As digital niches go, this is roughly the equivalent of the omnivorous junk drawer in the kitchen - a home for the homeless miscellany that defies categorization, spurns labels, looks you in the eye with a puckered-up face full of impudence and insists, "one day you're going to need me." And into the drawer it goes.

With that much as map and compass, herein simmers the mottled stew of a few treasures that have washed up on my leeward coast. They're not the sort of treasures you could expect to trade for, say, a shiny new bicycle. They're more like the, "What the heck is that yucky stuff on the breakwater" moments of wonderment that thrill you as a kid.

And who knows. One day I might need them.