In late June I went to the Origami Convention that is held annually at FIT here in Manhattan. What a great and glorious thing, truly. I don’t even fold paper and I loved it and I’ll tell you why: you can not be a complete idiot and do origami. You have to have some semblance of not-stupid, so it’s filled with computer programmers and mathematicians and librarians and physicists. These are my people, People! I thrive on nerdity and smartitude!* And they were all so nice. About ten of them (and I) went out to dinner and you know that dead time between when you order your food and when your food gets to your table? There was a container of paper on the table and everyone was just folding away and chatting, their fingers flipping back and forth, oh it was so cute and charming. I have a friend, Snorth, and she’s been folding since she was in single digit years. She made something called Puffy Star Cereal and she asked me to make her a box. I of course went overboard and redid the nutritional information and made up a story on the back about how the Puffy Star Cereal company’s cat (Mr. Twinkles) needed a mate and there was a contest on the side to help choose one for him, etc.. It was ree-diculous. Anyway, it was on display and people loved it and I got my picture taken with it, it was a hoot. Here are some pictures of people’s work from the 2004 OriCon that was so awesome it made my brain hurt.
* To confirm my dweebiness for all eternity, Snorth and I were talking on the phone once, and she was super-psyched about an episode of NOVA coming up soon on PBS that was just an hour of cuttlefish. She loves cuttlefish so much she had one tattooed on herself. I said in a sorrowful tone of voice, “I must apologize, but the cuttlefish is not my favorite cephalopod”.
I rest my case.