Thomas Edison's immune to sarcasm in Dick's Toolbox

Mike's Pith & Wind - Excruciation
A person who tells you they’ve never had an excruciating moment is like the little old lady driver who claims never to have had an accident - but sees lots of them happening round her. Then there are the hyper-sensitive souls, like bro’ Dick for instance, who has not managed to watch an entire episode of Ricky Gervais’ Extras - a squirm-inducing sitcom predicated on such moments lain end-to-end - without having to excuse himself and walk out of the room backwards, his eyes bulging in fascinated horror. David Stratton, of David and Margaret’s At the Movies show, got extremely toey the other night when previewing Dinner For Schmucks, a Hollywood re-make of a French movie I’ve actually seen called Le Diner Des Cons, which is again all about humiliation and which I remember being slightly appalled by at the time, but perhaps not for the same reasons as squeamish David.
Although I’m apparently not quite as sensitive to other people’s pain as are hapless Dick and Dave, I confess to being a serial offender in perpetrating my own excruciating moments. I’m sure you must’ve had a moment or two in your otherwise blameless life that you go hot and sweaty just thinking about.
Describing such a moment in print may ultimately prove cathartic, but reliving it in the telling and exposing my shame to your unflinching cyber-gaze could actually make it a thousand times worse. Oh well, let’s see..
Bro’ Dick (and Mary) are travelling OS as I write, visiting their daughter Lizzie in London via Crete, read more

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Dick's Toolbox - Thank you Mr Edison
It doesn’t take more than a possum reaching from one live wire to another somewhere in the maze of our local Victorian power grid causing for us to realise that we are highly dependent on electricity. A brief cascade of sparks, death carbonisation. And then darkness descends,
It is not an uncommon event out here in the bushy suburbs. If it’s not a possum, it’s a bat, a tired eucalypt or a member of the species homo nonsapient shortening life, health or the length of their car.
With the practise born of familiarity we go to the cupboard and get out the torches, lanterns and candles that are kept at hand for frequent events like these. We rearrange our lives around the absence of light, electronic entertainment and diminished cooking facilities by reorganising the meals, and putting on warmer.. read more