Two chairs and a table will slake my living room’s thirst for a while. Soon it will demand a coffee table and a couch and I will comply. Whatever happens, don’t let me buy it a television.

That wall needs art!

Q: What date did The Dude write on his check at Ralph’s?

I’m going to share a realization with you, something I discovered just a few hours ago. I used to code on my 14.1-inch laptop screen but I recently got a wide-screen LCD monitor so I’ve taken to keeping windows open side-by-side.

Without thinking about it, I was initally inclined to have my browser on the right and my code editor on the left. A few days ago I was working on a script with my editor on the right and a status window on the left. Suddenly my code, which I had made proudly just hours before, looked silly and nonsensical. Like a foot with seven toes, it worked just fine but it offended my senses to see it. Somehow I had awakened a sensiblity that had theretofore been dormant.

For hours I couldn’t bring myself to concentrate on my code. I wanted to wipe it out and start over. I needed to make it more aesthetic. I was compelled to eradicate the ugliness and I would have if I hadn’t remembered something about brain lateralization. Right brain/left brain theory suddenly hit me like a solid thing. I moved my code back to the left side of my monitor and looked it over. It looked okay!

After much experimentation, including having the same file open in two editors side-by-side, I’ve found that I still do my best work with a window that keeps my eyes focused neither to the left nor to the right. Perhaps when I need a fresh look or a new idea I can take advantage of my two-brainedness by looking sidelong at my code.

Balance repeatedly proves itself a great virtue.

[Third in a series of food-related articles, this one features a recipe for chili. It's not the best recipe, but the chili was good. Actually there's still some in the fridge. I think I'll go heat it up. - Andy]

Ingredients:

• One can red beans
• One can pinto beans
• One can black beans
• One can corn
• One can no-bean chili (Wolf brand is okay)
• One ounce 40-spice hummus
• One-half tsp. Sriracha pepper sauce

Steps:

1. Empty can of black beans into saucepan
2. Place on stove with medium heat
3. Strain remaining beans and corn, add to saucepan
4. Add chili, hummus and pepper sauce
5. Simmer until starving, stirring occasionally
6. Serve with bread and butter or hummus

[I think it's unfair that my articles rank so highly in the search engines because my site is well-organized and somewhat frequently updated. Last year I wrote a little note about a snack food and I suddenly started to get loads of traffic from people searching for Dunk-a-roos. I deleted that article and the snack-food seekers eventually stopped finding me in the search engines. Now I want to be popular for obscure things again. - Andy]

This is how I like to make a tuna sandwich. You can call it a recipe. Start with a fishing boat. Go out into the ocean where tuna fish swim. Pluck one out of the water, being careful not to hurt any dolphins. If you hurt a dolphin, his friends will tell Greenpeace and they’ll crash their boats into yours. Luckily the tuna haven’t found out how to grow marijuana and give it to Greenpeace as graft. Dolphins are cleverer.

Now that you have your tuna, you’ll want to take it to the cannery. I don’t know how to can a tuna, so I assume you don’t know. Just let them take care of canning your tuna. Be sure to ask for the bones back. You can do lots of neat things with tuna bones, such as pierce the tender parts of your body and your friends’ bodies. There will be plenty of bones to go around so don’t be stingy.

Take your can of tuna back to your kitchen and put it in the cupboard. Have a shot of whiskey. Have another shot. By now you’re too hungry to mill flour for bread, so you’ll need a snack. Go to Subway and buy a tuna sub on whole wheat.