A Delicate Touch

As the prior post said, I went to a Halloween party last weekend. From the party a video was posted to Facebook. If you are a friend of mine on Facebook you can find that I have one video associated with my profile. In that video I come to the rescue by opening a wine bottle that had two corkscrews broken in it.

Two corkscrews were broken, not just one, in an attempt to open the wine. Now I am not making any attempt to blame anyone, but I think it is a very important to take notice of something. It is unlikely that two defective corkscrews were used one after another. I also don't believe that it was some sort of super strong bottle of wine. I suspect the common factor of broken corkscrews was in fact the person using them.

Again, I am not trying to pick on someone, but am trying to reveal something that was suggested by the "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Whoever might have broken the corkscrews was not paying attention to their actions. They were probably distracted and in a hurry. And because of it, they broke their tool. They were probably likely to blame their tool.

I bring this up because in class this week we were to bring in our foam latex puppets for animation. Some people had major problems with their foam latex, others had success. While I can not say for sure, I suspect the root problem of most people who had difficulty with their foam latex were the people themselves. It required a lot of careful examination, patients, thought and determination to make work.

The moral of the story is be patient, thoughtful and caring when you are faced with problem. I struggled with the wine bottle for a moment, tried a tool at hand. I then thought for quite a while. I then opened the draw in front of me. Found some scissors and used the space between the handles and the pivot as a pair of pliers and very carefully persuaded the cork out of the bottle.

That is actually the second time in my life that I have come up with an ingenious way to open a bottle of wine. I think the first used a nail and a hammer, but I can't remember exactly.

Kyler