Nine easy ways, he says. *Nine*, he says. **Easy**, he says! Let me tell you something - ain't nothing easy when it requires a second hand to count on due to the circumstances of having run out of usable phalanges. Going to toes is right out. With that in mind, and with equal apathy extended towards the people in the cheap seats as to those rich bastards in the front row, I present to you now, *"Trusty Uncle Zhang's Three-Step Pro-Program for Ecumenical Disappointment and Growing Misanthropy."* Step One: Acquire, via means legal or illegal, moral or otherwise, and as ethically as you please, a *computer*. Step Two: Take that computer of yours and go onto the Global Information Superhighway that is *The Internet*. Step Three: Internalize the now blatant realisation that in actuality you *despise mankind and all of its creations*. I know this one doesn't really follow on from step two, but believe you me it does, with all the force of a greyhound bus slamming into a pedestrian at a hundred and fifteen kilometers an hour. Now I realise that the whole point of the article was a roundabout "don't do these things or you'll be miserable", but the problem with looking for satisfaction is that perfection and permanence are punchlines and that even after enlightenment you've still got to chop wood and carry water. One just has to face the facts; you cannot order wine here, because this is the Vinegar Bar. What you can do, however, is be equally happy when you're miserable, as you are when you're not miserable. Then, no matter how much vinegar they serve you, you can drink it down with a smile. At that point, the world will no longer be able to affect you, for you will have simply grown too powerful.