It’s a little hard to take the electoral process seriously with people like Puff Daddy reminding me to “Vote or Die.”

There he is on television, along with a gaggle of celebrity friends, urging me to vote. This is done mostly through t-shirts bearing the threatening slogan, but also through hip-hop music, which we all know is the magic key to young peoples’ minds.

Is this what the founding fathers had in mind? Political advice from a man who changes his name every two years, but still can’t manage to get rid of the word “Puff”?

Vote or die is right, I say. But only insofar as it’s taken to mean, “Don’t do both.” We have enough trouble with near-dead voters in Florida as it is. I know it’s Halloween and all, but we don’t need no senile zombie disenfranchisement.

Ah, but why do I make light in the face of such momentous events? Is because I can’t contribute anything worthwhile to the fair and flowing stream of thoughtful commentary on the presidential race? HA! Of course not. I have many arguments sitting right here beside my desk waiting to be thought out. _Right…over…here…_ (runs away with laptop under his arm).

I have once been chided for providing political observations in this space, and I do not intend to be chided again. It is boring, I was told. Boring boring boring.

Plus, really, there are three-hundred-and-seventy-two billion political writers out there already. There’s no need to add another drop to the already swollen waters.

Basically it breaks down like this: when the Jehova’s witnesses came to my door wanting to discuss abstinence and Jesus, I said no-thanks-I’m-Jewish and my-girlfriend-lives-here-though-she-might-want-to-talk. When the Cub Scouts (OK, just one, actually) came to my door wanting to sell me a holiday wreath, I said no-thanks-I’m-Jewish but the-neighbors-are-Lutheran-and-I-bet-they-want-one (I was later informed that wreaths are religion-spanning; news to me).

When a young, hip-looking man with a goatee came to my door asking for contributions to the __________ National Committee I said no thanks. That’s all, just no thanks.

I don’t find myself motivated to participate in nitty-gritties of the democratic process. Just like I don’t see much reason to play along with the whole Christmas decorations fundraiser racket. I figure, if I don’t buy a wreath, millions of other people will ensure that sufficient wreath buying does in fact take place. Christmas will go on without me (oh, sorry; The Holidays will go one without me).

Does this mean I spurn the glorious civic act of voting in favor of an apathetic know-nothing attitude? By all means, sort of! Well, no. I voted the first chance I got after I turned 18. I voted again in 2002. And I will vote again in ’04 (not sure how).

I treasure my vote, really. I would gladly purchase and wear one of Mr. Daddy’s ‘Vote or Die’ t-shirts (although I think ‘Vote and Die’ would be a lot funnier). But the last thing I want is for my vote to be a life or death matter. I want to be on the winning or losing side of a large margin. Something where my decision couldn’t possibly have made the difference.

And isn’t that the whole point of a democracy, after all? I mean, the nice thing about voting is that (at least in theory), your vote never makes _all_ the difference. It’s the distribution of individual responsibility. Otherwise we’d just have a random person choose every four years, and 7 out of 10 politicians would be WrestleMania stars. (By the way, have you seen Jesse Ventura lately?)

No one wants to go to the polls thinking that there’s going to be a 50-50 tie, and their vote will break it. And lord (the lord of ‘holiday’ wreaths) knows we wouldn’t be very comfortable if democracy worked that way.

Democracy provides shelter in the crowd. It makes difficult decisions anonymous and compromised. And that’s how it should be. It’s set up precisely so you aren’t faced with the choice between Vote or Die.

You can vote. You _should_ vote. But if for some reason you fail to get to the polls on election day, don’t go doing anything drastic.

From the end of my street I can see all the skyscrapers of Minneapolis. If that isn’t evidence of what a big small city Minneapolis is, nothing ever will be. There are about four or five real skyscrapers in that city across the river. The whole mass of big, shiny glass buildings occupies only a few degrees on the horizon.

Think of it this way: fall has not yet taken all the leaves off the oaks and elms that hang down low over the intersection of Fulham and Hendon. That leaves me with a small window to the west, about the size of a compact car. And yet through it the whole city is visible.

There’s a reason you don’t often see postcard depicting the great Midwestern skyline of Minneapolis. But we’re working on it; lots of construction going on. Mostly lofts, but some big buildings, too. Soon we’ll be the largest metropolis in the Midwest north of Chicago.

OK, we’re already that. And also we’re the only metropolis in the Midwest north of Chicago. And we will never surpass the windy city. The Sears tower alone would make our loftiest edifice tremble and squirm.

Not that I mind. There’s nothing wrong with being mid-sized. We can legitimately pretend to be big, and legitimately pretend to be small. Neither is accurate but neither is incorrect. For what it’s worth I like being able to see both edges of the city without moving my head. Makes it easier to get oriented.

If you’re ever in Minneapolis, don’t open your eyes until you’re standing to the northeast. That’s the best view, in my view, although that’s where I most frequently view it from. So maybe I’m not trustworthy. Or maybe I’m _extra_ trustworthy. You decide.

Last night the buildings sat blinking, silently, and I realized there’s nothing more empty or alone than an empty city. How many human beings could be counted inside those swaying towers at 9:30 at night? 500? 2000?

And at 3:47 in the morning? 20? 7?

Think of all that empty office space; stories upon stories of cold, dead volume. And from my street, between the oak branches, it all looks so small and fragile. As if it really were made of glass.

By contrast the houses on my block show all kinds of signs of life. Rooms shimmer in the blue glow of televisions. Chimneys cough politely, like babies, in little puffs of white. Bathroom windows bead up with steam; putting the kids to bed.

And what do we look like to someone at the top of the IDS tower? There’s nothing to obstruct the view up there, except perhaps an occasional cloud. But last night was flawless; one of those October skies made for full moons and bare branches. So what do they see?

I know what they see. And you do to, if you’ve ever been on a plane at night. It’s a mossy bed of yellow lights, growing haphazardly mold. From the towers of Minneapolis my block is, at best, a ridge of darkness. At worst it’s indistinguishable from the others.

How many people are in the houses on this block at 9:30 pm? 50? 100? So why is it we are the symbol of life and vitality, while poor old Minneapolis must not only stand empty, but also stand for emptiness.

Right, sorry. Why, beside because I said so?

They are so quiet, those skyscrapers. They sleep so peacefully. You’d think for all that cost and all that trouble they’d keep them running round the clock. But no, the tallest buildings in the upper Midwest shut their eyes just like the smallest.

And who knows, maybe looking down on us from way up there, we all look peaceful too. Twinkling away the last few hours before we go to sleep, and only the darkness and the streetlights remain.

Oh how I wish Garrison Keillor were my puppy. I would feed him and take him for walks and build him a doghouse of scrap wood and bent nails. In return, he would love me and smile at me in that expressionless way of his. On Saturdays he would tell me jokes and sing old folk songs with his floppy jowls bouncing rhythmically.

Until last Friday, my only encounter with Mr. Keillor had been through the speakers of my car radio, where his breathy, sighing voice found me on my way to other stations. It is true, I am a Minnesotan, born and raised (but not bred). Yet contrary to popular belief, all us Saint Paulites do not each Sabbath eve gather round the old Fitzgerald Theater stage to hear told tales of Woebegone.

We accept those strong women and above-average children as our mascots, proxies of ourselves to an outside world that knows us only for our celebrities. But we do not lie sleeping with our companions in prairie homes. We don’t all speak of winter in reverent tones. The lutefisk swims not atop our stoves. And what’s this about Lutherans?

I’ve heard it said that “A Prairie Home Companion” flirts with boredom. I think perhaps even the faithful followers of the long-running show might accede that point. Keillor’s voice was made for radio. But it was also made for a hypnotist’s office where the hypnotist’s goal is to lure you into a deep sleep. Garrison Keilor could make a CD in which he mumbles gibberish for 78 minutes and make millions selling it to parents of newborns.

“Goo goo,” he says. Breath. “Gah…” Sigh. “Gah.”

Friday night was my first time seeing the show. Well, actually it was a preview show; a dress rehearsal. This was because a) Saturday’s show was sold out, b) preview tickets are cheaper c) I made a mistake. Mix and match.

Nevertheless, it was a complete performance. Music, singing, accordion playing, two mandolin players, and old-timey radio sound effects. “A Prairie Home Companion” is not boring, let me start with that.

That robotic, synchronized clapping you hear on the radio is sincere, though it may not seem it. Keillor stands in the middle of the stage, a tall, stooped-over man, doing a slow-motion stand up routine, and the audience eats it up.

But if you’ve never seem him perform live before, the most interesting thing about the show is the complete blankness in Keillor’s face. Maybe it’s those big cheeks of his, but I think I saw him smile only once throughout the show, and even then it looked like someone was pushing up the corners of his mouth with chopsticks.

He is a funny, funny man, but his face is a lump of warm Playdoh.

Much of Keillor’s monologue this weekend addressed an issue that is top-of-mind for many of us Minnesotans: the looming arrival of hated, suffocating winter.

The last two weeks here have been, as the man said, like something from a murder mystery title sequence. The image that comes to mind is of an Edward Gory illustration, soaked in vinegar. Friday I looked out the window at work at 2 p.m. and it looked exactly as it had at six that morning: dark. Completely dark.

Keillor does a good job of capturing the you’re-not-one-of-us feeling that winter gives to many Minnesotans. “This is the time when people who aren’t from here leave,” he said (quotes used to indicate he was speaking, not that I’m accurately relaying what he said).

Winter, for all its crushing doom, has a nice way of getting everyone to pick teams: you’re either with us (humans) or against us (nature). Most people pick how you’d expect, although there are some who side with winter. But most of those people don’t make it, so, you know, not to worry.

Saturday I had planned on preparing the house for winter (weather-stripping, window-wrapping, etc.), but in the end all I could muster was one painted radiator. Still having problems with water coming through the kitchen ceiling, and the tree in the backyard has developed a dangerous looking baseball-sized crack. But I’ll save that for a things-that-are-broken update later in the week.

Sunday was God’s way of making Garrison Keillor look foolish: it was sixty-five degrees and sunny. A perfect day for a walk, or two or three. On the way home we stopped by the hardware store and picked up two pumpkins, which my girlfriend likes for their decorative value. I can only see them as they’ll look three weeks from now, rotting and slimy, begging my not to touch them. And of course I’ll be the one who has to throw them away, great dripping snot-balls that they will have become.

But for now, they’re just pretty. Pleasant autumn decorations, like colored leaves and apples and cinnamon. If you’re a nice Minnesotan child, dressed up for trick-or-treating, they say “Welcome to this home, we have candy.”

But, as the droop-jowled Keillor said, if you’re from anywhere else, the pumpkins say, “Get out. Go home. Migrate.”

I.F.S has passed. He was about six months old.

What his life lacked in length, it made up for in fullness. Toward the end he had a large tank with a water filter. He had a neon lump of molded plastic in the shape of some kind of coral formation. He was, by all accounts, a happy fish.

I want to apologize now, because I think over time I have treated the issue of my brother’s fish(es) with insufficient compassion. In my previous comments on this site and privately I was crass and disrespectful; I behaved as though my brother’s pet – the only pet he has ever had – was nothing more than an occasion for humor.

And though I won’t deny he was a funny fish, he was also so much more than that. He struggled bravely against fin rot, which caused his little fins to curl and flake. Yet he swam (or wriggled) gracefully through the murky waters of his unclean bowl (this was before the tank).

He was smart. As my brother pointed out to me at least twice, he could easily predict – with incredible accuracy – the times when he would be fed. All one had to do was lay a hand on the food canister, and I.F.S. would come flopping to the top of the tank.

What did he accomplish in his time here? It’s hard to say. But we mustn’t measure a fish’s life in mere dollars, awards, or diplomas. He lived simply, and so at the very least it can be said that he simply lived. Not a bad epitaph.

And, just as importantly, I.F.S. played a major role in the development of a child. He gave my brother an outlet for his incredibly weird naming ideas. If not for that dearly-departed beta fish, he would have grown up and found himself, at age 46, a successful businessman with a family. But unfulfilled.

Because somewhere in the deep, still waters of his heart, the desire would remain to use the name International Fish Station. For something … _anything_. Having had it rejected by his wife for the name of their firstborn, having seen his superiors at work pass it over multiple times as a suggestion for a new brand, he would fall into despair.

“Why doesn’t anyone understand?” he would wonder. “It just makes so much _sense_…”

But none of that will happen (probably). Because the name, like the fish, found a way into our hearts. And there it rests, gurgling, “Remeeeember meeeee…”

We will, I.F.S., we will. You will always be a special fish.

When you scavenge for newspapers in the cafeteria at work, you’re not bound to get the best pickings. There’s always an abundance of sports sections lying around, but though I’ve tried, I just can’t get into reading them. The only games I might care about are the ones I watched on TV the night before (in this case, the Red Sox-Yankees game).

For me, reading about a game I already saw is like reading a math textbook. All I can do is think, “Why are you telling me these things I don’t need to know?” I saw David Ortiz hit a bloop single in the bottom of the 14th to win the game. I don’t need to read a newspaper article saying that David Ortiz hit a bloop single in the bottom of the bottom of the 14th to win the game.

So that leaves the obituaries. Well, sometimes maybe the business section, but I’m usually eating soup, and I can’t handle a spoon and focus on business at the same time.

The obits simultaneously attract and repel me. On one hand, I’ve never understood people who read them; it’s just depressing. On the other hand, it’s some of the most interesting stuff in the paper.

Maybe I’m morbid, but reading the obits is the only time I feel real emotion for the people in the news. The rest of the time it’s just “Peterson, a 34-year-old Hinckley native, said his neighbors rarely argued.” Yes but what about this Peterson fellow? I want to know more.

The people you learn a lot about in the newspaper tend to be famous. At least, famous enough to be in the newspaper. That’s the point, right? You never hear about Abraham Bindlebaum from Orono who got a master’s in short-wave radio operation and then went on to join the VFW and the Orono Yiddish society.

Until he’s dead. Then his whole life gets squished into three column-inches, paid for by his family at the rate of $5.80 per line. And suddenly Grandma Bindlebaum is a writer of sorts; maybe the most honest kind.

Or the least. Depends on what Abraham was like. Hard to say, not enough lineage.

I’ve heard people justify reading the obituaries by saying that the older you get, the more you start to recognize the names. People you went to high school with. Old neighbors who moved across town, etc.

But I think reading the obituaries is basically a way of thinking about death without having to, y’know, _think_ about death. Let’s face it, whether you’re young or old, you don’t like any reminders that you or someone you know might die. It gets so bad that a lot of people won’t even let themselves think about it. I’m not in a position to know (thank god), but how many people, even those who have good reason to, think _”maybe my parents will die”_?

Not many. And I don’t blame them. There’s no use, as far as I can see. Because the second you start thinking about it you inevitably start writing those first few lines.

At the same time, people feel a need to explore the possibility of death. To get used to it. To put a hand on its cold face and make out its features. Because they know it often comes unannounced.

So we peer into the deaths of other people. People we don’t know but can sympathize with, because they are just like us. Young people old people middle-aged people. Healthy people sick people good people bad people.

No one cries in the cafeteria. The pages of the sports section aren’t wet, and neither are the obituaries. But reading them, you can feel something in your chest, and you know you shouldn’t stare too long at the dates of a person the same age as your father. Just note the important facts, swallow a spoonful of soup, and move on.

I had a busy day at work today. For me, that looks a lot different than you might expect. For a firefighter, a busy day involves riding in the truck, running into burning buildings, sliding down the pole (do they still do that?), etc. For my mom, who designs closets, a busy day means driving about 150 miles to and from building sites to measure rooms and talk to clients. For my girlfriend, who is a teacher, whose days are unfathomably busy; even a regular day means chasing after kids who run and cry and desire candy bribes and so on.

But me, on a really busy day, I barely get out of my chair. I sit and look at a computer screen and mold invisible alternating electrical currents into messages. Like a hallucinatory sculptor.

If I’d worn my pedometer today, it would have had an extremely high count, but that’s just because it’s a cheap freebie, and it counts more steps when you’re sitting than when you’re walking. Kind of poetic, actually.

Most days I try to take a walk during my lunch break. In nice weather this means going outside around our beautiful walking paths. In bad weather I circle the six floors of our gigantic building, starting at the top. Down to one end, down the stairs. Back to the other end, down the stairs. Like an egg in a Rube Goldberg machine. Except I’ve got an I.D. badge.

But today I didn’t even get a chance to circle my own cube. I spun in my chair a few times, and while that may have helped get the blood moving in my limbs, it doesn’t qualify as exercise.

So it was understandable that this evening I wanted to take a walk. This I did, with some determination, despite the risk of missing the end of the Red Sox-Yankees game, which by that time had already gone to extra innings. At around 8:30pm I suited up in coat and hat and gloves, and left the baseball game to fend for itself.

My reasoning was thus: it’s tied in the top of the tenth, they’re going lose, maybe if I leave, they’ll get distracted and win. I have a theory about my influence over the outcomes of distant televised baseball games. It is a shaky and unsubstantiated theory.

But what theory isn’t, really? Alas.

So I grabbed the trash and headed out the back door. After the garbage can, I had no destination in mind. On a cold night, when you’ve dressed adequately, it’s rather comfortable to be outside. It’s just you and the yellow patches on the sidewalk. And the crazies.

But not in my neighborhood. Don’t worry. No crazies here. Well, not many, anyway.

Just in case, though, I followed the path of most streetlights, which is also known as the path to Como Avenue. It winds through the Luther Seminary grounds, under a grove of tall, sprawling oaks, and toward the little commercial cluster at the center of our neighborhood.

I got to the gas station, its bays all lit up, with cars waiting outside like patients in the hallway of an overcrowded hospital. From there I could see the neon ‘open’ sign of the library. My feelings about the library are pretty straightforward: it’s awesome. It’s just an awesome library. It was built at around the turn of the century as one of the many hundreds that Andrew Carnegie (dare you to pronounce his name right) funded across the country. It has three-story arched windows and beautifully detailed masonry; it looks like an architectural drawing.

The only thing I dislike about the library is its open sign. A library of such historic beauty shouldn’t have a modern, swooshy, oval-shaped open sign. It should have an old-fashioned sign. Hand painted. Or maybe just a porter standing at the door, letting you know if the place is open or not.

Then again, the nice thing about modernity is you can see it a block away. At ten-to-nine on a cold fall night, a warm, bright library looks pretty inviting, even if the invitation comes from a buzzing tube of inert-gas-filled glass rather than a nice old gentleman wearing a cap.

“Who goes to the library at this hour?” I asked myself. The only answers I could think of were: “Crazies,” and “Nobody.”

I went in to check it out, and I was definitely wrong on the latter. There were lots of people in the library; over a dozen. And when I looked over to the right, at the bench by the new fiction, I saw none other than my dad and my little brother. So maybe the neighborhood isn’t as sane as I thought after all.

They had stopped for a moment after returning a movie they’d checked out (it’s only a historic library on the outside, inside it is more neon-sign than cap-porter).

“Hey, how’d you know we were here?” my brother yelled, much too loudly. My dad laughed. I answered, again in too loud a voice, that it was the gentle hand of fate that brought me here, a.k.a. the path of most streetlights. No one said anything about our volume; apparently the rules get a little lax toward the end of the day.

“Believe it or not, I was on a walk,” I said.

“Belie’ dat,” my brother said, or I imagined him saying. Sometimes I wish he were more of a little gangsta’.

“My fish died,” he said, somewhat unconnectedly.

“I.F.S?”

“No,” he said, “a new one. I hadn’t named it yet.”

So sad. The -tomb- toilet of the unknown -soldier- fish.

My brother was reading a spy novel. _The Eagle’s Eye_ or _Operation Beak_ or something like that. He blows through those books in a matter of days, sometime hours. My dad was looking at a picture book about penguins. I think he’s getting old. He used to read books with words. Now it’s penguins.

When the librarian started kicking everyone out, my dad offered me a ride. It was tempting, since I suddenly remembered about the baseball game, but I declined. Serendipity had brought me there; it didn’t seem right to let a minivan bring me home.

So I walked back up toward the seminary, the tall library windows behind me, the tall oaks up ahead. And waiting just a few minutes away? A baseball game and a warm house.

And one more piece of evidence to back up my theory.

Friday night I went with my girlfriend and her family to see a choral group called Chanticleer. It’s about a dozen men, most young, one with a lengthy handlebar moustache, who sing everything from medieval church music to Miles Davis. Also a song by a Korean composer that sounded like a sped up recording of some kind of large bird’s mating ritual.

That song was by far the best part.

Some of the men sing terribly low. The handlebar guy drops his voice so deep it feels like he’s sitting right beneath you. I bet he doesn’t even need subwoofers in his ride; when he listens to some rap music, he probably just sings the bass parts himself.

Another singer, this one with a trimmed goatee and a ponytail, is at the opposite end of the scale. His notes rarely come down beneath the stratospheric level. When someone who has been locked out of their house needs to break a window to get in, I’m sure he is the second person they call, after a hammer.

The really cool thing about Chanticleer is the versatility of their voices. The range of sounds they could produce reminded me that the human voice is really an amazing instrument. That was the other best part of the night; realizing that the beauty I’d seen on stage was created with nothing more than voice boxes like mine. It was a touching and universal message; music is in the soul of every person, and all you need to do is lift your voice.

I was pretty psyched about that. For a while. Then I tried to make that Korean ostrich shrieking sound and I got a little frustrated. Music may be the universal language or whatever but I think you need to be able to sing to speak it. Apparently I don’t sing Korean.

Plus, I think I sprained something.

Seriously, though, you can’t have a moustache like that and not have subwoofers. Or at least regular woofers.

Most everyone in the audience was pretty clearly a choir geek (and I say that in a loving, non-judgmental way). At intermission every conversation I overheard was about how “We should do Gaude virgo at the winter concert,” or “It’s amazing how full those third overtones were!”

At the end of the show when they announced that the last song would be “Keep You Hand on the Plow,” someone in the balcony actually said “Yesss!” I didn’t see who it was, so I don’t know, but I can only imagine he or she was pumping his or her fist.

Now, lest I give you the wrong idea, let me say that the song was a tremendous, soaring gospel chant and I was sorry when it ended. But if the words “Hand on the Plow” make you pump your fist, you are definitely a choral aficionado. Good for you, I say, as long as you’re aware of it.

Then again, I can see why someone would recognize the song; it’s one of those that takes over a whole room in your hippocampus and refuses to leave. I’ve been singing, humming, and thinking about it all weekend. Can’t get to heaven by drinkin’ gin, I reminded a passer-by on the walk to the coffee shop this morning. She wasn’t drinking anything, but she looked relieved anyway. It’s just nice to know.

Later at Marshalls I was in the dressing room trying on a pair of snow pants when I remembered that I needed to keep my hand on the gospel plow. Not having one around, I put my hand on my cell-phone, which, I thought, could at least be used to find a gospel plow, or call someone who could tell me about it.

Even now, as we speak, I hear the distinctive notes of that song coming from the bathroom, where my girlfriend is showering. That’s the power of gospel songs, I guess. They’re hard to stop singing. So the next time a glass of gin is placed before me, the first thing that’ll come to mind is an image of that pony-tailed man with his eyes closed and his face toward the sky, warning me, in an octave six times higher than normal, not to take it.

And you know what? I won’t. I will leave that glass were it lays. I will begin singing a mighty chorus of “Hand on the Plow,” in whatever octave I can muster. And if the mood is right, my friends at the table will start singing right along with me. Then maybe the whole bar will join in.

And a lone voice will come from the back of the room, drunk with joy and soda-water: “Yesssss!”

There are so many things in an old house that don’t come with instructions. Or if they do, those instructions were lost long ago. The instructions to some of the things in my house were lost before I was born.

Maybe even before my parents were born.

But yesterday when I went down to the basement to turn the furnace on, I wasn’t worried. I did it last year, somehow, with no guidance. I could do it again.

A furnace, for those of you who don’t know, is an octopus-like thing with a great steel belly and little dials for eyes. In the belly is water, which, when heated, flows out via the tentacles and throughout the house. There it circulates through the gills of the radiators, which are made of molded steel, beautifully decorated.

The whole question of when (and whether) to turn on the furnace is a touchy one. Some people simply will not abide the cold. My sister is an example. My girlfriend is also an example. When it is cold they immediately want an external fix. It can be mechanical, chemical, or even psychological; it doesn’t matter. The important thing is to create a mini atmosphere centered entirely around them.

Other persons are more flexible. To me the onset of cold weather is not a change we must adapt to, but a challenge we must overcome. Turning on the heat is clearly inevitable; it will have to happen sometime. But it’s also a clear defeat. My view is; if the squirrels aren’t yet hibernating, there’s no need for heat.

Unfortunately yesterday there weren’t many of the little creatures around, so I couldn’t prove they weren’t hibernating. “They’re probably watching the news,” I argued. “Or doing an art project. They don’t always collect nuts, you know.”

“They don’t hibernate,” she replied, looking even chillier than before. “At all. They just don’t.”

I pleaded with my eyes, you know, like this (insert pleading look here), but to avail. So I got a box of matches and descended into the maze of shirts that hang from our basement clotheslines.

(Like I said, the house came instruction-less. Are the wires strung across the basement ceiling for hanging clothes? Maybe. And is hanging clothes out to dry in a dark, damp, occasionally smelly basement a good idea? Hard to say. No instructions. We do it anyway.)

But then I remembered that the furnace’s pilot line vale control thingy had been replaced last year. The repairman had walked me through how to relight the pilot, but that was so long ago, and my attention span for that sort of thing is short.

That sort of thing = every sort of thing. But anyway.

I devised a plan. I laid out objectives.

• Plan: put some fire by the gas. Run away if too much fire.
• Objectives: warm house to a reasonable level. Run away if too much warm. Or not enough.

I pushed the little lever to ‘pilot’, moved the match that I’d lit toward the gas outlet very carefully. Slowly…slowly…then…

BOOOM! NOTHING!

Nothing happened. I reassessed, and looked over some instructions for the old burner pilot control valve thingy that were not only irrelevant to my situation, but also were covered in decades of dust and dead bugs.

In the end I realized you have to have the thermostat on, and the gas line valves need to be open. Sheesh. So simple. I did that, then reprised my fire + cover-your-eyes routine, and the pilot lit beautifully. Soon the combustion cylinders (at least, that’s what I gathered they’re called from the dead-bug instructions) were blazing. Dozens of happy little blue flames, like bright paintbrush strokes, tickling the water drum’s underside.

And the octopus laughed and laughed.

Google Desktop Search Download.

“Search company Google is testing software that lets people navigate the Web without opening up an Internet browser, placing itself in a field that Microsoft has designs on–desktop search.

On Thursday, the Mountain View, Calif.-based search company debuted the Google Deskbar. The downloadable software for users of Microsoft’s Windows operating system puts a Google search box in the desktop taskbar. Using the free tool, people can search for information on the Web while in a Word document or e-mail application. But instead of launching a browser, the Deskbar will display results in a small window in the lower right of the screen. ”
via CNET

• Apparently my glowing review of “Super Size Me” isn’t getting much attention in Singapore:
  

  Spurred on by shouts of “Shove it in, shove it in!” 19-year-old Don Ezra Nicholas stuffed more than three McDonald’s hamburgers into his mouth – without swallowing – and claimed a new global record at the end of Singapore’s contest to be the world’s wackiest.
  Link

  Those Singaporians. They never listen, do they?

• Aren’t there some things you wish your computer had?
• Google announced a cool service this week called Google SMS (Short Message Service). It lets you text-message a query to Google and get results on your phone. So, if you’re looking for my house (because you’re stalking me, or because I’m stalking you and you’d like to ask me, in person, to stop) you could just send a message to 46645 (GOOGL) with the text “Bruno Bornsztein 55108″. Within a few minutes Google will text you back with my directory information. You could also do “Pizza 55108″ to find pizza places in my zip code, which is probably a good idea, since I’m more likely to be there than at home.
• Perhaps you are just looking for pictures of my neighborhood from times long past? No problem, the Minnesota Historical Society has a nice searchable database of historical images of Minnesota.
• And finally, if yesterday’s spirited debate didn’t help you decide how to cast your vote, maybe some famous novelists can. I mean, their lives are so much like you life, right? Most of them swing Kerry’s way, with the exception of Orson Scott Card:
  

  “We’re at war, and electing a president who is committed to losing it seems to be the most foolish thing we could do.”

  But then, he also thinks our future in space involves training genius kids to fight giant alien ant-colonies. Maybe Ender would make a better candidate?