We actually keep our car in ours. It protects it from the elements & keeps it in better shape, apparently. (Who knew? Not me. When I was a kid, we kept our cars parked in the yard, under the trees.)
Stuff doesn't get wet and you can lock it. And the bears don't get in the garbage.
An attached garage is very handy during the winter if you live somewhere with cold winters. Otherwise, I wouldn't think it was a very big deal unless you wanted a place for tools and you didn't have a basement.
Moby beat me to the punch: A garage is a basement for people who live in places where basements are impractical.
And no windshield scraping in the winter.
My garage is my basement. Or at least part of it.
So, yes, people love their garages.
Whenever I'm in someone's garage it just seems so cramped and sad and spider-web-ridden. Clausterphobic.
What's a carport if it's not a garage?
Carports are just roofs over a driveway, no walls. I'd love a carport.
Carports aren't enclosed. Just a roof.
If you pwn a carport, you can't really store anything in it but a car.
I think that's why I like them. No depressing junk.
The question you need to ask yourself is are you going to put the depressing junk in the real house or are you going to not get depressing junk if you have to put it in the real house.
Yeah, keeping a car at a reasonable temperature seems like one of the main advantages.
16: I'm trying to be better about purging depressing junk when it loses its luster.
I take it carports are more of a dry climate thing.
Anyway, we had a climbing wall on the back of my parents' garage. Which seems like an advantage over a carport. Oh, and a pear tree growing on the side, although that's gone now.
Where do people without garages keep bikes? As clutter?
Garages aren't generally climate regulated, right? So we're just talking about the temperature that you get for being adjacent to the house?
Because a carport would keep your car cooler than a garage in the summer, I'd assume. Winter, a garage would definitely win.
My junk isn't depressing, dammit.
I take it carports are more of a dry climate thing.
Hmm, well, the one reason I like my parents' carport is that you can get in the house with your groceries without getting wet. So I think of it as being great in the rain, although the floor does get wet.
Where do people without garages keep bikes? As clutter?
We keep ours on our porch.
Because a carport would keep your car cooler than a garage in the summer, I'd assume.
Nope.
How could a garage not be 130°?
26: Even when not climate controlled, they are insulated. Even in past places I've lived (where the garage was not below grade), the garage never got warmer than outside.
My ideal home is a small apartment above a two car garage. I wouldn't put cars in the garage, I'd make it a haven for all my hobby gadgets. My apartment is cramping my style seriously - I have a couple of work benches but can't really do much without endangering the damn carpet.
24: not so useful in rainy/snowy places.
30: because bikes have parts that rust/break when they're stored outside. In New England, if you want your bikes to be useable as a general rule, you store 'em inside.
Looking around Pittsburgh, I just assumed bikes are supposed to be rusty after a few years of use.
We live in the city and have a two car garage. We keep both cars in it. Cars parked on the street can get broken into and hit by other cars.
Plus, we dont have to scrap our windows.
We also keep our bikes and lawnmower in it. It helps that BR is insanely organized.
Plus, we dont have to scrap our windows.
You don't have to what?
When I lived in the mid-Atlantic region I would have appreciated a garage. Chipping you car out of the ice every morning during the Winter gets old.
Also, at least in Britain, a garage can make a big difference to your insurance costs if your car's worth anything. We once bought a house (without a garage, just a driveway) from a guy who was selling it because he and his bf both had Porsches which together were worth much more than the house, and their insurance company was threatening to cancel if they didn't lock them up.
32
Looking around Pittsburgh, I just assumed bikes are supposed to be rusty after a few years of use.
There's a reason they call it the Rust Belt.
We have both a garage and a basement. As a result, I never know where my tools are.
Carports can become junk repositories too, but I'd guess less so on average what with the greater light level and likelihood of recreational use.
37: Stealing cars is something that doesn't appear to factor into insurance rates much around here. Roughly speaking, the difference between our car with comprehensive insurance (covers theft as well as damage we do to our own vehicle) and our car with only liability coverage is less than $400 a year. And I'd think of most of that is the damage part, not the theft part. Granted, the deductibles are high enough that if somebody smashes the window to take something, we'd probably have to pay for the damage ourselves.
I'm sure I'd seen them - I think one of my cousins' families in southern California had one - but I'd never noticed the word "carport" until I was like 10 or so. It was more like either a house had a garage or it didn't. Then I found five dollars left unlocked on the ground under an open roof next to a house.
Even before reading the thread I had come up with about ten obvious answers. Interesting how people who live in different climates have different assumptions about the world.
Where do people without garages keep bikes? As clutter?
One bike on a trainer in our family room. One bike in a shed behind a tree in our backyard. Also in the shed, a fair-to-poor condition portable skateboard ramp and an archery target (these items rarely used at the same time).
I could see combining skateboarding with archery, but I think you are right that adding the ramp would be too much of a good thing.
41. It doesn't factor in much around here for the kind of car you or I are likely to own. But when it's worth $200K they start thinking differently, it seems.
26 -- The spiders wouldn't like it.
Every garage I've ever had (including 12 years in Texas) has had very small windows, so the sun doesn't heat it up much at all. Most weren't insulated, formally, but had wooden walls and a real roof, which, apparently, is insulation enough.
We used to rent a house that had both a garage and a carport. We filled up the garage with boxes, and the carport with outdoor kid toys.
I could see combining skateboarding with archery
An ill-fated 1986 attempt by the government of the People's Republic of Mongolia to make their armed forces more "hip" and "Generation X-relevant" is widely regarded as the "New Coke of international defence procurement".
Where do people without garages keep bikes? As clutter?
My visions of my future bike shed are growing increasingly strong. There's not a good place for it, but I know it is at grade, lockable, has lots of hooks. It is beautiful.
but I know it is at grade, lockable, has lots of hooks
A bike with lots of hooks would be great.
I keep my bike in my front room, along with a bunch of junk. You know, so that visitors feel welcome.
I keep my bike in my front room, along with a bunch of junk. You know, so that visitors feel welcome.
I also say everything twice, so that visitors feel doubly welcome.
Megan, be sure to lock up the bikes inside the shed as well. It's usually not that hard to break into a shed -- way easier than cutting a u-lock.
I see everything twice, so Merganser's front room looks incredibly cluttered.
55: An unlike a garage attached to a house, you can't legally shoot someone breaking into a shed in most states.
If you don't have a garage, where do you store painting supplies, scrap lumber, Christmas decorations, and camping gear?
58: I think that's moot for California.
Californians can defend their sheds with lethal force?
When the shed exists, it will have ways to secure the bikes in addition to the exterior lock. Somehow. I'm sure of it.
62: You could run the cord of a perpetually-playing stereo through the wheels of the bike. If your neighbor stops complaining, your bike is gone.
||
ttaM? ajay? WTF have you been doing?
|>
To protect it from predators I now haul my bike up into a tree.
If 49 was the premise of a video game, I would buy it.
I hate my garage, yet am mandated by City building regulations to both maintain it more or less as is (it counts as a historic structure, and, as a garage built in 1915, it is) and to make sure that two cars can drive into it, and to not convert it into a usable separate guest room with kitchen, etc. I do not buy into the general Yglesias view of land use regulation at all but the local regulations re garages are particularly stupid.
When I do the long-thought-about, little-acted-on backyard remodel, I plan on turning it into a kind of big rec room, with couches and a ping pong table and space for my kid's toys. Which can be moved out when the inspectors come to make sure it's up to code.
70.2: Assuminly you aren't trying to sell, how can inspectors look in your garage*?
*Assuming curtains in any windows.
I should note that the garage is detached and, if you wanted to actually use it for storing cars, requires driving through much of the backyard in a narrow passageway between two houses to be useful for a car (it's built for 1915 width cars). I park my car in the driveway and as far as I know no car was parked in this garage for at least the past 40 years.
Assuminly you aren't trying to sell, how can inspectors look in your garage*?
If I want to remodel the backyard and add a deck, I'll need the inspectors out to keep it up to code.
Also, there is a neighborhood preservation association and the garage is (barely) visible from the street and there is this bitch from hell "preservation activist" (aka annoying local busybody) whom I'm pretty sure would take the first chance to report me if I lived my dream and tore the fucking thing down (it is basically like a crumbling shack at this point).
72: Over here. I assume the person walking away is you.
74: Still, would you have to let the inspectors look into the garage to approve your deck?
I understand that you can't tear down the garage. That I get.
76 -- probably not, but the garage would probably have to (a) still be there and (b) plausibly look like a garage.
My parents had a former garage like that. You would have had to drive up a narrowish path between two houses up a slope into the backyard to reach the garage if a previous owner hadn't turned it into a detached back room suitable for whatever the hell you wanted to do with it. The owner before my parents also had the house lifted up by one floor and a downstairs section + attached garage built below the 1920s-era part of the house.
Right now, the garage is totally like a horror movie on the inside. Old sports equipment from previous owners, spiders everywhere, crumbling wood, most likely roof rats crawling around.
73: CA's garage is like that. But being OH, cars are parked there to keep the snow and ice off. There's a bunch of firewood in there too. And many nocturnal creatures who leave tiny footprints all over the car. It's completely unnerving at night.
Even more unnerving? The pictures they take.
Ham-Love gets it right in 59.
What on earth do Heebie and Jammies do with their stuff?
82: Rats love the camera and the camera loves them.
We build an addition!
Actually, paint and scrap lumber go under the house. Decorations and luggage and camping gear go in the attic.
Under the house:basement::carport:garage
Ah. Attic. It all becomes clear. So, you see, if you don't have an attic, you need a garage!
My attic is full of very itchy insulation, reached only after you remove everything from a closet, and has no place to safely stand.
Parking your car in the attic is only feasible in for houses on steep inclines. At least if you want to move the car again before you sell.
True. A conundrum. Clearly a garage is the best overall solution, unless it's some kind of cruddy garage like Halford's.
Which, by the way, the situation Halford outlines in 70 is stupid. Just saying.
Ah. Attic. It all becomes clear. So, you see, if you don't have an attic, you need a garage!
My parents not only have an attic and a garage, the garage has an attic. And they still don't have enough storage.
I'm pretty sure parsimon is offering to burn your garage for you if you can hit the right price.
You need a garage so in the winter you can plug your car in overnight so it will start in the morning. Otherwise (or if the garage is full of stuff) you have extension cords running all over the yard. So unsightly.
It's possible your parents have too much stuff, Ginger.
Am I the only one who's barely staving off recalling George Carlin's "A Place for My Stuff"?* I could google that and provide a link for the unenlightened, but nah.
* Also, should the question mark go within the close quotation mark there? I had put it within originally, but it didn't seem right.
our garage also functions as a "Honey, I'm Home" alarm. the garage door opener is, of course, bolted to the garage ceiling, and the garage ceiling is also our bedroom floor. so when the garage door opens, the bedroom sounds like it's being shoved into a giant wood chipper.
It's possible your parents have too much stuff, Ginger.
I have told them this. Not least after alphabetically sorting the 800 VHS tapes in the attic. But I'm hardly arguing from a position of strength given that I've got boxes of books and DVDs and games stacked up all round my flat.
91: My parents not only have an attic and a garage, the garage has an attic. And they still don't have enough storage.
This is close to describing us but we have a basement* rather than an attic (well some boxes of textbooks are in the house "attic"). And yes, we do have too much stuff**, although we're on a pretty good roll of getting rid of a lot of stuff this year. And our dining room is still unusable due to books everywhere because sometime in the next decade we will maybe, possibly redo the upstairs floors and we've been ready for that since about 2005.
*Which now only makes you want to kill yourself a little bit when you go down into it thanks to Stormcrow family 2011 stimulus plan.
**Not hoarders, but not not hoarders. I finally caved on the National Geographics this year.
Dude, National Geographics are worthless. I hope you don't have a 30+ volume set of encyclopedias.
Not least after alphabetically sorting the 800 VHS tapes in the attic.
Oh my.
Well. It's hard to tell people to get rid of the goddamned stuff, it's true.
My parents have an encyclopedia set from about 1985. It still gets used occasionally - ok, sometimes when I visit I look at stuff just for the hell of it - but in its time it served its purpose well.*
*Keeping the kids educationally entertained.
98: Dude, National Geographics are worthless.
I'm wasn't going to sell them, oh mercantile one, they'd be for me to look at and refer to.
I hope you don't have a 30+ volume set of encyclopedias.
Ha! I have an 11th Edition Encyclopaedia Brit. (only 29 volumes*! ... but also the 12th & 13th edition update volumes). Bought on my honeymoon, you can pry them out of my cold, dead hands** when the entire thing is available for free on the Internet.
*Including "ODE to PAY"--best Encyclopaedia volume name evah.
**It's the smaller "Handy Volume" Edition, so I pretty much need a magnifying glass to read them these days.
100.last: This morning, my son asked me to read the writing on the strings of a tennis racket.
Actually, paint and scrap lumber go under the house.
Ammunition for tornadoes and floods?
Bought on my honeymoon,
Sounds like an exciting honeymoon.
I would never pry your 11th ed. Britannica from you. You should put notes on it for your heirs, or something, to explain its worth, so they don't toss it. Not its monetary worth, silly, its archival value. For the ages, for the intellectual heritage of our civilization. (Also, you might be able to find stray volumes to complete the set, I mean, if you were interested in that.)
finally caved on the National Geographics this year.
In Soviet Union the attic, a sufficient quantity of National Geographics caves on you.
In the paperless future, a sufficient quantity of National Geographics is indistinguishable from magic.
103: I know, my wife told me I needed to buy a book but it didn't seem to help.
1) Without a garage, how can you have an automatic garage door-opener? From a half block away, I push the button, and see the big door slowly rise as I pull in the driveway. Fucking neat-o! Course, bad security.
2) Junk and spiders, like you wouldn't believe. Like five old car radios, 3 old tvs, I just put 4 coffee pots by the curb
3) Drafty in winter, what winter we have, but keeps summer temps down to around 85. The garage not only preserves the finish, but also keeps the heat from wrecking the perishable parts of the car, rubber, vinyl, cork etc. Pushing 300k on the main ride. The 2nd ride has less than 30k, but is terrific at 18 years old. (She won't drive a 4-barrel)
4) It's the only room the dog are forbidden. They drink from the toilets.
5) It's a small back yard, and those who have sheds have less trees.
6) Most in my neighborhood have actually converted their garage into whatevers. Some even have big bay windows.
7) It provides insulation or protection for other parts of the house, keeping living room cool.
I think the 11th is online. I inherited a 1936 EB. Wife doesn't approve so it's in boxes. Very good on The Great War and outdated views of human nature.
If you have a toilet in your garage, you rule.
108.3 supplemental
And I never want to go anywhere. What do I need that's farther than 10 miles away? And I walk most everything less than 5 miles. Can't imagine using a bicycle when I could walk. No hurry.
110 was to 108.4, but also reflects my general views.
There is a semi-serious point to be made here about all this stuff. We Western post-industrial types have a lot of it, and we have a penchant for either hoarding it (though we never use it again) or throwing it away.
Yet we all know that landfills are overburdened, and there are actually many people in our own countries who would be delighted to possess those 800 VHS tapes.
Smaller communities I know have so-called "transfer stations": essentially free stores. You bring your stuff there, put in the appropriate area (books area, kitchenware area), and other people come and take it. Free.
In a not so small community, and if something like a free store or transfer station is considered simply unthinkable (because socialism! or else eww, used stuff), there's freecycle. Try that first before you toss.
Frank Lloyd Wright built carports rather than garages whenever he could bully his clients into it.
and there are actually many people in our own countries who would be delighted to possess those 800 VHS tapes.
I kind of doubt that. I'm sure somebody would take them if you are in an area with a big enough population, but it would probably be somebody who will die when the stack of junk falls on them and they can't reach the phone.
(Which is not to speak against your general point about freecycling and the like, but VHS tapes are a pain.)
Well, as and when my parents do get rid of them, it'll be at a charity shop rather than a tip. Not free, but not tossing it either. And I'd love to have them myself, if I had the space. It's not like it's random crap - it's a really, really good film colleciton.
104: I would never pry your 11th ed. Britannica from you.
It really is a fascinating artifact. The focus is very interesting, almost all of the natural history stuff is rubbish (and not just things not known, but basic information on species of wild animals and the like) while the article on "Tides" is pages of this (yes that is in fact equation 58):
Let A be the excess of D's over 0's R.A., so that A =a - a and h2= M cos 2 (4' - ,u) +M, COs 2 (4' The synthesis is then completed by writing H COS 2(p-4) = M-FM, cos 2(A - µ,+,u), so that h2=H cos 2 (I'-4)). (58) H sin 2(A-4)) = M, sin 2(A - µ, + i), Then H is the height of the total semi-diurnal tide and 4)/(7 - da/dt) or approximately 4)/(y - a) or h 4', when 4, is given in degrees, is the " interval " from the moon's transit to to high water.The 12th edition (post-WWI supplemental volumes to the 11th) has some of the most astonishing crap. An article on Ireland includes a personal anecdote in which the writer's wife was treated rudely while traveling there during the war.
109: I think the 11th is online
Yes. Explicitly.
I'm glad today isn't the day I had a lot to do and then wanted to leave early to see the Men's Final...
116: And I'd love to have them myself, if I had the space. It's not like it's random crap - it's a really, really good film colleciton.
That's great.
Contra Moby in 115.1, a lot of people really do still have VHS players. Older people especially. They can't afford to upgrade to a DVD player. They would *love* Ginger's parents' collection.
I was trying to recall whether it was Junkyard Wars or something like that where someone used VHS tape as rope, but I realize it was TOm Hanks in Cast Away.
A house near me converted their garage to living space this summer. They took out the roll up door and put in a window. It was then that I noticed that half the houses on the block had obviously done the same thing in the past with all the driveways ending in the same corresponding spots. All similar houses that may have originally been 2-bedroom bungalows.
I'm glad today isn't the day I had a lot to do and then wanted to leave early to see the Men's Final...
The makings of a classic with Rafa and the Djok. I enjoyed the Women's Final too - Serena is fast becoming the modern-day McEnroe when it comes to baiting officials.
122: I don't really have favorites on the Men's side, but I was pleased to see Djokovic come back as I think a this point in his career Federer would have folded without too much fight against Nadal. (I know he's a bit of a dick, but unaccountably, I find I would like to see Federer have another Grand Slam win at some point, but with those two around he's going to be hard-pressed to do so.)
Stosur did very well to hold up (after a brief wobble) against the early second set onslaught that followed. Really stood up to it well and kept hitting deep balls. Well won.
119: I know a lot of the elderly are on extremely restricted budgets, but I don't think cost is why they don't move to DVDs, as you can get a brand new one for $20 now. I suspect it has to do with familiarity and sunk costs in terms of current VHS collections. (So yes, still about cost in some ways but not because DVD players are so expensive.)
I have to brag here because Lee would want me to that at the recent local ATP she was able to get both Djokovic and Nadal to sign her Nadal hat. She still can't pronounce "Nadal" properly, and does better with "Djokovic" even though I don't know why his starts with Dj rather than Dz except that it might have to do Serbian being the side of the former Serbo-Croation languages I don't know at all.
124: I think you also often have to upgrade your TV to be able to accommodate a DVD player. That can be prohibitively expensive. Or perhaps you just need an adapter, but many older people aren't able to figure that whole thing out.
Maybe we should have elder services that include assessing and helping to upgrade TV/video capability. I do think this is a significant problem for many.
Wasn't there an elder-outreach for the switch to the fancy broadcast TV thing?
127: I think so.
Anyway, if Mrs. Jones could have Mrs. Smith, both widows, living a few doors down from one another and both in their 80s, over for the evening to watch Casablanca while they have their tea, or highballs, or fish sticks, or whatever else suits their fancy, they might have a grand time. Instead of watching My Fair Lady yet again, bored out of their minds.
Garage shops are better than basement shops because when you build a large, lovely thing in the garage, you are less likely to need to dismantle a building to get it out. Also, rolling bikes in and out is handy, especially if you move cargo on them. The Dwarf Lord combined these two for a while with a 'bent Xtracycle moving projects to the nearest hackerspace.
I find cars basically hideous compared to houses and gardens, so I like garages for hiding them, if you must keep them on the property; I'd rather have, in order, alley parking, street parking (protects the sidewalk from moving cars), and a porte-cochere with parking in the back. Oh, how I love a good alley.
Ginger Yellow, my mother has an attic, a barn, and two more outbuildings, and has now walled and roofed the passages in between a couple of these, making the passages about as solid as most garages, and she *still* ran out of space for the books I didn't want to move with during grad school. She built everything but the first barn out of reused... stuff, and a lot of the space is now full of building materials for the next projects, or tools and building materials inherited from her father on the other coast. I assume I will be thus in my turn.
She still has VHS tapes, too.
If they both worked at WalMart, they'd have a Redbox and a way to get to know each other.
I think you also often have to upgrade your TV to be able to accommodate a DVD player.
Not on this side of the pond. AFAIK, pretty much all DVD players over here have RF and Scart. There's basically no telly that doesn't have one or both of those.
No telly over here, that is. Scart's a Euroweenie thing only, I believe.
The DVD versus TV situation where you lose is when you only have RF-in on the TV (as is the case on many older US TVs) and the DVD player is just composite out (ignoring better quality outputs).
My grandmother, at the end, was set up with a cable box, a dual-mode DVD/VHS player, and a small HDTV with real inputs (the main virtue was that it was so much *thinner* than her old TV, it could fit in her assisted-living apartment). She was having dementia, but even at the beginning of that the various combinations and settings required to route the signal to the right place was a major hassle. (Maybe I should have considered the Harmony remote - I love mine - but the general total failure of integration is an industry failing, not just her personal failing, as I kept telling her)
We keep our bikes in our kitchen. 7 of them if they're all home, but usually only 6, and one of them is out a lot. I did have to get rid of a sideboard.
I'd like a garage, but I like neighbours keeping me warm more.
My parents have a garage, which is a useful place to keep our bodyboards. They also have a surfboard, a man over the road's lawnmower (he mows their lawn in return for keeping it there), and there has been a cement mixer (a friend's) in it for most of the 2 years they've lived there. Plus a fuck of a lot of cat food and cava.
113: Smaller communities I know have so-called "transfer stations": essentially free stores.
Oh, we have that. It's called the sidewalk.
The first day we took cans of paint to the new apartment, we set a can and the binder with my floor plans, to-buy notes, and paint chips, and some other random thing, maybe a stir stick, on the sidewalk next to the car (because our hands were too full to carry it), walked to the gate, realized we'd left the keys across the bridge in SF, turned back to the car, and had to shoo away the woman who was helping herself to what she thought was a free can of paint.
This weekend, I had a sack of crappy, crappy knock-off tupperware-like resealable (only not sealable at all due to the crappiness) containers that I wanted to get rid of; rather than put them in the recycle bin, I put them out front on the sidewalk with a note saying "FREE" and they were gone within an hour.
how I love a good alley
The new house I just moved into has an alley that people (including me and the new housemate) use. I share your love for them.
135: Ham-Love lives in my neighborhood, apparently.
And mine. I love releasing my old stuff back into the wild. It is gone from the front of my house within hours.
I know this probably makes me a bad person, but I really wanted to Djokovic to dispense with Nadal in the third set.
OT: Inside every K/nmore Front loading washer are two springs, four shocks, and two great big pieces of cement. Inside mine, there is all that plus what I think is a bad bearing.
Tennis players should have nametags and tennis TV should have better captions. Is Nadal the guy in blue ?
Haven't read through all of these, but clearly Heebie has never lived anywhere with four seasons.
Nadal's the guy with the butt-picking tic.
Yep. Nadal was in blue.
He just kind of decided to quit there in the 4th set, eh? I don't blame him. 4+ hours is apparently approaching the record for a US Open Final (which was, the commentators said, 4 hours 54 minutes, a match with Ivan Lendl, which would have been in the early 80s?)
Re leaving stuff out: it happens all the time around me... and it just sits there. Nobody touches it. Limiting factors are space and the need to carry whatever stuff we're talking about to (and often up to) one's apartment.
What you missed, E. Messily, is that both of these players are heavy-duty grunters: loud grunts every single time each of them hits the ball. Nadal's grunting was noticeable back when he hit the scene; now we have two of them.
Nadal sweats a lot. Either that or his Nike-sponsored shirt is poor.
139: Not off-topic, you merely need to decide whether to move it to the alley or the back of the basement.
In suburban NY with property taxes commonly over $12k/yr people buy small houses and convert the attached garage into living space (subdivide into bedrooms and den without central heat) .
For a nice garage see Ralph Lauren in Vanity Fair or that condo building on 11th Ave.
http://m.ny.curbed.com/tags/200-eleventh-avenue
144: Isn't another limiting factor that everyone assumes anything on the curb in NYC has bedbugs, or has that crisis finally passed?
I can't even get the bearing nut lose, but I think I should get partial credit for being able to pull apart the rest of the machine. Is there still stimulus money for buying efficient appliances?
I can't even get the bearing nut lose, but I think I should get partial credit for being able to pull apart the rest of the machine. Is there still stimulus money for buying efficient appliances?
Is it crooked? If so, you can probably study a map to see if that helps you get the bearing straight.
The bearing appears straight, but I can't really tell. It's all encased.
The hub in which the bearing sits is straight.
That's a nice bit of iambic pentameter. Now finish the sonnet.
Good lord, there's also a Republican debate tonight? What were they thinking, having one of those on the night of the US Open Final? However could a person decide?
157: Um, US Open final is normally on Sunday.
156: No clowns or trucks allowed, though.
US Open final is normally onscheduled for Sunday.
This is, after all, the fourth consecutive Monday final.
The hub in which the bearing sits is straight.
When the pulley is given a turn,
it squeaks until yours ear do burn.
A new machine to buy I'd hate.
We just got this one in ought eight.
Clean clothes for us we do so yearn.
And friction might cause the house to burn.
The hamper is full, we dare not wait.
A new bearing might work. Who knows?
It is clear that the last one really sucks.
I suppose we'll have to visit Lowe's.
It looks to cost several hundred bucks.
I'll pitch the old into the Mon's slow flows,
while yelling to S//rs various "motherfucks."
159: I know. Was joke. Do you really think the Republican party would care about a schedule conflict with a freaking tennis match? I think not.
163: the Republican party of George H.W. Bush would have cared.
163: OK, time for bed. And I did not even really get it right per Blandings.
But I did enjoy Djokovic kicking some cute Majorcan butt.
165: Sweetheart, I don't blame you: I don't exactly put flags on my sarcastic remarks, so it's easy to miss. What with the earnest that I otherwise tend to do all over the place.
Nadal -- we like to call him Rafa -- does have a cute butt. And I don't say that because he's constantly picking at his shorts!
Djokovic kicking some cute Majorcan butt major can
FTFY.
I enjoyed Djokovic's win as well. He reminds me of Bjorn Borg in ways I certainly can't explain right now.
I know. Was joke.
Natasha! Now you infiltrate we capture moose and squirrel.
And wow, the TPM Livewire report on the Republican debate is just appalling. I'm (obviously) embarrassed for my fellow countrypersons.
167: You know, I looked at that for a long time, but everything I came up with was just as stupid as yours, so I did one that was as stupid but which had an element of plausible deniability. However, I am led to understand that explicitness in discourse is sometimes valued by some people, so keep up the good work.
Wait, 140 wasn't me.
Unless I just got back from some sort of fugue state...
sort of fugue state
Did you watch the Republican debate? That could be the culprit.
173: Oh. That's weird. I just assumed.
I see I shouldn't have made that assumption.
Speaking of tennis, Thurber covered the 1937 Wimbledon, watching a semifinal a few miles away via an experimental TV broadcast. Budge, the size of your index finger, against Parker, the size of your little finger, wielding match-stem racquets hitting a speck of white.
That's pretty good, but it's nearly as funny as the live-blog of the Isner-Mahut match from last year. Maybe civilization isn't really declining, after all.
"I know where I've seen you before." I said to the lounging man. "It was in Zagreb in 1927. Tilden took you in straight sets, six-love, six-love, six-love."
The man's eyes glittered. "I theenk I bomp of thees man myself," he said.-- from "The Lady on 142."
Why would you, if you were a washing machine engineer, make it so that the bearing is built into the washtub? It's a $300 part, and that is the best case scenario.
And who pays the washing machine engineer?
175: Well, when I read back through (to figure out what you were talking about) I sort of thought it might have been me, too. Except E posted another thing that I know nothing about re: New York housing, so I think my original theory that I've been sleeping/reading all day was correct.
180: "bomp"?
183: Yeah, I see that now. Apologies to E, whoever that is.
I like to imagine that E and F are in the same family. Possibly distantly related to long-ago commenter L.
E, L, and the O-man used to play together in a band. You might think, "No F-ing way!" But it's true.
Stanley just made me laugh. Maybe I should go to bed.
188 sounded rude, as though Stanley is not normally funny. That is not what I meant.
I chuckled at your comment, so, you know. Whevs.
182: The washing machine engineers, they work for the tsar.
Speaking of dumb thoughts, here is the Republican debate intro that CNN chose to run with. And I did not realize that they had literally teamed up with the Tea Party Express and that it was billed as a "Tea Party" debate.
A couple of links via Balloon Juice and Jay Rosen on this special alliance between the clueless and the deranged. The NYT comes through as the narative-affirming uncritical "centrist" bushel of leaves that they are.
CNN, the 24/7 cable news pioneer long derided by conservatives as a mouthpiece of the political left, and Tea Party activists, who pride themselves on bucking the establishment, came together here Monday evening for a presidential debate -- an unusual display of cooperation between the news media and some of its most hostile critics.I guess that is the current role of "straight" political news--to be factually correct yet wildly misleading, you won't get that kind of quality work from some newspaper in Podunkville. They'd have to unwind 18 years of their own bullshit to write anything else.
And the Times (along with the Post) had a large part in helping set up the CNN = Clinton/Communist News Network meme in the '90s when they both led the way with their insane Watergate pron and impeachment-mongering while CNN for all of its vacuity was not quite as enthusiastic in pushing those barrows.
So, it's not OK for journalists to make their voting preferences known, but it is OK for CNN to co-host a debate with a far right political activist group. OK, then. I really don't understand US journalistic norms.
In the past, to hold a debate, the journalists have had to coöperate with the League of Women Voters, but that assumes women get to keep voting.
Everyone knows the League of Women Voters had a pro-voting bias, and was therefore composed of liberals.
When I vote, there's always women behind the table who can't find my name on the list. They're probably trying to keep men from voting or I mumble.
197: More seriously, I assume that CNN wouldn't do that for a debate in the general election, as opposed to the primary.
197: Politics has gotten so completely depressing here that I just want to strap a giant one of these to the roof of my car and spend my days driving around the country.
If you're interested in dumb thoughts for everyday that actually sometimes flow with logic and wit, visit my blog at www.theoffbeatdrummer.blogspot.com.
Annie
197: More seriously, I assume that CNN wouldn't do that for a debate in the general election, as opposed to the primary.
Presumably not, but still, it's hardly the sort of thing that a norm of "ostensible scrupulous political neutrality" would suggest is OK. After all, it's not as if the Tea Party, or the Tea Party Express, is neutral between the primary candidates.
I am astonished and strangely moved that you remember me, fake accent. I haven't commented here under that handle in six years.
You were totally memorable -- you were our contact with Katrina. All that college advice, and then you went off to Tulane and the city was destroyed.
That was me -- my browser's being weird.
Well, hell. I'd been commenting occasionally under a different name, once the one-letter thing was deprecated. If this one gives me old-skool Unfogged cred maybe I oughta switch back.
Also, single letter pseuds stand out,* plus I think you were part of the first multi-generational commenting here.
*An exception to the rule of initials being easier to forget or confuse.
210 before seeing 209. I had no idea you were still commenting.
This makes me wonder if Magik Johnson is around. (I think he was before my time.)
part of the first multi-generational commenting
That too, I remember worrying that people would be badly behaved to you. (Geez. I don't particularly feel older than I did in 2005, but you've gone from high school to out of college. I'm going to go out on the front lawn and shake my cane at people now.)
212: Try having everybody and his brother commenting in a 9/11 thread about how it was at their college or high school, and you're trying to remember if there were any salient milestones in your own life since that time. (L. is forbidden from describing their 9/11 experience.)
