The Opiate of the Masses
We had to go washing-machine shopping today, because it turns out that the great flood was caused not by the traditional method of the sewer stopping up, but by the equally traditional but somewhat less expensive method of our 9 year old washing machine deciding that it would no longer be a machine that actually held the water we wanted to wash clothes in.
This, believe it or not, is a good thing, because it's a lot cheaper (at, gasp!, US$900) to replace the existing washing machine than it is to jackhammer up the floor and replace the sewer lines. We still have to replace the sewer lines, because of their annoying habit of backing up during the rainy season, but we don't have to replace them right now before our limited supply of clean laundry runs out.
So we trotted off to the local locally-owned warehouse store and bought a new washing machine. "We" includes the bears, who, as befitting a couple of children who are being raised in a family that doesn't watch much television, made beelines for the TV section and watched Cute Baby Animals Get Eaten By Crocodiles (Animal Planet) and some sort of CGI music video show for about 25 minutes while the best haggled with a salesman and chose the energy-efficient front-loading washing machine of our dreams. (which , in one fell swoop, ate up half the money I'd set aside for the demonstration wind+solar power installation I'm setting up at home. But the washing machine doesn't use much power, so we won't be paying as much to the scumsucking pirates at Enron, or whatever the offical name of the holding company that owns the local power company is these days.)
The bears plunk themselves in front of the TV.