co-creating ideas (or please help me out here!)

assembling a diverse group - practical people, experimenters, musicians,
people with their finger on the pulse of trends, nerds, children, folks from diverse cultures,
the more diversity of ideas and backgrounds, the better.

i need some feedback for a co-creation project. first a quick explanation of what i mean by co-creation. in these days of social media, there are a lot of ways that companies are co-creating together with their customers. there's crowdsourcing (which is arguably what i'm doing here) - asking an open question online or via social media, there's direct invitation to be part of an exclusive engagement with the company (what pinterest did very well with their recent translations into the scandinavian languages), there are actual gatherings of users (ala LEGO brick conferences around the world), where the company can take the temperature of what interests users. and i'm sure there are countless other ways of co-creating in this developing field.

for a presentation that's very important to me, i have to sketch out a fictional (but plausible) scenario and describe a co-creation process. the type of process i'd like to describe is one which may start with crowdsourcing, but it will end in an invitation to be part of an exclusive group and ultimately end in a new or improved product/product line, so it will actually engage several aspects of the kinds of co-creation i described above.

i believe that when co-creating, the more diverse your group, the better. i'm a believer in putting together experts, users, artists and musicians, shaking them up and seeing the magic that happens.

i'm looking for LEGO-related ideas, which is where you come in. i have several, but i would like more. i would also like your feedback on the ideas i already have. they are as follows:

~ along the lines of their architecture series, LEGO should develop a wildlife series, possibly even with a tie-in to the BBC, which produces such breathtaking nature documentaries and or/the world wildlife fund (or other organizations devoted to the welfare of the world's animals).

~ LEGO education has some pretty amazing stuff available to schools today, but it's only available in large packs, which not every school can afford. it's difficult for an individual teacher to obtain a package to investigate and look into how she can use it in the classroom without the school having a big, expensive subscription. a co-creation process together with teachers from smaller schools around the world might result in ideas for LEGO education to make it easier for teachers to use their wonderful products.

~ the LEGO advent calendars could use some inspiration - a co-creation process whereby consumers come with suggested stories/themes for the calendar. i know we personally bought two of them in 2010 - the castle-themed one and the city one, but haven't bought one since because we don't feel that the story that's there is clear or will sustain us through 24 days.

~ despite the popularity of the friends series, there is a lack of focus on girls with LEGO. i know my own girl wouldn't want the friends LEGOs. there must be another angle to appeal to girls. who should be involved in determining that?

~ an environmental angle on LEGO. despite being a plastic toy, they are a plastic toy that lasts and that people save and hand down to the next generation. LEGO should take advantage of this and have an environmental themed series. but what should that contain? and who should be involved? (can you tell that this is the one that interests me the most).

so, please, please leave me your thoughts and ideas in the comments or email me directly jknachti (at) gmail (dot) com (sorry, had to write that way to protect from the spambots). please do let me know your thoughts, i really need and appreciate your help! the sooner, the better!

creativity and co-creation

this morning an article with the shocking headline of ted talks are lying to you caught my eye. my initial thought was, "say it isn't so!" but then i remembered that brené brown drivel on which i once spent 20 minutes of my life that i'll never have back. brené - what kind of a pretentious crap name is that? but thomas frank lays out a pretty good case for the pop phenomenon of self-help/business books on the topic of creativity. they're formulaic (like most business books), they're filled with the same stories (invention of the post-it with a few bob dylan lyrics thrown in) and they're not really about creativity at all, but about conformity and societal norms. and that made a lot of sense to me. because i've experienced myself how truly thinking outside the box will get you thrown out of the club, because what people really want is to be surrounded by people who think as they do, not by people who push them to think differently and behave in new ways.

it's an interesting read and it makes a lot of sense to me and articulates the aversion i've found that i have for books on cultivating creativity, without really knowing why i found myself rolling my eyes at them. what he doesn't go into is something i've been pondering of late and that's whether it's even possible to be truly creative and think outside of the box (i hate that phrase)? i'm beginning to think that creativity has much more to do with regular, even dogged, practice than it has to do with any epiphanies. the possibility of developing something unique and which is truly yours or truly an expression of what you'd like to, well, express, is nearly null. anything we make is somehow a conglomeration of influences and experiences and contains grains of them all, rather than being something completely new and unique. even a post it is really just weak tape and a small piece of paper, it's not anything new.

but that said, i do believe in a creative practice, tho' i admit that i do it myself in fits and starts and not very consistently. and i believe in the power of co-creation - where a group of people from different, seemingly diverse fields, come together and put their ideas into one big pot, where they are stirred together and become new and improved ideas. and i'd say that one of my main talents lies in an ability to put such groups together and have magic come of it. but it's unpredictable and the magic is always, always different than you imagined it would be. that's actually the magical thing about magic. to co-create ideas with other people also means being very open and willing to throw an idea into the mix and see it change and morph and become something else that only carries a kernel of what it originally was. and it's there that a lot of people have problems. they're not willing to let go of their precious baby ideas and really let them outside of their original box. i think that's where the dogged persistence and the actual nitty, gritty work come in. you have to keep going and pushing and seeing what happens. just like in real life.

and ultimately, it's why i still think ted talks are a good thing - ideas are floated into the world, consumed by people, who combine them with their own ideas and they become something else entirely. life, it's an act of co-creation.

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always pondering libraries, so i liked this guardian piece by neil gaiman.

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fantastic photos and stories of a forgotten russia.

surfacing

when i was informed nearly a year ago that my wonderful job was going away, i was given a couple of disingenuous excuses. they assured me that it was nothing i had done, i had performed at a high level, it was just a new course that was being charted because "LEGO isn't ready for co-creation." this despite countless articles by business journals and sites to the contrary (i link to just one of dozens). the other thing i was told is that my position was being converted to a marketing job and that i just didn't really fit with that because, "you're not commercial." i ran through my cv in my head, stumbling over decidedly commercially-minded companies like microsoft and maersk along the way and felt bewildered. i numbly accepted that news, because what else could i do. i was in a state of shock.

i had sensed that there was a reorg in the air in the weeks leading up to that fateful day, but i hadn't at all seen it coming that there would be no place for me in that reorg. it left me feeling not only sorrowful that my wonderful job had disappeared for reasons that seemed lame at best, but also that i had lost my ability to read people and situations and quickly understand them. and it has, i admit, knocked me off balance for nearly a year.

over the past year, on three occasions, i've been in the final pool for a new position with our favorite maker of plastic bricks and on every occasion, i came in first runner-up. it felt like i was beating my head against a (plastic) brick wall. the only feedback i've received on any of those losing propositions was that i was "too intimidating." a piece of information that is so far from how i feel on the inside, that i didn't know what to do with it, other than stir it up with the other oblique statements i had been given and try to make sense of it. that proved impossible, so what i did is that i gave up and started looking for jobs outside of LEGO.

one month ago, i applied for a very interesting-sounding marketing content position with one of the oldest shipowners in denmark. as you know, i'm a bit of a ship geek from previous jobs in the industry, and i'd long missed that world. just a few days after i sent my application, i was invited for an interview for a different position than the one i'd applied for - one which had been advertised earlier, but which i'd missed. i gratefully accepted and it went well and i was invited for the second round last week. and lo and behold, i was offered the job yesterday. and guess what? it's a marketing job. so i guess it turns out that i am commercial after all.

a delightful and quick process (getting hired into LEGO took more than six months from application to contract) goes a long way towards healing the wounds caused by those disingenuous excuses about my co-creation job. it makes me feel that i can once again trust my inner voice, read situations and that i am once again seen and valued for who i am and for my experience. it makes me sad to admit that the way i was treated by LEGO made me doubt all those things and feel strangely invisible. this was compounded by running into that duplicitous manager the other day and having him nearly refuse to shake my hand in greeting, even tho' he was shaking the hands of everyone else i was standing and talking to. i actually had a nightmare about that the night before last. but now, those nightmares can be put behind me.

i will still love the ingenuity and cleverness of the plastic brick and i am happy to have had the year i had as LEGO's co-creation manager and my immediate boss there was probably the best boss i've ever had, but i am also happy to be putting it all behind and returning to the world of shipping.

it helps a little bit that the new job is in copenhagen, so i'll get to return to the real world, at least during the week, a bit as well.

MAD: ID - co-creating the future of local food

last week, i participated in a co-creation event called MAD:ID (food (mad in danish), identity and design) at a place called spinderihallerne - a converted factory that's coworking, museum, café and event space all in one. madværket, a collective of local food producers (farmers, berry producers, breweries and even a whiskey maker), was behind the event. they were all there, along with politicians, people like me who do communications and happen to be interested in food (and who isn't?), bloggers, cooks, chefs, designers and events producers.

we were divided into several groups and asked to workshop various questions for two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. throughout the day, we were fed these gorgeous little tidbits of local produce made by local chefs, who had spent a couple of days slow cooking pork bellies and making hawthorne sirups. an area woman who both grows unusual herbs and forages for them provided all of the beautiful flowers and herbs that decorated the food. she was also a participant in one of the groups.

my group was given the question of how to make the unusual and often wasted cuts of meat marketable and appealing to an enlightened audience. we discussed ways of enlightening that audience (who we determined to be busy families who cared about the food they put on the table), as well as down to the details of packaging and even the whole supply chain - as one of the premises was that it would be grass-fed, organic, local beef, slaughtered at a nearby butcher and then somehow made available to a discerning consumer. so, as you might imagine, we talked a lot about the whole rising trend of farm to table, wherein people want a relationship with their food. we actually discussed ways of giving calves instagram accounts and facebook pages, so people could follow the life of their beef, quite literally, from when it was born.

one thing our group was missing during the morning was one of the farmers. we were a group of rather affluent women with lofty notions of what we'd like to put on the table and how it should be delivered to our doors. but we didn't really know that much about the reality of getting the steer to the butcher and from there to further processing if that were required. in the afternoon, we were joined by a down-to-earth beef farmer (who is also a politician), who helped us anchor our ideas a bit more in reality. i think that helped us and we would have been more productive had he been with us from the beginning.

other groups worked on topics like how to expand local food tourism opportunities, since there are a lot of exciting things happening in our area food-wise, at least where production of interesting, local food products are concerned. another group worked on connecting foragers to chefs and i learned that you don't have to have foraged in an enormous amount for it to be interesting to local chefs, you just have to establish contact and let them know when you've found something interesting (e.g. mushrooms). in the presentation round, i found myself wishing i'd been in that group. a couple of groups worked on the question of making obscure cuts of meat more commercially viable, as we did and interestingly came up with solutions we didn't - like starting already in school, teaching the very youngest children the importance of using the whole animal and not letting any go to waste. that makes good sense to me.

in the middle of the day, after lunch, we took a break to listen to a lecture by the utterly amazing dutch eating designer marije vogelzang. i was very disappointed when her lecture ended, as i could have gone on listening to her and being inspired by her for at least another hour. i came home and ordered her book immediately. she has put together the most amazing food-related projects that are part art, part happening and part design, with a whole lot of history and thought and emotion thrown in. she will make you think about eating in whole new ways.

it seems that co-creation is the new black, but it's risky business. you don't really know what will come of it and you have to be open to that. they opened the doors to this event (which was free) and hoped that everyone came with their own particular angle and view on things, as well as a willingness to share their ideas. it seemed to me that they did. hopefully madværket can go further with the beginnings of ideas that were shared and begin to make a real difference for local food producers and consumers alike. i know i'd love to know that the beef (or pork or chicken) i buy was locally produced and i'd go out of my way to obtain it. we all have to start thinking more about the food we consume. the future of the planet may very well depend upon it.

this little savory "dessert" was served late in the day - tender, long-cooked strips of shredded beef and a savory, cool green ice cream. a twist on dessert and a festival of flavors that made me stop and think about what i was eating. we all need more of that in our lives.

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marije vogelzang's dinner at spiers.

i so wish i were going.

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stuck for what to read next?

this just might help.

100 happy days :: day 17

i dare you to say that these robots on bicycles do not make you smile.

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hillary's visit from tech support is pretty funny too.

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we know about co-creation, but how about co-housing?

noticing...

noticing...

...the birch pollen is bad right now. my allergies are much better than they once were, due to eating loads of honey made by our own bees, but the birch pollen gets me every year. this year, with a dull headache that i can't shake (in addition to the usual itching throat and watering eyes).

...that it requires a whole new language to even read about minecraft, let alone play it.

...sometimes, it just feels like you're herding cats. and even if you love cats, that's not an easy task.

...that saying how busy you are and how packed your calendar is as a marker of your importance does not impress me. nor does it actually make you important.

...that i have, without my knowing, suffered a loss of confidence. i'm more tentative and less sure than i used to be. i wonder if this is simply a consequence of being older and wiser or if i've actually truly lost something that i cannot regain. i used to go so boldly through the world and now i feel i tread more lightly. this is both good and bad. puzzling and a bit frustrating. but also fascinating somehow.

...that walking out into the yard and feeding the animals is my favorite part of my day. and honestly, my days are pretty filled with good things, so that must be awesome.

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have a look at what my boss says about co-creation.

(have i mentioned that i love my job?)

and this review of the new lego brickumentary, which just debuted at tribeca, is funny.

30 days of lists: day 20

what's comforting you these dark, dreary november days?

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if you're interested in some beautiful, mint-condition vintage camera equipment or woodworking tools, check bill's listings on eBay!

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and speaking of co-creation, check out these mother-daughter drawings.

good news and good links

got some wonderful news today.
let's just say that you can expect a whole lot more LEGO
here on MPC in the new year.

i'm so excited.
and grateful to all of you who helped me with my co-creation question.
and sent good vibes and prayers my way.
they worked.

and after a run to germany for gin and other supplies,
i think i'm almost ready for christmas.

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inside the life of a bookie.

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an interesting blog.

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deep thoughts from john.
worth reading.
worth pondering.

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and for a laugh,
these hilarious answers to test questions.
really worth a look if you need a laugh.

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a pretty accurate little personality test.
and it's short too, so it won't take too much time.

bullying: nothing will change if you can't discuss it

i've got bullying on the brain. a week or so ago, several parents in our community called a town meeting to raise awareness of bullying in our community. i saw a sign about it at the library, but it was the same day that i spent at the food co-creation event and i only got back to town as it was starting and i still hadn't fed my family yet at that point, so i didn't go, even tho' i was curious about it. earlier in the year, i worked on english subtitles for a danish program about bullying that was broadcast on DR1. while my own child doesn't have problems with it (either as bully or bullied, thank goodness) at school, i know it's a big issue in schools and frankly, in the workplace and other places among adults.

it turned out that very few people attended the meeting that evening. and the reason is a disturbing one. apparently teachers at the 0-6 school had taken down the signs about the meeting and spread the word that it had been canceled. and quite a lot of parents must have believed it, as only a handful came to a meeting where they were expecting to have more people there than were allowed by the fire code (that would have been 150+). why would teachers not want this important topic to be discussed, i wondered?

the issue moved to the pages of the local newspaper in the days that followed. the first article reported on the meeting - three parents of children who were bullied told their sad and harsh stories. the reporter expressed that it was too bad no one from the bully's side had shown up and that there was no debate on the topic, as had been planned, since it was only the bullied side that was present.

but that must have not been quite correct, as the next day, there was an interview with the principal of the 7-9th grade school, where she said she had attended the meeting and thought it was a shame that she was never given the chance to speak. the first article had indicated that there was no one else present who wanted to speak, so i wonder if she didn't even try to speak up that evening.

she confirmed that the posters had been taken down by teachers at the other school, but said that they would have to speak for their own actions, she wouldn't do so for them. she also indicated that the school acts immediately in cases of bullying, talking to both the children involved and their parents immediately. she gave a recent example of a student who had used a fellow student's gym bag as a toilet and was going to be replacing his bag. she did admit that teachers and school leadership could only do something about incidents which they knew about and that undoubtedly other things happened at school that were never reported and thus not acted upon. fair enough that the teachers cannot be everywhere at all times.

things were quiet for a couple of days and then the story of the worst bullying incident came out in the newspaper. the story had been told at the meeting that evening, but too few had heard it. it was a case of systematic bullying over two years, which resulted in the boy in question growing increasingly angry and violent himself and eventually he, as the bullied, was kicked out of school. he was also diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the bullying and spent several months away from school. he's now started in a new school, as it was impossible for him to return. a sad tale indeed.

only one side of the tale has been told, as the school claims to be under a confidentiality agreement not to discuss the case. all of the parents received a letter from the superintendent who is responsible for both local schools, on friday (the day after the article appeared). the tone of the letter is very defensive and, in my view, not at all willing to admit that there is an issue. he claims that they have been "hung out" and that not all of the stories are true and that it's quite difficult to have to just "sit back and take it," due to the confidentiality agreement. the letter tries only to shut down the discussion, not open up for an honest conversation that might lead to solutions and new thinking around ways of handling bullying.

then, on monday, a politician got involved and has asked the school for a written explanation of the events in the story of the boy who ended up with PTSD. the explanation will be handled on a political, municipal level by the division of children and young people. it will be interesting to see what comes of it.

i find it sad that it's such a sensitive issue that it seems to be impossible for the school to open up and talk about it. no one wants there to be bullying so bad that a child is chased out of school completely, but to not be able to discuss it is a tragedy. how can anyone learn from the experience and prevent the next one if it's surrounded by defensiveness and a lack of open, honest discussion?

in the program i worked with in the early spring, many of the teachers were also very closed and unwilling to discuss the topic, some of them actually resorted to bullying tactics themselves on the man who was making the program, ignoring him and not letting him join them for lunch when he asked. unless they are involved in the bullying themselves, i can't see why teachers wouldn't want to open up and look for solutions together with parents and the community as a whole?

it's a sad affair all around and i'm grateful that somehow or other it's not an issue that's affected our family or our child's love for school. a week or so ago, she was actually sick and insisted on going because she didn't want to miss out on what they'd be doing in class that week. so the school is doing something (and probably a whole lot of something) right, but they're not handling this bullying issue very well. not very well at all.

pinterest for the win!

see my pinterest here.

i am a sucker for being part of a group. especially if they make it seem exclusive and cool and perhaps a little bit secret. oh, and if they flatter me when they send the invitation, hello, count me in! so when i got an email from pinterest this morning, complimenting my pinboards, and inviting me to apply to be a translator for the danish version of pinterest, i was like, sign me up, baby! so i dutifully clicked through and applied. a few hours later, i was approved and invited to my first secret facebook group. i think the difference with secret groups is that the rest of the folks in your timeline can't see what you're posting and commenting on. the whole thing makes me a little bit giddy.

but really, what it is is pinterest being very smart. they've flattered their users into doing the expensive translation job for them. for free! all by making it seem cool and exclusive. there is much to be learned from this (can you say co-creation?). they get a much better translation from native speakers (and folks like me who are picky about language and have lived here so long that i'm pretty good at it as well). they create loyalty among users. and they don't pay for it. i predict we'll be seeing a lot more of this from businesses in the not-so-distant future.

a little while later, someone in my facebook feed shared a status of someone from their feed who is pissed at pinterest. pinterest's terms forbid "pin to win" contests and they will go after users who are engaging in such things. and frankly, i think that's awesome. pins should be there because they are things people love, not things people are trying to win (tho' one might argue that you wouldn't be trying to win something if you didn't love it). and i like the purity of it. if those i followed suddenly started pinning shit from etsy (because etsy just opened their doors much wider to shit) instead of moodily-lit figs, just because they wanted to win it, i would be one unhappy camper. i do love me some moodily-lit figs, not to mention triangles, don't get me started on triangles (they're the new circle).

so, to recap. pinterest flattering their users (including me) into doing their enormous translation/localization task for them = score. and cracking down on "pin to win" greedy bastards = score. so it's pinterest for the win!

everything's just peachy!

it may have seemed that i fell off the face of the earth. it's been a crazy couple of weeks. getting lots of work done so i could have a few days off during my mom's visit. plus, we held a big party for 40 friends to celebrate sabin's confirmation. that and a whirlwind day where i worked all morning, picked up four teenagers and raced off to copenhagen to drop them off at a one direction concert, had dinner at nyhavn in the sunshine with my mom and then picked up the girls (along with about a zillion other parents who also had escaped actually attending the concert) and drove 3 and a half hours home to arrive here at 2:30 a.m., fell asleep by 3:30 only to wake up at 4:30 to take my mom to the airport for her flight at 6, came home and got ready for work as usual. whew. it makes me tired all over again, just typing it. but anyway, that's my excuse and i'm sticking to it.

meanwhile, along the way, i collected small snippets i wanted to blog about, but oddly, the words haven't wanted to flow out my fingers as they usually do. i think it's because so much of my work life now consists of things which are secret. i'm an immediate type of person and if i'm working on things which can only be talked about sometime next year or the year after, it gets in the way of the here and now, even if it's not those things i would even want to write about. you get a few secrets in your life and then everything starts to feel like it's a secret. and so my words have been blocked.

so until they clear, here are a few shots of our beautiful party last weekend. it was absolutely perfect weather-wise and the company was top notch. i highly recommend these chinese wish lanterns. they were a big hit. we will definitely be buying them again. they couldn't have been prettier or more joy-inducing. 

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maybe we as a nation shouldn't have stopped drinking at breakfast.

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words do change meaning.

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interesting thoughts on brands and co-creation.

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yes, we do have the best business cards. 

(tho' they take an eternity to come.)

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pockets of common sense, logic and decency are still to be in found in the united states.

but not on the comments to this post.

another goodbye

it's been a bit too much lately. losing dad. having my dream job done away with ("we're not ready for co-creation" and besides, "you're not commercial.").  getting turned down for another job after being tortured with an agonizing wait of an entire month. and now aunt mary has died as well. these are relentlessly grey, cold, dark days. it really is all too much.

aunt mary was such a presence in our family. married to my dad's oldest brother, she raised five children and has countless grandchildren and great-grandchildren. i'm so glad i visited her when i was there when dad died back in november. although i didn't know it would be the last time, it was a very nice visit. her beautiful home on the hill with the views of vast rolling prairie (these photos were taken from her house one summer) and traces of an old indian trail if you looked in the right spot when the grass was just right in the summer or when winter's snows had filled the ghosts of the ruts. you could feel the history blowing there in the prairie winds. and her cabinets of curiosities - quilts, antiques, artifacts. she always had stories to tell, stories that more often than not resulted in everyone dissolving in genuine laughter. she was always so positive and cheerful. sort of a stalwart ray of sunshine in the midst of the chaos of our big family. we sipped tea and ate cookies and listened to family stories and it was always wonderful to gather around her kitchen table.

she was 89, so she had a long, full life. uncle jim had died back in 2008, but she was surrounded by her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, so she wasn't alone. she was, like all of us, hit hard by my dad's death and i wonder if perhaps she didn't think it was time to go and join those who had gone before.

although i'm not sure that i believe that's what happens, it is comforting to think of it at times like this. i can just hear her laugh and dad's laugh and uncle jim's and uncle red's as well. and i hope that maybe somewhere they are now laughing and swapping stories together once again, perhaps playing a game of "tell" (the card game that's actually called "oh hell") with grandma kate. and that they know that we miss them. and that we are forever changed by the time we had with them.

the theory of cat love

lila

lila showed up at our house about this time last winter.

she was wild and her fur was matted. we couldn't get near her.

i started putting out food for her and talking to her nicely.

she warmed up and now she's the perfect housecat.

but she refuses to come into the writing house. i'm not sure why.

so this is a shot of her through the glass of the door, waiting patiently outside for us.

we think she's a norwegian forest cat.

i have a number of friends with whom i have a relationship that i call "cat love." these are friends who i don't see often, but exchange sporadic flurries of emails with maybe once every year or so. they're friends with whom, despite the long periods of time where i don't talk to them, as soon as i do, we're right back at a very comfortable level of closeness, as if months or years hadn't gone by.

i recently had a couple of gmail video chats with one of these friends. we met in macedonia and now she's living in the US. we had only emailed a couple of times in the past few years and hadn't seen one another since she and her husband (he is that fulbrighter who had to flee albania when it collapsed in a pyramid scheme) came through to visit us on their honeymoon trip in 2003(?). but we arranged to do video chats and jumped right back in to our skins as old friends--joking and laughing, even though our lives have moved on and the topics are different than the ones we joked and laughed about in the good old days in macedonia.

i call it "cat love" because it's how cats are. if you're not there, they're totally cool and go about their cat lives just fine, sleeping comfortably and not thinking of you or pining away for you. but when you come back, they're totally there for you and it's as if you were never gone.

now if there's "cat love," there also has to be "dog love," right? "dog love" is the fawning kind. the drooling, overly excited kind. the kind where the more you are rejected, the more you love. i have "dog love" for P at what possessed me. she doesn't even know i exist, but i still eagerly go back for more, like a slobbering dog. and feel totally validated when we post on the same thing (tho' i didn't see her post 'til after my post). i was just so proud that i found and shared the same cool thing she found and shared. i was, in my own head at least, validated in my level of cool hipness. just like a slobbering dog who finally gets a dog biscuit after making those eyes and begging ('cause those kinda dogs are way cool and hip).

and because i don't want to be an idea thief, i will give co-credit for the creation of this idea to my old college friend jill, with whom i struggled through russian class, once drove in my little gold fiero to an audition for into the woods in chicago and formulated this theory. she is my first "cat love" friend.