I frequently make up stupid songs based on people’s music and sing them to the poor unfortunate people who are with me. GILLY GILLY OSSENFEFFER KATZENELLEN BOGEN BY THE SEA (Al Hoffman / Dick Manning) is my most recent victim… I posted the Beatles version of this some time ago and learned the tune and melody. After I learn a song then I plagiarize, pilfer, twist them depending on what is going on.
Here is this morning’s THO version based on my being on my way back home soon….
There’s a Tiny House,
in the Tiny Woods
Where a Tiny Girl
Filled a Tiny Dream
Now the house sits still
waiting there for me
It is Tiny House Ontario
Chocolate shed in forest
loved by me-e-e-e-e…
OK… so now you know, I am not much of a song writer but if you know the tune, as I do, it is kind of funny.
No?
Well, my dogs think it is funny. They told me so with their eyes. They had to do it this way, because of course dogs hardly ever laugh out loud. At least mine don’t. Do yours?
What is ubiquitous assimilation? This three minute clip from the 2011 film, Detachment sums up what it means really nicely.
I am pretty sure that no sensible person can argue about the fact that we live in a period of time where society suffers from ubiquitous assimilation in a way that is scarily similar to the Borg.
As a Tiny Houser, I would like to think that the Star Trek: Next Generation writers were wrong. The Borg are science fiction characters, right? Sadly, I don’t think the concept of them is really so far fetched. I think that most people claim individualism but really, in this society, your distinctiveness is not assimilated into the group; Borgists of the world have their distinctiveness written over, disposed of, like an old floppy disk.
This Borgism applies heavily to the way that we live. The marketing holocaust reaches into every area of our life right down to how we live. Really, I would like to believe that we do not live in a world where everyone is not madly consuming stuff. Taking way more than they need, building huge homes which they cannot afford, filling them with stuff that they also cannot afford… just because advertising, television, and social pressure are telling them that this will make them happy. Assimilate, assimilate, assimilate… shop, shop, shop… CONSUME!
The crazy that is packed into this doublethink is lost on most people. I can’t tell you how many people I have heard bragging about the fact that they LOVE to shop… Love to buy… Even LOVE to be capitalists! Funny but these people never seem that happy. The seem too busy, too rushed, with never enough time to sit for a coffee. They don’t have time to enjoy any moments. They explain that they “gotta get to work, gotta get to the mall… My life is too busy to stop” they say.
Ubiquitous assimilation/doublethink.
I encourage you to consider if any of this post applies to your own housing and/or your stuff collection situation. Does this apply your life in any way at all?
I am not saying that you should all buy land, build a Tiny House and set up a farm. This would be as absurdly Borgist (though not as wasteful or consumeristic) as the current big pile of crap in a big house. When everyone does the same thing it is conformity. a Tiny House may not fit your NEEDS. I am not asking you all to mould yourself into something that does not fit you.
The current way of life for most of us in the (so called) developed world is not something that every person should want to do… still, they do it. What I do ask is that you to consider is all that stuff really making you happy? Or, is the way you live your life being constructed and ruled by marketing. Are you living beyond your needs and if so, whom are you are making happy while complying with the ubiquitous assimilation to advertising and consumer culture?
It is obvious, that this constant assault of advertising has created huge social pressure because it has triggered in us the need to do better so that we can be measured by some artificially constructed corporate concept of success. It is human nature (for most of us) to want to be accepted and looked up to, but are we doing this in a way that is truly giving us a better quality of life? Are we happy? Are you happy?
I ask you, have you been Borged or are you still an individual?
Too, if you have just now come to understand that you have been Borged, are you already so much a part of the corporate collective that you can no longer escape it and find your individual route?
I am still in the Big City and thus away from the Tiny House. I thought I might as well put myself to good use while I am here and get some food squirrelled away for winter. Put away a little over 2 bushels of tomatoes yesterday. Some mine and some from a farmer down the road from here. I used to can a lot of them but these days I freeze most of them whole. I still like to condense and can them but I have not done these yet. I want to use my own tomatoes for that. I like them done with the mixed heirloom varieties about 10% of those lovely sharp black ones make for a tasty mix.
I picked up the additional tomatoes when I went to pick up farm fresh peaches. I bought, sliced up and froze a half a bushel of them which I leave the skins on. I chose not to can any this year. They taste great but there is so much sugar in them and I am trying to get away from this. Also put away three bags of grated zucchini for warm winter loaves and alternately chopped up some plums, bananas and peaches in small bits and froze these in one cup bags for smoothies.
The two longer jobs were the boiling down tomatoes for condensed herb and garlic starters. I like to boil the salted tomatoes down until it is almost to a paste (I leave the skins and seeds in). When it was the thickness I added about 1 cup of fresh garlic, two cups of minced parsley, 2 cups of minced basil and take it off the heat. Then I put about a third of a cup in silicon muffin cups and freeze them. I made 24 portions of this (luck not planned). I pulled them out of the cups today and froze them individually. These are perfect for throwing together a quick pasta sauce meal for the two of us. I do this with a few frozen tomatoes. The skin rolls right off these frozen jewels if you run a bit of hot water on them. I cook them only enough to be able to smash them up, then one of the starters, a quarter cup of grape seed oil and then you can add gnocchi right in the sauce when it is nearly cooked. Sometimes I add pine nuts, a few raisins, oregano, onions, other fresh veg – whatever I have on hand and feel like really. These little guys make for some seriously fast/slow food! Takes about 15 minutes from freezer to table.
Actually, after all the food prep during the day I did not want to get into something elaborate, so we had this for dinner last night!
All this said, I have a freezer here in the city. At THO I do not. When I am there, I will have to go back to canning everything. Makes for a little more work on prep days but still when you get this all done, there is no reason that I can’t have fast/slow food ready for use in a root cellar. I just have to build me a cellar!
I never heard of Dick Proenneke until tonight. I was looking up some videos on how to build timber frame place out of logs and basically stumbled on this beautiful footage. His footage, of himself, building a life in the forest of Alaska in 1968.
There is also a second video which was just released in 2011
The third is yet to be released!
If you love this, as I did then perhaps you will also want to read his Journals? Which can be downloaded free here.
Sometimes the internet is so cool. How else would I have ever met him?
I am grudgingly still in the city way over on the South West side of the big lake. I don’t like it a bit and miss being at THO on the North East. I have to stay here until late next week because I have to see an eye specialist. I am afraid that my eyesight is running away from me faster than it should and with some (a lot) of eye issues on both sides of my family, it is time. I need, as did my 89 year old grandmother, to use 3.75 glasses to read and often suffer with aches behind my eyes. Granted I do spend a lot of time using the green devils at the top of my face, I am hoping they are just tired, not sick and tired.
The family has left to go home to Germany which is another reason that I came here, it was lovely to see them. Too, I also had to see my dentist and I am glad to be done with it, I had a good cleaning, but must go back for a crown on a tooth that has been wobbly since I was about 14 years of age.
I think I am too young to be falling apart! I am just in my mid 40’s but I am not as fit as I would like to be and yet I refuse to go to the gym and stop eating candy, so I can’t want youth as badly as I think I do.
It will be 7 days exactly from this day that I arrive back home at THO and start connecting the wiring in. I have to say I am pretty darn excited about this! For now, I wait and dream about the Tiny House in the forest.
“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.” ~ HD Thoreau
Tiny House Ontario 