How To Disappear Completely

marketing the cool

Recently I seem to be surrounded by discussions of the Long Tail. Back in the olden days, a company didn't have room on its shelves to stock simply everything, so like Mill's theory of utilitarianism, it had to choose those things which would bring the greatest amount of happiness to the largest number of people. And survived by selling huge quantities of a few items. With the advent of the Internet, however, it is now economically feasible to sell one or two copies each of thousands of different items. When diagrammed, this phenomenon looks like a sideways swoosh with a really long -- you guessed it -- tail. It also involves ratios: 80% of sales are made up of a few popular items and the other 20% of sales involve this infinite progression of obscure stuff.

Now, I've suddenly realized this principle can be applied to high school coolness quotients. Formerly, everyone ended up being unique in exactly the same way. Now, you can be cool in an infinite number of ways! You could be cool with your penchant for building large structures entirely with popsicle sticks! That girl who collects discarded coin wrappers can also be cool! Listening to Concerto for Cricket Wings will be decidedly hip.

It's a miracle.

The Long Tail of Experiences

So far the main disadvantage of going back to school is that I have had to get up Early. Three days in a row. But the lack of sleep is worth it when you consider I have exchanged a few unremembered dreams for the following:

*Making library cards for 5th graders (volunteer gig #1 on Wednesdays is going to be pretty fun).
*Reading about the advantages of library catalogue searches over Internet searches.
*Reading about the defects of library catalogue searches versus Internet searches.
*Puzzling over code for entering a bibliographic record in MARC (MAchine Readable Catalogue).
*Realizing this MLS is going to involve heaps of code.
*Wishing I could borrow Evan's brain for the semester.
*Attending museum internship fairs and trying to decide whether it would be cooler to work in an environment where I could wear converse shoes to work or whether I should hold out for a place where I could play with penguins.
*Sneaking bits of The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate on the T and bus, in between homework.
*Wishing I were 11-and-three-quarters-almost-twelve and determined to be a Natural Scientist (desires brought on through previous activity).
*Laughing (with the rest of the world) at the marketing disaster of the year: the iPad. Serious evidence of what happens when you put men in charge of naming things.
*Watching Blazing Saddles, yet again mystified by '70s color saturation rates.

Maybe It's Not Just 42

Inspired by warmer weather, a need for exercise and the book Green Metropolis which touts the environmental benefits of living in a city and walking simply everywhere, I've been using my own legs to get to work. The 15 minute journey affords a brief period free from distractions. Which might explain the following mind wanderings...

My first encounter with philosophy occurred sometime in high school when I picked up some Plato from the public library. I'm not really sure what I thought I would find within its pages, but I am sure I had heard somewhere that Plato "was a good author." I remember thinking that Socrates' students were uselessly dense; but I wondered how I would have fared in that 5th century B.C. class. I spent the rest of the day lost in thought.

So perhaps it was not a surprise when I found myself musing over similar paths, triggered by Evan's recent discovery of The Tree of Philosophy lectures and my subsequent engagement with Lecture No. 1. How would I have answered the question "What Is Philosophy?" Could I one-up these hypothetical students of thoughtful inquiry?

Questions and Answers, says one theoretical scholar. But not just any Questions, says Palmquist. And I agree. The reality is probably a Hitchhiker's Guide determination to find the questions that actually fit the answers some super-computer has conveniently calculated on demand. In other words, we all find ourselves somewhere. But what question does our existence answer?

And tomorrow is my first day of school. And this wasn't meant to be insightful. Merely an exercise in stringing words together once again...

quickstep

If I lived in an alternate universe where coordination were dispensed at birth along with all the requisite fingers and toes, I would learn how to dance the quickstep...voted "Dance Most Likely to Break An Ankle" in its senior class.

we make up stuff to see what we can achieve

And so my resolution for 2010 is to experiment with Etsy to see if I can launch some handicrafts into the general marketplace. Will the invisible hand smile upon me? Will this be the year I become a bonafide artisan?

I still have 4 more days of vacation left, but once I am back in Boston my goal is to set up shop. Not that the break wasn't productive in its own way: Evan and I made and addressed over 200 wedding invites. They won't formally appear until March, but I will say they are..um...unique?

yesterday

I feel like I wrote this entry only yesterday, caught up in an excitement that memorialized the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's death. How has the time climbed so swiftly to 29 years? Imagine.

Random wedding idea #306b

Get married on the 4th of July. Wear sparklers in your veil. Time the ceremony to end just before your hair catches on fire.

Random wedding idea #306

Get married at Christmas time. Take advantage of holiday fabric sales -- prints going for a buck a yard. The bridesmaids would look like Christmas presents, but hey, their dresses would ring up at $5 a piece...

in vintage ceremonies we progress through time

Back in the 1920s, my great-grandmother Jemma D'Amato was a seamstress in NYC. When she married my great-grandfather Louis Ciruzzi, she made her own wedding dress according to the fashion of the times.

This dress was handed down three generations until it was proposed that I re-use it for my own ceremony. After some months of getting back into shape, that proposal looks like a reality -- a wedding is a perfect excuse to lose 10 pounds and look fabulous.

Here's a throw-back to the Jazz Age. Since I have a dress, I am running with a vintage theme, although I am operating more in the vein of C.S. Lewis rather than employing a Tolkien fidelity to details. Which is not to say that we are inviting Father Christmas to the ceremony, but simply that anachronisms are welcome.

Note: Wedding dress not actually pictured to avoid accidental viewing by fiance.

Cosy as they come

Since I finished my last job (2 years of service to America, friends!) and don't start library school until January, I am currently taking advantage of a month's respite to re-acclimate my lungs to 7,200 feet of altitude.

Yes, friends, I am in Colorado. It's been good to have an extended visit with family as well as leisure time to visit florist shops and to choose patterns for bridesmaid dresses. And cook up somewhat eccentric ideas for table centerpieces involving DIY handicrafts and recycled LPs.

Now that the Thanksgiving cheer is over, the tree is decorated and the Christmas presents are well under way towards completion, I must admit to a certain sense of restlessness that often accompanies seasons of rest. Which might account for my growing enthusiasm for Craft Magazine, holiday baking and reading thriller novels about math.