Robot cat toilets and the dream of eternal rest
It’s important to seek wonder in everyday life, to retain a child’s fascination for simple things. This is not always simple – the sheer grind of daily life can easily knock the joie de vivre out of your system. Fortunately you can find wonder in the most unexpected places, so long as you keep your eyes open.
Just the other day for instance I picked up a copy of The Old Farmer’s Almanac 2011 while waiting in line at the supermarket. I am neither a farmer nor terribly old, but I do like to learn new things. Getting home however I discovered that the almanac is not really for farmers any more, but is rather a collection of miscellanies – bathroom reading.
Flicking through its pages I was less interested in the whimsical articles than I was in the multitude of small ads. Since the almanac is ostensibly for farmers, many of the items for sale were aimed at people with rural tastes – e.g. barn lighting, rustic doodads, Amish goods, and handcrafted Vermont cheese. Apparently even in the land of supermarkets the size of air craft hangars some people are still unsatisfied and prefer to have their cheese MADE BY HAND and dispatched to them via the mail.
And yet on the same page, incongruous amid this fetish for the rural, was a true classic of the American small ad genre, something I’d never seen before: a Litter Robot. A photograph showed a cat peeking out of a gleaming white sphere that resembled something from the 70s SF movie Logan’s Run- a teleportation chamber perhaps, or an atomization capsule. There was a small control panel beneath the opening. Now you can enjoy freedom from scooping litter – just let the Litter Robot work for you!
Read the rest here
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