Ah, there's nothing quite like real estate shopping to bring home to you exactly what kind of "purchasing power" you really have.

The process begins with a trip to the bank, where a sharp-eyed analyst will review your finances. He or she will look at your income, your car payments, your credit history, your bank accounts, how much your first born is worth in collateral, the number of gold teeth you have for potential extraction, and the exact distance between your knees and the ground so the "payment guarantor" (a guy named Guido) can adjust his swing accordingly.

After this analysis, during which time it was revealed that you have an excellent credit rating, several thousand in savings and a great gross debt ratio, you will be told you can afford: a straw bale house in rural Wawa.

Okay, so maybe you'll be able to buy something in metro Wawa; the next part of the procedure is even worse. That's because you must now start perusing the real estate advertisements. This is a cyclical process that works as follows:

1. You read through the ads rejecting all of those properties not suited to your needs (i.e., anything less than six bales high).
2. You find a few ads that describe houses that sound absolutely perfect (i.e., "Look honey! It's got barley fibre doors!")
3. You arrange to visit the property and discover that the ad photo was taken with the Real Estate Agent Camera, which is designed to make the home look three times bigger than it really is, filters out unsightly objects like the auto wrecking yard next door, and is just enough out of focus to hide the peeling paint or missing shingles.
4. You start back at Step 1.

If you're house shopping right now, I feel your pain - and I have something that may help. I have painstakingly researched and created what may be the world's first Real Estate Agentease to English dictionary. Some of the most common estate ad terms have been translated below:

Cute: You cannot swing a cat without hitting all four walls.

Cozy: You cannot swing a gerbil without hitting all four walls.

Handyman's Special: Possibly it's just best to knock it down and start over.

Bargain House in Country with Acreage: Your spouse will suddenly be seized with a mad desire to raise hogs. Or possibly alpacas.

Income Property: Provides a steady stream as long as your tenants do not do something silly, like default on their payments and then suddenly take a keen interest in pit bull dog ownership.

Quiet Location: Located out beyond even rural Wawa.

Immediate Possession: Code for owner is trying to unload this property in a hurry.

Rare Find: A term used to make the property seem special without actually meaning anything. See also Unique, Exceptional and Exclusive.

Cozy Kitchen: You must sit in the oven to eat your dinner.

Water Frontage: Expect your basement to flood. Monthly.

One Floor Living: The second floor was condemned by the building inspector as unsafe.

Newer Windows/Furnace: They might be less than thirty years old.

Compact Single Family Home: Your mother-in-law is guaranteed to think the house is very cute and want to move in with you.

Great Room: A room in an awkward spot on the floor plan that can't be used as a living room, dining room, or even foyer.

Vendor is Motivated: Because the property is being watched by the local police.

Feature Home: Agent has represented this property for more than a year and can't move the thing.

Tent, Sleeps Four: What you might want to consider for your next residence to save yourself the trouble and the expense. And it beats straw bales.

I have decided that I am never, ever going to attempt to drive a motor vehicle in Scotland.

I admit that I wasn't keen on the idea in the first place, what with Scots driving up the left instead of the right like I'm used to. And there's that whole roundabout thing. Instead of having nice, neat and orderly intersections with traffic lights, you move from one road to the next by driving around and around in circles until a) centrifugal force finally takes over and your car sails off in some random direction or b) a Scottish driver sideswipes you into a signpost.

But now there's another reason: Scottish officials have decided that the best way to reduce accidents and traffic problems is to remove road cues. Specifically, they plan to narrow some roads, blur the pavement edges, remove the white lines in the centre of the road, and plant trees to remove sight lines. The reasoning is that if the roads seem more dangerous, people will drive more carefully.

Ye. Gods.

Clearly these officials have never been either psychologists or humour columnists. If they had been, they'd know that the best way to get people to throw caution to the wind is to tell them they should be more cautious. People like a little frisson of danger in their lives, even if they have no clue where they can buy frissons. (Incidentally, they're in the bread aisle, next to croissants.)

Don't believe me? Consider the following list of driver types and tell me if you've met any of them:

Triple Chicken: This driver waits to overtake you on a two lane highway until you both are approaching a hill, which is on a curve, and it's pouring rain. Inevitably, they will have to slam on the brakes and cut in front of you in order to avoid hitting the very large transport truck in the oncoming lane.

The Drifter: Either a victim of bad wheel alignment or a firm believer in the power of telekinesis on the steering wheel, this person likes to allow the car to drift into other lanes. Indeed, they are so casual about keeping control of their car that they don't notice you until they've sheared off your side mirror.

Hot On Your Tail: These people suffer from an extreme fascination with mufflers. They must do - they spend the entire trip from Toronto to Windsor trying to park their car in your tailpipe.

Speed Demon: You could be going 160 kph and it wouldn't matter. This driver will pass you as though you are standing still.

Parallel Paths: This person pulls out to pass you but takes nearly 10 kilometres of road to do so. In addition to spraying rain/snow/sleet/hail all over your windshield for 15 minutes, this driver makes everyone else in the passing lane especially happy as they queue up and wait for their turn to overtake.

You Can't Pass Me: This driver, almost always male, will pull his large van/truck/rig to the lane marker so you can't see around him to pass. Should you find an opening and overtake, this driver will be very upset, because clearly your intention was imply he is not manly enough. He will go mad trying to overtake you back.

Bad Timing: You may be the only car on the road for 20 kilometres in either direction, but this driver will wait until you are almost at the road junction before pulling out in front of you. He/she will then putz along at 50 kilometres an hour while sightseeing. Or whatever it is people do when going that slow on a highway.

So do any of these sound familiar? Really familiar? Did you, in fact, recognize yourself?

If so, please move to Scotland. I can personally recommend the roundabouts.

Theoretical physicists have many ideas about how the cosmos came to be, but one of the most popular ones is the one which says that are an infinite number of universes, each of them different. There is, for example, our universe, another one where all your missing socks go, and one for your car keys.

The multiverse theory makes good science fiction fodder, but researchers really need look no further than the Internet for proof of the existence of worlds we can't touch or smell.

Take, for example, the online game World of Warcraft. Here, players log on and take part in a sword and sorcery role playing game. In addition to being able to thump each other with a Hammer of the Naaru or a Multidimensional Sock, players can talk to each other, form guilds, go on raids together, chit chat and exchange messages. I bet some of them go like this:

Bolroth: Hey man, I see you've acquired new armour since our last encounter! [Casts spell]

DarkLord: Yes - this is the good stuff. [Swings axe] How's the wife and kids?

Bolroth: Great! Jimmy's just finished grade four. [Ducks, throws fireball]

DarkLord: Congrats! [Puts up shield, makes stabbing motion.] Sally starts high school this year.

Bolroth: [Dodging sword.] Time flies! [Throws lightning bolt. Waits.] Wow, dude, that armour was really conductive.

DarkLord: [Disintegrating into cinders] Next time, I am going to chop your head off, I swear. Say hi to Cindy for me, will you?

The game provides so much interactivity that many people have formed long lasting friendships with people they've never met in person. There are even reports of players holding weddings online. Yes, I'm talking orc and troll unions here.

One of the more fascinating aspects of World of Warcraft and other games like it is they have created entirely new and quite real economies. People have begun buying and selling "objects" from the games -- things that will help you do better when you play, like weapons, or maps, or potions -- for real money.

There are even people who make a living by playing the game, improving a character to a certain point, and then selling the character for real cash. Yes, you read that right, these people earn money by playing video games, making that reason number 4,758 why *your* day job sucks.

Then there are the hybrid universes - based in reality, but still completely virtual. A good example is Facebook.

Facebook is one of those now ubiquitous "social networking" sites that allows you to hook up with people online. First you set up your own profile, and then add people you know to a "friends" list; they in turn set up their friends lists, putting you in touch with friends of friends... and so it goes.

This is one of those wildly popular phenomena that I did not understand until I signed up for it myself. My conclusion: the makers of Facebook have found a way to push an intoxicating gas through the Internet and out through your keyboard.

Okay, not really, but the site is incredibly addictive. Part of the fun is searching for people you know, or that you once knew. This is like having a high school reunion, but because it's online, you don't have to worry about how to lose the 30 lbs. you've gained in the intervening years. You can post only the most flattering [read: Photoshopped] pictures of yourself, and only connect with the people you're most interested in.

Another key tool is the Status Update. That is, you can tell everyone in your friends list what you're doing at any given moment, and the announcement appears in your friends' news feeds.

Why would your friends care about your daily life? The truth is, they probably don't. But *you* get to see your name in the news feed, and by telling the world (or a least this particular alternate universe) what you're up to minute-by-minute, you can be your own paparazzi. This can be a most gratifying egotistical experience.

This must mean that there's a little Paris Hilton in all of us. And that's a scarier thought than an entire universe of missing socks.

One of the scourges of modern life in the Western world is reality TV programming.

No, wait, that's unfair. Reality TV programming is really only a minor plague. What truly is a scourge is: product packaging.

I'm fairly lucky - I'm pretty good at beating my way into packages, and if I have to buy a product frequently, I can eventually work out a trick or two for getting into the package quickly. However, there are still several types that defeat me. For example:

Potato chip bags -- With most bags, you just need to grab one side in each hand and pull the top seam apart. However sometimes the bag has been pumped so full of air that there's not enough slack to grab. Worse, the seam may have been heavily glued, which means you really have to pull hard. The result? A chip shower when the bag finally rips open.

Pull tabs -- Pull tabs are little strips of material embedded in packaging, which are, in theory, supposed to help you rip through the package more quickly. In reality, there are two types of pull tabs: those that break in half as you're pulling them, and those that slide right out of the package before they've cut through anything.

Yoghurt lids -- Individual servings of things like yoghurt or pudding are often capped with a thin sheet of plastic. You might be lucky enough to find a tab to pull the plastic away. You will never be able to get it to come off in one piece. Indeed, many a lunch break across the globe has been wasted trying to remove enough shreds from one of these containers to wedge a spoon in.

Toys -- Most of our toys are manufactured in China these days and so perhaps manufacturers have become a bit paranoid about things coming loose on the boat trip over. But does Barbie really need to be strapped in with no less than 32 machine-tightened ties?

Twist off bottle caps -- Hands up all of you who have fallen for the line on the bottle that says "easy twist off cap!" Oooh, that's some nasty scarring you've got there.

Magazine mailers -- If you take any magazine subscriptions, you may have noticed that your favourite periodical now comes in a sealed plastic bag. This presumably is so that it arrives in pristine condition, allowing you the pleasure of making it into a dog-eared wreck yourself when you attempt to undo the bag.

Styrofoam packing -- Styrofoam has to be one of the most annoying packing materials ever made and it comes in two forms. The Styrofoam "peanut" comes complete with static electricity, so that individual pieces leap out of the box and on to your clothes, your hair, your furniture and your carpet. Moulded Styrofoam is great at providing an exact fit for the appliance packed in a box - so exact, there is no room to slide fingers in anywhere to lift the Styrofoam away.

Meat trays -- Speaking of Styrofoam, meat at the grocery store often comes in a foam tray covered with plastic wrap. These packages start leaking approximately 2.3 seconds after being put together.

CD wrappers -- Compact discs come in jewel cases, which are in turn encased in plastic. This plastic is quite possibly the strongest substance known to man; the plastic is shrink wrapped on, so there's nothing to grab. CD packaging, not the price of music, is probably the single biggest reason why people prefer to download their music from the Internet.

More than just a minor inconvenience, bad packaging caused something like 60,000 injuries in the UK in one year - presumably when people finally gave up and went for the knife, scissors or razor blade.

Worse, most of these package types aren't recyclable. Take those yoghurt lids for example. Even assuming that only 10,000 kids in my municipality have two yoghurts per week in their lunches, that's 1,040,000 bits of plastic to the landfill every year.

And with that much packaging in the landfills, it's going to take years of beating our way in to clean them up.

This week, I have good news for all of you poor slobs who are out there doing crazy things like watching what you eat and working out. There's no need! The world's junk food manufacturers are going to look after us.

For example, according to a Reuters' report, a prominent chocolate bar maker announced that it was doing its part in the battle of the bulge: it was cutting its king-sized bars in half. It is not, however, actually removing the other half from the package. No, instead it plans to market the halves as two bars in the same wrapper, thereby making it, and I quote, "shareable." For the record, the minute everyone who reads this column is suddenly struck with a case of Chocolate Bar Generosity Syndrome, I want your first thought to be: Chandra.

Meanwhile, a major hamburger retailer, which I won't name in this mcspace, has added salads to its menu. Presumably this is because nothing counteracts a ground beef patty with lettuce and mayonnaise than greens layered with bacon and ranch dressing.

No word yet though on whether a famous North American convenience store will jump on the healthy eating band wagon any time soon. It currently sells soda pop in cups that clock in at 1.3 litres in Canada, which is approximately as big as three football fields in American terms. It used to boggle my mind to think that anyone could consume that much liquid in a single sitting; of course, this is before I discovered the Englishman's capacity for ale.

While portion size reduction can only help, I suspect there are other factors at work in the obesity epidemic. For instance, according to the World Health Organization, the average American ate 147 pounds - yes, pounds - of sweeteners in 2001. I'd say that's the equivalent of eating your own body weight in sugar, but clearly when you eat that much sweetener in a year, your body weight is an upwardly mobile and hard to track number.

Further, about 62 pounds of that amount was high fructose corn syrup. Now I know what you're thinking: you're sitting there, saying to yourself, "Ha! Ha! Silly columnist! Obviously I am safe because I did not drink 62 pounds of corn syrup last year." To which I reply, "Ha! Ha! Silly reader! That's what I thought!" Then I started looking at the ingredient lists and found it in things like iced tea, lemonade, jam, fruit drinks, and bizarrely, a package of boneless, skinless chicken breast meat. I'm not sure why anyone thought I might want my chicken sweetened, so I can only conclude the chickens themselves drank a lot of cola on the farm.

Now before the farmers start pelting me with corn awareness pamphlets, let me say that there's probably nothing wrong with corn syrup sweeteners per se. It's just there's an awful lot of it and other highly refined products in our food supply these days. We've developed lazy palates - we want things super sweet or super smooth and super sized.

And the problem is that our bodies don't seem to be designed for taking on that much highly refined or processed food on a constant basis. If you'll forgive a little scatological etymology (translation: word history best not discussed in polite company), consider pumpernickel bread. Pumper comes from a German word meaning 'breaking wind,' while nickel means 'demon' (translation: your body could extract nutrition from the bread, but by heck it had to work like the devil for it).

I'm definitely not one for glorifying the old days and I admit there was a really good reason why people switched from 'old world' pumpernickel to other kinds of bread, and that is: you can also build brick-type houses out of pumpernickel loaves.

It's just that eating a peanut butter and jam sandwich on white bread with a glass of iced tea may well be the digestive equivalent of sticking your finger in an electrical socket.

What's that? Oh, sorry.

Didn't mean to ruin your lunch.