You were described by Advertising Age as an oddball/genius. Would that be an accurate description?

(laughs) That’s what they said, yes, and of course, I agree. I am a project maker; a collector, maker and breaker of things. I’m randomly inspired by things I see or find or hear, or overhear – things just pop into my head and I like to act on it, if I can.

Did you have any idea this project would strike such a chord in people?

No, not really. I started doing the grocery list thing in 1997 or so and a couple years later, I put it online and it became clear that people were strangely attracted to it. People started sending me things and contributing on their own and it got linked up on the Internet a lot more than I thought it would. It just mushroomed from there. People will take anything as an excuse to waste time at work and it’s really good for that because you can click through thousands of pages and be entertained.

How did the idea to collect discarded grocery lists come to you?

I always describe it as a moment of silly serendipity. I was literally just walking out of the grocery store and I saw a scrap of paper on the ground. I figured I’d pick it up, you know; be a good citizen. It turned out it was a grocery list and I thought, “Wow, that’s kind of interesting.”

The list itself wasn’t that interesting (it was as mundane as it comes and I’m not even sure which one it is in the collection now), but I decided I’d pick ‘em up whenever I saw grocery lists at the grocery store. It took a couple years to get up to 40 or 50, but then once I put them online, people started sending them in from all over. A grocery store clerk in Iowa even started saving them for me! I think people just saw it as a group art project and a fun, ridiculous thing to participate in. Sometimes it’s one at a time, sometimes it’s by email or the PO Box I set up, or it’s a whole envelop full of lists; it’s just fun. I’m way behind on getting them up onto the site because there’s just such a quantity now – I post them in groups of 100, and I’m sure I’m a couple thousand behind.

Lists are a good way to organize our thoughts, but do you think lists serve any other purposes?

I think we make lists to save us from going crazy, or to save us time or money, or to help somebody else remember something that you want or need. The cool thing about the lists is, like you said, people just throw them away. It’s really interesting to see the day to day stuff, the stuff that you’re actually doing and living. Whether it’s a shopping list or a to-do list, seeing those glimpses into real, everyday regular life can be interesting and a lot of them you can really read into.

You’re probably not going to be right about them, but it’s neat to make up that story and empathize and imagine what that person’s life is like. You can tell if somebody’s sick, if somebody has kids, if they’re elderly, or unhealthy - or very healthy. It’s like walking into a movie half-way through – you have these clues about what’s going on and there’s some storyline there but you’re not sure what it is. So, you make it up. I think that’s part of the voyeuristic thrill people get out of these lists.

The other thing is, some of the lists just are entertaining. The book is the best of the best; it’s the funniest, the weirdest, the scariest, the saddest, the strangest, the healthiest, et cetera, so it’s the prime collection.

There’s one list in the sad chapter that just has five things on it: kid hair detangler, Ibuprofen, Fiber-All, Sensodyne and Prozac. It says so much about this person’s life: they’re constipated, they’ve got headaches, aching gums, their kid has knotted hair – it’s no wonder they’re depressed! It’s sadly entertaining, and you can get some weird thrill out of seeing that and saying, “Thank God I’m not that person!” (laughs)

At least with a lost list, there’s an anonymous factor – but there’s no hiding your purchases from other prying eyes at the check-out counter! What do you think about the relationship between the store cashier and the shopper?

I find it pretty interesting that most people are pretty private about their list, but they go through that check-out line in front of everybody. I’m sure store clerks have seen any number of weird, humorous or frightening combinations of things being bought, and people have learned to kind of accept that. But they can’t accept leaving their list behind for people to peek in on. And that’s part of the thrill of the collection.

I also know sometimes people buy things are that somewhat incriminating or embarrassing, so they add the pack of gum or something to mask their condom purchase or whatever.

You’ve essentially brought out the humor that already existed in many of these lists. Do you think any of the people who made these lists realized how funny/weird it would seem to someone else?

(laughs) Probably some of them, but there’s a whole bunch of people who don’t get the whole humor behind trash like this and making fun of grocery lists. I want to give people credit and say that when they wrote that list for Kotex, cupcakes and Snickers, they’d have had a little chuckle over the fact that they’ve just actually made that list!

If someone is writing a list for someone else, you can get an insight into those relationships. There’s one where the woman wrote down Coke, milk, bread et cetera, but one of the notes is “if you buy more rice, I’ll punch you” – that tells me that the husband buys rice every time he goes to the store and now they’ve got a cupboard full of bags of rice that they’re never going to be able to eat! The wife probably didn’t think it was funny when she was writing it, but anyone else who sees it would think it was funny.

All humor aside, not all the lists featured in your book are funny – have you come across any sad statements about the human condition?

Some of them really are a glimpse into somebody’s life and it’s not always a fun glimpse.

The ones with the horrible spelling are really sad to me. Those are the people who were failed by the education system, or never tried. Some people have a learning issue or something, but the ones where the spelling is just so horrible really make me sad. They’re easy to make fun of, unfortunately, but if you stop and think about it, it’s pretty sad.

You can always tell an elderly person’s list because it’s written in shaky capital letters and has lots of medications, prescriptions and lotions, and cookies – always cookies.

There’s another one with two things on the list – one is formula and the other is a pack of smokes. You just think, “That poor kid; that’s not a good environment.”

Tell us about some of your other projects, and what you’ve got coming up.

There’s another book coming out in March – it’s a small little photography book called “50 Sad Chairs”. A lot of my projects have a recurring theme: the things other people ignore or the stuff that gets forgotten or left behind. 50 Sad Chairs is like collecting with photography; I don’t actually save these chairs. I just photograph the ones that I find in alleys or on sidewalks or deposited on the side of the street or generally discarded and sort of anthropomorphize each chair, giving it a title that reflects something about it.

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Check out the official Eggs Milk Vodka [3] website and the rest of Bill's projects at www.keaggy.com [4]