|
|
|
podcasts and weed whacking
Thursday, August 27 2009
Hands blistered by my scything attempt yesterday, today I attacked the lawn using grid power in the form of my electric weed whacker. Back and forth, back and forth, I swung the whacker in a large arc, usually dipping the whirring string enough to completely denude the ground down to the grass roots in patches. When I'd look up, I'd see various panicking black and brown forms scurrying away from me in all directions. These were spiders, probably Wolf Spiders, many clutching egg masses. It's amazing how many carnivores a patch of lawn can support, if, that is, those carnivores are not warm-blooded.
A weed whacker is not especially well-suited to general grass mowing, and it took me about two hours for our modest 0.1 acre yard. But using one isn't especially strenuous, and it's quiet enough to permit me to listen to podcasts through earbuds (if I then cover those earbuds with shop-style ear protection).
It was a Thursday, so I was listening to the fresh new episode of the KunstlerCast, the one where they talked about our "idiocracy" — media and politicians catering to all that is ignorant and reflexive in the populace, and how information technology isn't helping. Kunstler ended the show by mentioning a scary meme circulating on the intertron: if Barack Obama fails, the backlash could bring us a president even more evil and stupid than Bush II. And we'd have John McCain to thank for dredging her up from the kooky margins of the political lagoon.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?090827 feedback
previous | next |
