Adaptive Curmudgeon

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago

Yeah, shit’s fucked up. So what?

I’m trying to be a ray of sunshine. It’s not easy. In general I’m as cheerful as a Curmudgeon gets… which ain’t much.

But I’m getting worried about people. I feel like they need a kick in the ass. I’m getting a vibe of despair in some of my comments (including some private conversations).

Despair is a sin. Sure, we all go there sometimes, but don’t hang out there. It’s a bad neighborhood.

Didn’t you read Dune? Don’t you know fear is the mindkiller?

Too much fear, and misery, and resignation, and you’ve already built your own cage. Don’t do that. Don’t give up on yourself. More importantly don’t infect others with defeat. Never make the world a worse place.

Some of y’all are clinging to misery like an alcoholic clutches his last can of gay Bud Light. (See what I did there? Never pass up a potential punchline!)

I withdrew (incompletely and temporarily) from comment about current politics. Why would a sane person stay engaged? Right now politics is deeply unserious. It’s stupid fractally. It’s stupid at scales large and small. It’s stupid as seen from a thousand miles away and it’s stupid at the molecular level. It’s stupid in milliseconds and it’s stupid in years.

Rather than let that shit clog my colon, I’m trying to take the high road. I ponder in good faith. What can one learn from all this stupid? What does the accelerating pace of chaos really mean? Is a person who says provably stupid things actually deluded or acting in malice? Is there anything linking dipshit NPCs to Jaynes’ Bicameral Mind? If you took a monkey and shoved a cell phone up its ass would it get as messed up as a Gen Z who cuts off their dick after watching TikTok? What is the true meaning of someone wearing a mask alone in their car?

One thing I came to, through cognition while sitting under a sacred fig tree, is that our enemies are hollow. Look at ’em! Do they look healthy, bold, strong, clever, intelligent? Do they look like they’re growing and becoming more excellent in their evilness?

Hell no! They’re droolingly stupid! Many are geriatric losers and others are clueless waifs that will be eaten by reality.

The geriatrics are losing steam fast. Why not be happy about that?

Pissed off about California’s left coast’s politics? Then look at their two most powerful politicians. Nancy Pelosi has been in Congress since 1987 and her husband has been having gay naked hammer fights in the living room. She’s going to resign soon. To what end? To spend more time with her husband? Diane Feinstein has been a barnacle on humanity since ’92 and she’s toast. She’ll either resign or die pretty soon. Kamala Harris is half their age and is reputed to have sucked dick all the way to the office of the Vice President. Have you noticed that there isn’t a single living human being that likes her?

Speaking of uniparty toads, Mitch McConnell has been in the senate since 1985 and he’ll probably be gone soon. People of his own party call him “Turtle”.

The press lied hard to drag candidate John Fetterman across the finish line despite his stroke. So now the guy is missing in a hospital somewhere. Fetterman reminds me of a guy who won more votes than any other candidate in history without having to hardly campaign at all. He can barely complete a sentence.

I’m supposed to be driven to despair by that crew of losers? Call me back when you’ve got Stalin on the line.

The point is, none of us like where things are or where it’s going, but we are faced with enemies that… well… just look at ’em. Things could be worse. The bitch who’s fucking up some kid’s mind in a university literature course looks like this:

But she isn’t the same as a fucking Terminator:

I get it, things are dire. They could be better. We could have teachers that teach, doctors that cure, police that enforce laws as written, and judges that show judgement.

But we don’t. So embrace the suck. It could be a lot worse!

It feels like our side is slowly getting addicted to misery. Nut up! Look at the miracles that abound. Look how damn good we’ve got it.

Even as western societies in a dozen countries teeter on the edge we’re pretty damn close to the richest, happiest, fattest, laziest, most well treated human beings ever to walk the earth. The grid is still up, the roads are mostly paved, the McRib might come back this summer. This is not the end of everything. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

The HOA Karen might bitch about your yard but when is the last time Genghis Kahn burned down your garage? When I sail my little homemade boat will a Viking Longboat  show up and attack? If they ban gas stoves and incandescent lights is that really Orwell’s vision of a boot stomping on a human face forever?

If your work is annoying because six identical psychotic green haired lesbians harpies make you sit through a Powerpoint about diversity… isn’t that still better than dying of black lung from the coal mines?

Considering the baseline level of horror that is human existence, $5 eggs and bumbling mis-rule by geriatric morons isn’t the worst of fates. Things are still much better than they could be. Shit is damn near fabulous!

Don’t focus on the negative and potential. Focus on the positive and actual. Here’s a real world example, guns:

There’s a dozen tools in DC right now fiddling with lawfare. They’re re-interpreting some policy somewhere in a way that makes a dictionary cry. What’s new? They’ll write a memo that’ll somehow function in a law-ish way. So what? They’ll make a register of folding bumpstock plastic Glock assault revolvers based on some spastic interpretation of the word “infringe”. We live in a world where more than half the states have Constitutional carry and we’re acting like it’s the end times.

The various infringements are dumb but it’s not Stalin’s minions kicking down the door… yet. Enjoy the liberty you have.

In the big picture, stupid rules have accomplished the opposite of disarmament. The more they squeeze the less they grasp. The Clinton “Assault Weapons” Ban of 1994 faffed about with dipshit cosmetics like bayonet lugs and folding stocks. This made us thirst for those particular gadgets. 30 years later everyone and their dog has a closet full of AR-15s. Americans buy enough of them annually to equip an army. And we practice with ’em too. If you go to a range and some dude whips out an AR, you don’t even notice. The nightmare military style death reaper is as rare as a Honda Civic. Thanks Bill!

Whenever you feel like whining, do something. Think they’re going too far? Then get off your ass and walk into a shop and pick up another firearm. In 20 minutes you can pick out a bolt action 300 win mag, top it with a scope that’ll pick out the ass-hairs on a gnat, and spend the weekend putting six shots out of six into the diameter of a DVD at 300 yards. Can you imagine how pathetic the gun grabbers would feel if they new how little an arm brace really matters?

Regular generic rednecks like me will pick off a poker chip at 100 yards and it’s not even worth noticing. Meanwhile we’re bitching about some marginal restriction so that the NRA can muster up more funding.

I get it. The gun control shit never stops and it’s infuriating. In a perfect world, I’d have a fuckin howitzer. I’d paint “shall not be infringed” on the side, pick off elk from a half mile away, and carry out the quarters with a bulldozer. But if you look at it honestly, our world is closer to that than other options. We whine about things a disarmed Soviet peasant in 1983 would weep to ponder.

Buck up folks. None of us has yet had to charge a machine gun nest or do a Rambo style evasive forest run. Shit may suck, but it’s all paperwork and mindfucks. Rub some dirt on it and go back to enjoying life.

As always, thanks for listening.

A.C.

OODA…

Observe. Orient. Decide. Act.

Originally coined by Air Force Colonel John Boyd, it’s a concept originally intended for military combat. Since then it has been applied in any environment where two forces are in direct competition.

Oversimplifying greatly, the idea is that you must complete your OODA loop before your competitor does. If you succeed at this, you have taken initiative. This forces your opponent to react to your actions instead of initiating his own. Options that might benefit your opponent are lost to him. You maintain control as they flail about trying to react to whatever you choose to do.

OODA is a loop. As soon as you have performed an action you try mightily to complete the next OODA loop. You always want to be first. Stay inside your opponent’s loop. Always react just a little faster than your opponent. Keep them reacting instead of initiating.

Done properly, the person with the quicker OODA loop will almost always lead the slower, confused, hapless, opponent around like a puppet on a string. If you want a practical demonstration, watch mismatched marital artists sparring. The higher skilled practitioner will know what his opponent will do almost before his opponent has the idea. The master will always complete his OODA loop first. He will benefit from that sliver of time he’s created. He can easily disrupt his opponent’s half-executed action, he has time to setup and block like a brick wall, should he wish to attack, it will be devastating, minutely targeted, and appear lighting fast. He will dominate the situation not merely through physical prowess but through mental prowess as well. A master anticipates and out maneuvers a novice like he’s got mind control (which in a way, he does).

Why do I mention this? Because there’s power in understanding the pace of events. Forget about karate masters and Boyd’s aerial combat and look around you. Have you noticed that the pace of events has accelerated?

Recall that in 2020 a pathogen appeared and became the fire that lit so many fuses. At the time, I knew nothing more than anyone else. We all started at roughly the same level.

I took immediate action. I retreated to Curmudgeon Compound and did a genuine no-bullshit self quarantine. I’ll note that this was a real quarantine, not “follow the arrows in Walmart” faffing about quarantine-theater. You can’t be half-quarantined any more than you can be half-pregnant.

Self quarantine was my choice. I was well prepared for it and I didn’t hesitate. Why would I? A week too early is better than an hour too late. Besides, it wasn’t that big of a deal. If I was wrong I could always quit quarantining.

That’s an action I can and did on my own in a way that many others did not:

I chose to initiate my own quarantine at will. Should the action be unwarranted I could cancel it. When further data showed it to be unnecessary I did cancel it. I was in charge of my own fate far more than most people in the same situation.

That’s how the OODA loop works. Those first few weeks while morons were fighting over toilet paper I was safely at home. I’d done OODA loop properly.

OODA is an iterative process. While everyone else was sitting around waiting for the CDC to interpret sheep’s entrails or whatever dumb thing it does in lieu of true research, I was already doing the next loop. The first actual non-bullshit data I found were reports of the Diamond Princess cruise ship. It had an outbreak of COVID and was quarantined at sea. Could there be a better experimental design?

Everyone had opinions to voice loudly; none of which mattered. Opinion based on no data is never a concern to me. I simply tune it out. The cruise ship data was pretty good news. Of 3,711 people on board only 712 became infected. As expected, some number of people died; either by happenstance or because of the virus. How many died? 14.

14 / 3,711 = 0.00377

Nothing uttered by anyone anywhere was more useful than that simple “experiment”. Reality is that which exists regardless of your opinion and the reality wasn’t too bad. Nearly every human on earth was in a vastly better situation than a concentrated floating Petri dish filled with people of the health, vigor, and age of cruise ship passengers. When geezers packed on a boat have a 99.6% chance of survival it’s not the end of the world.

That’s what they call… a clue.

My quarantine ended around then. Sure, various governors and CDC dipshits and store managers did whatever they did… but none of it mattered to me.

Also I’d figured out a worst case. I’m not sure the average rate of death for 3,700 people on a boat but it has to be more than zero. Any group of people will have a few that stroke out or blow an aorta. Those unfortunate souls were part of the 14 deaths. Thus, 0.00377 was the maximum danger from the pathogen. Fourteen dead isn’t a happy thing but it’s not the black plague either. Another OODA loop complete.

In another OODA loop I gradually understood that people don’t know humans are mortal. Oh sure, they know it as a statement, but they don’t know it in their heart. Any risk of death anywhere and they lose their shit. “If it just saves one life!”

They had an unreasonable expectation that nobody should die ever. So they overreacted. They also failed to weigh alternatives. Kicking everyone out of hospitals because of a COVID freak out killed off how many people from deferred medicine? Fucking with kid’s lives caused how many suicides? They didn’t care because someone dying invisibly didn’t really happen in their way of thinking.

From my point of view, whenever people calmed the fuck down and counted knowable things, they got reasonable answers. 99.6% survival isn’t Godzilla eating Tokyo. It’s four in a thousand. Part of the uncertainty that all mortal beings face. Memento mori motherfuckers! I don’t know the odds that I’ll die when I take my morning shit, but know it’s not zero. If Karen at the HOA hasn’t come to grips with that, I don’t care. That bitch can wear three masks and hide in her basement until her dozen cats eat her. I sure as hell won’t let a fool like that change my life’s decisions.

Another OODA loop taught me that people couldn’t tell the difference between 0.5 and 0.00377. Dire clickbait articles flooded the internet. “It’s a disaster! Six people died in Iowa!” Guys like me ask “how many people in Iowa die normally”. Sheep don’t ask questions like that.

Another OODA loop was realizing that people can’t assess an “expert’s” track record. Fauchi, cretin that he is, relived his glory days of being wrong about the AIDS panic. If Paul Krugman ran his own checkbook and Fauchi ran his own health like the advice they give others they’d be broke and sick in a week. Governors unearthed “experts” as needed. They made speeches flanked by dweebs in lab coats.

Here’s a hint, if you’re wearing a lab coat while standing at a podium; you’re a prop and the coat is a costume. A lab coat is for when you’re in a lab.

People using words like “depopulate” and “black death” made bad decisions and tried to force it on others. Tent hospitals were erected. A Navy hospital ship was docked at New York City (it was never used). Schools were closed and kids were scrambled. If you wonder what kind of mess happens to a kid who lost 2 years of social interaction, look for the ones cutting off their dick and tits.

Everyone seemed so certain of things that simply weren’t true. I looked hard for information to verify their stupid actions; to reject my contrarian ideas. I found none. I drove around looking out of my car windshield. I didn’t see dead bodies. I saw things shut down not by illness but panic. If you turned off social media and walked around the earth you’d be hard pressed to find actual proof a pathogen existed at all. (I’m not saying it didn’t exist, I’m saying you can’t easily detect 0.00377. Hell, you can smoke Pall Malls for 20 years before you get cancer and then maybe none at all.)

OODA loops include “Act”. I quit my quarantine after a few weeks. It was unnecessary. I was confident I’d arrived at that conclusion through reason. I’m not dead; which isn’t proof I was wise but it’s a good sign. Others never came to their own conclusions and never came up for air. They shit themselves and they’ll probably never be the same.

Three years and two months later, my last post was about repealing the “state of emergency” that has been continuously in place. Last week I spoke with a nurse who experienced her first day without a mask in 38 months. She was giddy with joy.

I never wore a mask. Nor did I get the shot. My OODA loop was three years faster than society.

Remember I was talking about acceleration. The Hunter Biden laptop was unearthed in 2020. I knew it was real in late 2020. My OODA loop was short. Three years later it’s completely verified fact. A few Kool-Aid drinkers still think it’s a misinformation but they’re unteachable and therefore irrelevant. Elapsed time on that mess? Maybe 2 years. Faster than the two weeks becomes three years that was the COVID panic.

What about the spy balloon? In February, I wrote America let the Chinese Balloon drag its geopolitical nutsack across America’s face. At the time the Biden* administration said that the spy balloon had collected no spy data. What gibbering fool believes that?

My OODA loop on rejecting that spin was about eleven seconds. Now, the scuttlebutt is that by gosh by golly a giant spy balloon might have been equipped with a radio to transmit collected data. We got some real geniuses on the case! At least it only took them two months to figure it out.

See the pattern of fabrications with decreasing lifespan?

“COVID will mow us down like mice in a blender.” 3+ years.

“51 lying jackoffs assert Hunter Biden’s laptop is a Russian fabrication.” 2 years.

“The spy balloon inexplicably didn’t do any spying.” 2 months

Those who lie are facing people with a “Let’s Go Brandon” attitude. They’re trying to throw new lies so fast that old ones are forgotten before resolution. It gives the appearance of a society in collapse; because that’s what it is. So long as your OODA loop is inside theirs you are initiating rational responses. If you’re just reacting to the bullshit of the day, you’re still their puppet.

Here’s a test: what was going on while the nation spent a week freaking out about Trump’s arrest? Also who didn’t know this was coming? It’s 2023! A rational agent can’t get to 2023 and yet be shocked that Trump is again mired in lawfare emanating from a biased source. Your OODA loop should have seen that coming years ago!

Stay cool while those that would oppose us throw more and more chaos at us. They’re trying to get inside our OODA loop but they’re just too fucking dumb. The best they can cause is misery and panic. You may not be able to avoid misery but it’s inexcusable to panic. You already know their track record for lying and obfuscation. Stay frosty as society collapses; it’ll happen first slowly and then all at once. The “slowly” part is already over.

This isn’t your fault. It’s not your cross to bear. If the whole of society insists on shitting its own pants, that’s not on you. Your OODA loop should not be in service of some scumbag allocating tax dollars, it should maintain yourself and your soul. Not acting like incontinent fucking sheep is the first step to sanity and you probably already mastered that. Now repeat the loop.

As I thought about the ever accelerating rate of stupid things I remembered blipverts. The current shit hitting the fan is going to close in on that speed. Instantaneous cascades of disasters are in our future.

Back when Hollywood wasn’t entirely sub-literate gay losers with political agendas, they did creative things. One of them was Max Headroom. In 1987 an irreverent little sci-fi TV show with a glitchy talking AI wiseass had the concept of micro-fast commercials.

In keeping with the show’s dark premises, the “blipverts” made people explode. In keeping the the show’s sense of humor, only lazy, indolent, morons who watch too much TV were injured. Part of the joke was that anyone with the sense to watch only reasonable amounts of TV was fine.

Witness the glory of a blipvert!

*Biden got more votes than any other candidate in history and he’s got the political prisoners to prove it.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That, pursuant to section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622), the national emergency declared by the finding of the President on March 13, 2020, in Proclamation 9994 (85 Fed. Reg. 15337) is hereby terminated.

Passed by the House of Representatives February 1, 2023.

Passed by the Senate March 29, 2023 (yesterday).

The bill will pass. It’s very unlikely Biden will veto it.*

Did you hear about it in the news? Why not? What could possibly be more important?

I want to pause here. Please join me. Please join me to think.

Wise people reflect on the world in which they live. Join me at this juncture for intelligent, purposeful, thought.

Try hard to remember March 13th, 2020. Don’t fret over the panic of the day. Whatever Biden or his handlers are up to, the war in Ukraine, your taxes, what you want for lunch, or when you’ll plant your garden… that can all wait.

Concentrate. Free your mind of short term concerns. Try very hard to focus on one thing. Put away your cell phone. Turn off the TV or radio. Grant yourself a few minutes to think.

What has happened in your life since March 13th 2020?

Life revolves around what I call “points of inflection”. Often these are for you alone. They’ll become sealed in your mind; the birth of a child, the day a divorce was finalized, a car accident, a wedding. You will remember those moments because at that very moment, you committed them to memory with your whole heart and mind.

Depending on your age, you might remember different societal events; the first time man walked on the moon, the death of JFK, the fall of the Berlin Wall. You will remember because it marked a change between before and after. You can tell a person’s age by what they remember. Is it the day the Twin Towers fell, or when Truman dropped the bomb on Japan?

Here’s a thing to ponder. The youth have learned the COVID lesson deeper than you have:

A new generation will remember the day their school closed. They will remember it until they die. They will remember the experience stronger and deeper than you because they had no adult life on which to lean. Their experience had disruption in a way you cannot share.

Life is short and many voices vie to distract you. The moments you lose through distraction or inattention make you less aware of the world.

The less aware you become, the less human you become.

I was traveling on March 13th 2020. I knew that day was a big deal. I watched with care.  During that day, I saw people in many places and observed every detail. What were they doing? How did they look? What was the moment like?

I’d known March 13th’s stampede was possible. I saw it coming. I’d bought a huge pile of groceries two weeks prior. I was prepared to self-quarantine according to my own rational logic. I had prepared as well as anyone could be.

On March 13th, I knew a day of inflection had arrived.

I didn’t know where it was going but I knew it was going all the way.

Up until that day, we could have pulled back from the precipice. After that day it was freefall. People were overreacting right at the gate! They hadn’t decided to use this new situation as a weapon against each other but it was inevitable.

People hadn’t started tearing their own nations apart. I believed nations, unlike people, would persist through inertia if nothing else. I was incorrect.

Nobody knew how far the pathogen had spread but the panic was already a nearly unrelated thing. It spread at a different rate to different places. Eventually the panic (and pathogen) spread to every developed nation. I saw the spread of the pathogen as a certainty. That’s just biology. However, I was shocked by the global range of panic.

I made a mistake that day. I underestimated the pain and division that would ensue. I overestimated human reason. I overestimated spiritual capacity. I overestimated societal resilience. I thought most people were, for want of a better word, adults.

I wasn’t aware of the vastness of human mental and emotional frailty. I had no grasp of the limitations of people in groups.

I’d read a lot of history. I was always baffled how whole nations stumbled into obvious blunders; World War 1, concentration camps, the fall of Rome. I was too limited to understand. In the last three years I have grown to understand. I learned how deeply and completely unreasonable people can be. Auschwitz, Caligula, the Salem Witch Trials, Barbarians crossing the Rhine in 406… these I understand in a new way.

I was not capable of imagining what the next three years would hold. Were you?

“Two weeks to flatten the curve” officially lasted 158 weeks. Nearly everyone figured it out years ago. A few poor fools will wear masks until they die.

The world is utterly changed. March 13th, 2020 is the other side of a vast gulf. I can’t return. You can’t return. The previous world is gone. At the core, my understanding of humanity has changed. Hopefully your understanding grew too.

We live in the aftermath. Not an aftermath of the pathogen but of the panic. There is no resilience in anything. In my nation shakes and sways. Elections look sketchy not just occasionally but often. Cities finance and foment their own riots. The dollar fades. We get used to shortages and swings in our food supply. Police don’t default to enforcing laws, nor do courts. The FBI does domestic spying. It either encourages or creates domestic terrorism. It does this openly. Every electronic device is built to spy on citizens. Young people have never had a privacy in their entire lives. For this reason and others, they’re emotional wrecks.

The changes of the last three years were baked in the cake. They were going to happen anyway. All they needed was the triggering event.

On March 13th 2020 the panic (not the pathogen) made things which were impossible into things that were coveted by the fearful, and subsequently inflicted upon them. Those who tried to use reason were stampeded; as was always intended.

This isn’t limited to America. Every human endeavor was shocked. Some were more resilient than others. No country was unscathed; except maybe Africa. Weaker countries (many of them) drift towards authoritarians and centralized control. Some countries (perhaps my own) collapsed. Weaker people fell apart. Families broke apart. Unworthy neighbors lost trust and worthy ones were embraced. Strong people were tested as well as the weak. Strong people, like strong societies (such as the Amish) emerged perhaps wiser and more stoic. The weak acted shamefully.

Everyone knows what they did during the last three years. We all gained the priceless gift of knowing our true nature.

Governments didn’t fare well. Countries are no longer nations. Government no longer obtain the consent of the governed. All hell breaks loose. Governments do things to which the people don’t consent. Governments themselves are hard pressed to know why.

Citizens to petition their governments for redress of grievances and are ignored. Some become subjects; trading freedom for the luxury of being someone else’s pet. They look to bureaucrats for instruction on how to live. Others become a nation unto themselves; rightly recognizing they answer only to themselves or God. Bureaucracies become more powerful and also more irrelevant.

Lacking reasoned lawful political discourse, chaos breaks out in unpredictable ways. France has riots. Not just occasionally but during most summers. So does America. So does Europe. So does Canada. So does Brazil. Riots are common everywhere. Several nations, simultaneously, teeter on the edge. It will continue so long as the question of honorable governance is neither addressed nor resolved.

Canada drifts aimlessly under Trudeau. Nobody knows who’s running America. Denmark persecutes farmers until there’s a wild shift in governance. Iran struggles to keep the lid on their self-made caldron. Israel is having riots this week. It’s not a question of “if” there will be more riots; only “how many”, “how destructive”, and “for how long”.

Governments everywhere fail to govern wisely. The UK flails about for years; trying to Brexit or not Brexit. Australia built quarantine camps and imprisoned people. Canada froze trucker’s bank accounts. America has 500+ political prisoners and periodically encircles its seat of governance with concertina wire. The next generation of New Zealand’s citizens (subjects?) will never be legally able to buy tobacco.

None of these were within the realm of imagination on March 13th, 2020.

You might think this is a sad moment. I think the opposite. It’s probably for the best.

My fellow human (at least many of them) would gladly put me on a cattle car. It was just as true before March 13th 2020 but I was too dumb to know it. I have earned that knowledge. I feel like God wanted me to know.

I also witness that evil fails as soon as it has power. Everyone bitches about America’s past president but nobody on any side claims the current American president has done well. Nobody responds well to corruption; of the soul or of the mind (dementia).

I formerly expected corruption to lead to defeat. I see now it’s self correcting. Every sketchy election or bureaucratic mess creates more failure. Instead of consolidating power systems just dissolve. Things look dire but it’s an illusion. Not a damn thing is well clenched in an iron fist. We can all see it. No failure is truly hidden. Gasoline and eggs cost triple what they did three years ago. People can’t avoid knowing what bureaucracies hide. People know why Portland has riots and Haybale Nebraska doesn’t. People know what a college degree means and its relative value compared to a good welder. People know what to think of 3:00 am shifts in elections. People laugh at headlines. People (perhaps grudgingly) learn.

I didn’t enjoy the last three years but, like a visit to the dentist, it was pain with a purpose. God didn’t create us to be idiots. He wants us to rise. He gave me a lesson I won’t forget.

Misery might be temporary. That which can’t go on, won’t. The dream before the fever breaks is the worst dream of all. I believe in my heart (and my mind) that things will be OK. Well mostly OK. Or rather they’re OK for me and I hope the same for you. They’re OK no matter how it goes because I don’t value the external like I once did.

I’m optimistic because I didn’t fail the test:

All through the COVID madness I did “the right thing”. I never oppressed anyone and I never let myself be oppressed. What more is there?

A world in turmoil is not my problem. It’s not your problem either. We are not the source of turmoil. Given a chance to stampede like an unthinking animal. We didn’t. I did nothing which I regret. How awesome is that?!?

Consider most politicians. Look in their eyes. They don’t have my feeling of optimism. They had the same options I did but they acted like beasts. They know it. I know it. Everyone knows. They act like the damned because they are.

Hopefully, the peak is over. (I can hope.) Think of it this way, Congress is the dumbest, most irrelevant, immoral, geriatric, gathering of corrupt blithering idiots to walk the face of the earth. Even they are reeling from the madness they did over the last three years. As the morons in Congress slowly gain some level of understanding in whatever protoplasm they use for a mind, there is hope for the rest of us. We were never that craven.

So please observe your world today. Take a look around and remember. This may be the day you recall as “before” when you’re living in the next (and possibly better) “after”.

A.C.

* Biden won more votes than any other candidate in history. I repeat the official truth every time I refer to Biden because I want everyone to hear it and face what they heard. Biden got 81,283,501 votes and every single one is unquestionable. Don’t look away. Watch it play out.

On 357 Magnum I found a post called Cops Have No Sense of Humor. Click over and check it out.

I’ve never heard of the rapper called Afroman but the dude’s got the right attitude. The cops kicked down his door (literally), burst in with weapons drawn (literally), rifled through his stuff (literally), found nothing illegal (literally), and took his cash (literally). None of that is exaggeration.

What a bummer! I was born in a nation where such a thing never happened. I live in that nation’s hollow shell where police routinely seize assets (the word is stealing) and our president who got more votes than any other candidate in history keeps political prisoners and periodically circles the White House with concertina wire.

Afroman is a clever fellow. He didn’t freak out. He used the most powerful force on earth against totalitarians; humor.* He wrote a happy little song and added the video from his home security system. It couldn’t be more beautiful. So of course the cops sued him (literally). I find it funny that the home security system did exactly what it was supposed to do (document unwanted home invaders). The uniformed invaders disabled the cameras, just like any other home invaders.

I guess the best that can be said is the cops didn’t kill anyone or shoot a dog. (No word if Afroman has a dog.)

We can learn from Afroman’s mellow song. I would never have heard about some rapper in Ohio. I never would have known that cops were acting like dickheads in his vicinity. Now I have and I’m spreading the fun. Lets make these cops the most well known twerps in their state. The Streisand Effect can be a force for good:

The Streisand effect is the way in which attempts to hide, remove, or censor information can lead to the unintended consequence of increasing awareness of that information. It is named after American singer and actress Barbra Streisand, whose attempt to suppress the California Coastal Records Project’s photograph of her cliff-top residence in Malibu, California, taken to document California coastal erosion, inadvertently drew greater attention to the photograph in 2003.

*I’m serious about humor. The Soviets were evil totalitarian monsters. They were terrified of the slightest mockery. The same applies to modern day totalitarians. Lets go Brandon! 

I’ve been quiet. You might think I’ve been inert. Nope! I’ve been doing my own thing. Society is crawling up it’s own ass too deeply. It’s gross. I can’t watch.

Topic #1: What the fuck?

The cure for a world of brainwashed morons deliberately faffing about in a performative chaotic frenzy is to step out of their arena. Reality is the proper locale for a sane human. Remember before social media? That place still exists. I welcome you to join me: the sky is blue, gravity works, physical objects persist (unlike your money’s invisible decay through inflation), beer tastes good, the sun rises in the east, your dog isn’t trying to put on a dress, a tree won’t pretend it’s a goldfish, and I recently saw top notch northern lights.

The water’s fine, come on in!

I do have one question. What the fuck are people thinking?

The mix of bad ideas repeated on a loop and growing weirdness is unstable. The Bidenverse’s inevitable decay has gone to ludicrous speed.

When will we cross the stupid event horizon? Perhaps we already have? Each yeas is dumber than the last. The election cycle in 2016 was dumb and yet it was smarter than 2020. Twenty years ago people were idiots too but that feels like a long lost era of erudite philosopher kings compared to the medically assisted meat zombie we have now. Last week was dumb even by 2023 standards. At what point does it all collapse? I assume it has already collapsed. When will people accept the collapse their eyes are seeing but their mind won’t grasp?

Most things I see on “media” wouldn’t convince gullible houseplants or persuade lawn furniture. The only people who buy it want to believe. They don’t actually buy it either. They just pretend. Even your cat knows it’s bullshit.

The chaos accelerates. In 2023 I can make a ham sandwich that will outlast the shelf life of a news “scoop”. Consider anything that was important a month ago. Ask yourself “what happened to that”?

If you fret over something but forget about its final resolution, all you did was participate in someone else’s performance art. The world is awash in events. What happened to all that shit?

Everything dumb from an month ago has rifted from conspiracy theory to known fact. Yet all issues remain unresolved.

The Hunter laptop is now officially real. As we always knew. What happened with that? What happened to the 51 people who swore on the front page of a newspaper that it was Russian propaganda?

The southern border was open and thronged by illegal crossers. What happened with that? If Trump’s wall sucked, why is this solution better?

Two banks (three if you count Credit Suisse, which I do) have gone tits up. What happened with that? What has been learned from their failures? Did anyone mention the repercussions of extending FDIC insurance to infinity? We all know more banks will follow.

The J6 videos were pried out of the hands of congress-beings and shown on regular TV. You can see for yourself it was tamer than the crowd at a golf tournament. So what happened with that? We have political prisoners in the USA and it’s directly related to the videos. Those videos are exculpatory evidence. Withholding exculpatory evidence is a crime. What about that? Who is Ray Epps? Why are American taxes paying to staff American political operatives on American soil?

Musk blathered the details behind all sorts of hidden (but obvious and suspected) dirty censorship and propaganda. So what happened with that?

The Air Force spent a week ignoring a monster spy balloon and the next week shooting down hobbyist toys over Canada. What resolution has come of that?

In January, there were classified papers coming out of Biden’s garage, old offices, and various other orifices. What happened to that?

Are the plucky Ukranians still just days from total victory? Are they still heroically shooting down Russian jets with deer rifles? Someone blew up the Nordstream pipeline. If it was America, then Americans are the bad guys. What about that?

I’d like to see something that began… finish.

Topic #2: I’ve seen this show before:

When I turned my on computer after only a few days off grid I found out they (whoever “they” might be) spent all week on another Trump hunt. You know the guy who officially hasn’t been president for over two years? The guy who lost to the person who got more votes than any other candidate in history? That guy.

To damaged minds the period from November 2020 to February 2023 never happened. But I have a calendar so I know the truth. For better or worse, Trump is not president; it’s not his war in Ukraine, it’s not his inflation, it’s not his spy balloons, it’s not his southern border, it’s not his propaganda on Twitter.

The people who drove their own car into a ditch are blaming the car’s previous owner. Orange or not, Trump handed over the keys to a functioning society. We had a thriving economy, a secure border, a stable and minimal presence in Afghanistan, and oil independence. All that is gone. Trump is not why it’s  gone.

Some folks died in the election of 2016; Hillary lost and they never recovered. They don’t know they’re zombies but that’s what they are. They haven’t successfully lived since.

Others got exactly what they want in 2020. Biden got more votes than any other candidate in history and if you question it you may be thrown in jail. They got what they want and are miserable. They’re zombies; unhappy and dead. Shuffling around seeking some external force upon which to blame their own failures.

Folks who have accomplished nothing hate to see others thrive. They pursue Orange Man Bad as the avatar of their inner demons. They have nothing about which they can be proud. They’re nothing but the pursuit of and destruction of things others have built. Like him or hate him, Trump did stuff. They hate that.

People who still have their panties in a bundle over the Orange Menace are human train wrecks. (That reminds me… the mushroom cloud of chemicals over a train wreck in Ohio. What happened with that?)

Sane people get over things. I hated the AMC Gremlin, the 55 MPH speed limit, and disco. But they’re all gone now. If I spent my days burning junkyard Gremlins on a stack of disco LPs you’d know I was mentally ill. I don’t. Because I’m sane. To hate others without doing something of merit with one’s own abilities is the mark of someone who has no value. Deep in their heart they know it.

Last week, the perpetually aggrieved were going to indict Trump? Again. Why? The other dozen bullshit attempts didn’t flame out quite stupidly enough? They wanted to bolster his chances in the next run? They won’t feel complete until they’ve made him a martyr? They hope one more bite at the apple will finally heal their wounds? They’re getting old and want one more cycle of power? What good can come from bad intentions?

This round of the story that never ends didn’t even pretend to be solid. A legal non-disclosure agreement with a porn star is… and I know this may seem irrelevant to many… LEGAL.

As far as I can tell the porn star (who admittedly has a righteous rack) has already lost to Trump in court. She owes him (Trump) $300,000 from her ill advised and failed legal attack. Pause and savor the fact that a slut and a real estate showman fucked (allegedly) and the slut winds up owing money. How funny is that?

The slut’s lawyer, Michael Avenatti, has been convicted of an array of crimes. He’s doing a 14 year sentence. (Possibly more, I get confused trying to tally up his multiple convictions.)

Someone looked at this mess and thought; “The slut went bankrupt and the lawyer is in jail. I want a piece of that action!”

Trump did the right thing. He said, “let’s do it”. That’s all it took. The whole thing evaporated.

The willingness to do the right thing is exactly how American citizens killed power-mad Biden’s vax mandates. Biden freebased power until he decided to force his will on the people he should respect. Remember when Presidents said “my fellow Americans” and didn’t list off “people with whom they’ve lost patience”? Biden intended to put me on a list of people who were forever unemployable. Imagine that! America creating a caste of “the unemployable”! Picture that chapter in future history books. “President Biden who got more votes than any other candidate in history is credited with creating the biggest number of American political prisoners. Then he made a list of over 2 million Americans who could never have a job. His was the first legal apartheid unambiguously targeted to economically ruin his enemies. He’s a true hero of democracy!”

I don’t do victim. I told the bully “fire me if you can, but I will never bow the knee”. To my surprise and relief it ended. Poof! Gone! Just like Trump’s most recent arrest. Me and a couple million others stood up like true citizens and the fever broke. Biden talked big about imaginary Corn Pop but retreated behind concertina wire as soon as people told him they wouldn’t obey his will. Whiny bitches like Biden are bullies that never grew beyond high school.

You gotta’ hand it to Trump, he’s the glasses from They Live. Trumps enemies do shit that show you what they themselves are.

Topic #3: Plowing is a job that doesn’t pay:

Reality (unlike the panic on the media) has been all about plowing snow. I bought some gear (I’ll elaborate later) in anticipation of a happy fun-time summer. This apparently angered the Gods! Every 2-3 days since that optimistic gamble I’ve been in the tractor plowing snow.

I’ve been pushing mountains of snow on top of the towers of snow I’d already amassed. From a practical perspective, it’s like I picked up a part time job for 10-15 hours a week. There’s no pay and all I get out of it is a driveway that’s passable (sometimes).

I know spring will come but it’s dragging its feet!

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to tell Filthie to “DO IT!”

In the middle of the lingering snowpack I dragged Honey Badger (my Yamaha TW200 dirtbike) into my shop. I meant to get it ready for the riding season. I need to change the oil and I want to wire in some farkles.

I got plans y’all!

I spent all winter thinking of cool shit to do this summer! Me and Honey Badger will have all the fun I can survive.

Who knows if I’ll do all the cool stuff I dreamed? At least it’s a start. You must dream before you can do.  I’m optimistic because I know that Honey Badger is up for it. That little bike is always ready to go for anything on the trail.

Here’s a picture of my trusty steed. (The photo is a couple years old, the bike has more survival shit bolted to it now.)

Unfortunately, it snowed and my plans for mechanical tinkering were delayed. Then it snowed more. Delays compounded. I wasted a whole tank of propane heating the shop while I was busy plowing snow.

Meanwhile, the author of Filthie’s Thunderbox (a fine blog and ray of Canadian sunshine) mentioned he might someday like a TW200. He did so with a half assed tone indicating he probably won’t go for it. I can’t ignore that!

I implore y’all to go to Filthie’s site and comment. Tell the man “DO IT!”

If there’s anything a cranky woodsman needs it’s a little wheeled mule! It’s amazing the old carbureted thumper is still in production. Anyone with an itch of a molecule of curiosity should embrace the opportunity!

Filthie needs one!

The plucky TW is unlike any other motorcycle on the market today. It’s a slow, obscure, obsolete farm bike from a simpler time. It’s fun, unbreakable, street legal, trail ready, and relentlessly upbeat. It absolutely loves abuse. It has plenty of balls to ride in/through/over/across anything in its path. It’s crude and cheap. It’s cheap to buy (though it does have a cult following in the used market). It’s cheap to insure. It’s cheap to register. It’s cheap to fix what you break and it only needs repair if you did something that you knew was utterly stupid to break it. (Or like me you want to tinker on a dirt simple machine until it’s the ultimate bug out toy.) They’re said to last forever. They get great MPG.

I treat mine like a hammer. I’ve sunk it, hit things, got lost, flogged it, babied it, idled it, used a tree stump to adjust the chain, chased a bear, buried it in mud, run it hot, run it in snow, hammered the skid plate (aftermarket), and it has never skipped a beat.

Despite all that firebreathing bravado, the best part is that it’s silly fun. It’s a hoot even if you’re just sightseeing. I’ll spend all day puttering along forest service roads with a big grin on my face.

I load it with a ton of gear and it never bitches. It’s easy to ride and adapts to most terrain. It’s happy on a forest road, it’s happy when you flog it through a swamp, it’s happy when you wind it through trees, it’s happy when crash through brush, it simply doesn’t care what you do.

It’s (probably) EMP proof. When Putin has had enough of our shit and nukes us back to the stone age, the TW will still run perfectly well.

It’ll go anywhere I’m brave enough to steer. If the terrain is too tough for a TW you’ve made bad decisions in life. You don’t need an off road machine so much as you need a helicopter.

TWs are so uncool they’re cool by accident. A total lack of style and technology lets it cross over and come out the other side. Instead of regular cool, it’s beyond cool. Compared to everything in the market, there’s no bike that simply doesn’t give a shit about appearances like the TW.

When you ride a TW like you ought to, you aren’t a motorcyclist, you’re a moose trapping lost cowboy wolf-being fishing camp-beast that just came off the endless trail. A full dress Harley Road Glide may give an anemic soyboy dentist the aura of cool but it’s just an aura. When I park my muddy TW, even if it’s next to machines that cost five times as much, it’s the TW that gets noticed. It’s simply the cooler object because it’s molecularly incapable of pretention. People think: “What kind of lunatic rides a potato like that? Is the fender covered in moose shit? Is that a shotgun strapped to the back? Why is it loaded with MREs and a hatchet?” There’s only one conclusion; “That dude is bad ass!”

Dentists tremble before my tiny death bike!

The beast horrifies young hip speed demons who rove in packs on single track. (But it can still do single track and I had the bruises to prove it.) A TW will never impress the owner of a BWM R 1250 GS Adventure bike (or rather the owner of the payment plan that comes with a BMW). That’s because the only time I’ve seen a BWM R 1250 GS Adventure bike on a trail is on YouTube. If I encountered a one of those space technology super machines on the trail, the BMW rider would see a geezer like me pick up my fallen TW with one hand. That single easy lift would make the owner of twenty grand in very heavy and expensive ABS enabled fuel injection sorcery weep in envy.

It’s easily as good as any ATV yet it’s street legal in a way ATVs never quite attain. It’s the smallest thing that’s not too small. Women call it cute, kids like the cartoon-sized tires, deer don’t overly mind its sputtering engine, and I’ve used it to drag firewood to camp.

Before the TW, I had (still have) a cruiser. That limited me to half the motorcycle picture. The Sturgis and chrome crowd has a good thing going on but it’s not the only thing. The TW taught me other activities. I coined the term mechanical hiking. Think of a TW as a backpack that carries itself. It’s a mule that never needs hay. It’s a hunting rig and camping toy. It doesn’t mind if to strap fishing poles and chainsaws to it. The lawnmower sized power plant will never let you down. The fat goofy tires will hold traction for anything you’re willing to try.

The only place a TW doesn’t belong is the interstate. Keep your cruiser for the slab where it’s happiest. Get a TW as a little wheeled beast for different things. Its a friendly dog that can’t wait to go camping with you.

If wonder if you want a TW, you do!

Do it!

Part 1: Just Saying Hi:

I’ve been light posting lately. This isn’t an accident. There are two main reasons.

The first is that winter is kicking my ass. The fact that the calendar says March while I’m still plowing February level snow is proof of that. Lugging yet another jug of diesel across the ice to my tractor so I can plow yet another round of snow that’s drifting like the fucking Sahara of doom really does take it out of you. I’m beat!

The second is more philosophical; I’m trying to post as I wish to be. If it’s merely negative or it’s shit you don’t need it from me. You can get it elsewhere. The internet is doing just fine at hyperventilating without my help. Jumping up and down pointing at the dumpster fire saying “There it is! It sucks!” doesn’t seem necessary.

Y’all know. Y’all just lived through the COVID panic. You either understand or you’re trying hard to not understand. Instead of bitching about the eleventh stupid thing to happen since yesterday I’m wisely checking out until some level sanity returns.

I’ll give you an example that has absolutely nothing to do with our current president who got more votes than any other candidate in American history. I’m interested in economics. I actually like studying it. I used to post about the federal debt. Then I stopped. I didn’t stop last year or last week. I stopped (more or less) when it was a done deal. Sometime in the second Obama administration the largest debt ever amassed in human existence went beyond my own personal event horizon. I can’t remember the exact number (perhaps ten trillion)? I came to the realization that it could not be resolved in a normal non-destructive manner and therefore it would be resolved in a big messy shitstorm. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when.

That was probably 10 years ago or more. Frankly I’ve enjoyed these last many years of whistling past the graveyard. I even got a good chuckle out of about three years of booming economy during the post “Hillary wasn’t coronated” shitstorm and pre-plandemic shitstorm. I couldn’t have enjoyed that respite if I’d been too focused on the inevitable doom. Maybe we have a few more years left, maybe we don’t. But I’m not going to fret about it on my blog. The timing is uncertain but the destination is known; so lets talk about sailboats and trees instead.

That’s why two (or is it three now?) banks going tits up didn’t merit much response. Why would it? Why comment on what we all knew that would happen? We all know what will eventually happen. No need for me to bitch about it. It’s not a new concept. I’ll post when I have a ray of sunshine in my heart.

Which brings me to part 2.

Part 2: Play It Loud!

I haven’t paid attention to the band Extreme. I had not the slightest clue that Nuno Bettencourt was a guitar God. But I just heard a song that absolutely set me back on my heels!

I want to share it with you. What a breath of fresh air! In a world where autotune bitch music oozes from the earbuds of empty headed drones en masse, I have found another of the very few who can shred. Hendrix and Satrani and Skwisgaar (and some others) have a new member at the table!

This may be the coolest thing I hear in 2023.

Warning! If you can’t do heavy metal, this may hurt. If you’re Boomerishly incapable of liking anything newer than the Beatles… run! If you think Garth Brooks is the apex of music… bail out! If you think that hippie upstart Bach went overboard with Toccata and Fugue in D minor… hurl your computer out the window. You’ve been warned. If this isn’t for you, that’s fine. Accept there are places you can’t go and leave the path unexplored.

Those of us who aren’t dead yet should take it in like it was meant to be experienced. Do the whole dose! Slam it down! Don’t half-listen while writing up your TPS reports. Do yourself a favor and grant yourself five minutes to a single purpose. Turn off the phone, tell everyone to shut up, crank up your speakers, and listen.

Let this be a reminder of a different level of engagement. The cell phone dancing monkey that can’t sit still for even one single song will miss the blast zone.

It’s four and a half minutes. You aren’t doing anything that important. Experience it properly. Shut out every distraction. Let it happen. When the two phase guitar solo hits you’ll thank me.

The universe has given you a gift. Enjoy it!

Whenever everyone seems to be in the thrall of serial panic attacks I check out. I invite you to do the same. Nothing good comes from following the herd. Allowing oneself to be manipulated or stampeded is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Doubt me? Remember when misplaced classified paperwork started coming out of Joe Biden’s ears? Remember how that very week a giant Chinese spy balloon materialized in Montana? Remember how the balloon teabagged the continental United States for several days? What happened with the paperwork? You forgot about the paperwork didn’t ya’?

Whenever enough people stop to think they begin to discover uncomfortable things. As soon as enough people wonder too much, like maybe whether the CDC was a good faith source of information about masks… oh look! The Ukraine is winning, or losing, or the whole thing is about to go nuclear, or whatever… Stop thinking and look at the shiny thing!

Don’t fall for it. Keep your feet where they belong, on the muddy earth of the real world.

I’m still pinned down in the long winter of the northland but I understand weather cycles like Al Gore doesn’t. Winter won’t last forever. As Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote, “in the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love motorcycles.”

In efforts to reduce my daily dosage of dipshits, and in joyous embrace of nearly forgotten youthful simplicity, I’ve been returning more and more to nature. Spring, fall, and summer are when that’s easiest. While everyone hid from each other over Covid and then rushed to bunch up cheek by jowl in a mosh pit to righteously torch Portland, I was elsewhere.

I’d been rambling aimlessly on Honey Badger, my cheap and delightful Yamaha TW200. (I’ve also done overdue maintenance on my cruiser, a Honda Shadow nearly old enough for classic plates in some states. Unfortunately, the cruiser has been mostly ignored while I bounce over tree stumps on the brash little shitbox of the Yamaha. Who knew a farm bike could be so much fun?)

A TW200 isn’t perfect for all things. It does moderately low highway-ish speeds like a politician tells the truth. It can do 55 MPH but it’s painful and noisy and you can tell the bike would rather be beaten with sticks. To ameliorate this, I got in the habit of trailering the little bike behind my behemoth truck. I’d tank up with diesel (quite expensively given the Bidenverse’s fuel prices) and drag my long suffering utility trailer with it’s small cargo to nowhere important. I’d park and spend my evenings happily camping (enjoying the novelty of bulky, heavy camping gear). During the day I’d zip around the forests more or less for free (the TW gets roughly 80 MPG).

Unfortunately, the utility trailer has had a hard life; not the least of which was me mounting my sailboat on it and driving it into a lake as if it were a boat trailer. It’s pretty shot and I didn’t dare take it far. It will soon find its way to trailer Valhalla. Despite still being trapped in the time of snowdrifts and ice, I’ve been shopping for a new motorcycle trailer. Don’t sweat it, I’ve got a line on one. I’ll post details in due time.

With a good trailer the concern of distance fades. New options appear. I can trailer 100 miles, or 1,000 miles. It’s all the same. From wherever I go I can setup base camp and have Honey Badger adventures. I don’t care if politics drives the world into the dark ages, I’ve got a fun summer planned!

Ahhh but lets indulge in whatever flights of fancy come to mind. A TW200 is small, too small for long multi-day camping trips. But is it? I watched Ed March ride a diminutive C90 from Alaska to Argentina. Stupid or not… it happened.

Is that a one off? An unlikely product of Ed’s unstoppable moxie? Nope. Angelo Giannie rode a CT125 across the continental United States. Just like Ed March, Angelo documented every step of the trip on YouTube.

I dream. But if I dream of what can actually be done, I can make it happen. What a C90 or a CT125 can do, a TW200 can do. Why not?

But lets step back a bit. I’m a busy guy and there’s a lot of logistics in such an endeavor. Time to take it easy and test the waters slowly. Mostly, I’ve grown attached to my luxurious Dodge carried cot. I love that cot! A TW200 trip will have me sleeping on the dirt again and that’s a thing that one might transition to slowly. Maybe a few mild overnighters.

Be it resolved, I shall trailer to somewhere obscure and try a few mild overnighters.

Also, lest I forget a big inspiration in this direction, TDubsKid has been doing just about anything you’d imagine on his TW200 and that includes camping.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE.

While happily pondering the ultra-small gear I’d need to ride a pipsqueak farmbike into places most people won’t go (like the middle of some desert or in a swamp), I forgot other options. Thankfully, I stumbled across HerTwoWheels, which reminded me of tamer options for my very reliable and much larger cruiser:

A Harley? No shit! Lots of people camp from cruisers (and I’ve done it myself) but for some reason I hadn’t considered such a thing. I’ve been riding Honey Badger in swamps that would eat a Harley and spit out parts… and that gave me blinders to forget there’s a whole world of pavement out there. My Shadow is functionally the same as a basic Harley bagger (I would say better but that’s a discussion for another day). If a Harley can do it then a Shadow can. (Assuming I manage that “sleep on the ground” issue.)

Also, HerTwoWheels makes a point about going solo. I ride solo too. Always. Oddly, modern people (maybe it’s an always thing and not a modern thing?) never do anything solo. Except me, of course. It’s a nice reminder to see HerTwoWheels do the occasional campout on her own. (I should also mention The Emporium Outdoors does his thing with anything from an Argo to a brand new Jeep but he does it accompanied only by his photogenic dog. TDubsKid also rides and camps solo. Ed March is an entirely different critter altogether. He’s his own entire universe of self-reliance and could probably carry his bike on his shoulders if he had to.)

So now, one idea has turned to two; and perhaps many.

What will happen? I’ve no idea. Frankly I hadn’t budgeted for anything too extravagant in 2023. Yet the mind builds ideas that I’ll presumably indulge in due time.

I know what can be done with what I’ve got; and it’s plenty. My logistics look good (this is not by accident). I like to ponder what shenanigans I could cook up with two very different motorcycles, an unstoppable tow rig, and a solid reliable trailer. I’m not sure where this leads but I feel like it’s gonna’ be great!

It’s still winter. Nothing is set in stone. But in a fit of optimism I dug a path to the bikes (which are in cold storage behind a snowdrift). I pushed the little one into my workshop (which is also unheated) so I can start changing the oil and other needful things.

I took a photo. I call this picture “hope”:

I got an interesting comment:

“Goodness Dude when you say you’re OUT you almost mean it.”

I haven’t posted for a couple of weeks. I inadvertently checked out longer than planned. Was that unwise? Has the preceding demoralizing  progression of stupid events yielded to a more thoughtful current situation?

Ha! Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it!

Everything that happened the last two weeks is exactly what was going to happen. Due to the low caliber of participants, they could do no other.

Aside from more information coming out that proves what we already knew and a mildly funny joke by Woody Harrelson (that freaked out the left), nothing surprising has happened.

No major player has changed tune, learned, grown, or improved. Jerks can’t learn because to learn is to accept your inherent imperfection. All humans occasionally fail, most of us understand that. The current crop believes they’re flawless. (Ask them. They’ll tell ya’ how excellent they are even after a lifetime without evidence they’ve done a single thing right.)

Our current crop of dipshits don’t live in or deal with reality. They follow the story of their internal narrative. They’re never wrong. Every bad thing was caused by an Orange real estate guy from New York. They refuse to accept incoming data.

Can you imagine playing poker against Biden? The minute he says “no joke” or starts that weird whispering thing I’d know he’s bluffing. I’d raise like hell and I’d keep doing it. Biden is utterly incapable of folding. He’s never once said “I tried action A but it didn’t work so I changed to action B”. I’d Corn Pop his ass into bankruptcy.

As for my blog? It’s ok to “check out” right now. Idiots intend to drive into walls and there’s not much point in standing by the wall to witness the mess.

Here goes a summary of two weeks of stupid..

The things everyone knew to be true are turning out to be true:

Evidence is now clear that COVID came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. I welcome new members to the club of “knowledge that the rest of us had in 2020”.

Ivermectin is no longer dangerous horse medicine that’ll kill ya’. Way to get in front of that true fact.

People who wished to subjugate the un-vaxed are still mentioning “forgiveness”. They’re still not getting it. I won’t forgive them because they don’t actually seek forgiveness. “We did nothing wrong but wish you’d forget about it.” People that behaved abominably were “tricked” and want to “put it behind them”. No! What have they done to stop being the kind of person that gets tricked? What has changed that they’re unwilling to commit atrocity in 2023 but you were willing in 2020? They don’t want forgiveness. They want to escape mild, unenforced, and theoretical repercussions of behaving monstrously. The only reason I’m not unemployed, forcibly jabbed, bankrupt, shot, or imprisoned is because they couldn’t pull it off. Anyone who was bleating on social media that they hoped all the bikers in Sturgis would die of COVID is a flat out asshole. They did evil, they wanted it, they enjoyed it, and they will do it again as soon as they can.

Evidence is now clear that masks did nothing. Also the sky is blue.

Even the most deeply entranced Kool-aid drinker are starting to get a picture of the COVID mess. Remember when people who’d had COVID were forced to get the shot and natural immunity was censored as “misinformation”? Everyone now knows natural immunity is just as good as the vax.

Everyone is slowly understanding that Twitter, Facebook, Google, and the rest of social media were manipulated. Welcome to the party folks! Stay tuned while I continue to ignore social media. On a related note, everyone who figures TikTok is spy software is wondering how long it’ll take everyone else to figure it out.

Everyone now accepts that the Hunter Biden laptop is real. Remember the 51 spies who lied about that? Fuckers!

Everyone who doubts recent elections still does. Everyone who doesn’t is feeling queasy and would rather talk about sports. Doubting an election in 2016 was good but doubting one in 2020 is criminal. It wears them out.

January 6th is still the nothingburger it always was. Video is slowly trickling out. America has political prisoners now. I don’t like living in a nation with political prisoners. Every minute of video that trickles out is good.

Inflation continues. Our political leaders deliberately perform actions that cause inflation. The initial cover story was that inflation didn’t exist, then it was transitory, then it was no big deal. By election season inflation be a good thing.

We still have no border enforcement. We spend more money protecting Kiev than El Paso.

Ohio still has a polluted train wreck. It’s funny that Trump got there before Buttigieg. It’s funny that Biden will never show up. It’s also irrelevant. It’s already polluted. I have no idea how bad it will be. I’ve grown suspicious of “it’s so polluted everyone will die”. I suspect everyone will just get used to it a lower quality environment.

The US still bombed the Nordstream pipeline. Evidence is coming out that makes it harder to deny we did it. I especially don’t like this. People who bomb civilian infrastructure of their allies are not the good guys. Committing a crime specifically to reduce the chances of peace negotiations is extra bad. Germany was tempted to settle with Russia to access cheap energy in the winter. Sabotaging peace overtures is flat out evil.

On schedule the balloons/UFOs fad ran out. Once American jets shot down a $30 HAM hobbyist balloon over Canadian airspace the topic was dead. (I wonder why Canada needed an American jet?)

Epstein is still dead. Ghislaine Maxwell is still in jail. One alleged and one convicted of trafficking sex workers… who were victimized by nobody.

That’s my abridged summary of things irretrievably fated to happen.

There are two predictable events I’d like to address in detail:

John Fetterman, was elected while incapable of serving his job duties. He is still incapable of doing his job duties. Just look at that freak! Would you want him as your surgeon or lawyer. Would you let him babysit your kids? Would you leave him alone in your house? Would you take a long road trip with him? Would you go hiking, alone, on a remote trail… with that!?!

That photo is from before he had a stroke. It’s posed! That’s Fetterman in peak form!

Pennsylvania elected Fetterman after he’d had a stroke:

Now he’s in the hospital. Supposedly he has “depression” but it doesn’t matter what malady put him down. He started out too damn messed up to be a Senator he’s still too messed up. He never belonged in that role.

Depression sucks. Having a stroke sucks. It cuts down what you can do. Whitewater rafting is out. Chess competitions are out. Senator is out. If you’re too addled to figure it out, someone who cares ought to help you understand. Nobody can be a Senator if they’re not intellectually capable of being a truck driver or a tax accountant or a cook. It was cruel to put him in a high stress job. He was stupid to go along with it.

Elect a mess, get a mess. Fetterman’s health is never going to be better than the zombie that campaigned.

Meanwhile, the press says Biden is as fit as a fiddle! (Note: If Biden needs a lift then install one. Nobody cares if the president needs a wheelchair provided his mind works. Then again Biden’s mind ain’t what it once was either. He was fried when he campaigned in abstentia and he’s fried now. Elect a mess, get a mess.)

Everything in Ukraine proceeds exactly as it was going to proceed.

Among the many accomplishments of our record-breaking vote getting, super-popular president, is war in Ukraine. How’s it going?

It wasn’t going well two weeks ago. Today, it’s exactly the same but with more dead people. Check in two weeks from now and it’ll be exactly the same.

Remember the old days when one of two American parties was anti-war? Remember their endless bitching for decades? Between Vietnam and 2008 it never ended. Suddenly the lefty anti-war movement evaporated when George Chimpy McHitler Bush was replaced by Barak God Among Men Obama. No shit! I was there. I saw it. One week it was “no blood for oil” and the next week it was “Obama’s in charge, we’re cool with war now. Shut up and buy an electric car.” I honestly miss genuine peaceniks. (I don’t miss useful idiots who only protest wars that involve the party of R.) Peace protesters might be dumb but they had a moral framework. I live in a world where lefties (of all people!) will keep war going until the last Ukrainian soldier falls.

Since day one the American press has reported Russia is on the verge of collapse. Russia keeps not collapsing. Remember those first few weeks when plucky Ukrainian farmers were picking fighter jets out of the sky with deer rifles? Those news articles were a hoot!

Biden (or whoever is in control) is incapable of reacting based on observation of real world situations. Putin is smarter. When Russia’s early “move quickly” attempts weren’t working, he re-organized and  came up with a new plan. The “slowly, cautiously, grind them to dust” plan appears to be working.

Biden is glad to kill many Ukrainians if it burns off our existing war equipment. Then he gets to manufacture new shit with the usual grift and targeted spending in loyal congressional districts. Speaking of uni-party dipshits Mitch McConnel says any budget should magically have all the armaments we could ever want.

In 2020 doctors left-splained that everyone should stay home because of COVID but it’s totally cool to form a big sweaty moshpit if a “mostly peaceful protest” benefits certain parties. In 2023 Mitch is shit-splaining that a buck spent on highways costs a buck but one spent on tanks is free; a magic unicorn rainbow expense!

As for the war’s tactics, Biden, who knows nothing, has learned nothing, and will never have a new idea, continues to double down. He visited Ukraine to help. How? Is a soldier toting a rifle in a frozen grain field supposed to care, in some unclear ephemeral way, that an American geriatric placeholder is hanging out with the corrupt president that put you in that miserable situation?

The press reports there were air raid sirens. Hilarious! Presidents do not wander about where there’s a risk of air attack. Biden does, however, strut about with audio props that impress the press! “Crank the sirens! America’s animated meat sculpture is totally a risk taker! Give him a gun! He’s ready to fight Corn Pop!”

The Ukraine situation bothers me because America seems like it wants as many people killed as possible and we’re faceplanting as we do it. Russia made overtures to avoid conflict but we insisted that Ukraine join NATO. Things pretty much had to go the way they did. Our sanctions made Russia’s economy stronger and America’s economy weaker. Recently, it has come to light that it was America and not mysterious ocean trolls that bombed the Nordstream pipeline. Biden goes on TV about once every few weeks like he’s doing the fighting himself.

Russia has learned that negotiation is pointless if Biden is involved (and Zelenskyy is no prize either). Russia, logically, withdrew from the New Start nuclear arms treaty. Why wouldn’t they? Biden will pursue war until the last Ukranian is dead and he basically said so. Russia cannot negotiate with him. slowly and cautiously grinding their opponents to paste seems to be working anyway. Russia is dangerous. Cornering it into an unnecessary war was galactically stupid.

I had more to say but y’all have been patient just reading this far. Good luck out there.