Cozying up to Kara?

With the Amazon Wish List, book/daddy was vaguely aware that one can store the data on an assortment of items you want at the online retailer. But I was fuzzy on the fact that the list can be public. Anyone can log in and find out your heart's desires.

So imagine my surprise in learning -- via Scott McLemee -- that Archinect has compiled a list of notable listers -- a list of famous (and not-so-famous) authors, architects and artists' gift registries.

On the list, you can get glimpses of their bookshelves and CD collections, a peek into their personal tastes. What pop artist Ed Ruscha wants is a CD compiled by the late Hunter S. Thompson that's no longer in print. Deconstructionist architect Bernard Tschumi is looking for a book on graphic designers. Rem Koolhaas is a Trekkie. DJ Spooky hankers for the DVD of the 1973 espionage-and-black-revolution thriller, The Spook Who Sat By the Door.

That last one is so perfect, you can't help but laugh -- and then wonder whether someone has created a few of these lists as tongue-in-cheek jokes. For instance, Jacques Derrida has been dead for four years, but he still has an Amazon wish list. Ditto novelist Kathy Acker, who has been dead for 11 years. She has a brief but appropriate list. Were Amazon wish lists even around 11 years ago?

The status of other wish lists are more tantalizingly ... uncertain. Kara Walker's two items, for instance.