[Please forgive the disjointed nature of this post. Usually I have more time to think and thus arrange my words. This time I just typed and let it roll.]
Forgive Me For I’m About To Bitch:
[Feel free to scroll to “The Good News” below.]
Christmas is one of those variable experiences where I almost always take a vacation but the reason for the vacation changes. Sometimes it’s because I will enjoy the break. Sometimes it’s because I need the break. This year was the latter. That’s not great but it is what it is.
I started out strong but the year was long; all years are long lately. I might have gotten a second wind but the rear half of December dished out hard weather. Regardless, I give myself some credit; I did pretty well. I mentally and spiritually held my own line against the creeping malaise of a society determined to fuck itself into the ground. Who can do more? Unfortunately, no man is an island. I find it exhausting living among the suicidal.
We’re all feeling the exhaustion. The society that was the richest, freest, and more or less most pleasant to live in compared to all of human history is already half trashed. It’s cracking up not because the Huns are charging over the hill with swords and horses, it’s bending under the weight of people who’d rather rule over ashes than make the next layer of civilization. Whether you blame the Boomers as a cause or think it’s just coincidence of timing, the thing that rises in the wake of their passing is inferior. The nation that landed on the moon 50 years ago struggles to keep the lights on in a generic snowstorm.
It’s not just us. It’s everyone. Europe does the same. (This week there were videos of French streets with mobs setting cars ablaze. Paris should not look like a riot Bangladesh.) Australia had vaccination concentration camps just a few years ago. New Zealand has outlawed smoking beyond a certain generation. Imagine a person who’s 50 years old but simply not “mature enough” to make the decision to light a cigar! Canada is… well it’s Canada. I never expected Canada to lose their shit… but they did. Canada used to be stable and dull and my favorite place. It’s run by a clown who is proud of his socks. He started this year willing to set his own nation on fire lest a couple hundred truckers keep a few freedoms. What happened to you guys? I miss Canada, the fishing was great.
I wonder if it’s the Gutenberg Press Volume 2? Mass hysteria oozes from propaganda laden devices and humans don’t seem to have an immune system ready to handle it. Elon releases data that confirms what most of us already knew. It is all lies. Pretty much everything on social media is in the service of one party. Always one party. Always more centralized, always more authoritarian, always more control.
Serve up enough lies and you break people. They foam at the mouth; practically in synchronization. In the past a sizeable portion would have been removed, even if by chance. Back in the recent past a person could miss TV News that evening and inadvertently go 24 hours without programming or indoctrination. Such people might instinctively think before acting. Now the current fad is all encompassing.
Anyone with a sense of history knows how this will go. People who know what’s coming have no impact. They say “hey, this is a bad idea” and it’s lost in the howls of people desperate to vax-up, or manipulate children, or rat on the neighbor for having incorrect opinions, or do whatever the next thing happens to be.
Virtually every group has lost its way. Groups of people ignore basic core purposes. Football teams fret over racism instead of touchdowns, churches mask up and forget about saving souls, anything bigger than a bowling league is in service to politics. Lemmings, even when they’ve gotten precisely what they want, suffer. They’re victims of their own choices and so are we.
The Kool-Aid drinkers erode the firmament; the stoic try to be the firmament.
This… this is the mood that made me take an extended Christmas vacation.
I watched a video of looters tearing apart a dollar store in a Buffalo snowstorm. Everything in a dollar store is cheap shit. You can walk into a dollar store with $100 and buy more than you can carry. Looting from a dollar store is like stealing your neighbor’s trash can.
So now you’ve got a shiny new… trash can?!? Why?
Envy is sin, stealing crap because of envy is not only a sin but also remarkably stupid.
Even the most woke douchebag in creation knows this won’t end well. The fools trained to burn Target and Walgreens in 2020 are moving down the food chain. A society that can’t maintain a fucking dollar store is pretty much on its way to mud huts. Maybe it’s worse than that… would mud huts be superior to the tents used by the homeless on the left coast?
All that’s left is to adapt; which I encourage you to do. You didn’t loot a store in a snowstorm. You did your best. Your life happened in a particular era, that’s not on you. Society encourages chaos to happen. Don’t deny that the chaos is happening but don’t put it on your shoulders either. Eventually the lights go out and a mob is wandering the streets looking to see if there’s cool shit to steal from a dollar store in the middle of snowdrifts. Some of us live very far away, but nobody is immune. Adapt and prepare, but don’t fret over what might have been.
Adapt isn’t all about beans and ammo. This is key, take a week off if you can. You might need it.
The Good News:
Even as I piss about society, I was trying to light a candle. That’s the good news.
I took hammer to anvil and beat a new Squirrels chapter from my overworked head. Humbly, I don’t think it was half bad. Shortly after that, I pulled up the drawbridge, declared it “vacation”, and went mostly offline.
The timing of my posts was intentional. What may seem like a tactical error was a choice. The posts went live the week before a big holiday, a time when I traditionally get far fewer “hits”. Indeed my hit count wasn’t particularly impressive.
In general, when you’ve labored hard on a series of posts you try to serve it up at an optimum time to get the maximum impact. I didn’t. I posted my small offering to the world in a time when I judged it most likely to brighten moods. This could go two ways; either pleasing people already happy and celebrating or perhaps (and more importantly) a free chuckle for the few who might find the season less than glittering.
Did it work? One never knows. The best you can do is try.
So there you have it. In a world of TicTok “influencers”, I ignored “hits” in pursuit of something indefinable.
Wise or dumb, I made a choice that reflected my goals and not that of the device on which you’re reading this post. That’s what it’s all about folks!
Incidentally, this doesn’t mean I’m a monk. I got a handful of kind donations during my Chapter posts and that was grand. Some tips were very generous! I wanted to happily howl at the moon when I got them. (I live in the country, if I want to howl then by God I’m in a place where it’s legally and socially acceptable to howl. And I do!) Several other tips were small but still deeply appreciated. Y’all made my day! Thanks to everyone!
As I turtled into seclusion, nature played a bigger role than usual. I got the Squirrels out just as a cold snap and serial blizzards laid siege to my rural homestead. I scrambled to keep furnaces fueled, firewood stacked, driveways drift-free, vehicles running, and myself thawed. It was like tacking a second entire life on top of one that is already busy.
None of this is unusual for late December. It was a hectic time but it is December. Occasional crunches during storms are the nature of rural life. I’m still alive and my pipes are thawed; who could ask for more?
Just days before the Christmas, another curveball came across the plate. The whole family had plans to travel. One by one, every detail fell apart. Eventually we all agreed, by mutual acceptance of external forces, that travel just wasn’t happening. Frankly, the collapsed plans were good fortune in disguise. The snow put us in a mood to stay put. By chance or plan, Curmudgeon Compound became a haven of relaxed happiness. Even better, some nearby and well loved guests were more than happy to show up and brighten spirits.
It was probably the best and least stressful Christmas I’ve had in years! Rather than a nightmare of cancelled flights and frustration we became a joyous little bunch of guests smiling at the pretty snowdrifts. How cool is that?
I didn’t do much (any) decorating. I kept the house standing and that was work enough! By Christmas eve I was toast. I’d spent all day struggling with my tractor. Sometimes it operates wonky in the coldest weather. At -20 it complained mightily when pressed into service.
Nor had I properly dressed for conditions. Usually the tractor’s cab will eventually warm up to tolerable. At -20 it stayed cold. The glass box was like the frozen foods in a grocery store. I worked the controls and shivered.
My labors were compounded by hauling wood that was frozen and drifted. I wound up sore and tired. But I’d done my duty. The driveway was open for guests and the woodstove was merrily active. Success!
Again, this isn’t unexpected and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Brutal winters keep bossy people far from my life. Also, when you’re having an argument with a tractor’s iced hose clamp you’re “in the moment”. Unlike the world at large where formerly adult human beings claim to fret over concepts like “birthing persons”, I had intelligent and logical interactions with the real world (a frozen tractor).
I’d rather argue with a tractor than endure the shrieking of a purple haired college professor. I got the tractor to run. The tractor did useful work. I couldn’t make a purple haired college professor useful to society even if I had six months and a crowbar.
Rural life is amazingly REAL. If you’re missing that in life, you know where to find it.
My next post will make a lot more sense. See ya then.
As I said about a week ago. You keeping it real helps me deal with the unreal as well. I’d love to send you a bottle of my favorite scotch. Blogs by oldNFO and Sarah Hoyt point to the same breakdown of society. In a way I feel blessed. Having had depression era parents and grandparents from the old country who farmed with horses gives you a nice lens to see the coming shitshow and know what real is actually like. Congrats on dealing with that cold. It has been awhile since we’ve dealt with that.
I’m glad you like my stuff and apparently it does some good out there. I’ll continue keeping it real… including the talking squirrels. 🙂
Thanks for the offer of scotch. I’m typing this reply while sipping rye bourbon so I’m more or less already there.
I have to apologize for a disjointed post. I had a really great Christmas but was also filled with gripes about the predictably failing of woke society. How I figured I could cram the two ideas into one post is beyond me.
I know what you mean about rural life, but I left the cold in WNY and don’t shiver as much in EastTN!
Need a backhoe or a shovel for the purple haired problem…
Thanks for the read. Happy New Year. Stay sane.
” I couldn’t make a purple haired college professor useful to society even if I had six months and a crowbar.”
Yes, you can Compost IT through a pig.
More than a few drunken abusive farmers have disappeared into bacon and ham.
As Fiddler on the Roof says “Tradition! Tradition!”.
Concerning ‘dollar’ stores.:
About 20 years ago, Dollar General opened a store right next to one of Trashville’s worst housing projects, for the stated-on-TV purpose of ‘providing employment to the underprivileged and underemployed’.
A year or so later, a member of The Diversity got shot innocently walking home from an evening reading the Bible to his blind grandmother. Well, actually he pointed a firearm at a cop & got shot dead.
The other Diverse People got angry, rioted, and burn their own neighborhood down (stop me if you’ve heard this before). Among the things burned was the Dollar General store intended to provide the ‘hood with gainful employment. Not to worry, though! DG promptly announced, in their best impression of “of course we’re going to rebuild on this flood plain, we always have after we’ve been washed away”, that they would rebuild the store.
That, friends and neighbors, is why I haven’t shopped at Dollar General in many years.
Tractor problems, eh? The Mighty Ferguson (20hp of Welded Steel and Sex Appeal!) went tango uniform last week after the freezing rain and snow, Completely dead. It took a few minutes to find it was a $3 ignition switch that failed (it was parked outside, and I think water entered the switch and then expanded). Once replaced with an old toggle switch she fired right up at -20F and bladed me out just fine. The 2016 Bobcat with the nice heated cab just bitched. Glow plugs, crank, chuff-chuff-chuff-ack! Glow plugs, crank, chuff-chuff-chuff-ack! The 750-watt block heater just isn’t enough to heat the block at -20, and while #1 diesel doesn’t gel as easily (particularly when fortified with a pint of Howe’s per tank) the cetane rating is lower so doesn’t start as easily. Frustrating. You know those heaters that look like a jet engine and burn kerosene, or diesel if you don’t care about the smell? I opened the back hatch on the Bobcat, took that old heater I hadn’t used in a decade and pointed it right at the engine block from about 6 feet away, then sat by the wood stove sipping coffee for 10 minutes. She fired right up after that, glow plugs barely required. I suspect a heater and a tarp would work miracles on your tractor’s winter behavior (get a used, torn up canvas tarp one of your farmer neighbors uses on their grain trailer if you can, they’re heavy canvas and less likely to catch fire or melt than the plastic stuff).
Generally speaking, most equipment problems can be solved by getting water out of the hydraulics and getting the engine warm enough to fire. My Bobcat and your tractor have high-pressure hydraulics, and given a bit of time ice crystals will melt under the pressure and you’ll be fine, but pre-warming sure helps and the ice crystals clog the filters so warm them as well. (In the case of the Fergie, I use hydraulic and transmission fluid without emulsifiers, so the water collects at the bottom and freezes as an inert chunk that doesn’t bother anything. Don’t have a choice with the high-pressure stuff like the Bobcat. Who thought that was an improvement?) My prep-for-winter ritual on the Bobcat is, once it’s below 20 degrees or so I start it for a couple minutes, run the hydraulics for another couple, and replace the hydraulic and fuel filters which should now be full of ice crystals. I also change the engine oil and run 0w-20 synthetic so it’ll crank over faster, and replace with normal in the spring. It costs me a bit of oil, sure, but I can spritz the waste oil on the fire in the wood stove if it’s particularly cold, and while I hate spending $50 for engine oil I don’t need I figure when it’s -20 I’d spend $50 to have it start versus being stuck. Beyond that, come November I let the fuel tank get down to 1/4 or so and fill with straight #1 diesel and add some Howes for good measure and add only #1 until March. Less power, but again I don’t need a non-running diesel come winter and I’ll pay the extra in fuel costs to not have to bother thawing a gelled-up skid-steer when I really need to use it.
As for Christmas, the same storm had me home as well. We were supposed to leave Friday for the in-laws, so let the kids open a couple of gifts Thursday night. Friday I called it, and we opened a couple more. A new tradition seems to have started, we opened a couple more on Saturday and then, Sunday, stuck at home, we opened the remainder. My Good Wife was sort of in the dumps about the non-traditional Christmas but the kids really seemed to enjoy it, and honestly I rather liked the four days of New Toys versus one big ceremony followed by a feasting. It all seemed much more relaxed and thus enjoyable.
Good luck. 8″ of the white stuff coming tomorrow. It’s a great feeling knowing I’m ready. And I have new mittens, thoughtfully gifted by My Good Wife. All in all, can’t ask for more.
– Max
I never thought about #1 being hard starting. Usually I’m on #1 all winter but this time I was on blend 70:30 of #2:#1. My bad for reading the pump wrong when I bought it. I’m thinking of getting a battery maintainer for the tractor. I have them on my road vehicles and it’s a noticeable difference; especially when combined with a block heater.