What Th! II

After a fair bit of headscratching I got the blog layout more or less back to normal after I realized that I'd bobbled the picture upload last night and some funky code got written in. But whenever things like this happen I think back to the story of the Sorcerer's apprentice, a ballad by Goethe set to music by Paul Dukas and brought to its greatest popularity by Mickey Mouse. If you're not familiar with it, it's the story of a sorcerer—that much you probably guessed—who has an apprentice, which you probably guessed as well, and the sorcerer tells the apprentice to do the chores around the place and then leaves. The apprentice, not wanting to do everything by hand, uses some imperfectly learned magic to make the tools do the chores by themselves, but things spin out of control and the apprentice is clueless about how to fix the situation. I don't know about you, but I fear I''m going to live the rest of my life in this uncomfortable middle ground—too lazy to do the chores by hand, but too damn dumb to learn all the magic. (Sigh.)