If you get a new computer with software you've never used before you expect to spend a while working it out - it can do many things. A shower, on the other hand, does one thing - it lifts water up and drops it on you. If it takes more than 10 seconds to find out how to get the pressure and temperature of this water in the vicinity that you would like it to be then some designer somewhere should be fired.
I guess it's a couple of years now since The DaVinci Code was released. I recall everybody raving about it and I decided I'd check it out. I found an audio version of the book and thought it would be a good way to pass time on the tube. The trouble was that I kept falling asleep and on waking didn't know whether I'd missed 10 seconds or 2 minutes. There were also too many stupid names for my liking. That's the reason I gave up on the Hobbit when I tried reading that some years ago. I don't like having to figure out how to pronounce words I haven't seen before - especially made up ones. Why the characters just be called Jeff or Frank? It's complexity for complexity's sake. My sister read Harry Potter and thought Hermione was pronounced Hermi-1, like some long lost relative of Obi Kenobi.
I never finished The DaVinci Code so I don't know if the lead character (who had a normal name, but I can't remember it so I'll call him Tomanks) ever made it to the Z7 in Switzerland. Let's say he did, and let's suppose he'd been chasing after whatever he was chasing after, or running away from whatever he'd been running away from, for a few weeks. He'd probably be reaching the end of his clean underpant supply. Being a smart-arse he would know that the Z7 had a secret room and in that secret room was a washing machine and tumble drier!
I can picture Tomanks emptying 6 weeks of washing onto the floor before whizzing it into the wondrous washing machine (alliteration)......
...Tomanks looked at the box of washing powder and wondered how on earth he was supposed to know how much of that stuff to use. Too little and his clothes would be tossed around for an hour but end up wet and still slightly dirty; too much and the Z7 might be filled with suds resulting in the cancellation of his gig that night (he combined fighting organised religion with playing in a band)
After staring at the box for a few minutes and doing some quick mental calculations he just shoved the cup in and took his chances. He then approached the washing machine. He opened the drawer to be confronted by Notwanbuttu Resseptacles! (pronounced not 1 but 2 receptacles) Realising that this wasn't a stupid name for an arch enemy but simply more locations than expected for the deposit of his washing powder he breathed a sigh of relief and just put a bit in both.
But that was only the beginning (never use 'but' at the start of a sentence). In all his years of research he'd read of many washing machines and of course he'd used the one at home, but he'd never had to change a dial. The one he was used to using didn't even require powder - he just had a plastic ball that he put liquid in.
He bent down and examined the two dials. They were encircled with strange symbols. He identified them as Bolox markings from the Jibberish period. He'd stumbled across the Jibberish period while researching shower and toaster controls for his thesis. Bolox was known to be one of the most complex and convoluted codes known to man. This was a task that was going to require all the code breaking knowledge he'd ever acquired.
He sat down and pondered the matter at hand. "In ancient times men washed their clothes in the river" - he thought to himself very politically correctly. "The process was simple - get the clothes wet, put a bit of soap (maybe animal fat??) on them and rub them around a bit, then hang them out to dry." It seemed clear to him that the processes required to clean some clothes were few and simple - so why were there so many strange diagrams and options on this machine. Perhaps all was not as it appeared. Maybe it was a machine of many secrets. Could it be that there was only one setting for cleaning clothes and the others would reveal portholes to other worlds or facts about Jesus that only old painters knew and might be enough to bring down John-Paul-George XXVIVV and the rest of his evil gang.
Tomanks sat and thought hard about the possibilities in front of him. He didn't think socks and underpants needed to be washed at 60 degrees. He didn't think anything needed to be washed at 60 degrees. The men of olden times surely didn't have 60 degree rivers. Mind you, they probably didn't have underpants and socks either. He wasn't sure when clothing had been divided into so many different sections. He sometimes wished he'd lived in the past - just one big piece of material flung around. Maybe a pair of sandals? Flip flops?
Suddenly his travelling companion, a random French girl he'd been hitting on while picking fights with the Pope (we'll call her Derek), ran up to him. She was shivering from head to toe. "It's freezing in the dressing room" she said, her teeth clattering together like those of a really foxy French girl who's been sitting in a really cold dressing room for too long. "Wouldn't you rather head back to the hotel for a couple of hours until soundcheck?" Tomanks snapped out of his daydream, looked at the Bolox dials one last time before picking a random setting and hitting the start button.
On arriving at the hotel he realised that the washing machine would probably finish it's wetting and spinning of clothes a long time before he returned to the secret room. He pictured them sitting there, alone in the dark, festering in their own juices. He shuddered at the thought. He wondered whether all the trouble of the powder and dials had been worth the effort. He could just have turned them inside out - an old trick, but useful.
He'd returned to the hotel intending to seduce Derek with his wit and wavy hair, but he couldn't stop thinking about those clothes. He'd heard tales of a previous band member who'd washed all his clothes in the Z7 washing machine only to find out that the tumble drier didn't work. He decided to give seduction a miss and write a long overdue blog.
J
