our opinions: CURMUDGEON MUSINGS
The Last
Word
BY MARK BROWN
Aren’t Those Trendy New Tiny Houses Really
Just Dogloos For People?
N
ew trends fascinate me.
My current favorite? Tiny
Houses seems to be the latest
fad, especially as it pertains to
so-called reality TV. I watched
several episodes and could
not help but comment on the
whole Tiny House scene.
A family of five moves into
a 350-square-foot home. It’s
really way too generous to
call it a home. It’s more like a
doghouse.
It’s all my wife and I can do
to stay in a 23-foot camper for
two to three days without going
berserk. You have to go outside
to change your mind. The guy
on the show tells the people
they can’t have any personal
possessions, heck, you can’t
have any personal thoughts! Put
a family of five in a motel
room indefinitely and see what
happens. These people that
participate in this Tiny House
thing are not destitute, they pay
thousands of dollars for these
deals. Most of the owners seem
to want to pull these things
112
around from place to place,
and they appear really heavy,
because they try to build them
like homes, with all the accou-
trements, marble showers, full
kitchens, lofts. They also have
a magician-type guy that can
make a sofa turn into a dining
room table that can unfold like
a Transformer, he can make a
stairway disappear into a book-
shelf, and a loft with a trapeze.
So when they get all that
done then they need a giant
truck to pull it. It is probably
just me, but I can’t see it. Hey
man, just go buy a camper, it’s
much cheaper and you don’t
need a guy to tell you that you
can’t have your stuff.
P.S. If you haven’t watched
the Tiny House show, do your-
self a favor, it’s the best come-
dy relief there is.
So here’s what I want to
invent.
You pick up your iPhone
and send a text to someone
and get a text back, then you
get another text from some-
one entirely different, and in
your multitasking mind, driv-
ing on autopilot, listening to
your music, using your GPS,
checking your iWatch, and you
respond to who you think is the
original texter. But, nooooooo!
You have responded to the
wrong person. Don’t you just
hate it when that happens?
So, I would like to invent a
stupid monitoring app, just to
protect me from my own multi-
tasking, auto-piloting, dumb
self.
Really, the only way I know
to accomplish that is throw
away all these stupid devices,
and go back to an easier way
of life, a life without instant
communication, without track-
ing devices.
In fact I have already started
rebelling, I am going back
to using maps (yes, a piece
of paper you read to figure
out which route you want to
take), at least for the next few
minutes.