I spent a disturbing chunk of the morning looking at My Little Ponies on line.

I’m normally so sane, too. Well, relatively speaking. Well, sort of. Well, my insanity usually flows down different channels, anyway.

I have no particular desire to collect them, but I can see why one would.

I am not actually a collector of much. I am very much the type, but I have not found too many objects that appeal to me sufficiently to start. Since I know that I am a dire packrat, since I tend to live in small spaces, I have quite a rigorous mental discipline when it comes to collections–I have to really REALLY like the stuff. I have to go away and think seriously about it. This has nipped a lot of collections in the bud, since collecting usually seems to start when you buy one of a thing on a whim and then realize that you like it a lot more than you realized and the next thing you know there’s a room in your home that’s a shrine to My Little Llama.*

At the moment, I have one collection. (We’ll exclude “art” and “books” because those are not collections, they are requirements for continued existence.) Well, and stuffed wombats, but it doesn’t count, because people buy them for me. I have five or six now, which crowd in a tangle of faux wombat flesh next to my scanner and atop my monitor. I quite enjoy them, but I don’t actively seek out stuffed wombats or anything. And I have a vast array of ceramics, but they’re utilitarian. Also, I made about half of ’em in college.

The one thing I do collect is masks–primarily wooden barong masks from Bali, the more pop-eyed and fanged and brightly colored and grotesque the better. They’re relatively inexpensive as art objects go, since they’re cranked out in mass quantities for tourists, and there is a boisterous charm to them. Having covered the basics of the designs, the real joy now is finding the weird ones that I don’t have–the big ones, the ones with horsehair, the monkey kings, whatever.

I broke the other day, though. I was at the flea market, and saw a somewhat battered, but still snazzy duck decoy. I have always kinda liked duck decoys. My stepfather told me in passing that the only ones worth getting are the wooden hand painted ones, and here one was. I picked it up. It said $12. I opened my mouth. The guy behind the table said “I’ll give it to you for $8.” I closed my mouth.

It sits in my studio, and I realize whenever I pass it that I quite like it. And this is dangerous.

But as long as they don’t make My Little Decoy–or god forbid, My Little Barong–I should be able to keep it under control.

*These really exist. You were warned. http://www.hallelnet.com/von/info/chacha.jpg There’s a My Little Moose, too.