more useful than shoelaces?

[trochee]

Rob Brezsny's horoscope for me this week:

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Math-whiz Ian Fieggen has determined that there are 1.96 trillion ways to lace up your shoes. On his website, Ian's Shoelace Site, you can get instructions for 47 of those methods, as well as 17 different approaches for tying your shoes. You currently have a capacity for mastering detail that rivals Fieggen's, Pisces. I just hope you use it to accomplish more useful and ennobling projects than his. Be a stickler with a higher purpose.

I don't know if anything I'm doing is more useful than shoelaces.

but it's nice to know Rob B. has my back.

Comments

[q-pheevr.livejournal.com]

Shoelaces are extremely useful things, but adding to the repertoire of methods for using them produces very rapidly diminishing returns. Having a way to keep your shoes on is great; having three ways is nifty; having 47 ways is only infinitesimally niftier; having two trillion ways is absurd.

At a rough guess, I'd say that what you're doing is probably less useful and ennobling than discovering the first way to lace one's shoes, but more useful and ennobling than discovering a second way to lace one's shoes.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

thanks! I like that description of what I'm doing:
more useful and ennobling than discovering a second way to lace one's shoes