journal features

plumbers in my place

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Vancouver, 2002.01.10

The plumbers needed access to my apartment today. They had to get access to the front hall closet, of all places, because that's where the valves were installed that led to the apartment next to mine (I'm told the hot and cold water pipes come up in the walls inside my unit, oh joy).

Needless to say, something went awry in the closet after they'd been and gone, and the closet made a quick upgrade to shower stall. Nothing like the sound of running water to get your attention at four in the PM.

They quickly fixed it but I was glad I'd removed my few things.

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton