Sorry Construction Workers

This is marvelous and I thank Seanna for unknowingly inspiring me with it.  These are not my words but rather an excerpt from an article in The Atlantic.

“It’s 95 degrees and the humidity is 80%. People don’t understand that. People see a man with a shovel in his hand working on a job site and think he’s lazy because he’s just standing there. What they don’t see is the struggle going on inside your brain. The part of you that has lived in the wild for millions of years is saying it’s too exhausting, it’s too hot, why don’t you go lay in the shade for a while. That part of your brain sees the shovel, sees the ditch, sees the pipe to be laid, and it doesn’t see how this is getting you food or sex. That other civilized part of you is saying, there is food and sex to be found in that ditch. You just need to hunch over that pipe for another 5 hours, and then for another three days, and then it’ll be this made up thing, Friday, and you’ll have this other made up thing, money. Then you can go out and eat and try to procure a mate.

You just need to clinch that shovel tightly for a little longer and you can get what you want. The little tribesman in your mind doesn’t understand this. Things were easier in his time. Sure you only lived to be 26, but if it was too hot you didn’t move, if some bit of fruit was too hard to reach you walked to the next tree and looked for lower fruit. There is no low hanging fruit left in this world though.

You hold that shovel and think if only I could bludgeon that little tribesman in my brain. Then I could be free to give myself to wage labor, free to force my body to do what it doesn’t want to. So when you see a man on the side of the road not moving just watching some machine manipulate earth, know that he may not be lazy, but just engaged in a struggle between a past that shaped us and a present that was made by us but not for us.”

Filed under: architecture, hard work

You want a “custom home”? Really???

I’m in a predicament.  I understand why people want a ‘custom home’.  I just don’t know why they think they’re getting a custom home.  Seriously – is choosing your counter top material, the color of your walls and rounded corners what you consider ‘custom’?

I won’t mention the name of any custom home builders in this diatribe.  But you should note that the word ‘builder’ was just added to the phrase.  Interesting.  Maybe this is because custom homes AREN’T ACTUALLY CUSTOM HOMES but rather a pre-designed shell, designed (i use the term lightly) by a builder/contractor.  You, as the consumer, get to choose little amendments that the builder offers and poof, your customized.

I recently visited a home in custom home central – suburbia - that had ‘shuttered’ windows (since real shutters would be too much work – they were fake shutters screwed into the brick).  But upstairs, two sets of shutters were closed.  Upon entering the house I immediately walked up to inspect the closed shutters.  In both locations – no windows.  The home builder actually put up fake shutters to cover up fake windows!  Now consider that actual shutters, here in Houston, could save a pretty penny the next hurricane that roles through…

Filed under: architecture, custom homes, demand more, fake custom homes, home builders