101 Uses for an AOL CD
Who doesn’t get plagued with 2 or 3 AOL CD’s in their mailbox in a given week? I get several and I foolishly just threw them away, until the day I realized that we need to recycle and reuse as much as we can before the planet either blows up in hollywoods biggest special effect ever (again), nuclear holocaust, or we just wear everything out.
Even worse, AOL is now sending me two CD’s a week in a tin. It’s too thin to hold much and too bulky to use to store gum in or mints or anything practical. Now I think I need to start another list of things to do with the excessive packaging being wasted with these CD’s.
So in the interest of saving our planet, I offer up these uses for all of the AOL CD’s we get:
- New on 3-10-04: They make pretty good backgrounds for wall clocks. Nick writes:
by taking the standard clock mechenism from a normal wall clock that you may not like anymore, you can fit it into the hole in an AOL cd. using a simple tire from a LEGO model often takes care of any spacing issues you may have. Some of the AOL cds are quite attractive in design and make interesting clocks
- New in February 2004: Whose seen the commercial with the couple making the fish out of CD’s? Great Idea
- New on 12-13-04: Adults Only: One reader suggested their use for decorative pasties. (Kids, ask someone once you’re in college.)
- New on 11-9-03: 4th graders have placed CD’s on a spin-art table and made artistic pieces with them. Thanks Steve for the tip.
- New on 5-28-03: Mike hanges from the branches of his cherry tree to scare birds away.
- New on 5-19-03: Reader Ashling99 suggests removing pinstrips by spraying them with WD-40 and using the CD to scrape them off.
- New on 4-1-03: Reader Steve suggests using them as body armour when playing laser tag. Good idea!
- New on 12-2-02: Replacement "patty stacker" dividers!
- New on 10-12-02: Get an old satellite dish (big one) line the dish with them point it at the sun and you have one hell of a cigarette lighter. This would probably do a lot of damage to my pipe.
- Or have the focused energy hit a metal tube to heat water. Boy, that would save on the electric bill, wouldn’t it? Great ideas.
- Another suggestion for the upcomming holiday parties. Dan wrote in:"If you have helium balloons but you don’t want them to be sideways on yourceiling during aparty, simply attach a CD to the end of them. Take some rope and tie it around the end of the balloon. Then attach the other end of the rope to the CD. Make sure the rope is long enough to go all the way down to the ground. Not only will the CD’s act as weights but will create a nicerainbow effect on your ceiling to make the party even more spectacular."
- Coasters
- Microwave for a few seconds to create new and interesting abstract art pieces.
- Eclipse viewer
- Signal mirror when you are lost in the woods
- Y’know when you’re driving and some creep right behind you has their brights on? Use the shiny side to send their light right back at them
- Take some string, some cork, some glue, and an even number of CDs : Yo-Yo
- String up a bunch of them together and give them to a small child to keep them entertained.
- Glue as many as you can to a black body suit and go to the next holloween party as a disco ball.
- Bookmark for any hardbound book.
- Frisbees for children or expert frisbee throwers.
- With two of them you can make Elton John sized mirror shades.
- Balance a table with uneven legs
- Give your parakeet a friend
- Practice throwing stars for young ninjas.
- Throwing small pieces of pottery
- At work, keep the bathroom key in an easy to find location by attaching it to a CD.
- Astonomy: Glue two halves of a sphere to both sides of a tennis ball and model Saturn.
- Practice skipping stones indoors.
- Glue it to your pet mouse so it doesn’t chew on an injured leg
- Wind chimes
- Christmas tree ornaments.
- Make your own platinum album
- Shields for your GI Joes
- The AOL Mini-CD would also work as part of a lance for him
- ...Or make a really strange hat.
- Vanity mirror for Barbie
- Make your Gi Joe’s stand up properly
- Glue them to the outside of your house and bounce all of the sunlight off. Cut your cooling costs
- They say that there is no intelligent life out there. Glue them to a 4x8 board, grab a xylophone, and start signaling.
- Tape a few strategically to the walls of your house so that no matter where you are you can us the remote control. (Note: Requires Geometry or Trigonometry.)
- Glue one to your computer monitor so you can see whose behind you.
- Give them to your kid when they have to make a diarama of the final scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. (Think of the rotating knives)
- At your next party, give every guest their own personal tray of oe’deuvres.
- Get four of them and jack up your hot wheels.
- Diarama idea #2 : The Pit and the Pendulum
- Kill time by working out the Towers of Hanoi problem
- Nueveau wall paper.
- Snow shoes for dogs.
- Bicycle reflectors.
- Roadside and driveway reflectors.
- Laser defraction grating material for experiments.
- Toaster demonstrations.
- Put one behind each christmas light on your outdoors string of lights.
- Large fender washers
- Edward CD hands
- Replace those old playing cards on the bike as noise makers against the spokes.
- Furniture coasters
- Solar mirror for concentrating heat into a fresnel lens solar oven
- Glue several together into a parabolic shape for spy listening device
- Same as above for satellite dishes
- Make a house for the fish in your aquarium.
- Collect thousands and make an artifical reef.
- Use two for your snow boarding chicken
- Fishing lures for marlin
- Jack up your roller skates
- Tie some to strings and attach them in front ot the air conditioner vent. Watch them dance.
- Experts estimate that it would take about 10 to 12 of them to make a skeet pidgeon.
- Make a grinding wheel for your pocket knife.
- Add some straw between two of them and your pets can work out with you.
- New For Christmas:The CD ROM Christmas Tree.
- This is for Windows 98 CD’s, but we can do the same with AOL CDs: Launch Win98.
- Use a hot knife to carefully fold them into various shapes. I’d like to see the platonic solids, myself.
- A reader named Kevin pointed out that they make great candle holders. Why didn’t I think of that? (6-10-02)
- Another reader suggests taking six of them and glueing them together to form a box. Might be tricky, this one.
- They also suggest cutting them in half to form the legs of a rocking chair for dolls or stuffed animals.
- And the very obvious Disco Ball, which I only have alluded to as a halloween costume.
If you have any more ideas about what to do with these things, english@spiritone.com me.