An optimist thinks we live in the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist fears that it’s true.
Adaptive Curmudgeons like to focus on the little things that make life better. The following things are modern miracles which we should be thankful for every damn day!
- Cheap plentiful food.
- Air conditioning.
- Ice cold beer in August.
- Four wheel drive.
- Padlocks.
- The Internet.
- Pizza delivery.
- 24/7 electricity.
- Modern medicine.
- Peaceful elections (even if we have to choose between a dipstick and a jackoff).
Don’t believe me? Try this; drive a on old station wagon without air conditioning across Texas to find two jars of peanut butter which cost $87.50 each. Drink beer which got hot in the back of the car. Then turn north and drive the same station wagon over Lolo pass in a snowstorm (have fun chaining it up or just plunge off a cliff, it’s your choice). Once you get to your cabin (which has no internet because you didn’t padlock it and someone ripped the copper wires out to sell on e-bay for crack money) just sit in the dark because the power is off. Meanwhile you’re dying of tuberculosis while a battery powered radio is reporting that Baltimore is suffering from “political upheaval” because a contested election between a dipstick with an army and a jackoff with a secret police organization got interesting.
None of this is going to get your pizza to you while the cheese is still hot.
See, our world is positively gleaming by comparison.
A couple years ago, I was very sincerely offered a chance to move off-grid to bush Alaska, to fly freight as soon as I finished my commercial rating. I thanked the gentleman sincerely, and gently stated that I had an incurable addiction to hot, running water, and flush toilets. It’s not an addiction born of ignorance, but of plenty of exposure to the lack of them.
I adore washing machines and dishwashers. I think electric blankets are incredibly awesome, and while I’m fond of line-drying to save money, being able to get clothes dry quickly on miserably wet days is wonderful. I’d trade them all, though, for a simple guarantee of reliable hot running water.
I have watched, with growing contempt, the Liberal Establishment’s growing Crusade against “Obesity”. My personal feeling is that people aren’t that much fatter then they’ve ever been, but the sloppy ‘fashions’ that the Baby Boom generation (mine, I’m sad to say) has gone for instead of more formal clothes make even a little look like a lot. But more to the point;
WE ARE LIVING IN A CIVILISATION WHERE THE PRIMARY DIETARY PROBLEM OF THE POOR IS THAT THEY ARE TOO FAT!
so, before we get all worked up over ‘obesity’, could we maybe celebrate a little?
I’m a fan of indoor plumbing.
I invested heavily in my septic system…but I wish I had a nifty outhouse as “backup”.
As I do often live in a 3rd world country, let me add one thing:
-A good system of roads. When the streets in your town look like a bombing range, and your highways are basically linear potholes. True, 4 wheel drive can be a good thing, but it really doesn’t help when one has potholes you could swim in.
Interesting post & WIng’s comment too.
There are really 2 things on my list – the internet, such an awesomely useful piece of kit and the ability / freedom to wash my hair every morning .. and while I quite like hot running water with this, I’ll even take cold water over not being able to do it.
The peaceful elections / not living in a war zone is neat too ….
As a single parent of an almost 3 year old, who is finally showing interest in using the potty, I’d like to be thankful for diapers. I hope my stash lasts until a certain imp decides to actually use, and even master, the use of indoor plumbing. I also hope that indoor plumbing lasts long enough for him to appreciate it.
I’m also thankful for roads that at least where I live, are smooth. Though watching the maintenance schedule of tar and chips (in what I think of as a decent, relatively affluent city), does make me ponder the decline we are living in.
Mmmm…smooth pavement. I ride a motorcycle and simply love fresh pavement.
Wow, Lolo pass is crazy enough in good weather and 4 WD.
Seriously though, I agree completely. While many of us may look back wistfully for a simpler time it is hard to imagine stepping back to the technology of the 1930’s, 60’s, 70’s or even 80’s.
Things I would miss first if it all went in the pot: Toilet paper, matches, and primers. We got electricity the summer before I turned nine, along with LP for the stove, an electric well pump, an oil fired furnace, and a TV. My kids make Daniel Boone jokes when I talk about reading by kerosene lantern, butchering hogs, and canning up a winter’s supply of food, but it was kind of fun.
I would miss the luxuries, but they are luxuries, and the extra exercise cutting and splitting wood, drawing water from the well, and tending the garden probably had something to do with my grandparents doing the horizontal hula three times a day in their 80’s.
It’s the warzone thing I wouldn’t like much. As a rural kid, almost everybody up and down our one lane blacktop road was family, the men had all served in the military, and everybody hunted. With 5 or 6 guns in every house and several dogs as well, it would have been suicidal for some displaced city thug to play home invasion.
Today, I suspect the mixture of “summer people” and total strangers one would have as neighbors might seriously handicap any kind of mutual defense. If, as I have been told, we will be economically in the same place in 2018 as Greece was last year, it is something to think about.
It’s possible that “summer folks” and hardened locals might draw together? No summer person wants their vacation home looted. Maybe they’d get with the program.
Am I a ray of sunshine or what?
I suppose it all depends on what kind of Summer Folks you are dealing with. My Grandfather Smith knew he’d been accepted when the locals started joking with him. He was in town (about 5 miles) when the Fire Trucks went out, so he asked a townsman where the fire was.
“Oh, it’s the Smith place, way out on Mishaum Point. They say they won’t get there in time.”
Every U.S. citizen should be required to live in a 3rd World Country for 6 months before they are allowed to vote.
They should also have to drive solo coast to coast in a vehicle with only AM radio.
Good God! What have the people in the centre of the country done to you that you would wish that on them?
It works both ways. For every clueless urbanite jackoff that hyperventilates in Kansas there’s going to be a slack jawed yokel who implodes on the LA freeway. Real citizens can (and should prove their ability to) handle both. Since we’ve foolishly created so much central government control it behoves us all to know the full scope and breadth of the nation lest we get ruled from the coasts or the hinterlands get too disconnected.
You can take my MP3 player when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
Don’t miss the big stack of LPs eh?
Modern medicine is the reason that I’m here to write this. I fear the economic melt down more than most folks because the day my medication shipments stop is the day that I start to slowly, painfully, and miserably die. I’d have three years on the otuside, and they would be years that no man would willingly choose to live.
My Uncle had the same problems that I have, and when he died at age 45 (they didn’t have the meds back in the early 80’s that they do now) he told us all it was a sweet mercy that he didn’ have to live another day.
Think about that before you get too excited about how bad things are in the here and now.
I live full time in northern Mexico in one of the most beautiful spots on the planet. Nat Geo Mag recently declared our Mirador outlook the number one scenic ocean view in the world. Starting in the 60’s this was a winter Gringo colony, there was NOTHING open here in the summer; everyone except the fishing Seri Indians went to the mountains forty miles away. The nearest city had about 40,000 residents.
20 years ago the govt. began subsidizing electricity all summer. After air conditioning, this place is hopping year round. In addition to many full time Gringos, it is a popular place for rich Mexicans in the summer as it is fairly cool then compared to other, more humid places. The little city now has over a quarter million residents and is spilling out of the mountain valleys and onto the plains. Most of the newcomers work in the Maquila assembly plants, making this one of the wealthier places in Mexico.
None of this would be possible without air conditioning.