That's song that played in my head, when I saw this in the Washington Post:
The author of the song, Layne Staley, is not a man in a box. He died (at the age of 34) and was cremated.
You can see that WaPo article is topping the most-read list in the "Lifestyle" section.
[Getaway, a rental cabins business,] presents a dire vision of urban life, and then offers itself as the antidote. It evokes the Japanese practice of forest bathing, and disconnection, and a little curative isolation... and not a single wine glass... absolutely no WiFi....
It’s ridiculous, but I expect to feel some instant woodsiness that never materializes. Even though I play Bon Iver on the Bluetooth radio, and then take the provided torch outside to our fire pit and sprinkle the (provided) firestarter over the (provided) logs, and light our first campfire and make some (provided) s’mores.
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I recently watched that Netflix Ted Kaczynski miniseries. I wonder if the Unibomber cabin would qualify as a tiny house?
"The author of the song, Layne Staley, is not a man in a box. He died (at the age of 34) and was cremated."
Then he is in a box, a very small box.
"Then he is in a box, a very small box."
Could be a coffee can.
And it can be had for only $45,000! Because millenials are too incompetent to create a plywood shelter from $1,500 worth of materials from Home Depot.
I live in the woods. Well, there are lots of woods a few yards from me. These same people will crap in their pants at the first signs of any squirrels, raccoons, possums, mice, bats, lizards, spiders, etc. trying to make their way into their living area and also the deer eating all of their carefully curated garden plants. Not to mention the pack of coyotes that howl in the night and will eat what passes for your dog the first chance they get.
That said, I much prefer battling with these than what I had to deal with in the city - rats, pigeons, and the catch and release criminal elements.
Sounds very contrived to me. I understand enjoying the woods and cabins and such. Our family has a cabin in the woods, no TV reception - but a TV and DVD player. Plenty of board games as power is regularly lost. Plenty of candles and hurricane lamps. Bad cell phone zone, so land line phone, indoor plumbing, etc. Plenty of wine glasses on the bar, too. 25 minutes down the mountain to Carlisle, PA for 'civilization' and college town pubs, shops, etc. We used to do New Years up there frequently, until I had trouble getting the extra days off it would take to warm it up enough with the fireplace to be comfortable for guests. I takes time to get the temps right, where they were equalized between the two floors, or it would be 50 degrees downstairs and 80 upstairs, what with heat rising and all. The real trick is getting the stone fireplace and indoor chimney heated enough to provide radiant heat.
I looked at the Getaway website, and what it seems to offer is something close to camping, available to people who don't know how to camp or think camping is too dangerous (because of wild animals and scary humans).
That scene in The Big Lebowski, is quite possibly the funniest scene in a movie ever.
If you didn't grow up camping, it's pretty hard to camp. I think it's very hard for women, speaking for myself.
It’s ridiculous, but I expect to feel some instant woodsiness that never materializes.
Yes. It IS ridiculous, because you are still living in a cocoon. Pretending to be in the woods and pretending to commune with nature, while all the time, everything is being provided for you by some invisible hand. You don't have to work in your fake experience. You don't need to inconvenience yourself in the slightest. Even the S'mores are made for you.
You don't even try to experience the woods or appreciate nature. Playing your music to blot out the natural music of nature. Birds singing, animals rustling through the vegetation, wind sighing through the trees. I bet you don't even lay outside in the pitch dark and view the stars and the river of the Milky Way.
Poser.
Pretending your way through life. Sad.
Stay in the city. Please.
Nonapod said...
I recently watched that Netflix Ted Kaczynski miniseries. I wonder if the Un[a]bomber cabin would qualify as a tiny house?
That cabin certainly kept him calm, rational and stress-free.
It evokes the Japanese practice of forest bathing,
For the full "forest" experience you need flocks of crows eating deer carcasses, although a squirrel eating a rotten pumpkin may substitute in the less rural areas.
Pretending to be in the woods and pretending to commune with nature,
In Soviet Russia, nature communes with you, especially in Siberia.
Back when I was raising beef cattle, the first thing that new neighbors from the city would say to me about my spreading manure in the spring was: "What are you going to do about that smell?" Please, stay in the city. You'll do everyone a favor.
"Could be a coffee can."
That video reminds me of a burial at sea that I participated in. Similar result too.
Imagine that, playing Bon Iver and NOT getting a woodsy feeling. I mean she put it on. On the bluetooth. And it was playing. What happened?
Wasn't there a 50s folksong critical of suburban squares living in "boxes, little boxes all made of ticky-tack all look the same?"
Hippie Communes. Mansonvilles . That is a Patriarchal context if there ever was one.
Are the Feminists surrendering ?
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
If you didn't grow up camping, it's pretty hard to camp. I think it's very hard for women, speaking for myself.
12/28/17, 9:52 AM
Yep. If men fail to keep providing women with electricity, there are going to be some whiny-ass women in this country.
"Buried in my shit/Won't you come and save me?/Save me... But if you are short and not hung like a horse forget about it."
robother said...
"Wasn't there a 50s folksong critical of suburban squares living in "boxes, little boxes all made of ticky-tack all look the same?" "
Pete Seeger - "Little Boxes"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-sQSp5jbSQ
Not to be confused with John Mellencamp - or whatever name he goes by these days, I've lost track - and his "Little Pink Houses."
"Little Boxes" by Malvina Reynolds, also Pete Seeger.
She wrote it about the postwar housing developments in Daly City, just south of San Francisco. I can see the houses she sang about from my window, winding along the hills.
Its an arrogant song, less about architecture than normal life. All those people in the ticky tacky boxes were too square for Reynolds and her friends.
Immobile recreational vehicles. At $100 a night lol. You can buy a nice little rv camper for under $100 a month. Pull it somewhere nice in an hour or so and be good to go for about $30 a night. Hardly camping but still. Here's the late great Risemary Clooney singing: Let's Get Away from it All". I guess every generation has to relearn Walden on their own.
https://youtu.be/h-bjP5i4dvE
Ann Althouse said...
If you didn't grow up camping, it's pretty hard to camp. I think it's very hard for women, speaking for myself.
12/28/17, 9:52 AM
I did not even enjoy it when I was a Girl Scout. I stayed awake all night at Camp Alice Chester, jumping at every twig snap, because I was sure a bear would eat me. A dozen years after that, I went camping with a boyfriend near the Appalachian Trail in Southwestern Virginia. I took no pleasure in that either. I was still convinced the bears would get me.
Thousands of years of evolution enabled humankind to get away from sleeping on the ground because sleeping on the ground sucks.
My go-to "box" song. I remember the summer this song was on the radio, for some reason it always cracked me up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svVaEWQaoSo
The image in the post is a good idea for a high end designer coffin. I’ll have my elves work on it.
Hipsters. Living in the city was cool, until "gentrifying" made it uncool. Now, its literally moving out of the city into little boxes that's cool. Next thing you know, they'll be reciting iambic pentameter rhyming poems in their coffee-houses.
There's no shortage of people camping out on city sidewalks, or under freeways. It's very fashionable.
Great fucking song.
exiled said...
Thousands of years of evolution enabled humankind to get away from sleeping on the ground because sleeping on the ground sucks.
I always tell people my idea of roughing it is showing up at the Hyatt without a reservation...
Instead of a regular man in a small box how about a small man in a regular box?
I recently watched that Netflix Ted Kaczynski miniseries.
Me too.
An example of tech controlling our lives was being stopped at red light at intersection. Middle of nowhere at night . Nobody in sight but we wait for green light to give us permission to proceed.
You can get idiots to pay for anything.
Marginally related:
YouTube: Man In Box Show
Workplace-themed sketch comedy; the main actor in that is Mike Polk--he's the guy who did the Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video and the One Semester of Spanish Love Song
I think these were all from 2007-2009 or so but most have held up pretty well.
Man In Box: Terry's Soda Pop
Man In Box: Star Wars vs Sports
His ideas helped him to live to a rip old age of 34. Who can challenge that?
Ann Althouse said...If you didn't grow up camping, it's pretty hard to camp. I think it's very hard for women, speaking for myself.
False. Women are naturally gifted campers and their stronger organizational and social skills mean they easily adapt to any living situation--they thrive in places the average man would find intolerable. Women are just better at dealing with harsh environments, Professor, so something like camping is easy as pie. Not that women belong in the kitchen or anything like that--it's just an expression but one I'll keep an eye on in the future.
Anyway it's sexist to say that women have a harder time than men at any activity. Please don't be so sexist, ma'am.
“Thousands of years of evolution enabled humankind to get away from sleeping on the ground because sleeping on the ground sucks. “
Your complaints seem to center on wildlife. Most animals are very afraid of you. If you go camping in Alaska you might have some problems but in the lower 48 everything outside of the injured/old cougar will leave you alone completely.
As far as sleeping I have trouble sleeping on most beds without pillows under my knees and lower back. The most comfortable bed for me is dug up sand/dirt with a tarp/poncho liner on top. The ground is downright comfortable compared to spring mattresses or floors.
Man in a box is a great song. I had high hopes for the video. Maybe something like the Tool videos or Metallica’s unforgiven video.
That video was bad. A high school club could have made a better video.
I see that, according to the caption under the photo Althouse has in the post, that people are to "rediscover pleasure of solitude and unstructured time" We discussed this concept in a previous post's comment section.
There is something to be said about this idea...unstructured time. Especially for those who live in a highly structured and stressful environment. You can UNstructure your time while at home, but it IS easier to do this in a new place where you don't have any reminders of the structured things you need to do, or should be doing.
We go "camping" frequently in the spring, and summer. I put "camping" in quotes because we really are going out into the woods or camping areas in our trailer, which is fully contained. So...we are not roughing it as we used to do when truly camping ,in tents, for a week at a time deer hunting in the Madeline Plains of Ca (google the photos) That was Camping, with a capital C, and rough work.
Even so, with the luxury of a nice bathroom, shower, hot water, stove, fridge, soft bed, heat or air conditioning as the weather dictates, and YES...even blue tooth music on wireless speakers if we want, the UNstructured life of "camping" is very relaxing. There is no schedule to follow, other than the fact we want to eat meals during the day, clean up after the meals, and, of course, look forward to the cocktail hour when we can sit in our zero gravity chairs and just do nothing other than chatting and relaxing or merely listen to the birds.
Read books, nap, play scrabble or cribbage, take walks, whatever you feel like. No phones, no internet, no cell reception. Just doing what you want, when you want. Unstructured time.
SO. Even though I poke fun at the pretentious expectations of the author to be as one with nature, the experience is likely a very valuable one that she should repeat and often. Everyone needs some time to decompress and people who live in the cities...even more so.
The other "man in a box" song that I think of is "The Gift" about a man who mails himself in a box. (Velvet Underground)
"Anyway it's sexist to say that women have a harder time than men at any activity. Please don't be so sexist, ma'am."
I think there is a greater danger (or at least a greater fear) that someone finding you outside sleeping will sexually assault you and it is unquestionably much more troublesome to pee outdoors.
These are real physical differences.
Music videos still stink. Good song tho'
"The ground is downright comfortable compared to spring mattresses or floors."
Nothing compares to plain wood. Just as long as there are no splinters.
Here's my favorite, circa 1978 (& until today the only one I knew) Man In the Box cut by Manchester combo V2. One of the best punkers of the era, no doubt due to their glam bent.
Mellencamp doesn't keep changing his name, so it shouldn't be confusing. He professionally went by Cougar early on, switched back to Mellencamp over 30 years ago, and kept to it.
Also, "Little Pink Houses" is a far better song that that pinko Seeger ever came up with, or Malvina Reynolds, who wrote "Little Boxes". And Mellencamp didn't write his song to ridicule the people living in those houses, unlike Reynolds, whose song Tom Lehrer reportedly called "the most sanctimonious song ever written".
I love that song. One of the few songs since the early 70s that really rocks.
They were an incredible band. Can't believe I was actually lucky enough to see them live,,, right smack dab in the middle of that era (1990).
The other "man in a box" song that I think of is "The Gift" about a man who mails himself in a box. (Velvet Underground)
Waldo Jeffers. Scissors right through his head.
Nice comment TTR. I am proud of you!
"I recently watched that Netflix Ted Kaczynski miniseries."
Episode 6 "Ted" was excellent. Also, it could be watched without watching any other episodes.
The problem I see with the tiny house is one of authenticity... the roof is not thatched with straw. Maybe that would help?
Remembering your Great Gatsby Project.
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