The Not-So-Free Press

Long time readers know that we try to avoid political topics here at ExhaustNotes.us. There’s no percentage in it as the best you can hope for is losing half your audience. Oh sure, we could tear off the bandages and let fly with the anti-pros and pro-cons as good as the next guys. But with Berk leaning right and me not-leaning-right the result would be a complete loss of all of our readers. No, the free press I’m referring to in this click-bait title is my four-brick, paper brick maker that I got for Christmas last year.

This brick thing happened because I’m a subscriber to the Sunday edition of The New York Times. The Sunday Times is a left-biased but mostly true news source that is so big you can read the thing all week long. The NYT puzzle page is legendary and it takes me forever to do the crossword…in ink. And what happens after you read the huge quantity of great writing contained within? Boom! Into the trash goes all that fine newsprint. I felt guilty throwing those efforts into the landfill. It doesn’t have to be this way. I’ve started recycling The New York Times into home heating blocks for the coming winter. If this works out well I may start a commune. We’ll wear flowers in our hair and stink. I’ll call it The Gresh Utopian Society, or Gus, for short.

After shredding all that mostly true but left-biased information I toss the confetti into an empty cat litter bucket. Any bucket will work but the cat litter bucket seems appropriate for America’s political mood. Next I pour water over the top of the paper and add a bit of bleach to keep the odor and mold to a tolerable level. You’ll need to let the paper soak for a week or more for it to break it down into an oatmeal-consistency mush. I give the mush a stir every few days just to let it know I’m thinking of it.

The paper brick mold is a simple machine with four perforated compartments for mush and a close-fitting plunger to squeeze the water from the mush and compress the block. My example was a little too close fitting as it was nearly impossible to get the plunger into the mold. A quick session with a grinder and pliers made the plunger more plungerable, if I can use that word.

Once you’ve filled the mold with your paper mush a heavy weight on the plunger will supply steady pressure and solidify your firebricks. Drying time is about a week out here in arid New Mexico. If you tried this in Florida or the Pacific Northwest the bricks may never dry. Yes, this is a time-consuming process but look on the bright side. If you find one let me know.

The finished paper brick is surprisingly lightweight. It takes two NYT Sunday editions to make about six bricks (depending on what President Trump has said or done the week the paper came out). I have just started building my winter stockpile so I can’t really say if this is a good idea or a total waste of time. As they say, the truth is in the burning and if the bricks ever dry out completely I’ll write a follow up report on how long the paper bricks stay aflame on the next slow news day.