It has been said that nature abhors a vacuum. This is incorrect. What nature abhors is neatness, convenience, and the pathetic belief that things can be persuaded to work out the way they are supposed to work out. Nature's most basic law is not the law of the jungle, the law of diminishing returns, Murphey's Law, Sod's Law, The Golden Rule, or Catch 22. It is simply that the intensity of one's need to create order, to successfully complete a project, to smooth one's own road through planning, organization, experience, and careful execution will be met not with success, but by an irresistable counter force equal to the intensity of the original desire raised to the fourth power.

All natural law is predicated upon this most basic principle.

Begin with a modest intention, say, to improve the general appearance of your automobile–a wash and wax job. Within twenty four hours your modest intention will bring on a National Weather Service dangerous weather alert, a blinding dust storm the like of which has not been seen since the Depression, and an unseasonable migration of the dreaded "Caw-Caw" bird, devouring and delivering the latest crop of sticky, seed-filled, purple berries to your door . . . and your hood and your windshield . . . . A perfect example of the Clean Car Conundrum.

Or begin with an honest attempt to organize your life, to bring order to some small corner of your unruly existence. Take that tackle box (or tool box or purse), where for the last ten years you have dumped every manner of hook, line, sinker, "innovative" bass lure, pork rind, pliars, reel, Ronco accessory, stink bait, live bait, dead bait, scaler, measuring tool, plastic worm, cricket, real worm, rod wrap, and broken bobber. Buy a second tackle box, spend a weekend cleaning, sorting, tossing, ordering, untangling, straightening, and fantasizing about how much easier fishing will be from now on, how much time and effort you'll save by not devoting 92% of your energy to digging for and then untangling the one piece of killer equipment the was going to catch those enormous fish that were jumping all around the boat an hour earlier when you began to dig.

Fool! The world is an unruly place, and you have just invoked one of its major mechanisms for perpetuating its natural state--The ____ ____Principle, an inflexible rule of nature which states, simply and unarguably, that "if you got two of 'em, the one in your hand ain't the one you need." Victims of this Principle can be identified by the following conversation with themselves:

"Hey, where's the ____? . . . Oh, ey ! It's in the other tackle box/tool box/purse!"

Hence, the Two Blank or Blankety-Blank Principle.

Perhaps the strongest of all manifestations of nature's resistance to human intention lies concealed in the dreaded After Closing Time Theorem, an eternal truth that strikes terror in the hearts of all serious do-it-yourselfers. It comes in many forms, but it boils down to something like this: "Nothing you have to have to finish the job ever breaks or gets lost until just after the closing time of the only store in town that carries it." As gravity is to fragile objects, so is this theorem to the act of completing any project between closing and opening times. Consider the following case study.

It was Christmas vacation, and I had agreed to help my brother replace the carbeurator on his pickup truck. This was, of course, our fatal error, a direct violation of the two bit mechanic's Prime Directive: "If it don't quit, don't fix it." We couldn't begin until after nine o'clock in the evening, just about closing time for the auto parts stores in town. Everything went smoothly for awhile, as it almost always does in accord with the Lured into Believing You Know What You Are Doing Principle of Propitious Beginnings. We got the old carbeurator off and were ready to go on with the new one, when suddenly, from under the hood, a faint, almost musical sound assaulted my senses–"Clink, clink, clunk."

"What was that?" I asked, knowing full well that just from such innocent beginnings arise frustration, madness, despair, and taxi rides to work.

"Nothing. I just dropped a nut," my brother replied. "I know right where it landed."

Poor child. He had not done enough after hours in somebody else's garage mechanic work to understand the implications of the minor neurological malfunction of his fingers which had set this chain of events into motion. He could not know that we had just become victims of the Dropped Nut Corollary to the After Closing Hours Theorem–"a dropped nut is a lost nut." And without that knowledge, he could not understand that even God did not "know right where it landed." But he would learn. Yes, before this after closing hours project was completed, he would learn.

Remembering that The Dropped Nut Corollary is often accompanied by The Handy Hidey Hole Axiom, I advised Monty to search all forty thousand of the little nooks and crannies on the engine that were just big enough to hide the lost nut. No luck. Clearly a case of either the Three Bounces Takes It Into Another Dimension or the If There's A Hole You Can See, There's Twenty Behind Or Below It You Cain't Clause.

Then Monty did a rare and wonderful thing. He introduced me to a new principle, a principle derived from a new basic premise, a principle whose only function in this unruly world is to counteract the effects of the After Closing Time Theorem. In a single, profoundly analgesic sentence, Monty invoked the But I Work in a Parts House Transformation and derived for my wondering mind its logical conclusion–"so I can run up to the store, pick up a new one, and we can finish this job and go get a beer." I recognized that this wonderous transformation had the potential to bring us dangerously close to the Runaround Rule ("You never get everything you need in one trip.") or to the It'll Be Here Next Wednesday If The Shipment Don't Get Delayed Time Displacement Formula, but since his store was only about three blocks away and our situation had gone from ridiculous to pathetic, we opted for the Law of Last Resorts–"When all else fails, go get a new one."

Gathering up my car keys and one of the other nuts for sizing, Monty fled through the night in search of a replacement for the lost nut, which he found and which we used to install the new carbeurator. We thought we had won, finishing an hour and a half job in a mere 6 hours and 17 minutes (a nice case of the Times Three Clause of the First Time You Do It, It's Gonna Take Forever Model of Inefficient Energy Expenditure). I should have known better.

We marvelled at our completion, at the fact that the truck actually ran, and patted ourselves on the back for the disaster we had averted as we cleaned the garage and put away our tools. I thought "How strange it is that human beings must convert every activity into a great contest with the universe." As Monty turned the old carbeurator onto its side in order tp put it into the box, "Clink, clink, clunk"–the lost nut fell onto the floor at his feet.

We stared in horror, feeling our joy slide away into confusion, our euphoria descend into depression, our after the job beer become a six or a twelve pack each. I looked into his eyes, he into mine. Time stopped. A night bird called to its mate in the moonlight outside the garage; a distant howl dominoed into a neighborhood cacaphony of barks, yips, and yaps; the West Texas wind threw a dump truck load of dust and sand against the sheet metal sides of the building; the overhead neon flickered and grew dim, filling our eyes with the debris of innocence cracking, crumbling, falling to the ground at our feet.

And we heard, I swear we did, the hiss of the not-at-all-indifferent universe echoing out of that dark night, out of the wind-whipped silence following the sound of the nut falling to the floor–"It was there all the time. It was there all the time. Suckers. Sssssssssssuckers."