Now this is worth a listen

http://popup.lala.com/popup/432627065039840422

A Marvelous Poem

Next up: the wonderful Boomers Storm by D.M. Lambert
(Copyright 2010 by DM Lambert).
Boomers listen and do absorb,
you are the problem, you did gorge,
the debt you made, is now a rage,
to the piper, it must be paid.

You did worship, the god of mammon,
and like a fish, we're all now salmon,
following, a god of lies,
in histories grave, we soon will lie.

Don't you see, the horizons cloud,
moving faster, towards the crowd,
children crying, going hungry,
millions suffer, tents and sundry.

You said that we, could have it all,
debt to the sky, ahead of the fall,
But thats ok, they said to us,
you are fine, just us, do trust.

Now we're not Congress, no we're not,
debts to the moon, we go to pot,
they say to all, it'll be ok,
clouds do gather, not here today.

A hurricane gathers, around the land,
generation zero, does try to stand,
what it means, they just don't know,
they filled your minds, all full of glow.

You went to class, and they did too,
a criminal act, they said to you,
that debts can grow, unto the sky,
a trick they pulled, upon your minds.

Cycles of history, they do flow,
unto minds, of men, you know,
they deceive and they do fool,
we're in the mud, and left with gruel.

The good times of credit, do not last,
after the good, does come the fast,
its different this time, they did proclaim,
we knew better, but went insane.

We the boomers, created the fall,
boomers must change, one and all,
we must find, a life without sin,
of he who dies, with the most toys wins.

What is it with Mel Gibson

You know, I have been reading blogs and this gloomy stuff for quite a bit now, and one thing is starting to strike me. The propensity of tin-foil hat type to see themselves in a Mel Gibson role. I was reading one of my favorite commentators today (I gave him money when he was here in Oregon) and I'll be damned if he didn't compare himself to Mel.

It is weird. Folks, survival and getting by in a hard world is not a spectator sport, it is not suitable for a hollywood megamovie. Handsome leading men are mostly makeup, and folks will make a lot more mistakes than they care to think about. It is the rare person who can tip the hangman.

My experiences tell me that grand heroic gestures get cut apart by the opponent the vast majority of the time. If you are serious about getting through situations you drop all that nobility crap and figure out the most efficient and risk-effective means possible. You stay low and keep your wits about you.

So, I am not telling you how to run your life, or how to set your self image, but I hope folks realize just how silly they look when they try to imitate hollywood.

Clocks

Dmitry Orlov wrote a very interesting piece today about the direction and uses of current industrial society. I would strongly advise giving it a read.

That being said, now lets consider the humble watch. It is difficult, it not impossible to find a high quality non-quartz, mechanical watch. Think about that. All of the watches on folks arms and in pockets; all the clock on walls are the residue of a very fragile industrial ecosystem.

Then think about the watches made by Tompion and John Harrison. These didn't require the resources of an industrial juggernaut. They were made in the early eighteenth century and kept time well enough to allow for celestial navigation. I can't imagine a daily use that would require greater accuracy. They weren't made with modern metals, such things were 150 years away.

I am thinking that this kind of product may well be the next wave. The possibilities are legion; Simple, non-electronic sewing machines. Tub washers with mangles. Local Glassblowing. Edison batteries lasting for decades. The honorable mimeograph machine.

In a series of books by Eric Flint et al, the protagonists in a highly entertaining and improbable soap opera deal with this kind of stuff. I would recommend them highly for anyone looking into the future.

Teeth

I always wanted to be one of the folks with great teeth. My dentist informed me yet again that I was not one of them.

Modern dentistry, when likened to auto repair facilities, tries to more like a high-cost body shop. The dentist told me he wanted me to pay him on the order of $10,000 to bring it back up to his standards. I told him that I was looking for a slap of body filler and a tune up.

Since I have the money and he doesn't, we are doing it my way, so his boat will have to wait for someone else to make its payment.

By the way....Read this  and switch to Linux

Thank God it is sunny

This year I am not going to be nearly as ambitious with my garden. That way maybe I will be more efficient and get better quality results.

#1 Son is going to be in charge of potatoes, garlic, and cooking greens. I figure that we will be able to do six to eight tire stacks of potatoes.

#2 Son is going to be in charge of the three sisters

The old geezer is going to be in charge of tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce.

So today is go out for a walk..thank God it is finally sunny, then do the initial dig and lay in a bunch of fertilizer. I think that I am going to go searching for a big black tarp and once the fertilizer is spaded in, cover it with a black tarp to collect heat and let the weeds sprout and die off. Just an experiment, I'll tell you how it goes.

I am going to go with Ronnigers for the seed potatoes this year, I don't see any reason no to try as many varieties as we have tire stacks. I'll get the garlic there as well.

The corn and squash will come from Victory seeds up here in the NW. I'll get the scarlet runner seeds from my buddy Paul who has been saving seeds for >10 years.

Tomatoes,cucumbers and lettuce and will come from seed that I have on hand. I haven't had success yet with growing tomatoes from seed, but I'll be damned if I will quit trying.

The Enemy of My Enemy

Spent the week nursing a boy. 102 F. temperatures are nothing to sneeze at.

But mostly I have been pondering the nature of preppers and their habitual political leanings. To be blunt, there appears to be no apparent thought to the process, merely a knee-jerk "anti-Communist" "pro-freedom" set of leaning that really doesn't make sense in the current modern political climate.

We have entered the final stages of capitalism as envisioned by Marx and Engels. The capitalists (owners of production) are doing their level best to make sure that the workers are in thrall and kept there. I cannot think of a better way of describing the process that is occurring. Yet the preppers see everything as a commie plot to take their freedoms. Shit. The communists here in the US are so damn lame that they couldn't take their own temperature, let alone your freedoms.

Yet whenever someone stands up and say that capitalism is fucking us over, they are labeled as a godless commie and the dumb-fucks on the lunatic fringe of the prep movement go all John Birch. They would rather kill a commie who has an excellent handle on the nature of the problem than listen to him. Sure, Marx and Engels had some less than stellar ideas about how to solve the inherent contradictions of capitalism, but you sure can't begrudge them their absolutely right-on and prescient description of the depredations of capitalism.

So, I would highly recommend that y'all back off of the comrades. Hell, I think that if you listen to them without mindlessly bouncing dated and invalid screeching out of your yap, you might find that they are on the same side you are.

Again, this does not mean that I agree with communist theory at all levels. Hell, I think that even the Commies are embarrassed by how badly the term was misused in the twentieth century.

Sickbed

Me and the youngest are down to some kind of bug.  The eldest brought it in and spread it around last week.  Nice fever, chills, the whole shebang.  I have managed to fight it to a standstill, but the youngest is taking a couple days off.  The eldest (or as we refer to him "typhoid Mary".  Seems to be OK except for the fact that he has to schlep for two invalids.

So writing might be a touch lean for a bit.

Starting the move

 

I am beginning the process of moving my stuff over to a wordpress system that will reside on a server that I can control.

I have been with Blogger for quite a while (the original was back in 2005, but I let it lapse and blogspot won't let me have it back).  But I am getting more and more disturbed by the omnipresence of Google.  It is just too intrusive and subtle for my tastes, it has too much effect on a supposedly free system.  

Being an avowed tin-foil hatter, the recent "agreement" between the NSA and Google for technical assistance in securing their systems left me cold.

So, I will continue dual posting here and at the new site for a while, as soon as I get the change over to my satisfaction, I will post the new URL and let this thing lapse. 

Not Doing Anything

In a way, the pickle that we are in is a result of a whole series of positive actions done by the consortium of commercial banks than constitute the Regional Federal Reserve Banks and their mouthpiece, the Federal Reserve Board.  This crew, along with the free-spending compadres in the House and Senate have botched things up pretty badly.

Oh, we like blaming the President for our problems, but he neither writes bills, nor spends money, nor votes in confirmation hearings for the clowns on the federal reserve.  His main task is to look good and do what the Joint Chiefs of Staff tell them to do.  Thus far, I would actually give BHO pretty good grades on his being the malleable and photogenic mouthpiece that is the nature of the job.

So, back to the point of the essay.  I think that the country is divided into two sections.  These are the;

1. We have to DO something crowd.  These are good folks.  They are passionate about their solutions to problems and have a positive outlook and a true belief in the power of mankind to better itself.   These folks have been in power for the past sixty years and we have a whole series of edifices and societal structures to monument their world view.
2. The other crowd is the crowd that we are mostly involved with.  This is a surly, rather annoyed crowd that has been towed along in the wake of the improvers listed in (1) above.  As a group, they do not appear to have any confidence at all in the power of mankind to better themselves.  They mostly want to be left alone.  

Now, some of you will wish to divide these neatly into Democrats and Republican titles.  I would say that would be quite a bit of a reach, thank you very much.  The Republican party has proved itself very adept at spending money and trying to improve the world for the past twenty or so years.

But I think that a lot of folks are edging from the umbrella of crowd one over to crowd two.  The "improvements" that have been put in place have been looking pretty long in the tooth lately.  This decrepitude is slowly convincing the younger folk that maybe government programs aren't the way to go and maybe they have to do it themselves.   The old folks that currently have their hands in the monkey puzzle (where the monkey puts it hand into the cookie jar, grabs a cookie, and can't get the hand out while it still holds the cookie) are pretty much at the mercy and whim of whoever is in charge.

So really, what we have to do it wait.  We can't insult folks for taking so long to figure it out.  Prep as hard as you can prep.  Get as local as you get.

Be adaptable.

Cuz no one is going to save you.

Security

I am putting a video and some links in on the bottom of this post.  I truly feel that you should all think long and hard about the odd little device upon which you are reading these ravings.

A lot of you are sitting on a system with a wireless connection to the internet, running windows, and blithely writing things that in a less charitable country would be considered sedition.

Now, at some time, the powers that be may take it upon themselves to check in on folks who write such things.  Governments always have and always will take such liberties.  Such is life.  But it may be that you wish to at least make it difficult.  I have spoken of this earlier, and I would recommend that you at least consider these earlier warnings.

Now back to the original point of this discussion, you are sitting in a comfortable spot, planning activities that may or may not meet the approval of some power.  That power takes an interest in you and decides that a look at your writings and contacts may be in order.  With that as a setting, watch this video.


This should raise the hairs on the back of your neck.  So, if it is this easy to break into your network, now your computer sitting there, with all of your files and writing available for perusal.

So now, that you are a little interested, you might want to consider your firewall.  This should help keep folks out of your system.  As before, a determined attacker with extensive capabilities might get through.

So, think about what you are doing.  Take a minute for mature reflection.  protect yourself.

04:40

TGIF
It's the sincere prayer of the wage slave.
I am on my first cup of tea (sometimes my stomach is funky and tea
doesn't beat it up as badly as coffee) and I am thinking again about the
availability of caffeine in a the cold times.  99% of all coffee is
imported, same probably goes with tea, but I haven't looked into it.
I keep some canned green beans in my preps.  One case only, the hassle
of roasting them, then grinding them keeps my from digging in.  They
also have O2 scavengers so they will last about forever, which is when I
want to use them.
Just thinking, you might want to get a backup supply in your long preps

04:39

Got up later...nice dreams were occurring.  Dreams about beautiful women are always worth the price of admission.

So, sitting down with a cup of coffee and reading the Archdruid.  As always, worthy of the time invested.   He notes that this is a time where one should start thinking about the loss of empire.  Well OK.

What I recommend is that folks take some time and try to find an abridged or Cliff notes or some other read about Oswald Spengler's "Decline of the West".  No, do not read the whole thing unless you have a sincere need for intellectual masochism.  He has the writing flair of a Teutonic Knight and the style of ........ oh just take my word for it....it was a quarter from hell, even though I learned something from it.

Anyway, it is a good place to start from, an anodyne to the fever we are running from the opium dreams of perpetual growth.

04:16

Up early this AM.  Went to sleep early yesterday and got 8+ hours, so life is just dandy right now.

What I want to talk about is how everyone on the planet seems to think that what is happening right now was done to them by some malevolent external force.  You know, the bilderbergers, the commies, creeping socialism, alien space rays, the NSA, blah, blah, blah.

What no one seems to want to address is their own complicity in the creation of the morass of problems that are ebbing and flowing around us.  I really see this as the biggest obstacle to any meaningful solution or set of solutions. 

I was part of the mess.  Closed down two factories which ended up in China.  Flew back and forth to Asia more times than I care to count.  Got all snotty and high-falutin' because I though that I was king shit.  Brought down some good coin and blew it just as fast as I could shovel it out of my pocket.

So when the SHTF, I have to stand up and claim my share of the fault. 

But folks that I talk to don't want to do anything like this.  They were pure and innocent babes in the woods, wide-eyed and amazed that someone would do this to them.  The did buy too much house, but everyone was doing it.  Their 401-K had nothing to do with the stock bubble, though it fed the monster.  Their disregard of politics under slick willie and bushie weren't part of the problem, they were out living the dream, everything was going great so don't look too close.

The problem we are facing now is that we want to find a convenient scapegoat, punish them thoroughly, and then, once the shallow gods that we worship have been properly propitiated, go back to livin' large.

The scapegoats we drive forth will not serve as an adequate sacrifice.  Like christianity vs the pagan cults, a simple external sacrifice doesn't satisfy, what is expected is a cleansing of souls.

I for one would bet against it happening soon.

Ow

The trouble with dealing with foot problems is that the cure hurts. My fungustoe that was taken care of the other day by nail removal and ablation (trans: Rip that puppy off and then nuke the nailbed so it won't grow again) solves the problem, but sometimes it hurts.

This is the old-fashioned remedy. Could go with the $200 nail polish or the "take oral antifungals for six months and hope your liver can handle it" cure.

This is where medicine will probably return. Get used to seeing trusses instead of hernia surgery. Dentures instead of implants. Generic medicines instead of blockbusters. SImple fixes instead of state of the art.

The reason that our medicine and health care cost so much is because we think we can keep it running longer if we put in good parts. That dog ain't gonna hunt.

We die when God calls us.

Intensives

It is actually a part of speech that isn't spoken of too much. Essentially is is something that raises the ante in the conversation. The "F" word is a great example.

There was a discussion on cussing the other day over at the Rantfest. Pretty good stuff, but as with any complex subject such as etiquette, there was no solid agreement.

I am always fuddled about how to approach the subject of cursing around the "wimmen-folk". Since I know women and men who cuss like longshoreman and women and men who wouldn't say shit if they had a mouthful.

So it is a arena where mutual respect must be weighed and gauged closely with no certainty of where you will land. You need respect others desires to nott hear cursing, but they will need to respect your need (yes need) to cuss occasionally.

If a person is willing to reject and shun you for having preferences on a minor issue like this (yes, it is minor), then you are well served bidding them well. If a person is willing to overlook your occasional "flaws of speech", you should make every effort to keep them at a minimum. Such is the nature of mutual self respect.

This must be extended simply to all people. To place women on a higher plane and change your basic nature to suit them is an insult to your individuality and to their maturity. To treat them as frail flowers is to belittle their strength. To do what they say because they said it is to remove you own spine.

It is kind of a weird custom we have here in the USA, we scratch our heads in amazement when the rest of the world goes gaga over the inferior type of football, but the rest of the world returns the favor when we go gaga here.

Oh sure there are artistic/politically correct/sensitive wienies that look down their nose at the game, but they don't get invited to the parties, so screw them. Having friends and kids friends come over, eat a little to much, drink a touch too much, and shout at poorly thought out strategies is great fun.

Mostly is is a counterpoint to our Thanksgiving tradition. On thanksgiving, we are going into the winter and we celebrate the bounty of the land with our family. Super bowl is the time where we close out the doldrums of the winter and hang with our friends.

To be honest, the food is better at super bowl parties. Thanksgiving is steeped in its own traditions, but by being hidebound you are limited in what you serve at the party. Super bowl is straight free form. Gotta have some Mexican, this year in honor of New Orleans we are doing mufflata sandwiches (it is the olive spread that makes them great). Beer and chips, buffalo chicken legs, soda for the boys (you know how hard it is to find stuff without that high fructose corn syrup crap!). In other words, top quality junk food.

I can't remember when I first heard this saying, but it is so true;

"Football shows what America does best...committee meetings followed by violence."

Happy beyond belief

I actually found a great blogging tool for Linux. Outstanding this is.

The name of the program is blogilo and it is as sheen a piece of work as there is out there. I have it running on my Ubuntu system and it works as nicely as I can hope for.

So this is another reason that you ought to go out and look at weaning yourself off commercial software. I defy anyone to tell me how a decent linux distro is inferior and to prove it.

Test

Test Testing 1,2,3

Fretting

Whatever acts cannot be destoyed, as long as it acts.

Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibnitz

We go through phases where the world seems to be going more awry than usual. I for one have an ability of looking at the half-empty portion of the glass. But with this awareness comes a tendency of over-analysis and paralysis. In a sense, prepping is a simple way to break this paralysis and get moving. But the simple part of prepping is what folks drift toward (myself included), where you go out and buy some stuff and put it in the basement (BTW I place the ill-considered fascination with weaponry that seems to be endemic in the prepper community part and parcel of this).

The real hard part of prepping is the mental discipline of deciding what to do and what not to do. Making up a completely stocked bug-out bag and then not having a well defined decision tree to execute the plan is getting ready for the prom without getting a date. Having a completely stocked gun cabinet with state of the art hardware without a clear idea of is an appropriate response will get a man  years in prison (and deservedly so).

Boyd's OODA loop is a good place to start your thinking. 

The reason that I like this diagram so much is that it is complicated, it shows that simple, sloppy thinking is the action of a child. Screaming freedom is not the way to structure a movement, the force and direction of a movement is necessarily constrained by complex, often mutually incompatible goals.

Jeez...Can't say much

Busy with a lot of little crap lately...school applications, getting a toenail removed, dishes, just all the day to day crap.  sorry, but there's nothing left today in my brain worth writing about.

 

It also looks to be a day in hell at work......

The Generation That Invented the MBA

In an odd way, Dorcas' Daddy has always been kind of a touchstone for me.  Yes, I am still somewhat bitter about losing an Eagle to him, but that's OK, I have always been kind of a crappy loser.

He made a comment the other day that set me back hard on my heels.  I had been flailing about for days wondering why I had been sick of reading Jesse and Mish and that crowd.

Like Barry Switzer said, "Some people are born on third base and think they hit a triple."

Motherfuckers from affluent backgrounds whose parents cleaned up their High School DUI, paid for their life until they were 25, gave them the downpayment on their first house, got em a job (and payed for school) and now the guy pushes paper for six figures and thinks he's a self-made man.

And it's not a panacea, but let's be honest boys, being a tall white guy doesn't hurt anything but your rap career.

The whole fucking nation is overrun with these guys. Even the 'good' guys, like Jesse (Cafe Americain) and Charles (Of Two Minds) talk about rentiers and wealth extraction, then they give investment advice. AKA, how to make money sitting on your ass not being productive. Even the 'good guys' are lazy douches.

We're so fucked, and I'm not even sure I'm sorry.

  I guess this just kinda crystallized my thinking, but I am going to take this on a different tack.  I think that these snotty yuppies (yes, I think Jesse, Mish, Panzer, Charles,and Yves are the spokesman for a couple generations that will be noted by history as abysmal failures and best left behind.

Charles and Jesse are identifying the financial problem, them placing themselves above it.   Yet, as DD states so succinctly, all they know is doing useless and parasitic shit, like sell stocks.  There lies the problem.  I spoke of it in an earlier post.

Mostly I despise the rantings of Ayn Rand.  In my opinion, she is a sicko who argues that there is a group of people who are better than everyone else so they get to fuck us every which way.  Bullshit.  But there is a single scene where the Spanish male character is talking to Dagny's brother.  He speaks of the difference between making something of value and making money.  I can't remember the whole quote, but the end lines is "sometimes words have precise meanings".

I think that we also have forgotten the difference.

Populares

There is nothing new under the sun.  Mayberry reminded me that a populist movement is as frightening to those who interests it claims to advance as those who's privileges it impinges upon.

At the end of the day, the US is not really that much different than the Roman empire which it modeled itself on.  There always has been an elite running the country, and the elite has always advanced its own agenda ahead of the interests of the rest of the country.  It was easy to forget this during the past thirty years.  We had so much and were so heedless in our use of money and resources that it seemed like the party would never end.  There was so much around that even the low plebes such as the sort who read this screed had enough to satisfy themselves.

Now the party is winding down.  The cornucopia that flowed during the bulk of our lifetimes is slowing down, and the country doesn't quite have enough to make everyone happy any more.  Now is the time when the division between the Optimates and the Populares will start becoming ever more evident.  But you have to remember that these titles, like the term populist or conservative or Randite, or Anarchist are merely convenient tags that we apply to the ruling elite and the factions that divide that class.

Don't read it then

One of my buddies who is aware of my blog just gave me a ration of shit.  Apparently, he can't understand how I could think the way that I do.  After all didn't the powers that be create this marvelous society where a man can have a smokin' hot trophy wife and a Mcmansion and several SUV's.  What could be wrong with a society like that.

He went on to explain how the "po' folk" are just whining little losers who can't compete.  That the big boys like him are just better than the poor and the vanishing middle class.  Apparently my concern regarding an intrusive government is just a guilty conscience.  As for peak oil and the oil wars, we can take the Arab's oil and that will solve our problems.

So, one friend down.  Telling him to fuck off and then informing him that, in my opinion, his wife really isn't that good of a lay,  probably wasn't the civilized way to approach it.

The Two Buckets

 

They sit over in the corner of the kitchen, on the way to the living room.  They are just 6-gallon buckets that I got from Healthy Harvest a couple of years ago with one of those spiffy Gamma Lids instead of the standard cover.

Having them there, looking kinda ugly, in the corner of the kitchen is kind of a shrine to my Nona's kitchen.  I have the new modern kitchen with shelves for boxes.  She had two really cool bins where she kept her bulk flour and bulk sugar.  That is what my bucket contain as well.

The key to the presence of the buckets is to remind me that cooking is an integral part of your life.  Real cooking starts from humble things; salt and flour, sugar and yeast, fresh and dried vegetables.  Prepping must take this into consideration and practice routinely.  Stuff must be moved through your supplies and you have to learn to use them.

We are the product of a society based on convenience and self-absorption (or laziness and dilettantism, your call).  I think that one of the sovereign remedies to such maladies is the humble act of preparing foods from scratch.  It removes convenience from the mix.  It also forces you to address things at a more fundamental level, realizing that the things that you need to live are not necessarily mass-produced, but can be crafted from your own hands.

Maybe the buckets can teach me something; that to really be a prepper is to reject the facile and to accept the heavier loads needed to get through the twists and turns of history.