Word: cataloger
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Within the pages of Harvard's two academic bibles-the Courses of Instruction catalog and the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) guide-the monster class is conceived. Save for a week of so-called "shopping," with daily battles to grab half a syllabus, official Harvard literature provides students with the only concrete evidence of the class to come, and many students scrutinize these books, studying enrollment stats and reading into course titles...
...From course catalog to buzz, the word is spreads-a monster is born...
...that would have been foolish. MI5 wouldn't have chanced it. Not like this anyway. Still, the man had the right look about him. The windowpane blazer. Nicely non-bureaucratic." Windowpane Blazer. $225. Too much Bond, I think--a little over the top. So is this, from the same catalog: "Fabiana whistled for the stable boy. He came. She whipped her crop against her boot. 'Saddle my horses.' (Tie-back chiffon blouse. $135.)" Then there is the turtleneck sweater from a "Bohemian aunt...says Dylan Thomas gave it to her at 3 a.m. outside the White Horse Tavern...
...trick of the catalog, as art form and selling tool, is to create an idealized world. On the planet J.Crew, for example, it is always the weekend of the Princeton game; translucent blond girls, clones of Mia Farrow long ago, smile at guys who don't tuck their shirts in, and touch the guys (on the calf, for example) in a lightly intimate way that is somehow proprietary. For the summer catalog, the setting switches to some Martha's Vineyard of the mind that, similarly, will know neither death nor gingivitis...
...whether by investing in a stock just because it has gone up or buying a leather coat just because it looks great on the model in the catalog. Impulse buys are almost always a bad deal. Sleep on those decisions, and you'll probably not spend the money. Credit cards compound the problem by making impulse buys less painful. Forneris' sin was giving away his valuable baseball the day he caught it. McGwire would have been just as pleased to get it the next day, or even the next week. You lose nothing by taking time to think. "The smartest...