Exhibit A: Awaiting the Flushularity...
Who'd have thought in 2010 we'd still be pooping, (yes, I'm joking) let alone sealing our toilet-sewage-pipe junctions with wax "ass gaskets"? Where are my cleanup nanobots, dangit? :P
In any case, the commode here was leaking recently around the base so Matt and I spent a fascinating Monday evening getting very closely acquainted with the underside of the porcelain throne.
Here I am scraping off the old wax ring in preparation for applying the new one and replacing the toilet in its rightful place. This was totally disgusting and I am very very glad the new wax ring supposedly has a 10 year lifespan, as I don't relish doing this again this century, let alone this decade. As much as I appreciate the technological wonder that is the sewage system, man, when that stuff gets flushed I never want to see it again.
Oh, and I also found this pictorial tutorial on replacing the wax toilet ring (on a cool do-it-yourselfer site called "Hammerzone) to be really useful and clearly written.
And despite the grossness of the task, I should note that it's good to know at least I can perform light plumbing repairs if the need arises...eventually I want to replace the bathroom's vinyl floor with ceramic tile, and one thing I was dreading was removing the toilet, so it's a bit of a relief to find out it's not actually all that complicated or time-consuming.
Exhibit B: Cat #4 Has Arrived
As of last Sunday, ours is now a four-cat household. My parents (who just moved out of state) brought Nikki (an eight-year-old Chocolate Point Siamese kitty) over and she has since been settling in (she is shown below patrolling the kitchen).
Nikki spent the first few days in her own room so she could get used to the sounds and smells of the house without being accosted by the resident kittens Coraline, Brodie and Shadow (who are now five months old and utterly full of energy)! She was very scared and (quite understandably) peeved at first, but settled down a lot the second day and by the third day was jumping into my lap and purring. :D
She has now met the kittens and (much to my shock) even spent a short while napping on the couch right next to Shadow the other night! Brodie mostly stares at her and wants to play, but she isn't ready for that yet and usually hisses at him.
And she and Coraline are probably going to take a while to negotiate whatever cattish things they need to, as they're both rather strong personalities (Cora is tiny but wants to be Boss Cat, and is currently a bit miffed that she can't show Nikki what-for, as Nikki is about twice her size). But overall I am really relieved that so far we've had nothing beyond totally expected hissing, growling, and swatting; no actual fighting has taken place, yay!)
Exhibit C: An Exercise in Refurbishing
When my parents brought Nikki over they also brought her very old and very broken-down cat tree. These things can be really expensive new and given my current state of employment (or lack thereof) I figured it was worth a try refurbishing it. Plus I figured this way there would be less waste, as I'd be re-using the basic structure of the thing. Below is the finished result, set up in the living room:
In order to get it to this state, I had to take the whole thing apart, strip off all the old carpet (which had been disintegrating due to weather exposure as my parents had had it outside for a while), re-upholster it, and then put the tower back together in what I hoped would be a more stable configuration. So far it seems to be holding up well, and it actually looks pretty good in the living room, almost like some sort of weird art project.
I applied a variety of materials to the surfaces -- some carpet (my dad gave me some leftovers from when he and my stepmom re-carpeted their house), some sisal twine, some burlap, some old dish-towels, a bit of canvas, and some gaffer's tape holding various edges and seams together.
So, yeah, overall the first bit of 2010 has been very, shall we say, grounded in the physical.
12 comments:
Did you know Siamese coat color depends on temperature?
> Where are my cleanup nanobots,
> dangit? :P
I think of that every time I contemplate the dust that's accumulated in my apartment since the last time I cleaned.
I dream of armies of nanobots that come out at night (I certainly would never want to **see** them) and crawl over everything, leaving all surfaces spotless and renewed.
Speaking of which, how come so much human skin has to come off on things like light switches, staircase banisters, keyboards, and mice? I mean **lots** of it!
> As much as I appreciate the technological
> wonder that is the sewage system, man, when
> that stuff gets flushed I never want to see
> it again.
And it **is** a technological wonder, is it not? I mean, it's not exactly science-fictional gee-whizzery, at this point in history, but when I was little my grandma in Pennsylvania didn't have central sewage (or sidewalks). They did have flush toilets, as far back as I can remember. But they had a septic tank in the back yard, that was always causing them grief. My grandpa had to put on hip-boots and dig it up and unblock it periodically. And since it drained into the back yard, there was always a whiff of -- physicality -- about the place. And **everybody's** septic tank, in the whole neighborhood, ultimately drained into the creek that ran past the back yard, so that little stream had a certain tang to it, too. Of course, when you're a kid, these things don't bother you. I can only imagine the joys of less than a century ago, when lots of people still had outhouses. Can you imagine getting up in the middle of the night and fumbling around one of those? (Spider bites, anyone?) To say nothing of the historical descriptions of big cities, in times gone by, when people just emptied their chamber-pots out the window.
jimf wrote:
And it **is** a technological wonder, is it not? I mean, it's not exactly science-fictional gee-whizzery, at this point in history...
Yes! While I was (hopefully clearly) joking re. the whole "why are people still pooping in 2010?" thing, I was quite sincere in declaring the sewage system I and many other middle-class Americans enjoy today to be quite the marvellous thing indeed.
On that note, one reason futurism usually fails for me is precisely because of its focus on "technologies" fitting a particular, desired aesthetic, while at the same time utterly failing to recognize both existing and potential devices and methods that are practical and useful yet (apparently) insufficiently glamorous. Waste management systems definitely fall into this category.
And on that note, another example of this sort of thing I noticed when listening to one of the "Seminars about Long Term Thinking" podcasts courtesy of the "Long Now Foundation". I don't recall exactly who the speaker was, but he commented at length about the various ways in which the USA's food production system could stand to be improved. I thought he made a fair number of good points, but during the audience Q&A session it became clear that some folks simply weren't wowed enough by practicality (the speaker mentioned, for instance, understanding stuff like soil science and how to plant complementary crops, etc., as being potentially critical to improving the food-production infrastructure).
And...one person in the audience asked something like "So, how do robots fit into all this?", as if somehow in order to actually demonstrate "advancement", one must have robots involved! I think robots are pretty nifty myself but I also figure there's a time and place for them, and I think it's quite silly to base one's perception of how cool or useful something is by the presence or absence of robots.
WTF is an ass gasket???
Amanda: The "ass gasket" I refer to is the wax ring shown in this tutorial (which I've now edited my post to link to, as Matt and I found it really useful in performing the repair).
And the reason I referred to it as an "ass gasket" is because I was describing the repair job on the BBS I'm on, and one of the people on there said that apparently these wax rings were the "original" ass gasket, for whatever that means. But the term was just so funny I couldn't resist repeating it. :P
Lactarius: Yes, I knew that about Siamese cats, though per the article you linked to, I did not know the color/temperature gene was also found in mice and rabbits. That's really interesting.
Incidentally, I sometimes wonder if the reason Tim (the Siamese cat I had growing up -- picture here) was so dark was because we lived in Connecticut at the time where it was generally much cooler than CA. Tim was a mainly-indoor cat but he did get out once in a while, and we also didn't tend to have the heat on full blast so who knows.
And...one person in the audience asked something like "So, how do robots fit into all this?", as if somehow in order to actually demonstrate "advancement", one must have robots involved!
Yeah, that whole let-a-robot-take-over idea threatens to go in some unseemly directions.
> [O]ne reason futurism usually fails
> for me is precisely because of its
> focus on "technologies" fitting a
> particular, desired aesthetic, while
> at the same time utterly failing to
> recognize both existing and potential
> devices and methods that are practical
> and useful yet (apparently)
> insufficiently glamorous. Waste
> management systems definitely fall into
> this category.
I was, however, reminded of an Isaac Asimov short story I first read many **many** years ago, called "Strikebreaker":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikebreaker_(short_story)
It's rather a sad story, although there are bits of humor -- I recall that one of the waste-processing units that Mr. Lamorak needs to reactivate is called a "lunge-howler".
However, this is **science fiction**, not "futurism" per se -- there is a difference, as Dale Carrico recently pointed out on his blog, in response to an offhand comment by Annalee Newitz.
I have trouble extracting meaning from Carrico's word salads. If he has something worthwhile to write, he could at least try to communicate it in plain English, like, say, Joe Bageant.
Mark: Meh, to each their own...I actually find Dale's stuff bizarrely easy to read, probably because he takes the time to define his terms rather than just assuming that everyone is going to know what he means when using a particular word. Having Engineer Brain I don't always get the humanities stuff he goes on about but I do get the cultural critiques most of the time these days.
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