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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decay & ruin
Biosphere II
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Irving housing

got that wrong
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Fractal antenna

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Like my brownhouse:
   two levels of brownhouse
Sunday, October 11 2009
For the past week I've had something as close to a conventional job as one can have while working at home in one's pajamas (it's true, I actually wear pajamas all day long except when I go into town). But today was Sunday, and I could work on my household projects the way God intended: as a weekend warrior. So I spent much of the daylight hours filling in the gaps in the shell of the brownhouse (the small building where I was someday be venturing when nature calls). The brownhouse is divided into two areas. In the upper portion I'm building a pleasant space with a huge south-facing window, a large reservoir of water (to stabilize the temperature and provide a handy resource for to ablutions), and bookshelves groaning with the kinds of literature best read in five minute increments. Below this cabin will be a small basement where a 32 gallon plastic trash can will sit, catching whatever falls through a vertical hole connecting the two spaces. Last night I'd used pressure-treated lumber to frame-in a small vinyl double-paned window I'd salvaged, and today I installed the framework into the south side of the brownhouse basement. The idea is to provide a way for solar energy to bake the side of the shit receptacle, encouraging decomposition to continue through the winter.
I added some more cross-members and what not to the walls of the brownhouse basement and then installed an exterior wall of Wonderboard (mesh-impregnated concrete panels). Since both the framing and shell of this basement will be resistant to rot and water damage, I will be able to bury it to a certain depth.
So far I'm leaving the east (downhill) side of the brownhouse basement unwalled. Eventually a large access door will go here, allowing me to swap cans when they get too full of shit.
As the sun set, I cut a 24 inch wide closet door down to size and hung it in the brownhouse doorway (the entrance to the pleasant upper cabin) with two galvanized hinges. I then tried to figure out how best to provide a latching and pull mechanism, all functions normally provided by doorknobs. I didn't have any doorknobs, but I did have a large collection of cabinet pulls to choose between. Unfortunately none of them ended up being suitable for this application.

Meanwhile Gretchen was trying out several recipes in the kitchen, making a bunch of delicious (if technicolor) savory scones and vegan crabcakes with a delicious peppery sauce (pronounced "snarce").
She's been watching a hilarious television series called Party Down on the Roku. It focuses on a Los Angeles catering service all of whose employees are C-list actors and actresses who have great difficulty landing acting gigs. The conceit of the show (every episode is another catering event) allows for all sorts of wildly different scenarios. The differences between catering events are like the differences between planets in the Star Trek universe, though in Party Down things are actually funny.


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http://asecular.com/blog.php?091011

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