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Day 31: A History of the World in 100 Objects

Here we are, at the end of my month-long consumption blog. Thanks for following along, though I’m sure most of it is dreadfully boring.

As my last list, here’s a book I just checked out from the library. It’s called A History of the World in 100 Objects, and is by Neil MacGregor. It’s exactly what the name would have you think, but specifically they are 100 objects from the British Museum. Given that I will be studying abroad in London and plan on visiting the British Museum quite a lot, for me the book doubles as a to-do list of things to see there.

The book is quite extensive, and it’s likely I’ll be condensing the contents into list format along with some notes about each object.

Cheers!

Day 30: Mental Lists

In addition to physical or digital lists, I have an unnerving ability to memorize lists of fairly random and useless things. These are items I thought would be interesting to know, you know, forever. In some ways, my mental lists are the final form of my digital lists. They are still searchable, but in a more flexible, organic way, and I have minimized to the utmost the amount of things I need to carry around with me.

Some of the things I’ve memorized over the years and can still rattle off by rote:

The surnames (and a good crack at the given names) of all the U.S. Presidents. Even poor Garfield, William Henry Harrison (not to be confused with Benjamin Harrison), and Arthur, who are always forgotten...

All of the books of the (ELCA) Bible, and I can usually figure out where some of the books deemed canon in other denominations go.

If I put some thought to it, I can rattle off all fifty states. I used to be able to pair up all the capitals as well, but I’m afraid I’ve slipped a little in that regard. I can probably get thirty of them.

Here’s something useless for you: the Greek alphabet. Not just the names (gamma, delta, epsilon, etc.) but the written forms of the capitals and minuscules as well. My knowledge of this list has actually been surprisingly useful...

But how about the first eighteen Roman emperors? And that was years before I took a class on the early Roman empire. I used to have just a list of names: Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho-- now I have facts to associate with all of them!

In addition to lists, I’ve also memorized a number of random facts, historical events, and poems. I have a rather modest mind palace I put together a couple years ago for fun. I only bothered to put three facts in it, but it’s held together wonderfully: Henry II was the king of the Angevin Empire and that’s when the mishap with Thomas a’Becket went down, D-Day happened on June 6, 1944, and man landed on the moon on July 20, 1969.

Day 29: Further Musings

I haven’t been actively adding to my lists in the past couple of days since I’ve been busy with other things, but I did work through my expenses and bought more groceries, so those two lists increased in length.

I still think my scroll idea is pretty neat, but I’ll have to dig in a bit further to find a connection to economy, society, or culture. There’s the link to ancient Alexandrian society, but I’m not sure if that’s what you’re looking for lol. The general concept of man making order out of chaos and organizing and compiling information may be more apt-- that was at the heart of what the Alexandrians were doing, after all: compiling knowledge. And making my scrollable Excel documents into literal scrolls would be a handy commentary on the changing form of the book throughout history as well; with the endless scrolling pages of the internet, we’ve returned to the original format of the book (sorry, codices).

Alternatively, I could explore society, economy, and culture through the lens of Microsoft Excel. That could be somewhat interesting, but I don’t think the world of office software is plagued with as many ethical and economical problems as, say, cosmetics companies.

Day 28: Few More Things

I added a couple more things to my List of Things to See in England today, bringing the grand total up to 102.

Day 28: Once More, With Gusto

Another list: The image above is a snapshot from a list of classes here at the U that I’m interested in perhaps taking, along with which lib eds they fulfill.

I even made a spreadsheet for picking out a college; I systematically ranked every single college that sent me mail on the quality of their programs, location, price, etc.

I seem to have momentarily misplaced another list of mine, but it’s exceedingly long and lists pretty much every song I have on my computer, to prevent duplicates.

Day 27: More Lists

Here’re some more of my myriad collection of lists.

First up: A couple of years ago, I went through and watched pretty much every “classic” (ie. 1963-1985) episode of the British TV show Doctor Who. I made a spreadsheet to keep track of things, and it includes the name of the episode, its sequential number, if I own it, if it’s on Netflix, if it’s a lost episode, etc. There are 181 lines.

Another list I have is both shorter and newer, and consists of local businesses that I might be interested in working at, or which have posted graphic design jobs in the past.

A third, longer list keeps track of inventory and sales for my small etsy business selling playing cards.

Day 26: Historical Lists Part II

More lists from my treasure trove of England-based knowledge.

From the top: A list broken down into sections in which I summarize information I found in great detail. This means that I didn’t feel like typing in every bit of information I read about the price of horses, but wanted to be able to find it again later should I need it. The list is broken down into subsections such as “travel,” “medicine,” population,” “time,” "names,” and “money.” There are 350 lines broken down into 30 sub-categories, and more additional notes at the bottom.

Second: Truly one of my most delightful lists. It lists a number of foods available in fourteenth century England, for what meal they would be consumed, if they are allowed to be consumed on no-meat days (which was most of the days), which class they were consumed by, my level of certainty of that assumption, notes, the book I got the information from, and the page number. There are 252 items on this list.

I have a few smaller miscellaneous lists scattered throughout the document, including one of trade routes and common imports/exports, a complete list of the royal household of England from 1392 to 1393, and a list of facts about the Welsh and Scottish wars of the early fourteenth century.

Day 25: Historical Lists Part I

Just to drive home how hopeless I am at preventing myself from making lists, here are a few from a collection I made back in the day. To be clear, I spent an embarrassingly large part of one summer just doing this. This is what happens when you socially isolate an inquisitive mind and put her in a room full of books and Google. All of these lists relate to fourteenth century England.

From the top: A list of reigning monarchs in England, France, and Scotland from 1066 to 1343, along with notable historical events and their dates. This list has 108 items.

Next up: A list of Christian holidays observed in the fourteenth century. Information includes the festival/holiday’s associated color, the date (or method whereby to determine the date, usually dependent upon the date of Easter that year, which is in turn determined by the lunar cycle), and notes about the holiday’s observance. There are 70 holidays on the list.

Third: A list of every profession and breakdowns of specific jobs in government/the king’s household. This includes their rank, the number you could expect to find, the full title, who they report to, their duties, the branch of government in which they work, where they sit at certain important dinners, and the book in which I found this information, complete with page number. There are 467 lines, but a few of them are blank.

Last: A poorly formatted list containing information I collected about fourteenth century London and its inhabitants, complete with sources and page numbers. There are 79 lines.

Day 24: Order and Chaos

As I stated in my last post, one of the only two things all of my lists have in common is that I am creating order out of chaos. For example, in my food prices spreadsheet, I have compiled a list of every food item I have bought, when and where I bought it, and its price. I hope this will be of use to me in future years, so I can guess when certain seasonal foods will go on sale.

Each individual piece of information seems equally unconnected to the next: who cares if green peppers were 89 cents on September 9th? And what does it have to do with pineapple being $3.99 on that same day? But when you look over all of my data once it has been sorted by name, you'll see that I overpaid on that pineapple, because it's usually only $2.99.

Order out of chaos. The individual details are meaningless, but look at the big enough picture, and you start to see the patterns.

Or that's the idea behind the mathematical model of chaos theory, at least.

Consider the upper portion of a tree. It's a vertical trunk with large branches splitting off. Look at one of those large branches by itself, and you'll see that it, too, has branches splitting off from a central axis. Look at an even smaller branch, and it too spawns twigs. It's the same system no matter how closely you look. That's what mathematians would call a fractal. The trippy image above is a famous fractal called the Mandelbrot set.

Mathematical fractals are relatively easy to make, and are created using very simple mathematical equations. The beauty of them is that they become increasingly complex as you zoom in further, and the complexity is infinite. You could zoom in on a fractal forever and never reach the bottom. Think of the scene in Ant-man when he's shrinking to quantum size.

I think it would be neat if I could incorporate fractals into my display somehow, to indicate the chaos inherent in the system.

Alternatively, I could portray chaos in a more artistic fashion. The purpose of the lists was to organize information into a way in which it was easy to read. I propose to destroy all illusions of organization.

This could manifest itself in a number of ways. Here's one: I print all of my lovely spreadsheets out and either shred them or cut them up so that I have individual lines with individual text. I then rearrange the text within each scroll in an artistic depiction of chaos. Legibility is irrelevant. Chaos reigns. I have one section of the scroll with a single word pasted onto it: "bartender." Another section is a collage of all of the times I've had to pay for printing at the U.

Think of it this way: the world is chaotic. In my lists, I have ordered that chaos. I am now shredding my ordered lists and creating chaos again. But, in a final twist, I am organizing each list/scroll into cubbies in my Alexandrian bookshelf by category.

I am creating order out of chaos out of order out of chaos.

Some might call that a fractal.

Day 23: Scrolls

Let me tell you about the Library of Alexandria. This was an ancient library situated in the city of Alexandria on the northern edge of Egypt, near the mouth of the Nile. Back circa 100 BC, the library was one of the most prominent of its (admittedly rather limited) kind.

Alexandria served as a triple gateway: to the Roman empire in the west, to the myriad of empires in the East, and to Egypt and the rest of Africa. Alexandria served as a center for knowledge and learning. Every ship that landed in the Harbor of Alexandria was required to surrender any books (usually scrolls, increasingly codices) on board for immediate copying by the scribes of the library. The originals would be kept and copies given back to the original owners.

In 47 BC, Julius Caesar took refuge in the city with Cleopatra to hide from the army of the Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy XIV. A siege ensued, and Julius Caesar thought it wise to set fire to all of the ships in the harbor, so that the invading army (it was clear the Egyptians would have no trouble taking the city) couldn’t use them for their own ends. Unfortunately, the library was located on the edge of the harbor, and the flames spread. The library burned. It would burn two more times in the ensuing centuries, each time by a different army from a different continent.

The top three images are reconstructions of what the library might have looked like.

Let’s make a quick little divergence into how to read scrolls. The popular idea that you read them vertically and “scroll” like you would a webpage is incorrect. Among the ancient Romans and certain other cultures as well, the norm was to read them horizontally, much in the same way we might a modern book. Due to this, the text was broken up into what we might consider individual “pages” of text. Imagine taking a modern book, removing the binding, laying out each page so that they are lined up next to each other (forgetting for a moment that the pages are double-sided), sewing the edges together, and then rolling it up. That’s the format of an ancient scroll.

The bottom two images show ancient scrolls. The righthand one shows the proper way to move through a scroll--they are often depicted incorrectly, with one side being spooled the opposite rotation, so that the text ends up on the outside instead of the inside.

Ancient shelving is less well understood, but one system utilizes diamond-shaped shelves, as seen in the center image above.

Now let’s switch gears to my collection of lists. In them, I have collected information from all over the internet and, in many cases, from various books and real-life situations. I have taken information from around the world, copied it, and created a library.

In that regard, I propose doing a project in which I re-present my lists in a scroll format. I could construct a bookcase using the diamond-shelf format, which automatically breaks up the space and gives me “cubbies” of a sense in which I can compartmentalize my scrolls.

The only things that are true of all of my lists are that I am 1) collecting information and 2) making order out of chaos. More on order and chaos in tomorrow’s post, which will address the interior of the scrolls.

Though my lists defy universal similarities, many of them can be grouped into themes. For example: lists about books, lists about England, lists about money and frugality. I could therefore break down my bookshelf into specific areas such that each diamond-shaped cubby represents one area of my interests, and each of my lists would be represented by a scroll or two in that cubby. I would essentially be organizing my lists into broader categories for easy browsing--something libraries everywhere have been doing since the beginning of time.

Day 23: Old England Lists

Here’re some older lists I have that I’ve dredged up for your viewing pleasure. Neither are terribly long, but they’re what I used to plan out my last trip to England, when my whole family went. I took it upon myself to read the entire Rick Steve’s England travel book cover to cover and pick out the most interesting things. The top image here is of some of the highlights of our time in London, and the bottom is of our itinerary, complete with the hours of different establishments and the estimated cost from each attraction’s website. Man, those were the days.

Day 22 & 23

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be continuing to talk about my regular consumption...? I haven’t had the time to add more things to my lists yet.

For my general consumption, I’ve been eating salads, pasta salad, and cheesecake. I’ve been to several smaller social events that gave me plenty of time to get social consumption. I’ve watched some Colbert videos as usual, and spent more time than usual on tumblr, because I always have the tab open to remind myself to make daily blog posts.

I have been making progress on the England front in general; now that I’ve officially been accepted, I’ve been chipping away at study abroad scholarships and that lengthy list of logistical things I need to do. I’m also slogging through internship applications, which are the worst.

Day 21: You Want Lists, I’ll Give You Lists

Here are the two largest lists by far that I have. I don’t update them anymore, but my sister and I spent several summers working on them, so I entered probably a little under half of the current information in all of them.

The first is what we call the Master Library List. It’s a list of every single book owned by my parents. My dad is an avid book collector, and we have an entire room in our house dedicated to his library (and an annex, and several bookshelves in other rooms, etc.). The list (which was all entered by hand, remember) includes the title, author, series, genre, sub-genre, copyright year, binding style (hardcover, paperback, pamphlet, etc.), if it’s a first edition, if it has a dustjacket, if it’s signed, and (as a later edition) the ISBN number. This list has 5,716 books on it.

The second is our spreadsheet of movies that we own. Again, my father has too much spare cash on his hands and buys movies left and right. This list includes the movies’ title, media (DVD, VHS, Blu-Ray), format (widescreen vs. fullscreen), color (vs. black & white), rating, genre, and run time. This list has 1,659 movies on it.

So that’s how I spent my summers as a child. No wonder I like lists so much.

Day 21: Logistics List Here's one of my handwritten lists, of which I don't have very many. Handwritten lists have aesthetic, but are terribly disorganized by nature and if they get too long it's impossible to find anything. This is why I generally prefer digital lists. The only other advantage of a handwritten list is that you have the pleasure of crossing things out when you're done with them. This particular list is a hodgepodge of things I need to figure out logistically for my trip abroad next semester. Items vary from the obvious (who will take over my lease?) to obscure (will I renew my Adobe suite subscription? If so, how?).

Day 20

Just wanted to say a little something about a couple more lists of mine, since that’s probably the direction I’m going to go in.

I have a list that is just ideas for meals and their constituent ingredients. It has 148 lines.

I have a list of every item I have ever bought at a grocery store, when and where I bought it, the quantity (oz., etc.), and how much it cost. There are 117 lines on the spreadsheet, and counting.

I have a list in which I keep all of my budgeting and track my spending. It has 424 items since I started it freshman year.

Day 20

I had some free time and updated my list of things to see and do in England with some of the cheapest eats in London. The list is now 97 items long.

Day 19

I was rather busy and didn’t do much today, but I started mulling over ideas for my collection of lists.

I collect lists for purely utilitarian reasons-- I can compile information I couldn’t possibly remember otherwise into a completely searchable database. Information collection, that’s where it’s at.

My lists organize the world and make order out of chaos, so perhaps my project should do the reverse. Take order and return it to its natural state of chaos.

Perhaps I could print them out and cut out individual words and compile them into poetry. Or print them out and paper-mache them into something beautiful. Or record myself reading them and make some sort of bizarre music remix. Shall ponder.

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