Pack Your Shit, We’re Going Camping Soon

Did you like your Christmas present? I posted fifteen consecutive days of handmade satirical whimsy. I never mentioned COVID, any politician, or exhorted you to buy stuff (save a tiny hint that I do azppreciate tips).

Now, weeks into 2022, we’re trying to decide if it’ll be 2020 part 3 or a legitimately new year. The jury is still out. I expected to go back to normal topics of blogging; “the stupid shit this or that dumbass politician advocates will have stupid results”, “inflation sucks but it’s not exactly a surprise”, “Paul Krugman is wrong about economics like an icicle enema is cold”… you know, the usual.

I couldn’t do it. It’s winter. It’s a season of deeper connection.

I like winter. Winter puts bullshit in a cage. Folks will roll bullshit in a tube and smoke it like a fine cigar… but it won’t catch fire in the winter. It’ll work all through spring, summer, and fall… but winter is when you interact well with the real world or collapse. That’s why I like the season of cold; it’s a season of reality. That’s why most people hate it. Nationwide (planet-wide?) people have gone so far off the rails that shoveling snow exceeds their mental state. Why shovel snow when they can postulate a universe where snow doesn’t exist? For one thing your car’s in a ditch! Embracing clueless space-cadet thinking in this season is like taking a children’s nursery rhyme seriously. “We’re considering taxing unrealized gains.” “Ha ha ha, that’s cute. Now grow up and haul firewood; it’s going to be cold tonight.” Childish imaginary notions don’t work on anyone who’s recently hauled firewood in deep snow.

I know what’s real. Snow is real. The dwindling firewood pile is real. The cycle of life is real. My old dog is dead and our new puppy loves to play in the snowdrifts. Love is real. Family is real. Rolling about in politics is not just unreal but self-destructive.

I’ll admit it. President Potato had me on the ropes in late 2021. Never in my life has any president has been so personally opposed to my continued existence. Putin may be a real life James Bond villain but it’s Biden that specifically wants me dead. President Declining Intellect lost patience with me, tried to fire me, and wants me to die. Not very charitable of the man.

The good news is karma sometimes works fast. I went camping and came back renewed in spirit. Biden declined in popularity to the point where he rates somewhere between explosive diarrhea and getting hit in the balls with a hammer. The bastard rants that I’ll experience “a winter of severe illness and death” and that I deserve it. Jumping Moses, who talks like that! Even if it’s true, would you say that? Would you say that to a cancer patient? “You’re gonna’ get leukemia and die and you had it coming!” Would anyone with a shred of dignity walk up to a perfect stranger and condemn them to a “winter of death”? What kind of demented asshole would speak like that?

He said his piece and toddled off to his safe space in Delaware where he’s become “the president less popular than Carter”. He’ll hide in his basement, just as he campaigned; emerging only to fuck up monumentally. Perhaps quarterly they’ll pump him full of whatever keeps him standing and he’ll venture forth to do his master’s bidding; sowing destruction and hate like the whiny little bitch he is.

Meanwhile, I refuse his admonitions. I’m a free man. I’m immune to the Potato’s exhortations because I make my own choices. I see it play out in real time; one of us is an angry shambling zombie and the other stacks righteous firewood with a smile on his face. The Puppet at the Podium thinks I’ll die. It is him that’s seeing death. It’s looking back from his own mirror. One of us is doing well, one of us is a punchline.

By the way, Biden wasn’t always the angry declining miserable bastard he is now. Don’t get me wrong, he was always reprehensible; but he used to have a wicked sharp delivery. Like him or hate him, it was once impressive to watch his flim flam artistry; his was the slick pitch of a finely tuned and impressively corrupt used car salesman. Now, it’s different. He signed a deal with the devil. He got to be president through means somewhere between murky and outlandish. Does anyone think he was the best choice among 350 million Americans? Does anyone really like the guy? He exists as much as a warning as anything. He seized control just in time to lose himself. Hubris forced his 79 year old mind to inhabit a world it cannot manage. His 50 year old brain was smart but the ensuing decades of corruption was a price too high. Victim of a self inflicted Faustian bargain, he’s dying and it’s pissing him off. I’m not and that pisses him off too. I’m the guy who’s comfortable with his own soul. I fixed the plumbing last night, using my own tools and own intellect. I’m not a slave to power. I’ll never be a fuckin zombie.

Rather than talk about “the trees” to avoid the forest, I paused blogging for a while. Why not? I don’t draw a salary for all that writing and I like watching my birdfeeder. Now that I’m back I don’t want to do “usual topics”. I will leave that for the F***book and Twatter crowd.

If you’re still in the scrum, have at it! More power to ya! I’m enjoying a seasonal reprieve but that’s not to say you’ve got to join me in my insolent peace.

My next several posts are a ten(-ish) part story of camping and sailing. I started writing it in spring of 2021. I never finished. I’m rectifying that. Based on my faulty memory and what I’d already saved on disk, I shall post an escapist (and true) story.

Remember, the story was written before President Potato went fully apeshit. It was written before he ordered me to die. It was written back when we were all exhausted by covid panic but Jihad against the unvaccinated was only a conspiracy theory. As with so many things these years, the difference between unrealistic conspiracy theory and true reality is about six months. Personally wishing harm on someone due to the presence or absence of an injection was still understood as evil when I wrote this story. The taboo hadn’t yet fallen.

Such a short number of months yet so much damage. Back then Australia wasn’t filling up concentration camps and Biden wasn’t hunting for Jews in the attic… yet. When editing, I left in frets and observations that haven’t aged well. They represent the true things of the time. So much water has flowed under the bridge that it’s good to observe what has actually happened. Somewhere between a third and half the population has been trained into behavior they’d never have formerly considered. To do so they must reject their own memories. Everything must be a panic. Urgent. Unprecedented. To kill a jew in 1938 you must be swept up in the fervor of 1938. I preserve the observations of a slightly different and saner world; so that you too may remember it.

Remember, a mad world doesn’t make you mad. As your mother used to say “if all your friends jumped off a cliff would you?” It’s now 2022 and now you know. Seemingly everyone jumped off the cliff. Have you?

If you must, build a boat. If it becomes necessary, it will be your salvation. Sail it to rationality.

A.C.

P.S. I realize too late the title seems to imply a camping trip with my new hot tent. (I mentioned my new camping gear at the following links; 1, 2, 3, 4, pics.) Sorry, I already had the sailing story half written and when the thermometer hit -37 (!) I bowed out of camping plans. There’s a time to test new gear. Temperatures that’ll freeze the balls off a wolverine are not the right time.