Had a very instructive morning, dear boys and girls. The power in my neighborhood went out for a while.
The devil! you say. No, truly, it did. No lights, no TV (poor Dude and Dude’s daily recordings), no stove (electric, ptooey), no dishwasher, no washing machine or dryer (not like I personally use those things), no hot water (after what’s left is gone), no Internet (gasp!), and, my personal favorite, no data because my laptop went on battery immediately, but I keep everything on my grab’n'run emergency preparedness external hard drive.
Pffft.
So what did I do? Went hunting for my eBookWise. That’s right. I’d had it charging and it was all fresh and ready to go, but what would happen after my charge ran out in 12 to 15 hours (depending on what light level I had it set on)? I would not be able to read, that’s what would happen. And I would thus be forced back to dead-tree books.
And writing long-hand on lined paper. (Er, well, I do that anyway.)
Take away from this what you will, but while I am still a pusher of electronically transmitted stories, nothing but nothing will take the place of dead-tree books.
February 10th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
Amen.
February 10th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
.
Yeah, reading The Road made me think of ebooks.
Of course, all the dead-tree books were pretty much gone as well…..
February 11th, 2009 at 12:58 am
Well, you know, my argument has been that if we’re all subsisting, a) would we have time to read them and b) what if we had to leave them behind? We wouldn’t have them anyway.
On the other hand, it was incredibly disconcerting this morning. Power outages are a part of life, right? But I’ve never been so weirdly affected before.
February 11th, 2009 at 2:37 am
I used to write my rough drafts longhand on lined paper too. But typing them in later annoyed the crap out of me. And hurt my wrists, so I gave up the practice.
February 12th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
I would like the techies to look into fast growing pulpy grasses to make paper.
I think ultimately various types of bamboo will cloth and house us, so why not entertain and inform also.
February 12th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Yes!
I’m actually all about hemp, but there’s so much POLITICS wrapped up in that.
February 15th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
[...] Moriah Jovan faces the cold hard reality that comes with a power outage: Had a very instructive morning, dear boys and girls. The power in my neighborhood went out for a while. [...]