Modern governance is a shitshow because it’s subverted by evil. Evil cannot build. Evil did not obtain consent. It’s such a mess that our society can’t properly support the shitheads in Panem even if we wanted to.
But here’s the real question. How do you know you’re not part of the problem?
Ouch! Hurts right? Well, time for some introspection. If you’re in a spiral of despair because shit’s getting weird, maybe it’s because you’re hoping for some external force to save you. It doesn’t work like that. You have to save yourself.
How do you start? Easy. Build something.
Pissed off about Frankenfoods? Plant a garden.
Pissed off about ammo prices? Load your own.
Pissed off about life in general? Stack some firewood.
Just build something.
God did not put us here to complain about the universe failing to meet our needs. He gave us great big monkey brains to imagine a better way… and a soul to yearn for it.
Build! Plant a seed and grow a better world.
Which brings me to my recent absence. After the horror of 2020 and the brazenness of the election and the slavering craven corruption of January 2021 I was toast. Too much stupid. It burns. I set out to build. Which is to heal.
In my garage, I fired up my welder and… nothing. I just couldn’t do it. My heart wasn’t in it.
I’m building “a cool thing”. It’s in parts all over my shop. But who cares? Another cool toy for me? It’ll be fun to have and more fun to make. But my soul told me I was barking up the wrong tree.
What need is filled if I make “a cool thing”? Not the right one. Better to make a thing which others might enjoy. It’s the dark cold heart of winter. People need to laugh.
I went to my scrap heap and dug through my piles of materials. Every build project starts with the idea and the gathering of materials. I gathered up 26 letters and a pen. I started writing the next chapter of my serialized book “Attack of the Lesbian Activist Squirrels”.
Chapter 10: Thunderdome, is just about done. I’ve written about 47 pages. I expect about 13 posts. Scrivener tells me I’ve picked up and arranged just shy of 80,000 letters. Each and every person, including the dickheads in DC, has access to the same 26 English letters that I do. From those crude materials I have built a story. For I may be weird, or mad, or whimsical, but I am not evil. I can build.
It’ll go live in the next few weeks. I hope you enjoy it. I hope it makes y’all laugh.
And if it sucks? Tough shit. I tried.
Stay tuned and keep on keepin’ on!
A.C.
Thank you! A little levity now is good. I’ve been wondering how those batshit crazy squirrels, and their human compatriots were getting along.
I’m glad to hear you’re looking forward to it.
Fire wood, from trees to a warm house in the winter. Its real. Its actual stored solar energy.
Also, I can go to the pile and stand there and assess my odds of staying warm on that supply. I can reflect on the risk of a colder or warmer winter. I can add more or less labor to my preparations.
It occurs to me that every stick of wood must be stacked before it’s needed (often years in advance) but for common urban methods of heating your house (like electric or natural gas) the bill arrives after you’ve already used the btus. How does the difference between personally physically preparing in advance versus just another bill after the fact change a person’s perception of things. I wonder if that scales up to bigger choices like paying mortgages and saving for retirement.
I’ve been struggling a bit myself. It seems like everything is futile – the cruel and stupid world will callously smash everything I care about, and nothing I can do can fix or prevent it.
I’ve managed to build a large integer math library for cryptography. Been studying the subject. Also half a workbench, but I keep getting interrupted before I can get into it.
Thanks for your writing, as always.
Glad you like my writing. Good luck with your bench. We’re all in this together. Don’t let despair get ahead of you.
You’re not getting my firewood!
After I (finally) make the lumbermill bandsaw- it’s going into flooring.
Besides I don’t know if your furnace would like Texas’s Post Oak feed
Ha ha ha… I already used bridge mats as fuel. Texas post oak is probably fine. However, shipping would kill the idea unless you own a train line. I don’t know how far south you’ll be running your bandmill but I’m far enough north that it was -32 this morning and it hasn’t been above zero for weeks.
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