First rainbow of 2022. Even fainter than last year’s. I hope that’s not an omen.
–Simon
Let’s Get Ready to Roomba!
Appliances are the servants of the masses.
How badly can that Marx quote be parodied?
Still, it’s a relevant modern take. Appliances, created to save labor, instead become the baseline expectation. And while they may start as a luxury for the elite, they’re soon reduced in cost and made accessible to all. They may save labor, but do they really save us any time? Once everyone has them, they’re no longer life hacks. Appliances don’t give us leisure, they just provide more time with which we’re expected to do more productive tasks. And spend more money on the appliances’ maintenance.
But for that brief period of novelty, they’re great.
I had long considered robovacs to be a novelty, for how effective could they really be? I distinctly remember the useless Dustbuster my mother had in the kitchen–designed to quickly and cordlessly clean up isolated crumbs. And I also remember picking the crumbs up by hand and dropping them into the unit, because it lacked the power to do anything close to vacuuming, and manually removing the debris was simpler. And of course there was the spite factor, because mom made me use the stupid thing, and I knew those crumbs would fall out the moment she went to use it herself.
The point: battery-powered devices were simply underpowered in the 90s.
But last year a Dyson cordless was gifted, and with it the realization that technology had indeed reached the point where battery appliances were now effective, provided the user had patience with charging times.
And so, with daily sweeping required in our house due to the dog situation, and some nice Amazon gift cards in my possession, why not?
Sebastian 1.0 does a better job than I expected. He’s sadly impervious to verbal beratement, unlike my future baby-boomer-who-can’t-retire-because-he-never-saved-for-retirement-and-social-security-went-bankrupt-Sebastian-butler/manservant, but on the other hand he’s a lot cuter.
He even drew a up a nice map to provide as a progress report. Well done, Sebastian! Take the rest of the day off.
Perhaps robots are the new proletariat, at least until they rise up as one and slay us. But such would be the necessary end to any exploitative social system. For now, they save us labor, for better or worse. For now, they serve us. For now, they help us maintain our superiority. And while one day the status quo may violently crumble, when the appliances upon which we depend withdraw their labor and we’re left with little time to ponder such thoughts; I shall at least for now have very clean floors.
–Simon
Parenting in the Moment
As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, I didn’t have a good work/life balance during my 20s. As a result, much of this time period resides in my mind as a diluted memory blur. Selective remembrance, likely out of self-preservation.
As a father, it saddens me to have lost the early formative years of my daughter to my own undiagnosed mental disorders. Alas. At least I didn’t kill myself.
No matter. It sure is fun to document good moments now!
–Simon
Not Prepping
If one possesses a practical skill that’s not necessary for survival, but could be were accesses to the modernization which itself defines the individual possession of said skill unnecessary, to become inaccessible–is the possession of the skill prior to its inaccessibility considered prepper behavior?
Such a discussion walks a fine line. My completely unnecessary gardening somehow doesn’t qualify as prepping, but storing water apparently does.
Well, as long as I’m stumbling along that delineation, I might as well ignore it entirely.
Yep, I went there.
Now I think I need lots of rice and multivitamins…
–Simon
Approaching Middle Age (Part 1)
No one respects a young man. Young women at least have the advantage of looking good (although I’m certain some would argue as to whether or not that’s actually advantageous), but a man is still primarily judged on experience and financial status, regardless his age. I don’t make these rules up. A woman’s worth is determined more by her appearance than a man, and a man more by his financial security.
So that 22-year old working at Home Depot? No, no one wants your recommendation. But if it’s a young woman, would you pretend to listen?
To further complicate matters, a newer generation of parents arrived who, having had significantly more access to livable wages and therefore able to dabble in self-actualization, decided to mold their collective MO and lecture the younger generation on the importance of finding happiness, but also simultaneously still judging harshly those whose finances delayed life event milestones of success. Because the old expectations, entrenched for millennia due to their core function of species preservation, ran up against the new age philosophies that they permitted, yet never themselves vanished.
So it was that I discovered happiness couldn’t be derived from employment if I wished to obtain these financial life milestones, but still the available employment opportunities available to me significantly delayed them. Marriage and home ownership were for so long an impossibility. And, being a young man, the constant disregard for my professional knowledge by my elders served to keep me underemployed, which in turn reinforced my low socioeconomic status. I was a failure in both forms: neither happy nor financially secure.
This is my generation’s dilemma: to be expected to adhere to the old and new ways simultaneously, even when the two are directly at odds.
Next up: Ammunition, cheese, and cars.