The world according to cdlu

Keeping Track - Lawn mowers: our most pampered and successful pets

If I wanted a carpet outside my house, I would put down a carpet instead of a lawn. I've always had trouble with the concept of exceedingly short grass and wonder what the purpose is. There are plenty of plants that stay short on their own, are prettier and less allergenic than grass, require no mowing, and in some cases even produce perfectly good food. Wild strawberries, for example, are aggressive, short, and produce absolute delicious food. Creeping Charlie is considered a weed, but is anything but. It has all the advantages of grass with none of the disadvantages. But instead of these practical solutions to having carpets outside of our homes, we grow lawns, and my column this month is a nod to the most successful domestic species in the world: the lawn mower.

As a society, we're too good to our lawn mowers

Summer is once again upon us. I can tell, not because of the date, nor the sweet sound of chirping birds, nor even the flowers in bloom. Summer's arrival is heralded by the ubiquitous sound of grazing lawn mowers.
The noisiest and least social animal humans have domesticated, the lawn mower generates some of the world's most toxic flatulence while producing no useful byproducts.
Unlike many of its grazing ancestors, this survivor of the modern urban jungle has evolved to chew grass, and return it from whence it came.
It produces only foul smelling gases, yet it is one of the most popular pets known to humanity. Its ancestors on our lawns, the goat and the cow, produced milk used for many aspects of cooking and baking, as well as large quantities of fresh, healthy meat, but were seen as unsightly and messy because of the organic fertilizer they produced. In some areas, another popular grazing animal, the sheep, has been replaced by lawn mowers as growing wool for clothing has gone out of style.
Some older, endangered breeds of lawn mower chew up the lawn and spit it out, allowing the grass to decompose back into the soil and strengthen the lawns, but most modern species of lawn mower hold their meals in large stomachs that have to be emptied by their human masters when they get full.
Many people are so embarrassed by the digested remains of their lawn mower's meals that they hurriedly stoop and scoop the partially eaten grass, quickly hiding it in yard waste bags to be fed to the mower's distant cousin, the garbage truck.
As lawn mowers are known to have a voracious appetite, many of their masters feel compelled to chemically induce their lawns to produce more and, particularly in droughts, divert limited potable water to their lawns lest their lawn mowers become malnourished. Watering lawns is not always legal but many lawn mower owners do it at night, or have their children play with the sprinkler system.
While some citizens let their lawns languish in this dry weather, many people believe that this results in inhumane treatment of lawn mowers which must be fed at least once every two weeks to stay properly fit.
Some rare species of lawn mower are so difficult to feed, municipal governments set up entire parks just to provide enough for them to eat.
These heavy but nimble lawn mowers waste little time enjoying their meals, and spend much of the year trying to eat as much of each city's grass supply as its minders will allow, the better to prepare for their long winter hibernation.
The very best lawns are set aside for the elite. Their life of privilege is funded by generous people who care deeply about the health of these grazers; pampered fairways are subject to continual inspection by club-carrying foursomes, assuring the quality of the grass. On these large, exclusive properties, delicacies, known as greens, are cultivated to the finest tastes of the most demanding lawnmowers.
Lawn mowers are not a social species. They are solitary creatures, rarely ever seen in packs. This far north, they have evolved to hibernate for the winter, although in warmer climates they must be fed year-round.
Lawn mowers reproduce asexually, frequently speciating, and not inheriting evolutionary advances found among their peers.
They are known to react very aggressively to being petted, particularly on their underbellies. However, as lawn mowers are one of our most sacred species, it is very rare for them to be put down for such an outburst. Most lawn mowers are vegetarians, but they have been known to eat a wide variety of small amphibious and land animals that seek shelter in lawns.
Most cities have laws that effectively set minimum standards for the number of lawn mowers that must exist within its limits. If a lawn mower has not had access to a particular lawn in so long that the lawn's height exceeds eight inches, a landowner can be severely penalized for lack of compassion for their lawn mower. As a result, population control for lawn mowers is very difficult and in many areas their numbers have grown to exceed both dogs and cats.
Some people are beginning to see this prolific species as a pest.
With no natural predators, their numbers are increasing and some desperate groups are proposing reintroducing endangered residential grazers like goats.
Prolific consumers of grass and weeds, they could displace lawn mowers in the same habitat. These grazers would reproduce naturally and provide humans with an indirect means of eating their own lawns; feed a goat for the summer, and it will help feed your family for the winter.
The future of the lawn mower is looking very bright. As its world population continues to rise and farmland is replaced with lawn mower grazing fields freshly established in each new urban development, and as grasslands continue to expand northward as lawn mower flatulence works its way through the atmosphere, its food supply and habitat is growing by leaps and bounds.
Indeed, lawn mowers may be one of few species in the world to benefit and thrive from climate change.

columns satire 1018 words - permanent link - comments: 1. Posted at 08:31 on June 10, 2010

Happy press freedom day!

The Conservative Government has ~~removed the Coordination of Access to Information Requests System~~ This post has been censored by order of PCO.

politics satire 26 words - permanent link - comments: 0. Posted at 08:30 on May 03, 2008

Tories forgot a word...

According to Kady O'Malley's blog, the tories have released a statement about the RCMP and Elections Canada's "visit", but it's missing one important word...

It reads, "Today Elections Canada visited the Conservative Party of Canada Headquarters. This is related to an on-going court case initiated by the Conservative Party of Canada in the spring of 2007. The Conservative Party has provided Elections Canada with all the information that they have requested."

It should perhaps now read: "... The Conservative Party has involuntarily provided Elections Canada with all the information that they have requested."

Accuracy is important.

politics satire 100 words - permanent link - comments: 2. Posted at 18:00 on April 15, 2008

Harper demands equal treatment for Canada

Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants the US to remember Canada when it builds its 1,100 km fence along the Mexican border. Calling for a "Peace Wall", Harper believes it is only fair for both borders to be properly defended.

"The United States' security is at risk from Canada, too," Harper said at a press conference today, "and we believe a defensive fence should be built along our border by the United States."

The US' northern fence, Harper says, should go along the Canadian border everywhere except Alberta, where the fence should swing north on either side of the province, linking up along the 60th parallel.

The Whitehouse did not immediately return requests for comment, but an official said on condition of anonymity that, "We support Prime Minister Harper's idea for a fence along our northern border. When Canada gets electricity and running water, we can review it."

Liberal leadership hopeful Michael Ignatieff also supports the plan, suggesting that Canada is a known source of criminals entering the United States. "The American constitution should be reopened to block Canadians without PhDs from entering," he said in a statement.

satire 193 words - permanent link - comments: 4. Posted at 19:04 on October 27, 2006

Why lawns suck

As my grass begins to look more like a plant than a carpet, I wonder again why it is that we feel a societal need to have -- and mow -- lawns.

Grass is a widespread natural plant, found on a large proportion of the world's surface. It is the primary food source for many grazing animals, from elephants to rabbits. Over the last few centuries, it has evolved into a cosmetic accompaniment to most homes in the West.

It is often planted in arid parts of North America where grass is not a native plant. It has difficulty surviving and requires frequent watering to maintain its healthy green appearance. In some areas, this usage makes up more than half the total residential water usage. The more scarce the potable water supply, the more of it is used to water the lawn.

During hot, dry seasons, and in the winter months, grass goes to a dormant, brown state. There is nothing wrong with the grass in this condition, but many people believe it is unsightly and unhealthy. They therefore water it until it is green again.

With enough water, grass grows. With more water and the strong sunlight associated with dry areas, it grows faster. Then it needs to be cut. Many people use lawn mowers that bag the cut ends of the grass. These are then thrown out, clogging up landfills and taking nutrients out of the soil. With the nutrients gone, lawn owners call chemical companies to fertilise their now unhealthy, fast growing, water-consuming lawns.

It doesn't make any sense to me. In fact, the more I think about lawns, the less logical they are, at least in their current implementation.

In a sane, rational world, we would still have lawns, but our lawns would be diverse, containing broad-leaf plants as well as grasses and clovers. We would not cut them, but we would, instead, have animals grazing our lawns, keeping them short and healthy. A couple of lambs could keep the lawns of a few houses short all summer long, for example.

The animals used to keep the grass short can feed off of the lawn while keeping it short and fertilised all summer long. In the winter, they can feed the owner of the lawn and their family. In the spring, the process can start over with a new grazing dinner in waiting.

This, to me, would be a rational use of lawns.

essays satire 410 words - permanent link - comments: 3. Posted at 12:05 on July 25, 2006

O Canada in the Commons

It turns out there *is* one thing that the new government does better than the old.

Parliament's weekly discordant rendition of O Canada before question period every Wednesday has actually become listenable since this government took office. I'm not sure if parliamentarians have been distributed tuning forks, but something has changed!

It used to be that everyone present, government or opposition (except the Bloc), would crowd around together and sing something that sounded approximately like our national anthem, some singing it in English, some in French. Now only the Tory Tenors� sing, and only in English.

Amusingly, this week's rendition and question period were preceded by 'the Entertainer' on CPAC.

� I hereby coin 'Tory Tenors' to describe the singing classes of the Conservative caucus.

satire 129 words - permanent link - comments: 0. Posted at 14:14 on June 14, 2006

March 16th, 2004 (from Advogato)

Moo?

Guess I haven't written in here for a while.

Remember Segfault? It's been gone a while.

Humour in this community is not, though. I've tried my hand at a bit in the last few months...

Linus Torvalds enters race for California Governor

Microsoft seeks law to retroactively ban Finnish immigration

Nestl� to buy Google

Microsoft makes RMS its friend

Microsoft Way goes nowhere

Watch for more...

Train chasing has really taken off, too... I have almost 8000 train pictures and over 400 train videos on line now. It's tonnes of fun. If you're in the area and are into trains, come along for the fun!

That site (railfan.ca) is written entirely in a bit over 500 lines of good old bash... who needs perl, anyway? :)

Oh. And I got a new car. My old one died.

satire 143 words - permanent link - comments: 0. Posted at 19:47 on March 16, 2004

February 22nd, 2003 (from Advogato)

Mmmm... nice new monitor.

I've taken up the hobby of railfanning, or if you prefer the British terminology, trainspotting, and my first 3 weeks of this activity have yielded over four hundred pictures and nearly 30 short video clips the camera I am borrowing takes.

But I kept missing something out there, on the tracks, often in good Canadian weather of 50 km/h winds and blowing snow.

What I kept missing was the trains.

So yesterday, I went to downtown Guelph to find a scanner. Freight trains emit a signal every 30 seconds from what's called an "end of train device". They also make extensive use of clear radio signals to communicate, relaying their positions to the trains in front and behind them and to dispatchers. Every so far along the tracks are detectors, devices that look for dragging equipment, overheated wheels, and even derailments. All of these broadcast in the clear, and I wanted a scanner.

After searching two pawn shops in town, not wanting to pay full fare for a brand new scanner, I stopped in at the sole remaining pawn shop and asked the employee (yes, there's only one - the employer and one employee run the store) if he had any radio scanners, not wanting a flatbed scanner which seems to be the first thing people think of.

He didn't but on the way over to check, I passed a couple of flat screen 21" monitors - Trinitron p1110 with Dell labels. After much ponderance, I bought them both - one for me and one for my roomate - at a combined total of some CAN$630 after taxes.

I never thought that I would find anything that would make my 17" monitors - or my television for that matter - look puny, but damn.

But I'm still without a scanner. I want to get a scanner and GPRS, plug the laptop into my inverter and camera into laptop and the gps on my dash to my laptop and scanner to line in and GPRS in... and then I can keep accurate audio-visual-scanner video and pictures with date/time/lattitude/longitude stamp and immediately upload them to my railfan web page. And I can work (telecommute) from the tracks at the same time.

Except that then I don't get to use my new monitor.

Them's the breaks.

satire 392 words - permanent link - comments: 0. Posted at 19:44 on February 22, 2003

August 18th, 2002 (from Advogato)

43.50MHz.

2,400MHz.

They don't look very close to me.

Nevertheless I can listen to my 2.4GHz wireless telephone on my 43.50MHz walkie talkie. These items have nothing in common except that a) they use radio frequencies to communicate, and b) they both came from Radio Shack.

I'm still trying to determine which is worse...

At 43.50MHz anyone with a radio can listen to my conversation quite happily.

At 2.4GHz it risks interfering with the 802.11b network I am providing to my housemates.

Or perhaps 802.11b really runs at 43.50MHz too, and maybe I can listen to network traffic on my walkie talkie as well.

After all, I got my 802.11b nic at Radio Shack, too, and it does use radio frequency to communicate...

If that is the case, then perhaps I can learn to make ticking sounds into my walkie talkie and simulate network traffic.

It wouldn't be very fast though. I'd have to pretend I was at the outermost point of signal with my access point. I'd also have to learn the protocol...

Or maybe my walkie talkie really runs at 2.4GHz. But it says on it "43.30MHz-43.70MHz" and has five channels. My phone talks on channel C (well, sometimes. Once it showed up on channel B - 43.40MHz.)

Sometimes I can't hear my phone on the radio at all. I think that it spends that time interfering with my wireless network.

Incidentally my wireless network also seems to be interfered with by ... well ... me.

See, my access point is upstairs, and I have a nic plugged into an ancient ISA PCMCIA adapter sticking out of the drive bays in the front of the firewall - a full tower desktop box which really doesn't look like it should have PCMCIA cards in it. (This computer did not come from Radio Shack, however it does seem to broadcast on a very large number of frequencies, interfering with the walkie talkies, phone, shortwave radio, television, and just about anything else that dare attempt to use radio frequencies near it.)

That's fine and good and all, but if I stand up, I get between the nic and the access point, and that's just enough to block the signal and kill the connection.

Ah well. Some things just never seem to go the way you want them to.

radio satire 392 words - permanent link - comments: 0. Posted at 19:39 on August 18, 2002