this week, i discovered several things. the extreme usefulness of pillows. the joy of a solid grip on your friend’s stick. (say that five times fast). the fact that my car doesn’t have interior lighting that can be operated by a switch. among others.

so i have many friends. few of them can drive a manual car. this is sad. i have made it my mission, among others, to remedy this situation. the solution requires time, pillows, and easy personal amusement. without these three, driving instruction is a disaster. with them, it is one of the most fun things that you can do. and only one kerb was mutilated in the process. shhh. don’t tell anyone with the richmond road services.

that’s a good point. the way people drive in richmond, kerbs are an endangered species, high on the persecuted objects list.

so we went to the mall. at midnight. in the parking lot. and drove around in circles for a few hours. and i found out several things. driving a car with a turbo is a fun spectator sport. you can be not particularly short but still unable to drive a scandanavian car built for amazons and the decendents of thor without the use of supporting materials of a relatively thick variety. she’s not all that much shorter than i am. must be something in the car. i think it’s sexist. doesn’t like female drivers. or pillows. is there a connection there? i shan’t say anything. it would be bad and unwise for family consumption. but i can imply. that’s safe. look down.

so here’s the sum of my contributed knowledge from this encounter. how to drive a standard in several short steps.

if you take your eyes off the road, you will hit something. likely something inanimate. it will hurt. this is bad.

start with your foot on the brake. if it is not there, you will roll. and hit something. also hurting is possible here. note. bad. well done.

the throttle is your friend. nuzzle it gently. stomp on it hard. don’t forget about it. it will eat you. and your children. even if you don’t have any yet. it’s fickle like that.

when you start, there is no relationship between a smooth takeoff and a smooth depression of the throttle. this is an urban myth. don’t believe it. it’s beyond stupid. it’s painful. almost like hitting something. which you’ll likely do, anyway. go figure. i like my tyres. ground clearance is my friend. more than i ever knew.

don’t touch the *insert expletive here* handbrake. it’s not there for you. once again — no handbrake. it’s for amusing escapades in powersliding. that’s it. no, it’s not for hills, starting, stopping, general fondling of inanimate objects, or inspection by functional attachment. congrats. you win at life.

the glovebox is not fundamental to driving. leave it alone. it will also eat you. with ketchup.

if you’re not having fun, you’re not moving fast enough. and it’s a parking lot. it should feel bloody fast. all the time. if not, you’re doing it wrong.

now you know how to drive. ok, maybe not. but we can pretend. take a bow. *shove*.

i’m a little out of practice. but i hear it’s hot. soldering, that is. and, yes indeed, i managed to burn myself. but only slightly. on my finger. pinky, in fact. and a cardboard box. but success is upon me. i have spent awhile in the land of hot lead, long strings of plastic, and the fine scent of burned paper byproduct. and somehow i also managed to get myself completely tangled in a power cable for a *insert shock here* dell. no, it wasn’t mine. i don’t do such scandalous things as to buy computers running windows or linux. it would offend my religion. really it would. ok, not my religion. but at least my sense of thought. dell is actually code. it’s latin for “the sixth ring of hell”. and you thought that was a certain professor’s lectures. no, indeed. that’s a different ring. i shan’t say which. imagination, i tell you. well done. you guessed it.

suffice it to say that i now have, in my hand, a magical box. it has black cables therein. and takes a seemingly meaningless hole in the wall and turns it into the lifeblood of a technological abomination known as a personal computer. go me. *insert curtsy here*.

that being said, this was simply as introduction to a class in which the necessity of doing such hotness-related things was created. everyone makes mistakes. especially with computers. in school, this tends to get worse, as people use unfamiliar equipment that belongs to other people. there’s no caretaker of your computer like yourself. oh, the joys of heavy, padded bags and touchy new-laptop-owners. the cable was broken. by accident. it was a terrible design. not really anyone’s fault. and the computer was completely wonky, for lack of a better word. but we survived. plentifully. and moved on with the class. that’s where it gets fun.

someone suggested that thought reflects language and another that language reflects thought. you know that object that derives from the rather rear-most portion of the male bovine? both qualify as similar to this particular excremental entity. blatantly so, even. when i pointed this out, it was not taken as being particularly helpful, though, only as confusing an already confusing issue. my bad. i shall put it simply for you here. language is thought. it just is. we think in language. we speak thought. there’s no language without thought and no thought without language. infants don’t think. they react. animals don’t think. ask fido what he thinks of the theory of proximal development. see if miss pussy has a deep-seated interest in discrete inequalities. or the rules of cricket. or even in crickets. the chirping kind. unless fido fundamentally floors you with a well-placed word, sentence, or even symbolic utterance and kitty does a little more than eat the cricket and nuzzle the calculus text, what we have is simple reactivity. that’s it. no more discussion. but it took an hour.

then we moved on to other things. like group projects. i’m lucky. i attract smart people. it’s a gift. they like me because i don’t make them stupid. stupid is contagious, you know. and endemic. this is canada, after all. so i get a partner who actually knows how to do work, is willing to do it, and has no issue with both speaking his mind and listening to me speak mine. wonderful. then i notice how many people have issues with actually getting together and deciding something. but that’s a topic for another day.

simplicity is decision put into practice. don’t forget that one. it’s more important than language being thought and infants being thoughtless. not that those aren’t important. next week, we solve the mystery of the ages. or at least talk about cheese. any questions?