Continuing from where I left off, here is Bookshelf Number Three.

Because the photo is blurry, here's the list:

Tolkien, The Two Towers
Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
The Best of Owen Marshall's Short Stories
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital
The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse
The Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories
Tennesee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
Michael Coren, Aesthete
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Steven Barnes, The Legacy of Heorot
Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel
E.M. Forster, A Passage to India
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus
Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy
Edward M. Cohen, Working on a New Play
Canadian Short Fiction
Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
Kevin Chong, Baroque-a-nova (signed)
Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion
Frances Russel, Mistehay Sakahegan: the Great Lake
Lunsford and Connors, The St. Martins Handbook
The Heath Introduction to Poetry
Joan MacLeod, Amigo's Blue Guitar
Larry Niven, Three Books of Known Space
Michael Ondaatje, Anil's Ghost

Here's a quote from the Cubicle Dweller's Survival Page:

The dictionary defines the cubicle as, "a working environment consisting of a number of easily separated walls containing an optional door". If you are a cubicle dweller, which I believe you are, then this is where you spend your days. A dim space that has become a petrie dish which others come to inspect only to see the progress of their experiment. To find out if you are growing spores. To see if you are multiplying.

That is just all too accurate. Fortunately, the site owner also provides tips and tricks to stay sane.

At about 3:30 this morning, I found myself staring intently at the ceiling without the slightest urge to close my eyes. Argh. So I wandered over to the TV and let my thumb flip up and down the channels. Then I landed on the arts channel, Bravo, which was showing Buster Keaton in the General.



What an amazing movie! Even though I'd seen it before, it was absolutely hilarious. That guy was a genius. The only actor (in my humblest of opinions) who has come even close to Keaton's mastery of physical comedy is Jackie Chan. I was quite disappointed to see it end, since it was much more entertaining than staring at the ceiling. Heck, it would take at least a thousand ceilings to top that movie.

Anyway, this is an aimless blog entry today, so I'll just finish up with this.

Continuing what Zel started, here is Bookshelf Number Two.

The titles are blurry again, so here they are in print:

Peter Loeffler, Five Sketches on Gordon Craig (signed)
Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
Minasi, The Complete PC Upgrade and Maintenance Guide
the Canadian Oxford Guide to Writing
the Norton Reader
William Shatner, Star Trek Movie Memories
Bruder, Cohn, et al., A Practical Handbook for the Actor
Canadian Content
Talbot, Film: an Anthology
Robert Burns: Poems and Songs
An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English (vols. I and II)
Maximizer Enterprise 2000 Setup Guide (by me, in part)
Samuel Richardson, Pamela
Milton, Paradise Lost
Tomson Highway, the Rez Sisters
Samuel Johnson, the History of Rasselas
Greene, the Age of Exuberance
Defoe, Mol Flanders (Doh. Darn Flanderses.)
Gray, the Other Cinderella
Gurney, the Diningroom
King, All My Relations
Lee, the New Canadian Poets 1970-1985
Timothy Findley, the Wars
Prince, Movies and Meaning
Matters of Life and Death: New Introductory Essays in Moral Philosophy
Maximizer Enterprise 2000 User's Guide (again, partly by me)
Larry Niven, Ringworld
The Penguin Wordmaster Dictionary

What were you thinking? That after five break-ins, you would finally find something of value in my car? I left the glove-box, ashtray, and coin holders open and empty. There was obviously nothing -- nothing -- in the car. No stereo. No personal belongings. The only loose objects are the spare tire and a pump, which you didn't take.

No, you just broke in, pulled the wires out from under the steering column and completely failed to hotwire the car again. Seriously, if you've been at it this long, and you still can't figure out how to start a car, you should find another line of work.

And that was a nice touch, opening the sunroof and turning on the lights. I found my car this morning damp and quite dead, you.... you... malicious, brain-diseased little cretin. I hope you get a shard of auto glass lodged in a very personal part of your body that gets infected, turns gangrenous, and is eventually amputated by a drunk chimpanzee with one arm, bad breath, and a rusty bread knife.

Following in Zel's footsteps, here is the first bookshelf, from the top down: Bookshelf Number One.

For those of you who can't read the blurry titles, they are (from left to right):

Hamlet
Anthony and Cleopatra
Othello
Romeo and Juliet
Coriolanus
Love's Labour's Lost
Henry IV, Part One
As You Like It
Henry V
The Merchant of Venice
The Taming of the Shrew
Twelfth Night
As You Like It
Much Ado About Nothing
King Lear
Hamlet
MacBeth
Troilus and Cressida
The Tempest
A Misummer Night's Dream
Richard II
Renée Descartes, Discourse on Method and the Meditations
Jane Austin, Pride and Prejudice
Rudy Wiebe, The Temptations of Big Bear
The Koran
Jane Austin, Persuasion
Frederick Phillip Grove, Settlers of the Marsh
Christopher Marlowe, the Complete Plays
Beatrice Culleton, In Search of April Raintree
Gabrielle Roy, The Tin Flute
Antonine Maillet, Pélagie
Frances Brooke, the History of Emily Montague
Ten Canadian Short Plays (ed. Jon Stevens)
Timothy Findley, Not Wanted on the Voyage
Yves Beauchemin, the Alley Cat
Stephen Leacock, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town

The Vancouver Sun ran two stories today about how Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn have settled in town (see New to the neighbourhood). Two giant full-colour photos and supplementary black and white photos accompany this breaking news.

I'm glad the Sun keeps us informed when important events like this occur. This is the kind of dangerous, on-the-edge-of-your-seat kind of reporting that I like to see on the front page -- not that boring stuff about the police (allegedly) using excessive force and (allegedly) threatening the media or the tiresome escalating military action in Iraq.

I only wish they had mentioned it way back when they arrived, or I wouldn't have been so surprised when I spotted Kurt at lunch. I wish they'd tell us when the scores of other actors and actresses who live in Vancouver go outside for any reason.

Keep it up, Vancouver Sun!

I unexpectedly fell face-first into the issue of 'net censorship this weekend. And it looks like I'm the villain.

In principle, I have always been opposed to censorship. When I think of censorship, I think of a tight-lipped, tight-assed old lady (or man) who takes a black marker to any library book that she doesn't throw on the bonfire. Censorship inhibits free expression and the exchange of ideas.

Having said that, I have to admit that I just deleted someone's comment and the link to their site. My reason? Although it was a perfectly fine (but weird) comment, I was worried that it wasn't appropriate for non-adults. And I have reason to believe that my site is visited by younger types who, in my humble opinion, probably shouldn't be exposed to certain subjects just yet. His link I removed for the same reason.

To me, it's a matter of responsibly gauging the audience and presenting material that is not offensive or even traumatizing for the wee ones. The last thing I want is for a 10-year-old to link to my site from a Lego fan site and get smacked in the face with inappropriate adult conversation topics. If there were no such links to my site, I wouldn't censor a thing, unless someone called me a "poo-poo head" or something else (that I probably deserve).

Now that I've done this, how do I feel about censorship? I'm still opposed to censorship and suppression of ideas, but this kind of self-censorship is different. It's more akin to avoiding the "F" word in front of children.

Then why do I feel like the tight-lipped old man with the black marker?

Went for a stroll along the beach today, camera in hand. This time I started at a beach called Spanish Banks near the UBC campus and walked around the end of Point Grey to Tower Beach. If you're thinking "Where the heck are these places?", have a look at this map. Spanish Banks is the beach directly north of "University Hill" on the map; Tower Beach is west of it.

Anyway, I took a bunch of snapshots: click here to see them.

On a side note, Tower Beach and nearby Wreck Beach are popular clothing-optional beaches. Don't get excited. It was a bit nippy out today, so these photos are entirely 100% free of naked sunbathers.

How many trendy coffee bars are there in your town? Too many Starbucks to count? I wouldn't be surprised. Starbucks shops seem to sprout from street corners like weeds.

In my daily commute, I pass at least five Starbucks on Robson Street (no exaggeration). I especially like the corner of Robson and Thurlow where there are two Starbucks kitty-corner to each other. Add to that the scores of Blenz, Second Cup, and independent coffee bars on the same street. Imagine the volume of coffee that is consumed daily in this city. Everybody must be so completely wired that I wonder how Vancouver has a reputation for being really laid back.

I don't understand why people linger on the sofas, reading the paper. Can't they do that at home? Some are meeting friends over a coffee, which is pleasant, but most are alone on the sofa or in the corner. And there's always the artsy type with the laptop, typing up the next great novel to be rejected by the publisher. And the grey-suited guy reading the business section of the Globe and Mail. And the mother with the stroller, reading in the tabloid about Prince Harry and his alleged pot habit while the little one is distracted with a biscotti. And the unknown actor with the Georgia Straight, intently searching the personals for someone without warts. And the woman with the bifocals, reading a Danielle Steele novel between sips of chai.

Thanks to the blessed coffee vending machine, I can get caffinated for free while I'm at the cube farm. Otherwise, I only drink coffee at home. Am I missing out on something?

As I mentioned on my "About" page, I grew up in Steveston, BC. One of the nearby landmarks is the historic village of Finn Slough, which is apparently continually facing extinction. A few days ago, I posted a few snapshots of Finn Slough and Garry Point, so today I thought I would follow up with some interesting links to the area's historical background.

Finn Slough Heritage and Wetland Society

Tourism Richmond: Finn Slough Tidal Community

Vanishing BC: Finn Slough

The toughest part of being a technical writer is the 2% of the job in which I have to be creative. I have no problem with creativity in general, of course. I do, however, have a problem with thinking inside the box.

If you're a junior whatever at a cube farm, don't let anyone fool you into thinking outside of the box. Trust me, it's just a catch phrase invented by corporate automatons to make themselves feel like the ordinary crap of their job is actually an intensely creative experience.

No, those briefest of moments in which you think creatively must fall within well-defined boundaries of a corporate taste. That is, all good ideas fall into the same marketspeak meatgrinder, where it's turned into an easily-digestible, homogenious paste before being spoonfed to upper management from a gold-plated tureen.

Please understand that I'm referring to companies in general. It's the nature of product design and marketing to render all brilliant concepts down to their most meaningless essence.

So, thinking within the box, I need to come up with a title for a new user guide. Most guides, as you have seen are cleverly titled "User Guide". That's a difficult one to top, but I plan to try. If the product is Wxyz, maybe we could name it

Learning Wxyz

Getting to Know Wxyz

Everything I Ever Needed to Know, I Learned from Wxyz

Wxyz: Your New Best Friend

Wxyz for DFUs

Wxyz: RTFM

Getting that Warm, Fuzzy Feeling with Wxyz

Wxyz: A Reason to Keep Living

Wxyz User Guide: the Paper Thing that Makes the Box Feel Satisfyingly Heavy

Canada.com reported today that Finance Minister John Manley says he'd rather "jump off the Peace Tower than raise the GST."

Sigh. Politicians are always making promises they don't keep.

Can you name this "food" item?

INGREDIENTS. CRUST: FLOUR, SUGAR/GLUCOSE-FRUCTOSE, WHOLE OATS, VEGETABLE SHORTENING, WATER, HONEY, DECSTROSE, MILK INGREDIENTS, WHEAT BRAN, SALT, MICORCRYSTALLINE CELLULOSE, POTASSIUM BICARBONATE, SOYA LECITHIN (EMULSIFIER), NATURAL AND SIMULATED FLAVOUR, WHEAT GLUTEN, CORN STARCH, CARRAGEENAN, GUAR GUM. FILLING: SUGAR/GLUCOSE-FRUCTOSE, APPLE PRESERVE (GLUCOSE-FRUCTOSE), APPLE PUREE, WATER) GLYCEROL, MODIFIED CORN STARCH, SODIUM ALGINATE, MALIC ACID, SODIUM CITRATE, CALCIUM PHOSPHATE, METHYLCELLULOSE, CINNAMON, CITRIC ACID (ACIDULANT), COLOUR.

On the bright side, it has only 3 grams of fat! It must be good for you.

Tonight I will do something terribly, terribly unusual.

Tonight the computer will be off and I won't even look at it once. Knowing you have an addiction is half the battle.

It wasn't supposed to be such an ordeal. I thought, "Hey, why don't I finish that story I was writing?" and thoughtlessly threw myself into the fray.

I guess I panicked, because on the weekend I couldn't put words on paper (or the screen for that matter). The Ready Or Not crowd brainstormed some excellent ideas on Sunday night, but to no avail. Last night, I packed it in. Seaton's Journal was officially dead and buried.

Wow. What a relief to just give up. I went to sleep happy and relaxed, having been released from the chains of my hideous creation.

Until this morning, when I realized what the story was really about. The plot's on life-support for now, but I think it stands a chance of pulling through. If it survives the next week or two, I'll keep going. If not, there's a recycle bin eyeing those files hungrily.

4,500 years ago, the Egyptian pharoah Cheops had the Great Pyramid built. Inside the pyramid, at the end of a long, steep shaft that is too narrow for human passage, there is a stone door. The door has remained closed for thousands of years, but tonight the seal will be broken on a live television broadcast. (Article on Canada.com)

Should some doors remain closed? This strikes me as a dangerous game. I'm not referring to the curse of the pharoah. I mean broadcasting the event live is a risky business, as Geraldo Rivera can attest to. So many things can go wrong in the brief two hour broadcast -- the least of which could be the discovery of an empty chamber beyond the door.

If I were to be cynical for a moment... er... for another moment, I would predict one of these outcomes:

1.) The robotic probe breaks down or gets stuck before finishing the job.

2.) The door turns out to be far thicker than the measly 7.6 cm they detected.

3.) Should they manage to drill through the door, it will be too dark to see anything.

4.) They discover that it's just a really elaborate cat door.

But will I be watching? Abso-freakin-lutely! I first heard about this mysterious door a few years ago while watching one of those educational (and entertaining) documentaries about the mysterious shaft. I was hooked -- I love a good mystery.

I hope they brought Brendan Fraser with them, because the dreaded mummy of Cheops' cat may not like being woken from its nap.

On my way to the cube farm this morning, I spotted the same woman that I saw on August 21. And she did it again. At the boulder by the soccer field, she bent over and planted a kiss on it.

It's not even a very attractive boulder -- it's all angular and pointy. Maybe to another chunk of granite, it's a real hunk. But I personally don't get it.

Am I missing something? Is this a religious observance that I should be aware of? Is it a fad, like pet rocks? Or does she hope that one day, the boulder will be able to return her affections?

Somebody help me out with this one.

I have no more excuses. I need to write something. Tonight is the weekly Ready Or Not meeting, and as usual I have nothing to read to the group. I had planned to present the next installment(s) of Seaton's Journal, but I have writer's block. I know where the story is going, but the words are getting stuck somewhere between my brain and the keyboard.

And then there's always the nagging doubt... is there any point in writing Seaton's story? Or in the bigger scheme of things, why bother writing anything at all? Why not just shut down the computer and go for a walk in the fresh air, instead of cooping myself up in a darkened room with my face glued to a glowing screen? Don't I do enough of that at the office?

I've had three coffees, but all the caffeine in the world can't squeeze another sentence out of this cubicle dweller's brain.

This morning's little PHP adventure is to implement a nifty new PHP-based comment system called dotcomments. The old one is BlogOut, which works quite well and was extremely easy to add to my blog. I'd recommend it to any technophobe blogger.

The problem is that all of the comments/discussions physically reside on the BlogOut server, not mine. Should BlogOut ever pack it in, as commenting systems have been known to do, all of those wacky, zany discussions would vanish as well.

Not that anyone really needs to know any of this. Except that, should you feel like commenting on this fine Sunday morning, you will probably see two "comment" links below. Best to use the first one until I get the kinks worked out of dotcomments.

Cheers

Someone recently found this website by searching for "meat goat project". Is that the next sequel to the Blair Witch Project? In the Meat Goat Project, three film students encounter gastronomical terror when they get lost in Mexico. Scary stuff.

I watched Dragonfly recently. About halfway though, because I was so intensely bored, I began to forage for snack foods. The weird Japanese snacks had long since run out ("...and there was much rejoicing. Yaaay."), which left me a little wanting in the munchies department. As I scanned the cupboard, my internal monologue sounded a bit like this: "Soup? No. Dry bread? No. Rice? NO!"... and so on. I finally settled on the sunflower seeds in the shell.

What a useless snack. What kind of sadistic freak packages these things as a snack food? Twenty minutes later, I had a small pile of shells and wasn't sure if I'd actually eaten anything. A hungry person could probably go insane trying to extract enough actual seed. I wouldn't be surprised if this were one of the CIA's dreaded interrogation techniques. "No! Not the seeds! Not the seeds! I'll talk! I'll tell you anything!"

Hmm. I notice that they have a website with the headline, "Canada's most exciting snack food company!"

"Most exciting"? This country is deeply troubled.

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It's with mixed feelings that I say this. Someone found my site by searching at Google.com for "it's a turnip shaped exactly like a thingy". Apparently, I'm the first site listed in the search results.

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I saw the Sign this morning: the Harbinger of the Sacrifice.

Tomorrow, as you probably know, is Friday the Thirteenth. It is a day steeped in meaning and feared by many. To some, it is a day of ill-fortune. To some, it's a day of evil spirits. To my fellow cubicle dwellers, Friday the Thirteenth marks the Day of Sacrifice.

Of all the rituals, the Sacrifice is the most feared, for if the correct preparations are not made, the consequences can be dire.

This morning, with the appearance of the Sign, it began. A cold shiver ran up my spine when I saw it. So I closed the refrigerator door.

The Sign read, in large block letters, "Any unlabelled items will be thrown out on Friday the 13th."

I must begin preparations immediately, lest my precious food items be included in the Sacrifice. They are truly ruthless when it comes to carrying out the Sacrifice. I once heard of a junior sales rep who forgot to put his name on his bagged lunch. The lunch vanished on that Friday, and he went hungry. He went hungry.

Entire catered lunches have gone to the Sacrifice. And in one instance, ten bottles of lager (although I suspect it was closer four or five... you know how these stories can become exaggerated).

On Monday the Sixteenth, the refrigerator will be clean and pure. A mixed blessing is the Sacrifice.

()

I know what I want for Christmas this year.

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At this point I feel it is important to submit this question for discussion. It is a question that has weighed heavily on my mind for years. I have put it off for far too long.

In support of the Bibble faction, this memorable bibble moment comes from Blackadder II:

Edmund: And in Genoa, it is the custom to stand with one foot in a bucket, pin a live frog to one's shoulder braid, and go 'Bibble' at passers-by.

It is indeed a dilemma. Oh.... wibble.

(Cast your vote in the comments... which will prevail? Wibble or Bibble? The fate of the world is in your hands.)

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Things I can do to inpire me to write:

· Drink fifteen quadruple-strength coffees.

· Scour the news for ideas.

· Free writing: start writing complete crap and eventually it will work itself out into something.

· Think of a really good opening sentence, then stare at the screen until there are more words.

· Put said opening sentence at the end of the chapter/scene and write the scene so that it leads up to the sentence.

· Bash my head against the desktop repeatedly, while swearing at the top of my lungs. (Note: this one may annoy the neighbors.)

· Pick five random words from the dictionary and string them together into a sentence. Repeat hundreds of times until it's finished.

· Read something by somebody really clever, then plagiarize. Then feel bad about it and delete everything.

· Juggle penguins. It doesn't help me write, but the penguins seem to enjoy it.

· Ingest a mind-altering substance next to a keyboard. Check again later when consciousness is regained.

· Write stupid lists of things to do until I get a better idea.

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To the person who found my site by searching for "belly+japan+gallery": I'm sorry but there is no Japanese belly gallery on my site. Just a lot of navel-gazing of a different kind. But I'll certainly keep it in mind for a future article.

Ever have days when you have absolutely nothing to say? This is one of them.

[Insert witty and entertaining commentary here.]

It's times like this when I think it's best just to stick two pencils up my nose, put my shorts over my head, and say, "wibble".

()

Sandwich preference is a very personal thing. I consider it a reflection of a person's personality -- a collage of favourite flavours, engineered to work in harmony to satisfy a person's most basic desires. What you choose to put in your sandwich truly reveals who you are.

So here I am -- I will describe what is, to me, the perfect sandwich. This has to be built in the correct order to achieve the correct interplay of taste and texture.

Ingredents:
? alfalfa sprouts
? green leaf lettuce
? 1 vine-ripened tomato
? 1 kosher dill pickle
? mozzarella cheese, thinly sliced
? dijon mustard (the kind with the seeds)
? Miracle Whip (NOT mayonnaise)
? smoked breast of penguin (substitute duck where penguin is either unavailable or illegal)
? sourdough bread, thinly sliced and toasted

Assembly:
The order of these ingredients is very important.

Place two pieces of Sourdough bread, thinly-sliced and lightly toasted, on your bread board and begin building on it as follows:

On one slice, carefully spread the Miracle Whip so that it's about 3 millimetres thick in the centre, but only 1 millimetre at the edges.

Onto the Miracle Whip, place a 1 centimetre layer of lightly packed alfalfa sprouts. The sprouts will absorb the Miracle Whip at the centre.

Onto the layer of sprouts, place a single 5 millimetre layer of vine-ripened tomato. Again, the sprouts will absorb the juice. Healthful and practical things, sprouts are.

Add 5 millimetres of the thinly-sliced mozzarella and a single leaf of lettuce. The cheese provides tasty structural integrity to the vegetable matter and acts as a moisture barrier between the tomato and the lettuce (never let your lettuce get soggy).

Add the penguin, but not too thickly. This is an ensemble piece -- don't let your penguin become the prima donna. If it tries, give it a stern talking-to.

Slice the pickle lengthwise in 3 millimetre slices and place them across the width of the sandwich.

Finally, on the second slice of sourdough, lavishly spread the brown, seedy dijon and mount the slice on the pickles to complete the sandwich.

At this point, you may now take the sandwich to your favourite cubicle and consume it without relish. I mean don't use pickle relish. By all means, enjoy eating the Cubicle Dweller Sandwich™.

()

In Mostly Harmless, Douglas Adams wrote, "There is an art to the business of making sandwiches which it is given to few ever to find the time to explore in depth."

When I was a student, I must have had far too much time on my hands, because if there is only one thing that I am truly good at, it is making sandwiches. When I make a sandwich, it's a perfect creation. Some people just slap a few things between a couple of slices of white bread and stuff it into their mouths. I suppose for them it gets the job done -- it puts matter in their bellies. But there's so much more to the experience. It's an experience that begins with sandwich architecture, which I think Douglas Adams understood:

There was also the geometry of the slice to be refined: the precise relationships between the width and height of the slice and also its thickness which would give the proper sense of bulk and weight to the finished sandwich: here again, lightness was a virtue, but so too were firmness, generosity and that promise of succulence and savour that is the hallmark of a truly intense sandwich experience.

Such a deep understanding of the delicate nuances of sandwich presentation and form is rare.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to make myself a sandwich for breakfast.

()

Another shock at the cube farm. After the replacement of our good old coffee urns with a coffee vending machine, I didn't think it could get worse. It has.

There's a big empty spot in the employee lounge where the snack vending machine used to be. That's right -- one of our principal food sources has vanished.

I don't know what to say, but that my heart is heavy with the loss. It was a provider of nourishment. From it's glowing window, it offered all the staples of the cubicle diet.

No more Mr. Big or Kit Kat. No more giant double chocolate chunk cookies. And worst of all -- and I have a tear in my eye as I type this -- no more Miss Vickie's sea salt and malt vinegar homestyle potato chips.

We will miss you Miss Vickie. You touched all of our hearts, as well as our major arteries.

()

The "H" is missing from the front of my Honda. This isn't a new development -- it has been missing for quite a while, and every now and then I'll notice its absence. Those two empty little holes at the front edge of the hood remind me that my car had something taken from it.

Where did it go? I always assumed it was just the whim of some teenage punk. Was it for his collection? Do kids show off shoeboxes full of their latest prizes -- Honda, Acura, Toyota, ... maybe even Oldsmobile? "Hey, dude," he probably brags to his friends, "check out the KIA logo I ripped off a van last night!"

I really would like to replace it. Maybe there's a black market in these things, and kids are recruited to harvest them from parked cars in the dead of night. And on certain streets, near certain alleys, there are shadowy characters like that trenchcoat-wearing character on Sesame Street who skulk in shadows, saying "Psst. Wanna buy an H?"

()

You might be surprised to know that there is more than one way to turn on a light. Allow me to explain.

The common light switch, a ?rocker? switch, which is usually inset into the wall, has only two positions: on and off. At first blush (which one may in fact do when a switch is turned on at an inopportune moment), the switch is simple to understand, but several nuances exist that complicate the situation.

In North America, the standard installation of a light switch has the light turning on when the switch is flipped up. Most people take this arrangement for granted, but in many other countries, the standard is to flip the switch down to turn on the light. I personally have been stymied by the reversed arrangement; once when I walked into a darkened room, I found that the switch was already flipped up and concluded that I was blind. Since that incident, I have been corrected on that hasty conclusion, and I have also begun to take notice of light switches more than is usual for an average switch-user. Now that I am aware that other countries have different standards of light-switch installation, I rarely make the same mistake.

In an older house in Vancouver, however, I encountered a switch that consisted to two push buttons: one for on, one for off (to use the vernacular). Having been thwarted before, I decided to call in an expert?an electrician by the name of Armand, whom I befriended during my missionary work in the Sudan. Armand was of the opinion that the top button would initiate a closed circuit mode select, which I heartily supported with a round of vodka martinis (no olive or twist?a Dickens of a drink). However, considering the elderly nature of the device, the two of us decided it would be best if we researched the matter first before taking any action.

After we had drained our sixth martini, for which Armand had a special family recipe involving a brand of Vietnamese vodka that smelled suspiciously of rubbing alcohol, I decided to bite the bullet and simply push a button, and any damn button would do. Staring down the switch as would a bullfighter trying to intimidate an angry bull, I advanced. I pushed a button. A light came on.

To celebrate our success, Armand fabricated another martini, and I passed out on the floor. When I awoke, I pondered the dilemma of the push-button switch as I applied a cold compress to my aching head, and I realised that I could not remember which button I had pushed. Armand was of little help either, as he had been rendered blind by the foreign vodka. To this day, the dilemma of the dual-button light switch frustrates me. All I am able to do is spread the word that there is more than one way to turn on a light.

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To the person who found my site by searching for "addiction to raw salmon": I hope you find help soon.

They say that salmon is a gateway fish to other raw seafoods. You see them every day down on East Hastings Street... the sea urchin addicts and octopus junkies. The worst are the ones who stumble around looking for the next hit of mackerel. It is a very sad thing.

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"... while Windows 98 installs on your computer." Huh. The Linux installer didn't want me to relax.

On the other hand, I'd hate to guess how many times I've seen these annoyingly-friendly screens. I think I've installed Windows (of any version) close to a hundred times. Literally.

I think of these installer sreens as an exercise in patience. It's a chance to pause and reflect on things. Very zen.

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