Two things have frustrated me all my life - Murphy's Law, and why cellophane only rips in one direction.
The cellophane thing is far too big an issue to discuss here, it is the stuff of which Nobel Prizes are made.
But Murphy's Law is another bottle of fish altogether.
Some would argue bottles don't house fish, but in the wild eyes of Irish rural logic, fuelled by Guinness and far too many potatoes, the absurdity of fish living in bottles is the very essence of Murphy's Law.
Its definition and sub-definitions stretch logic to breaking point - "in nature, nothing is ever right, hence in life, if everything is going right, it must be wrong".
Arrant poppycock.
And yet the law has not only survived for centuries, it has flourished.
For a time, it flourished for me also.
In fact, until last weekend.
I had been fighting bare-knuckled with Murphy for decades.
When I woke in the morning, if I dared to move a foot from the bed to the floor, it would land in the only pool of cat-sick in the house.
But when our cat died, I needed to find other ways of divining Murphy's intentions for the day.
And I found one that was almost zen-like in its simplicity, gleaned from the incisive writings of Oscar Wilde.
Oscar suggested, and I'm paraphrasing, that you take a pair of Fila leather jandals bought at a Melbourne outlet store from the shoe cupboard and throw them on the floor higgledy piggledy.
If they land together the right way up, then Murphy has slept in, and you are in for a trouble-free day.
The jandals never landed that way of course, just like jam toast always falls face down on a kitchen floor.
So I sucked this in and assumed that day would be as abject as all the others, another domino-collapsing litany of misfortune at the hands of restaurant waiters, incompetent shop staff and Delhi help-desk personnel.
But last Saturday, when one of the Filas pogoed across the floor under a table, where I cracked my head trying to retrieve it, I decided I had had enough of Murphy's Law.
Murphy had kicked enough sand in my face to solve the problem at Middle beach.
From now on, I would stand up to him, I would attack his law with all the native cunning, chess-like counter moves and fearless bravery I could muster.
The next morning, I abandoned the Fila jandal game.
Murphy had barely blown the froth from his Guinness when I hurled every single shoe from the shoe cupboard on to the floor, knowing one pair would land the right way up, even if it was the white Nike golf shoes with spikes.
I went outside, my Nike golf shoes giving me excellent grip on the drive, and deliberately didn't look for the Sunday Star-Times, which Murphy is fond of not delivering.
I picked a kilo of junk mail out of the red letterbox, and went back inside.
In case Murphy had made us run out of a key breakfast staple - bread, tea bags, peanut butter - I opened one of the 20 tins of canned tomatoes my wife keeps in case of a nuclear strike, and slurped happily through that while reading of some very reasonable deals on Kia cars.
The sun had barely risen and Murphy was on the ropes.
I spent the rest of the day finishing him off.
For sure, I missed out on all the things I like doing on a Sunday, but I had enormous fun.
And that's the guts of it really: you attack Murphy's Law, you don't let him stomp all over you.
Murphy is smart, damn smart, but he can't shoot down what isn't there.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
