I have recently become extremely obsessed with the ever-expanding glut of TV shows about storage unit auctions, people taking one of a kind items into pawn shops and negotiating high-dollar bargains, and/or people rummaging around in dilapidated barns & garages for treasures that, I’m told, are high-dollar items. An antique vibrator?! $300. Thomas Jefferson’s own personal butt-plug, hewn from Mount Rushmore? $4,000 all-day. A rare acetate demo of John Lennon fisting Yoko Ono with brass-knuckles? Actually, that could be ANY Lennon/Ono composition. But I’d still pay at least $2,000 for the chance to own it. This is my fault. I’m addicted to junk…thus my interest in joining Team Discord.

For the uninitiated, shows like Storage Wars and Auction Hunters have this main premise: every day thousands of unclaimed storage lockers are put up for auction. Bidding is fierce, and rivalries develop instantaneously over storage lockers chock-full of rarities and untold riches. It’s the ultimate in Ponzi* schemes, with the rule being buy-low, sell-high.

*Given our fascination with combining celebrity couple names, I can only conclude that somewhere along the line Potsi Webber & Arthur Fonzarelli had a brief, albeit torrid, sexual affair, thus the term “Ponzi”.

Oh sure, there are storage units that turn out to be a bust. Apparently SOME people in the world don’t feel that a cold, 8’x10′ storage locker, one that you’re sure to forget paying those monthly fees for, is the best place to store their priceless collection of Action Comics #1 or their collection of rare Aztec artifacts. These people are idiots. Climate-controlled bank vaults? Safety deposit boxes? Safes? Actually, safes are okay…as long as you stick the safe itself in the storage unit as well. The rule of thumb here is this: if it has intrinsic value, put it in a glorified carport and lock that shit up with a high-school locker Master lock. Then forget you owe $400 for the past four months rent and lose the bitch altogether.

Many of your garden variety archaeologists have given up scouring the ruins of some long-forgotten city, whose name the average Indiana Jones wanna-be can’t even pronounce correctly (and honestly who can blame them?) spending months at a time in some dense jungle—amidst the constant threat of attack by large primates, bot flies that lay eggs in open wounds, and oppressive “jungle stench”—just doesn’t help morale when you’ve spent four months with a Maybelline rouge brush, carefully and intently brushing the faintest of flecks of dirt, layer by layer, away from a couple of shards of clay pottery. Ask any archaeologist whether or not they were inspired to seek treasures and unlock the mysteries of the past by the Indiana Jones franchise, if they now feel cheated by taking this career path. I’m almost positive the answer will be a resounding fuck yeah!

I’ve been out here in the jungles of Costa Rica for four months now and not ONE Nazi OR crystal fucking skull about. Bullshit. Plus, most of the good treasure has already been looted and sold on the black market, only to end up in an 8’ x 10’ storage shed in default of payment, waiting for some hulking behemoth of a man with head-tattoos and Oakley shades to slowly bid it up to roughly $1200 American. So, in short, to any and all of you potential treasure seekers out there who might be reading this, give up dreams of Custer’s Gold. Put away the maps of Oak Island, and don’t even THINK about going near Fort Knox. Become an Archeostorageunitologist and begin your new career today! Who knows, you may end up with Lincoln’s personal stash of Bukkake porn. Or, you might just end up with a compilation of old Discord posts…but don’t let that deter you.