Gonna be gone til monday

Family business calls, I am not looking forward to it, but there it is.

See you on Monday.

Cleaning

One of my big beefs about the prepper community is their almost elemental pig-headedness.  There really is no other way to define it.

To find someone in the community who is just trying to figure out how to get by in a world going through a spasm is difficult in the extreme.  Preppers have a tendency (approx. 67%) of being knuckle-dragging right wing morons.  They spout the catch-phrases of the past and imagine that somehow the world would magically improve if we would just go back to being blinded by the false ideas that led us here.  Now just to make sure that folks understand, I still like these guys, and would happily buy them a beer any old time, but their politics suck

Nayway, I really don't think highly of this group.  As a matter of fact, most of them should be rounded up under some obtuse law and shipped to Alabama.  But that won't get done, so I will have to deal with it.

But I think that this group is just as likely to shoot themselves in to foot as the "sheeple" that they so disdain.  The idea of superiority because you saw something coming is odd.  Hell, what counts is how you act when it gets here.

But the preppers are certain of their way.  They have the future mapped out and their plans laid.  They will follow these set plans, assured that their plans are blessed because they had the ability to see the storm coming.  Remember though, the storm arriving will just be the start of the process.  Most of these semi-sacred plans will fail, and you will be scrambling with the rest of the folks.

So, I think that I will keep and eye peeled for what's coming my way, keep my head low, and try to devise a system with flexibility and a big dose of compassion.

This is just for the Onery Bastard

Soccer Officially Announces It Is Gay

White House Predicts Record $1.47 Trillion Deficit : NPR

I was just reading that the Prez has admitted that they are going to keep running up the tab.  You know, I good with that.  The money isn't real, and maybe they can extend things long enough for me to fort up a little better and be ready.

I am not really thinking that running up the tab will work, or for that matter, it won't make things marginally worse when the hammer falls, but it might allow me a bit of time.  In the end, that isn't a bad deal.

But there are a lot of folks out there who can't or won't look out and recognize the storm times that are moving in.  I have genuine sympathy for these folks, when things keep going the way that they will for the next couple of years, they won't do the necessary things, they will try to maintain the facade that is burying them and they will go down.  It is truly a pity.

You see folks, they were the true believers.  They were incapable of the necessary skepticism that allows one to be a decent scientist or have a world view relatively free of lies.  The government has taken care of them.  They have nice homes, decent cars, adequate educations when defined by the progressively lowering standards, and a Madison Avenue approved lifestyle that is equated with success.

What we are seeing is the American system being pulled apart for the sake of political and business elites who derive their power and perquisites from the false promises outlined above.  They have created a system similar to the ancien régime in it's power to deliver a munificent lifestyle to the upper nobility.

But this new regime is ending now.  It is thrashing around, trying to come to grips with its limits.  It will pass, and a lot of folks will remember the times for the pleasure given.

Celui qui n'a pas vécu au dix-huitième siècle avant la Révolution ne connaît pas la douceur de vivre et ne peut imaginer ce qu'il peut y avoir de bonheur dans la vie. C'est le siècle qui a forgé toutes les armes victorieuses contre cet insaisissable adversaire qu'on appelle l'ennui. L'Amour, la Poésie, la Musique, le Théâtre, la Peinture, l'Architecture, la Cour, les Salons, les Parcs et les Jardins, la Gastronomie, les Lettres, les Arts, les Sciences, tout concourait à la satisfaction des appétits physiques, intellectuels et même moraux, au raffinement de toutes les voluptés, de toutes les élégances et de tous les plaisirs. L'existence était si bien remplie qui si le dix-septième siècle a été le Grand Siècle des gloires, le dix-huitième a été celui des indigestions." Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord: Mémoires du Prince de Talleyrand: La Confession de Talleyrand, V. 1-5 Chapter: La jeunesse - Le cercle de Madame du Barry.

I think that there is something there

OK:  I am/was a pretty fair scientist.   I have excellent grounding in chemistry and physics.  I know biochemistry like the back of my hand.  A couple of patents, a couple of articles.  I gots all the chops.

Anyone who is good at this odd trade has to have a nose for which way they think that the data might lean before you start the experiment.  Well and good.  It's called a working hypothesis and it is a great tool, gets you started.

Now comes the hard part, looking at the data in a useful way.  Oh, you get some ideologues out there who will tell you that a statistical analysis of data will allow you an unbiased means of judging the data.  I have had a series of nasty run-ins with statisticians who proved without a doubt that X was the result and then go 6-8 months down the track and then find out that it wasn't so.

So, this is a piece about climatologists and their sacred cow of "global warming".  First and foremost, let me state clearly that the CO2 data, the ocean temp data, and the temp data lead me to believe that there is something there.  Not sure about the base reasons other than burning fossils fuels will add quite a bit of CO2 to the air and raise the concentration of this gas.  I will allow that right now, no complaints.  I would also posit that having 6.7 billion humans sweating, breathing, and fucking may have a certain impact on the matter.

But when I see the chart above presented in the blogosphere, replete with the shrill, girlish squeals of panic and doom, I have a tendency to giggle.  Look at the damn thing.  Carefully.  The zero line is an average of a 29-year period chosen randomly in the middle.  The graph covers 119 years and compares the variation from this sampled average.  In the early part of the graph for around fifty years (pre-1930's), the global mean temp dipped down to about 0.75 degree Fahrenheit below this arbitrary baseline.   On the right side of the graph, Over the past thirty or so years, the temp has gone up to approximately 1.15 degree Fahrenheit above this imaginary average.

Guys, I have a feeling that the industrial world, powered by fossil fuels is doing a bunch of stuff (I will not say harm) to the climate.  I also think that the population of CO2-exhaling humans have a real impact on the levels.  But if that is the best data that NASA can come up with to support climate change, they will have a long, rough row to hoe before I call the matter settled.

The Epicurean Dealmaker

Y'all Have to read this

The Epicurean Dealmaker

The Strategic Ramifications of a US-Led Withdrawal from Afghanistan | Oil Price.com

The Strategic Ramifications of a US-Led Withdrawal from Afghanistan | Oil Price.com

Please Take some time to read this

Thriving in the Age of Collapse

Thriving in the Age of Collapse

I am a huge fan of Dmitry. In truth, he is one of the few people on the net that I have actually given money to. He is that good.

This is his best thought-out article.

Enjoy

BTW  Chapter Four is up

The Vapor Pressure of a Google

Consider Google for a while. For a while, I went out somewhere else, looking for greener pastures and a less intrusive medium of information. Then all the sudden one day, I got to thinking "what the hell". Google is a transient. The latest of a bunch of media darlings riding the wave of digital technology.

We know all of them, old geezers like me remember the elephants who have gone to the graveyard. Data General, Digital, Sun, Compaq, Atari. They start out like IBM as world straddling behemoths, then gradually die out as the digital ecosystem they set out to exploit morphs beyond the feeble dreams of their business plans.

Google will do the same. It is built around the lamed and dying economic models that gave us globalization and the housing boom, easy credit and high-velocity money. As the world changes to the smaller and more local systems that will be our lot, Google will join the other dead elephants in the graveyard.

Look at the Dow Dones companies in 1920, 1959, and now:

1920

American Can	Baldwin Locomotive	Texas Company
American Car & Foundry	Central Leather	U.S. Rubber
American Locomotive	Corn Products *	U.S. Steel
American Smelting	General Electric Company	Utah Copper
American Sugar	Goodrich	Western Union
American Telephone & Telegraph	Republic Iron & Steel	Westinghouse Electric
Anaconda Copper

1959

Allied Chemical	General Electric Company	Sears Roebuck & Company
Aluminum Company of America *	General Foods	Standard Oil of California
American Can	General Motors Corporation	Standard Oil (NJ)
American Telephone & Telegraph	Goodyear	Swift & Company *
American Tobacco B	International Harvester	Texaco Incorporated (formerly Texas Company)
Anaconda Copper *	International Nickel	Union Carbide
Bethlehem Steel	International Paper Company	United Aircraft
Chrysler	Johns-Manville	U.S. Steel
Du Pont	Owens-Illinois Glass *	Westinghouse Electric
Eastman Kodak Company	Procter & Gamble Company	Woolworth

Now

3M Company   Dupont  McDonald's Corporation   Alcoa Incorporated   Exxon Mobil CorporationMerck & Company, Incorporated   American Express Company   General Electric Company   Microsoft Corporation    AT&T Incorporated    Hewlett-Packard Company    Pfizer Incorporated    Bank of America Corporation    Home Depot Incorporated     Procter & Gamble Company    Boeing Corporation   Intel Corporation    Travelers Companies*    Caterpillar Incorporated   International Business Machines   United Technologies    Corporation  Chevron Corporation   Johnson &    Johnson     Verizon Communications Inc.    Cisco Systems, Inc.*    J.P. Morgan Chase & Company   Wal-Mart Stores Incorporated     Coca-Cola Company    Kraft Foods Inc.    Walt Disney Company

Guys...have fun with this as long as the idiots keep providing it for free.

It ain't gonna last

I'll keep blogging and I will remember to save backups of everything on my hard drive.......never hurts

There is nothing like

Reading what you wrote yesterday and realizing it is nothing more than a bad-tempered, poorly reasoned tantrum

Transport, trade, and other such trivialities

I have found a new blog that has been really tweaking my interest.  If you have a chance, head over to Dearthagetransport and give the guy some attaboys.  Anyway, he got me thinking about transport and such, but instead of worrying about cars and the laziness in having to drive a couple of blocks to buy a cheeseburger, I want to talk about how we are going to deal with getting useful stuff from point A to point B.

Our system now is built on the extravagant use of fossil fuels.  There are some smart modalities.  River traffic on the Mississippi and the Columbia can move bulk freight for an astonishingly low price.

But instead, we now load things on long haul diesel trucks and spend absurd amounts of money on transportation of bulk products.  Air shipments are remarkably stupid.  An open admission that you are too lazy and stupid to plan.  We have gutted warehouses for the fallacy of just-in-time manufacturing, allowing global wage arbitrage and cheap oil to let MBA's fire support people and outsource the warehousing to China and India.

All this shit has to stop.  The cheap transport that allowed the MBA scum to chop jobs and lard their own pantry will bring this to a screeching halt.    You see, just in time delivery has always been a joke.  Oh, the "managers" with their MBA will use the idea as a means of telling stockholders to give them raises, but what it really means is that you rely on everyone else to do your job for you and then try to take an outsized portion of the total reward.

Long supply lines are unstable.  Making your primary subcomponents in other countries is unstable.  Relying on cheap transport is unstable.  Not having adequate inventory when the other three conditions are unmet is unstable.

If we wish to move forward, we must address long distance freight transport in a meaningful and sustainable way.  We must also address the necessary warehousing and inventory of items in a world where transportation becomes expensive and constrained.

And we probably won't be able to do it under the self-serving and arrogant fools that currently man the corporate and business boardrooms across America.

House Church

You know, maybe we are going after this all wrong.

Been doing some odd reading of late.  I have given up on serious shit for a bit, I think that things are serious enough in real life to forego throwing my energy at tilting at windmills.  Instead, I think that I will try to figure out how to actually start changing things at a micro level.

A long time ago, I read a book by (Warning, if you click the link about the book, it will take you to Amazon, if you buy the book from them, I will get some coin...No surprises) Robert Heinlein, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".  Great book, I would even go so far as to argue that it is his best.  

The book talks about the formation of the "free luna" movement as well as the technical details for fomenting such a movement. 

I am especially intrigued by the idea of five-person cells.  So here is my idea, why don't we start putting together the cells that are described in the book.  We aren't going to do this to overthrow the government, what we are going to do is to create a culture where we can live free regardless of what set of jackasses is shouting at each other on the different ends of the mall.

Pick four other people and get them interested in prepping and living free.  Among the group, create and divvy up duties and inputs.  Then when you get things working among that group, each of the five of you will go out and recruit four different folks.  It is critical that there is no overlap.  If a person is in one cell, he has to create a new cell with four brand new people with no association with other cells.

OK, now here is the hard part.  Stop there.  You have to let things go at that point.  You tell everyone that they can do the same recruiting cycle, but they have to stop at the 4x4 group (one primary group and one secondary group) and just work with those.  I think that is more than enough.

But here is the kicker.  Now you get to create a separate cell out here in the digital world.  Folks that you don't physically know, but that you have had long conversations with.  Discuss what you do that works and makes sense.  Commiserate about the idiosyncracies of you little groups.  Bitch your limit and stay in touch.

If we are going to start the process of ignoring the idiots and carving out a life without their input and direction, we will have to create a means of helping each other.

Any revisions, ideas, clarifications, and shout-downs are happily accepted

Sharecropping and other such outmoded realities

Rather than sitting down and trying to write a complete article every day, I think that a better approach would be to write down what I am thinking as an idea and then expand on it the next day or as the muse otherwise takes me.

Todays idea seed is the idea of gardening as a means of adding to a revenue stream.  I kinda doubt that you are going to go out and make a million here.  What the gardening will do is allow you to get outside and work and maybe get enough back from sales of part of the crop to defray the costs of growing the crop.  You eat what is left.  The savings on food and such will be sufficient to make it worth your while.

First, one has to look at the way we approach our time and efforts.  Put in a nutshell, we are entirely too liberal when we put a dollar figure on the value of our time.

“Man, my time is worth more than that!” is a phrase that is entirely too often spoken and even more often thought.  It is as though when we get home from our normal day jobs at the tertiary of quaternary earning a wage from someone else, we expect any action that we do to bring in a comparable amount of dollar bills or the action is useless.

I would argue that you will have to get away from that type of thinking if you are going to get by.   Consider the task of gardening.  I really can think of little that it does that is a detriment.  It gets you outside, breathing air and into the world.  It provides food, it gets you into the rhythm of nature.  You can take the proceeds of your spare time and keep your earnings in your pocket.  If done correctly, you can even make a piddlin’ amount by selling the proceeds of your endeavor.

More than anything though, gardening is a means to start getting some space between you and the system that you live in.  The corporations are in charge, and they have every intention of your giving them the money and effort that keeps them in power.

A new find and a new chapter

If you guys have the time, you really ought to go and take a peek at Transportation in the Dearth Age.  It is a new blog and I have found it to be refreshingly practical and realistic.  Welcome the guy on board and maybe he will continue fighting the good fight with our sorry asses.

Chapter Three is up over at the serial.

Needful Things

You have to start whittling away at your life.  The real problem with the America that we have grown to loathe is the naked dilettantism and petty enthusiasms that pervades nearly every aspect of our culture.

You really have to have a clear set of priorities that accurately reflect the world around you should you wish to thrive.

Mine are focused around pretty mundane things.  Working for the man for money, gardening to help provide food and spiritual comfort, cooking slow to conserve money and provide a step away from the processors, brewing beer to provide a tenuous link to the calming precision of the lab (needless to say, the alcohol provides its own reward).

Most of America's unhappiness rotates around what we don't have.  Everyone my age has scraped and saved and established a physical portfolio of "needs" that would astonish a King a couple of centuries ago.  The pain and their anguish about the storm that is a brewing is that their expectations defined in a earlier time will not pass through the storm.  They would vote for anyone, do nearly anything to retain the physical luxuries that they consider their due.

They sit and watch the news, praying for a hint that someone has developed a magic potion that will allow them to keep their stuff.  They glean through the net, looking for the purveyor of hope that will tell them what they wish to hear.

But in the end, they will have to walk away from the Babel that they have made.  There will be no dreams of excess to unite us anymore.  We will have to travel a thousand paths and find to our great chagrin that many of them will be failures.

I think that this is how we will truly carry on in our lives.  The daily rantings of the cognoscenti and the untruths of the world around us will not effect us in a noticeable manner unless we pay attention to them.  The world going broke in a big way will break around us if we prepare reasonably well and don't allow ourselves to get caught up in the furball.

What I am really talking about here is getting an emotional distance from the false world.  This can be supplemented, if you desire, by a physical separation, but I don't see that as necessary.

Disappearance

For a little while lately, I have tried to become active in politics to see if I could make a difference in the political process.  This may well have been a mistake.  The meeting and reading that I digested from both of the parties were both sobering and frightening.  These people really and truly have their heads stuffed firmly up their ass.  Both Democrat and Republican are filled with folks that would feel at home in the Spanish Inquisition, torturing and killing heretics who dare stray from the fold.

Some of you might consider me a coward, but I think that now might be the time to go nondescript. As much as possible, it might be in your personal best interests to lie very low, stay very quiet, and keep your eyes and ears wide open in order to see which way the wind is blowing.  Both parties are getting aggressive and vocal.  The Tea Partiers are even dicier.

One of the things that I learned about in the army is you have a considerably lower chance of being hurt by staying camoflaged and staying quiet.  So my foray into to telling other folks how to run their lives and minds (yes Virginia, that is the nature of political parties) may well have made others notice my existence.  It may not have been my best idea. 

No one can foretell which way the mess is going, but the storm clouds tell me we sure as hell aren’t going to like it when it gets here. I don’t think that the folks are standing up now and trying to take charge are going to lead us to the promised land any more than the entrenched powers that are trying to remain that way.

It seems to me that we are getting closer to where we will have to either take sides or get the hell out of the way. The sides that are showing up really don’t thrill me too god-awful much. It seems as though a lot of the groups opposing the "guvmint" are as silly and as venal as the powers that be that they so loathe. Trading in the current pack of liars and thieves for another, currently unannointed group of louts seems like a damned silly idea.

I think that we are looking at getting caught between two big machines, and if we are not careful, we could be nothing other than grist for the mill.

Until I see who to back (and I have a very uncomfortable feeling it is the lesser of two evils), I think that I will try to disappear.   I realize that writing here is probably a violation of that principal,  but, as I stated yesterday, it makes me happy, so I will take the risk.

Confirmational Bias and Other Such Oddities

I have a tendency to read stuff that agrees with my preconceived notions.

Human nature I suppose. Being right is ever so much more pleasant than being wrong.  I am starting to question my own thoughts and the way that I see things going.  In other words, maybe things aren't going to hell.

But then, I go back and look at the presuppositions that led me to where I stand.  The green revolution and it's effects.  The rapid increase in oil production and usage.  The incredible population explosion.  Degradation of fisheries.  Pollution.

Crap

You see, the way that I see it is that we gotta go through storm times in a big way.  Things are horribly out of balance and our super-sized American dreams and expectations aren't going to make it though the fire of this particular forge.

The scariest part that I see that we will be facing is the reaction of the spoiled children that make up the population.  When the three-day supplies run out at the Piggley Wiggley and the general population is looking at a bag of rice and some questionable hamburger, are they going to recognize it as food or will they go out a "demonstrating" until they get something that is packaged properly?

I guess that what makes me akin to the other folks here in the tin foil hat fringe is that I don't see us going back.  The way of complexity is a failed path, but the way of simplicity is a much narrower one that will allow many fewer fellow travelers.
So I guess I will read those that say there are a bright future, hoping that they have somehow created a magic potion that will provide us ease and leisure once again.  But all I see out there is the same set of patent nostrums peddled by the same group of quacks that got us here.

A Cultural Schizophrenia

We are an odd country here in the US. The bulk of the leadership structure is corporate/fascistic in nature, but there is always the high wierdness of the socialist and hippie-infested education system that adds to what has to be one of the strangest political cocktails on the planet.

Our national mythology is that the Puritans came over to escape religious persecution and set up the New Zion. The truth of the matter is that they came over to have their own way and oppress the shit out of other folks.  Calvinists have never been anything but a group of creeps that way.  I would wager that as much or more of our national DNA came over as slaves, indentured servants, and transportees as ever came over for religious reasons.

The puritans set up shop running slaves.  The asiento trade was started by the Dutch (again, Calvinist pricks) and was picked up on by the English, with slave hulls running primarily out of good old puritan Boston.  This was the corporate America of early America. 

The educational establishment has all the tools to understand and teach this.  But, as most of them are pasty-faced white liberals who group hug and only look for the positive.  The other side of the coin are the right-wing imbeciles who can't imagine for a moment that our past may contain episodes where we were in the wrong and did evil.

We have buried the idea that we may be less than perfect in our past actions.  You see, then we would have to look at our current lives and realize that our wealth and their comforts are built upon the depredations of the ancestors.  Instead, we steadfastly cling to our false self image of being the highest perfection and personally blessed by the almighty as a justification for our actions.

We are now going through a spasm of payback, the same as we have gone through on a routine basis since the founding.  Everyone speaks of the injustice that the common folk blundered into via the depredations of the financial elite.  You see, this is just another delusion.  No one wishes to speak the truth about the American populace as a bunch of greedy, self-centered brats who ran up the bills.  We instead will cling to the stubborn self-deception that this was done to them by greedy bankers.  We are, after all, blessed by God!

So what we are doing now is giving things back, returning to the mean.  The nation will be poorer, but probably with a very similar happiness quotient.  It will take us a bit of humility, a dash of pain, and a bunch of hard work to rebuild, but it will be possible.  When we begin and start the growing up, we'll be just fine. 

The only thing standing in the way is the politicians telling us we don't have to grow up.  That through the Presto! of cheap accounting tricks and other peoples money, badly accounted for, we can continue our overlong puberty.

Maybe then, when we throw aside the asinine triumphalism and exceptionalism, and the politician themselves become red-faced about their lies of leisure, we can get down to the brass tacks of becoming a mature society.  Instead of the feverish adolescence we have just gone through.

What to Strive For Among Our Odd Circle

Mistah Charley Ph.D. Sent me this quote.  Thank you

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.  Do Justice, Now!  Love Mercy, Now! Walk Humbly, Now!
 
You are not obligated to complete the work,
 
but, neither are you free to abandon it.”

 It got me thinking about the nature of the odd club of bloggers that we frequent every day.   This is just my point of view, and you can take it or leave it as you wish.

I think that as a group, we all can agree that things cannot continue the way that they are going.  We are all trying to come to grips with the changes that are needed for us to make it through those changes.  None of us have the one true answer for making the grade.  

So what we do is hold one-sided conversations with those who will listen.  We listen to their one-sided conversations and try to rub the two ideas together to see if they will strike a spark.  The comments heard on the conversations add to the mix and allow us a refining fire to make the ideas and the thoughts more pure and to remove the faeces of what will keep us away from our mutual goal.

So, take your time when you find something of worth and expand on it.  Set it back out with your thoughts added.  You may allow one of us to be enlightened and increase the chance of getting through the pickle we are heading into.

Do not however, think that our ravings will effect the general population or bring them to an understanding that is well past the power of their shriveled and brains and souls to comprehend or even see.  We are writing for each other, the odd tribe of folks who know that the walls of Jericho are tumbling down.

The Saturday Schedule

I am just doing this blog from Monday through Friday/

On Saturday, I am going to write me a serial novel/story.  I am just going to let her rip and see how it goes.  I am going to recycle some of the old stuff I have written and put it through the grinder to make something new.

So all we will have her on Saturday is a link to the serial and something that I find amusing.

Have fun, be well.

A Very Long Conversation

A couple of posts came up lately, one mine, one over at Mayberry's. In a way, the both of them kinda got me thinkin'. So I went and talked to my mom and Aunt's and uncles and the old folks back in the Italian rural ghetto I grew up in.

What I talked to them about was how folks ate. I didn't talk to a person who was less than 79 and I listened harder as the folks got older. What I talked to them about was their eating habits and how they used things like clothes.

They ate low on the food chain. Even I remembered that part. Gardens were big. Canning was a fact of life. Meat portions were small and you got one piece.  Potatoes and polenta was used as filler.  Green beans in a mason jar were a fact of life.  Sweets were simple like cakes and cookies and were used as bribes for children and when visitors came over.

But they remember having a good life.  That is the key to the whole banana.  Try stopping the fancy crap that you see on restaurants and TV cooking shows.  Try eating basics.  You will find that by stopping your pretensions and your striving and just eating simple good food you might start a process of simplification that will make you a better person.

Slave to the Beauty

Took some time to talk with Claudius for a while today.  He was bored on a long holiday weekend and we had time for a great chat.  One of the more interesting seeds that he sowed was the purpose of art and beauty in a life.

He gave a reference to a book he had been reading, about art and its importance.  Then I got jabbering and thus this post is here.

Music, painting, sculpture, and all the forms of art (Yes, even the not-well-done ones) should all elicit from us a reminder that the world is a beautiful place.  A great time we do not notice this simple fact.  If a piece of someone else's time can draw from us a recognition of the beauty, maybe for a moment we can turn away from the tawdriness and ugliness that we are so prone to obsess on.

I guess that I see this as a survival strategy second to none.  When you spend all of your time wondering what/how to eat and how to kill/maim transgressors and punish the guilty, you are surviving, but the only thing that truly survives is the meat puppet that carries you.  I would argue that you do all of those things out of necessity, as they allow your physical form to live.

The beauty that surrounds you, the slap of waves coming in from the ocean, the whisper of wind through the trees, the raucous cackle of a crow wheeling overhead are why you are living.  Art can give this to you in a small way when they aren't otherwise easily available.

Paintings and sculpture can show you a purity of form.  Music can elicit the sounds of beauty in your mind.  A simple hymn can allow you to briefly sense God.

Don't leave this essential out of your plans.

To Live with the Consequences

As you are probably aware, I really see a descent into a sub-human apocalypse as a very long-odds type of affair.  It isn't impossible, but having to deal with mutant zombie bikers is a scenario best left to movies, as for the most part, it really doesn't play that well in Peoria.   For the sake of the argument, I see it as no greater than a 3-4% chance.

That being said, what is it I am prepping for?  Simply put, it is the breakdown of the US federal government.  You see, I think that the country and its riches are more than adequate for us plebes who live here.  Food can be grown, water is available, there is energy and industry and vision enough for the people.

What there isn't enough for is the rapacious and insatiable desires of the "military-industrial-congressional" complex that we were warned about back in '59.   The system we have generated here in the US is not a democracy, but an extraordinarily efficient means of tax farming.

This system has lasted this long because it has figured out the stealth taxes like social security, where they swear they will give it back to you later.  Needless to say, you know my take on when you get it back.  Even more, I'll allow you a guess as to where they will give it back to you.  Here is a hint: ()*()

Anyway, these regular taxes and the stealth taxes (which they spend as freely as the regular taxes) have allowed them to shove "Hush Money" into everyones pockets.  Now it is set up so that the whole structure is so intertwined that if you pull out one piece, the whole damn shooting match comes a tumblin' down.

Why do you thing the well-coiffured thug Nancy Pelosi did her little political whore magic on the defense spending bill for Afghanistan?  All the little bribes to the voters that keep electing these clowns is buried in the defense bill that allows this profitable little war going.

So, two birds were killed with one stone.  They made the "Defense Establishment" happy with ongoing profits.  They also bribed enough voters to get them re-elected.

Is this a great country or what?

Thinking About a Nail

When you write for public consumption, even a public as vanishingly small as those who read this, there are many choices to be made.  Many avenues to be explored and the ramifications of each to be outlined.

We are looking hard at a point in American history that may be the equivalent of the other great spasms that have shaken the country; the changeover from the Revolution to the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution(1770-1787), the Civil War(1850-1865), and the Great Spasm (1917 to 1945, This is a moniker of my own making, it describes the First World War, the Great Depression, and The Second World War, In my mind these three "events" are so intertwined that the must necessarily be looked at as a whole).

Now, you will probably notice a kind of rhythm to these things.  The overall time from crest to crest is around seventy to eighty years.  The last one ended around sixty-five years ago.  Each of these periods went from a steadily more nasty run up leading to a spasm running for around 10 to 15 years.  Hmmm, it is not too difficult to imagine 2003 as a starting point for the nasty run up.

So, like most of you, I am thinking that we are getting pretty damn close to a nasty bit in our collective history.   

But it seems that like any conflict, there are strategies and tactics needed in order for the change to be successfully made or resisted.  So right now, I have to think hard about the approach that I am going to be taking over the next little bit.  We are facing an immensely powerful force that has taken over the country (No, it isn't Obama, he is just their Press Secretary).  This Oligarchy has no intention of letting go their chokehold on the system and they are implementing laws that will allow them to safely default on any "responsibility" and to be able to enforce any measures necessary for us to continue lining their wallets.

Now, I have no intention of allowing them to do this to me.  But I think that a straight up fight might not be the best idea.  Despite any desire for a flamboyant gesture, in the current environment, a straight up fight will just get you squashed like a bug.  I believe in my heart that I am a Freeman.  The Oligarchy that is now attempting to run the country wishes me to be a Consumer.

So, I by choosing the path of a Freeman, I feel that my only ethical move is to disallow the Oligarch's plans to make me less than I am.  I must subvert their goals of making me and my fellow citizens their pawns.

So, the inelegant and effective method of subversion and eating away at the supports of the system seem to be an effective way to go.  But what is the system that you are trying to subvert?  Where is the most effective point of attack and what are the tactics that you can use to make the attack.

• I would argue that the main point of attack would necessarily have to be the finance and banking systems.  They also have the benefit of being the easiest to attack.  Go Cash and Gold.  Doing so will strangle them if enough folks realize that these folks are stealing from them and get out from under them. 
• Pay off your debt.  Look at your statements.  If it says Interest Due anywhere on the statement, you are paying a vampire for the right to suck your blood.  Don't take out any more debt.
• Stop wanting everything NOW.  Real people with real lives realize that they have to work and save to get anything of real value.  Spoiled children want things now. Save you money until you can buy cash.  If you can't pay cash, do without and save.
• Don't pay for anything with any flavor of plastic whatsoever.  It screws you and it screws the person selling stuff to you.  The vendor has to pay the bank for the right to launder the money though bank (read here: Scum sucking parasite), the vendor then raises the price to cover his cost.  You get screwed either way.  The bank gets money for your lack of discipline.  This is a tax, pure and simple, and you can stop paying it. 
• Get out of the stock market.  It is a mafiosi casino.  The "returns" are nothing more than illusions generated for the gullible.  If you can find a company that pays dividends appropriate to it's revenues and pays it's CEO and management an income less than 20x the income of its line workers, then I would say go for it, but good luck finding one of those.
• Save money in a safe in your house.  As the banks start toppling, they will take your money with them.  The promises that they give to back your money are as ephemeral as a fart in the breeze.  The government and the FDIC doesn't have that kind of cash.
• Stop thinking about the money you could have "made" with your investments and your savings with interest.  If you feel that the system is corrupt, you must sever yourself from the shackles of greed by which you bind yourself to this corrupt system.  
• Start taking less.  My favorite quote from the past is:  "Fix it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."
• Ruthlessly reduce your energy use.  The current system is based on profligate acquisition and consumption of energy.  If you can figure out how to cut your energy use in half, you are reducing the money flows going into the complex, thus starving the beast.
• Start providing for yourself.  Start figuring out where you can do this, gardening, raising chickens, walking.  Start providing means where you are self-sustaining and independent of the large scale structures that allow the system control.
• Barter your produce.  If you can fix someones boat and they give you three or four cases of homebrew, you are strangling the beast.

I think that these simple ideas are do-able.  There are probably a thousand subtle variations on each of these as well as a host of others that I haven't thought of.  Will they bring down the system, probably not.  The analogy that I figure comes closest to the effect each of these will have on the beast is that of a red blood cell.  If you can do one of these, you will take one red blood cell from the beast.  Will that bring it down? No.  But if enough of us get fed up and start doing these simple things, the decrease in the number of blood cells will start having an effect.

These may well make the system unstable enough that it can be taken down.  It will also allow you to develop the skills to transition to the new regime or to weather the interregnum.

But until enough of us are angered when they call us consumers, until enough of us think of ourselves as citizens, the beast will ride us until we founder. 

Upon Mature Reflection

OK, I spent some time and coin making a statement.  Moved the site over to a new server. Then quit because I didn't see the use in writing anymore.  Grand gestures of an idealist.

What a dumbass.

So what if Google watches my every keystroke.  In the first case, I am fairly certain now that they are only doing this to better figure out how to sell me shit on the internet.  If I don't buy shit on the internet, their loss.  In the second case, all I am doing in exercising my right to free speech and free press.  If someone wants to give me a free soapbox (with their company name placed prominently on the soapbox) well, good on them.

So my going to another site and throwing this grand hissy fit is yet another in a long line of grand gestures that end up with me slinking back and looking sheepish.  I would feel guilty for this, but it is such a time honored tradition in my life, it is more like an old friend than a character flaw.

So, I am going to let the other, $90.00/annum site go and come back here with the requisite amount of contrition.  I might or might not write a lot.  I think that I will just build up some lumber in the virtual lumber yard of the post storage.

I am here to write for myself and for you fellow odd ducks that occasionally agree with me.   Sometime you give me new ideas, sometimes you make me laugh.  Sometimes you piss me off.

For some odd reason, I am happier when I do this.  That's enough.

Equals

At the end of the day, we have been taken in by a myth.  It is a myth of equality.

I think that it the core of our beliefs currently in the US.  It is a myth foisted on us by Democrats and Republicans alike.  But the concept of equality is a subtle thing.  It has limits and a circumscribed area where it is valid.  What has happened to it over the past couple of hundred years is that it has been pounced upon by the unsophisticated, treating the fragile little concept that started out roughly.

I would guess that when it started out, the thoughts about equality were pretty limited.  If you were able to stand up and swing with the rest of the boys, they thought of you as an equal.

No, the equality they spoke of is the chance to get into the furball and take a try at the prize.  They never, ever said that you would get an equal share of the prize, just that you would have a chance to take a whack at it.

What things have degenerated into is a game where political blocks are promised shares of the proceeds because that block has defined a set of conditions that prove they "exist".  I would not try to say that this is minority issue, as the biggest dollops of money go to pasty faced white pukes who are to big to fail.

Nope, equality has always been an illusion.  There are a lot of folks who are better than you at shit.  Get used to it. 

All real equality can offer you is a chance at the prize.

Unfortunately, that isn't offered here anymore.

Leftovers Beer (Brought in from the the affectation blog)

Since the State of Oregon sees fit to relieve me of some of that evil load of money (One needs always remember Christ’s contempt towards the rich), I am using up leftovers in nearly all facets of my life. This trend has been ongoing for quite some time now, but I think that it is going to be even more pronounced for the next couple of weeks.

I need to start making beer for the summer. Brew doesn’t appeal to me in the winter..wine better suits the mood then. But a beer in the summer is an act of kindness. But, due to shortfalls as described above, I went rooting around the basement and found the following:

1. An old mason jar in the deep freeze containing what is probably Millenium hops pellets. These are probably around two years old.
2. Two cans of Coopers light malt extract.
3. Big jug of molasses
4. Spices in the freezer
5. Some brewers yeast of uncertain origin. I think that it is fermentis SAF T-58 High Gravity Yeast, but who knows for sure.

So looks like an odd batch of beer will be coming down the pipe. I did go out and buy more priming sugar (3 lbs for $2.99) and a lb of rice syrup solids for $4.49.
First, disinfect the hell out of all equipment. I have found that soaking with bleach followed by soaking with iodophore cuts infections way down.

I started out by adding a 5-second pour of molasses into around a gallon of cold water I figure that this is around 2 or so cups, stuck this on the stove and started heating it. At around 120 F, I added

• 2 teaspoons nutmeg powder
• 2 teaspoons clove powder
• 2 tablespoons dried orange peel

Brought the mix to a boil and then chucked in the hop pellets as follows:

1. 1/3 cup of pellets in a muslin bag, tied off with dental floss. Give yourself a long string to pull it out when it is cooked, makes it easier. These get steeped for an hour. Set the time for thirty minutes to tell you when to put in the next hops.
2. 1/4 cup of pellets, prepared as above, go in for thirty minutes, set a timer for twenty minutes.
3. 1/8 cup of pellets go in for ten minutes. When the last timer goes off, pull them out of the solution and let them drain for a minute before you pull them out.

After the hops are out, I added one can of the malt extract and the pound of rice syrup solids and then brought it back up to a boil. Just so you know my nomenclature, I call this the wort concentrate. At this point I turned off the burner and let it cool for three hours. Note folks, do not open the lid during this cooling time. If it is cooling from 210 F, the stuff in there has almost no bioburden. If you open it to the air, you have no idea what cooties you are letting in. Don’t open it.

After the wort concentrate has cooled, dump the iodophore out of the carboy and put it upside down to drain for five minutes. Add around two gallons of cold water (I usually use the sprayer head to make sure the water gets well aereated) then use a funnel to pour in the wort concentrate. Fill the carboy to the five gallon line with cold water and pitch the yeast.

I usually lug it back down the basement the next day. Wait two weeks, transfer the beer to another carboy, prime it with one cup of sugar, and bottle it.