the cupcake paradox, or the adams-mcclosky problem

I’m not positive when my cupcake obsession began.  I know it took a turn for the ridiculous around Halloween of last year when I spent the day decorating 50 some-odd cupcakes that looked like, well, this:

Ever since I’ve been captivated by the possibilities of The Cupcake (like all my obsessions, as soon as it catches my fancy it becomes a Platonic abstraction: see also, The Knitted, The Horror Film, and The Baby Animal).  Wandering through Barnes & Noble a couple of days ago, I stumble across a cookbook simply titled, Cupcakes.  In it are recipes for tiramisu cupcakes, pistachio white chocolate cupcakes, chocolate orange cupcakes, maple pear cupcakes — it’s gorgeous.

Giddy over my newest acquisition, I indulged in a little facebook gloating.  My friend Anthony requested that I bring cupcakes to a movie night he’s hosting this week, and that’s when we started thinking: people love things in miniature. I’m much more likely to eat a cupcake than a piece of cake or a donut hole than a donut. Anthony just bought a new ottoman that kicks ass. Why? Because of a smaller, identical ottoman stored inside the larger one.  As a child, when I’d start cracking open Russian stacking dolls, my question was not really “How many are there?” It was, “How small do they get?”  The smaller, the better.

This, we decided, is the cupcake paradox. One would assume that when we have a good thing we’d want more of it or to make it bigger.  Not the case. You want to make a popular thing (fried chicken) more popular? Make it smaller (hello, chicken nuggets.).  After some semi-intense pondering, we couldn’t think of a single, non-sexual example of something that is considered better when it is made larger.  Even possible exceptions, such as a drink, turn out to be inaccurate.  Liquid is measured by volume, not mass. So, you can’t really have a smaller diet coke (by which I mean beer), you’d just have a smaller glass. Which I’d just fill up over and over again because small things are precious.

Miniature trains, dollhouses, those monkeys that are the size of your finger when they’re babies: these are the things people get strangely obsessive about.  That’s The Cupcake Paradox at work.

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Popular Tripe, Sloppy Methods, and Questionable Conclusions

I have long been held in the throes of a catastrophic delusion: I think I am a mult-tasker. I’m not. I’m diagnosed ADD and have the same attention span/interests as my cat. However, whenever I buckle down to take on a task — folding laundry, reading articles, writing this so-called “thesis” — I always think I’ll just pop in a movie for a little background noise.

This never works.

However, through extensive research, I have come up with the absolute best movie to not be busy to. Are you ready? Ghostbusters.

  

Yes. Ivan Reitman’s 1984’s classic, Ghostbusters is hands down the best film to have playing whilst wallowing in unproductivity.  It meets all my requirements for an accomplishment-free time filler. It’s played on TNT/TBS/FX/Fox Movie Network ad nauseum, so I’m able to convince myself I won’t really watch it. Just like I don’t really watch it every Saturday when it comes on (hint: I’m lying. I will always stop whatever I’m doing to watch Ghostbusters).  

Second, it’s the sort of movie that, in theory, will not offer anything substantial enough to tug at my attentions. It’s fluffy; it’s harmless; it’s a loosely bound collection of jokes based on Dan Akroyd and Harold Ramis’ ability to play nerdy, Rick Moranis’ ability to play awkward, Annie Pott’s ability to talk nasally, and Bill Murray’s ability to be Bill Murray. That’s absolutely true. Guess what I love? ALL OF THOSE THINGS. I can’t look away from Bill Murray being Bill Murray ever. Ever. And I don’t want to be the sort of person who could. As an added bonus, Akroyd, Ramis, and Murray play disillusioned academics alienated and rejected by the very institution which they’ve built their life around. It’s the scariest part of the movie.

The final straw on the camel of diligence’s back is this: five years later, they made another one. Ghostbuster’s II is exactly like Ghostbusters.  Yes, they relied on the trusty crutch of a baby to highten the drama, but ultimately it’s more of the same. More of the beautiful same.  It’s an affinity Ghostbusters shares with my second choice for background/foreground noise, Alien and Aliens. Also, they share Sigourney Weaver. And in their second installments each introduces and subsequently endangers a child. And they both showcase dripping goo. Turns out they may have more in common than I first thought. 

Most importantly, I walk away from my hours languishing on my couch, balancing my over-heating laptop on my knee, as please as if I’d been productive. Thanks to Mr. Reitman, I never feel badly about not accomplishing much. Because, I mean, I just finished Ghostbusters. What do I have to be unhappy about?

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I’m addicted to all the glittery, twinkling, chirping charms of the Internet.

I am not a math person. I’m a word person. However, even I am able to recognize the little equations by which our world works.  My most relevant pattern is the way in which pressing academic and professional demands ensure I will waste even more hours delving into the hyper-connective world of The Internets.

When I was an undergraduate, I dismissed facebook as “too creepy, even for me.” Know what’s creepier than social networkingn sites? Writing a (godawful) paper on Milton. I can’t even tell you what that paper was about, but I do remember that facebook is awesome.  If it weren’t for facebook, I’m sure I wouldn’t have friends at all. In graduate school, I’ve crept into last.fm and flickr,  I greedily hoard rss feeds in the basket of Google Reader and keep my film collection updated on DVD Aficionado (under the compulsion of a lovable if obsesssive film student). And this past semester, the final stretch of my M.A., has found me wallowing — gleefully — admist all the little wiki-widgety-real time wonders of the internet. I’m a twitterer for crying out loud.  So enters the blog.

I have a few and commendably legitamate reasons to commit to the blogging. most of which I’ll be keeping to myself and do not inlcude narcissism and over-stimulation — those are just bonuses.  The moment when I knew I could do this and keep it up and make it interesting enough came when I realized, “This would give me something fun to do.” And really, being the simple creature I am, that is all it takes. Let the shininess in.

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