See Ya After the First

It's ġéola.  I am not really interested in spending any time during the next week wallowing around in the gloom, looking for nuggets of life that I find meaningful or distasteful.  


I think that I will eat a little too much, spoil my children a little, talk with family and friends, go to work and hold down the fort on the slow week between the holidays.  


I'll throw out some predictions for the year coming up on the First, then get back to my normal post rates of around 4 posts a week. 


Wishing you and yours happiness.  I and mine are certainly going to try for it. 

Riddle Me This

How the hell did this happen?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16292244

I can see one, but 69 of the damn things heading off to China to be reverse engineered?

This will be covered up, but there is a mighty stink under this one I would bet.

Jails

Dave Cohen over at Decline of the Empire published this piece yesterday.

Now, what I think is that not that more folks are getting arrested by the police, but the system is now so self-referential and the records keeping so detailed is that every arrest is detailed in extreme.

I got thrown in a couple of jails in my wild and wooly youth.  Good luck finding any record of those encounters.  The folks at Muscle Shoals tossed me in theirs after the bar fight and released me the next morning (you get back to your base straightaway boy, you give us a call when you get back there and you put your First Sergeant on the phone).  Or a little town in Southern Colorado, Fruita (I tossed that damn weed in the snow last night...now get outta here and don't let me see you again).

No the difference now is the cops.  Where they used to be peoples friends and fathers and neighbors first and took a hand in the alternate mercies and punishments that are part and parcel of being an adult.  They now are just cops, nothing else.  They are an arm of the state.

I really miss the old way, where they would deal with you as an adult to a kid.  Now they just arrest.

I know that the world has changed.  I realize we probably can't go back.  But I do miss it.

Nostalgia

Get Some

Get some cash aside folks.

The way that I would approach it would be to sit down and figure out how much your true basics cost.  Now, be ruthless here.   Your bank/landlord won't be able to kick you out for a month or so (bare minimum) and it will take a while for folks at the electric and gas company to shut you off (months if you play "the pay some money and promise" game).    Same with your car, same with your credit cards.

I think that the true basics are food, and to a certain degree fuel.

Get some cash set aside to navigate a month or three of uncertainty.

The global economic system is looking pretty sour right now.  Truth be, it is as bad as I have ever seen it.  2008 looks pretty easy compared to what we will be going through, if worse comes to worse.

The banks are held together with bubble gum, baling wire, and accounting tricks.  Governments are in huge debt, and there appear to be ominous rumblings coming from any number of sources.  For the first time, I would start thinking seriously about the possibilities of bank runs in the year coming up.

Now, I am not saying pull out all your savings and put them in your mattresses, makes for poor sleep, though in my case it wouldn't even cause a bump in my pillow, let alone a lump in my mattress.  What I am saying is have some actual cash money to navigate strange times.  The technical word for one of the likely scenarios is deflation.  Getting hold of cash is difficult in this setting.   Having a bit of cash about will make it easier to navigate the oddness that may well come our way.

I used to be a silver bug, but got out of the game.  If things stay smooth for a while, I may go and buy a couple of rolls of quarters and dimes.  But that is all.

I hold by my premise that a full pantry is the best savings.  I wouldn't recommend going full-LDS just yet, but being able to get through a month or so with only minimal grocery shopping will allow a lot of flexibility in your life

Same as the rest of us

There have been a couple of posts that really got me going the past couple of days. First one is this one that lays out the issues from the perspective of the bottom end of the socio-economic spectrum.  There is an abbreviated version over at Financial Armageddon that I prefer, as sometime Zerohedge drives tack with a sledgehammer.

The other one is a touch more insidious.  Jesse has always been a favorite of mine.  Jesse speaks for the moneyed interests who have a feeling of responsibility and duty.  I have always felt that Noblesse Oblige is a emotion only felt by the noble.  I respect him highly.  But Jesse is now in a bit of a snit because it looks as though people who have stored their gold and silver bars in the vaults of vipers now may lose some of their money.  The horror.

For the most part, there were very few grandmother's retirement nest eggs in the list of investors at MF Global.  I am certain that they kept a few on retainer so that they could appear to be serving a pubic interest, but the truth of the matter is that this was a fund set up by a predator (read here Corzine) who wanted to parlay his financial (ex-Goldman-Sachs) and political (ex US Senator, ex-New Jersey Governor) influence into an even more insufferably huge wealth pile.

The people who raced to throw money at Mr. Corzine were the financial equivalent of jackals to Mr. Corzine's wolf.  When the wolf took their money, they were/are aghast at the idea that someone would use them so luridly.  Jesse of course finds the idea reprehensible (which it is) but come on, in the immortal words of Sister Anna Rita (Eighth grade English)  if you run with a bad crowd, you most certainly will eventually end up in trouble.

Look, the system here in the land of the free (etc., etc, etc) has been financially and morally bankrupt for a while.  Jesse has been one of the best chroniclers.  I think that here in blogoland, we should not concern ourselves so much with the huge losses obtained by the wealthy (leaving them still wealthy, but less satisfyingly so), but instead, chronicling and working to help the truly needy who are so starkly chronicled by Mssrs. Durden and Panzer

Friday Fare

Man, I can't resist.  I talked with Locutius today.  Kirk and Spock on the front burner

 

A bit of a rant here...so sorry

I fucking HATE people who bring the little annoyance dogs in a bag everywhere with them.

You puling, insecure pieces of shit who need a toy dog to substitute for your stupid fucking binky and security blanket?  For fucks sake, grow the fuck up.  The fucking stupid animals that you make so goddamn dependent and worthless are nothing but poorly bred rats.

Fuck you, you don't get to take them into a hospital because you like them and you are so pathetically insecure that you need a fucking worthless piece of shit animal to make your sorry ass feel better.

If you try to tell me that the thing is a fucking service dog, you can kiss my big fat rosy red ass.

Fuck You.  Go out and suck a tailpipe and put the worthless piece of shit animal to sleep while you are at it.

Assholes

Read this now and please get all of your friends to read it as well

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3629

This phrase just blew me away

We are living, he observed, in the age of the assholocracy.

Prognostications

Since it is that time of the year....I am putting out my last year's look into the crystal ball for review and ridicule.

Oh wait...I chickened out last year.

I will try to be less cowardly this year.

The year before I did pretty well.  except for the stock market, which is being held together by....Hell I don't know, it still doesn't make a lick of sense.

If everyone who reads this would be so kind as to send in your big prediction for next year, I would appreciate and note it during my predictions.  Low-lying fruit will be mocked as cowardly, alien space babies running for President under the Republican banner would be more along the lines I am thinking of this year.

Home Feelin' Poorly

I took a page from my co-worker's playbooks and spent the day at home because I didn't feel well.

Now, I can't really say that I was sick, but I sure as hell felt like crap.  I am normally a furnace, hell, I wear t-shirts in the winter rain here without complaint.  But yesterday I felt crappy and cold the entire day.  It looks to me as though the old immune system has been waging war on my behalf.  It also appears that it has a worthy opponent.

So today is drinking herbal teas and urinating.  I am also slugging down vitamins and resting.

Ferdinand Braudel is the read for the day.  Hell, it has been the read for years now on quiet days.  I cannot think of a better exposition on how we got to where we are.   I am asking you all to go out and take the rest of the winter to absorb the book.   Get an idea of where we came from and how we go here.  I cannot think of a better way to prep.

Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Centuries, 3 vols. (1979) English translation by Siân Reynolds

* The Structures of Everyday Life (vol.1) 

* The Wheels of Commerce (vol. 2)

* The Perspective of the World (vol. 3)

Just for giggles, please don't buy it online.  Go to a by-god bookstore and let them relieve you of your money.  Sure, it will cost more, but you will be doing the right thing

Bourgoisie

A country was once accused of being a "Nation of Shopkeepers" by a bad man.  This sobriquet was not well thought of at the time, but, like most unwanted nicknames and descriptions, it rang pretty true.  But what causes my gorge to rise even more is that we are now a nation of poseurs and consumers.  A nation of shopkeepers at least had some value, we cannot even claim that.

Russell has been somewhat somewhat fascinated recently about my admission that I am a "person of mass".   He seems to have misconstrued my being miffed at Cuntsler (sic) for his ongoing denigration of anyone who likes their vittles a bit too much.  He mistakes my distaste for Mr. Kunstler's ongoing tirades describing his revulsion for the less-than-svelte who inhabit his perfect world for the self-flagellation for being a big ol' corn-fed boy.

But Russell did make me think, and for that, I am truly grateful.  His links to Chuck Robb's articles about dentistry made me think even more.   Seeing my documented distate for cosmetic orthodontia

Our consumer driven economy, with Madison Avenues flickering images of perfect people laughing merrily in perfect settings are now part and parcel of our national self image.   When you read Mr. Robb's description of the prerequistites for the "Global Middle-Class", it reads to me as a lengthy infomercial for the American Dental Association.  I do agree heartily with his recommendations about taking care of one's teeth yourself, but the description of teeth the size and color of white porcelain saucers rang quite true.

For some reason, as a country and a culture, we are so shallow as to believe that what a person looks like is somehow indicative of their worth as a person.  Actually, it is a two-headed monster, with the other head being the idea that wealth is a indicator of a persons value.  I have recently been indoctrinated into the cult of the Kardasians with a hysterical laugh-filled primer by Rita, the clerk at Safeway's on Main Street.   No wonder these bimbos are so popular, they are rich, shallow, and beautiful.  Everything that the bulk of America strives to be.

I am now coming to the conclusion that the things that Mssrs. Kunstler and Robb speak of are our biggest problems.  Where the Brits may well have been a nation of shopkeepers, we are a nation of shallowness, with our needs and desires defined by people who wish to sell us shit and enslave us with debt\, with success being defined by appearances.

I doubt if our descendants will think too highly of us when they review our actions and our morals.  But, I think that they will be too busy trying to put back to right the extraordinary mess we are leaving to obsess too much over our shallowness

Preppin'

There is every reason right now to be paranoid.

Doesn't mean that one has to be stupid about it.  Stoneleigh and Illargi have made a concrete suggestion that may be useful.   I think that I will be taking some of this wisdom home.

The real problems is that the world is way out of our control (by our, I mean us unwashed masses).  It also appears that control is slipping from the fingers of those we elected/hired to mind the store while we ran our lives.  Limey-boy Cameron is having a sissy-boy-slap fest with the little loser from France.  Merkel is trying on her Ilsa Koch outfits, and the idea of democracy in Italy and Greece has been vetoed by their corporate masters.

Our democracy is kinda becoming a surreal joke.  Obama is trying to cast himself as Roosevelt the Elder, having been an abysmal failure as Roosevelt the Younger.  The Republicans front runner is Newt fucking Gingrich, and Ron Paul is still "unelectable" as he goes about telling the truth.

So right now, I am going to concern myself with things like coats for boys and presents for little kids.  I am going to be kinder to the folks with food stamps cards who can't add, and I am going to keep waking up every morning and going to work.

Time to get some popcorn and watch some football.  I'll finish reading last weeks news today.

Life goes on.

Sorry That I Haven't Written Anything

Nothing is really all that interesting to me right now.

I'll try again next week.

John

Senatus consultum ultimum

Europe is a mess.  It will be interesting to see just how much pull the moral and intellectual descendants of   Baron Von Rothschild will have on the end game.  Bankers have not always won out.  Just ask the folks who loaned to the Valois and Bourbon.

The amount of money in play is mind numbing.  It really isn't fathomable by anyone.  It is a pile big enough that if it lights will burn down the house.  I can't imagine that our banks would survive.  Not that the idea bothers me much now, but I also have a good idea that with the banks going down hard, my life would not be made easier in the process.  Matter of fact, my life might well be pushed over into the "damn difficult" column.

I have structured a life where I think that I will be able to whether the storm.  Belts will have to be tightened further should the SHTF, but hell, there is a lot of slack in the belt.  I can get along with a lot less and really have a pretty damn good life.

Being Careful

If you are reading this on an old beat up computer, running a decrepit operating system, you are probably OK by me.  Linux would be fine by me, even an older Mac running system 9 would make me pleased, and if, for some odd reason, you are running BeOS or BSD, I am truly honored.

What is starting to scare me is the Apple iTunes store and the knock-offs that are coming down the pipe.   I have around a grand spent over the tears on the Apple store buying music that I liked.  But with the advent of the iPhone and the new spiffy iPad there there is a disquieting trend.  The corporations that have been fighting for dominance have now all taken the path of the walled garden.

I would strongly recommend that you read this article over at the Harvard Law School.

Look, I gotta agree with the guy.  What we need is some angry nerds.  But nerds have always been such a small segment of the population that even if they got angry, I doubt that it would account for much.

What we need instead is a bit of fear.  Look folks, the big boys like Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft and creating these walled gardens for the same reason that folks set up feed lots.  They aren't there for the benefit of the occupants.

Taking longer

I am spending this morning on the other blog. I started the project in shameless imitation of John Michael Greer's "Stars Reach", but ran into a case of serious writer's block. I am now trying to catch up on the writing and reacquaint myself with the characters.

The only current thing that I really have to comment on is the following.  A hat tip to the folks over at ZeroHedge.  I only changed the formatting to make it easier to understand.

Here are the four most important data points and charts from today's job report: 

• the civilian labor force declined from 154,198,000 to 153,883,000, a 315K decline despite the civilian non-institutional population increased (as expected) from 240,269,000 to 240,441,000: always the easiest way to push down the unemployment rate. Percentage wise this was a drop from 64.2% to 64.0%: the lowest since back in 1983. 
• Naturally, this would mean that the people not part of the labor force rose, and indeed they did by 487,000 to a record 86,558,000 from 86,071,000. 
• This also means that more people are looking for a job: and indeed, the number of "Persons who want a job now" rose by 192K to a record 6.595 million.
• And lastly, confirming the behind the scenes disaster of the US jobless picture, the average duration of unemployment rose to a new record 40.9 weeks from 39.4 weeks previously. And that is your "improving" jobless picture in a nutshell. 

I can't tell you how many times I listened to this

On My head phones (Koss, of course) with the amp and the speaker in my locker.  The extension cord running over to my bunk.

Bitter cold outdoors in either Hohenfels or Grafenwohr.

Kept me alive

Written off-line using Gedit on Monday the 28th.

I always get up earlier than strictly necessary in order to pour a couple of cups of coffee down my gullet and to get all my shit into one dufflebag before I head out to work for the day. Lately that time seems to be used in reading headlines on my favorite bitching sites on the web and getting my nose out of joint because of the antics that the world is going through.

Today I woke up and there was (gasp) no Internet connection from my router. Coffee still flowed down my throat (I forgot to set up the coffeemaker last evening and I had to settle for some pretty skanky instant coffee instead). The world appears to be the same walking out the door. My life on a day to day sense does not appear to be negatively impacted by the loss of bits flowing through the router.

So now it is Tuesday the 29th. This time the coffee was made and the Internet was on. No real big difference in the day to day activities. But I decided that it would be mentally healthier for me to drop off the web and get to work writing.

The end lesson of the past couple of days is that the web and the news media that you get through trolling through the internet doing what some folks euphemistically refer to as "research" is really the same distraction that the mainstream media offers us. Just a different flavor. Plopping your big nasty butt next to a laptop and surfing is just as mind numbing as the CBS evening news.

I get too caught up in the "big picture". It is just such a sexy beast. But in truth, you have to keep the desire to keep checking on it to a minimum. I think that I have to get a grip on it again. Back to once a week reads and keeping the internet "research" to a minimum.

Back to writing the novel