Monday, April 29, 2019
My cat blog
I saw a cat today.
Wait, let's start over:
Like you I don't know any celebrities. Celebrities are so manifold that I can probably name as many of them as I can name actual people that I know or have met. And yet they are so rare that I can statistically say that there aren't any and for most practical purposes be correct. Let me demonstrate:
I poked around on the Internet and was willing to take one sketchy estimation of one in 10,000 people being famous as at least vaguely based on something. But it also seemed overstated, including, as it seemed to do, everyone who is famous to someone. The number of people who consider someone famous is an utterly essential deciding factor in determining how many famous people there are. How many people have to know of someone for that person to be a celebrity? I prefer the definition of a celebrity as someone who in name or image, and with just a little context provided, would be known to at least a third of any random group, and at least a couple of people in that group would get kind of voluble and excited about just the idea of that person and their fame. In all my years working at a library I have surely seen a couple hundred thousand people. Of those, according to my definition, real celebrities I have seen would number...
Zero.
So let's go with that statistic then: Zero out of 100,000 people are famous.
This makes it hard to talk about what it's like to run into famous people. But nevertheless for myself I have an idea of exactly what it must be like.
It must be just like when I meet cats on the street.
1. I become very aware of them.
2. I am excited to catch a glimpse of them.
3. I get a little giddy.
4. While desperately wanting to be noticed by them and have an interaction, I also want to remain calm and cool so they'll think well of me.
5. If they like, approach, interact with, or talk to me, I feel inordinately proud, like I've accomplished something, or I'm special.
And when it's all over I can't wait to come on to my cat blog and tell you all about it.
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