Reason 5,198

Reason 5,198 I enjoy living in Boston:

Nowhere else I have lived (with the exception of a term studying abroad in Oxford) ever pops up in books I'm reading. I love that little shock of recognition when I realize that I know where that character is walking or what shop they're talking about, especially when I didn't realize before that moment where the events were set. I like thinking that authors enjoyed their time here sufficiently to set their works here even when they've since moved on.

I just finished a book (guess what it is) that referenced the YMCA on Mass Ave, the Christian Science Mapparium further down Mass Ave, what I assume is Redbones in Davis Square (where else in Davis would you eat pulled pork?), what I assume is Dali near Inman Square (I don't know, are there more Spanish restaurants with a boar's head grinning down at you from over the bar?), Filene's Basement and the no-dividers dressing room thereof, walking over the Charles via various bridges, someone meeting her husband at Alewife Station after work, Cardullo's in Harvard Square (though I kind of doubt there was no other place to buy bay leaves and cloves, even if those were more exotic in the seventies or whenever this was set), going to Central Square for Indian food, walking around from Downtown Crossing to Park Street, some lawyer guy working down near State Street, etc. Of course, Filene's is now a giant crater, but I did experience that dressing room before it went.

It's just so weird, because if you read the story without being familiar with the setting, you wouldn't feel like you were missing anything, and you wouldn't be. Being familiar with the location isn't at all necessary for reading the story, but somehow it's nice to have that anchor and to envision the characters intersecting with your daily life.

(Sometimes.)

Actually I'm kind of split on this. The last book I read that was set here (36 Arguments for the Existence of God) kind of annoyed me because it seemed very in-grouppy, chummy, like if you got the references you were in the right crowd (and most of them seemed very specifically pointed at Harvard and the professorial circle, so I did not). Plus it was so unnecessarily detailed, describing the exact path characters drove, that it almost interfered with the story because I couldn't help but visualize it and try to figure out exactly where the person's house was that they were going to. That one very definitely referenced Dali, though, which made me feel all in-grouppy for a bit.

Then there was The Handmaid's Tale, which I had read long before I moved here and never really noticed the setting, but then when I reread it shortly after moving here I realized (with a much more unpleasant shock) that the building where one of their ceremonies took place, by the river, where a "banner covers the building's former name, some dead president they shot" was probably the JFK School of Government, so then I paid more attention to where they were were walking and going. Everything else was similarly obscured, but it's still very clearly the Harvard Square area. It ended up kind of freaking me out since it brought the creepiness of the story home to my lovely liberal and decidedly not theocratic Cambridge. I went to a reading of hers last year and she said she enjoys setting her terrible stories in Cambridge (apparently Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood are as well, though I didn't notice as much when reading them).

OK, my first sentence wasn't entirely true. Murder in Coweta County does in fact take place in the county I spent half of my childhood (though, if I remember correctly, only barely mentions my town), and The Whisper of the River by Ferrol Sams does indeed take place not only in the town but at the very college where I went. But that was the whole point in reading both of them, not something to stumble over and be delighted about. Plus, The Whisper of the River is based on his life, I think, and reading about him having sex on top of the administration building was just kind of gross.

(The book I just finished was Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri.)

Recipe Roundup (Jan-Mar 2011)

Things I've made/eaten lately:

I was ill-prepared for International Pancake Day, but the plethora of pancake options that flooded my consciousness resulted in my treating myself to these lovely Lemon-Ricotta Pancakes for my birthday breakfast a few days later. Nice and fluffy and a step up from your normal, boring pancake. The blueberry sauce stained my bottom lip, though, so I spent the first few hours of my day worrying people would think I'd already been drinking red wine.

Pesto mac and goat cheese! Delicious, obviously. I always forget how awesome panko is. What's great about this recipe is it's mostly stove-top (so it's quick!) but still ends up with a nice crust liked baked mac and cheeses. If only I could ever use the broiler without charring the top of whatever I'm cooking... I really ought to lie flat on my stomach staring into the broiler and watch it the entire time. I halved the recipe since it's just me and I didn't want to die of fatty dairy overload or anything by trying to eat the whole thing within a week.

I've been trying to find ways to use tuna fish that don't make me gag (so, not tuna salad or sandwiches) so I can finally use up the canned tuna that's been in my pantry since I rescued it from a former roommate who was going to throw it out. I'd made a pasta dish or two that were OK but nothing special. Then for some reason I decided I thought tuna would go well with black beans. (Which I actually had never willingly eaten before, so I'm not sure how I came to that decision...though it may have had something to do with the facts that they're neighbors in my pantry and I'm trying to use stuff up.) So I Googled a bit and decided this Southwest Tuna and Black Beans fit the bill. I used it as filling for soft tacos, and I was surprised to discover I liked it even though I don't really like any of the things in it (except lime). I was somewhat bewildered at the store since the various fresh peppers were clearly mislabeled and I'm not terribly familiar with them. I'm pretty sure I didn't actually end up with an Anaheim, but whatever I got instead seemed to work fine.

Lentils are a thing I'm trying to eat more of. Super-healthy, super-cheap, long shelf life, probably a better idea for protein than stuffing my face with cheese all the time... I also recently remembered I had not yet used the crock pot another previous roommate gave me when he bought a bigger one. I needed to do something to break it in, so I gave this Sweet and Spicy Lentil Chili from Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker a try (see page 118; it won't stay there for some reason). I was not such a fan of this. I've just not had terribly good luck with lentils. The last thing I used them in was a soup that wasn't terribly exciting either. The spices in this are good, but I guess fundamentally I just don't like that much tomato (right, so chili probably isn't that great an idea...). I ended up freezing most of it once I realized there was no way I would eat it all (it claims to serve four to six, but at least I would definitely not want to eat more than like 1/12 of this at once). So it's lurking, waiting for me to suck it up and give it another go-round.

This Slow-Baked Beans with Kale casserole was another disappointment, but I'm not entirely sure it was the recipe's fault. My beans never got anywhere close to "creamy." Maybe I'll give it another try but using canned beans instead. I'd been thinking I was going to use dry over canned since they're cheaper and the extra effort really isn't that much, but I don't know, for the relatively small price differential the ease of cans probably make it worth it. (In other news, kale is only 96 cents for a big bunch. I guess I had never noticed its price before, but that's kind of amazing, especially given the whole "healthy food costs more" argument.)

Soups:

Growing up I thought I hated soup (and probably did), but this winter that's one of the things I've been working on. It helps that I'm always cold in winter in Boston so warm liquidy food sounds much more appealing these days. Right now this is my soup obsession, except I make it with kale instead of escarole. I'm actually not sure I've ever consumed escarole, so maybe I should give it a try as written sometime. I keep forgetting to actually put the Parmesan on, which obviously means I'm not missing it. Then Martha Rose Shulman at the NYT had several "soups with grains" recipes that I gave a try. I made the Garlic Soup with Quinoa and Snap Peas (scroll down) and Wild Rice and Mushroom Soup. I had really high hopes for the mushroom soup, and it was good but not as good as I wanted it to be, especially reheated. (This was my first experience with dried porcini, though, so it was a learning experience.) I liked the one with snap peas a lot, though. It's basically an egg drop soup, and it's oddly satisfying (not in the sense of filling, though the quinoa helps with that, just that I felt a sense of satisfaction eating it—something about dredging the quinoa up or something...plus I love garlic, although it's not as dominant as the way the title is phrased would make you think).

Then there's the fancy grits that I'm pretty much obsessed with. The jalapeño keeps it from being boring, the goat cheese makes it rich and creamy, and the mushrooms are all earthy and satisfyingly umami-y. The perfect meal for a cold, wet, cranky day. I halve it, but the first time I made it I ended up eating all of it that night (which is well enough because I can't imagine it reheats terribly well).

And my latest obsession... Last week I ate at Not Your Average Joe's for the first time in a while and they had this new crusted portobello thing (with or without chicken—I'm not sure why anyone would really need the chicken, though). It was pretty much amazing, so two nights later I set out to replicate it. (Yes, I was that impatient.) I'm not sure what they used to encrust their mushrooms, but I used a mixture of ground pecans and Parmesan cheese, and it was even better (plus then I got to feel all virtuous for finally using part of the pecan meal or whatever my aunt gave me some time ago). So: Israeli couscous with some herbs or pesto or something topped with the mushrooms (NYAJ didn't slice them, but I did and recommend that, then dip in egg, then coat in the nut/cheese mixture or breadcrumbs or whatever, then fry), topped with a handful of arugula and some goat cheese. They also had a tomato sauce kind of around the side and on the couscous that I didn't bother adding; it's good with or without. I then made this the next night as well. And ate more pecan-fried mushrooms for brunch this morning. So yes, that's three and a half times in one week. There are two more portobello caps in my fridge, so it may just happen again...

Pardon the not-terribly-exciting picture and my entire lack of artistry with the cheese. (Oh, and I used orzo since it's also something I'm trying to use up, but Israeli couscous was much better.)

An Embarrassment of Riches

I occasionally wonder what the Bangladeshi or Pakistani or Taiwanese people working in factories to make our crap think about it. Just think of all the ridiculous little plastic tchotchkes you've ever encountered in your life (especially stupid free stuff branded with a company name or the sort of novelty gifts that made solely to get a laugh out of them when they open it and are never touched again) or the super-cheap ridiculously-trendy articles of clothing. It's someone's job to make that. Every day.

Taking the whole income differential out, I'm pretty sure anyone who spent their entire life devoted to making useless junk would feel pretty unfulfilled (hell, even if I spent my whole life making toothbrushes I would feel pretty unfulfilled, and those are actually important), but assuming that factory workers in these countries have a standard of living a fraction of that in the United States, what must they think? Do they sit there on the production line trying to envision what kind of person buys these things, what they do with them, why they want them? Do they try to picture what kind of life includes such things? Do they even know what all of them are? Are they just thankful to get a paycheck, or do they resent fulfilling what is clearly a rather useless role in the grand scheme of things? Do they dream about a life that includes these things? Or do they feel like they're pulling one over on stupid Americans who are too dumb to realize they're giving these people money for nothing? Do they think about it at all?

The other day I ran across this article about how World Vision collects T-shirts and hats and whatever from retailers who made up a batch of "Hooray, we won" Super Bowl paraphernalia for either contingency. Everyone's patting themselves on the back for finding a good solution to unite U.S. waste with charitable giving, but I just found the whole thing disturbing. To an extent, they're right: of course it's better for a bunch of poor kids in Zambia to have clothes than not to. But what such a program says about American attitudes in general isn't terribly flattering. We care so much about improving their lives by giving them their very own pieces of brand-new clothing, but not enough to actually give them brand-new clothing unless it's worthless to Americans.

I find it appalling that companies do the double-production thing at all. Americans really have such a need for instant gratification that they can't wait for these things to be produced after the Super Bowl so only one set, an accurate one, has to be manufactured? (Well of course—if they waited, they'd realize there's really no reason to buy such a thing.) And we're willing to produce twice as much as we "need," knowing that half of it will be entirely useless? We're willing to spend $2 million making stuff solely to hedge our bets? And consumers are willing to pay a much higher price than would normally be charged for such things in order to comp that? What is wrong with us?! (And to go back to the beginning, isn't it embarrassing to have impoverished factory workers producing our ephemeral (at best, if it's the half that's accurate) commemorative gear? The most trivial pieces of our lives are responsible for their livelihoods.)

Too, the attitude that comes across in this article just really bothers me. I mean, I doubt many of the people accepting these donations do care what their T-shirts say. Presumably they don't read English anyway. But it still seems rather disrespectful of human dignity to unload your unwanted possessions—your trash, really—on others just because they don't know better or you think they're not in a position to be choosy. It's like the rich flicking scraps of food from their table for the poor to eat and calling it charity. It's not. From a utilitarian standpoint it does help them, but it's not charity. It doesn't come from an attitude of wanting to help. It doesn't make you a nice person. It doesn't mean you get to go feel all warm and fuzzy because you spent a week of your life traveling to third-world countries handing out "inaccurate" sports gear to kids who smile at you. If you pay some poor villager somewhere $10 to let you beat them up, that would in a sense be worse than if you just beat him up without paying him, right? It's taking advantage of poverty.

I find it really offensive that we as a country have apparently decided we can make and do whatever we want and waste as much as we want because, whatever, there are always people worse off who will use whatever we don't want; things that are less-than-worthless castoffs to us are life-changing extravagances for them. If true, isn't this a problem? Doesn't this bother anyone? Isn't it extraordinarily immoral to live that way? It's almost like such profligacy makes these people feel better about themselves because they're doing good by being wasteful. No! Prodigality is not a virtue, even if it indirectly does improve others' lives.

I guess I'm not actually arguing that it's so immoral to do such things that all other things (i.e., not donating normal clothing) being equal, we shouldn't do them, but it would definitely be much better all around if people actually deliberately did things to help people rather than assuming trickle-down effects will take care of everything and they don't actually have an obligation to think about their actions at all.

Sign Changes

This is has been a thing (at least in my Facebook feed) for all of three hours, but I am finding it absolutely fascinating. Oh no, most of us aren't actually whatever zodiac sign we've always thought we were! How shall we ever live knowing that the past however-many years of our lives were a lie? (What about all the horoscopes that were perfectly suited to the situations of our days?! All lies!) This is apparently the article that started it all.

I mean, right, it's astrology, so its real-life impact is nonexistent, but people's reactions are really interesting. Most people are some variation of "What, so I'm an X now? No way am I an X!" (I for one find what I hastily learned from one random website about Aquariuses to be much more accurately descriptive of my personality than the wishy-washy touchy-feely dreamy fish I was previously purported to be, not that that matters.) I really hope people's reactions to just staying what they've always been are due to this all just being fun and games and changing exactly nothing about the real world; otherwise, these attitudes of "What I've always 'known' above all else!" are rather terrifying.

For someone who took astrological claims seriously and truly believed the positions of the stars in the sky at one's birth actually influenced or outright determined their personality, fate, and compatibility with others, there would be no choice but to accept this new knowledge immediately, switch to the "new" sign, and live as that which they always were, despite having been misled in the past. I'm not terribly familiar with astrological claims, but I assume there is supposed to be some mechanism by which these positions affects people above and beyond their knowledge thereof. So, pretending this was somehow scientifically valid, it doesn't matter what you think you are or what you've always been, the only thing that matters is which constellation the sun was in at your birth. Denying, then, the "new" (actually it seems to have been known since before the Common Era that the alignment of constellations and dates were drifting through an epic cycle) and apparently earthshattering news that you've been wrong your entire life about something so important would be counterproductive and the worst possible response. The only reasonable response would be to adopt your real sign as quickly as possible and try to make up for years of living your life a little out of sync thanks to heeding advice meant for others. But no: "I've always been an X!" "Screw you, I was born a Y and I'll die a Y!" "Z forever!"

Obviously in this case there are two levels of truth. "I was born a Leo" means either (or, until today, presumably both) that one was born when the sun was in the constellation Leo or that one was born on a date that was considered to belong to the sign of Leo. We're learning that the former expression is now untrue for many of us, but people's vehement responses are obviously because the latter expression turns out to be the most important to them in a visceral sense. And I suppose that's reasonable, since we do live in a society in a time period that (at least I assume I'm not extrapolating terribly, though as it tuns out, 25 percent of Americans believe in astrology) is too sophisticated to believe in such primitive nonsense. So of course cultural categories matter more than "reality" in this case, since the reality is impotent either way. Not that the cultural categories aren't, but as far as spending your life half-heartedly identifying with some set of characteristics or reading horoscopes in the hopes they'll have something useful to say about your day, I suppose there's no more reason to disrupt that for these scientific reasons than for the scientific reasons of oh wait, they're stars, exactly how are they supposed to affect your life?

Regardless, I certainly hope if, in the future, we are presented with new scientific knowledge that asserts what we've been thinking or doing our entire lives and/or history is incorrect in some area where it might actually matter, we'll be a bit more open to it and not cling to our past beliefs so tenaciously. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem terribly likely. I'm reminded of the Pluto debacle, although that was less about new information and more about consistency in categorization (also it probably doesn't make any difference to anything real how it's categorized). But there's the babies-on-their-tummies versus babies-on-their-backs vacillation and the fat-is-bad—no-wait-carbs-are-bad debate, and I'm sure there are plenty of other life-changing discoveries to come. (Though in both of these cases I think we've held each position more than once over our history, so the problem seems to be either in changes in how we measure outcomes or in properly designing and analyzing studies. I guess when scientific consensus changes that much (or doesn't actually reach consensus) in one's lifetime, it's harder to feel certain that this time it's right, so personal choice and preference does actually seem to be (and may be, for all I know) a valid way of making decisions above and beyond the evidence.) I think these habits of disregarding evidence and relying on our intuitions, wishes, or anecdotal evidence bode ill for our nation as a whole and the state of ourselves and our minds as human beings.

Twenty Ten

I've been whining about how awful 2010 has been, but really I think it's just that the not-so-great parts were all toward the end (including a three-hour-late plane at the very, very end which put me in a very grumpy mood to ring in the New Year). In the spirit of accurate memories and cheering myself up, here are cool things I did in 2010.

First, some firsts:

I had my first fancy foodie experience at chef's choice night at Craigie on Main. I saw a silent film with a live orchestra for the first time (Metropolis), which was really pretty amazing. I ran my first (and second!) 5K. First jury duty experience (OK, so not everything is inherently awesome, but it wasn't all that bad, and it was indeed a first). First corn maze.

I read 61 books this year, for a total of 16,025 pages. I'm not going to list them all here, but a few recommendations from them: Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver; How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu; The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien; The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan; Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond; The World Without Us by Alan Weisman; Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen; and Fugitive Days by Bill Ayers.

I saw some excellent plays and performances, including Gatz, an epic two-part (six hours total!) performance where the entire text of The Great Gatsby is spoken on stage; Wicked (finally!); a local performance of Julius Caesar in which a dear friend of mine played Brutus, pulling off his first thoroughly serious role rather amazingly if I do say so myself; Death of a Salesman with Christopher Lloyd as Willy Loman; and the surprisingly awesome Slutcracker burlesque.

And then there are the author events. This year I heard two of my favorite authors speak, Barbara Kingsolver (on tour for Lacuna) and Tim O'Brien (doing a 20-year anniversary tour for The Things They Carried, one of my all-time favorite books). With last year's Margaret Atwood event, I have now seen my three favorite living fiction writers in person and have autographed books from all three. This year also included Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Gail Collins, and Salman Rushdie. It would have also included Oliver Sachs if I hadn't had an exam at the time of his talk (I'm still peeved about that) and Christopher Hitchens if he hadn't gotten awful cancer and had to cancel everything.

I ate one table over from one of the guys from Jersey Shore while out for dinner in the North End. This isn't terribly cool, but it's a thing that happened, and it was rather ridiculous, so it counts.

I took a random chemistry class to keep my brain alive, and it fulfilled its purpose well. I'm rather amazed at how poorly it turns out I have been taught in the past...or maybe it's just that now that my brain isn't being constantly bombarded with things it's supposed to know for seven hours a day, it actually cares and can absorb and contemplate and savor knowledge in a much deeper and fulfilling way.

And I hiked (most of) Mount Washington! I didn't know going into it how big a deal Mount Washington is, so we weren't really prepared with weather-proof attire for the part at the top where the wind is trying to both numb you and pull you off the mountain, so we turned back annoyingly close to the top, but I'm still quite proud of how intense it was and how well we did, considering we're not "real" hikers. A bit later, my brother and I went on a hike in the Cannonballs (also in New Hampshire), which turned out to be an even more demanding hike overall, partially because it was ten hours long and partially because the first half was steeper than anything I've done before. So it's been a good year physically, with hiking and biking (I finally biked to Walden Pond, a trip I've been wanting to take on since I moved here) and starting to run (I did the Couch-to-5K program this spring and have kept running fairly consistently the rest of the year). Next year I shall add kayaking, ice skating, and perhaps skiing to this mix.

Six Point Eight Pounds

Six point eight pounds. Three and a half inches. Twenty-seven items. What's that? The stack of catalogs* I have received in the past two(ish) months.

Over the past two years or so, catalogs have slowly gotten to a point where they are capable of inducing mouth-frothing rage in me. I hate them, but they simply keep coming! (In merely the past two days, there were eight of them! I know it's the holiday season, but come on!) I have never requested a catalog in my life. I don't purchase things from catalogs. Many of the ones I receive are for companies from whom I have never purchased anything. I unsubscribe from them as soon as I receive them, yet after a short break for decency's sake, it seems they always keep coming. And, since I moved three months ago, I've been drowning in even more catalogs for previous residents (mostly one previous resident, whose catalog problem, assuming she considered it a problem, dwarfs mine).

Yet, since I do purchase things online, it looks like I am doomed to receive catalogs until I die...and probably long after. And unfortunately I haven't noticed any space for notes or anything in most online checkouts where I can put a note requesting not to get a mailings. I assume if I actually made orders by phone I could request to be put on some list of "Please never ever send catalogs to these people because they might explode or something," but the internet doesn't seem to give me that option. Annoying.

This kind of bothers me for privacy reasons and because they're trying to exploit my weak willpower and because there isn't really an opt-out option at the point of "solicitation," but mostly it's the sheer waste. It makes me so angry that trees are being wasted to create and energy is being consumed to process, print, and deliver unsolicited and undesired materials to me. I try to be environmentally responsible, and I decidedly do not enjoy my efforts being overwhelmed by my forced complicity in everyone else's kill-the-earth marketing schemes. Yes, I'm recycling the catalogs, but that doesn't negate all the energy wasted to bring them into their short-lived existence.

Oh, and I particularly love their proclamations: "[...] 'green' is more than just a color in fashion apparel! Not only are our catalogs recyclable, we proudly use paper from sustainably managed forests"; "[...] catalogues are printed on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and contain 10 to 30 percent post-consumer recycled material." Oh, well that's all fine, then. I was concerned about wasting resources, but gratuitous waste doesn't matter as long as it's from sustainably managed forests. Don't get me wrong, I'd certainly prefer them use FSC-certified materials and recycled materials and everything, but you know what would be even better? Scrapping paper entirely and marketing online where your only costs are negligible electricity (or not marketing at all, but I suppose that's a bit much to legitimately expect). I'm not terribly knowledgeable, but I assume privacy rules are more stringent with email than with postal mail and that's why they don't do that? That seems entirely backward; you can always filter your email, and nothing's really hurt by the production of excess email, but when it's real, physical, paper things invading your life and having real-world consequences? Enh, no biggie.

It terrifies me to envision what the drifting year-at-a-time renting habits of my cohort must be doing for junk mail—we move blithely from apartment to apartment, unwittingly leaving ever-increasing trails of junk mail fanning out in our wake. We're long gone, but our "or current resident" mail lives on. I hate to imagine how many apartments the average twenty-something woman leaves receiving Victoria's Secret catalogs for years after her departure.

I've been using Catalog Choice for a year or two in an attempt to control my unruly catalogs, which has helped. Since this August (when I moved) I have requested for myself to be removed from 11 mailing lists, for the aforementioned previous resident of my current apartment to be removed from 17 (!!), and for five other previous residents to be removed from one each. Three different people (none of whom still live here) were receiving Crate & Barrel catalogs!

If it hadn't been for the move, I think I would have finally almost had it under control (with the exception of the one or two companies I do actually patronize semi-regularly, who apparently add me back to their mailing list every time I purchase something else from them). The problem with the move was that I was under the impression that filling out the change-of-address form with the post office was the responsible thing to do as it would merely forward anything to me that I forgot about in my address-changing spree so I could rectify the oversight and would prevent my old roommate from receiving random stuff addressed to me (with the exception of catalogs, which, since they're usually addressed to "or current resident" get delivered regardless). Now I know better. Not only do they provide your address to anyone who requests forwarding information, they actually sell the lists of new addresses to direct mailers.

I just did some research, and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse site seems to have a lot of useful information (and look much more official than the other things I ran across...) about ridding oneself of junk mail. The Direct Marketing Association, which is where many direct mailers get their lists, has a site where you can set your preferences either catalog-by-catalog or in a lump (for multiple addresses, too!). Anyone who is a member of the DMA will have to update their databases periodically and once that has happened will not be able to send you catalogs; however, this unfortunately doesn't apply to companies whom you actually patronize. (Also, I'm not entirely convinced it works, because when I went to go submit the form, it turns out I already had a profile, which means I had already submitted such a request and shouldn't have been receiving catalogs from people I hadn't purchased anything from... Maybe the catalogs I receive are from companies who are not members of the DMA?) They can also direct you to a site to stop getting credit card offers (which, if I have already done, is extremely effective, as I'm pretty sure I haven't gotten a credit card offer from anyone except my current credit card company in several years).

I hope submitting another request with the DMA helps, and now I'm newly inspired to actually call some companies to try to get on the special list of permanent removal now that it turns out such things do exist. (I had thought they should, but obviously that's no guarantee of anything.)

It just really, really bothers me that companies don't even have to offer an opt-out of mailings in online checkout. Obviously if I'm making an online purchase, that means I'm perfectly capable of Googling the company's name and completing a purchase without the reminder or aid of a catalog. In fact, it might even be reasonable to assume I prefer online ordering to phone or mail (do people even still do that?) ordering. It would also be reasonable to think that if I'm ordering from their website, perhaps emails would be a better way to draw me in. Sending me a catalog requires that I actually look at it, then if I decide I want something, that I either call or go to the website. If I get an email, I'm already at my computer, and I can just click a link and buy something in probably less than a minute. It seems pretty obvious to me that online marketing would be way more effective (at least to the Millennial generation) than any sort of physical paper marketing to close sales. Of course, it's also easier to opt out of, which is I guess why they keep doing the impossible-to-opt-out-of paper mailings. Really I think it probably just never occurs to them that there are people in the world who care so much about paper.

On a related note, it really bothers me when charities send me mailings (especially when they include cards or return-address labels or something) to solicit donations. I am never going to donate to a charity who is spending a sizeable chunk of the money donated to them mailing out physical letters; that's like a big neon light that says, "We have high overhead costs!"

* My default is "catalogue," but since I am apparently the only person in the entire world, or at least the U.S., or at least under the age of 40, who prefers that, I'm letting spell checkers and constant exposure to the abbreviated version wear me down so I'll look slightly less pedantic. "Dialogue" still has the -ue, though...unless it's a "dialog box." Don't ask how I make these rules for myself.

The Epic Pare-Down, Update 1 (Because You Know You Care)

It feels somewhat dishonest to post possessions I've come to think of as stupid and annoying and cluttering to Craigslist or eBay or foist them off on friends. Here, I say, this is sucking peace out of my life, but I'm sure you'll love it!

But not dishonest enough that I won't do it. Things I've sold:

• 62 tiny super-strong neodymium magnets
• some plates that weren't even mine to begin with (continuing the streak of selling off things prior residents left in the apartment, which began with a bed, a rolling hanging rack, a computer chair...after I sold all that stuff I had a net profit on my move!)
• some ridiculously kitschy wooden German Christmas ornaments (which, as it turned out, I should have asked for at least twice what I did as they sold on eBay in a mere eight hours and then someone else messaged me to ask if I had anymore lurking anywhere because that was such a great deal)
• a pair of 5-pound dumbbells (way too light)
• a pair of 15-pound dumbbells (slightly too heavy; also I always had the fear lurking in my mind that I would run into them in the dark or when not paying attention and break my toes)
• a set of 10 Delft-looking dresser knobs from like eight years ago when I had a blue-and-white room
• six books
• 10-ish DVDs
• one CD
• one Wii game (No, I don't own a Wii. You can see why I would want to get rid of this. To be fair, I did live in the same house as a Wii until August.)
• a black pencil skirt (too big, tags still attached *sigh*)
• a dress that I got (tags still attached) several years ago from a friend who was moving, never ended up wearing, and sold today with the tags still attached

I've also donated 110 items of clothing and 69 other items to Big Brother, Big Sister, who kindly will come pick up donations from your porch. I have several boxes of other stuff waiting for their next pass through my neighborhood or for some other as yet undetermined fate. I've thrown away 209 items (that I remembered to count; I'm sure there are others I forgot). I've passed along five items to friends.

What I've learned thus far: eBay and Craigslist are entirely unpredictable. Nobody will buy my toaster, but those dresser knobs got snapped up immediately. I can't seem to get rid of two nice pairs of slacks with the tags still on them, but a half-used stash of ridiculously strong magnets? Gone in the blink of an eye. I still can't get over those stupid ornaments selling that quickly. Obviously I shouldn't have doubted that people would value those as much as I did when I bought them, but how can you tell that in advance? People should value these pants for as much as I paid for them! (And yes, I seem to have a problem with buying things and then losing weight or deciding I don't like them after the return deadline. I'll work on that.)

So far I've made $92 selling stuff ($150 minus shipping costs and eBay posting fees). Not a lot, but better than the nothing I would have got if I'd just chucked them in with the boxes and boxes of donations. But it is a pain. Take pictures of everything, upload pictures to computer, make listing, upload pictures to site, meet people to hand off things, go to the post office every two or three days to mail something...repeat, repeat, repeat.

I've also acquired 15 new items in the past few weeks. Ugh, I know. But how am I supposed to keep running if I don't have anything weather-appropriate or even really properly running-appropriate? And how am I supposed to make pie or lasagna without a rolling pin or a Pyrex? (At least those were basically free thanks to a gift certificate I got in the mail when I moved in!)

I think the thing I am perhaps most proud of thus far was going through my big box o' computer stuff. Cables to peripherals I probably don't still own, installation CDs for stupid crappy programs that came with the laptop I got in college and which died two or three years ago (and which I'm pretty sure I never even installed the first time), an entire spindle of blank CDs that I'm never going to use and had forgotten I even had, another spindle full of stuff from backing up my computer in an emergency while I was studying abroad, a bunch of music CDs I never use since I don't drive anymore... It took two full evenings, but I went through everything, making sure I had all the files on my computer that I did on those backup CDs, making sure all the CDs were ripped to my computer, and then backing all that up on my external hard drive (which has until now been backed up haphazardly and/or through the Windows wizard; I was not at all convinced that everything I might actually need had actually made it over in an easily accessible format). Now I just need to find a VHS player and get it and my brother in the same room so he can digitize my band videos, and I'll be set.

The thing that sucks the most? Scanning all my documents. Am I really ever going to need pay stubs from my high school job? No, of course not. But someday am I going to want to know how many hours I worked or what my wages were or how much I made? Yes, because I am that kind of person. I want to know how much money I tithed or donated to church when I was a minor (the encouragement of which, by the way, I think is pretty reprehensible) so I can attempt to counteract it now (or at least counterbalance); since I kept my old checkbook registers I can actually extrapolate from those two or three years. I want to know when I read 1984 for the first time, so having my reading lists from middle and high school (the times I actually kept up with them) is useful. But obviously I don't need to drown in the physical forms of these things; having them on my computer is actually more useful as I'll then actually know I have them and find them rather than not even knowing what papers I have stuck in random file folders or boxes or whatever. But it's quite the pain to scan page after page after page of stuff. I'm pretty sure that even I won't actually want to refer to the vast majority of this stuff ever again, but at least by digitizing it I can override my "But I might need it someday!" tendencies with what passes for rational arguments ("Look, it's here; you can still access it."). A slightly clogged hard drive is much less problematic in the grand scheme of things than piles and piles and piles of useless papers.

But hey, that's 429 items I've gotten rid of! Progress is indeed being made, even if it's slow and tortuous and likely not to actually end at my goal. (I think I'm going to have to recalibrate the way I counted things, too, for proper fairness. I realized I hadn't counted the couple dozen books and movies I had already posted to half.com in my possessions because they were already slated to be gotten rid of, but I think that's being unnecessarily harsh on myself, especially as whatever I haven't sold by the end of the year I'm planning just to donate or otherwise get rid of, so it's included in the process. Also, it's obviously unfair to myself to have counted the entire contents of my file box as one item when it's obviously there's a much finer gradient than that. If I get rid of three quarters of my papers, I'd like for that to actually count in some way!)

"And When You're Living in America [...] You're What You Own"

I've been reading a lot of minimalist blogs and articles and stuff lately (read enough about natural food and eating and about being environmentally responsible and sustainable, and you'll hit minimalism sooner or later), so I've gotten inspired (and/or the crazy hippie bug has infected me full force). Now, a lot of people are doing challenges like living with fewer than 100 personal items, going three months wearing only 33 items of clothing, or wearing only 6 items of clothing for a month. I'm not going to pretend I even want to do anything that drastic.

Well, OK, the clothes ones, which I encountered before the 100-Thing Challenge, intrigued me for about two minutes. But see, here's the thing. Doing a one-month experiment where you only wear six items of clothing is interesting and a challenge, yes, but what good does it actually do? You still own everything else you own, you're just not using it. That's exactly the opposite of what I want to do. I'm not hung up on the number of items of clothes I own, but to me, the whole point of a functioning wardrobe is that you wear everything in it on a regular basis. Once you own something, you should definitely use it, and if you're not, then you should get rid of it. (Of course, the people participating in the two clothing challenges may decide at the end to donate all their other clothes—or most of them, at least—having lost their fear of needing something and not having it, in which case that's all well and good.)

So anyway, I have decided to become a minimalist, though I'm sure I'm using the term so loosely most the bloggers I've been reading would barely recognize it. I am bothered by how much stuff I have. Excess stuff sitting around distracts the attention and weighs on the mind if it's visible, but even if I manage to keep all my junk nicely hidden away, it still takes up psychological space. I know it's there. It's like I feel responsible for it, for caring for it and managing it. Plus I still have to cart it around every time I move, which I have done 13 times in the past seven years (counting moves to and from college each year, to Oxford, to Marburg, and my annual moves since). I have to spend a lot of time sorting stuff, picking it up, moving it around, putting it away, etc. So I definitely want to have less stuff—much less stuff. And, as I said, I want everything I have to be something I like having and use regularly. I'm tired of feeling obligated to my stuff. It's entirely irrational. Just because I've owned a thing for six years does not mean its feelings will get hurt if I get rid of it! Just because I paid $50 for a thing does not mean I'm getting my money's worth from simply having it sitting around for two years any more than I would if I just got rid of it. Just because my eccentric aunt gave me a thing does not mean she really thinks it's something that should be a central part of my life (at least I hope that's not her intent or she's much more eccentric than previously thought), and she probably won't give that thing one thought after she gets my thank-you note, so it's pointless feeling obligated to keep it around.

I decided a reasonable but definitely doable challenge would be to get rid of half my stuff. This presents me with a conundrum as well, however, as I definitely don't think just chucking everything into 20 trash bags and putting it out on the curb is a legitimate way of dealing with things. Of course it's easy to just tie things up and cut them out of your life in one fell swoop, but I feel like doing that isn't deliberate enough and just leaves you open to letting more stuff come in to fill its spot. Plus, obviously, it's no more responsible to fill the landfills with your things than to fill your house with your things, so as much as possible, things need to be actually dealt with. So clothes and books and things should obviously be sold or donated, but what about all that stuff? One thing I realized lately is I have a gallon bag full of 3-ounce toiletry bottles from traveling. I have recently found an amazing travel toiletry set, however (the bottles are all like 0.5 and 1 and 1.5 ounces so you can take small amounts of like 12 things instead of 3 ounces of like three products, of which you generally only use a third or half each), so I'm never going to actually use any of these for traveling again. So, yes, I'm going to spend the next month or so using up tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner and such at what I am sure will feel like an agonizingly slow pace. But this reduces waste, and, perhaps even more importantly, it forces me to be mindful of my purchases, to attend to the lifespan of each, to find a way to release them from my life naturally. I'm guessing (hoping) this will make me less likely to mindlessly acquire new things, since I'm aware of what a pain it is to deal with them. If you buy something knowing that when you're tired of it, you'll just throw it away, then money is pretty much the only impediment to acquisition.

Which brings me to another important topic. Obviously just eliminating half of my possessions won't solve the underlying problems. That's like getting extensive liposuction: great, the fat's all gone, but if you don't change the way you eat and live, it's going to creep back. My hope is that I'm actually undergoing a significant enough change in the way I think about possessions and consumerism and such that I will be able not to simply justify buying tons of new stuff since now I have the space because I did such an amazing job clearing stuff out. To a certain degree, I know this is true. Over the past few years I think I've actually managed to recalibrate my sense of disgust (disgust is the most powerful motivating emotion) so that things like fast food and big hunks of meat and piles of shiny new toys actually vaguely disgust me. This should be very helpful, since if I find mindless consumerism and acquisition disgusting in others or in principle, presumably I will at least think twice about doing such myself. It's an added hurdle, which in this case is to my benefit. However, of course, I am fighting against a quarter-century of some pretty powerful social conditioning and DNA full of pack rat tendencies. So we'll see how that goes.

Anyway: so I'm getting rid of half my stuff. I set January first as my goal date to be done. It's like a special bonus resolution that will have me already feeling good about myself on New Year's and will thus hopefully serve as the impetus to get a move on whatever resolutions I end up making then. This also gives me two and a half months, which I'm hoping will help with the mindfulness part that I mentioned before (I'm pretty sure calm, rational, deliberate culling over time is far superior to one fell swoop, as it has the best chances of actually getting habits started and getting me used to looking at everything from that perspective) as well as give me time to consume things like those travel-sized toiletries and hopefully at least some of my 14 types of hair products. (Note: I use between one and three hair styling products on any given day. In any given month, I probably use four max. But, like everything else in my life, as my tastes change, I just keep the old stuff and acquire new stuff (repeat, repeat), and then I have like five times as much as I actually need.)

So, how am I measuring? Being the kind of obsessive person I am (the challenges mentioned at the beginning really do appeal to exactly my brand of crazy), I'm taking an inventory of every single bit of stuff I own, listing it out, counting it, and then aiming to end up with only half that number by the end of the year. I'm not trying to halve each category of stuff; some categories (papers, random crap in boxes under my bed) should be eliminated almost entirely, while my 430 books are probably going to be lightly pared at best. Why? Because that's the way I want to do it. Because my books make me happy and are a psychological boost while the boxes of junk under my bed are a psychological drag that I constantly feel like I need to deal with.

I spent the last day and half or so (on and off) making my list. I just went clockwise around my room, cataloguing in a Word document all the stuff that was on each surface or in each box or drawer. (I have some stuff in the kitchen, bathroom, and basement, but those were all pretty easy to do.) And yes, being obsessive, I wrote everything down in excruciating detail. A partial list from my kitchen (the least embarrassing segment, I'm sure):

sifter

one set measuring cups

two sets measuring spoons

pastry cutter

small silicone mats (2)

electric mixer

strainer

white plastic bowl with lid

small springform pan

silicone muffin cups

small cutting board

medium cutting board

scoop cutting board

cookie sheets (2)

large plastic storage containers (2 rectangular, 1 square)

grippy things (3)

veggie scrub brush

kitchen towels (2)

vegetable peelers (1 normal, 1 palm-held)

cheese slicer

can opener

garlic press

plastic bin for compost

toaster oven

blender

food processor

toaster

waffle iron

mini George Foreman

The final list was 16 pages long. (Just the one column per page, but still!) And what counted as an item? I wasn't entirely consistent. Each plate, bowl, etc. was counted separately, but "utensils" were one item. Pens and markers were each enumerated, but "file box and files" was one item, "2 xmas boxes I didn't feel like opening" were only one each, and "pile of papers" was an item each time one was encountered. The bag of toiletries previously mentioned was only counted as one item.

And—the big reveal—I am the not-so-proud owner of 2,762 and a half items. This was way more than I was expecting. Of course, little things—or well-organized things—add up quickly even though they don't take up a lot of space. For instance, I own 66 and a half pairs of earrings (um, yeah), but they take up about a quarter of the small half-drawer at the top of my chest of drawers. My 430 books fit—with extra room, even—on two Ikea Billy bookcases that take up exactly six square feet of floorspace.

That being said, I was horrified by a lot of categories. For instance: 104 pairs of underwear. What?! And of course I only wear like a third of them on anything approaching a regular basis. Actually, yeah, clothes are most of what appalled me. Seven swimsuits (four of which don't even fit). Twenty-two bras that are too big for me (!!), not counting the ones that fit (of which there is some subsection I actually wear). [I feel the need to defend myself. I have lost a lot of weight, in fits and starts and with fluctuations, over the past two years. So this, like several other areas of my wardrobe, reflects a good three- or four- or five-size range. And bras aren't cheap, so I held on to them in case I gained ten pounds back again or whatever. No need to give things away for free and then spend $100 to replace them in three months! However, this is actually ridiculous (they were in four locations, so I didn't realize I had held onto that many), so I'm getting rid of all but a couple. Plus, holding onto fat clothes is one of those big no-nos if you read dieting articles, because then it's like mental permission to get lazy and creep back up again. I'm not sure I buy that entirely, but whatever, it's a consideration.] Sixty-nine and a half pairs of socks. (Thirty are white tube socks or ankle socks that I actually do wear regularly, and that are actually often the limiting factor in determining when it's laundry time. Fifteen are knee socks, which, yeah, are not. Six are fuzzy house socks, which I'm pretty sure I did not myself purchase a single pair of. And obviously the lone, unmated sock is doing nobody any good.)

Then, on the other hand, are the seeming excesses that I don't think actually are. (There are few of these, by which I basically mean this one.) I own 11 black tank tops, 8 white tank tops, and 6 gray tank tops. (Also 39 others, but that's not the part I'm justifying.) I really do wear almost all of those frequently. The white ones especially are essential to wear under all sorts of less-than-opaque or low-cut tops. I actually have three of the same white tank top because I kept having to fish it out of the hamper because I always needed it again before it got washed.

But yeah, I'm appalled at myself. Thirty percent of my belongings are items of clothing, and that's saying a lot, since I started this mostly concerned with the proliferation of just random junk. If I got rid of all the junk and kept the clothes, they would probably be around half. Ridiculous!

Stay tuned. Over the next two and a half months, I've got to figure out not only which 1,381 items get to leave my life forever but exactly how I'm going to manage that. Also hopefully I'll have some great insights about how not to replace those items with thirteen hundred of their close cousins.

I feel accomplished already, and I haven't actually done anything.

Oh, right. The title is lyrics from "Living in America" from Rent.

Black-hole Decision Making

I find myself faced with environmentally framed decisions which I feel completely ill-equipped to make. It's hard to make a rational cost-benefit determination when you can only guess haphazardly at what those costs and benefits might be, or at least their exact measures. How am I supposed to make decisions on no information? For instance:

1) The bathroom, kitchen cabinets, and fridge in my new apartment are full of half-used toiletries and food belonging to previous residents already departed. Whenever I can waylay both of the other current residents more or less simultaneously, we're going to cull the collection. Obviously the environmentally (and fiscally and otherwise, I suppose) responsible thing to do would be not to simply throw everything out but to spend the next few months living off the two varieties of Herbal Essences shampoos (extra moisturizing and anti-frizz, both of which, conveniently, my hair could benefit from), the duplicate bottle of my face wash, and the myriad body washes left behind (and eating lots and lots of soy sauce and mustard?) so as not to allow huge quantities of perfectly good products to go to waste. And I likely will do this (at least for the bathroom supplies—using an unseen person's leftover shampoo seems a lot less gross than their leftover food, plus the food stuff isn't stuff I'll eat, or at least not quickly enough for it to benefit the stuffed level of the fridge with any alacrity).

But then what to do with the unwanted dregs? I'm a compulsive recycler (I've been known to fish roommates' bottles out of the trash, rinse them, and put them in the bin), but I know that the plastic recycling process isn't actually all that efficient, that the water wastage required in rinsing out a container (especially one containing body wash or something that foams seemingly eternally) is a nontrivial factor in this equation, and that—oh wait—washing loads of liquid pollutants (which is what toiletries basically are when you get down to it) down the drain where they eventually end up contaminating rivers and groundwater and such probably isn't the best of ideas. So, do I simply toss the whole thing—bottle, contents, and all—into the trash, hoping the bottle will remain intact enough to keep the contents from spilling out into our (eventual) water supply, and not wasting the water to endlessly rinse it, or do I spend an afternoon rinsing out bottles of Worcestershire sauce and conditioner, wasting untold gallons of water?

See, what I need to know: Exactly how inefficient is plastic recycling? (I'm sure this is publicly available if I really looked.) How much water is required to rinse out a shampoo bottle? (I'm sure I could figure this out on my own.) But then, how much water wasted counteracts the beneficial effects of recycling? (This is possibly close enough, given the inefficient nature of plastics recycling, to be significant.) What are the environmental effects of pouring bath products down the drain? (I am aware we do this daily anyway as our daily doses of shampoo, conditioner, face wash, body wash, shaving gel, toothpaste, mouthwash, and whatever gels, pomades, or mousses are already in our hair wash out and down the drain, but just because we already do it to some extent doesn't mean it's a problem. Peeing out all the drugs we take is doing awful things to fish, frogs, and other animals, including leaving them hermaphroditic thanks to 12 million American women's birth control pills.) Does anything thrown away in its container actually remain contained after being crushed and compacted and tossed in the landfill?

2) Since I always use my flip & tumble bags at the grocery store, CVS, etc., I'm finding that I actually have a dearth of paper and plastic bags around my house. In my area, paper recycling has to be either put into a paper bag to separate it from the other recycling, or tied neatly into a coherent package with twine. The latter sounds nigh impossible (only a small percentage of my paper recycling is regularly-sized and -shaped paper—what to do about all the receipts?!), but it seems beyond ridiculous to be sure to get paper bags at the grocery store for the sole purpose of restraining my paper recycling. (This is less a cost-benefit thing than just an annoyance thing.) Until recently I was making it by on the occasional Whole Foods bag the roommate would bring home (he's slightly less perpetually armed with reusable bags since he doesn't carry a purse), the small bags his beer comes home in, and then (a windfall!), somewhat embarrassingly, a stash of paper bags I filched out of a neighbor's recycling bin one day. But now? Nothing. I appear to be the only person in this apartment who cooks, so apparently I'm the only one who ever buys anything at the grocery store. (Odd.)

Plastic gives me an even worse conundrum. The other day I went to empty the bathroom trash, but then I realized I didn't actually have any plastic grocery bags to replace the bag with. (I would just dump the trash into the kitchen trashcan, leaving the bag there, but our toilet has a weird leak that the trashcan has been living under to catch, so everything was kind of soggy and gross, and the bag actually needed replacing.) So when I went over to the old place to swap out some stuff I'd unwittingly taken for some stuff I'd unwittingly left, I also grabbed a substantial portion of the stash of plastic bags we had accumulated over the past two years in our kitchen closet. (Of course, over half of them are the somewhat less conveniently sized bags that you get when you buy clothes or something somewhere slightly fancier than the grocery store.) But someday, these too will run out, and then what? It's ridiculous to buy trash bags, at least for that size trash can. (Seriously. How thoroughly stupid is it that stuff is manufactured—and we spend money on it—the sole purpose of which is to throw away?!) But again, is it much less stupid to refrain from using my reusable bags once or twice to build up my supply of plastic grocery bags to line the trash with?

3) Composting brings me to a problem in a similar vein. I had decided once I moved I would resume collecting my vegetable peels and such to take to the compost dump. (Another point entirely is that the compost site is only for residents of my old city, but that I live much closer to it now that I've moved across city lines. I'm going to just do it anyway, since I only composted for maybe two months of the time I lived there, so they owe me a good thirty-odd months of accepting my food waste on principle. Not that they check resident status at the entrance...) But I refuse to simply use my plastic bin unlined by anything else, because as the waste accumulates, it liquifies, starting to smell and leaking putrid liquid in my bag as I carry it. So here we are again—I can line with a plastic bag, which I not only have a dearth of, but I don't enjoy doing because then I'm still stuck with the now-disgusting bag to dispose of later, or I can line with a paper bag, except I don't have any of those either. Is it better or worse to purchase paper lunch sacks to contain the veggie refuse (introducing waste, including water waste in the manufacturing process) to prevent all my biodegradable waste from entering the landfill, where it is no longer to actually decompose due to lack of oxygen and thus absence of the bacteria that break it down? (An apple core only rots measurably faster than a styrofoam cup when you bury them in your backyard for science class, not when you throw both of them away—shrouded in a plastic bag, no less!—to enter a landfill.)

Gah, I need numbers! I need data! (Better yet, I need someone else to gather the numbers and data and make a nice little website telling me what to do!)

My other option—and don't think I haven't already done this to some level on light-waste weeks!—is to sneak my paper to be recycled into an unsuspecting neighbor's under-stuffed paper bag. I'm pretty sure that's technically illegal, though, not to mention embarrassing if I they catch you. And it doesn't help with my bathroom trashcan!

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Subscriptions

I've always been rather disappointed by the subscription model's triumph over every other reasonable way of doing things, presumably primarily because I just can't shake the feeling that after paying month after month for one's entire life, one doesn't actually have anything for the trouble. This is pretty much the argument for buying a house rather than renting: you may still spend your life paying for a place to live, but at the end of it all, you wind up with a house. At any rate, I've always chafed at the idea that cable TV and phone service, for example, require eternal payments. (I mean, I understand the concept that you get something as long as you pay for it, but back in the day when people were predicting we'd all carry tiny computers and communication devices in our pockets, monthly service fees were never part of the picture.) I would probably have less of a problem if the pricing seemed more reasonable, but I think it's pretty obvious the companies just charge you as much as the disposable income you have (or debt you're willing to acquire), so I'm less likely to accept it as a legitimate cost of providing service.

I think this is one of the reasons I have such issues viscerally with the idea of e-readers. They're not subscription, but it leaves me feeling the same. If I'm going to pay for books, I want to actually own something afterward. I mean, clearly you do still have your digital books, but it doesn't feel as substantial or as real as paper books. Digital books seem less than two-thirds real, but you're paying two-thirds the price of a real book. (For some reason I don't have this issue with music. I have no problem buying music online, at least actual MP3s. (Now, the old iTunes songs that would suddenly become useless if you switched from Apple to anything else, on the other hand...))

Anyway, all of this is what makes it so weird that today I found myself suddenly having a vision of a happy, unencumbered future where I would hardly own anything, just pay for and use things as I needed them and then not have to deal with them any longer. This is (as far as I can tell) motivated by two things.

First, I'm moving in a few weeks, so I've been on a purging spree. I spent last weekend listing the majority of my DVDs and a not entirely insignificant number of books online to be sold. Going through all those movies and posting them for such insignificant sums of money while realizing how much I'd spent acquiring them in the first place (and how little use I'd since gotten out of them) was pretty dispiriting. I was sitting there thinking to myself how much richer I'd be if present me had somehow managed to go back and tell past me not to spend so much energy trying to build up a DVD collection when I really wouldn't watch them all that frequently (I'm not the kind of person who enjoys watching the same movies over and over, it seems), my tastes would change, and once Netflix came around (hm, a subscription service I'm more or less at peace with—eventually, at least) I would entirely quit buying new DVDs and then quit watching the old ones as my DVD collection became more and more of an afterthought. (Then I started wondering what things I'm spending money on right now that I'd lament as shortsighted and misguided in five to ten years...)

Secondly, I joined Zipcar today. For some reason, I'm really, really excited by its entire concept, even though it is in no way different from anything else one might pay for and then not own at the end. Somehow, I think it's pure genius that you can have rights to occasional use of a car while not having to own, maintain, or insure it, etc. while not feeling the same excitement about cell plans or TV. (Maybe it's because cell phones and TVs aren't as annoying to take care of? A cell phone isn't a big enough investment for you to be terribly put out when you have to replace it; TVs don't really require any maintenance, just a place to sit.) For some reason, I see Zipcar as a liberating service rather than a restraining one. I wonder if this is is because I come at it from not owning a car, so it only adds to my possibilities, whereas if I were replacing a car with Zipcar, I might resent that I was still incurring vehicle-related costs but without even the benefit of owning it.

And there's the rub: why is owning something inherently better? The reason you own things is so you can use them when you want them. But if everything is set up to be easily accessible and not terribly expensive, you can still pretty much use them when you want them—and all without having to store them anywhere!

And that's when I realized that between Zipcar, Netflix, and my local library, I was doing an awful lot of using-without-owning that I was pretty excited about. (I mean, I haven't actually used a Zipcar yet, but how can it disappoint?) Part of me feels like I'm throwing money away with Netflix, but then again, I do feel like it works pretty well with the way I watch movies. I can watch stupid movies I would never want to pay to go see or even to rent individually but am still for some reason interested in; I can watch really random and obscure stuff; I can watch weird stuff without feeling judged by the Blockbuster clerks or like I'm making them feel awkward (I'm looking at you, Ms. "And here's Eve Ensler—oh—Monologues"); I can watch stuff without even exerting the energy to go out somewhere to get it; I can work through a list of things I feel like I should see without ever having to actually decide "OK, today is the day"—it just shows up on my doorstep, and then once it's there, of course I have to watch it...eventually; since I never really want to watch a movie more than once a year (or longer), I don't feel like I'm wasting money on any particular movie. The library was similarly freeing (though I'll still definitely make an argument for having a book collection...but I'll admit my habits of the past few years were a little overboard and perhaps counterproductive). The library is great for new books I feel some push to read because I keep seeing them reviewed in all my news sources but probably don't actually want to own, particularly in hardcover (I hate hardcover books for some reason), but which are too time-sensitive to wait for the paperback editions. It's also good for all the stuff I feel like I should read or to fill in the gaps. There's less pressure to get a certain dollar amount's worth of enjoyment out of any given book, so since there's less at stake, like with Netflix, I'm more prone to dabbling.

So what's next? I really like the idea of owning almost nothing, just renting/borrowing what I need as I go. It feels more truly environmentally responsible: rather than every house having a car and presumably largely overlapping DVD collections and—to a lesser extent, I would guess—book collections (and whatever else I'm not thinking of yet because I'm too in the box), it makes way more sense to share a smaller numbers of cars, movies, books.

Really, to make another dent in my acquisition habits, it would have to be clothes. Unfortunately, that seems a little more problematic to implement well. I know people who use Bag Borrow or Steal so they can have fancy, expensive purses while not having to actually make the investment. Unfortunately (well, fortunately) designer handbags aren't really on my radar, so that wouldn't be quite so useful for me, but I applaud the concept for those who are interested. I think you can do that with fancy jewelry, too. Maybe kitchen supplies? I don't really need to own a panini press, a blender, a waffle iron, a pasta maker, a rice maker, such a variety of cake and pie and muffin pans, and so forth—wouldn't it make sense to share (and not have to store everything all in my house)? I've pretty much decided that I'm not terribly interested in actually owning a house (like cars, they're an awful lot of work), so I'm more or less unconcerned with renting for the rest of my life, unless that's going to leave me ruined in retirement.

I'll have to give this more thought, but I'm definitely excited about the general idea of having less stuff and a less cluttered living space and life. If the subscription model gets me there, I guess count me in.