Status:
Decided to try out this new method of doing things I used to be able to do in a different way that doesn’t harm me (needs a snappier name) and got out the woodchipper today. Fi has been pruning the shrubbery and lopping the trees and we have a significant pile of branches in the garden. Normally I’d run them through my machines pretty sharpish and take the shredding to the compost heap, but this is not normally times.
The chipper is the corkscrew type which grabs a branch and winds it through the blades, chopping it into small pieces and, importantly, crushing it in the process. (The crushing opens up the stem, increasing the surface area and allowing it to decompose faster.) It works on most branches but not all. Today is was not working on any.
I noticed it was pretty clogged up in there and the usual fixes weren’t fixing, and then I found my head starting to tighten and throb. For the last couple of years this sort of thing has become a trigger for me in a way I find both annoying and embarrassing. The closest example I can think of is how a small child feels when they’re prevented from doing something they planned to do by forces outside of their control. Angry and impotent. There’s more going on, of course, but that’s the vibe. So as the dark clouds threatened I switched everything off, went inside, and did a jigsaw to calm things down.
Once I got over not being able to do a thing that didn’t really need to be done right now I switched gears. I’ve had to dismantle the chipper before so I knew I could do that, and in the process I should be able to fix it. I applied the same rules I used when woodworking earlier in the week and slowly took it apart with lots of breaks. Unclogging the corkscrew took a fair amount of poking with various tools and then I put it all back together again. A nice afternoon of doing something with my hands and it felt good.
And then I tried chipping a couple of branches. They sort of went through with a lot of effort but they left a lot of gunk in screw and I could see the problem repeating. Not to mention the effort involved. Something is wrong. This is not going to work.
I have another chipper with a spinning blade but this has also been giving me trouble. It keeps overheating because something is rubbing in the mechanism, but I’m not skilled enough to figure that sort of thing out. It a consumer-sized version of a professional piece of equipment and really needs a professional to maintain it, not some dilettante like me who has probably run it into the ground.
I think my woodchipping adventures might be over. And that’s OK. Anyone want to buy some chippers? One not-so-careful owner?
(Found lots of interesting looking things in the Sunday newsletter torrent but haven’t had the capacity to read them properly, so hold tight.)
Reading:
- Language and longing — Paul Raven on post-literacy notions, recently floated by Sam Kriss and others. “Literacy will not disappear, but rather become infrastructural."
Watching:
- Two ways to turn a cube into an octahedron (20:27) — Math stuff so I don’t really understand why it’s interesting but I always enjoy watching nerds get excited.
- How did the Metaverse fail so badly? (31.52) — A very dry takedown.
- Laura Kampf (25:28)
Listening:
- Headliners with Nihal Arthanayake: Stewart Lee — A nice long chat. I liked the bit about realising collecting stuff was a burden on those clearing up after you die.