Junkity-Junk-Junk-Junk!!!

Junk; who knew it could be so fun? Or is it that when we get older we just seem to forget this. I remember when I was a kid I used to play with Junk all the time. My favourite thing to play with was cartons or bottles discarded on the street. I would transform this carton/bottle into a hockey puck , launching it far away from me. If I was lucky to find other cartons or bottles they would be cast as my goal posts. But as I got older I was constantly pestered by my mother on how Junk was dirty and how it should not be touched. Being a good child, I obeyed, for a little while.

Luckily not all adults believe this. In fact, for Mario Caicedo Langer from Bogota, Columbia, Junk is an essential part of his life. What does he do, you make ask? He is an ecodesign creative expert. In other words, he transforms junk into toys for a living-or more specifically every day objects into toys.

The picture above is a scorpion toy, made from a computer mouse, clippings and other "useless" things around the house. I am not sure what the purpose of this toy is, exactly, but what I do know is that it excites me. Why, you may ask? Obviously because it is Junk. However, despite my excitement I am somewhat discouraged by the fact that Junk is portrayed as only useful if we merge it with something else in order to create a useful final product. What happened to the bottles on the street that could be transformed by a simple tap of the imagination. What can I say,I guess I'm a Junk purist.

You must be wondering why I am dedicating a blog to junk? Or maybe you're not wondering, but I'm going to tell you anyways. Before I go into the full fledged explanation, I want to first clarify the meaning of Junk for me . Junk is something regarded as worthless and often discarded because of its worth value. However, I would not say that Junk is "meaningless" as dictionary.com postulates. For Junk to be meaningless, it would have to be something that has no significance, but it does. The fact that we have a word for it renders it meaningful, doesn't it?

What fascinates me about Junk is the way it infiltrates into our lives, allowing us to demarcate the good, the bad and the ugly. But this is not its only interesting feature. Another interesting aspect is its fluid nature. Ever heard of the old saying: " One man's Junk is Another man's treasure". Junk's ability to leap from worthy to worthless is almost like a transformation that could only be seen in a hollywood movie-- you know, the kind where the ugly duckling magically transforms into the bombshell, snagging the popular jock's gaze. I guess it is true what they say, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. And on that note, this blog will attempt to find the beauty of this worthless thing called Junk.