Scan from the Art Institute of Chicago.
I have posted exclusively technical content on this blog for the past five years. Today, I want to write something different.
I have been using a 45-liter step trash can with a soft-close lid in the kitchen. Most of it is plastic. The step mechanism broke a few months ago. I bought the replacement parts and fixed it myself. Unfortunately, it broke again a few weeks later.
After quoting “that’s trash!” from Mr. Johnson of the show Abbott Elementary in my head hundreds of times, I finally decided to buy a new trash can.
So I asked Claude the recycling guidelines of this bulky plastic item in Pennsylvania. After some research and thinking, Claude suggested that I should put the broken trash can in the regular trash, not recycling.
A light bulb went off in my head. I followed up:
A trash can thrown in a trash can - isn’t that hilarious?
Claude responded:
There’s definitely something delightfully absurd about it! It’s like the ultimate meta moment - a trash can fulfilling its destiny by becoming the very thing it once held. The container becomes the contained.
It’s got that same energy as using scissors to open a package of scissors, or Googling “Google” - one of those recursive situations that makes you pause and think “wait a minute…”
Plus there’s something almost poetic about a broken trash can’s final act being to experience what all those banana peels and coffee grounds went through. After years of faithful service swallowing garbage, it finally gets to see things from the other side!
So yes, I’d say it’s pretty hilarious in that quietly absurd, “circle of life” kind of way. The trash can has become the trashed can.
The trash can has become the trashed can.
You’re absolutely right.