Adventures in Home Heating.

Last week, amid what I consider Arctic Cold (yes, I am a wimp, when it comes to this shit…),

The Box Stove in the Library shows signs of Collapse…

It’s what it sounds like, one of those rectangular, boxy things, with a little door on the front, and  round things on top…which can be removed for cooking….

A leak around the roof jack had caused rust, which had weakened (after 10 years) the Chinese Imitation of an American Contraption.
It was an inefficient bugger, compared to my other 2…but it’s what I had, and I could Cook on it…quite a handy feature, when one is usually at one’s Brokest in winter, and the Propane runs out…a week before payday.

So, I’m down here reading one early AM, when I notice a large Crack…through which I can see the fire.

Preemptive Pain Meds…and a really good dolly…and out the thing goes.

Irreparable.

I then move the Pantry Stove in to replace the Library Stove…a larger, heavier, more robust and efficient model($200, from a friend down the street.).

Fine and well…collapse for a few days, in a hell of agony.
I’m not designed for this sort of work, any longer…but necessity, and all…(leak was fixed a couple of months ago)

So, now I’m down to the large, old Earth Stove, up front, and the Library Stove…with the Freezing Pantry(former garage), in between.(till Tax Return)

Day before yesterday, after adding a mesquite knot, so’s I’d have coals, when I returned,…and on my way out the door…I noticed that the Elbow, arising from the top of the Front Stove, has deteriorated…the last 2 pieces of the Cheap Stove Pipe have almost expired. As I had to special order the Good Stove Pipe, before, I had to wait till payday, and a trip to Fredericksburg(45 miles, one way) to get a good El…Meantime, it’s Aluminium(lol) Foil, and Vigilant Insomnia…and lows in the 20’s…

Yesterday, I made the trip (Eye Doctor..Ugh!), and, as it never left the 30’s…the fire kept on.

2 am….”Cop Radio” wakes me(Local News)…and the Fire has died, as I intended.

Up gets the wife, and I …and we screw around replacing the damned pipe and el…and it’s , apparently, nonstandard, by an inch…so the big ass stove must be manhandled, lifted onto additional blocks…in order to work….and an hour and a half later…Viola!

I quickly kindle a new fire(I can build a fire in a lake!)

….and run in and out, inspecting the connections…(this had been a 2-person, indoor/outdoor job…front room was Cold!)…so far, so good…but

What’s that smell?

The Damned New Elbow is Painted Black! (I much prefer the Galvanized Stovepipe, for this very reason)

The “New Pipe Smell” is the ….well, whatever it is that cooks off of a new, black pipe, on the first burn).

So it’s 23 degrees, outside…3:30 in the morning…and I’ve got the kitchen, and bathroom exhausts going, as well as the Smoking Section Exhaust, over my bed…all going…and the Doors open, waving a damned pillow, to blow out the New Pipe Smoke.

So, now, at 4;30, the boys are in our bed(they like sleeping in the front room, for some reason(?))…Wife’s in the big red chair, asleep…and I’m in the Library, with coffee, and my own fire.

I can confidently predict that very little else will get done, today.

Hypocrisy

“If the President is allowed to suspend constitutional rights on his own personal whims, our free republic has effectively ceased to exist,” Stockman wrote.(1)

 Once again, the Right has forgotten…oh so conveniently, it’s recent history….and expects the rest of us to join them in their selective remembrance.

Like the  easily forgotten admonition that “Deficits don’t matter”(2), the whole “Unitary Executive” nonsense seems to have never happened.

Only Republican Presidents get to be “The Decider”, I guess…

Where was the loving, worshipful regard for Constitutional Government, when Lil George was busy setting  said “Goddamn Piece of Paper” alight?!

This forgetful bullshittery was on full display on Talk Radio™, yesterday…the Usurper! The Democratic Dictatorship!

Trampling Our “Precious Constitution”!!!

Some of us remember…

I remember being might near Strangled, when I asserted, with actual Facts to back up my argument, that Bush II was the worst President, ever…and that he should be brought in Chains to the Hague to answer for his Crimes.(3)
I was labeled, Loudly, a Traitor…for warning of Dictatorial Tendencies that I detected in the Bush/Cheney “Administration”…all with ample, documented Evidence, to hand.

How easy it is to forget, when one is out of Power.

(1)    http://www.salon.com/2013/01/14/texas_goper_threatens_impeachment_over_executive_action_on_guns/

(2)    Dick Cheney

(3)    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Schmitt#Neoconservatism

A Little Light Reading…

So.

A Book Budget.

After all this time, I’m ecstatic when the mail comes.

Giddy, even.

I’m halfway into the Dharma Bums…my Dad’s favorite Kerouac…which I haven’t read since Highschool, when I picked it up from his bedside table…

It’s what led me, like a rock rolling, to On the Road, and my Wild Years.

And the rest of the Beat Catalog…and, then, to the almost predictable, Identification with them.

Simultaneously, I’m a ¼ into “Where the Wasteland Ends”…it’s been on the List for a long while…

Seems like a sort of Counterenlightenment Manifesto for the Post Modern Age…. fits in with Howl!, in this way(the big red book of Ginsberg has yet to arrive).

I’m reminded of Rosenstock-Heussey, “Out of Revolution”…and his Critique of Cartesian Duality…rather the Universalism with which we employ it.

Romanticism, as a Critique of the failings of the Enlightenment…which are Legion, and almost totally unregarded in our usual, kneejerk Reactionism….

Universalism in Enlightenment Thought went overboard, in it’s self-regard, and produced the Nazis and Stalin…and our own Universal State.

In a similar, if more Dense, vein…Gilles Deleuze, “Anti Oedipus”…

I’m only 5-6 chapters in…but it’s remarkable!
Above mentioned tendency toward Fascism is inherent in Us all….and the antidote, as in Nietzsche(!) …is to Feel…as well as Think.

 More Enlightenment! (Habermas)….in answer to the Habits that the Enlightenment inherited from Ancien Regime.

All of these guys, Uncle Jack included, are indicating the same thing.

Universalised Reason, to the exclusion of all other considerations, is as bad as Divine Right…

Pure Reason leads to Pure Efficiency, which leads us to the Hell World being constructed all around us, today.( Iron Law of Oligarchy)

Leaving no room for the Mystic…the Ecstatic…the Meaningful.

Film at eleven…