Friday 13 April 2012

The Last Staple

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


13 April

No, not, o true Tolstoyans, The Last Station, but Staple!


The simple question being: why cannot the stapler, a bit like the oil warning light, tell you when you are using the last of a row of what, gummed together, always looks like a lot of staples when you load it?

If it did, not only would you not go to staple a document - usually that document (and six copies of it) with which you need to rush out of the office - and fail and have to find one that is loaded, in all your frustration and anguish, but nor would your colleagues.

For everyone assumes, which is neither rational nor necessarily fair, that someone else, at a less pressing time, should have filled the stapler up, because he or she knew that he or she had just emptied it, instead of lazily using another.

Whereas, as I should like to suggest (and Dirty Harry would agree), none of us - and this is not meant to have gravitas, unless you choose to read a profound insight into it - knows when it is The Last Staple. (So I say nothing about Wise and Foolish virgins, and trimming wicks and filling with oil.)



End-notes

* Of which Bach treated in Cantata No. 140, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 140.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love your blog, in fact arrived by checking yahoo and google for a comparable issue to this post. Which means this might be a late post nevertheless keep up the great work.

The Agent Apsley said...

I know now that Blogger's 'automatic spam detection' works wonders, because it had consigned your kind comment to the separate folder from which The Agent has retrieved it!

With encouragement such as you have offered, we will do our best, and hope that you continue reading...

Anonymous said...

hi there very helpfull ask for peter poland
bearty

The Agent Apsley said...

Indeed, I shall ask for him - though, unless it is a nickname, I am unsure whether Poland (which is what so-called predictive text gives) can be right!

As you are 'Anonymous' - which is fine - I also have no way of knowing whether you are following on from your previous comment, or whether that was someone else and you are making a fresh one. Maybe, though, all will come clear from asking PRB...


Ap.