Neat and tidy

Entropy is described as being the measure of the degree of disorder, or "mess", for want of a better term. Entropy is the default setting for the world, and indeed the universe. Left alone, things get messy and disordered, chaotic if you like.

People have a natural tendency to rebel against entropy to return order to their environments. Anybody who's studied thermodynamics in chemistry or physics to any level will know that it's pretty tiring fighting against this descent into chaos.

To counteract messiness, people tend to develop little "tidying" habits to help maintain order, or to prevent mess. Things, like DVDs, CDs and books are categorised; other stuff is organised into rooms according to appropriateness and relevance (bathroom, kitchen, bedroom etc); desks are organised so that different piles mean different things.

Piles of paper
These are the things that we create subconsciously before filing or binning. But the paper isn't just "piled", sheet upon sheet in any old fashion. We have a tendency to automatically neaten the pile of paper so that the edges match up as much as possible - it just seems like that right thing to do. In fact, it's almost impossible not to. There are even guides in hole punches that centre the holes so that the edges of the pages are lined up neatly when the paper is filed in a ring binder.

Given some sheets of paper to staple, a recipient can't usually stop themselves from straightening the pile prior to fastening it - the usual method is to lightly grasp the papers in portrait orientation and tap the bottom edges against a flat surface, then to repeat this while holding the papers in landscape orientation. With the edges aligned, the stapler is then used to fasten everything together at the top left corner.

So, what do we make of this then?

Is it just me? Surely it's impossible to simply pick up a pile of papers and staple them without tidying them??? Surely you make sure you have all the relevant bits of paper in the pile before stapling it so that you don't have to put a second staple through to append something else to it????

What the fuck is wrong with people?


Synchronicity
Synchronicity is one of my favourite songs from 80s rock superstars The Police.

It's that thing that women who live and work together get when their menstrual cycles synchronise. Organisations have cottoned to that fact that, if you get a load of women who suffer from bad PMT working together, you can actually use their combined energy to power the photocopier for one week in each month. This can backfire and entire office blocks have had to have replacement windows after all the glass had blown out during an emotional outburst between two colleagues (something to do with wanting chives rather than pineapple in the low-fat cottage cheese).

I've noticed that there's a bit of synchronicity going on in the ladies' lavs at the Moonlighting Detective Agency. Every time I go in there, the same woman is there too. Trillion pointed out that I was seeing my reflection in the mirror, oh har har har. But seriously, it's the same woman, I don't know who she is and she always uses loads of toilet paper to clean herself up - as if she's messed herself and got poo up her back or something.

Very odd.

Poo seems to be the topic of the day - Herge has given a wonderful description of the use of toilet cubicles already. Not long ago, my dad announced that he was "going for a sit" on the toilet. This is his way of saying that he was intending to spend 20 minutes passing a poo that would resemble a hedgehog in both shape and size. A poo that would be impossible to flush that would need vigorous liquidising with the toilet brush.

How delightful.