The other day I drove my wife to a visit at the super-awesome laser eye surgery. We stayed there for more than three hours drinking tea, so at a certain point I had to go for a wee.
When I got back I realised the door I had to go through had one of those combination-electronic locks that need you to input a code. I made a couple of timid attempts at opening it anyway, failing, then I entered another office – thankfully with no electronic locking device on its door – and asked for help.
The woman behind the desk looked at me as if I were an idiot, then she got up, went all the way to the infamous electronically-locked door and she pushed it open with the sole aid of one finger. Because, you know, it was open.
I muttered something about me being an idiot (her contempt wasn’t misplaced after all) and carried on with my business.
Then this morning I took my daughter to the nursery and when I tried to get out – tadaan – there it was, another awkward door with complicated-looking locks and bolts.
I started fiddling with one of its hundred handles, as confident as I would be trying to disarm an exploding device. I went on for a couple of minutes with no success, shifting involuntarily into full swearing-even-if-you-are-technically-still-on-nursery’s-ground mode, when a pious woman eventually helped me out.
She pushed the door open with ease, her face full of the benevolent smile you give a toddler you’ve just helped tie his shoes. Again, I apologized for my dumbness and went off.
So while driving to work I thought that I should find out more about doors and their secrets (doors are not as straightforward as they seem) and I put “learn about doors and their secrets” in my mental things-to-do list.
This is when I realized that my things-to-do list is pretty long at the moment.

There’s The Book, the one sitting in my drawer that I enounce in capital letters and is only waiting to be illustrated. Then life-drawing classes, the gym (which apparently is the only solution to my backache) and my newly found social life every now and then. I’m craving to finish The Fall of Hyperion and start with the next in line (The Graveyard Book). Then, after I received this for Christmas I became a fan of Robert Sabuda and now I’d like to study paper engineering. Oh, then there are the signatures I have to draw – which I’ll be posting soon – and Supernatural, Desperate Housewives, House M.D, Lost, How I Met Your Mother, The Office, Cougar Town and Scrubs season 9 that I really need to watch, plus Fallout 3 that I really need to finish. I won’t mention the 60 new feeds I receive every day from blogs and forums, but if we add the fact that it would be polite to spend some time, daily, with my wife and kids, it becomes apparent that I have some time issues. But I found a solution.

At first I thought of doing some experiments with polyphasic sleep. You have to follow your naps schedule carefully to avoid the risk of going insane, but if mastered it could add up to four hours to your waking time. Unfortunately nobody has as yet solved the issue that most people have with other people dozing off in the middle of a conversation.
There’s an acquaintance of mine who bragged about the fact that he could manage to sleep only three hours a night, no problems. What he really did though, was fall fast asleep while people were talking, and I can’t deny I did find it, at times, quite inappropriate.
I’m confident that society will eventually get rid of this illogical social taboo, however I doubt my boss will ever be happy knowing that I go unconscious at regular intervals during working hours, possibly drooling over my expensive Wacom.

Then a friend told me about this interview to Varg Vikernes in which, contrarily to every misconception about jails, he sports quite a comfortable room that looks Ikea furnished, complete with computer, broadband and everything.
So I read a few articles about the penal system in Norway and I was amazed at how advanced it is. It would definitely deserve some more debate but, as I said, I have no time, so I’ll have to add it to my things-to-do list, right after “learn about doors and their secrets”.
Meaning no disrespect towards those unfortunate enough to be confined in an Ikea cell, I find the whole thing as the best solution to sort out all the things I’d like to do.
Now I’m trying to figure out how to get jailed in Norway (this is actually at the top of my list at the moment) without causing too much trouble to other people.
I know in some countries peeing against walls or smelling paint can be considered a felony, so I could go for one of those.
The more I think about it and the more it looks like a brilliant idea. I haven’t spoken to my wife about it but she always supports me, I’m sure she’ll agree.
Although, thinking about it, I doubt anyone in jail will teach me how to open doors without looking stupid.