from the desk of stinkpot

ughhh, it’s been so hot and humid lately here in boston. the woolly heat just blankets you as you step outside and into the sun.

christina and i have eschewed air conditioning in our apartment due to the following moral arguments:
1) we’re cheap.
2) having both descended from 100′s of generations of tropical island people, our egos can’t bear the thought that we’d be overcome by boston summers.
3) we’re cheap.

sadly, blood has already been shed for our noble, air conditioner-free cause. one of our giant danio fish committed suicide today, by jumping out of our fish tank. apparently, fish do crazy things when their water gets too hot. our three oscar fish also don’t look so good – they’ve stopped eating. poor guys. rather than invest in a water air chiller, we’re just going to see who lives out the summer and buy more of those kinds of fish. we’re darwinian monsters.

i do have a plan, however. when we were visiting the really nifty-looking reichstag:

i learned from our tour-guide that the architects engineered a huge water-based temperature regulation system beneath the building. in the summer, water was pumped near the ground’s surface and allowed to heat up. the water would then be stored until the winter, during which the water would be pumped through the reichstag, warming the place up. meanwhile, a parallel hydraulic system would be using the cold winter air to chill water; that water would be used to cool the building in the summer. pretty clever stuff.

i figure we could use a similar system to climate control our apartment. we’ve got a huge vat already sitting beneath our apartment – our landlord’s brother-in-law has been using it to crush his own grapes in the fall. (if you’re wondering why, it’s for his basement winery … in the context of our portuguese neighborhood, we’ve learned that a basement winery makes perfect sense) christina has brought up the very valid point, though, that a giant tank of water under our house would probably give the blasted mosquitos, gnats, and fruitflies infesting our house the upper hand.

so, the backup plan is to force water through a series of tubes and ducts to my nearby and wonderfully climate-controlled lab. the water would be heated or chilled as it snaked through the labs; it would then flow back to us and surrender its thermodynamic bounty.

perfect.

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in other news, i came across a really crazy website the other day. 4shared.com. if they were able to kill napster and morpheus, it should be a piece of cake to sue this site into oblivion. nonetheless, the site has yet to go down …

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oh, and i just found out that avril lavigne and the lead singer from sum 41 got married two days ago! you’ll have to excuse my zeal and being a bit slow on the celebrity news lately – i’ve been completely out of touch this past year, since we don’t have cable and it’s raison d’etre, vh1. it’s funny: i always thought that i was above the whole celebrity gossip thing. but, the giddiness i felt when i married an avril lavigne and sum 41 playlist on itunes this morning obviously belies that belief. god, it’s really embarrasing admitting that i’ve got either of their songs on itunes. i’ll just console myself by remembering that admission is the first step to recovery.

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