Before you find you're a dull fellow

[austin_dern]

``You're making an awful noise,'' our pet rabbit said, in his most scolding of tones.

I stopped swinging the rubber mallet and let go of the putty knife. ``Yes, I know, but it's for a good reason.''

He poked his nose between his cage mesh, almost close enough to nibble at the knife's handle. ``I don't think you understand. It's you and you're doing that thing where you make noise.''

---

And please follow the rest of my dialogue with our pet rabbit over on the humor blog. Other items from the past week are:

• The Big Idea, and what to do about having it.
• What To Do With Abandoned Ideas, as everyone has them.
• Forms of New Jersey Local Government (3), further explaining this oft-confusing field.
• Robert Benchley's Are You Between The Ages Of 7 and 94?, something of classic vintage.
• Robert Benchley Society Announces 2013 Writing Contest, a straight bit of signal-boosting about the humor contest.
• Here Are Some Numbers (July 2013), a report on the statistics of how things are going.

Trivia: Zoysia grass, two strains of which were introduced to the United States in 1906 and in 1930, is native to Manchuria and North Korea and Manchuria. Source: The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession, Virginia Scott Jenkins.

Currently Reading: Colonies in Space, T A Heppenheimer. I missed the detailed thoughts of how much farming our Space Colonists would be eager to do, but harvesting infant bunnies in space for their meat? I can see why they downplayed that in later O'Neill Colony Agitprop. I didn't need the assurance that the space goats would not be fed space onions lest the space taste get in their space milk; I plan to let all known or suspected space goats be. Also, the assurance that people will be able to go to ``buffet-style'' restaurants seems to be micromanaging.

Comments

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession, Virginia Scott Jenkins

Good book. There was a lot more there there than I thought there'd be when I read it many years ago. I could never wrap my head around the conflict between, "I'm an American, I can do what I want, I'm fiercely independent because FREEDOM that's why, my home is my castle, don't tell me what to do with my property," on the one hand, and "Oh yes, of course neighbours have a right to coerce you to keep your lawn in the way they think lawns should be kept," on the other, until Jenkins detailed the history of social engineering by seed and lawn-care equipment companies to implant that second bit into American cultural expectations.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, it is a great book. I was stunned by how much more interesting the subject was than I imagined when I picked up the book; it was one of those happy caught-the-corner-of-my-eye moments in the library.