I just went spelunking for a particular pair of headphones. I could find my Sony quasi-studio 'phones, and someone's folding JVCs, not to mention about nine pairs of craptastic earbuds that obviously came with some other device, because we haven't even bothered taking them out of the cellophane. Only after digging through an entire crate of--

• Two pairs of cheap foam-pad headphones, one Sony and the other so cheap it has no brand name on it;
  
• A TI-83 graphic calculator;
  
• A Linksys 4-port ethernet hub, the location of whose AC adapter is a mystery;
  
• Cat's portable DMM, plus the extra banana clips and a static band;
  
• The remote controls for both Amber's and Cat's TV tuner widgets;
  
• A cheap (corded!) desk phone, which has lingered in Purgatory since we moved in, since we didn't bother getting a landline;
  
• A lone 3' length of phone cable, suitable for use with the abandoned phone;
  
• Four cat-5 cables of varying lengths and colors (and I know there are more somewhere in the house);
  
• A bundle of brown and yellow speaker wire;
  
• Two two-prong extension cords;
  
• A mystery Playstation A/V cable;
  
• Four assorted electronics power cables -- standard desktop tower/PS3 cable; PSX/PS2/Maleficent figure-of-eight; a mutant GameCube figure-of-eight cord with the corners on one side so you can't use it with anything BUT a 'Cube; and a Balthy/Spot three-round thing;
  
• One press-fit and two screw-on coax cables;
  
• One 30GB Maxtor and one 40GB Wester Digital hard drives, just sort of loitering loose in the crate;
  
• Balthy's floppy drive (never used, I think), and his spare DVD±RW drive, which has been set to Region 2;
  
• Two PS/2-USB adapters, also loose in the crate;
  
• A PS/2 mouse, which explains the adapters;
  
• Three 1/4"-1/8" stereo and one 1/4"-1/8" mono headphone adapter plugs; two 1/8" stereo-1/8" mono headphone adapters; two F/F RCA plugs, for lengthening cables; an S-video-RCA adapter; two 1/8" stereo headphone splitters; and calc2calc link cable for the TI-83 calculator, all dropped into a plastic tube that once held a set of D&D dice;
  
• The output widget for Cat's TV tuner, with a proprietary plug on one end and S-video/RCA + RCA audio output jacks on the other;
  
• Aha, there's the AC adapter for the Linksys hub;
  
• 1/8"-GBA stereo headphone, RCA-1/8" stereo and M/M 1/8" headphone cables, the last of which is still in its plastic packaging;
  
• A portable folding keyboard for a Palm IIIc, and the serial-USB adapter Cat uses to sync/charge it -- although the IIIc itself, and its charging cradle, are strangely absent;
  
• My Palm Tungsten E2, trailing both the USB sync and the charging cables;
  
• Three sets of crap earbuds, two of which are still in the cellophane wrapping;
  
• The interactive quiz clicker from an anthropology course Cat took at least a year ago;
  
• Cat's electronic Japanese-English + kanji dictionary;
  
• One mystery travel AC adapter marked in English; one mystery travel AC adapter marked in Japanese; and one mystery power brick that takes a figure-of-eight cord and is marked up in Chinese, questionable English, and for some reason Swedish ("Endast för kontorsmaskin");
  
• Three USB A-B, two USB A-miniB and one USB extension cord.

--did I actually find the ones I was looking for.

This is not the only nest of snakes box of cables in the house, either. There's another one atop an office bookcase that has, that I can see from here, a PCMCIA network card (blue label: Linksys), Cat's strobe and blacklights, and one of those indestructible PS/2 keyboards. Furthermore, there is a shoebox, in which previously resided a pair of go-go boots, full of something that makes jingly loose-screwdriver noises when it's bumped, and the drawer underneath the TV containing most of the video game accoutrements like the lone SixAxis controller, extra DualShock2s and Wiimote pieces, at least two video/stereo audio RCA cables, and another USB A-miniB + USB extension cord for charging the PS3 controller. The tangle on the floor nearby is a power strip with so many travel chargers hanging off of it (phone, other phone, a pair of DS warts) it looks like a drunken daddy longlegs.

Well, I did warn everyone that if Cat and Amber and I moved in together, the place would be a major fire hazard.