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Request | Nov 22 2003

Help, please. I am trying to rename the Oblivio homepage section currently called Found Things. If you don’t know, that section contains links to various pieces by others on the web. There’s an extensive archive of these pieces, going back two years. I used to call the whole thing Choice Cuts, but grew to hate that. I want something not boring but not pretentious. The simplest solution. I’ve thought of Things I Like, Things I Found, and Favored Links. None of these seem quite right. The ideal solution will fit on one line, but doesn’t have to. It doesn’t have to be so simple either. I’ve considered a line from Pynchon: The broken, the spilt world. I’ve considered a lot of things. It’s beginning to bother me.

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UPDATE (Sunday): The response has been overwhelming. Many many suggestions received. I’m going to give it a few more days to see what else comes in, then decide. Much thanks to everyone who contributed. This has gone so well that I’m planning to ask for my readers’ help the next time I need to decide which shirt to wear on a date.

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UPDATE (Monday): It is one thing to claim one is crazy and to write stories in which one appears to be crazy, but now you will see what crazy really means. As of 10:24 p.m. Monday, I have received exactly 150 suggestions (thank you everyone; you are all, each of you, my hero), and I don’t like any of them. Or rather, none seem quite right.

Three seem pretty good, though, and perhaps something can be gained by writing down what I do and don’t like about them.

» Good Stuff

» Recommended

» The Garden

I am getting depressed.

Still, I want to add that I like The Garden as a concept—that is, the idea of a concept—only this particular concept feels a bit too hokey.

Also, Good Stuff is probably too informal, and Recommended too boring.

Plus I’ve resigned myself to probably having to add some explanatory text under the title; something like things by others. By resigned I mean something like, I will do it if I have to, but it still makes me want to tear off my eyelids.

If you think I’m being absurd, just imagine what I’m like when something actually matters.

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UPDATE (Wednesday): A good friend suggested Things By Others. When I wrote back that I liked it, she replied, “This is my job: listen and repeat back to the other what they have said without hearing themselves.” She’s a therapist.

Truth is, I’m not entirely thrilled with it, but I like it better than anything else, besides also being dead tired of thinking about this.

I may change my mind in five minutes, but for right now, 6:29 p.m. Wednesday, it’s Things By Others.

Thanks to everyone who helped, or tried to help. I am a bad client.

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The list as of 6:31 p.m. Wednesday (exactly 200 suggestions):