posthumous "doh!"

I woke up this morning some time between 6:30 and 7. In the last couple years I have seen 7:00 from the "wrong side" far more often. Why? Huh? Which? Well today -- to walk through the murk to throw a frisbee with the two other dudes who had a the stuff to show up. We can't get any more GOOD practice times -- blah blah whatever.

But I am writing because I can't find a book I want. Or well I want to write about it anyway but I can't find it to read and write about. I don't mean I can't find it here in Norway. I mean it isn't on eBay and it isn't on Amazon and it isn't on GEMMBooks and I am ennå (still) curious.

The National Geographic Channel had some hour on the "science (or was it secrets?) of shaving" and a newer one called "A Closer Shave" - longer irrelevant story not bothering you here. The show confirmed (so much as TV show experts can) that hair is seen by our genes as unhealthy. Evolution shapes attraction away from health risks (in this case parasites) blah blah. Moving very slowly towards the titular point.

Mr. almost-household-name Gillette has an anything-but(-household) f'n weird name: King Camp Gillette. Neither "King" nor "Camp" would really be that cool on its own but... King Camp? Somehow it's awesome -- having nothing to do with imagining a summer camp run by or for kings? Anyway its at least as good as when I got roundhoused in my pre-adolescent nose by a little purple belt named Lord Hampton.

WELL...
That's his awesome name and he was a utopian socialist. He wrote a book. He wrote a few books. "The Human Drift" lays out Gillette's wacked (awesome) Metropolis concept. Ol' K.C. (KING CAMP!! KING CAMP!! Everybody do the KING CAMP DANCE!! ???) wanted everyone in the United States to move in together around Niagara Falls. Hydropower is good food (ref: Campbell's Soup slogan). He also somehow figured that all business could get crammed together into one ginormous publicly owned megacompany. Just so you know "megalopolis" is a much awesomer word than "metropolis".



I have skimmed some web synopses/commentaries but have avoided reading them in depth (duh because I want to read the book). I saw this picture more than once and got curious. You can read more carefully in one of those things I skimmed - but the gist is simple. Each unlettered building is a living building. Each lettered set meets some public need (education, food, amusement). Each "need building" serves the six living buildings around it. From other pictures I gather that each building is supposed to be pretty mega huge. Looking at the pattern, you share some of your life by way of snacking, schooling, and sporting with people from your own and twelve other living buildings. Some from that set you only eat with, some you only study or play with. Your direct neighbor set will be a closer bunch - overlapping on two but never all three needs. Sounds initially maybe boring (or awesome) - but I imagine there is some more flexibility worked into it (boo)...

...I could tell you more but I haven't read the book. If anyone (book lovers and friends of bookstore owners) knows how I might find a copy (even literally a photocopy) of the book (eller bare the content thereof) -- do that thing where you write down a $$$ number on a little slip of paper and slide it across the table to me.

I seem to be writing a little bit more the way I think (and browse the internet - I have 117 tabs open right now - heh heh). Stacked thoughts/subtext and some bits of referential/experiential imagery that pop into my head - but with proper paragraph form and more or less capitalization. Clearly I hate commas. I think they are ugly - especially when I write them by hand -- which I almost never do. So yeah a lot of ellipses and m-dashes and parentheses - and sadly I am tiring of all of them as well. Well let me wrap this up even though I have a bazillion other things I want to say. I think maybe I will just make another entry just as soon as I post this one.

Resolving the title - though the point of this all was more just to mention head stuff from the last couple days. King Camp is dude number one absolute most responsible for spreading the concept of disposability in product design/as a business practice. Okay... YES he worked for the guy who invented the bottle cap and that is most likely how he got the idea for his disposable blades - but somehow that doesn't quite count the same way -- the bottle cap is a packaging material (a byproduct of soda juice beer blah blah). Packaging is a different animal that had already existed for millennia. Gillette's disposable blades were the first intentionally disposable by design product (admittedly yes the packaging thing does cloud this a bit) -- use it, when it no longer helps, very intentionally throw it away.
Anyone who knows me knows how much I generally dislike waste. Most bright folks know how cluttered the world is with nigh-undecaying yet mostly no longer useful metals and plastics and bloated diaper pad mush gel cruds.
So... "failed" socialist turned world famous mega money earner (I want to read a biography and find out what he did with his money). Gillette wanted good things for society, the world, what have you and in his time made shaving much easier for the world (I consider that to be of very mixed value) BUT wound up sowing the seed for all of the above mess. "Doh"ing in his grave.

Ooh... a package.