Many Americans have a romanticized view of trains, rooted in a bygone era of elaborately adorned rail cars lit by flickering gas lamps and pulled by smoke-belching steam locomotives.
I usually plan to read a book for a half-hour before bed, but then I end up staying awake until 3 A.M. to finish it. Fortunately, my dog doesn't mind when I keep the bedside lamp on.
He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts - for support rather than for illumination.
I have a bit of a lava lamp fetish. They are kind of hideous, but there is something so therapeutic about them.
When I received my first paycheck from my now known day job, I spent it on a period Craftsman chair and a Frank Lloyd Wright-wannabe lamp. With my second paycheck, I bought a stereo.
I really enjoyed staying at an encampment at the top of a hill in the Samburu Reserve in Kenya. You reach it on a small plane; there is no electricity, no city noises and you sleep and shower under the Milky Way, with moths fluttering around a kerosene lamp, knowing that there are elephants and lions roaming free in the valley.
Once upon a time, I was morbidly sensitive about the impertinence born of sociology. Taxi drivers would not stop for me after dark; white girls jogged to keep ahead of my shadow thrown at their heels by the amber street lamps. Part of me didn't blame them, but most of me was hurt.
I just don't think there are any rules to color. You have a small space with no windows? Put lamps in there, make it dramatic, paint the ceiling black. Do something with it. If it's dark, accentuate the darkness.
I have taken some hits here and there, but I've been most damaged carrying my little terrier to bed, and I broke my hip turning off the lamp. I've been nicked a few times, but he put me out of business. So life is a very strange adventure.
I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination.
