Category Leisure

• The Larva Rodeo

  IS THERE A THING OF which it is said,
  ‘See, this is new’?
  It has already been,
  in the ages before us.
  The people of long ago are not remembered,
  nor will there be any remembrance
  of people yet to come
  by those who come after them.

  When you turn your PC on in the morning and browse through the usual sites of work and study avoidance—email, Google Reader, the front pages of the newspapers, twitter—you generally expect most things to be as they were when you closed the machine down the afternoon before.

  Posted 10 April 2012 · Author Liam Hogan

• Compost

  THE INTERNET IS A LIMITLESS source of contradictory information on how one should compost. I understand the basics; you put organic matter together with a decent proportion of carbon and nitrogen sources, then you leave it alone. But should I bother to shove a fork in it twice a week? Do I need a second to establish a cycle? What should my position on eggshells and scraps of meat be? Is it hot or cold enough? How do you promote organic breakdown and stop maggots or pests getting in? Should I have added chicken shit? Does one layer a compost heap like a good lasagna¹ or rotate the pile, or leave it be entirely? If I keep googling “nitrogen ratio” am I going to get a knock on the door from the Australian security organisation?

  Posted 26 October 2011 · Author Liam Hogan

• Mutt and Gmail

  A RECIPE IS A LIST of instructions, just that. It’s not necessarily about food or edible goods; it can be oh so much more. As this is a blog not just about the consumption of meals and drinking, but also time and energy, it seems fair that I also document the other ways in which I choose to profligately squander the short time I will walk the earth.

  I quite like the free email service Google provides. I also have a soft spot in my heart for using computers to do things in ways that aren’t entirely in keeping with the browser-heavy experience of those one generation younger than me. How can I reconcile these two?

  Posted 14 October 2011 · Author Liam Hogan

• Cold Framin'

  LISTEN TO ANOTHER PARABLE. THERE was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watch-tower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country…
  —Matthew 21:33

  If you’ve skimmed the Gospel, you know the story. After making sound property and infrastructure investments, a vineyard’s owner’s slaves and sons go to collect the dues, but meet gruesome ends. The landowner, as you’d expect in a story told by the Son of Man, “[puts] those wretches to a miserable death”.

  The moral, of course, is if you’re a tenant with a garden, don’t stop paying rent no matter what the dispute, put all communications in writing, have the number for the CTTT handy, and read your Residential Tenancy Agreement.

  Posted 27 June 2011 · Author Liam Hogan

• Breakfast At The Wrong Time Of Day

  PSEUDOCYCLICAL TIME IS ASSOCIATED WITH the consumption of modern economic survival—the augmented survival in which everyday experience is cut off from decisionmaking and subjected no longer to the natural order, but to the pseudo-nature created by alienated labor. It is thus quite natural that it echoes the old cyclical rhythm that governed survival in preindustrial societies, incorporating the natural vestiges of cyclical time while generating new variants: day and night, work and weekend, periodic vacations.¹

  So said Guy Debord about the rules governing when one can and cannot eat particular meals. Michael Douglas’s character D-FENS, the classically alienated man, transformed by industry and excluded from power and the communal experience of history, made a similar declaration.

  Posted 4 May 2011 · Author Liam Hogan