Media Centers; Harry/Draco; Truck Signs

When I moved, one of the pieces of furniture that was left behind was a media center. It was one of those you assemble from a kit and was about 2 feet wide and about 5 feet tall with glass doors. It was very serviceable and not unattractive.

Now that I think of it, when I lived in the duplex, I had a much larger unit, easily 6 feet by 6 feet, that I'd assembled from a kit. And when I moved into the house, I took it along. But I have no recollection of how. Levitation? Stevedores? Three guys and a truck?

I do remember that I stored all the furniture in the garage/shop while the floors of the house were being resanded. During that time, a storm flooded the garage/shop, and the base of the unit was damaged, so I gave up on trying to move it inside.

For the past three months, the media equipment has been stacked on top of a chest in the living room. And I kept telling myself that I needed to do something about finding a unit to hold everything.

Last week, I started on a campaign to find something. I went to two Home Depots, a Lowes, an Office Depot, Best Buy, two WalMarts and a local electronics/appliances store. But nothing I saw was similar to what I left behind. There were a couple of nice-looking units but far too expensive.

Today, I forced myself to make a decision, so I bought a unit in black laminate and slighly larger than the old unit. It is fairly nondescript, but I'm not sure it's what I want. There was a nicer-looking, more expensive unit that may be more suitable. Soooooo, I may make an exchange.

Trying to get the unit out of the shopping cart and into the car proved to be a taxing experience. It was too large and heavy to grab and pick up. I was finally able to pull, yank and shove it out of the cart and push it onto the back seat. But it was so long that I then had to lower the window and lift the box so that it rested on the window frame. It projected about a foot out of the window, and all the way home, I was fearful I'd hit something.

Hunting for something that I'd like to be a certain way is always such a tiring process. I so like to go one place and find exactly what I want.

Slash fiction dates from the demise of the original "Star Trek," when fans hungry for more stories started creating their own. In fact, some of the works were very clever and were actually published.

However, at some mysterious junction, the stories became sexual in nature. And soon stories appeared pairing up various characters from the series. One of the most notorius was the duo of Kirk and Spock, written as "Kirk/Spock" and pronounced "Kirk slash Spock."

The Internet has proven an ideal medium for publishing such stories. Except now, stories exist for almost any context. Among the leading contenders for the most slash fiction web sites are those about the characters from Harry Potter.

As I Googled away, I discovered sites involving every conceivable combination of characters and every imaginable sexual peccadillo. The following matches are especially prevelant: Draco/Harry, Snape/Draco, Snape/Harry.

I;ve thought about the fact that slash fiction may not be great art, but it does reveal what people are really interested in.

Another truck sign favorite is for a Christian moving company - "Jesus Saves! Jesus Loves! Jesus Moves!" That may not be exactly right, but it's close.

PAX!