Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   energy beer for the active young adult
Sunday, July 22 2007
The evening was filled with two social calls in greater Marbletown. The first was to a barbecue at the house of our 50-something adventurer friend, where he still lives with his 20-something Australian girlfriend. We'd brought our dogs, and Sally managed to dig up a couple of plants while trying to get to a chipmunk. There were tofu dogs, but all the other vegetarian options seemed to be drowning in mayonnaise. Gretchen had brought a chocolate cake, which was excited everyone in that way that chocolate cake always does. For me, of course, chocolate cake is an overrated dessert much as Heineken is an overrated beer. I noticed, by the way, that Heineken now comes in narrow aluminum cans similar in shape and styling to Red Bull, as if it's trying to position itself as the energy beer for the active young adult on the make.
Later we stopped on the way home at Penny and David's house for wine and chuckles. Their house is a boxy modernist structure with huge windows to the east and north (terrible site planning for passive solar). The windows are constructed of massive eight by four and eight by five foot panes of insulated glass. The seals are blown on the panes and leaks have developed around them so they all must be replaced, a job that's going to cost in the low five figures. Tonight I was looking at the panes and imagining what I could do with them, since otherwise they'll be thrown away. Earlier I'd been considering using one or two of them as cover plates for my homemade solar panel. But they're so heavy and awkward I'm thinking it might be better to find a use for them on the ground, perhaps in some sort of greenhouse or passive solar function. The fact that the seals are blown on these panes actually doesn't much decrease their value for such applications.


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