restrooms along my travels...

 Sure, I tend to agree.


You don't have to tell me twice.

This is in a nice part of town.


Now if you need me, I'll be cleanig my poney.