For some reason we bought a house (in 2007 no less (so yes we paid more for this house than anyone ever will ever)) and during the following 4 years my partner and I have compiled a quite large list of "Things we hate about our house, specifically, and homeownership, in general" and the lawnmower (and associated tools (I never hated myself more than the day I bought an edger)) holds a high place to this day. Not enough to overtake the moldy basement which gave our son asthma and pneumonia, but still a strong position.
So in conclusion fuck this town that we'll never be able to afford to leave and fuck the ownership society.
(I am bitter I know. I should be more grateful for having a roof over my family's head. I am trying to learn meditation this summer. Perhaps I can get better.)
(word verification: kisseabl, reverse karma?) (I didn't enter the word correctly the first time. New word verification: lexati)
I'm so sorry you're stuck with ownership. With any luck the whole thing will fall apart soon. Best for all of us.
My cat is spending yet another day hiding under the bed because my next door neighbor chose this beautiful, peaceful day to spend all morning and a chunk of the afternoon noisily and air-poisoningly destroying what until today had been her beautifully unmowed lawn, with a variety of different plants of different heights, with grass gone to seed, which was a gorgeous sight to see especially when wind blew through it, butterflies flew above it, and squirrels played in it. Now it's a devastated wasteland. But hey--she sure owns it!
She's better than most of my neighbors, who literally mow their lawns at least once a week every week. The sound and the smell (and the damage it's doing to all of us) is non-stop. As my father said the next time he was in my neighborhood after I complained about it, "So, all these tiny little parcels of land have their own internal combustion engines, huh?"
I think it's telling that when you do a google image search for "lawnmower," you do get one non-motorized one on the first page, but it's a cartoon of a modified tricycle that is presented as ridiculous (it's even at totallyabsurd.com). Then you don't get another one until the third page--and it's also a novelty item, a modified bicycle (which seems like a terrible idea if you ask me). The first image of just a standard, unremarkable non-motorized lawnmower is on the sixth page of results, and that's an illustration for a stupid joke about Barack Obama and John Boehner.
Meanwhile, the very first row of results on the very first page contains a dehumanized image of a woman, in an advertisement used to make women ashamed enough of their bodies to buy products to fix them. The site hosting this image praises the ad as "mixing relevance with attention-getting imagery."
We rent now, thank god, though for sure "owning" has benefits we're now aware of. Still happy to be not owning. Thankfully, the owners have a non-motorized push-mower. Unfortunately, they just last fall put in new sod, so we can't like grow a garden or anything like that (that would be one of the benefits: being able to do what you want, more or less, including taking steps towards some modicum of self-sufficiency).
I have a political party with many planks that make sense to me. One of them is that all grass cutting must be done with human powered implements. No electric trimmers, no electric/gas mowers, no blowing things (except rakes and mouths. I have a million planks, hammered together with a hammer in my mind.
We also have a push mower. Using it is more difficult than the power mower (perhaps because we bought a cheap POS one), but I am much less worried about killing or maiming myself or my children while using it. In fact, the whole family can be in the yard watching me sweat and we can talk and everything. Or after they have seen enough I can put on headphones and listen to music. And afterwards, I don't smell like small motor exhaust.
My beautiful wife is slowly turning much of the yard to flowers and shrubs. I usually complain about the work involved, but I can't argue with the results. Much less maintenance overall I think.
I do need to convince some of the coyotes that live a mile away to wander into our neighborhood to eat our bunnies. They make it difficult to grow many different types of plants. Maybe while the coyotes are here they could take out the little yippy dog that lives a block over.
Both sensible approaches. Let me know how they turn out when you two are old enough.
Richard: we probably could garden here, but I absolutely don't trust the soil here not to turn anything that grows in it into poison. Sucks.
Randal: Citations be damned! Be a rebel!
drip: I will gladly nail planks with you.
Anonymous: In my experience, if you have a decent push mower it's no more difficult than a motor one, sometimes easier because it's smaller and more maneuverable--but that's just me, might be different for others. And yeah--you can be social while doing it, the air smells like cut grass after instead of exhaust, etc. So nice. I say, if you (the general "you") have to cut your lawn, do it wish a push mower.
It was putting the mower bit in place of the front wheel--it just seems like the weight would be all thrown off, not to mention that if the mower gets stuck on something it could be, uh, unfortunate. But dunno, maybe it would work...!
We dug up all the grass in our front yard when we moved in, put in a cherry tree, a pear tree, raspberry canes, a strawberry patch between the sidewalk and the street, a bunch of herbs and flowers. We dug up quite a bit in the backyard for vegetables, and more strawberries. We do have a patch of grass reserved where we installed a meditation labyrinth and where we practice tai chi, but it is easily maintained with the human powered mower.
We harvested about 30 gallons of strawberries last year, and they're just starting to ripen again this year. I've managed to talk one of my neighbors into replacing some of his grass with strawberries. When my plants start sending out runners, I dig up surplus plants and give them away. I'll give free quarts of berries to the neighbors in an effort to get them thinking about growing their own patch.
Ethan's working through his music collection in alphabetical order
The next five artists he'll be listening to:
The Clash The Clientele Jimmy Cliff Patsy Cline Clinic
(Project began May 29, 2010. Finished through the letter B on April 1, 2011 with 460 items catalogued on Rate Your Music.)
Ethan's reading
Samuel R. Delany Triton aka Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia
Thoughts that aren't getting whole posts
- I just caught my cat licking one of my dirty shirts. When he saw I was watching, he pretended he'd been cleaning himself all along. -ethan 9/23/11
- I didn't know The Pixies covered "I've Been Waiting for You"! So on Heathen, David Bowie covered The Pixies AND a song they covered? Weird. -ethan 9/21/11
- Dangerous Visions is so goddamn macho. And like half the writers are military or "intelligence" or government or advertising dudes. It largely bites. -ethan 9/10/11
- I wish people would figure out that "HD" is not even close to "like you're actually there"--it's completely different from how we really see things. If they figured that out, maybe it would occasionally be used interestingly. -ethan 9/9/11
- Robinson Crusoe on Mars has its major problems, but it looks like a series of living Nicholas Roerich paintings. -ethan 9/3/11
- I just plain don't like Brian Aldiss. -ethan 8/31/11
- Here, at least, it was a good hurricane. I'm embarrassed by how happy I was when the electricity came back on. -ethan 8/28/11
- Is it my imagination or is IOZ way more open about genuinely caring about things since his return? -ethan 8/26/11
- Does Firefox constantly tell British people that they're spelling labour and programme and theatre wrong? -ethan 8/25/11
- There is a huge (and hugely important) difference between knowing that events a, b, and c happened between years x and y, and understanding that they were happening at the same time. -ethan 8/24/11
- Among the many things bugging me about the crappy novel I'm reading is that it keeps referring to a woman whose "late teens" were "forty years ago" as a "little old lady." Come on now, she's 59 at the oldest. -ethan 8/22/11
- Spending a day in the woods is the best thing in the world. -ethan 8/21/11
- Maria Mies: "Powerless groups, particularly if they are totally integrated within a system of power and exploitation, find it difficult to define reality differently from the powerful." -ethan 8/20/11
- The funniest sentence in Frankenstein: "I found that I could not compose a female without again devoting several months to profound study and laborious disquisition." -ethan 8/18/11
- Chumbawamba: "Nothing ever burned down by itself/Every fire needs a little bit of help." -ethan 8/18/11
- We'll see if I use this. Idea stolen from Davidly. -ethan 8/18/11
12 comments:
For some reason we bought a house (in 2007 no less (so yes we paid more for this house than anyone ever will ever)) and during the following 4 years my partner and I have compiled a quite large list of "Things we hate about our house, specifically, and homeownership, in general" and the lawnmower (and associated tools (I never hated myself more than the day I bought an edger)) holds a high place to this day. Not enough to overtake the moldy basement which gave our son asthma and pneumonia, but still a strong position.
So in conclusion fuck this town that we'll never be able to afford to leave and fuck the ownership society.
(I am bitter I know. I should be more grateful for having a roof over my family's head. I am trying to learn meditation this summer. Perhaps I can get better.)
(word verification: kisseabl, reverse karma?)
(I didn't enter the word correctly the first time. New word verification: lexati)
I'm so sorry you're stuck with ownership. With any luck the whole thing will fall apart soon. Best for all of us.
My cat is spending yet another day hiding under the bed because my next door neighbor chose this beautiful, peaceful day to spend all morning and a chunk of the afternoon noisily and air-poisoningly destroying what until today had been her beautifully unmowed lawn, with a variety of different plants of different heights, with grass gone to seed, which was a gorgeous sight to see especially when wind blew through it, butterflies flew above it, and squirrels played in it. Now it's a devastated wasteland. But hey--she sure owns it!
She's better than most of my neighbors, who literally mow their lawns at least once a week every week. The sound and the smell (and the damage it's doing to all of us) is non-stop. As my father said the next time he was in my neighborhood after I complained about it, "So, all these tiny little parcels of land have their own internal combustion engines, huh?"
I think it's telling that when you do a google image search for "lawnmower," you do get one non-motorized one on the first page, but it's a cartoon of a modified tricycle that is presented as ridiculous (it's even at totallyabsurd.com). Then you don't get another one until the third page--and it's also a novelty item, a modified bicycle (which seems like a terrible idea if you ask me). The first image of just a standard, unremarkable non-motorized lawnmower is on the sixth page of results, and that's an illustration for a stupid joke about Barack Obama and John Boehner.
Meanwhile, the very first row of results on the very first page contains a dehumanized image of a woman, in an advertisement used to make women ashamed enough of their bodies to buy products to fix them. The site hosting this image praises the ad as "mixing relevance with attention-getting imagery."
We rent now, thank god, though for sure "owning" has benefits we're now aware of. Still happy to be not owning. Thankfully, the owners have a non-motorized push-mower. Unfortunately, they just last fall put in new sod, so we can't like grow a garden or anything like that (that would be one of the benefits: being able to do what you want, more or less, including taking steps towards some modicum of self-sufficiency).
But god I hate gas-mowers.
I try and wait until right before I know I'd get cited by the city for the gothic horror of unkempt greenery.
I have a political party with many planks that make sense to me. One of them is that all grass cutting must be done with human powered implements. No electric trimmers, no electric/gas mowers, no blowing things (except rakes and mouths. I have a million planks, hammered together with a hammer in my mind.
(First Anonymous here)
We also have a push mower. Using it is more difficult than the power mower (perhaps because we bought a cheap POS one), but I am much less worried about killing or maiming myself or my children while using it. In fact, the whole family can be in the yard watching me sweat and we can talk and everything. Or after they have seen enough I can put on headphones and listen to music. And afterwards, I don't smell like small motor exhaust.
My beautiful wife is slowly turning much of the yard to flowers and shrubs. I usually complain about the work involved, but I can't argue with the results. Much less maintenance overall I think.
I do need to convince some of the coyotes that live a mile away to wander into our neighborhood to eat our bunnies. They make it difficult to grow many different types of plants. Maybe while the coyotes are here they could take out the little yippy dog that lives a block over.
my step father made me ride one of these at least two hours a week to not be gay.
i can sympathize. my parents used this for my latent tendencies:
http://bit.ly/lAOe5k
http://bit.ly/ioNgD1
Both sensible approaches. Let me know how they turn out when you two are old enough.
Richard: we probably could garden here, but I absolutely don't trust the soil here not to turn anything that grows in it into poison. Sucks.
Randal: Citations be damned! Be a rebel!
drip: I will gladly nail planks with you.
Anonymous: In my experience, if you have a decent push mower it's no more difficult than a motor one, sometimes easier because it's smaller and more maneuverable--but that's just me, might be different for others. And yeah--you can be social while doing it, the air smells like cut grass after instead of exhaust, etc. So nice. I say, if you (the general "you") have to cut your lawn, do it wish a push mower.
And coyotes! I love coyotes!
Wait, back up, the bicycle idea sounds promising to me.
It was putting the mower bit in place of the front wheel--it just seems like the weight would be all thrown off, not to mention that if the mower gets stuck on something it could be, uh, unfortunate. But dunno, maybe it would work...!
We dug up all the grass in our front yard when we moved in, put in a cherry tree, a pear tree, raspberry canes, a strawberry patch between the sidewalk and the street, a bunch of herbs and flowers. We dug up quite a bit in the backyard for vegetables, and more strawberries. We do have a patch of grass reserved where we installed a meditation labyrinth and where we practice tai chi, but it is easily maintained with the human powered mower.
We harvested about 30 gallons of strawberries last year, and they're just starting to ripen again this year. I've managed to talk one of my neighbors into replacing some of his grass with strawberries. When my plants start sending out runners, I dig up surplus plants and give them away. I'll give free quarts of berries to the neighbors in an effort to get them thinking about growing their own patch.
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