Oh, and some of those wooden stirrers with that, thanks...

Foot pedal blues

Sad, but true. The foot pedal ordered from Amazon does not change the sound an electric guitar makes. It doesn't add wah-wah, it doesn't create fuzz or distortion, none of that. It starts and stops a media player for audio typing. It's a digital dictation instrument, not a musical one. Amazon confirmed the order, and that page had that section along the bottom: customers also bought...

...I don't usually pay much attention to this, but this time I did, and there's:

Olympus ear sponges. Makes sense. Foot pedal on the floor, headphones on the head, ear buds in the ears, and those foamy bits on the ends wear out after a while, become thin, get loose and fall off. In any case, if there's common headphones in the office, you need your own ear sponges. Otherwise, you're in audio typing territory equivalent to junkies sharing needles.

Philips ear sponges. See above.

Keyboard-type 'foot' switch. An alternative start / stop method.

A connector cable. Presumably of the type needed for the foot pedal? Surely they're all USB now?

Sticky coloured dots 8 mm labels. These:

OK. They are office supplies. There must be any amount of office supplies more relevant to a foot pedal than these labels. (i)

Drink stirrers.

Yep. Long thin lolly-sticks that substitute for spoons (ii). People thinking about foot pedals were also thinking about hygienic, disposable coffee stirrers. Apparently.

(i) 

I was once on a removal job. The result of a divorce between an interesting couple. He was one of those ex-army (armed forces, not barmy) types, very posh, obviously wealthy. She was an African lady he'd met on his travels. Sadly, after many years together, things hadn't worked out, and the split, clearly, was acrimonious. We were there in two separate lorries. Us doing his stuff, and our competitor (swearing allowed for proper names) Vic (the prick) doing hers. The problem was, or, more accurately, the problems were:

1. He was moving into a small flat in town, and therefore what he was taking was labelled with those little round stickers (blue).
2. The flat was too small to accommodate all his chattels, so others were going into our storage unit (green stickers). Already too much for a removal bloke to remember, eh?
3. She was also downsizing.
4. Her stuff was going to her flat (red stickers)...
5. ...and into Vic (the prick)'s storage facility (yellow stickers).
6. There were a number of items going to a separate storage unit (orange stickers). These were still in ownership dispute.

Vic (TP) had (all-day, industrial strength cannabis) problems with what day it was, let alone with what coloured sticker was going into which truck, and where (we were stacking left / right – flat / storage, he was going front / back. They deliver a mean bollocking when under pressure and irritated beyond a sensible level, those ex-army bods. Wasted on Vic (TP), though. He just did the eyebrow thing, smiled, and said “other van then, boss?”

(ii)

Do you think there's one factory producing these? Normal (for lolly sticks), long super thin (for stirring hot drinks), shorter, fatter, individually wrapped (for the Dr when he does that “now say ah” thing, pressing down on your tongue?)