Though I've always tried very hard never to take my luck for granted, most of my life, I've been spoiled in one way. Not counting a couple of years where my mother was on maternity leave, both of my parents have always worked, which means that neither of them really felt inclined to do much housework. As far back as I can remember, we've pretty much always had a housekeeper for a few hours a week to come in and help with cleaning, cooking, and in the earlier years, child supervising. Moving out means losing, among other things, that help. It's bad enough that my new place has no dishwasher... it also doesn't have people who do my laudry for me. How big of a culture shock this is going to be remains to be seen.

This is not to say that I'm unskilled. I'm a big believer in aquiring any and all skills which I suspect might be useful to me; I haven't had to learn how to cook, dust, or vacuum, but I've gone out of my way to be taught how. Over the years I've made a point of learning what sorts of things need to get done around the house, how to do them, how to tell if your equipment is working, and whether that mess on the floor is a job for a mop or a broom. I can change bedsheets and, if it's a good day for my hands, I can even fold hospital corners. That said, I've never *had* to do things in the sense of "if I don't do it, it won't get done" and I'm acutely aware of how fortunate I've been and how my luck, in this one sphere of activity, has just run out. I'm armed with the skills, and perhaps even the work ethic, but not the habit or the practice. Or, it goes without saying, the enthusiasm... time spent on chores each week will severely cut into my comic-reading and cartoon-watching, which strikes me as an inexcusable reversal of priorities.

One problem is that while I do know *how* to do all of these things, I don't know how *often* they need to get done. Sure, you cook when you get hungry, you clean the dishes when they're in the way, and you feed the alligators once a week unless you they catch an insurance salesman on their own, but how often do you change the bedsheets? Should they be changed weekly to keep them clean? If you spend a three nights a week staying at your parents', significant other's, or hospital on-call nap room, can you get away with changing them every two weeks? If the monster under the bed leaves stains, but they're bacteriologically-sterile ectoplasm, is it worth bothering to get the stains out of the sheets? I don't know these things. And then, there's vacuuming. I wanted hardwood floors so that I can just use a dustmop rather than a vacuum, but I don't know if that's how it actually works. I can use a mop with deadly skill and handle a vacuum with grace and care, but I have only an imperfect notion of when each one is supposed to get used.

The workload won't be prohibitive, of course. I don't mind washing dishes and on the small scale I sometimes even enjoy it -- although, I've course, I've never had to do it day in and day out for a year. I'm not the sort of person to let dirty dishes pile up so, in theory, I should never find myself with a full week's work of soiled plates waiting for me, and if I do, there's no one to blame but me. Similarly, dusting ought not to be too bad. In years past, dusting was a Hurculean chore in my living space, due primarily to my large collection of miniatures and action figures, all in various odd sizes and shapes and which apparently exuded some sort of mystical dust-mite-attracting energy. Knowing I would one day move out, however, and more importantly sick of dusting them even before I moved, I went online midway through last year and bought two great big plastic display cases. Together, these spaces, which it goes without saying have already been moved to the new appartment along with their content, give me enough combined storage and display space for my entire Necron army (not counting two Monoliths, of course) and every lead, pewter, and plastic fig I've ever painted or received as a gift. I couldn't store all of my heroclix with them, but for my own personal paintings, there's a nice, easily dusted rectable in which to keep them. The cases aren't airtight by any means, but they're secure enough that the dust collects on top instead of inside and individual figs don't need to be dusted more than once a year or so.

And finally, speaking of dusting... I'm a little anxious about how I'm supposed to deal with snowfalls. My rental agreement specifies that it's my responsibility to keep my balcony clear of snow, but it somehow fails to specify what I'm supposed to do with the snow. I'm only two stories up and overlooking the courtyard, which will be basically empty over the winter except for being filled with snow (and possibly my snow sculptures, if I feel really courageous). I *could* just dump shovelfulls of snow off of my balcony and into the courtyard, gambling that nobody is going to walk out under me while I do so, but somehow, I suspect that if I mentioned this plan to my landlord I would be met with blank stares at best. The more logical alternative, of course, is to cover my floor in garbage bags and, whenever my balcony gets covered with snow, carry it to the bathtub and let it melt there and go down the drain. The obvious bonus to this plan is that I get a pile of wet, warm, melty snow in my bathroom, and can play with it and make snowdemons in the tub which I can then watch melt. It may not be a perfect plan, but it definitely has some points going for it.

Now, off to sort through my stuff and determine what else needs to go to the appartment. There isn't enough stuff on the shelves collecting dust yet.

As a great man once said: "Ever notice how their stuff is junk and your junk is stuff?"

So you're moving into a new place. It's exciting. It's a fresh start. It's a chance to get out and live how you want to instead of how other people want you to (with the exception of a landlord, of course). It's a time to prove that you're capable, self-sufficient, and able to take care of yourself. And it's time to buy new Stuff.

When I was looking for a place to move in to, plan A was to look at condos. One place I looked at was this stunning place. Sensibly priced and in an excellent location, the previous tenant had decorated beautifully and actually put in real marble floors in most of the unit. It looked like an almost perfect place... except that it had no oven. It lacked even the potentiality of an oven; there was no empty socket where as oven might be meant to hook up, though if one tore out the dishwasher and did some extensive rewiring, one probably could have made place for a small one. The implications were staggering. Here was a man who microwaved his pizza and never got a hard crust. Here was a man who never made french toast on a lazy Sunday morning. Here was a man utterly incapable of properly baking cookies or marshmallows. I don't cook often because I don't enjoy it, but I'm actually quite good at it when I put my mind to it, and living in a home with no oven struck me as being utterly ridiculous. I left the condo and scratched it off of my list, not to even be contemplated again.

The point is, stuff's important, and different people need different sorts of stuff the thrive. I don't need an oven to live, but I very much want one... even more, though not by much, than I would want marble floors.

It is, quite frankly, somewhat astonishing the sorts of things that I find myself realizing that I'll want with me. I try very hard not to take for granted to excellent fortune I've had in my life and I give thanks daily that I was raised in a home which not only never lacked for food but also had can openers, cutlery, a microwave and a fridge for later, but somehow I find myself dumbstruck again and again as I think of something small that hadn't occured to me until that moment. These things range from the simple -- the sandwhichs bags in which I carry my lunches to school or, soon, work -- to the complex and important -- a really good hairbrush, for example. I was fortunate to find a friend of the family looking to sell her old stuff now that she's moving, which let me pick up most of the kitchen essentials, but even going through her boxes, I find all kinds of things which will be very usefl, but which hadn't occured to me. Certainly I would need pots and pans, but this colander, I might never have thought of until the first tragic time I wanted to cook ramen. The list is long and annoying, but I am feeling increasingly grateful for the wide array of Stuff I'll find a use for.

Then we have other things which are of varying importance. For me, for example, a good computer is quite literally a necessity; even if I didn't live at my computer and rule an entire country through my e-mail, my schoolwork requires an internet connection and I have entire lectures which are mandatory reading and online only. This brings us to, for example, a television. I do watch TV and movies, but only ever on my computer; the only use I have for a television set is to watch DVDs if I have friends over for a movie night. I don't watch television on television and I certainly don't intend to pay for cable, and since as a general rule I don't play videogames except on the computer I'm not likely to need something to plug a console in to. As it happens, the same lady from whom I bought my kitchen stuff found herself selling her TV and DVD player for less than half of what either was was worth, so I did pick them up -- I intend to have people over for movie nights, after all -- but this hardly seemed like an essential.

Finally, we have the category of stuff which *feel* like essentials but which objectively (and more importantly, in the face of very limited funds) don't really seem that important, at least in the short term. For a while, after I've moved out... and this is going to shock people... I won't own any gaming rulebooks. This is a slight exageration (since my copy of Aurora's Catalogue comes with me, and I've got a printed-out copy of The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen in my bookcase which as near as I can tell is the closest and living creature in the world is to having a proper bound copy) but even taking twenty on a search check will turn up no copies of a D&D Player's Handbook or Dungeon Master's Guide, not even a Mongoose Pocket version. I will have all of my favourite books in pdf, and the main D&D books are all available quite legally in the SRD download, but I won't have a bound, portable gaming sourcebook to call my own. This isn't out of a lack of desire or love, but simply because of economic constraints... 3.5 books cost more than twice what I'm willing to pay for them, at least for the next few years while I watch my bank account slowly dwindle and my student debt exponentiate. I dearly love my gaming and hope not to have to totally give it up in the coming three years, but until I've got my hands of a good toaster and a bed a Monster Manual somehow doesn't feel like a priority. Again, this isn't a huge sacrifice, since I've got online access to most any book I'd want and free access to the library at the Games Club besides, but somehow on a gut level, giving up my gaming rulebooks feels like a big deal.

If moving out does one thing, it disurpts your life and consumes precious glucose due to the necessity of moving boxes, but if it does two things, then the second thing is give you a new perspective on the stuff you need, the stuff you want, and the stuff you can't figure out how drunk you must have been to get in the first place. That's pretty valuable... it's good to know what you have and what you need, and after all, at least in a materialistic society like ours, what you have is a part, however small, of who you are.

Another of the suprisingly difficult questions facing the discriminating gamer in the wake of their first move is, how to decorate. There's good scientific research showing that the average male, when moving into their first appartment, particularly if they live alone, spends something in the area of half an hour in the whole first year decorating and organizing their living space with the single exception of potentially spending hours finding the perfect orientation of couch and television. I, of course, am not a typical male, and furthermore, I'm more than a little obsessive-compulsive, so a significant portion of the time I've spent moving into my appartment has been finding the perfect spot to put Everything. It's a long, slow, and largely futile processs, not helped at all by the fact that I haven't yet set up all my shelves or brought in my computer desk, and so any placements I make now will inevitably be changing radically before much longer. None the less, entire moles of glucose have been consumed by my brain to find the best possible spot for the other more unique or more memory-laden toys in my collection, and half an hour went into arranging my first shelf of books perfectly so that the spines and titles would be visually pleasing from a distance of ten feet. Call it an example of my obsession with balancing order and chaos -- in a living room overflowing with action figures, each one must be precisely placed to cast just the right feeling of imaturity and sisorganization across the entire room. It's an art, and even a science.... feng plushie.

Consider a handpuppet, of which several have already been moved into my new place, including the venerable Bill T. Handpuppet and my life-sized but regrettably non-functional Mister Flibble. Unlike an action figure, your normal handpuppet won't stand on its own, and so can't simply be left standing upright in any old spot. A handpuppet isn't like a painting, which can be framed and put on a wall, or a book which can be stuck into a pile of twenty identical items. A handpuppet is soft a squishy, and so requires structural support, and needs to be moderately acessible for love, affection, and occasional puppetshows, or else what's the point of even owning it? Fortunately, there's a solution, or at least, there is in my appartment. I took over my lease from a friend who had to flee the city on short notice and couldn't take with all of his Junk, and so much of his Junk became my Stuff, including his large and blessedly shelf-rich TV stand. The vertical posts on the TV stand protrude a good several inches above the top surfaces of the shelves and the overall superstructure, meaning that the unit itself has several short spikes poking up. These spikes are just long enough to stick into the body of a small bow-tie-wearing, death-ray firing penguin. Bill, in comstrast, is a much larger puppet; his torso isn't much smaller than mine, though he doesn't have my broad shoudlers and finely-shaped deltoids. He is, furthermore, a good deal floppier and less willing to sit up straight than my other puppets, since like most politicians he's totally spineless. Bill does, however, have two very long arms ending in velcro-wielding paws, and so, as I write this, he is currently perched on the top shelf of the TV stand, not far from the other handpuppets, arms wrapped around the shelf and holding on for dear life. And, I might add, he has been placed quite carefully to ensure that his eyes follow you wherever you stand in the room.

Shockingly, I do own some decorations aside from handpuppets and action figures. I'm not speaking of such boring items as lamps, of course, but rather posters. Hostorically, I've never put up posters in my living spaces. I did as a very young child, but I found in short order that the problem with putting up paper posters is that paper tears, particularly given that anything that spends too much time in my vicinity tends to get damaged one way or another. I do own three much loved posters, and because I love them dearly, I've never had the courage to put them up, until now. In addition to furniture, with the appartment I inherited a nice big picture frame, several feet tall. When I moved in, the frame held, of all things, a Dumb and Dumber movie poster... I can only conclude that since the fellow who lived there before me was an anaesthesiologist, he had an abiding interest in either 1) pain or 2) things that put people to sleep. It was the work of only a few seconds to deduce how to get the poster out of the frame, and it will be the work of just a few more to log on to eBay and see how much the poster might fetch me if I sell it, but more importantly I was left with a great big black picture frame obviously large enough for a poster, and there I was with a couple of posters which I'd planned to bring with when I moved but which I'd expected to leave safe in their cardboard tubes. Up on one wall, therefore, dominating the wall outside of my kitchen, one will therefore find a beautiful shot of Boba Fett standing, backlit by a beautiful Bespin sunset, signed by the actor who wore the costume in the original trilogy (tragically, he wrote "stay cool" when he signed it, but he's an actor and not a poet laureate). As soon as I procure another large frame, my Babylon 5 "Agamemnon" is goin up on the wall over the computer desk, and a smaller frame in the bedroom will hold my unecessarily-large-number-of-smiley-faces poster.

On a note not-unrelated to posters, there's a great big stretch of white wall right in the living room which is just begging to be filled with something. I probably could go out and buy more posters, or perhaps even real paintings (I admit that there would be a certain appeal to having an original Lauren Harris landscape in my home), the better solution occured to me fairly promptly. The white spot in question is about five feet high and eight feet wide, too big to fill with most conventional decorations without leaving too much wall exposed and looking half-decorated. The gods provide for knaves, of course, and it just so happens that I've got a high quality, four foot by six foot nylon fabric sitting in my closet; once it's up, from the moment anyone walks into my home, the biggest, brightest, and most eye-catching decoration will be the flag of the Aerican Empire. And rightly so.

Oh, yes, and then there's stuff like colour-coordinating the bed sheets and shower curtains and couches and stuff, but that's not really very important.

The move continues, with the seventh box being transferred this morning. Amongst other things, the appartment now has bedsheets (no bed yet, but when it's there, there will be sheets for it), a handful of Discworld novels, a nicely garish shower curtain, and Kosh (the place just didn't feel complete without Kosh, standing there and looking cryptic). For the first time ever, I spent more than twenty minutes in the appartment; in addition to getting out my tools and doing some repairs to the second-hand desk that came with the place, I sat around on a couch and read for a bit. This, more than much of what I've done thus far, made the place feel like I lived there.

There's an old tradition among several of my friends that when the move into a new place, they give it a name. One good friend of mine, for example, has made his home in such colourful locales as the Treehouse and the Tower, while another friend has made his home in Da Dungeon and still another spent two months living in very much inacurately name Mos Elvis Cantina. Clearly, were I to try to join this august group by naming my own home, I would have a difficult time coming up with as catchy a name as they all have. Then again, one might reasonably suggest that Being Clever is one of the three things in the whole world that I do really astonishingly well. Moreover, I'm about to move out of what has until now been listed on Wikipedia and in Lonely Planet travel guides as the Aerican Embassy To Everything Else, so maybe it shouldn't be much of a shock if I were to name the new place too. If anything, the challenge might be keeping that name out of the international newspapers.

Mental note: Ask building supervisor if there are any rules about anexing and conquering neighbouring apartments.

For the benefit of people reading this who haven't seen the appartment -- which is everybody, with only one exception -- it has what I consider to be an amusing layout. The whole place is arranged in a rough G shape. Relative to the shape as it appears on the map in the last sentence, the front door is on the leftmost surface. At the very center, one find the kitchen, which ends in a curious sort of blind alley. As one leaves the center, one passes through the dining room, living room, vestibule, and bedroom, with the washroom and balcony protruding from predictable spots. The shape certainly lends itself to a variety of fun references, the very least of which include the previously mentioned letter G, the golden ratio, a snail shell, numerous species of molluscs, and the Time Tunnel. While all of those are repectably amusing, none of them really grab me the way something like this ought to. Thus, with a nod and an apology to Mark Rein·Hagen and Bill Bridges, and in light of the fact that I'm far too lazy to paint the walls, my new place is now officially christened The White Spiral.

Somehow, giving it an unecessarily melodramatic name just makes it feel that much more like home.

On June 10th, 2004, I made the first post in my online journal. At the time, it seemed like it would be a pretty bad idea -- more or less guaranteed to be a failure in plain view of the two or three people who would bother reading it. Having now completed three full years of this -- less time than most people whose journals I read these days but still a pretty respectable number -- even I am forced to admit that this ended up being a pretty good idea. I'm still glad that I resisted mirroring to Livejournal for as long as I did, but since that brought me an extra reader or three, it was most likely a good move. In any case, three years to the day later, I find myself with something in the area of 20 active readers and, despite pretty regular and occasionally crippling writer's block, I still enjoy posting here.

Sadly, that's all I've got to say on the topic, so to fill the rest of the space for today: things that I would never have done with my life if not for this Journal and, in particular, the last year.

The first thing that comes to mind, of course, are my KP 42 stories. I know that not everybody who reads this has enjoyed those, expressing such varied complaints as "they're too long," "they're too medical," "they've got no depth" and "they're bad." For every person who's told me they don't like the stories, though, one and a half people have told me that they're fun and enjoyable. Most importantly, the stories are a load of fun for *me* to write, and that's reason enough for me to write them. It goes further than that, though... most of my readers don't know this, but my KP 42 stories have been rejected by some of the finest science fiction magazines in North America. No less pretigious a magazine than Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine has personally rejected my work, and I'm expecting a rejection from Fantasy and Science Fiction in mid August. Not all editorial responses have been so predictable; when I sent a full novel proposal to a small Canadian publishing company, their editor actually told me that he'd enjoyed the stories a lot but that their company didn't do sci-fi. Normally I'd take that sort of thing as an "I don't want to hurt your feelings" blow off, but the fact that I got something other than a form letter suggests that he was telling the truth. Someday, I may yet get some of those stories printed, and if I do, it will be clearly attributable to the fact that between the second and third year birthdays of this journal, I wrote a whole bunch of those stories and grew to love writing the character. Never mind that the character itself was originated before June 10th of 2006... I don't bother with details. On a related note, I've come up with at least one very nifty short play and a bunch of really neat gaming material in the last year alone that I would never have bothered writing if I didn't have to fill space (or spill face) right here. Words can't describe how much pleasure I got in updating Clayton Paulo's character profile up to 2006, regardless of how short his new incarnation would prove to be.

Without this Journal, I would never have gotten hooked to etymology. I always enjoyed learning where words came from, but somehow in the past year I've found myself crafting entire Entries several times based on odd etymological facts. Whether it's plumbing the mysteries of persiflage or finding new and exciting meanings of the name of the Goddess, I'm constantly expanding my horizons and my vocabulary thanks to this thing.

If not for trying to find a way to work in a throw-away gag in one post, I might never have coined Forsteri's alias, Aptenodytes the Misleadingly Named. Every god needs multiple names to be known by, with the judeo-christian god notably having nearly three hundred names (and that's if you only count the particularly holy three-letter-long ones). I'd always felt that Forsteri lacked a few more names, and so this was very cheering for me. On a related note, if not for this Journal, I probably would never have conceived of The Book of Contrivance, and that would have been truly tragic.

If not for this Journal, I probably wouldn't have gotten my uber-nifty summer job last year, which led directly to my becoming a published scientist. It was very much the fact that I self-identify as a writer that I got hired last year to, understandably, Write Something. If I didn't keep this Journal, I'd have composed tens of thousands fewer words in the last year (or last three years) and wouldn't have had enough confidence in my word-sloughing-skillz to take (or at least, excel at) that job, and then where would I be? I might have had to get a real job.

So, looking at all this, what do I conclude? Obviously, this Journal's presence in my life has brought about a variety of huge changes, and the divergent realities which could have been created at numerous nexus points had I stopped writing (or never started) are nigh inconceivable. Sure, I'd have a bit more free time than I do today if I didn't feel pressured to crank out a kiloword every three days, but I'd be a different person right now. I can't say with authority, because one never knows what amazing things one might have accomplished along an alternate life path, but it seems probable to me that had I taken a different course and not started this Journal, I would today be Somebody Else... and given how absolutely wonderful I am right now, I have to assume I'd be less wonderful if I weren't me. Thus, today, I pronounce that in addition to being a writer, artist, and architect, keeping this Journal is officially and irrevocably part of Who I Am. This isn't significant enough a change to prompt a new build upgrade, since writing the Journal was equally inherent to me when I became Eric 4.2, but now we've got it out in the open and acknowleged. A whole lot of who and what I am is for better or worse contained in this text. And you, foolish as you are, have been letting it into your brain, which can't possibly be healthy.

Fnord.

In the coming year, we'll see how this Journal changes. I'll be starting to write it from my own place as opposed to where I've been living up until now, and in a few short months it may be getting filled with posts inspired by various misadventures in the hospitals. There's also always the tiny chance that if I get around to mailing out some of the posts I've written here, I might actually sell something to a magazine of some sort... unlikely, but always possible, and it costs me nothing to try again and again. Half the fun will be seeing what neat stuff the Journal pulls out of my head that I never would've known was in there otherwise.

I'm moving. I don't say that in the sense of "I'm planning a move" or "I'm going to be moving" but rather in the sense of "I'm currently in the midst of the process itself." I took ownership of a very nice appartment on June 1st, just a few days ago, and since the 4th I've been moving into the building one forty-pound box at a time. I won't be moving myself into the appartment until late July or early August (I certainly wouldn't want to find myself net-less or computer-less in the middle of the Empire's Culling of the Inactive) but the goal is that by the time my body makes the actual move, I'll have long-since cleaned out my whole room and filled the new place with furniture, electronics, essentials, towels, and assorted Stuff (including Junk). It's a long and slow move, doing things this way, but it is kind of interesting watching the material representations of my psyche slowly fill up this empty space. Moving this way also means that I won't find myself unpacking for months after a single large move; I'm unpacking and organizing things as I move each box.

One of the most ubiquitous things in any move, of course, are boxes. There are boxes everywhere while moving. Here, there are boxes. There, there are boxes. In that room, there are more boxes, and under them, folded up, are, you guessed it, even more boxes. I personally find packing kind of fun, rather like a very slow moving game of Tetris. This box will hold toys. This box will hold old notes. This one's going to hold toys. This one's going to hold textbooks. This one's going to hold handpuppets. This one's gonna hold clothes. And, most importantly, this one's gonna be an airplane, this one's gonna be a time machine, and this one's gonna be a castle.

Boxes are a lot more fun before you put stuff into them, if you ask me.

Boxes are really quite remarkable, when you stop to think about them. You can put things into them. You can take things out of them. A particularly remarkable box might allow you to take out things which you didn't put in, but those are hard to find and, when found, tend to be illegal to empty. Cardboard boxes, being the ones I'm using the most while moving, have the particularly nifty feature of being collapsible, allowing one to fold up a single box and put it -- sometimes even many just like it -- into a single box, which might overall actually be a smaller box than the ones you're putting inside of it. The mind boggles! Clear plastic boxes are useful for carrying heavier objects which might tear cardboard, and a large clear plastic display case, such as the two in which I keep most of my painted miniatures, can do double duty as large capacity boxes (and in fact, when such a case is filled with clothes, the clothes can in turn be used to wrap up painted miniatures for transport within their normal display case). Other objects might not initially appear to be have box-like characteristics can be made to be box-like and used to carry other things; my famous duckie towel, for example, spoken of with such love and poetry less than two weeks ago, was easily and cheaply wrapped around several long and thin objects, including posters, one of my canes, and one of my steel kali sticks, making it practically a box on its own.

The utter amazingness of this last example pales slightly given that I was speaking about a towel, of course. We should not be surprised when towels turn out to make excellent substitute boxes, because a towel is about the most massively useful thing in the galaxy.

All that being said, the real wonder of boxes is not that you can put things into them, or take things out, or fold time and space and fit multiple boxes inside each other to form a single hyperbox. The most astonishingly fantastic thing about boxes isn't even that you can keep towels in them. The most staggeringly stupendous thing about boxes is that by the simple expedient of a black marker, you can turn a box into anything. The first day I got some boxes together, I picked out the three best ones. "This one," I said, "will be the box in which I shall move things. Since I plan to move only one box per day until I finish my exams, these other two boxes... these perfect, flawless boxes... these boxes which would make Plato weep... this one shall be an airplane and this one shall be a time machine." And so, because few and far between are the souls foolish enough to incur my Imperial wrath, they became so.

I haven't yet had time to try out the time machine due to my very busy schedule, and besides, it's extremely difficult to decide where to go when you're as compulsive and tangential thinker as I am. I could go into the past, but what if I change something? At best, I might create a new and divergent timeline; when I returned to the present, I could never be utterly certain that I had returned to the right one. I would no doubt spend the rest of my life searching for the one small change I had brought about, and I would probably fail to find it, since it would be something silly like a single tree in the middle of an Amazonian rain forest having an extra leaf next Spring, and I'd eventually go stark frothing mad and be locked up where I couldn't check my e-mail or watch Boston Legal. On the other hand, I could go into the future, but given the state of our world today, I could never be sure that I wouldn't arrive after the world had ended in an abrupt nuclear holocaust, and arriving there would probably kill me too. All in all, trying out the time machine hasn't been deemed a priority. The airplane works just fine, though, and let me just say that the Altneuschule is lovely this time of year and that you'll never believe what they've got sitting in their attic.

And now, off to go fill up a box. Tommorow's move will be biochemistry and embryology textbooks and toys. I'll be flying it downtown in the morning.

The essential difference between a great wit and a great comedian is this: A great wit says something hilariously funny on the spot; a great comedian says something hilariously funny two weeks later.

I'm not a great comedian. I have a miserable time telling a premeditated joke. Anyone who's had the misfortune of watching me try to use a prepared and planned joke has watched me start laughing at the punchline before I've told it, stutter, or get halfway through and realise I'm mixing up too many jokes. I haven't got the temperament for real joke-telling because I have a miserable time building the groundwork for a joke... I lack the patience and I lack the ability to remain focused on only one thought at a time. My humour is much more in the "spontaneous throw-away" one-liner. One-liners are hard to do for most people, because they take a very quick thought process more than they require a sense of humour or any sort of real intelligence. To be a comedian is to be able to isolate the perfect throwaway line to make the audience laugh without them ever realising that you've just given them the funniest bit. A comedian gets one brilliant and shiny penny... and then spends millions of dollars contructing a skyscraper just to drop the penny off of the roof and see who it hits. All I do is wait for the right moment to throw the penny myself.

The essence of comedy is all about knowing how an audience will react. The true art of the comedian is to know what an audience will find funny and then play up that angle. A good comedian does this exceedingly well, and can set an audience off on peals of laughter with the meerest shrug or raised eyebrow once they've been primed. The trick is, what this requires is three talents: the ability to plan a joke, the ability to execute a joke, and the ability to read the audience's communal mind. Planning a joke isn't something that all comedians do conciously, but if you ask a sucessful stand-up comic, they'll usually say that for every minute of time onstage, they spend an hour working out precisely how to tell a joke or make a gag. Very few comedians make any effort to run their act spontaneously, or at least, very few *good* comedians make that effort. If you've got any talent at remembering a joke under pressure, it's easier and more reliable to have your material ready ahead of time. Of course, few things are more pathetic than a comedian trying desperately and woodenly to work audience participation into a pre-written stock of jokes, so as in all things, there's an optimal Balance, but the premise is sound... most comedians are not spontaneous and survive based on preparation disguised as sudden inspiration. This isn't a criticism on my part, since I have tremendous respect for people who can run a good comedy routine... I can't, since I haven't got the memory or the ability to follow a script reliably.

Me, I'm not a comedian... I'm a wit. Webster defines "wit" as the quality of Knowing Stuff, derived from the Greek for to know and to see. The word includes such diverse meanings as a person who is 1) intelligent, 2) perceptive, or 3) imaginatively perceptive and articulate individual especially skilled in banter or persiflage. Webster does not, ironically, define "persiflage," and I believe this to be a variety of cabbage native to Northern Iceland, much like "kibbitz" and "schmooz." Obviously I'm intelligent and certainly I'm articulate, but what's interesting is that the definition of wit has a lot of words which mean "clever" but no words which indicate "hard working" or "good at planning." A wit, Webster suggests, is an individual who is A) smart enough to have a prepared repetoire of witty comments and B) who is perceptive and intellectually agile enough to lie in wait for the perfect moment to drop a smart-bomb.

At heart, the comedian and the wit aren't so different; both rely on their intelligence and humour to let them make a funny at an opportune moment. The important distinction is that the comedian expends tremendous time and energy preparing their comedy ahead of time so that, at a predetermined time and in a carefully planned manner, the comedic power can be unleashed. In contrast, a wit has a repetoire of jokes available to them and can use these jokes any time however they see fit, but they're at a severe disadvantage in a situation where a large number of jokes are called for or when they need to be funny without a straight-man to react to. A comedian can make more jokes at will, but has to spend hours preparing and memorizing, whereas a wit can unleash a vast comedic storm but stumbles weakly in situation where they have to act without a clear target or co-comedian to react to.

I am now legally obliged to suggest that comedians are Wizards and wits are Sorcerers. I say this not because it's true, but because my contract requires me to make two D&D jokes in every Entry. Don't ask me if the comparrison is true or valid; I'm a cleric anyway.

And, for those who wouldn't be able to sleep ever again until they found out for themslves, Webster actually does define "persiflage." It's a noun which means "frivolous bantering talk" and my French-speaking readers may recognise that it's derived from the same root as persifler and siffler, "to banter" and "to whistle" respectively. Both are derived from the Latin sibilare, which means "to hiss." It's an assumption but not a great leap of imagination to suggest that the word was derived because ancient linguists associated banter and witty speech with the proverbial Serpent and its deceitful silver (and forked) tongue. At its core, after all, most humour is the exageration of mundane events and ideas, and what is an exagerated story if not a form of lie? A lie lies at the heart of almost all jokes... a harmless and agreed-upon lie, but a lie none-the-less. This is probably doubly true given that when the Greeks first invented formalized, institutionalized comedic writing, it was first and foremost intended to be a new and exciting rhetorical technique to make one's enemies look stupid.

So, when you tell jokes, if you want to be a real purist and get the maximum comedy per joke, draw out the "s" sounds a little bit. This, I command! (Or, if you don't get that reference, feel free to make a comment about my name rhyming with hiss, if you're witty enough.)

       The majority of the devices that have been issued over the years are built directly into my body, which makes them handy. I often forget to take my keys with me when I leave the house and it'd be embarassing to die someday because I'd forgotten to get my blaster off the kitchen table. The upshot of having most of my tools built right into me is that I'm rarely in a situation where I haven't got, say, a lockpick, or a heavy metal rod, or a bottle of seltzer water. The downside to it is that it's not much fun to go swimming when you're carrying an extra four hundred pounds of metal that you couldn't take off even if you wanted. Take my armour, for example: an extremely thin and extremely durable armoured layer sits just underneath my skin, such that even walking down the street nekkid, I'm (theoretically) bulletproof, and nobody would be the wiser.
       On the other hand, not every piece of hardware I like to have with me is small enough to be kept inside of me, particularly stuff that's built into my helmet. A human skull is a tiny little thing, and a lot of that space is already taken up by my brain. My main computer is in there as well as my major sensory enhancements, but the relatively big and bulky stuff -- full video display, full audio system, that sort of thing -- are in the helmet itself and not my head. My helmet's removable, and in situations where I have to walk around and not be mistaken for a killer robot -- like right now -- I can't take my helmet with me.
       As I enter the bar, I'm immediately struck by the fact that the ordinary unaugmented humans can see anything in here. Gopper's is not what we call a classy establishment... you can't see the far wall for all the smoke, and even if you could, it'd be too dark to see much. Without my helmet, my normal eyes only get three visual spectrums -- more than most people get to use, I admit, but less than I'm used to working with -- and I slip into an infrared overlay so that I can at least make out where the warm bodies (and their reduced-temperature drinks) are. Nobody pays me much attention as I slip through the door -- just another lowlife in a bad coat -- and I give the room a quick visual to spot my target. I spot him easily, since he's the only heat signature flanked by four bodyguards, each of whom looks to outweigh me solely by virtue of their steroid-induced muscle mass.
       B-Treg, a gun-runner of some local standing, pretty much owns Gopper's, and he does his business here. He lives in the bar itself, which means he can't be easily nabbed outside, and this being a seedy portion of planet, it's not feasible to bring in a big enough law enforcement squad to take him by force. Only a small, unobvious team could get close to him without having to level the whole building. I'm supposed to do something about that, and the bosses specifically requested that I do it subtle-like... gather evidence, vid-catch him in the act of making a deal, drug him, and get him out. Subtle... I can do subtle. All I have to do is get close to a paranoid psychopath, distract his ogres, jab him with a hypodermic filled with Pleasant Dreams (or thiopental or whatever they issued me), and then get out of a crowded hive of scum and villainy carrying said hundred-kilo psychopath over my shoulders. Yeah, I can do this.
       I hum a little ditty to myself as I push through the crowd. It's a catchy little tune called "I'm Going To Beat My Boss To Death." Fortunately, I can't hear myself over the "music."
       According to the local cops, B-Treg's customers aren't supposed to just sit down and say hello, and if they try they tend to undergo immediate and usually unecessary spinectomies. I follow the mission briefing -- up to the bar, put down some off-world currency, and order a Big Shiny Gun. I'm in luck, it seems, as nods and walks right over to B-Treg's table. I'd been worried that he might be with a customer when I walked in, in which case, to keep from attracting too much attention I might have actually had to drink something, and I have a little vial in my pocket of two hundred year old Monastic brandy just in case I need to wash anything unpleasant out of my mouth. The bartender walks back and nods to me... I leave him the coins and walk over to the Target's table.
       "Have a seat," B-Treg says to me as I come up to the table. I'm about to when two of his guards put heavy hands on my shoulders. I put up my hands and widen my stance and let the other two guards frisk me quickly, confident that they won't find where I keep my guns unless they crack open my arms and look in between my bones, although if they were using a metal detector I'd be screwed. One of them does find my vial of brandy and pockets it... I make a mental note of his face, for later, time permitting. Finally, they step aside and I sit. I'm already recording everything I see and hear.
       "You wish to make a purchase?" B-Treg asks me. He's got an accent I can't place -- probably some undergutter dialect from a back-end world.
       "Yeah," I say, giving him my best 'trust me' smile. "I'm looking for some heavy stuff. Plasma, maybe even ordinance." He looks at me speculatively; if he's surprised, he hides it, and that makes me wonder what else he's been selling here.
       Finally he smiles, and that's when I decide I don't like him. "I can provide pistols. Cannons are not available right now. Maybe grenades, if you can pay."
       I open my mouth to say something suave like 'money is no object' when one of his ogres beeps. They all look up and immediately start looking around the crowd, putting hands on bulges which I'll assume are product bought at wholesale from their boss.
       "What's wrong?" I ask. I have the nasty feeling that I've been blown somehow, and almost before I order it to my computer begins calculating exit velocities from the bar.
       "We run an electronics sweep once every minute," B-Treg says to me, looking at the beeping bodyguard. "It's picked something up." My face is blank, but my computer doubles the speed at which it's processing escape routes, in the hopes of finding a few that leave me with better than one in eight odds of getting out of here alive. The bodyguard pulls a little palm-puter out of his jacket and waves it around the room quickly... when he stops, it's pointing right at me, and B-Treg's gaze follows it. Boy if looks could kill, huh?
       I figure I've got maybe a second and a half before they monkey-pile me and rip my arms off. At a speed of ten tousand thoughts per second I evaluate the optimal attack strategy, working out how I could take down all four guards before B-Treg's out of his chair, and then I swear loudly, kick over their table, and shove myself back into the crowd where the meatshields will cover me.
       There's a time to fight and a time to flee like a frightened bunny. Too many bodies are between me and the door for me to get out before the shooting starts, so I do what any vid hero would do in this situation: I dive behind the bar, hit the ground to make the smallest and lowest target possible, and put my hands over my head.
       Gunfire rips into the shelves above me. There's a yelp of pain and the bartender hits the floor next to me, most of his left arm gone. I glance up in time to see something that steals my breath in fear. I tense my legs and pounce forward along the floor, reaching out and hoping for a miracle, and by the grace of the Emperor my fingers close around it.
       Tangenja's Best, worth over a week's pay per bottle. I couldn't have lived with myself if it had hit the floor. What's a booze like you doing in a place like this, my friend? Very carefully, I set it down on the floor, cushioned by a rag lying near me.
       I'd gambled that the bar had been reinforced against small arms fire, and my luck's stayed golden for the moment. They stop shooting for a moment, and all I can hear is the sound of yelling, running, and heavy bodies competing to get out a door. Heat-sense lets me see about twenty signatures still on the other side of the bar, five of them close enough to B-Treg's table that I assume they're him & his boyz, especially given the extra-bright heat-spots at the ends of their hands. I dial up the gain on my audioceptors, but can't detect any footsteps; they're waiting for me to stick my face up so that they can shoot it off me, no doubt. The joy of powered armour is that I can probably wade through their fire until I'm close enough to take their guns away, but it's the "probably" that gets you, and besides, without my much-missed helmet, my skull armour isn't guaranteed to stop heavy-caliber bullets, let alone anything excotic they might be packing. Besides, if my bosses wanted this done carelessly, they would have sent in a tank, not a KP.
       They *could* have sent a tank, but they like to give me busywork. It makes them feel important. 'One lone agent,' they said, 'can get in, get the target, and get out without leveling the building.' If they would just get out from behind their desks and give this sort of thing a try, they'd stop saying such dumb things.
       So, options. Plan A (Get to the door, run away very very fast) is no good. Likewise is Plan B (Leap out and beat all my foes into unconciousness with big metal fists) out the window, and Plan C (Stand up and try to shoot them before they shoot me) looking implausible. Plan D is looking pretty good, but it's dependent on a gamble. hat the hell, my luck's been good tonight. Except for the electronics scanner.... and the crowded bar.... and my getting this assignment. Y'know, maybe this isn't such a good plan...
       Plan D requires me to get through the door at the back of the bar. Getting to the back of the bar requires me to cross the bar itself. Crossing the bar itself means not getting shot. Not getting shot means reducing the number of shooters in my vicinity. Heh... I'm very good at reducing the numbers of shooters in my vicinity.
       A mental command opens up the flamethrower in my carpal left wrist, and I send a jet of flame up into the booze above me, most of which goes up with a satisfying whoooosh noise. I kill the infrared overlay on my vision, which won't do me any good now. Distraction: check. The flamer retracts back into my wrist. I close my palms and flex my brachioradiali bilaterally. In response, the concealed panels in my dorsal forearms slide open, and out come the twin blasters built into them. They lock into place with a satisfying click sound, and on the HUD on the inside of my eyes, two happy little aiming reticles appear. I rise to my feet in one smooth motion, counting on my heat-abative dermis to resist the fire behind me for a few seconds, although my hair begins to smolder immediately. Strings of numbers and letters flash up into my view as my battle computer runs its threat assessment program and paints the thugs with priority markers. The whole process takes less time than it would for me to send a "start shooting now" action potential to my guns. Most of the thugs are carrying small handguns -- solid-slug weapons, based on the damage they did to the wall behind me -- and the four bodyguards are carrying large calibre weapons which I'd really prefer not to get shot with. To make it sporting, I turn off my targeting computer and squeeze off a couple of shots manually. Then I turn it on again, and this time my shots hit something.
       Move and shoot, move and shoot. The targeting computer picks my shots for me based on threat priority, leaving me free to worry about skirting the end of the bar and charging the back door. I don't hit much while running and weaving, but then again, neither do they. Three steps from the door I tuck my head down, bring up my shoulder and leap. It only occurs to me at this point to wonder if they might have reinforced the door with a steel plate or something, which would make this a very short-lived escape plan, but simple wood shatters under my impact and I roll into the back room.
       "Stop shooting, idiots!" shouts T-Reg behind me, and I know I made the right call.
       I've known gun-runners before, you see. I've got some idea how they think. Deep down, they love weapons even more than they love money, and on their home turf, surrounded by flunkies and safe from fear of being searched by local authorities, your average arms dealer won't be far from his arms. I gambled that the back room was his storehouse.
       Smashing my way in here has probably bought me a few seconds while they try to decide what to do. I spend that second checking the damage report. I winged a few of them outside while running, maybe even took down one or two, but they got their licks in too. There's a hole in my right flank from a lucky shot that's leaking black blood, and I've got a few new dents in my armour. Nanorepair is already reporting that it's patching the hole and repairing the filtering unit that one bullet ago functioned as one of my kidneys. The important thing is that my overall combat effectiveness hasn't gone down any; if that lucky hit had taken out one of my knees or something, I'd be in real trouble. As it is, My control gate kicks in and endorphins pump into my circulation, and the pain from the hole in my side fades to a mild ache.
       Enough R&R, then. My vision clicks over to low-light and a take a look at the shelves around me. I don't spare a second glance for the ammo shelves, which won't do me any good unless I decide to put myself out of their misery. Similarly, I don't waste time looking closely at the pistols, since I'm alreday packing two single-shooters and those alone won't get me out of this building. What I need, and what I have to find in the next eight seconds or so, is some grenades or an autocannon or...
       A grin splits my face. Reports that he couldn't lay his hands on plasma cannons were apparently vastly exagerated.
       For anything smaller than vehicle use, it's hard to beat a plasma weapon. The concept is simple enough: a power cell and a gas cell are mounted together at one end of a magnetic coil and, when the trigger is pulled, the gas is superheated and fired at close to light speed down the barrel. The plasma is hot enough to burn right through steel, let alone a person, and these things are rightly feared as being one of the most dangerous weapons ever designed by human hands. I love the things, personally, but the KP apparently put some note into my file a few years back saying that I was not to be issued any sort of plasma weapon under any circumstances short of planetary invasion. Honestly, some people just never get the hang of "forgive and forget," and besides, it's not like any of them were civilians. A good, solid plasma pistol is small, hand-held, and low-powered, and will fire through a bank vault or turn armour like mine to steam. A low-end plasma cannon follows the same principle but packs in four or five times the power capacity. Each cannon is more than two feet long, weighs over two hundred pounds and is meant to be mounted on a weapon platform or, better yet, a large vehicle. A normal human couldn't even effectively aim one of those things without a tripod or something, let alone make it use it combat-worthy.
       I pick up one in each hand and turn back to the door. I have to reroute extra power to my glutes and hamstrings just to keep from falling forward. My luck is still golden -- they're loaded and charged, and then make a cheerful whining sound when I flick off the safeties.
       I don't know what T-Reg was expecting me to be carrying when I came back out of the room -- he must have known I'd grab *something* to use against him -- but the look of horror that flashes over his face makes my day. I slip into combat-speed perception as the bullets start coming at me; I'm not able to move fast enough to dodge them but I can see where they're aiming and automated reflexes help to keep my head out of the way. Slugs hit my chest plating and bounce off, and I'm driven back into the wall by KE. Then I start to return fire, picking my shots. The cannons use magnetic accelerators to fire the plasma bolts, which means there's no recoil and the barrel stays nice and steady. The two remaining bodyguards dissolve into clouds of red mist as I watch, and as they start to settle on the floor I relax and let my automated firing program take control of my arms, sending superheated doom with perfect precision.
       It occurs to me that these plasma bolts are going through my targets, into the walls behind them, and probably going right across the street into the next building. Ah, well, occupational hazard.
       I only have to fire off six or so shots before the running starts. B-Treg's henchling's aren't getting paid enough to deal with me and they break for the door. I let them, and when their boss tries to do the same, I casually toss one of the cannons at him which brings him to the floor with a crash. Before he can get his breath back and maybe even try to get the thing pointed in my direction, I walk over, pull out the hypodermic, and shoot him full of sleepy juice.
       As I radio in that he's secure, I take a look around what's left of the tavern... which isn't much, particularly since that fire I started has spread to the cieling and is making its merry way towards two walls. Admittedly, the higher-ups probably won't feel that this qualified as "subtle," but they weren't the ones being shot at. Somehow, I suspect that this is going to go in my file and won't persuade anyone to lift the injunction against issues me heavy weapons in the near future. Still, that's a worry for another day... I drop the cannon I'm still holding, pull up a chair that's still mostly intact, and sit down to listen to the familiar sounds of doppler-enhanced sirens.

Oh Mighty Sun,
How I hate you.
I loathe you, despise you, dislike you, deride you.
Oh Burning Sun,
you sear flesh from bone,
spoil food, spoil days,
banish pleasant shadows, drain energy, drink life.
I hate you so damn much, oh Sun.

Oh Vastest Sun,
You are larger than anything else for quite some distance,
you are the biggest bully on the block.
Oh Corpulent Sun,
You so fat, you cast a gravitational shadow sufficient to restrain the entire solar system in stable centropetal orbit.
Oh Immense Sun,
large, obese, fat, bulging, swollen, pulsating.
If you had arteries, I would hope they clogged.
Why can you not collapse under your own weight and be done with it, oh Sun?

Oh Burning Sun,
blazing, flaming, radiating,
sorching, roasting, toasting,
boiling, broiling, grilling.
Why does naming your sins make me hungry, oh Sun?
Hungry for vengeance against the source of my suffering!
Oh Callourous Sun,
who heats, burns, enflames, ignites.
Oh Parching Sun,
your are the hottest there is. But not in a good way, in a bad way.
You are not good looking, you are just too hot.
I hate you so very much, oh Sun.

Oh Illuminating Sun,
casting light onto the earth,
banishing shadow,
fighting the darkness,
banishing fear,
sending away the night,
banishing the time when evil holds sway,
is it too much to ask that you turn it down a little?
I mean, I like a nice bright day as much as the next guy,
but really, there's such a thing as too much.
I can't see a smegging thing outside, thanks to you.
At least if I couldn't see because it was dark,
my eyes wouldn't hurt.
Oh Blazing Sun,
I see peace and shadow, and everything has gone dark at last.
Because my eyeballs have melted. I hate you.
This is still better than having to look at you, oh Sun.

Oh Distant Sun,
You're so very far away.
So very, very far away.
Really a rather astonishingly long away away.
Kind of makes the word "long" itself look kind of puny.
Are you distant so that we are not incinerated in your radiance?
Are you far because we could not bear your full glory?
Or are you far because you know what we would do to you if we got our hands on you?
Oh Cowardly Sun,
Yeah, you better stay a million miles away.
You come down here and we'll get you good. I've got this brick with your name on it, you know.
C'mon down here and try to pull this "thermonuclear fusion reaction" crap.
You come down here and we'll beat the hydrogen out of you, oh Sun.

Oh Mighty Sun,
Oh Vastest Sun,
Oh Burning Sun,
Oh Illuminating Sun,
Oh Distant Sun,
burning, lighting, shining, melting,
I hate you so much. I want you to go out and die.
Half the year too lazy, half the year to hot,
half the day gone, half the day too bright.
Can't you get a frelling thing right?
You bastard.
Oh Mighty Sun,
I hate you so damn much.

Most of the year, I walk around knowing precisely where my towel is -- being, at home, in a cupboard, as opposed to, say, in my backpack or something. For the second year in a row, on May 25th, I carried a towel with me while I was out of the house, from 6:40 when I walked out the door to 4:30 when I put it down with my bag and didn't bother to carry it for the rest of the evening. It was a big towel, a soft towel, a towel of nobility and dignity, and it had duckies on. One of the strange things about life is how the simplest things can be found to be multipurpose and useful, even essential and indispensible. Somehow, when I have no towel with me, I rarely find myself in a situation where I say to myself that I really need one. On those rare occasions when I've got my towel with me, though, somehow nearly every situation I come across has a solution directly involving towels. I attribute this in part to humanoid ingenuity and partly to the magic of towels but largely to the miracle of cognitive dissonance.

My day began auspiciously when I woke up at 5:30 am. It took me a minute to realize that if I was lying in bed, I probably was not working to develop a deadly anthrocidal bacteria and I could safely put down the invisible beakers I was mixing together. It took another moment to process that I had another hour before my alarm would go off. Before falling back asleep, I decided that if I was awake anyway, I might as well get a head start to my day. I got out of bed, picked up my towel from next to my backpack, folded it up, put it on top of my pillow, and fell asleep again. Towels make comfy pillows; towels with duckies, doubly so.

I got to school. I habitually arrive on campus a full hour before classes begin, and because classes started an hour later than usual that morning, I had quite a lot of time to go use the computers. My favourite computer to use in the mornings is in a small, private room in an out-of-the-way corner of the main medical building, and this room, regrettably, hass uncomfortable hard-plastic chairs. No chair is uncomfortable if you have enough towel, though... I was able to fashion a crude but comfortable cushion to sit on and still have enough towel left over for a modest back-rest. Then, horror... some oil-fingered individual, possibly a visiting pre-schooler, had painted vast worlds full of abstract art on the glass in front of the computer screen, making use of the computer impossible. Despair almost overcame me, until I remembered the astonishing multitool I had with me. A bit of oil and dirt was no match for my towel, and the God of Windex Himself couldn't have done a more impressive job of clearing the view.

Two hours is more than even I can easily spend on the computer -- at least, on a public terminal in an unsecure location with low-quality speakers, relatively few codecs, and old versions of Flash and Quicktime. Eventually, I had to go to class. Slinging my towel rakishly over one shoulder, I climbed the countless stairs. The staircase was oddly chill at that hour, and my towel kept me comfortable. By the time I reached the top of the staircase, of course, I'd warmed up and even sweat a bit, but one swipe of my towel across my forehead fixed that up nicely. Outside the lecture hall I was attacked unprovoked by an orc, who I beat into submission with a rolled-up towel, and upon entering the lecture hall itself my towel, already curled around my shoulders like a loving giant weasel, was perfectly in place to make a nice pillow when I sat down.

During the course of lectures themselves, my towel proved to be of relatively little use, and I foudn only another dozen more or so things to do with it. I passed it to a skirt-wearing classmate when her legs got cold, loaned it to another classmate whose water-bottle was uppended and got his hands and notebook wet, wrapped it around my hand to put on an impromptu puppet show during a break between classes, saved a teacher from falling to his death when a chasm opened up during the fourth hour of our introduction to pharmacology lecture, and rolled it up into an arm-rest when my left elbow started to feel a bit sore. Lastly and not to be underestimated, when a dull lecture enters the home-stretch in the last twenty minutes and each second feels like it lasts an hour, when all hope seems lost and you know you just have to hang on for a little bit longer to escape, few things make for as much of an easy pick-me-up as having a small army of duckies at the ready.

Lunch began with a Quest, as I journeyed in the company of a wonderful individual in search of a specific Tim Hortons coffee shop, the precise location of which was known to neither of us. The blazing sun was high overhead and the ambient air temperature was over thirty degrees celcius -- I could practically feel my proteins denaturing. Yea, though I walked through the valleys of the very very tall Montreal buildings, I did fear no sunlight, for my towel wert with me; its fluffiness and its duckies did comfort me; it prepared a shady spot above me in the presence of the humans; it de-anointed my head of sweat, though my forehead runneth over. On the grim and gritty streets and in the coffee shop itself, people seemed to give me a wide berth and look upon me with fear and awe -- possibly because, looking upon me, they all felt that anyone who could walk the length and breadth of the city, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

The day continued much the same way, with my towel additionaly being used for two chairs, one blanket, two more pillows, and one flogging. In the evening, after classes, I ironically opted not to bring with my towel when I went to the Botanical Gardens, which proved to be an incredibly foolish choice, as I should have known it would be. Over the course of one towel-less hour at the Gardens, I was rained on, attacked by mosquitos, lightly dusted (with dust, naturally), stabbed repeatedly with sharp grass while lying down in a pleasant-looking meadow, and menaced by two very unfriendly looking Fu Dogs in the Chinese Garden. All of these situations came up in the space of a single hour, and all of them could have been averted, solved, or otherwise dealt with had I but had my towel with me. What a fool I clearly was that, on Towel Day, while going on an excursion which met all the criteria of Going Outside and Having and Adventure, I opted, deliberately, not to take with my towel? I have no one to blame but myself for putting myself in a position like that, tempting fate as I did. On the single plus side, the Botanical Gardens was host to a very cute flock of duckies.

Happy Towel Day to everyone, unless you don't like towels, in which case, you're already suffering enough.