Last night, I dreamed it was my turn to be hotel manager. One of the maids came to me with a burned-out light bulb. Said she couldn't find one to replace it. I ordered a search of the supply room -- nothing but dead bulbs. Could have just gone to the hardware store and bought a fresh supply, except the hotel's light fixtures all used a special type of bulb that was only available at one particular store -- that had just been bought out from the edge of bankruptcy by a big chain. Needless to say, they'd dropped the shelf-warming specialty bulbs from their inventory. Problem -- who to blame? The guy responsible for the choice of non-standard light fixtures in the first place, of course: former hotel manager John McCain. I asked him what he'd been thinking, hadn't he seen this coming? He started muttering some dodgy answer and I cut him off: "Quit making excuses and do something about it!" Of course, the old man was in no position to fix the problem -- I was just venting. I knew perfectly well it would mean an overhaul of the hotel lighting system. I didn't know if we could afford it, and I suspected not. I was afraid of what a look at the hotel's financial records would reveal. The sequence ended there, unresolved. Would we sit there and watch the hotel go dark, room by room, or would we stand up and "do something?" I have no idea.

What do you make of that?

-BC