Humor

Unsightly Rooftop Debris

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In the city they don’t built out they build up. When you first move into your condo you are amazed at the city view (if you have one). But then, after a while, you start to notice the details.

While buildings may lavish effort on their facades and interiors, often times they forget the roof. After all, who cares what the roof looks like. Your neighbors up above, that’s who. Those in the middle of the photo collage, to give a feeling for all the condos in the mostly beige and white skyscrapers look down onto the smaller (mostly commercial) buildings. In the loop it is businesses looking at businesses while in River North and the Gold Coast it is mainly condos and hotels looking down on commercial buildings.

Upper left – ever wonder how they hang signs and lights off the side of the building? In this case it is a series of planters filled with concrete in a grid. At least they are neat, I guess. Upper right – there has been a puddle with floating debris (including that rope and those boards) up on that roof for SEVEN YEARS. I can’t believe it doesn’t drive the people beneath them crazy with leaking but, rain or shine, in all seasons, there is a big pond on that roof (in the winter it does freeze). Middle left – there is grass growing (it is dead now) in the large puddle on that roof. Middle right – a roof is a great place to store your cinder blocks, un-needed antennas, and the like, apparently. Also been there almost a decade. Lower left – a bunch of boxes and cartons have been strewn about on that roof for a while. Lower right – of all the rooftops this is the most amazing. That is a fully grown tree (in the winter it sheds its leaves) on the roof of the old firehouse. I have no idea how it gets enough purchase to stay on that roof in the high winds but it has been up there for at least seven years, changing with the seasons. Kind of like those trees that live on the rock face in the wilderness.

Dan asked me over at LITGM why I used the word “purchase”… I was using it as a synonym for “grip” which I thought I heard somewhere but maybe I am just confused.

Cross posted at LITGM

Hazards of Find & Replace

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Some rather strange lines in a version of Tolstoy’s War and Peace which was published for the Barnes & Noble device known as the Nook:

At the rare moments when the old fire did Nook in her handsome, fully developed body she was even more attractive than in former days.

Captain Tushin, having given orders to his company, sent a soldier to find a dressing station or a doctor for the cadet, and sat down by a bonfire the soldiers had Nookd on the road.

Probable explanation here

Pretty funny. Also a useful reminder that computers, despite all their usefulness and power, are dumb and clumsy beasts, and when not properly supervised can do things considerably more harmful than messing up some passages from Tolstoy.

(via Five Feet of Fury)

Gulag Plants

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Dan and I have the habit of sending boxes of books back and forth after reading them, and I recently received a large contingent of books which was much appreciated. We both are trying to stay away from military history reading to the extent we can because we’ve read so much of it over the years. In this instance I take the book “Gulag” which is an excellent history of that horrible system of jails and concentration camps that were used to repress the Russia people (and their satellites), and utilize its otherwise completely depressing contents to support our direct lighting system for tomato plants.

A positive use for this important but incredibly depressing book. On the other side I should balance it out with the Black Book of Communism.

Cross posted at LITGM

Alpha Male of the Kitchen

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I just picked up a $15 rice cooker at the same store where I once bought a very fine $8 toaster. Do I know value or what. But here is the thing. A rice cooker is passive — you put in the rice and water and turn it on and it does the rest. Do you even have to turn it off? I don’t think so. It just sits there, stewing. Sort of female-like. The cooked rice stimulates one’s appetite. It also takes a long time to get ready in the evening. Tradeoffs.

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