Best lists ever

If you know me, you know I love lists. Lists make my life feel smooth and convenient. Little assembly lines. I think lists in literature and film can flow as beautifully as pearls on a string or be as shocking as finding a spoon, a dictionary, a bug and an engagement ring behind the refrigerator or as thought-provoking as thinking about their shared destinies, where they came from and how far they traveled, all little arrows shooting inevitably towards the common target of that crack between the fridge and the wall.

I love common, everyday lists, love ballpoint pens on paper, love crossing things out when they are completed. Even people who don't keep journals make lists, and these become their de facto daily records. Assuming the things they list are things to do or buy, the records quickly become obsolete. (In fact, they are made with the goal of obsolescence.)

My stepbrother once left a list on a post-it note in the bathroom. I don't recall exactly what was on the list, so just assume it was something along these lines:

1.buy this
2.do that
3.or whatever

The funny thing was, above No. 1 he had written "Go to potty" and then crossed that out, so it looked like this:

Go to potty
1.buy this
2.do that
3.or whatever

Then he left the list there, and it looked like that was the only thing he achieved that day. Finding this, I felt like an archeologist of the present. I wanted to frame it, with a little blurb explaining where I found it and my conjectures and postulations of this man's life based on the few records he left behind which I was able to unearth.

I have many of my own lists, happily on their way to fulfillment and obsolescence. (My language list, for example.)

I love the way people try to hide one certain thing in the middle of a list, like when a student at the international school where I worked in the Swiss alps had to phone her dad to request "peanutbuttertamponsandcandy."

What? Peanut butter tampons? "No. Three separate things. Peanutbuttertamponsandcandy."

Or in Anne of Green Gables when Mathew Cuthbert goes to the general store to purchase Anne a dress with puff sleeves, and tries to pass this off as normal by ordering several pounds of brown sugar, a rake (in the dead of Canadian winter) and, oh yeah, one dress with puff sleeves, please.

But I digress. Where was I? The best lists ever.

The best lists ever, or at least the best lists of recent memory:

3. The White Stripes' "Rag and Bone" (from the 2007 album Icky Thump)

Keep going, we're not tired.
Got plenty of places to go, lots of homes we ain't been to yet.
West side, southwest side, middle-east, rich house, dog house, outhouse, old folks house, house for unwed mothers, halfway homes, catacombs, twilight zones.
Looking for techniques, turntables to gramophones.
So take a last lick of your ice cream cone.
And lock up what you still want to own.

2. John Hodge, Trainspotting

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family.
Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars,
compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good
health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed
interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your
friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a
three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics.
Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning.
Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing
game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose
rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable
home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up
brats you spawned to replace yourself.

Choose your future.

Choose life.

1. The 2003 film Jeux d'enfants (Love me if you dare)

Sophie was back in the game! Pure, raw, explosive pleasure! Better than drugs, better than smack! Better than a dope-coke-crack-fix-shit-shoot-sniff-ganja-marijuana-blotter-acid-ecstasy! Better than sex, head, 69, orgies, masturbation, tantrism, Kama Sutra or Thai doggy-style! Better than banana milkshakes! Better than George Lucas's trilogy, the muppets and 2001! Better than Emma Peel, Marilyn, Lara Croft and Cindy Crawford's beauty mark! Better than the B-side to Abbey Road, Jimmy Hendrix and the first man on the moon! Space Mountain, Santa Claus, Bill Gates' fortune, the Dalai Lama, Lazarus raised from the dead! Schwarzenegger's testosterone shots, Pam Anderson's lips! Woodstock, raves... Better than Sade, Rimbaud, Morrison and Castaneda! Better than freedom, better than life!

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