Barter, so easy your kids do it...

Almost all of our relationships begin, and most of them continue, as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods. ~W.H. Auden

I noticed something today (as opposed to yesterday’s ostensible notice that the free drugs are the illegal ones).  Bartering must be something inbred into every human being.

Stop and think about it for a minute, children who have no siblings to trade with will still trade toys in what they feel is a mutually favorable trade. Even young children who have no concept of money the way adults do will trade with one another if they both feel it’s mutually beneficial.

I started thinking about this, all the way back as far as I could in my poor over taxed cranium, and found that barter (along with war) is as old as mankind itself. Stop and think about it for a minute, caveman A has extra pelts from last month’s hunt, caveman B has extra meat from this week’s hunt, caveman A hungry, approaches caveman B with an offer of pelts for meat, should caveman B be in need of pelts a trade is likely, if not then caveman A needs to learn to hunt better or go find another caveman with a surplus of food and no pelts.

What is money after all but a representative store of value (the actual value being the goods that the money purchases). Money in the form of gold and silver coins, rocks (artistically made), sticks( marked with the kings markings), and even sea shells have been over the years used as a means of exchange, they are all easily divisible, easily transported in large quantities, and have a given “value” per quantity. Whether through mutual agreement as to their value, or necessary direction from whatever government happened to be in place at the time.

All money really did was move from a direct barter model to a distributed barter model where a person took some “money” (for our argument we’ll assume it’s something that meets the above criteria) and spend it with a merchant for those pelts he needed. The person would then take the pelts home, and make say shoes out of them, and then sell the shoes to some other person for more money than he paid for the pelts.  By doing so the people involved did not have to worry about obtaining the animal themselves, or making the pelt usable for something.

They could keep their money in their pockets until it was needed to purchase whatever it was that was needed, as they traded goods and labor for more money they could keep the “money” for longer periods of time without worrying about it going bad or spoiling, spending only what they could in equivalent labor or products.

I would venture to guess that this was a natural evolution of civilization, as man became more agrarian he no longer needed to “fair trade” with his neighbors for things that he needed some approximation of his labors that he could keep without having to worry about it going bad.  He could also save his new money (read labor) for something that he (I use he to as a general reference to both genders) could not otherwise generate a sufficient amount of labor for at one shot, if he took his corn, beets, carrots, or whatever to market, and sold them to the various people who came around at one time he may not be able to afford that shiny new whatever he really wanted for his hovel, however if he saved a portion of the proceeds from his labors everyday at the market he would in time have enough for the shiny whatever he wanted for his hovel. Perhaps it was a new more efficient plow blade that allowed him to be more efficient in his labors, thus giving him more bang for the “buck” and allowing him to take more to market on a given day.

One thing is for certain however, and that is when money was a fixed supply of whatever it was, gold, silver, shells, artistic stones or sticks, there was no inflation.  A pelt was worth X number of whatever was in vogue, should a merchant want to make more than that he would either have to come up with better quality pelts, or more of them at a given time.  He would eventually spend whatever “money” he had anyway obtaining the things he needed on a day to day basis, so the money circulated and was said to have velocity, this velocity of money is what caused an economy. For those who could labor and bring more to market they received a larger portion of the economic pie.

All I know is somewhere along the line we lost sight of bartering, and it’s a skill even the youngest among us has, we should all take a lesson from the kids, trade for what you want, starve the beast of corprotacracy and regain a real value for what you need.

Hail Citiz...er Consumer

Take the so-called standard of living.  What do most people mean by "living"?  They don't mean living.  They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to singular prenatal passivity which science, in its finite but unbounded wisdom, has succeeded in selling their wives.  ~E.E. Cummings, Introduction, Poems, 1954

It’s most unfortunate that without the internet I could not write this stuff and put it out for the singular person in the universe who actually takes the time to read it.  If I were to attempt to typeset all of this it’d never sell.

I have mentioned in the past my feelings about consumerism, well the holiday season is upon us now, and the interminable shopping begins, the lines to grab the latest plastic pumpkin from china mart have begun, I can’t even go get groceries without running into some lady (who by the looks of it is not poor at least, and who paid for her groceries with something other than an EBT card) huffing and puffing in front of me in line and asking for help with her groceries out to her car, now I understand some people need the help, and had she been 80 some odd years old I’d have helped, however this ladies only excuse (as far as I could tell) was that her basket was full of ding dongs , ho-ho’s,  and Twinkies; Along with Doritos (R) and a few other choice items of food.  Nowhere to be found was anything even remotely resembling food.  Now I like an occasional snack, some Reese’s, or a Butterfinger, but not all the time and those items do not solely make up my diet.

Couple that with the fact that she was buying undergarments for the man in her life (whose size I could not help but notice was roughly 50), now why do you think she needed help to the car? Because she’s a lazy CONSUMER, we have stopped being citizens and become consumers.  We live to feed the corprotacracy that is now my America. We are too fat and lazy to do anything, now I know the only place this blog is linked those people don’t fit this mold.

Our entire economy is based on consuming, not making anything mind you, after all we are too high priced to keep stuff made here, no one will buy it because well, we don’t make enough money for that so we export our manufacturing capability to China, Taiwan, Mexico and South America. And what do we have here? Not a damn thing.  Used to be you could get American made products everywhere, you can’t anymore, why? Because we don’t make one damn thing here in the U.S. anymore, we simply can’t afford it.

What’s worse is that we now have how many people out of work, and at the time of this writing CONgress has failed to pass yet another extension to the jobless benefits, so right around a week or so (maybe two depends on who you talk to) before the Christmas holiday roughly (again depending) 2 million people a week will start to lose their jobless benefits, welcome to Christmas except this time Ebenezer’s name is really Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geitner.   Between those two fools all the money gone to the banks and not into the pockets of those who could really stimulate the economy is it any wonder we now have QE2 and will end up with QE nth at some point? Let’s keep feeding the beast that ate the economy, this is a good plan, right up there with sacrificing virgins in the volcano to appease the lava god.

Look, I’m just a computer programmer in an insane asylum, I don’t know a whole hell of a lot, I do know however that if you’ve dug yourself a hole too deep to get out of the first thing you do is quit fricken digging.  I feel sorry for those who are losing the only lifeline they have in the coming weeks, no Christmas goose, and just some 10 year old fruit cake in their futures.

It Just Dont Make Sense

It is easy to get a thousand prescriptions but hard to get one single remedy.  ~Chinese Proverb

I do not partake in this particular lifestyle by the way, so this is written strictly from an intellectual honesty academic exercise view point.

I noticed something today…well, not noticed per se, but I connected some dots that have been there in the blatantly obvious positions for years I’m certain, I just never noticed it till today.  It dawned on me while having a conversation with someone that all of the illicit, illegal, and warred upon drugs all share one thing in common.

With the exception of methamphetamine they all occur in nature.  Opium (heroin), cocaine/crack (the latter being a derivative of the former), peyote, magic mushrooms,  and marijuana all grow naturally in our environment, and with the exception of the first one don’t cause houses with little children to blow up.  What’s worse is anyone wanting the first on the list drug just needs to doctor shop their high fructose laden child around for a bunch of Ritalin prescriptions; it’s the same damn substance. So for the sake of argument we’ll concentrate on the latter, all natural products.

Now this makes no sense to me in an intellectual capacity.  I cannot legally partake in the bounty of nature, but let me go to 5 different doctors for an oxycodone prescription and I could probably get it. Just ask Rush.

Could this just be a case of “follow the money” since there is no money in growing products such as these (they are more intensive to grow than corn in a single row mono agriculture that we are so flipping fond of in the U.S.) and if they were legalized I suppose the CIA, NSA and any number of alphabet soup agencies would pretty much be out of a job, after all how sexy is it to chase some doctor shopper in Florida when you can get the guy with the Uzi.

We actually have no idea what the potential medicinal qualities of any of these plants are since our wonderful we know what’s best for you government won’t allow the research to take place, could it be that our Native American (both north and south variety) knew something we didn’t? After all they managed to survive, some in pretty harsh conditions, for centuries prior to Leif Ericson landing on our shores and trading pelts with them with this stuff literally growing wild around them.

Allopathic medicine it seems has made us a bunch of junkies, I personally wont drink the tap water just due to the fact there’s no telling what the hell is in there as far as pharmaceuticals go.  I take my vitamins that the body cannot make on its own or does not store in quantity, C and D (I don’t spend enough time out of doors), the rest I get from what used to be a pretty good diet, I’ve slipped recently however (I know shame on me) due to other obligations.  And yes I filter my filtered water, and then distill it.

It seems to me if we wanted, truly wanted to solve the drug problem, we would legalize something nature provides, and make the crap being shoved down our throats by the likes of Pfizer on the illegal list.

Too bad its not sustainable...

"Simplicity is the last thing a person considers as he is madly searching for the secret to life" ~Marlena De Blasi

I’m a simple guy, I don’t ask for much, expect much less and very rarely end up disappointed.  It’s not that I live a life of Riley, nor do I live like Ebenezer Scrooge, my existence is comfortable enough.

I spent the recent American holiday with family, many of whom are very comfortable in life, some of whom had no food to speak of in their houses.  It is this latter group that I wish to discuss.  I’ll leave it at the fact that they are relatives of the spouse of one of my relatives and leave it at that, lest they learn to read and come after me for liable.

This particular family lives off of the work you and I do every day, that’s right they subsist solely on TANF (welfare for those of us old enough to remember the stigma that went with that), food stamps, and a monthly check they receive for their two children, both of whom suffer from genetic defects directly related to their fathers drug use.  They also cannot stay in any one place more than a couple of months it seems, for failure to pay their rent generally, nor can they seem to keep the utilities on for the same reason.

After the grand holiday feast the conversation turned to “black Friday” and the deals that could be had on plastic pumpkins in the local china marts.  This particular person of whom we are speaking was going on and on about the fact that they were going to go get a 37 inch flat panel 1080p LCD television for the living room because by god they needed it.

Did I mention that they had no food in the house, and no “money” to go buy more because the couple hundred bucks he had in his pocket was earmarked for the T.V.?  Yes you read that right; the money he had could not be used to purchase food because it was for the T.V.  He then proceeded to beg borrow and plead the remainder of the money necessary (another two hundred) off of family members who could ill afford to loan it to him (those on that side of the family who could have paid it out of their lunch money were ill inclined to do so).

No wonder I feel that we are all about to circle the drain as a society.  It never dawned on him that the brand spanking new shiny idiot box (and in fair disclosure I own two, paid over a grand a piece for them, but then again I paid cash, my own cash and only purchased them when I had the cash to spend, my children never have nor will they ever want for food to eat or warm blankets on the beds) would not continue to function after he failed to pay the power bill this month because he owes everyone in the family money (which they will probably never see again) and his rent is due, and after a short discussion about how much money was coming in versus what was being spent he could not see that his sustainability for the month of December was about, zero.

What about food I inquired, “well you see we get food stamps on the first”, ok, it’s the freaking 25th of November, far as I can tell you have 6 days or so before the first of December and you have nothing, I guess I know where all the leftovers went to, at least the kids will have something to eat, until today or so, and well going hungry for a day or so is good for the soul, or so thinks this individual.  Never mind the fact he’ll probably spend thirty percent of the money he gets at the local bar before the money ever sees the inside of his house, or with the local herb dealer if you catch my drift.

I personally have nothing against either, if you have the money to burn either place more power to you. But for the love of Pete make sure its money you can burn, not money you should be spending on food for your children, and I can hear it now, who made me arbiter of how they spend their money, no one. I just felt the need to put it out there, I’m sure I’m not the only one who has had this experience that just makes you shake your head.

Death Comes For Us All

People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive.  It is as though they were traveling abroad.  ~Marcel Proust

I have been studying the 5 stages of grief, now there are some adherents to grief theory that state there are 7 possibly more, but I have yet to run across less.  As a child I recall reading the book “on death and dying”, pretty macabre stuff for an eight year old I’ll admit, but mom was a nurse, and she had purchased the book while in pursuit of her master’s degree as one of the required reading materials, of course me being me I read everything, including that.

For better or worse, it let me in on something all must deal with at some point, whether for themselves or someone they knew and loved. The ideation that perhaps the non denominational church I was required to attend as a kid was all wet.  Now I’m not going to go on yet another rant regarding the church and its faults and foibles, I’ve done enough of that below, however the book and the examination of church and its doctrines led me to the belief that God (whoever that truly is) does indeed recycle.

So if death is the event horizon of the physicality that is the human experience, does the quantum entanglement of two souls, much like the quantum entanglement of two particles, continue even if one of the subjects in question crosses the event horizon?  I would have to believe they do, once entangled they remain entangled forever, after all if Einstein were right, there is no time, there is no space.  All points in space-time exist alongside every other point in space-time at once.  What we humans call time is simply an excuse for one to be late to work on a day to day basis.

Yes, the 1800’s exist right next to the 2010’s which exist right next to every other moment in time, all played out at once over and over and over, if something causes the timeline of events to go another direction, a new thread is created with that new event, thus every event that possibly could have happened has happened, and will continue to happen and spawn new threads.

This leads me back to our physicality, our existence here where we are reading this, has already occurred. We simply have not caught up to it in our current configuration; however our souls are entangled with the event just like two particles that were in close proximity to one another are forever entangled.  Since matter can never be created nor can it be destroyed, only transformed, even the transformed matter maintains its entanglement with the thing it was entangled with.

I personally believe this explains the paranormal phenomena of ghosts, now poltergeists and evil spirits do exist, and sometimes find it in their interest to bother us poor sods here on planet terra, but I think most ghosts and haunting are due to a quantum entanglement with something physical here on earth that for whatever reason the ghost or spirit being has had a difficult time parting with.  Perhaps however this is their reincarnation, or they are waiting for their next incarnation.

I have studied bushido, and after having talked with many wise men, medicine men, and the occasional kick from the universe itself am not afraid of death, I don’t necessarily want to experience it right now, but accept that it comes for all of us, it’s the one thing every single one of us shares in common, regardless of our status or stature in life.  In 130 years every single person alive right now, including those who are incarnate but not yet born will be gone. Sobering fact that, so it’s best to deal with our own mortality while we are alive and able to. Cause one day we aren’t going to be.

Ponderings

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.  ~James Thurber

This is me waxing philosophical with no destination in mind. I’m going to let my mind and fingers wander (yes I know, they are too young to be out alone at night, sheesh even the jokes are old around here).

I have spent the last few weeks pondering many things, life, the universe, our reason for existence, so yesterday, I decided to go find some good quotes to put in a text file, hoping it would give me the inspiration to write, normally I write about things that are deathly important at the time I write them, matters of grave concern and potential grievous bodily harm that may (or may not) befall some poor sod whose has but by happenstance found himself (or herself) in a quandary, predicament, or otherwise sullied state of affairs.

Normally that person is me, more often than not, every great once in a while it’s someone I happen to know, albeit not very well mostly, and sometimes its someone close to me who comes and seeks my counsel (although I am remiss to figure out why, but I do assure you it is on my list).

One of the things that have kept my poor sorely overtaxed grey matter busy is the concept that everything is a business model.  This is a postulate of a gentleman by the name of George Ure, who runs the urban survival site http://www. Urbansurvival.com/week.htm (you can copy and paste if the whole parsing of links doesn’t work.) and while I may not always agree with George regarding some of his flights of fancy his postulate of EBM is one I can find no fault with, which is in and of itself strange, because I’m usually the guy that finds the logical fault in damn near everything that is not a law of nature (sorry, I’m not sure we can enforce those laws, and I’d really hate to be a judge on that case).

As much as I hate to admit it, George is right, everything IS a business model, we all trade something of value for something of equivalent value, whether it’s time for money, free range eggs for beef or wheat, computer skills for sex, well maybe not that, but you get the picture, people tried to argue the point of marriage, relations, etc. to which George responded with tacit pointed arguments, that if taken to their intellectual conclusion, made sense. Not all transactions are of money, could be time for time, I help you with the fence, you help me with the porch repair that sort of thing.

I’ve also pondered being poor, now I’m not rich by any stretch, in fact I’m probably just above poverty in many cities across the country, and I have discovered that it’s going to be much easier to enter into the coming singularity if your used to making do or doing without, or making it yourself.  Those who have never had to pull up their own bootstraps aren’t going to fair too well in my estimation.  It’s hard though to imagine myself without some of the material trappings that I have grown so used to over the years, like heat, light, electricity, cable, and trash pickup.  However those things may return on the other side, what shape they will take is yet to be seen.

I have also pondered the upcoming singularity, which depending on which doomsday prophet you wish to listen to is anywhere from 15 minutes ago to 50 years in the future.  I think we have the possibility of the singularity arriving sometime relatively soon, the American elections are coming up in a few weeks time, and there is a distinct possibility that roughly half the house and a third the senate will be replaced, by whom I have no clue, but replaced none the less. The American electorate is duly pissed off about the profligate spending our banal government has found itself enamored in.  Whether this will make a difference has yet to be seen, but shortly thereafter I am relatively certain we will see something none of us expected, nor should we have accepted, after all a lame duck is the most dangerous kind, especially when they are of the political stripe.

Yes I have been pondering, the world, the big peace, and just how much peace is coming our way.  I distinctly remember that silence is deafening, that you don’t realize how much noise is around you day to day until someone takes that noise away from your surroundings.  On September 12 2001 it was deathly silent around campus where I was attending school for the umpteenth time in my life, although it was with no particular degree or whatever in mind, it was more a way to keep myself occupied during a extended stint on unemployment, and as long as I went I got my check, but could not help but notice the deafening silence that accompanied the lack of aircraft on that day, the day when the sun still came up, we still went to class, people still went to work, and 3000 of my fellow Americans were dead because some nut job used a 737 as a weapon.

We are all painfully aware of the damage done to Nagasaki and Hiroshima Japan by the measly little 13 kiloton bombs we dropped to end the war against us in the 40’s, given that we have weapons now that are measures of magnitude greater in their destructive power mutually assured destruction has kept that genie in the bottle.  What most people don’t realize, and something I have always had in the back of my brain, is that a single warhead of the current configuration and size detonated just inside the edge of the atmosphere directly above the geographic center of the north American continent would cause a power outage that would pretty much last forever, it could and would drive us straight back to the 18th century, your wonderful iPhone would be nothing more than a 600 dollar plastic brick, your televisions, 1000 dollar plastic doorstops, and your refrigerator a really nice casket for a loved one given you were willing to dig a hole that size with a shovel and not try to rely on a backhoe.   Credit card machines would not work, and your local grocer would accept only cash and then have to train all of the teenage checkout peeps how to use an abacus, or (gasp dare I say) do math.  Just a pondering mind you, but what better way to get the government they want than to send one up and light it off after the elections.

I saw a tee shirt once that read something along the lines of, I’ll keep my food, my silver, my weapons, and you can keep your change.  Too bad those at the top don’t know what those at the bottom have already realized to a great degree, we are going to get change, and it’s not the kind of change we want.

Livin on the edge

There's somethin' wrong with the world today; I don't know what it is; Something's wrong with our eyes
We're seeing things in a different way;  And God knows it ain't His; It sure ain't no surprise
We're livin' on the edge   ~Aerosmith “Living on the edge”

“Your preparing for something aren’t you?”
“Yes I am”
“What do you think it is?”
“Honestly, I don’t know”

That’s the gist of a conversation I had with a friend recently (well earlier this afternoon anyway) after I sent them an e-mail regarding the fact I was once again compulsively making a list of things I needed to get from the dollar store, the local hardware and that store everyone loves to hate, Wally world (you know the place where you USED to be able to get whatever you needed all in one trip?).  Some of the items are mundane, I need more candles, and a few more lighters from the dollar store, and a couple of other items, from Wally world include propane for my candle stove downstairs, maybe some nice hurricane lamps from the candle section (I like them, they make for good usable decoration).  From the local hardware store I need some three quarter tubing, some flat stock, a couple of new saw blades (mine are getting dull).  Nothing big there; nothing out of the ordinary if you were to think about it.

However what is out of the ordinary is the urgency with which I felt I must make the list. Confessions are tough, especially when you don’t know how people will react to them; I’m a bit of an empath, I have friends that are freaky good at it to, but the one thing that ties us all together is we cannot see ourselves or our situations. I wish I could because then I could know and understand why I felt the sudden urgency to write all that stuff down on a piece of paper, and why I sat there for over an hour hyperventilating over the whole thing. I don’t hyperventilate; I’m the guy whose patience quotient puts JOB to shame. I don’t get excited over stuff, never have, I can dead pan a car wreck with no problem. I pride myself on being unflappable in most circumstance, yet today for some unknown reason, I just had to grab a pad of paper, my trusty pen, and start writing a list of odd things I need.

The seriously odd thing is they are all “holes” in my stuff, consumable items that I need to stock up on (foods covered as long as the ammo holds out, and even then it’s not a problem to obtain, there’s always the cross bow, those rounds are reusable), as well as enough fish hooks, bobbers, line etc. to keep Roland Martin busy for a few years. Plus I have non-GMO seeds available, and stored so veggies would take a season to get going, but could happen relatively quickly.  It’s down to the holes now, and those are the holes I now know need filling.

But it still beggars the question, why now, why the sudden rush, what’s coming down the pike that I’m not aware off (at least not consciously) that makes me feel like I need this stuff right now?  Is the world not going to be here on Monday? Dunno the answer to that one, is the dollar going to all the sudden become toilet paper? It might, but if it does I’ll be glad I don’t live in Canada where they have dollar coins and not bills LOL. (You know who you are).

I’ve known something was going down for a while now, and every time I think, this is it, I turn out to be wrong, and certainly above all else hope that I am wrong now, however I have also learned to listen to that voice in my head that tells me to do certain things (no not that voice, the other voice that’s actually reasonable)

EBT And The Downfall Of Man

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. ~Chinese Proverb

I like to eat, don’t get me wrong, but what really, really cheeses me off is that some people eat better than I do.  Are these people better off than me? No, not by any stretch of one’s imagination. Have they done something righteous with their lives that allow them the luxury of buying the $20 roast and the $25 dollar bucket ‘o crab legs? Again, nope. What they have done however is suckle at the government teat.

Allow me to explain.  This year my federal income tax return AGI will probably be in the 5 digit range (since the government don’t do the whole cents thing anyway) and will most likely start with an 8 or a 9, not sure just yet.  I don’t live beyond my means either, I drive a 10 year old minivan that is in desperate need of a new engine, live in a house that was about 25% of what the bank said I could spend (PITI is $660 ish just  to give you an idea). I have cable TV of course, the minimum you need to get high speed internet and my cell phone, I have the cheapest plan I could find that was unlimited text and talk since I have family across the country.  Of course I pay for electric, sewer/water, trash service, and fuel and insurance for the van (again my insurance bill is like 20 bucks a month).  I eat relatively cheap, mostly vegetarian with my meat supply coming at the business end of a box of 270 Winchester ammo I buy for $20 at the local Wally world, coupled with an eighteen dollar license from the state.

So why am I cheesed at those people, cause they not only get the food stamps (of which there are now something like 43 million people using them) which roughly equates to 1.5 percent of the entire population of the country, this does not include the chronically hungry who probably don’t qualify cause they “make too much”.  Now I’ve been on food stamps, and let me tell you they make it next to impossible to get off of food stamps, but that story is for another day, even if I laugh myself to tears every time I tell it. What bothers me is that after they are done spending more on groceries for the month than I will probably be able to afford in six, they break out the WIC checks to pay for a couple boxes of cereal, some OJ, some milk, and cheese (mind you they could have gotten all of that on their EBT card).  I don’t begrudge those that need these things the help, as I stated I’ve been there done that, burned the t-shirt.  But it never fails that they are dressed nicer than I could ever afford, have cell phones that make mine look paltry, and drive new cars (after all what are they gonna spend their welfare checks on, odds are they live in publicly subsidized housing that costs little to nothing). More often than not they are also wearing high dollar jewelry that I would not ever deign to look at the price tag of no matter how I felt it might look on me.

Have we fallen that far as a nation that those of us who are responsible adults, pay their taxes (however begrudgingly), pay for their own way have to stand in line behind the EBT crowd watching them spend my hard won tax dollars?  I worked hard for that money, I got up every morning and sacrificed my time and energy to earn it, only to render unto caesers that which is caesers, and watch helplessly while it gets squandered on cheez doodles and ice cream for the multiple screaming brats in the cart that exists to the fore. And mind you mommy looks like she’s barely 20 and the kids are both between 3 and 5 years old, you do the math.

One day all of that is going to come crashing down on them, the government checks and help are going to stop coming in on the first, and people are going to wake up. May the universe help us all when that happens. But i also must question, at what point do we hand out poles instead of fish.

Why dont we fix things anymore

Our houses are protected by the good Lord and a gun, and you might meet 'em both if you show up here not welcome son. Our necks are burnt, our roads are dirt and our trucks aint clean, the dogs run loose, we smoke, we chew and fry everything. Out here, way out here.   ~Josh Thompson, “Way Out Here”

And I’ll bet they fix things rather than running down to the local all you can buy boofarama of Asian made plastic pumpkins and other assorted crap.  I am not one of those rabid recyclers; those unhinged humans who think that we are killing the planet and that the planet would be better off without us.  I do however understand that 50-75 years ago (a time period that many will remember) things were built to last, and to be repaired.  My granddaddy used to fix televisions; he started out fixing radios in the 30’s, and when television came along in the 50’s he started fixing them too.  Point being that he would not recognize today’s televisions.  I have 2 flat screen TV’s in my home and don’t get me wrong I enjoy both of them. However I am painfully aware that they have a great potential to become roughly 1100 dollar paper weights. And while the cost to replace the smaller of the two has dropped to below 300 dollars, it does not make sense to me to bear that cost when it should have been built to either last longer than planned obsolescence, or made in such a way that it would be repairable by a competent individual with a minimum of tools and knowledge.

Part of the problem lies in the constant need for humans to consume, hence the reason we are no longer called citizens (at least not in the United States) but consumers.  It’s a possibly well known, possibly not well known, possibly flat out wrong axiom that all products necessary for a year’s consumption could be made in a matter of a few months, but what then to do with the remainder of the months that are left.  In the days before (before what I’m not exactly certain) the farmer would grow his crop, take his crop to market where he would trade with others for what they grew, in this way he could supplement his own food stores with stuff that someone else had that  was surplus for them.  He then took those things home and preserved them for the winter, in the winter time the farmer would repair whatever implements may have been damaged during the growing season, or to build things that he would need for the following growing season, it’s important to remember that farmers grew and put away during times of plenty, and left their protein sources (also known as meat) to run around in its otherwise unaltered state until it was needed.  Chickens do not lay many eggs in the wintertime, as a defense mechanism against the inevitable cold, so those chickens that were maybe a little older, or possibly not laying like they should have toward the end of the season, became soup, fricassee, broiled or otherwise consumed by the farmer and his family.

In order to accomplish this though in the most efficient manner possible the farmer (or other person of that era) would make things that made his life a bit easier.  Whether it was a “killing cone”, feather -plucker, or perhaps something else that the individual would need.

The main point to all of these inventive ideas, was they were readily repairable by the person who built it, in the event it (whatever it was) broke with some simple tools the creator of said implement could easily repair it, there was no running down to the local department store to purchase a replacement when whatever it was that one was using finally bit the dust or needed repaired.  Even if the original implement was created by someone else, the person using the implement usually had the tools, knowledge, and wherewithal to repair whatever it was.  In the event they could not repair it themselves and a trip to town was required, one could be certain that it was repaired as good or in some instances better than it was when it was new.

Now a days, we just trip on down to the local whatever mart to get a new one, I remember my mother having the same toaster for probably 25 years, it broke down once, and she let me look at it,  it turns out to have been a simple matter of oiling the slide that you push down to make the toast, it was otherwise sound.  I took that toaster with me when I moved out of the house at age 18, mom had the toaster for several years before I was born, and it looked it, but when your first out on your own you take what you can get.  It was replaced in a fit of consumerism by my ex wife, because it looked too outdated for our décor, but mind you it worked perfectly well, that was 1985 and here in 2010 I can’t help but think that it would have still been making toast had I not succumbed to the consumerist lifestyle.

I keep things, not to the level of hoarding them mind you, if something has in fact outlived its usefulness and cannot be repurposed into something else readily, or if I don’t have an idea for it right away, depending on the raw materials it contains I’ll scrap it myself, keep the items I know I can utilize at some point in the future, and discard the rest.  The end result is the same for the item, the junk heap somewhere to be buried with every other bastion of our consumerist society, however my junk foot print, to steal from the “climate change” crowd is much smaller than most people that are in my rough income bracket, and the stuff I keep will end up being something else later on down the road, in essence doing my own little bit to starve the beast and return the balance.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Robert Heinlein, to wit:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, Conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein

We have become too specialized, so specialized in fact that we lack the skills to repair the simplest of things, seeking instead to replace rather than renew.

On Hubbert, and TEOTWAWKI

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains; however improbable, must be the truth.”—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I’ve already written about Jung, and synchronicity, and the lack of coincidence in the universe, I have semi revealed to you some of my thoughts, i.e. being out of place, and time.  As I stated in a previous blog post regarding the lack of civility in the church of ostensible peace (I realized later that more people have died in “Godly” fights than for any other reason I could conscientiously think of, anyone besides me recall the crusades?).

I have also regaled you with my thoughts on something wicked this way comes.  I have begun the study of bushido, not because I wish to become a samurai, but because the samurai had some good thought processes that anyone can adopt to help them get through life.  So it’s not from a swordsmanship perspective, but from a philosophical perspective that I read and study the works of Tsumetomo.  In the bushido, or hagakure, Tsumetomo speaks often of the warrior living each second as if they were dying, and even in dying should always move toward their goal.  My goal is to survive long enough to get to the other side of whatever it is that is coming.

Last week I was in class, learning Microsoft’s WPF framework, I’m a software developer (don’t ask it’s a long story) and we are adopting this as the model moving forward for all of our windows development.  The conversation turned most curiously to on M. King Hubbert, who in 1956 predicted that production of oil would peak in the United States in or about 1970, several years after his prediction, geologists came to the conclusion that Hubbert was in fact correct and oil production in the United States had in fact peaked when Hubbert said it would.

I find this very disconcerting, I am aware that the black stuff in the ground is a finite resource, and even if oil were abiotic (renewable in its current form) we still do not know how long it takes for an oil field to recover, it is quite evidentiary however that whatever that recovery rate is mankind is rapidly outstripping the earths ability to put it back.  If it is not abiotic, then we all need to take a page out of the Hagakure, and prepare every day for our death, imagine all the ways we can possibly die, and come to grips with it.  I don’t say this lightly, I believe that we could return to ways that were sustainable, and of course those who cannot will unfortunately perish.

It’s this constant mantra of “business as usual” that will be the down fall of mankind.  I find it almost ironic that those people who currently live on a sustenance existence are the best equipped to meet the new world head on.  After all they already exist at a level that will be below where the western world finally ends up.  I foresee some areas returning to “the wild west” and the areas between the towns will pretty much be a no man’s land, this will not require a terrorist attack, a nuclear weapon discharge, or some other yet unforeseen catastrophe to befall us, we have sealed our own fate by failing to take into consideration that funny looking black liquid that was first mined in Pennsylvania launching the industrial revolution did not have a finite quanta that could be applied.

I’ll leave you with pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate, which loosely translates to “plurality should not be posited without necessity”.  The simpler something is, the easier it is to maintain that thing.  I love my high speed internet, my large flat televisions, the cable that brings me mindless entertainment for roughly 30 minutes a day (don’t know why I own 3 TV’s 2 don’t get watched) and the one that does is usually on either food or how to shows.  Time to get simple, or as simple as you can, life is going to get simple soon enough.

Romans, Christians, and Does God Give a Crap

"Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned." –Author Unknown

This hits the nail square on the head so to speak, why is it that the individual religions and their subsequent followers do not question the existence of whatever it is they believe in.  As I have stated previously I am neither atheist nor agnostic, but hold views of a higher power that while not necessarily antithetical to modern religions certainly flies in the face of the established dogmas.

I am currently in the next state over to attend training in Windows Presentation Foundation fundamentals and advanced techniques.  While retrieving my belongings from the vehicle I happened across a “church” group holding their weekly meeting in one of the multiple conference rooms located on the lower level of the hotel.

I still believe that all people are free to exercise their religious beliefs in whatever way they see fit, hey that’s up to them, but it does not stop the ice pick in the ear feeling I get when a group of people get together to “praise God and pass the ammo”.  Do none of them stop to think why they are there, or are they there out of some odd sense of necessity, do their lives stink so badly as to need the comfort of one another while they worship and give song offerings.  I suppose it’s’ better than sacrificing young children mind you, although that thought has crossed my mind from time to time.

I just don’t get it, I may never get “it”, I am unsure of that at this time, however I do know that they definitely did not apply any critical thinking skills whatsoever to their little gathering downstairs in the prince George room.  I know this because I was met with contempt when I simply peered in to see what was going on (ever so curios, one day it’s going to get me killed, and hopefully not in a way I have not imagined yet).  One of our fine church going ladies was out in the hall way taking a personal cell phone call, now had she been on the phone with God taking direction I could understand that, in fact I may have a few questions for him myself.

Anyway, I was walking down the hall, with the door opened in the direction I happened to be travelling so I peered round the corner just to see what variety of gathering had everyone all in a ruckus.  Said and described woman on the phone decided that “whitey” should not be imposing on “her” church service and basically said “excuse you”, I apologized and said I was simply curious as to what was going on, flashing my best smile and trying to be as apologetic as I possibly could.

Her reaction was nothing short of irascible in its nature.  Pretty much telling me that I did not “belong” to “her” church and to kindly remove myself, well that’s kind of tough since I’m at the hotel for the next week (today being Tuesday, yes it takes me several days to write these).

This whole encounter has done nothing but raise the question in my mind of how so called “religious” people can be such hypocrites, I’m not even sure that’s the term I’m looking for.  It seems endemic to me as well, that everyone has a label, and either they are trying to remove the one you’re happy with and replace it with theirs or they want nothing to do with you.  They all seem to lack the critical thinking skills to realize that the person they just rejected could have been their saving grace.

The Bearable Lightness Of Being

“I have become a queer mixture of the East and the West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere.” – Jawaharlal Nehru

I know how he felt, I feel the same way most days.  If nothing else like I don’t belong here, as much as my friends try to make me feel differently, I just can’t shake the feeling.

I am unable to put it all into words, the general feeling of dislocation is becoming stronger, I have had this feeling my entire life, and now at 43 its becoming stronger.  I feel like I don’t belong “here” in this time period.

Everyone has talents, and skills. The difference is talents are just “there” skills are taught.  Cooking is a skill (to do it well anyway), but the ability to draw is a talent, (one I definitely do not possess, I’d be hard pressed to draw a straight line if you nailed the ruler to the desk). But I do have talents; I have the ability apparently to “see” what others miss, to instinctively understand the world around me, almost in a Zen like way, even if I’ve never studied Zen. I often find myself telling people that I’m not psychic; I personally believe that those people exist, but I’m not one of them.  I can however look at a situation and pretty much tell you what is going to happen in a very broad sense, and sometimes very specifically.  To those whom I have made “predictions”, they themselves will tell you I run about 80% dead nuts accurate, with about 90% of the remaining 20% running in the downright scary category.  Don’t ask me the lottery numbers, because if I knew those I sure as hell wouldn’t be telling you LOL.

I recently had a conversation on the phone with a very dear friend, we got onto the subject of houses, what our perfect house would be like, it would have 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, a basement etc. all the normal stuff you think about when you talk about where you would love to live, out in the country, in the city etc.  After we hung up, I picked up a piece of paper from inside my desk where I store my excess printer paper, and picked up a pencil and started to draw, now please take note of my missive above about my artistic talents, I aint got none, and I despise pencils, I dislike the scratchiness of them against the paper.  Anyway, in roughly 4 minutes 30 seconds (ok probably closer to 6 but hey time is relative) I had drawn a house. Don’t know why I drew a house; I just let the universe guide my hand, much like I do when I’m writing for the blog.  I phoned my friend later in the day and said I would like to show them my picture, since I don’t draw, can’t draw, and despise pencils to begin with; they are perfectly aware of all of the above and wanted to see it.  Well I ended up taking a photo of my drawing, lacking a scanner and all, and e-mailed it to them.

What came next shocked both my friend and I equally.  They asked me where I had gotten the picture from, and when I explained I don’t know, I just started with the pencil and that’s what came out.  They then proceeded to tell me that as a younger person (were both “over the hill” so to speak) they had drawn the exact same picture, almost 100% identical (at least as identical as one can get coming from two different minds).  They promised me that they would dig out their picture and send it to me for comparison.

Its these and other experiences that tell me I’m out of place, how is it I should know how an engine works, and have since I was 5 years old, I just “knew”, when helping my uncle work on his old Nova, how it functioned, what was wrong, and how to fix it, something no 5 year old should know.  I also instinctively know how to grow vegetables (although this year’s garden has been a bit peaked).  I also know, even though I keep a book around, how to preserve that food for the long haul.  If the world came to a screeching halt tomorrow, I’d make it to the other side.

All of this begs the question, have I been here before (wherever here is, ultimately there might be many “here’s” to be at or from).  If I haven’t then what explains my experience as a child and as a knowledge seeking adult that all, however anecdotal, the evidence of having traversed this existence before.

Others with whom I have spoken, also have had similar experiences, which were repudiated by their ostensibly “educated” elders as utter nonsense, the issue I take with this is that no one bothered to investigate it.  I bothered.  I found that while again highly anecdotal, the evidence is there that all of us have been “here” before, whether we know it or not.

The lonely empty tuna can

“I said grandpa what’s this picture here, it’s all black and white and aint real clear, Is that you there, he said yea I was 11, Times were tough back in ‘35 that’s me and Uncle Joe just trying to survive a cotton farm and a great depression.” –Jamey Johnson, “In Color”

The fact of the matter is we have forgotten what grandpa knew, from the great depression that fomented worldwide between 1929 and 1939, Americas, neigh, the world’s lost decade.  That at some point, whatever you had, whether it was tenable or not, was of value, today’s world is filled with throw away cheap plastic stuff not meant to be repaired.  All based on a finite resource known as “Oil”, black gold, Texas tea, the list of synonyms goes on and on, and the fact of the matter is had oil not been discovered in Pennsylvania when it had, we may still be powering things with steam.  Potentially worse yet, people in the form of slaves, and work animals such as horses and mules.

Rather than blather on and rail against the ostensible wickedness of the industrial revolution, today I wish to examine how we get there from wherever it is we are headed, it is my ever so humble, and usually quite wrong, opinion that the world as we know it has reached an untenable crescendo, and must, as gravity dictates, fall.  The question is, do you have the skills to ride the wave or are you going to drown.

This brings us to the lonely tuna can, that bastion of servitude hiding in plain sight.  I will attempt to chronicle everything I manage to glean from the lonely tuna can; you see I eat a lot of tuna, packed in water, as a low calorie snack, or part of a meal. Normally like any good over consuming American I would have thrown the can away with the rest of the refuse from my daily life.  Then it dawned on me that the can the tuna came in, may be useful in some other way.  So far I have come up with at least 2 ideas, I’ll present the first here, and the second in another post when I get the other parts for it.

Worst case scenario we end up scrounging around for food, shelter, and basics a la “the road” or “the book of Eli” (both excellent films btw).  But what if you could gather the necessary items pretty effortlessly and when coupled with a few hand tools, that everyone should already have by the way, make something that while not exactly aesthetically pleasing to start off in a survival or emergency situation function should take precedence over form.

Now to the meat of the matter, first you want to remove the lid of the tuna can, using a standard rotary can opener, manual of course(you do have a manual can opener right? If not spend the 2 bucks and get one, cheap insurance), I take the “lid” off and clean it up with a paper towel and set it aside, I have a small screen doo dad that I picked up at the store that drains the tuna wonderfully.  This raises the question of what to do with the tuna water, under the auspices of waste not, want not, I pour the tuna water out onto some house plants I keep in my office to make it a bit more cheery.  Trust me, no amount of miracle grow will substitute for tuna water, my plants are healthier and happier since I got tired of walking to the back door to pour out the water.  Anyway, you clean off the lid, set it aside; you’ve drained the water out of the tuna, now you can make a sandwich, or if you’re like me just add some Cajun seasoning to the can and eat it that way.  You can always feed it to your cat as well, that is if you have a cat, and you’re not fond of tuna. We need the can, not the contents per se.

Now, you need to gather a few other things from about the house, a hammer, a block of scrap wood, 8d to 10d nail, and a piece of string about 2 feet long, be certain its cotton string/twine, or sisal/jute.  It is required that it be natural, burning the plastic based ropes will kill you if you breathe the fumes for too long.

If you do not have these things, go immediately to the local hardware store and get them, they could be the things that save your life in an emergency.  I’ll make a separate posting on what I feel are the necessary tools to have around, even if you live in an apartment.

Ok, we have a hammer, nail, tuna can, and some cotton string.  First we need to take a file or other rough surface to the edge of the can to dull it, wouldn’t want to cut ourselves.  If you lack a file, take the lid outside, and while wearing gloves (for Pete’s sake wear gloves), rub the edge of the lid all the way round on the sidewalk or other suitable rough surface (rock, asphalt, brick, whatever’s handy).

Ok, now that there is less of a chance we’ll be removing fingers during the rest of the project, you now need your nail, hammer and your piece of scrap lumber.  Place the lid on the scrap lumber, and use the nail to punch a hole in roughly the center of the lid, make it large enough to pass a doubled over string through, but no so loose the string falls through it.

Take your string, tie the two loose ends together, and hook one end around whatever is handy, a nail, coffee cup hook, chair leg etc.  Pull the loop taught; insert your nail in to the loop at the other end, and twist. Twist it up until it gets to the point you can’t twist it any more than double it over and allow it to twist on itself while keeping the tension  on the string.

If using jute soak the wick in ¼ cup salt to 2 cups water, then lay it out on a pan and allow to dry overnight. The salt solution will keep the wick from charring too quickly.

Feed one end of the wick through the hole in the lid about a half to three quarters inch, fill the can up 7/8ths of the way with either olive or vegetable oil, let sit for 10 minutes or so.  You now have a homemade oil lamp, that will extinguish if tipped over (but with the size of the can that should not happen), the floating lid allows for the wick to always be near the oil, any further away and the oil will not “wick” up fast enough to feed the fire, the idea is that the oil will burn faster than the wick does.

Oil lamps have been around for thousands of years, and this one can be powered by whatever cooking oil you happen to have around. I plan on testing mine with various oils to see what gives the best light, and longest burn.  Now you have light for when the lights go out, you can make up a bunch of these and put them in your emergency kit, you do have an emergency kit right? Just fill them when needed after the lights go out.  You’ve saved the landfills from a few cans, made something useful, and taken something otherwise untenable and given it a new life.

UPDATE: I had to add 4 slices of styrofoam about 1/8 or slightly thicker, the lid now sits on these; to the oil to hold the lid up, it sinks otherwise, I suppose because veggie oil is thinner than I had anticipated.  However, it burns and works well with the addition of the styrofoam, I just used some junk styrofoam I had lying around.  The veggie oil does give off some black smoke, but I may have also had the wick too long as well, will shorten it and refire to see what happens.

Chaos and Synchronicity

“Does the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in the amazon, set off a tornado in Texas?”—Edward Lorenz

Dr. Lorenz, a meteorologist at MIT coined the phrase when he was researching how to make better weather predictions in the 1960’s.  He realized that ever so small changes in inputs had a radical and grandiose resultant difference in output. He dubbed this the butterfly effect, and set off a wave of research that continues to this day in chaos theory.

If we accept the axiom that Dr. Lorenz was correct, and that small changes in input cause radical differences in output, how then can we reconcile chaos to synchronicity when both are not only present but in effect at any given time as we go about our daily lives.

Take for example an online game, Lorenz’s theory states that in order to be a chaotic system it must first meet the threshold of sensitivity to initial conditions, so the point at which I moved from my position in the game to a random server position where other people were gathered, this random server selection in order to balance load qualifies as a sensitivity to an initial condition.

The second requirement is that there is topological mixing within the system, as I arrived at the place where the people gathered, others arrived and left as well, this mixing of individuals causes the system to be in constant search of balance.

The third requirement is density of periodic orbits, or does a player, as they flit from server to server looking for and finding friends, keep to the same server set, or are do they approach a server only to be moved as their friend whom they were following moves, thus never actually arriving at their intended location.

Having accepted the above axiom as having a modicum of truth is it then synchronicity that the people one needs most in their life at that time, would come from a random chaos meeting in the game?  If it were to happen that someone met and fell in love with someone in the game due to the chance server they ended up on due to the chaotic nature of the system, is that not an example of synchronicity in action?

If the receiver of the gift of love, or friendship, or just that right person to help their career, at just the right time, through events that have no causal relationship is what defines synchronicity.  One could argue that chaos is a tool of synchronicity, or that synchronicity is an element of chaos.  Could one exist without the other is a question that I have a feeling has a negative answer, but cannot prove, Lorenz attempted to prove mathematically that any system that met the criteria, could be considered chaotic, but at the same time have a synchronistic element wherein the universe uses the chaos to meet its own goals and objectives.

Jung was right

“There are no coincidences” --Carl Gustav Jung.

I believe that sentiment.  There is too much that happens on a day to day basis that is wholly unrelated at the time of the occurrence but becomes connected later on in its effect.  Thing A might happen today, while thing B may not happen for a day or two, and due to the fact that most people (especially Americans, sorry I are one too, and its true even of me most days) have the attention span of a gnat they don’t realize that the two events or incidences (incidii?) are related to one another, it may be sometime in the future before they realize that A and B were actually connected.

Jung coined this phenomenon synchronicity, believing that events that appear to be causally unrelated are in fact intertwined with each other whether the observer believes it or not.  This intertwining can take many forms, most people who employ well designed critical thinking skills can see these things as part of a giant puzzle, at the time we may not know where all the pieces fit, or that they are even part of the same puzzle.  There is a potentiality for multiple puzzles to be available at any given time to be put together by the astute observer.

It is not my job to convince you of this, or anything else for that matter, as it would be a violation of my spiritual tenets to do so. The greatest freedom “God” gave us is the freedom to choose, for right or for wrong, the freedom to choose, and therefore it would be a violation of your freedom to choose if I were to convince you one way or the other, I can simply present my case as the facts that I know to be true and allow you to decide ultimately on your own what you will believe.

Case in point, I wrote the second blog post first, and sat on it, Unsure whether or not to start this journey and post it.  I sent it to a friend, who, besides thinking I was totally insane (ok well partially insane anyway), confided in me that they were doing much the same thing, without knowing the reason why, just trusting that it is what needs to be done for whatever reason.  It was with that feedback that it was posted.  The religious asshattery post was actually written second but posted first, and it wasn’t until I read them top to bottom, almost as one posting, since the blog puts the latest on top, that I realized there was synchronicity between the two.

It seems that the universe was trying to tell me something, with the asshats on the side of the road, that maybe, just  maybe, my instincts are right, something wicked this way comes.

The journey begins, with a single step, toward the destination, even if the destination is in fact unknown.  I love the ancient Chinese wisdom as well, which succinctly states that “unless you change direction, you are liable to end up where you are headed”.

Stream of Conciousness

I’m chronicling this not to frighten anyone, not in the least; it’s simply not my style. I went to the “store” (yes that store, the one everyone loves to hate) and as I was gathering my normal apples, grapes, etc. I wandered through the soup aisle, now I should preface this with the fact that I eat soup on a nearly daily basis, its good, filling and low calorie (at least the ones I get), along with cans of tuna, one in the morning, one with lunch and one in the afternoon, so I go get that stuff and a little voice in my head says “buy some ramen” you know the last bastion of food for college kids everywhere, the 12 for 2 buck ramen packets, 3 boxes of chicken and 3 boxes of beef.

So I go up the next aisle, just kind of looking round for anything I might need and I ended up with 2 pounds of salt, I don’t eat salt, I do use it in cooking, but I don’t add it to anything. I’ve felt compelled to purchase these things for reasons unknown, but I think it might be for the same reason that I now possess 20 pounds of rice, 30 pounds of beans, and other legumes. As well as assorted tools and supplies all hand crank variety.

Something is coming, what I do not know, now the end of the world has been coming for a couple thousand years at least, and everyone was certain that their time was the time it would happen, and I’m not saying that the end of the world, just possibly the end of the world as we know it.

The fact of the matter is I’m INTJ (the masterminds) now people of my personality type are not given to fits of compulsion, in fact it’s not unlike us for our contingency plans to have contingency plans. We don’t do anything without a plan, well planned, with contingencies taken care of. So to be compelled to do something totally outside our predefined lists is totally out of character for me.

I also ended up with 1100 rounds of .22 ammo, now I love my .22’s they are cheap fun, but I realized when I put the ammo in the ammo can it belongs in I now have 5500 rounds of .22 ammo, not that it’s a whole bunch, especially for me (I’ve been known to keep enough ammo to start and win a small war), but feel like it’s only about 1/3 of what I really need. I couldn’t help but think that I need several boxes of larger caliber ammo as well. Since the store had plenty of ammo finally, I need to pick up a couple boxes of larger caliber ammo for food purposes.

I also am researching how to keep food without refrigeration, now I grew up canning food, growing a garden etc. I have a pressure canner, and have started to keep things like left over veggies for stocks. I now buy my chicken with the bones in it, so that I can make stock from that. It’s an old school skill set that I feel compelled to learn these things in the event the power goes out on a permanent basis. Heat is easy to generate, I have enough trees in the general vicinity to keep the heat on in the winter and am researching rocket stoves to use this wood in the most efficient manner possible. I also have an earth “rocket powered” oven design in mind that I’ll start building shortly to see how it works out.

It should be noted that up until the invention of refrigeration, food was generally kept in its natural state, walking around until it was needed, in the event the tribe managed to bag a larger piece of meat, or the proverbial ton of fish, they would keep it by either salting or smoking, both technologies I am researching right now, and going to attempt to get right before the feces contacts the high speed rotational device. I am hoping to run into a few books on native American food storage, or older “house books” from the 17th and 18th centuries to use as guides, even if the writing requires a way back dictionary.

I don’t know why this is important, I just know it is. I feel like Shakespeare, “Something wicked this way comes”. Even if I don’t know what wicked thing that is at this time. There have been many prognosticators over the years that have gotten it wrong, and I’ve never claimed to be psychic in any way shape, form, manner, or method. However I have learned to read people very well, I have a high N factor (close to 100, highest of the 4 letters in the Meyers Briggs), N stands for iNtuition, or what your gut is telling you, mine is screaming prepare, but for what?

It’s also telling me that there is another side to this, whatever this is, and that all I have to do is get there successfully. It is entirely possible that I’ve simply driven myself off of the deep end, gone schizophrenic and simply do not realize it, however, the voice really isn’t a voice per se its more my gut telling me to get the hell down off that limb, you’ve done climbed out far enough.

My apologies if this seems a bit disjointed, I wrote it in about 4 minutes as a pure stream of conciousness exercise, so may not follow all the "rules" of course I was never one for "rules" anyway, they are more suggestions than rules.

Heres a question for you.

I don’t write this blog in an attempt to get rich, obviously there are a ton of people out there who do that, and I wish them well. I do this for the catharsis effect it seems to have by writing it down.

Now let me preface this with I am not agnostic, nor am I atheist, I do however have a unique view of “God” and our surroundings, while not antithetical to Christianity, it certainly fly’s in the face of the obvious dogma espoused by the church, any church.

As I was traveling to the store this evening in my duo daily attempt to convince my stomach my throat had not been cut, on the corner were some people holding signs (no not of the Bill Engvall variety, although they certainly could have utilized one of those as well) saying such happy things as “prepare to meet thy god”, and “Jesus is coming, are you ready”.  Now I’m certainly not the type to prejudge individuals, I’m sure some of those church monkeys were really nice people, with absolutely zero critical thinking skills.

It’s obvious to me (although I certainly don’t think the idea even came close to running anywhere near their minds) that there is a large Hindu population in the area, now if I were a Hindu, I would not only be duly embarrassed, but also extremely insulted at the “prepare to meet your god” statement, now don’t get me wrong, this country was built on freedom of speech, religion, and gathering, those were so important that the founding fathers put them in the very first add on to the constitution.

Now back to being insulted, if I were Hindu, I would have been duly insulted to my core, as the Hindu religion has around 27 “Gods”; which “God”, as a “God” fearing Hindu, should I prepare to meet? Or what of our poor Muslim brothers, who believe in the same “God” as Christians and Jews, but believe Allah was Jesus, but Jesus was good too. Or Buddhists, for whom “God” has returned over and over again over the millennia cast into different bodies.

I seek only the truth, somewhere in all of the world’s religions are a true sense of what “God” meant in all of their teachings (as I am unsure of gender, we’ll just run with that).

So there is your religious asshattery for the day. Hope you enjoyed it.  Put on your critical thinking ability for “Gods” sake, I’m relatively certain that he won’t mind you questioning him, his existence, or anything about “them”.