August 18, 2004
#190 :: Dental Floss
I believe there is a continuation of the three classifications that make up the first query in a game of 20 Questions. Animal, vegetable and mineral are followed by mechanical, chemical, electrical, digital and, ultimately - if it really all is some bottomless vortex of a Darwinian end game and we each will return to dust - spiritual. There's an unrealized artwork in my head centering around the nexus of these seven factors and the four traditional elements - earth, wind, fire, water - maybe some sort of periodic table for existence, maybe a deck of cards with suits and faces and long, wickedly complex games with too many rules to argue over. Maybe just a bad haiku. And maybe this New Periodic Table's really about physical compounds: Where do Persian carpets fall on the chart compared with, say, hockey pucks? Schnauzers versus beveled -glass, walnut-paneled doors? Somewhere up among the noble compounds - the ones the world was made of before somebody discovered plastic and ruined it all - lie paper, glass and steel. Some rather large pharmaceutical company packed a little coil of dental floss (a slightly less noble, mid-table compound on the order of, say, cheddar cheese or wallets - into a glass capsule lined with a label and capped with a little cutter lid of stamped tin. They sold millions of 'em. And one made its way to a swap meet because you can't just waltz into a store and buy 'em any longer.