98 BLOG
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| MODULES FOR LIVING |
TABLE MODULE
MY LINE OF NOMAD FURNITURE
I've moved so many times since I left home for college that I
finally had developed my own LINE OF FURNITURE.
_Flooring: We had all this cheap wicker type of squares 12" square that would easily fold up and stack for moving, yet presenting a nice warm, comfy floor in the living area.
Chairs: I found some large, square, cushions
and made a low base with a slanted back for two of the cushion, allowing us to
sit around with our all on drugs &
wine to solve the problems of our universes.
Book cases: I finally devised a box
that had handles cut into the ends, so they could be tossed in a trunk and not
have to pack/unpack. Books.
Bed: The
waterbed was around but I thought it too cumbersome so I opted for the
inflatable mattress, just making an appearance.
The only real problem I had was they all came with a flocked coating
which was very hard to get around when I had to fix a leak with my bike tire patch kit. Otherwise this
was ideal, except it was blown up manually and took some time.
Eating: We didn't Dine, we scarfed. For a table, I had a large 42" round butcher block top, remove 4 screws, then roll
it out to your car.
THE SPEC HOUSES
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| BRIDGE HOUSE |
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| 'M' FRAME |
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| LANGWORTHY TOP OF WORLD |
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| HEX HOUSE |
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| CONCEPT ONE |
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| CONCEPT TWO |
Of course, the mere smell of wood & concrete this readily got
me into building 'Spec' Houses in Laguna Beach .
Spec means that you buy a lot, design a house for it, then sell
it on condition, or 'On Speculation'
that you will recoup your investment plus some profit involved for all the work
you've done. When I opened my office in South Laguna during my 'Mostly lived on
carrot juice days' I met a Japanese fellow who had some backing from his folks
in Tokyo and wanted to build some "On the edge of the Spearpoint ' house
so we did a few really far out Spec houses.
The first one
went pretty well. The plan was based on three hexagons with the two car
carport, which had huge umbrella roofed
area. I did all the structural
calculations (Still do) but after we finished the carport, there was an unusual
flexibility of the heavy steel center support column as I could rotate the
entire 20' roof roof with my finger several inches. But easily solved with a
small bolt to the adjacent retaining wall. We alway re-used materials like
the wood siding was from a friends old
fence.
But you have to realize,
we knew that 99% of the market was being catered to by Tract builders, so we were after the 1%, but not the 1% you
know who have most of the money, we were after the .09% who had TASTE! . Well, it turned out that the percentage was
less than than that, but we got lucky,. An architect from Taliesin & his
partner, a successful artist loved the place & bought it right away. Then
we found an impossible lot , bought it and built an 'M' Frame house on it , We
were able to use a lot of redwood plywood in those days as it was fairly cheap.
This place had 20' ceilings in the living area and we actually sold it too.
But we kind of met our
Waterloo when we built the plastic roofed house on Top of the World, the plan
based on the old Mexican haciendas, around a small patio where one had to go
outside (although covered ) to get to the living area. This was 1965, the lot
cost 12,000, construction materials another 12,000 as we did all of the
construction. (This, our Labor, turned out to be free). My partner & I did
all the labor (I mean all, concrete, carpentry, electrical. Plumbing, etc.).
However, after several months after we finished it we ran out of money to keep
up with the loan (Yes! We were able to obtain construction loans from the local bank) so we
voted that Lamont move in and make the payments on the loan. You can only appreciate the irony of me
living in the best house in Laguna, on
Top of the World (That's what it is actually called, sitting up about a
thousand feet above town, overlooking a huge cattle ranch) but friends
generously collected food boxes from the elementary schools for my small family (Me, Patricia & new
daughter, Medina). But fortunately for everyone, our neighbors, who were
renting, loved the house and bought it after several months. Ted & Lucy,
both Greek scholars , also bought the lot across the street and hired me to design
another fine home.
My partner, Patrick,
dropped out of the high risk games (He got busted for having a maryjane joint
but my next client, Tom Lyster, got the bug, and after we finished building his
house, which was first published in a
German Architctual magazine called
"Bauwelt" or something similar. built another Spec House on the
adjacent lot that was more or less a historical garden from Old Laguna days. In
order to preserve the wonderful historic gardens in this little Canyon, we used
the obvious things, and built a "Bridge House out of pre-fabricated roof
truss, as Tom was a salesman for them. Well, everyone builds a spec house that
bridges 40' over the gardens below, don't they? But this time we got lucky and
sold it before it was finished to a professor who was head of the Art Dept. at
the new Irvine University. This owner
was great, as he hung original art work all over the place, like Licktenstein
originals, (the guy who did blow ups of comic book people & things.)
BOOK ALERT
I found the alternate story of the WAR (not the last war) of WW2.
It's titled THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE.
by Philip Dick, who was a science-fiction writer and also wrote DO ANDROIDS
EVER DREAM OF ROBOT SHEEP? This later
became the Cult movie "Blade Runner", which will be released in
October as an upgrade of the older ones. It seems only S-F writers have enough
imagination to write alternate histories. This was written 17 years after the
war was over. An interesting story, as the author has the protagonist write an
alternate of the alternate, (in other words, How the Allies Won" That was
easier) The U.S. was divided up between
Germany & Japan, but it was better to be on the Jap side as the Nazi still
liked to kill any Jews. But life is fair and the Germans attacked the Japs and
took them over too. Are there any Japanese Jews? (Not any more!).
VIDEO ALERT
If your still interested in politics you might like REQUIEM FOR
THE AMERICAN DREAM featuring Noam Chomsky, who is one of the few who have a
memory of recent political happenings and the shenanigans of most of our recent presidents. Wars, finances health
care, don't seem to important issues with us .
Anyway, it's Rather sobering. (I'll drink to that!).
ANOTHER VIDEO
The curious case of Benjamin Button. F. Scott Fitzgerald did a short story on a
kind of reverse aging person who is born old but gets younger, unlike the rest
of us. His relationships tend to get pretty weird as how would you like to see
your spouse getting younger and reverting to a baby?
BELIEVE IN TRUTH
To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then
no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If
nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most
blinding lights.
by
Timothy Snyder
I'M GETTING A LTTLE WORRIED ABOUT OUR SPORTS MANIA.
I happened on to the
beginning of a national basketball game a while back and was really appalled at
the adoration of the Star Spangle banner was shown. This whole thing was rated
as a Holy exercise, where all had to show obeisance to the music by standing,
hats off, with their hand covering their heart. Usually the playing field is
showing a giant American Flag (Patton!) and anyone stupid enough to forget the
"under God l" would probably be tarred & feathered, and dragged around the field before any activities began.
This worries me a lot as
it seems the mainstream has forgotten that there is no "Uber
Fatherland" to require our obeisance especially with a song that was
penned by a
Brit who used the music of
an English Drinking song but putting a more Nationalistic twist on the
lyrics. We have to be careful to be able
to differentiate between Nationalism and Patriotism and Religion.
LET'S TALK ABOUT OUR FEDERAL BUDGET
Maybe it's time to re-access our monetary requirements that
impact our tax requirements so.
I noticed the other day an article talked about the small amount
it took to take care of one of our
military problems (some trans-gender stuff) was only 3 to 9 million dollars.
And went on to say it was ONLY .05% of our military budget I thought it was
about 500 Billion. Now, here I thought a few million was a large
sum, but now it seems to be pocket change. Maybe our leaders should hire a small book-keeper to set our national
priorities. Here's how I would see it working;
Let's begin with a clean
slate and ask ourselves what exactly should be the role of the Federal
Government? Our founding fathers may have done that but it sure got distorted
afterwards. I wonder if they knew about
the power of lobbyists?
We pay most of our taxes to the Federals, except I now see our
sales taxes (which are local taxes) are creeping up to 10% of all we buy (State
Tax)(except food?).
1. Military - It is more efficient
to band together and hire a Military force. That is the primary reason for a
Federation of individual entities, isn't it? Also the expensive cost of
weapons, especially nuclear subs, fast fighter planes & bombers can cost
millions and billions each! When did we
assume we had to have the largest Military twice over of any country on earth?
No other country spends 60 % of their money on the military . Even so,
our new president wants to increase the percentage.
2. Health care for all;(6%
of our budget) Most developed countries have a pretty adequate Health system
for most of it's citizens. Our best system is not even good enough for our
Senators & Congress men, who have their own super Health care system. My
favorite doctor is quitting (retiring) due to being overcome with paperwork
that supports an inadequate health insurance.
We've given it over to large Pharma and Insurance corp. This
means that the independent doctor will be extinct as he can't afford to do all
the paper-work that large companies can do. Doctors will have to work for large
companies that will relieve them of the obnoxious paperwork. Soon, Medical
doctors will be majoring in accounting with a minor in Medical. Maybe we could allow abortions but certainly
not pay for them. And lets cut off the Viagra to the geezers.
3. Infra-structure; -
Build & maintain a national system of roads and rail (& air) to
move things and people around in a defense mode. It should be obvious to our lawmakers that
fast trains are much too expensive for any one state to afford to build, to say
nothing of maintaining.
The above items
are large scale projects and need everyone to chip in. A good example is
California trying to build a fast train from half the length of the state that
is costing more than we can afford on a local level. All we have to do is look
at other countries to see how they do it, and we may find that only the federal
government can afford to build &
maintain such projects. I suppose infra-structure
should include large electrical generating facilities, which used to be dams,
but is now PV or wind or wave
generation. This takes a lot of money & support. What state can afford to
put up $7500 for every electric car sold in their state?
$15.000,000 will cost the Feds for just the last 200,000 electric
car still to be subsidized.
How much money is generated every payday? Maybe it sounds crazy, but maybe the Budget
should be based on our earnings. Take 10% of that and that should be how much
you can spend on everything. What percentage of that should you pay to Feds?,
To the State? 4. Social
services. ;- This is a big one. Just look at your phone book (I
know, you probably just google it) and you'll find most of it is Social
Services that take up several pages .
How would you describe ...S.S.?
I suppose most of it would be something Socialist countries support ,
sometimes too much, making the country potentially bankrupt, or out of money.
College? How about promoting & supporting work that will actually earn you
a living? maybe education should be kept on a local or State level?
Polititions love to use
the word “socialism” in a derogatory way, but aren’t our Social Security,
Health Care, Fire and police kind of Socialistic? I don’t believe that is a dirty word.
However, we
sometimes are responsible for our own plight, as we are still believing
Everyman should be able to own his own house, on a small plot of his own, even
if there is only 3' to the property line. What Is wrong with us? Are we
brainwashed to only want a small bit of dirt, but not all the entities of communal living?. Just try to get
financing on a very small living unit. I have, and couldn’t get anything.
A SHORT, INTELLIGENT NOTE
The old American idea
that giving money to Political Campaigns is free speech means that the very
rich have far more speech, and so in effect, far more voting power, than other
citizens.
Tim
Snyder
