Adaptive Curmudgeon

As surely as night follows day and disgust follows an election, the flu follows January. Not the actual flu this year, just one of the many mundane illnesses that shows up and fucks everything.

It showed up like rust on a fender. Nothing big. No cause for alarm. That’s how it infiltrated the property. As always, it came riding on one of the smaller Compound denizens. I’ve often said that nobody who weighs less than a Labrador standing on a bag of feed should be allowed to leave the premises when germs are afoot. “You’re paranoid.” They tell me. I considered a road trip. Were my services needed somewhere safe? Maybe a toxic waste dump in New Jersey? A crack house cleanup in Detroit? Alas no. I stayed. What a fool!

Then came the coughing. The fevers. The whining.

Actually it was worse than that. No whining. Just a sort of resigned endurance; exhaustion, misery in silence. When kids stop whining you know it’s some serious shit. Manfully braving ickiness, I did my best Florence Nightingale routine. Shortly thereafter I was nailed too.

That’s it! You can all fend for yourself, the Curmudgeon is going to bed. I crawled under a blanket and stayed there a couple days. Unlike the smaller members of the household, I whined! Meanwhile Mrs. Curmudgeon fell prey.

“This is it.” Thought I. There’s nobody healthy but the cat and the dog. The dog can’t drive me to the doctor and the cat would let me die just to enjoy the show. The dog agreed. We were doomed.

Then, after a single day in convalescence, Mrs. Curmudgeon popped up bright and chipper and fled for work. I felt better too. So did the smaller components of the household. As soon as I was sure they were no longer disease vectors I packed them off to the sanatorium that they call a school. I had a fever and some grit in the carboretors but I clocked back into work.

Then; round two!

The bacteria, or viri, or creeping crud, or whatever you call it, came off the mat swinging and it had my number. I was pounded to dust, reconstituted as misery, passed through the bowels of regret, ripped from the lungs of despair, and in many other ways endured gross metaphors. Apparently I was going to miss more work.

Round 1 sucked but round 2 is playing for keeps.

Stay tuned for whiny unpleasant updates.

Turn the wayback machine to about 1992. During an unreasonably short period of time, just a few months really, the internet exploded. It went from the swamps of dial up bulletin boards and Oak e-mail systems, a steamy jungle of basement nerds and college computer science kids setting up dorm room servers, to a consumer “appliance”.

It happened outrageously quickly. Automobiles over horses, electric lights over oil lamps, Gutenberg press over illuminated manuscript, from my reading of history none of those seemed to phase in quite like the juggernaut of Americans with 486 computers and AOL floppies.

It was about then that I started getting spam. Obnoxious shit on-line was nothing new but spam, at that juncture in time, could have developed along many possible paths. Observing this I had one simple question:

“Why is there no spam for things a normal human might actually buy?”

At the dawn of the mass market internet I saw spam as nothing more than hideous billboards on the digital scenery and nobody goes through the hassle of creating a billboard unless they’re selling something you might buy. Yet spam shoveling dickheads were illogically trying to entice me to buy… to buy what? Gadgets that magically violate the laws of thermodynamics to double my car’s MPG (it was the nineties)? V1agra? Russian brides?

Really? Why?

All along I’ve wondered why there isn’t spam for goods and services a normal sentient adult human might actually purchase. Maybe something that’s small and easily shippable? Maybe something dull and uninteresting? Something that people actually need. Spark plugs? Fishing lures? Slippers? Screwdrivers? Hell, why haven’t I received spam that tried to sell me Spam?

It’s been like that forever. Spam never tried to sell me a damn thing I’d buy (or really anything any reasonable human would buy). By now it’s white noise and very little spam gets through my filters (which are set on “merciless” and do a decent job of it).

Last week some spam got through. What was it selling?

Toilet paper!

No kidding. I felt happy, vindicated, at peace with the world. It was a link to a place selling big rolls of toilet paper like you’d find in a truck stop shitter but if you’re really into buying bulk, at least it’s a product we all need and use. Finally I’d received spam for something a normal human would buy! For no clear reason, this made me happy.

Then I flagged it as spam, deleted it, burned it, and salted the earth where the ashes were buried. Because, duh! Spam.

Last week I recommended Amazon’s Pilot Episode for The Man In The High Castle. I stand by that. It was awesome. I hope everyone watches it and the show garners a zillion positive reviews. I’d like to crowbar Amazon’s ass off the couch and make those bastards film the rest of the series. (It’s possible you didn’t like it. If so may I recommend Ow My Balls for a more appropriate choice of entertainment?)

As for myself, I couldn’t wait. I bought The Man in the High Castle in book form. (Actually I bought it in Kindle form. For better or worse I’ve ditched paper so thoroughly I’m as likely to buy a paperback as an illuminated manuscript.)

I’m glad I picked it up. I’m halfway through and it’s been excellent. (I just wish I had more time to read. You know how it gets when you’ve got a killer book at hand but are continually distracted by… life.)

I’m thinking the folks at Amazon have their antennae tuned to the wind because they just dropped the price of the book. That’s right. While yours truly paid a reasonable (but not cheap) $7.69 everyone else can go get it for $2.99. Life; it ‘aint fair.

You heard it here first. Apparently it’s possible to buy a book from 1962 and and still make the purchase a week before the price drops. Is there a word for “53 years late to the party and still an early adopter”?

A.C.

P.S. Same warning as before, plot spoilers in the comments will result in execution.

There’s apparently some sort of sporting event going on; possibly involving advertisements. It occurs to me that not only do I not know who won, but I don’t know who was playing. However, I did wrap up some maintenance on my deer stand’s metal roof and read half a book. It has been a good day.

Philip K. Dick is one of the world’s weirder authors. He’s waaaaayyyyy out there; pretty much a world apart from everyone else. Here’s how I describe his writing:

Remember that one night you drank too much tequila and were absolutely certain that it made perfect sense to drunk dial your ex and then set your pants on fire? Philip K. Dick understands that moment. His moment is the time when it all fits together and it’s logical and right to do precisely this thing to which you’ve set your mind, and all the people telling you to put down the matches, they’re the fools! If only they would just listen to you it they’d understand too and then you’d all set your pants on fire together and it would fix everything. That’s Philip K. Dick’s natural state.

Philip K. Dick is going on the trip with or without you. In his best works the reader gets to come along. In his lesser works you’re halfway through the book and still haven’t figured out whether the main character is or is not dead (see Ubik).

Is he that good? Yes, excellent! Is he that bad? Absolutely, terribly bad! Is he confusing? Usually, in fact when it makes sense is when you’ve really lost it.

Lucky for us, Philip K. Dick was a prolific author. Even so I try to pace my reading of his stuff because the dude’s dead and when I’ve read the last Philip K. Dick book… then what? Also, if you binge read too much Philip K. Dick you’ll wind up spaced out and floating.

My favorite Philip K. Dick book is The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Yes, it is a snappy title. I read that a zillion years ago and loved it.

I held out forever to “save it” but last year I finally read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? It was pretty good. It was also entirely unlike it’s derivative movie, The Blade Runner. This doesn’t detract from either the book or the movie. With a guy like Philip K Dick you just accept that the movie and the book live on different dimensions. Also the movie had an unfair advantages. Daryl Hanna tried to kill a guy with her thighs (which might be worth it) and Rutger Hauer, a murderous inhuman creation, has the world’s greatest death scene.

Last month I bought Ubik to celebrate the resurrection of my kindle. It was pretty good but not his best. I got overly distracted by the whole “is this guy dead or not” question. I know; I’m such a square.

The same time I was puzzling out Ubik, Roberta X recommended a TV show called The Man in the High Castle. This is a Philip K. Dick book made into a TV Series. I intended to ignore it because TV pisses me off but Tam seconded the recommendation. You can’t ignore two such recommendations!

Holy shit! It wasn’t good it was goddamn awesome! The production quality was great. The acting was seamless. The plot was… Oh my God if I don’t get the plot figured out I’m gonna’ die! Don’t take my word for it, there are 6,400 reviews and the average is 4.8 out of 5 stars. In a perfect world any review below five would result in execution.

The Man in the High Castle is a Philip K. Dick book that I haven’t yet read. Those monsters at Amazon made one and only one episode and so now I’ve got to read the book immediately. I’m freaking out! Will the Nazis nuke San Fransisco? Will the Japanese invade Canon City, Colorado? Where the hell was Churchill and how did he get on the ilicit movie reel?

I recommend the following:

1. Watch The Man in the High Castle. Do it now (it’s free on Amazon Prime).
2. Comment on Amazon and tell them to get their ass in gear and film the rest of the series!
3. Buy The Book and read it.

So there you have it. I’m already on step 3.

A.C.

P.S.#1: The links to Amazon are sponsored. If you use them I get a haypenny and six farthings or some shit. Feel free to click a link and buy any darned thing you want on Amazon. It won’t cost you a penny and commercialism didn’t bias my recommendations. I always recommend Philip K. Dick without reservation. Well there is one reservation, if weird turns you off, click on the link and buy something else because P. K. Dick will totally melt your head.

P.S.#2: I do not want any spoilers in the comments. I just bought the book and I don’t want some tool hosing it up. If you’ve got a spoiler comment, please clamp it until I give the go ahead.

P.S.#3: There is a pricey Blade Runner (30th Anniversary Collector’s Edition) on Blu-ray. If you think you need it go ahead and buy it from the link so I can be rolling in that sweet sweet Amazon kickback dough. Think about it first. A book written in 1968 was turned into a movie in 1982 and it’s supposedly an even more super extra awesome experience because it’s on a form of media invented in 2006? Really? If you think this makes sense then Philip K. Dick is perfect for you.

A reader, who is obviously the coolest guy on planet earth, just sent me a box of heaven.

Yes! I have ALL THE SALMON!

I was inspired by the following cartoon (click image or this link). I hated student loans. I have slain them.

In a flurry of tapping keys I wrote long and bitterly. Find a teenager and make them read my post. Possibly tattoo it on their ass.

Recently I was talking with some kids and I realized every damn thing adults had told them about college was bullshit. I thought about my youth, had it happened to me? Yes! Yes it had! By God everything I was told about college was bullshit!* Here (in no particular order) are some sage bits of advice I wish I’d received:

1. “Work your way through” is dead: Grandpa paid his way through college? Good for him. It won’t happen for you. People who told me I could “work my way through college” were myopic assholes who didn’t realize times had changed. It’s currently impossible because the endless flood of government loans inflates tuition while a recent high school graduate’s labor remains roughly worthless. Young adults don’t earn enough to pay in real time for a university any more than they can fund a Lamborghini. Grandpa is recalling a financial picture that’s dead and if he persists have him put in a home.**
2. You may discover that you’re poor: High school seniors and helicopter parents page through lists of “best colleges” like it’s magic. Bullshit! When I went to college I discovered, shockingly, I was poor. I was from a poor town, in a poor county, with a poor background, and my statistically likely lifetime earnings was less than it might otherwise be if I’d been vacationing in Kennebunkport with the Bush family. Who knew? What that means to a high school senior is that the U.S. News and World Report College Rankings is likely to point toward colleges that might very well never pay off. Mimsy Rockefeller and her fellow Harvard legacy program upper class twits have financial calculations that are different than yours. Unless your dad is a senator that owns a yacht, you need to focus on the mundane. College is for an education, so you can get a decent job, so you can avoid spending your life freaking out over the electric bill. If you made it all the way to teenager without discovering life ‘aint fair, you might as well know now.
3. It’s OK to sample the real world: I was told I must go to college immediately. Once I’d tasted post high school freedom I’d never drag myself back into a classroom. I might “fall through the cracks”. I accepted this at face value and hustled into college. In retrospect I’d received terrible advice. Suppose I’d stumbled across a sufficient living doing something like trucking or welding or scrubbing bedpans or whatever? To an educator that’s “fell through the cracks”. Fuck them! It’s a reasonable life path. If you find something better than a McJob and it makes you happy, why prostrate yourself before the tuition bills of college? Because you’d disappoint your high school English lit teacher? Is that a good reason do do anything? If you’re self supporting and happy, enjoy it. Raise a family, see the Grand Canyon, train a dog. Forget the eggheads. Conversely if your foray into the real world is nothing more than a series of demeaning shit jobs and grinding poverty you’ve received nature’s hint to better oneself. You’ll hit the books with a lean and hungry motivation you heretofore lacked. You might want to find out if the real world truly sucks before you hand over fifty grand (at least!) to briefly flee it.
4. Getting accepted to a college is not the big deal you think it is: Paying for college is a big deal. Getting accepted is not. You’re dancing because you got a letter that they’ll lower themselves all the way down to your level and deign to take your filthy money? Whoopty shit! It’s your money. Those bastards work for you. Go where you belong and don’t be impressed by a letterhead and a fancy name. Another crop of high schoolers graduates every year and Yale can live without you more than you can afford to pay for Yale.
5. The opportunity cost of earning nothing is huge: Imagine you skip college and get a shit job… say minimum wage floor mopping. Unless you’re a drooling moron you’ll earn $15,000+/- a year; which sucks. Compare that to a kid who takes five years inching through a Bachelor’s program. When you’re both age 25 you’ve skated by on the dull end of a mop while he’s been cribbing book reports from the internet and pulling all nighters. Shockingly, you’re ahead by $75,000! Imagine that! College kid hasn’t made dime one and racked up God knows how much in loans. You (presumably) have used your time to land an apartment and a life and maybe a second hand car that runs and maybe you’re chief executive mop pusher (which is still a shit job but slightly better than ground zero). It’s going to take college kid years and years to make up for all that time earning zero. You’re going to be pissed off when he’s hired to be your assistant mop pusher and you discover he can’t even do that right. Eventually, maybe, if he’s lucky, he might possibly surpass your lowly shit job. Or he might not. Doctors, surgeons, lawyers, and engineers will catch up and blow past. Even then it’s not a big money dump, expect a gradual crossover in your late 40’s or 50’s of age. Often college kid will never surpass the several years of job abstinence if he picked majors poorly. Even for the high fliers, it’s not uncommon to see a 40 year old surgeon who’s been working like a dog forever and is currently poorer than dirt. Every moment you’re in college you’d better be learning your ass off because you’re earning squat.
6. Teachers are a bad example: I grew up in Bumfuck nowhere. Teachers (and oddly the veterinarian) were the only “educated people” I knew. I assumed they had unusually wise counsel. Was I an idiot or what? The common way to become a high school teacher is to take out largish student loans and forgo four years or more of work to land a modest paying job. Yee haw that’s a barn burning great idea. For a truer view of the job benefits of college you should talk to other college educated people; accountants, surveyors, pharmacists, meteorologists, or whomever you can find.
7. College without a return on investment is just mental masturbation: It feels good but you’re not accomplishing much. Ask adults about college. Your first question should be what was their return on investment from their personal choices in education. If they spout something about “making friends” and “life experience” immediately ignore anything else they say… on any subject… ever. You might want to key their car and kick their dog while you’re at it. If they say something like “I paid off my loans and now make $X more than I otherwise would have earned” listen to them because they have valuable knowledge.
8. You probably don’t need education at the foot of the masters: You are not on a Kung Fu journey of enlightenment. An expensive college theoretically has better professors but a recent high school graduate isn’t ready for that depth of study. It may be wise to start somewhere cheap and knock out a wad of college credits. Later, if you merit it and you want to, you can always transfer those cheap credits to the overpriced land of braniacs. Hint: what’s the difference between 3 credits in Freshman Literature at a community college versus MIT? Answer: The cost of a used Honda and nothing else.
9. If all you want is an easy “A” then drop out: I can write “A” on a piece of paper and charge you sixty grand. Is that what you want? Will that validate your feelings that you’re an extra special snowflake of awesomeness? Student loans make for a very expensive form of external validation. Don’t pay for any education that exists to expand your self esteem. It’s unearned and therefore false.
10. If you’re going to college to avoid getting a job stop it this very instant: There’s an easy way to avoid getting a job. Don’t get one. Sit on your ass, go fishing, get drunk, play Nintendo, watch TV. I don’t care. You can waste time for free. Dropping huge bucks on a college to justify doing nothing is the absolute most expensive nothing you’ll ever buy.
11. If you drop out of college, get a job: Any job will do. Don’t whine to me that you can’t find a job. You just can’t find a job you like. This is nature’s way of telling you to either lower your expectations or improve yourself. Either solution will work.
12. If you don’t get a paycheck, it’s not a job and you probably shouldn’t do it: If someone looks you in the eye and says the following: “This volunteer opportunity / internship will increase your job prospects” you’re getting hosed. Translation? You’re majoring in something that doesn’t merit a salary and the job prospects suck. Why in God’s name would you pay a college to teach you a skill that idiots will do for free? Furthermore why would you be that idiot? You should limit your lifetime intake of working for free to as little as possible. Like none. God has a word for time you spend not getting paid, it’s called leisure. If they don’t offer cash, go fishing instead. Fuck them.
13. Nobody gives a shit about sports: Once you’re about twenty three you’ll realize sports are games. Aside from Lebron James and Nike nobody makes money playing games. Don’t piss your education time away at a game.
14. Life is hard, go for the kill: In every college group there are a few real winners and a herd of undifferentiated scrum. If you’re the scrum either work hard to rise or you’re probably not going to get a big bang for the buck for your tuition. What I’m suggesting is not so hard. It’s college, have you seen how dumb your fellow students are? Suck it up and study. If not you’re just buying a credential. There are exemptions. If you’re the last native English speaker in Advanced Calculus amid fifty South Korean prodigies, perhaps average is indeed excellent.
15. Education is best used to prepare you to do things of value: Look at civilization. Notice that we’re not living in mud huts and starving to death? Huzzah! That’s because smart people make engines run and sewers operate and keep the lights on and deliver the friggin’ corn flakes. If they go away we’re all screwed. The economy rewards them with money. Notice what I didn’t mention? If everyone who can deconstruct Descartes suddenly vanished, nobody would give a shit. The economy doesn’t reward those people so they do things like protest and/or talk to their cat. Your future salary will reflect how much you’ll be needed during the zombie apocalypse. Your college choices should too.
16. Servants are expensive: Imagine someone really rich. Daddy Warbucks and his 1% cronies are sitting around ruling the world. How awesome is that lifestyle? Someone cooks their dinner, someone mows their lawn, someone maintains their house. If you’re a college student in a dorm with a meal plan you’ve got the same servants as Daddy Warbucks but you’re paying for it with loans. The cafeteria cooks your food so you can show up in your jammies for a late breakfast. Really? Rich senators and brilliant brain surgeons have to cook their own meals. Your parents don’t have servants. That’s how the economy sorts itself out. If your personal claim to fame is a B in Freshman lit and you have servants cooking you breakfast is it any wonder your student loans spiral to infinity? Every inch of lifestyle beyond hunkering in a box under a bridge is banking on you being awesome after college and it’s not without risk.
17. Student Loans are deadly serious, like owing Tony Soprano: If you buy a house or car you can’t afford you’ve got an asset that partially offsets your mistake. Maybe you can sell the car or house and get out from under it. Failing that you might faceplant into bankruptcy. Either way you’ve got a fair chance to emerge in one fiscal piece. Nothing, not God himself, can save you from Student Loans. This is serious, Congress wrote special laws just for student loans specifically for the purpose of hounding you to hell and back. They’ll never ever quit. When you die the IRS will dig up your corpse and sodomize it with a student loan bill. Loans might be unavoidable but picture Tony Soprano with an ice pick every time you sign a student loan. Frankly the mob is probably a lot more reasonable than the IRS.

I’ve said a lot of negative things about college. I’m not worried that I’ve gone overboard. American kids are steeped in bullshit about the value of education starting when they’re a wee tadpole in pre-school and ending when they’ve got a half million sunk into a PhD in puppetry. There’s plenty of room for counterbalancing. Now I’m going to say two positive things about college. TWO. That’s all the positive you’ll get.

1. It’s OK to go for it: Are you lean and hungry? Do you want to hone your mind like a weapon? Do you want to get in there and outshine your intellectual competition and be better, faster, stronger, than all of them? Do you love it when they grade on a curve? Do you wreck the curve for everyone else? Do you think it’s funny when you do it? Will you hit the job market like a friggin tornado the instant finals are done? Can you back your shit up with hard work and a steely eyed resolve. Do you think sleep is for pussies? Do you think a 40 hour work week is laughable and luxuries like taking a relaxed crap on Saturdays and seeing the sun during the month of finals is excessive? Under those circumstances and only those circumstances college might, just maybe, pay off handsomely. Go ahead and take modest student loans, the smallest you can possibly bear. Use the investment to venture into the den of iniquity that is college with the intention of getting right back out as quickly and efficiently as possible.
2. Intelligence is desirable: There is nothing particularly noble about stupidity. The human mind is what separates us from the apes and if you wish to use it, to really push the boundaries and develop that incredible organ between your ears, then college is one place among many where you may seek it’s fullest potential. This doesn’t mean pissing away a zillion dollars that you’ll never earn back. It means you can use that evolved monkey brain of yours to make college work for you as one path to true intelligence.

A.C.

* For more non-bullshit advice I’d suggest Aaron Clarey’s Book: Worthless: The Young Person’s Indispensable Guide to Choosing the Right Major.

** Since this is the internet, someone is going to comment that they really did work their way through school without being a coke dealer. Those few are the one in a thousand and usually sixty years old. Don’t bet on it.

*** In the interest of full disclosure I’m not against learning. I went to college(s) just like the rest of the seething throng. The difference is that I saw debt as the enemy and colleges as a drooling beast to be harnessed for my purposes. When I think of my alma mater(s) I smile and think “I made that bitch do my bidding”. Kids and their helicopter parents won’t read about that in U.S. News and World Report College Rankings.

The weather has been (relatively) warm. The snow has been excellent for snowball fights and snowman making, and more importantly ignoring homestead chores.

As for the snowman, the poor fella wasn’t made out of magic Christmas snow and eventually wound up assisting with archery practice.

Homesteading is dangerous and addictive. If you overthink it you’ll set the bar too high. One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to roll with the punches a bit more.

Recently I had to several chores to do. No biggie, I’ve got a system and when things work out it’s pretty efficient. Things don’t always work out. For one thing I was fried from a sporting event. (I’m not saying what it was, just assume it’s something cool like synchronized cage match armed tennis.) I reluctantly levered my ass off the couch for wood duty, plus I’ve got a painting project, had to haul garbage to the dump (you think I’d pay for a garbage man?), had to empty a fuel tank, and I needed to plow the driveway. I had a teenager helping and most of my equipment is functioning. Shoulda’ been easy. We tried mightily. Everything got screwed up.

Painting went south first. Crap got into the pail when I was stirring it and I made an unholy mess getting it out. Then I ran out of paint at an inopportune moment. I cleaned the brush and bailed.

We switched to loading the truck for a dump run. At the dump the teenager took a wild spin on a frozen tailgate. This became an epic swan dive into the ground. Amazingly, he wasn’t hurt. (Watching the fall from ten paces I expected a visit to the ER for a broken arm.) No injuries is good but it dampened our sagging spirits.

Back home the teenager attacked the snow with our old ATV while I gave the borrowed tractor a try. The borrowed tractor started and ran but the damn thing seems to want me dead. Then it started acting funky. I limped it back into place and killed the engine before it could impale me on a lever or set itself on fire.

I stacked wood in the wagon (a job that’s safer than playing with murderous tractors). Meanwhile Kid roared off to plow the path where we haul wood. Then… nothing. There’s a pattern one expects. The ATV, blade down, is supposed to tear down the path blasting snow to the side… then the ATV comes back.

I waited a bit, then investigated. I found a very stuck ATV and a bamboozled kid. The snow was too deep and the ATW was mired. He lifted the blade, I gave a push, and it skittered free. I sent Kid to do the driveway which is less likely to eat ATVs. Plus, I had a backup plan for the deep drift and I love implementing backup plans!

Back at the garage I fired up my snowblower. How cool am I to have redundant equipment? The snowblower picked up an evil curse but that was last winter. Last year I fired it up on the first snowfall, ran 100 yards, and sucked up a rock that jammed it hard. After “the jamming” I had it serviced and a month later tried it again. It sucked up a piece of bark in less than a minute and jammed again. I gave up for that year. I spent the summer bitching at anyone and anything that left any object where it could kill a snowblower.

This fall (before the snow!) I tore into it and removed the bark. It ran fine and then… didn’t. Go figure. A couple sheepish trips to the shop and I had her running like a top once again. After the repairs and a summer of patrolling for detritus on the lawn it was ready to earn its keep. You know where this is going. The curse returned. It fired up instantly (huzzah!) but 100 feet later I sucked up a rock that jammed it. ‘Aint life annoying? Kid saw my misery and zipped away; redundantly plowing the driveway twice.

Ten minutes of swearing and I had it running again. This time it threw snow like the champ it was meant to be. I have no idea why it was reliable for years and suddenly became an expensive rock detector. At any rate, I like snowblowers. There’s a difference between a plow which creates hard mountains of packed snow and a snow blower which hurls the shit to the horizon.

Time for the fuel.

Editorial note: Fossil fuel extraction on private lands in North Dakota is a done deal. I’ve seen trainloads of fuel traversing where the pipeline ‘aint. It’s not theoretical, it’s real, it’s now, and I’m happy about it. Lots of oil comes from shitholes like Libya or ridiculous places like the bottom of the ocean. A private cornfield in North Dakota is a far superior location. The president and not a small number of the left and right coasts are unhappy with cheap domestic fuel. Screw them! I don’t give a shit about anyone’s opinion until they’ve split a cord of wood in August mosquitoes and burned it during a twenty below blizzard. It’s easy to dislike cheap fuel when your every want and need is met by someone else and that’s the root of everything wrong in politics. (Obama also said a pipeline to Canadian supplies would send every last dime of revenue to Toronto and have no impact on American prices; because apparently magic faeries override Econ 101. I’m perversely impressed anyone can lie like that. I simply can’t speak deliberate falsehoods without my face twitching like a moron.) Since I can count and can see with my own two eyes I’ve been buying fuel oil while it’s cheap and will revert to 100% wood when oil goes expensive again.

Since I’d gone nuts with the snowblower I had room to muscle the truck into position. We dumped some fuel oil into the furnace tank without falling off the tailgate or getting the truck stuck. The first win of the day.

There was still a wagon load of wood to haul and unload. (In general it’s not furnace or wood it’s furnace and wood.) I sighed. I was sick and tired of this shit.

Then a snowball. Whack! Snowball fight? It. Is. On!

Twenty minutes later we were covered with snow and happy. I unilaterally declared we should stop working before we killed ourselves or broke something. We covered the wood with a tarp and went inside to drink cocoa.

That was four days ago. The wood is still outside. We made it a few days on the wood already in the house. Since then we’ve ran the furnace for 2 days. It has been a warm spell so I can be complacent. Homestead fail? Depends on how you look at it.

You’ll never pick up Mother Earth News and read about some redneck having a snowball fight when he should be stacking wood. Yet I think it was the right call. Running the furnace 2/365 days ‘aint the worst of fates and I’ve got nothing to prove. Also, thank you North Dakota!