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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Trading Up From Red Paper Clip to White Picket Fence |
| 2007-08-24 |
| WHEN slackers, decades hence, travel great distances at their own expense to celebrate doers of great deeds — which, come to think of it, would go against the slacker ethos — the saga of Kyle MacDonald, or, as he is known in these parts, the Red Paper Clip Guy, will be told and told again. Even now, with Mr. MacDonald’s book, “One Red Paperclip,” hitting the stands this week, the Web doth still veritably tremble with his legend: he’s the 27-year-old Canadian who traded a paper clip for a house. The tale goes like this: It was a dull day in Montreal, two summers past. The young MacDonald, his fair girlfriend toiling at her labors, was Lying About the House in their minuscule apartment, thinking about What a Drag It Is to Pay Rent and how nice it would be to Own Your Own Place and Stuff Like That when a thought occurred. What if he could trade a red paper clip for a house? Not in one swap but in a bunch of swaps, as in the game Bigger and Better, which he did play when he was but a youth. And lo, on only the 14th trade, after he bartered such treasures as a moving van and an afternoon with Alice Cooper while dealing with a media torrent, the farm town of Kipling (Pop. 973), on the prairie of western Canada, does buy and give Mr. MacDonald a house. The publicity may help the town’s fortunes, the townspeople do think. The price of the house the young real estate warrior refuses to divulge, and the town graybeards indulge him in this, until a Dragon From the East doth come and give them a Look such as is not normally seen in Canada. .... The first trades (from paper clip to fish pen to handmade ceramic doorknob to camp stove to 1,000-watt generator) brought Mr. MacDonald’s Web site 20 to 30 hits a day. Then he wrote a note to the Web site boingboing.net. The day it was posted Mr. MacDonald’s site had over 100,000 hits. Eight months later, after he had swapped an afternoon in a recording studio for a year’s rent in a Phoenix condo, members of the news media were calling him hourly. His last trade item, a speaking role in a movie produced by Corbin Bernsen (offered by Mr. Bernsen for a Kiss snow globe), led to the offer of the house in Kipling. NICE TO SEE SOMEONE BEING CREATIVE. MAKES ME WONDER WHAT I COULD GET FOR TRADING RANDOM STUFF FROM MY HOUSE. WANNA TRADE? |
| Posted by:NOLA |
| #1 Actually, a very creative approach. Unlike the vicious idiot who became a soldier to jump start his career at the New Republic, Mr. MacDonald gave people things they valued, taking in exchange that which they valued less. That in the end he got what he most valued -- a beloved wife, a little house, and his first published book -- does not take away from the the fact that he left small happinesses behind every step of his journey. Neither the clearly earnest and hard working New York Times reporter, nor such vicious idiots as that New Republic writer who joined the Army to give his output more gravitas even as he spun his poisoned lies, will ever understand the difference between their choices and his. Thanks, NOLA! |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-08-24 09:58 |