Two tubes of soft flesh
Mostly alike, side by side
How do they differ?
[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]
Showing posts with label by. Show all posts
Showing posts with label by. Show all posts
31 January 2018
05 December 2012
on cleaning clothes
I no longer use a washing-machine powered by electricity. Instead, I have developed a series of buckets in which I clean my clothes, a system that works fairly well. To start, I fill up an old cat litter bucket – one that is clean, squat, and wider than the average contractor's bucket – with the clothes I wish to wash, a dollop of detergent, and water. Usually, I allow this brew to sit for many hours out on the deck so that the soap and water can impregnate the fibers and make cleaning easier. Such long soakings (which make up phase 1) work fine in summer; in winter, however, they find me cleaning my clothes in the evenings, the cold and the dark conspiring with the dirty, frigid water in which my garments have been sitting to make for a miserable task. Now, I process a load in one go, the wash and the rinse cycles following one another closely rather than being spaced out over an entire day.
I agitate the clothes in the squat bucket by poking one side down with a long bamboo pole (a broomstick will also work during this, phase 2), forcing the items down on one side, which pushes them up on the other and allows me to mash the garments thoroughly. After I see a particular shirt or item for the third or fourth time, I put aside my stick and drop a skinnier bucket into the squat one (skinnier in that its bottom goes all the way down to the bottom of the wider bucket), this one with many holes drilled into its bottom and sides. I sit on the top of the skinner bucket, thus forcing the water from the clothes using my own weight. Once I am satisfied with this rudimentary straining, I take the skinnier bucket back out and resume poking at the clothes with my poker, rotating them around and around until they seem well agitated. (The water at this point will be oily, brownish, and filled with tiny particles of sweat, skin, and dirt.) I usually agitate and strain at least three times before dumping out what water I can and moving on to phase 3.
Phase 3 involves putting the skinnier bucket back into the squat bucket but then flipping both over together so that the water runs out. Then, I sit on the bottom of the squat bucket, using my own weight to strain the clothes against the skinnier bucket (which, again, has holes drilled into its bottom and sides). This forces much of the remaining water out of the clothes; I get even more out by rocking back and forth and by shifting position on the bottom of the squat bucket, which allows trapped pockets of water to escape onto the wooden deck, which must be swept off afterward to keep it from rotting quite so quickly. I generally give the clothes a visual check at this point, and a close smelling, to see if they need a third rinse or if the are clean enough to move on to phase 4. This last phase involves taking the wet items from the squat bucket and hanging them up to dry on my clothes-spider, a retractable hanger that perches at the edge of the deck far enough from the house so that the water dripping from the clothes does not seep into the foundation or moisten the siding. I usually leave the clothes there to drip their remaining moisture onto the grass; if I am lucky, they get an additional from the rain. Once the clothes are mostly dry, I move them to lines under the roof of the upper, front porch, where they are allowed to dry fully before being taken in, folded, and put away.
Cleaning clothes in the manner described above takes more time than with an electrical washing-machine; it uses virtually no electricity, however, it is all but silent, and it provides the washer with a good upper-body workout. The cost for the buckets, soap, and poker is less than $20, but the ability to wash one's clothes – without electricity or undue physical strain – is nearly priceless. Regain a slice of independence through honest effort! Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
I agitate the clothes in the squat bucket by poking one side down with a long bamboo pole (a broomstick will also work during this, phase 2), forcing the items down on one side, which pushes them up on the other and allows me to mash the garments thoroughly. After I see a particular shirt or item for the third or fourth time, I put aside my stick and drop a skinnier bucket into the squat one (skinnier in that its bottom goes all the way down to the bottom of the wider bucket), this one with many holes drilled into its bottom and sides. I sit on the top of the skinner bucket, thus forcing the water from the clothes using my own weight. Once I am satisfied with this rudimentary straining, I take the skinnier bucket back out and resume poking at the clothes with my poker, rotating them around and around until they seem well agitated. (The water at this point will be oily, brownish, and filled with tiny particles of sweat, skin, and dirt.) I usually agitate and strain at least three times before dumping out what water I can and moving on to phase 3.
Phase 3 involves putting the skinnier bucket back into the squat bucket but then flipping both over together so that the water runs out. Then, I sit on the bottom of the squat bucket, using my own weight to strain the clothes against the skinnier bucket (which, again, has holes drilled into its bottom and sides). This forces much of the remaining water out of the clothes; I get even more out by rocking back and forth and by shifting position on the bottom of the squat bucket, which allows trapped pockets of water to escape onto the wooden deck, which must be swept off afterward to keep it from rotting quite so quickly. I generally give the clothes a visual check at this point, and a close smelling, to see if they need a third rinse or if the are clean enough to move on to phase 4. This last phase involves taking the wet items from the squat bucket and hanging them up to dry on my clothes-spider, a retractable hanger that perches at the edge of the deck far enough from the house so that the water dripping from the clothes does not seep into the foundation or moisten the siding. I usually leave the clothes there to drip their remaining moisture onto the grass; if I am lucky, they get an additional from the rain. Once the clothes are mostly dry, I move them to lines under the roof of the upper, front porch, where they are allowed to dry fully before being taken in, folded, and put away.
Cleaning clothes in the manner described above takes more time than with an electrical washing-machine; it uses virtually no electricity, however, it is all but silent, and it provides the washer with a good upper-body workout. The cost for the buckets, soap, and poker is less than $20, but the ability to wash one's clothes – without electricity or undue physical strain – is nearly priceless. Regain a slice of independence through honest effort! Mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
03 October 2012
importance of metrics
Americans – and, by extension, peoples in all parts of the world who are yearning for Liberty – appear to have lost sight of the more important things in life. Bombarded by constant advertisements telling us we need this new thing and that new service, this new skirt and that new car, we long ago gave in, affording these things by burying ourselves under mountains of personal and high-interest debt. Furthermore, we have come to define ourselves primarily by our current occupations; we have come to accept monikers such as Blue Collar, Middle Class, Working Poor, and the like, without batting an eye, without a single question, without the slightest outcry, without even taking a moment to see how such narrow definitions are deflating our once-buoyant and once-vibrant individual souls.
To accept such monikers, or to strive to be seen by others as belonging to one specific class or the other, is to step willingly into the artificial world that advertisers and their corporate slave-masters try so hard to craft for us (in order to get our money); to talk constantly about What We Do For A Living – to start every single fucking conversation with that exact question – is to declare that our lives are primarily boring, devoid of personal development, lacking in spiritual humility, focused mostly on grabbing and taking instead of offering and giving. When trying to remember when was the last time I spoke with someone about my recent efforts to increase my own Liberty or that of another person, my mind draws a blank; when trying to talk to the average Someone about the use of negative space within an artistic composition, or the importance of cadence in prose, they immediately change subjects and want to discuss the upcoming release of the blue-ray diskette of the fourth season of some worthless fucking TV show about super-models-turned-moms who run secret subterranean cabbage farms.
I am beginning to suspect that I am largely alone in my conscious rejection of modern consumerist culture, that my efforts to cultivate a shred of individuality – not by hoarding cash or working 70 hours a week but by reading books on a dozen different topics and trying to reawaken my artistic abilities – that my efforts to make myself a slightly better and more interesting person are being matched by few, if any, of my peers. Please understand that I am not trying to say that I am cooler or more valuable to society for rejecting its more knee-jerk and pitiful aspects, merely that I feel largely alone, a poor sob adrift on a sea of self-banishment that is fed by my own tears, a snake for whom the once-familiar tones have lost their charming edge. My disappointment with society is likely the reason why few people bother to read these blogs, anymore – my bleating has turned sour; my whining, incessant; and my holier-than-thou attitude has become so stale that even I am bored with it. Perhaps I too should just give in, work a nine-to-five, worry above all else about my choice of cable-TV provider, and gain 75 pounds of pure belly-fat. Probably not, though, because I've given up on so many other things in my life that I could hardly live with giving up on becoming the best person I can possibly be. (If The Best Person I Can Possibly Be is not a metric of its own, a tiny little box into which I am trying to force my bursting and exuberant soul, then I have no idea what a metric is, anymore.) To my knowledge, though, few Americans self-identify with artificial names and metrics dreamed up by content-hungry newscasters, and this judgmental thunder-and-brimstone that I compose is just wasting space on a perfectly good server farm, somewhere. Oh well; mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
To accept such monikers, or to strive to be seen by others as belonging to one specific class or the other, is to step willingly into the artificial world that advertisers and their corporate slave-masters try so hard to craft for us (in order to get our money); to talk constantly about What We Do For A Living – to start every single fucking conversation with that exact question – is to declare that our lives are primarily boring, devoid of personal development, lacking in spiritual humility, focused mostly on grabbing and taking instead of offering and giving. When trying to remember when was the last time I spoke with someone about my recent efforts to increase my own Liberty or that of another person, my mind draws a blank; when trying to talk to the average Someone about the use of negative space within an artistic composition, or the importance of cadence in prose, they immediately change subjects and want to discuss the upcoming release of the blue-ray diskette of the fourth season of some worthless fucking TV show about super-models-turned-moms who run secret subterranean cabbage farms.
I am beginning to suspect that I am largely alone in my conscious rejection of modern consumerist culture, that my efforts to cultivate a shred of individuality – not by hoarding cash or working 70 hours a week but by reading books on a dozen different topics and trying to reawaken my artistic abilities – that my efforts to make myself a slightly better and more interesting person are being matched by few, if any, of my peers. Please understand that I am not trying to say that I am cooler or more valuable to society for rejecting its more knee-jerk and pitiful aspects, merely that I feel largely alone, a poor sob adrift on a sea of self-banishment that is fed by my own tears, a snake for whom the once-familiar tones have lost their charming edge. My disappointment with society is likely the reason why few people bother to read these blogs, anymore – my bleating has turned sour; my whining, incessant; and my holier-than-thou attitude has become so stale that even I am bored with it. Perhaps I too should just give in, work a nine-to-five, worry above all else about my choice of cable-TV provider, and gain 75 pounds of pure belly-fat. Probably not, though, because I've given up on so many other things in my life that I could hardly live with giving up on becoming the best person I can possibly be. (If The Best Person I Can Possibly Be is not a metric of its own, a tiny little box into which I am trying to force my bursting and exuberant soul, then I have no idea what a metric is, anymore.) To my knowledge, though, few Americans self-identify with artificial names and metrics dreamed up by content-hungry newscasters, and this judgmental thunder-and-brimstone that I compose is just wasting space on a perfectly good server farm, somewhere. Oh well; mahalo.
場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit
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