I came across this rather moving story about mouse-catching and focus, which is followed by an embarrassingly amusing story of a woman forced into urinating into a cup while driving. At the end of the story, I found that it happened here in Athens.

Did you ever read Ray Bradbury’s story, There Will Come Soft Rains? I read it when young, and it had a profound effect on me. I was obsessed with nuclear obliteration (although it was probably good for my psyche, I was rather upset I wasn’t allowed to watch The Day After), and this story is set shortly after a nuclear catastrophe. The main character is a robotic house, something else that fascinated me. So, this story took a technological utopia and set it in a terrible, terrible time, and it grabbed a hold of me.

I’ve taken the first step toward my own technological utopia, a robotic home, today. My first order from X-10 arrived today. If you read through the marketing gloss, past the webcam, surveillance, and MP3 talk, you’ll see that what they’re offering is a way to program your house. Everything electric, from appliances to light bulbs, can be programmed or remotely controlled. I’m starting simple, merely beaming the audio and video from my most excellent TiVO to two separate TVs without wires. But thanks to the oddly discounted pricing scheme, I also received a couple remote controls and a few appliance and lighting modules. Mere baby steps toward what I see pictured in my head.

You see, I want to be an ecopoet. That’s a term coined by Kim Stanley Robinson in his Mars books, and it’s a broad word, but it means what you think it might. Technically, ecopoesis is the act of introducing a biosphere into an arid, unhabitable environment with the intent of transforming the environment into a more hospitable one. Putting plants on Mars to change the carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen, for example. But Robinson stresses the poet aspect of things to mean living harmoniously with the ecosystem, creating beauty. And not just pretty floral arrangements, either. This is what I mean by broad… beautiful meals, beautiful animals, beautiful vegetables. (See this previous post for more examples) And in my mind, it doesn’t mean being a Luddite, either. I want to live in a farmhouse (well, I do now, but I mean my own farmhouse, on my own farm), grow plants and animals organically, use my own muscles for labor, but I also want to be as intertwined with technology as I can. A nearly-invisible, behind the scenes technology. Some examples: sensors in the garden that can tell when specific plants need water and water them; a voice activated digital cookbook in the kitchen; a fireplace that comes to life when I sit in my reading chair.

I’ve longed dreamed of a fusion of “the old ways” and new technology. Today, I start my journey.

CNN is talking fruitcake. I made four loaves over the weekend, following Alton Brown’s recipe from his Good Eats episode It’s a Wonderful Cake. He’s right – it is a wonderful cake.

The American Chestnut, wiped out by a fungus early this century, may return within ten years. Just in time to get cut down to make room for more strip malls, I reckon.

Last night, the aged Hotpoint washing machine my girlfriend moved into my house stopped working. Or, more likely, it stopped working some time ago, and we just noticed last night. The agitator wasn’t agitating, and that pretty much prevents dirty clothes from becomming clean clothes. I’m not a handy man (though I do have a knack for fixing things), but I blindly began disassambling the agitator. On the inside, I found some cracked plastic that prevented the agitator from sitting completely on the spinny knobby geary thing (I’m really not a handyman, you see. I’m sure that thing has a real name.) in the middle of the drum. Sure that that was the problem, I went to the internet to find out more. As I’ve said before, the internat can make you seem like an expert on anything, and this was no exception. Our model of washing machine has long since been discontinued, and Hotpoint isn’t even its own company anymore, but still I was able to find not just an online catalog of parts and accessories, but also a complete schematic for the machine in PDF format for downloading. I know the exact part I need, but thanks to the schematic, I was able to jerry-rig it so it should last another several months at least. Viva la internet!

I’ve got just over a gallon of various dried fruits soaking in the best aged Nicaraguan rum I could afford in my pantry right now. This weekend, they will become four of Alton Brown’s fruitcakes. And I can’t wait.

The editor of my favorite British newspaper, The Guardian , is risking deportation “for the term of his natural life” by calling for the abolishment of the monarchy. In this article, they argue that the requirement that the crown can only pass to Protestant heirs of Princess Sophia (making Catholics, those that marry Catholics, and those born out of wedlock ineligible), and the requirement that male children get the first shot to the thrown over older sisters, violate the European Human Rights Act, now law in Britain.

Do you want to follow along behind the scenes of a play in production? I’m directing Christopher Durang’s Baby With the Bathwater , and I’ve formed an egroup mailing list for my cast and crew. You can join, if that’s the kind of thing that would interest you.

It’s Pearl Harbor Day. The 59th anniversary of the US’s entry into World War II. Of course it’s the “day that will live in infamy,” but with what we know now, that whole speech just rings wrong. In college, we noted this day on several occasions by having a Pearl Harbor Party. The theme drinks were B-52’s and Kamikazes, and they were drunk in revered remembrance in great quantities. I vividly recall one year’s party (I don’t know how, considering how many B-52’s I had) hosted by Randy. After solemnly noting the beginning of way well into the night, I then had a drunken conversation on physics homework with Marjorie, took an incredibly drunk Charlie across campus to some friends’ house (known affectionately as TenTen, since that was the street address), to play a game of Avalon Hill’s Civilization. I explained the rules to him, and he listened. After that, he excused himself for being to drunk to play and left. Meanwhile, the residents of the house, perfectly sober when we walked in, were busy catching up so they wouldn’t have an unfair advantage over me. Very nice fellows, they were! The game lasted until just about sunrise, at which point I left to nap a bit in my dorm room. I’d left my door unlocked, and a surprise awaited me there, but I’ll keep that memory to myself.

Up With People is down on its luck.