Adaptive Curmudgeon

Lets state for the record that I’m often fearlessly stupid. I heartily recommend it. Man was not put on this planet to meekly watch TV until the clock runs out. An interesting life of physical and mental exuberance is the place to be (at least some of the time).

However, I’m still alive. I do have limits and (with caveats) observe them well enough.

<Warning: nostalgic memories ensue… all details scrubbed for obvious reasons.>

I remember one night in my long ago youth when shit got too real. I was 95% of the way through a bottle of tequila. If you’ve ever been in a bottle of tequila you know what I’m talking about. (Yes I wrote “in”… at some point you’re “in” the tequila and not the other way around.)

This wasn’t anything new. It was a place I’d been many times. I’ve explored the internal geography of someone who drinks like he’s Thor and doesn’t give a shit what happens next so long as it’s loud. So have many men.

That night was destined for the kind of epic misadventure that involves ER visits and broken furniture. I was young and bulletproof and usually up to live out a good story. It was that magic time in life when a few stitches or a burning car or whatever else happens is just part of the fun.

This time was different. I don’t know why but I didn’t let the story happen as it was written in the stars. At the very last minute, I showed just enough common sense to know I had no common sense. My ego was writing checks my body couldn’t cash and it was time to bail.

There was only an inch left in the bottle and we had plans to do something (I forget what) as soon as I was done. Obviously, the right and proper thing to do in the middle of that already well developed night of unwise decision is to finish the bottle. Upend it like the lunatic you are and ride the burning madness all the way to wherever you end up! Everyone around (who was just as drunk as me) was chanting. “Drink! Drink! Drink!” I was the center of attention. I was in the spotlight. I was having a hell of a night!

We’ve all been there. If you haven’t you’re a wimp. For whatever reason, this time I showed a bit of wisdom.

I’m out.

That’s all I said. I set the bottle down; or rather I tried to and needed assistance to get it settled on the table (which was moving like a ship in a hurricane, as was the floor, and ceiling, and planet). I flagged down someone (I don’t remember who) and instructed them to get me somewhere (I don’t remember where). On the way to wherever I wound up, I vomited on a bush… which was right and proper. Because tequila.

The point is there’s a time when you have to say “I’m out”.

This week, I was out.

The “news” exceeded my physical limits for stupid. The fake and gay propaganda stream that passes for current events was just too fucking dumb. I stopped watching the circus and wandered off… it was time to get some pancakes, drink some water, and sleep it off in the safe refuge of ignorance.

So this is my concise summary of this week and the continuing balloon thing:

I’m out. I can’t go this dumb.

How did this come to be? Last week I ranted about the marvelous massive Chinese spy balloon of mysterious mystery. It demonstrated the First Rule of Clown World*.

* “No matter how fake and gay you think it’s going to be (for any value of “it”), it will always somehow end up being so much faker and gayer.”

I’m not naïve enough to expect ensuing events to be anything other than dumb but I’m only human. Perpetual logarithmic increases in weirdness to infinity (and beyond!) are hard on my more or less sane mind. Some levels of stupidity are physically painful to grok when you are not insane yourself.

Here’s the best I can make of the muddle.

A few days after “America let the Chinese Balloon drag its geopolitical nutsack across America’s face all the way to the coast” I was told that balloons spy on us all the time. Apparently we just sorta’ let it happen. The public was never informed because why would they be? It’s all the fault of Trump or something.

I also learned that an American ICBM had been launched into the Pacific… because “shut up, it’s a thing”. Nukes are a thing?

Yep. I’ve now learned that we (or at least someone) considers it completely normal to launch American blank nukes. A quick search turned up American nuke launches in: 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2023.

I did not know that. Let the record show that I was totally unaware that firing blank nukes was commonplace.

Did you know that? Whether you knew or not, it’s true.

Let’s all take time to assimilate this true fact.

America periodically ejaculates a nuke.

That’s a fact. It’s verifiable.

Let us stop here and give this warm steamy nugget of truth the attention it merits. Let it roll around in your head for a few minutes. STOP AVOIDING IT! Quit surfing Tik Tok and scratching your nuts… reflect on the fact that it’s totally normal for America to fire ICBMs into the Pacific because that’s what we fucking do.

Whether it’s based on some logic (testing purposes) or just for shits and giggles doesn’t interest me. Am I the only one sane enough to think that launching nukes is a bad fucking idea?

“Don’t launch nukes” is a good solid rule of thumb that applies everywhere and always. I’m sure there’s a good reason for this and it involves testing equipment and I’m equally sure that launching nukes is still a dumb fucking thing to do. It’s dumb if you’ve got a reason to test the gear. It’s dumb if you think Trump is a spastic orange gibbon who’ll start WW3. It’s dumb if the president that got more votes than any other candidate in history can’t complete a coherent sentence. It’s dumb if Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley is a shitweasel who subverts the chain of command. It’s dumb when NATO is at war with Russia in the Ukraine to defend the Ukrainian border using money from a country that won’t defend its own borders. It’s dumb when we did an act of war. It’s dumb in a house. It’s dumb with a mouse. It’s dumb here or there. It’s dumb anywhere.

I not sure I was ready for that final bit of stupid. Firing blank nukes after a balloon pantsed the continental US seemed fake and gay. So I find out we do it all the time because reasons. We do it all that time? Does doing it all the time make the world more sane?

Then, for no reason I can discern, the Biden administration started shooting down shit all over the place. High altitude objects apparently fly over us all the time and only now we’re hearing about it. And these objects can’t possibly be domestic spying on Americans by Americans because only a tinfoil hat wearing weirdo would ask such a question. And they’re popping up in February but not last November because of course they are. And for some reason this week it’s wise to shoot them down… unlike last week when we waited for thousands of miles. And for some reason Canada asked us to shoot down one of these objects over Canada because apparently Canada doesn’t own airplanes.

And these objects which are shot down are always shot down in places where there’s no wreckage, like Lake Huron. And since nobody can identify them they’re unidentified… even though they’ve been happening all the time and including under Trump but we didn’t know because “shut up”.

And if nobody is willing to identify them, then maybe they’re space aliens… because of course that’s a possibility that normal rational adults consider when they see a balloon.

Oh look, a mushroom cloud over a train track in Ohio.

I look at all that and say…

I’m out.

I recently mentioned the First Rule of Clown World (coined at Founding Questions):

“No matter how fake and gay you think it’s going to be (for any value of “it”), it will always somehow end up being so much faker and gayer.”

I ruminated about the Chinese Spy Balloon kerfuffle. I can imagine a reasoned world where America (or any of the few remaining serious nations) would shoot down Xi’s Barroon one inch inside their airspace. I can even imagine a slightly weird but vaguely logical world where America lets the Chinese Balloon drag its geopolitical nutsack across America’s face all the way to the coast… and then let it sail toward some other nation to see if the next nation downwind can react better.

But I could not imagine the fakest and gayest possible situation. America let China teabag half of the continental US and then decided to shoot the balloon down as soon as it’s over hard to retrieve salt water. Thus reacting decisively, but literally doing so only after the very maximum amount of embarrassment/spying had happened.

A serious nation would shut the barn door before the horse gets out. A stupid nation would shut the barn door after the horse gets out. Our monumentally fucked up mess of a nation waited for days until the horse was out, then shot the horse.

Truly, we live in an amazing universe.

But wait… there’s more!

Having completely mis-handled the situation clear from Montana to the Atlantic there’s still a faker and gayer way events could play out.

I hesitate to type it because the new face saving spin is so dumb it’s almost radioactive:

Presidential Spin: “Getting spy ballooned by the Chinese is no big deal. It happened three or four times under Trump.”

The Last Few Sane Americans: “That sounds like bullshit. I never heard of it.”

Presidential Spin: “We kept it secret. The military didn’t even tell Trump.”

The Last Few Sane Americans: “The fuck you say?!?”

Presidential Spin: “Yeah, so getting pantsed by China in 2023 is no big deal because China does this shit all the time.”

The Last Few Sane Americans: “Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it.”

Presidential Spin: “Sure! Biden got more votes than any other candidate in history. Yesterday we installed a fence before the president gave a speech. We did that to protect Democracy. We didn’t want to have to take more political prisoners.”

The Last Few Sane Americans: “When you tug you yank!”

So that was it. The story was over. It’s no big deal that we had a ChiCom Balloon floating over the heartland because it happens all the time. The ultimate fake and gay way for the story to play out.

Wrong!

Speaking of “radioactive” there was a faker and gayer option. Something so incandescently moronic I’d never even considered such a thing. America launched an ICBM at the Pacific Ocean.

The Last Few Sane Americans: “WHY ARE YOU FIRING NUKES?!?”

Presidential Spin: “It was a “routine” activity “intended to demonstrate that the United States’ nuclear deterrent is safe, secure, reliable and effective…”

The Last Few Sane Americans: “FIRING NUKES IS ROUTINE? ARE YOU FUCKING HIGH?”

Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, Air Force Global Strike Command commander: “A test launch displays the heart of our deterrence mission on the world’s stage, assuring our nation and its allies that our weapons are capable and our Airmen are ready and willing to defend peace across the globe at a moment’s notice…”

The Last Few Sane Americans: “I’m supposed to believe that Chinese Spy Balloons have teabagged the Continental United States several times. But this time, and only this time, Americans saw it. Therefore, you concluded that it was a reasonable and intelligent response to sink the balloon in the Atlantic and fling an ICBM at the Pacific?”

Presidential Spin: “I give you my word as a Biden, the laptop is a nothing-burger.”

The Last Few Sane Americans: “What’s wrong with you? Launching nuclear weapons is dumb. It’s dumb at every scale from planetary to molecular. Have you been copying your homework from North Korea? North Korea is the only place that does that kind of shit and they’re fucking weird. Don’t be North Korea!”

Presidential Spin: “I’m hard core, Jack! Corn Pop was a bad dude.”

I don’t know how fake and gay things can get. I ran out of imagination years ago and I talk to trees!

All I really know is not over. It’s sixth week in the third year of the Bidenverse. An event that came about due to more votes than any other candidate in history appearing at 3:00 AM in specific locations. And that was just the start!

I can’t imagine what will happen but the remaining 46 weeks of the year. They’re going to be mind-blowing!

Last week a slow, crude, dumb Chinese balloon flew over a huge portion of the continental United States. The Government and its air force had the capacity to shoot it down. It lacked the decision making capacity to do so. Nor did it express some decisive alternate action. Our military and government did the same thing your geezer neighbor did on F***book; they literally watched it float over domestic airspace for thousands of miles. The people nominally in charge witnessed events but did not drive them; no different than someone watching a sporting event.

After the balloon completed whatever its mission was (assuming it had one) and after it had (presumably) gathered as much data as it possibly could, it was shot it down. It was dispatched where the wreckage would be submerged in salt water and hard to recover.

Nobody thinks the air force is incapable of destroying a balloon. But the people in charge (including the president that got more votes than any other candidate in history) weren’t capable of deciding what to do.

The inability to make decisions and implement swift rational responses to events are the end state of decay. Part of any collapse is the point when nobody knows what to do because nobody knows who’s in charge or even why they show up to work in the morning.

You’ve seen this for yourself. We both experienced the last few years of concentrated panic and chaos. You know it as well as I.

The core purpose of nearly every system in society has been discarded. Are doctors really curing sick people? Is the FBI solving crime or causing it? Why does the Post Office have guns? Does your bank have enough money to pay you back if you make a withdrawal? Will that withdrawal happen if you vote the wrong way or have unpopular opinions? Will the police protect you if someone tries to rob you? Do elementary schools teach reading or racism? Do universities teach anything at all? Does your church try to save your soul or is it doing something else? When was the last time the press told the truth? Do you have freedom of speech? Of the rights written in the constitution; how many can you exercise right now? Who decided you can’t have an incandescent lightbulb or a certain flow showerhead or a gas kitchen stove, and how did they get to be in charge? Why are fences put up periodically in Washington DC? Cuba or Iran might have political prisoners but why does America have them too?

Think of all the things that are done which don’t match the original purpose of the organization doing them. Think of all the things they should be doing. Think about how many things just don’t get done.

Don’t take it from me. I’m just a dipshit blogger. Look with your own eyes. Witness today’s post covid paralysis using whatever common sense God gave you. Watch whatever system interests you to see if it still does what it was created to do.

Some people call it Clown World. I call it the Bidenverse. Whatever vocabulary you use, you know what I’m talking about.

In 1987 an inexperienced German amateur pilot had a fun adventure. He rented a Cessna 172. It was not a particularly powerful plane and he wasn’t some sort of super duper ace pilot. He was a 19 year old weirdo with a starry eyed view of the world and perhaps more initiative than common sense.

Mathias Rust and his rented Cessna flew straight into the heart of the biggest baddest Communist empire in human existence. He flew into their capital city. He landed there. He signed autographs and waited to be arrested; two hours later.

The Soviet Union (USSR) had been a mighty, unstoppable, globally dominant, militarized, superpower but it was in terminal decline. By 1987 it was hollow. Nobody knew what was going on. Nobody knew who was in charge, what their orders were, or if they had the authority to do anything.

The USSR’s fearsome military and government had once been murderously powerful. It fought wars and starved whole regions to death. It could vaporize a Cessna at will and had Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that could do the same to cities anywhere on earth. A few years before Mathias’ little joyride, the USSR would have shot him down pretty much instantly.

But that’s the point, by 1987 the USSR was just a shell. They couldn’t  figure out what to do about a youth in a simple little airplane and so they did nothing (emphasis added):

“A teenage amateur pilot, he flew from Helsinki, Finland, to Moscow, being tracked several times by Soviet Air Defence Forces and civilian air traffic controllers, as well as Soviet Air Force interceptor aircraft. The Soviet fighters did not receive permission to shoot him down, and his aeroplane was mistaken for a friendly aircraft several times. He landed on Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge, next to Red Square near the Kremlin in the capital of the Soviet Union.”

I’m not saying it would be a great thing if anti-aircraft fire had downed idealistic Mathias and his rental (I wonder if he put down a deposit on the plane?). I’m saying the USSR in 1956 would have blown the plane to bits but the USSR in 1987 was so internally contradictory that it didn’t know what to do.

Here’s a picture from that day:

It was 1987 when the mighty and feared USSR couldn’t figure out what to do with a nutty teenager in a Cessna. Four years later, in 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics completely dissolved. I’m not saying a Chinese balloon last week means America is toast… I’m saying America right now behaves like the USSR did back when the USSR started not meaning anything.

Now here’s the good news. The oppressive and miserable USSR (at least some of it) is now the Soviet Federation. The transition sucked and the ensuing Federation isn’t perfect… but the nation that rose from the ashes is a vast improvement. The Russian Federation is better for its people than the totalitarian shithole it replaced. Collapse was followed by renewal and improvement.

There’s always hope.

Here in the west, politicians and boomers and dipshit “journalists” haven’t yet figured out that cold war USSR is no more. They act like it’s 1973 and Putin is one James Bond plot away from nuking Baltimore. That’s not true.

Whatever is damaging society domestically is based in city, State, or Federal mis-governance (or a combination of all three). Failure is not inflicted externally from Moscow or Beijing. Like the chaotic fading mess of USSR in 1987, whomever is making a mess of Baltimore or Portland in 2023, is failing due to internal contradictions. Locally, governance isn’t assuring domestic tranquility, clean water, stable economies, or the freedom of citizens… and at the national scale it didn’t know what to do about a Chinese balloon. Nationally, the system that can’t handle a three story floating fabric ball has opinions about your kitchen appliances and the contents of your bloodstream and everything else but it can’t do much of anything well.

Today, the leader of one of two nations that couldn’t make a clear decision about a balloon (not Trudeau) will give a speech. This man, who got more votes than any other candidate in history, will give a speech from behind temporary fences, in the city where he imprisons his political prisoners.

You will be given orders. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Toe the line. Forget about the balloon. Eat your bugs, get rid of your gas kitchen stove, line up for the next booster. Don’t say certain sentences and you are required to at least pretend to have certain official beliefs. Do as you’re told. Why? Because you are told to do so.

Will you?

I present to you; Rover:

Founding Questions is a much appreciated fount of rationality and humor in this, the third year of the Bidenverse (and the seventh or ninth or thirtieth year of the long drawn out swirling of the drain). Among other wise thoughts you’ll find there is the First Rule of Clown World: “No matter how fake and gay you think it’s going to be (for any value of “it”), it will always somehow end up being so much faker and gayer.”

So true!

I spent January riding out a boring old fashioned winter cold, burning my inadequate firewood supply, and stacking canned goods. I was forced by circumstance to sit still. I used the time to idly ponder what stupid thing would roll around after the mid-winter cold snap wrapped up. (I think last mid-winter had Texans freezing their ass when windmills froze up?)

It tried ever so hard to think of the dumbest, most pathetic, lamest, stupid thing that could happen but the First Rule is never wrong. Clown World did it’s thing by diving beneath the lowest bar I could imagine.

A balloon? A fucking balloon!?!

Great raving gibbons of Gloucester*! The stupid thing was a fucking balloon?

I’d pinned my guess on a limp dick AI generated article that proved CPUs are racist. Or maybe a boatload of “non-documented totally anything but illegal migrant blessings of diversity” would have a tragic whale based accident near offshore windmills.

But no… it was a goddamn balloon.

Early last week it “suddenly” appeared; just lot like certain myocardial issues… see what I did there? It appeared in Montana. Virtually nobody in any press mentioned how it crossed from the Pacific to the Great Plains without anyone noticing. Since our press is nothing but propagand-tainment nobody bothered to ask why the entire nation of Canada didn’t pick up the phone and maybe give us a heads up. Nor why NORAD didn’t flag this issue long ago. (Are they literally doing nothing but tracking Santa?) Don’t we have an air force? (Or God forbid couldn’t the space force do something? Bwa ha ha ha the space force! I crack myself up!).

Nobody dropped that fucker because nobody is in charge.

When I see a raccoon heading for the chicken coop I handle it. I see the threat, I assess options, I consider where the creature is headed and evaluate possible outcomes. If the critter is about to take out a chicken I know. I know what to do. Most importantly, I do what I know how to do.

Invariably (if I see it) the raccoon is dispatched within ten minutes or less and not a feather is riled on a single chicken. If a raccoon was made of fabric, three stories tall, radar indicated, and moving at walking speed it would be even easier.

Yet in Clown World the balloon seemed to have the upper hand. The most highly funded military on planet earth couldn’t handle the same decision made by a dipshit blogger with a chicken coop.

The balloon just hung around. Noticed by all and addressed by none.

I’m not particularly worried about spying or even Chinese spying. I’m especially not worried that Chinese Lidar is going to scan a midwestern cornfield (or even the adjacent missile silos) and figure out something they don’t already know.

However, there’s one thing they might have learned. In case there was doubt before, it’s now proven that our chain of command can’t do shit. It literally couldn’t handle the basic and stupid situation of a balloon in our airspace.

“General Sir, there’s a balloon the size of a Winnebago floating near Billings, shall we blast it to smithereens?”

“Stand by soldier, I need to check my nail polish and then make Powerpoint slides for a hundred meetings.”

The dumb, stupid, slow, lazy balloon outwitting a whole nation is what happens when nobody’s in charge. It’s not that we lack the capacity to handle a stupid balloon, we lack the command structure to decide to handle a stupid balloon.

I tried to think of the fakest and gayest possible resolution to this situation. Letting it coast at the speed of USPS all the way to the Atlantic is about what I imagined. Unlike a lot of people, I’m not worried about a fucking balloon. It does what satellites do, just slower and cheaper. Lacking any more information than anyone else, I figured someone in China tossed it into the stratosphere as a sort of test; “lets see how long it takes the morons in American government to detect and shoot this thing down”. I’m sure they got a laugh out of it; “What do you mean it got the way to Montana and now it’s a trending meme on F***book? How is is still floating? Are they all too busy watching the Finnish Figure skater fall over?”

Over a couple of days it became a waiting game and I had a bit of hope. One neat idea would be to let that fucker just plain float clear to France. It would be a pretty chill response. Show the world that the US isn’t easily panicked. Ideally it’d drift from stupid America to stupid Europe and heck… it might make it all the way back to a completely baffled China.

I thought the lowest level of fake and gay would be to let it drift as if undetectable clear to the heartland, then let it lumber across the eastern seaboard, then earn back a little redemption by watching to see what everyone else did. After all, the best way to look like we weren’t so incompetent as to be unable to decide what to do about archaic technology might be to let archaic technology float on by.

Has anyone here ever done any sparring? If your opponent’s punch ain’t gonna’ land, you don’t have to expend energy blocking it. Sometime that’s the boss move. By the time it got to the coast I was expecting that to happen and I was mildly optimistic that we hadn’t behaved like total jackasses.

We could learn something. Since formerly mighty and now completely inept America had let it pass like it had zero fucks to give, what would come next? Would France flatten it eleven nautical miles from Brest like a proper nation? Would Portugal pick it off from the Azores like a proper nation? Would Spain consider it a new from of green energy and have a parade as befits the Clown World. Would it drift over a bickering, irrational, indecisive EU only to wind up vaporized the instant it got within view of the Russian Federation (which for better or worse appears to have adults in charge)?

Ha! This was going to be fun. Canada (as far as I can tell from American propagand-tainment) either didn’t know it was there or was too busy picking out new socks for Trudeau to do anything about it. America hyperventilated while doing nothing. My nation’s government used the excuse of “it could hurt someone if it fell on the densely populated civilians of Eastern Montana”; which convinced absolutely nobody who’s seen the empty spaces of Montana. So now we could enjoy the show. What would France’s reaction/excuse be?

But I forgotten the first rule. There was a faker and gayer resolution. One so incandescently stupid that I hadn’t been able to conceive of such a thing.

“General sir, we’ve had days to ponder the situation. Are we just going to let the balloon float to Europe for the exclusive entertainment of an obscure blogger?”

“No! I’ve consulted with Captain Pike… I mean I’ve spoken with a very popular president who won more votes than any other candidate in history and is clearly in charge of everything. He says we should let it float over every single inch of the continental United States but then, just when the wreckage would fall into salt water where retrieval and reverse engineering would be hardest, blast it.”

“Yes, sir. We will call it operation First Rule!”

So it was done. A nation of 350 million people, once the most technologically advanced society in human history, a people that could put men on the moon 50 years ago, used a 35 million dollar fighter jet to eliminate a fucking balloon that had finished it’s presumably super secret spy mission across an entire continent. We failed to either quickly dispatch OR stoically ignore technology first demonstrated in 1783. We picked the dumbest possible option out of a huge universe of slightly less dumb options.

None of it matters. The balloon will be forgotten by next week. Sooner or later something similar but even dumber will happen again. Why wouldn’t it? If you were the Chinese government and had inexplicably outwitted the Americans with a balloon you’d logically experiment with something even slower and dumber. Maybe they’ll put a chihuahua in a kayak and see if it can take out Tacoma? (Based on the balloon, a chihuahua might work!)

Tomorrow the president who got more votes than any other candidate in history will provide the next example of the First Rule. He’ll give his state of the union speech. I don’t know what he’ll say but his last two memorable speeches have been a doozy. One involved getting me fired while cursing me to a winter of severe illness and death. The next involved blood red lighting while flanked by soldiers in a setting that would make Darth Vader cringe at the negative symbolism.

At this point I can only imagine what he’ll do and I simply can’t imagine the ultimate level of fake and gay that is certain to happen. Kittens being thrown into a wood chipper due to climate change while executing gas kitchen stoves for racism? Interpretive dance while on stilts?

There’s something out there that’s so fake and gay I cannot possibly imagine it. Tomorrow we get to experience it.

Stay tuned. And lets offer a silent nod of appreciation for the Chinese engineers who did pretty well. They flummoxed not just one but two nations, encompassing most of North America… using fabric. I’ll bet they know calculus in a way our military doesn’t.

Good luck y’all.

A.C.

*It doesn’t have to make sense. Nothing has to make sense.

My last post came about because I’ve been thinking about the “spectrum” of self reliance. It amused me to post the video of the girl who thought Obama would fill her car with gas. Then I realized she lives in the same world as some of my readers who (wisely and impressively) grow heirloom crops. She thinks the president has a “Bureau of Filling Cars With Gas” while others gather their own seeds from their own crops. Meanwhile, I have twelve cans of peanut butter but I’m running out of firewood.

That’s a huge spectrum to be acknowledged. Folks seem to think “prepping”* is either yes or no; but it’s nothing of the sort.

This is exacerbated by “prepping media” which emphasizes the extreme over the mundane (as do enthusiasts in any hobby). Someone will always bitch about any level of anything as “inadequate”. Here are a few samples I’m sure you’ve heard: “If you carry a .22 for self defense you’re almost certainly screwed.” “If you don’t own a lifted Jeep with a winch you can never bug out.” “If you haven’t EMP proofed your Jeep while carrying nothing less than a .45 with a backup AR and twenty loaded mags, you’re zombie meat.”

I figure if you get shot with a .22 it’ll still hurt like hell. Unless you’re on the Chuck Norris side of things any firearm hits harder than a punch. Sure, a .45 is better than a .22 but anything is something. My cheap squirrel hunting 20 gauge fits somewhere in there. Nobody would recommend it as perfect for home defense but I damn sure wouldn’t want to be in front of it. For that matter if someone bails in a Toyota Camry all that really matters is if it works. If they watch the tsunami on TV from 100 miles inland, I guess they successfully bailed out. It’s important to avoid perfect becoming the enemy of “making good progress in the right direction”.

Failing to see a spectrum is a weakness to which I am prone. For example, in 2022 I cut less firewood than I wanted. Now, in the coldest winter months, I’m running low. There’s no surprise in that; ant and grasshopper y’all. But it still sucks. (Relax, I’ve got a furnace too.)

I could fret that I, like Germany, allowed myself to become dependent on oil. I could fret that (predictably!) the cost doubled or tripled after certain events in early 2021. But what good would that do?

I should focus on the positive. I should shrug and be happy that I cut 60% or 80% percent of what I needed. Less than I wanted, more than most.

So what does “more than most” really mean?

Bad question! Trying to find out sent me down the rabbit hole. I tried to think how many people are 100% dependent for their heating (or in warm climates cooling)? Or 100% dependent for food? Or struggling paycheck to paycheck? And for that matter isn’t “paycheck to paycheck” elevated self-reliance compared to “EBT to EBT”?

I started playing with numbers and just plain gave up. I’ve sought (to varying degrees of success) self-reliance so much and so long I’ve lost touch with how utterly dependent most people really are. I can’t quite picture a “normal person” anymore. How are they still alive?

Is this why they were fighting over toilet paper in the first week of Covid? Is this why they signal group affiliation on F***book as if their life depended on group membership? Is this why people act so… for want of a better word… stampede prone?

I don’t have any answers. I just got sucked into this line of reasoning and decided to share.

A.C.

*I hate the term “prepping”. Newspeak couldn’t hack the manly stoic term “survivalist” and sought a lame, gutless, alternative. “Prepping” sounds like something you can do from your couch. “Survivalist” sounds like someone who actually does leg day. Since our language is as manipulated as our media they gradually associated “survivalist” with someone running around the forest re-enacting Rambo… which wasn’t the original intent. I tend to settle on “homesteading” but what do I know?

Level -99: Obama will pay for everything.

Level 100: I want to make a sandwich. Oh look! We have a dozen jars of peanut butter!

Level 99: I’ve slightly depleted our supplies but this peanut butter sandwich is delicious.

Level 100: Mrs. Curmudgeon replaced the missing jar!

Level ???: Just now six cases of canned goods arrived! (The UPS guy hates us.)

Bonus tip: If you stack plentiful canned goods throughout the year and visit the range regularly, Burt Gummer will come on Christmas with his deuce and a half. He leaves a brick of .22s for every good survivalist.

My last few posts related to my scheming to buy a seed drill (an expensive tractor mounted implement of agriculture) and complaints that Hollywood took a steaming dump on the sweet and dopey but also lovable Scooby Doo. Then I went off grid.

I vanished to ride out a case of the sniffles. I’m still working on it. Don’t fret, I’m alive and fine and all that, but I’m not my usual bushy tailed self. In light of being slightly under the weather, I won’t do any literary heavy lifting for a while.

Today’s post is “catch-up”; a few small topics from this, the first month of the third, or fifth, or twentieth year of the swirling of the drain that is our modern world. Thanks for joining me.

Velma: It’s Nice To Know I’m Not Alone

It’s unnecessary to point out that Hollywood, and indeed every media outlet, actively, deeply, completely, and utterly hates us. It hates plain American citizens with the white hot loathing usually reserved for war criminals and genital warts. Why? That topic could fill a book. Lets just say that if you are an “average” person, they hate you. You’re targeted if you hold down a job, have positive relationships with family, married and/or like the opposite sex, raise your own damn kids as best you can, pay your bills on time, and can get through the day without bitching at everyone about everything all the time.

Hollywood, in this case HBO Max, decided to ruin a 50 year old plot about a handful of teenagers and talking dog. Why? Because they hate you. Also they’re too damn stupid and perverse to make their own plot about teenagers with a talking dog so they have to find one that exists and fuck it into the ground.

Incapable of creation they’ve ruined everything else. Star Wars? James Bond? Lord of the Rings? Name any 50 year old plot and there’s a Hollywood entity bending it over the table and shoving “the narrative” up its “plot”.

I usually ignore Hollywood’s depredations. I didn’t respond to Lord of the Rings because of course it sucked. Like Satan, Hollywood can never create, only copy and ruin. The Lord of the Rings was crap because how could it not be? If anyone in Hollywood had the creativity of Tolkien they’d have him drawn and quartered within the week. They’re pissed at J. K. Rowling and all she did was write Harry Potter fer crissakes. Nobody in Hollywood can do anything but suck.

The amusing thing is, Scooby Doo is so fucking simple it takes deliberate effort to ruin it. A six year old with a crayon could run another cycle of Scooby Doo that’s “barely average but not reprehensible”. Hollywood can’t. Some folks learn through reading and some have to pee on the electric fence themselves but Hollywood shoves itself feet first into the woodchipper. “Velma” didn’t have to suck, except that the participants suck so completely that anything they do pulls disaster straight out of the universe and concentrates it into a steaming heap of putrid failure.

They can’t talk this level of failure into non-being. Not only does everyone hate it but it’s bad on such a galactic level that even people who fully control all media can’t hide it.

Here’s how it was going on October 22, 2022. Mindy Kaling’s ‘Velma’ HBO Max Series Assembles Its Scooby Gang:

“HBO Max also released a teaser for Velma that pokes fun at complaints over changes to longstanding IP.”

Here’s how it’s going exactly 4 months later. Velma Pushes Aside Dragonball Evolution to Officially Become IMDb’s Worst Ever Entry:

“…the Mindy Kaling-led series has hit a new low and spectacularly taken its place as the lowest-rated piece of entertainment ever…”

Lowest rated entertainment ever! Yet, they’re still discussing the possible second season.

“…will Velma get a second chance to make a first impression? While not as expensive to make as many of HBO Max’s live-action scripted shows, there is a doubt over whether a second season of Velma would be financially viable for a platform who have recently undergone so many cancelations in the name of cost-cutting and financial realignment.”

Isn’t that hilarious? If “lowest rated ever” doesn’t get a project killed, nothing will. Which, now that I think about it, is why I know how much Hollywood hates us.

[Also it’s the source, not me, that misspelled “cancellations”.]

Thoughts On The Seed Drill:

I had a small fiscal setback. It’s not a tragedy, just an event. Shit happens and so forth. After a thorough review, I had to jettison the idea of the grain drill. Too expensive.

It’ll be more expensive in the future, but I’ll deal with that when the time comes. Economic choices are about the best option within constraints, not the Utopian ideal. (Unless of course you’re spending tax dollars in which case you can do whatever dipshit thing you want with unlimited money.)

I’m sad that the seed drill won’t happen this year but it’s not insurmountable. I have a hand seeder for broadcast planting (it’s more work than you’d think but it definitely does work) and I’m in the market for one of those wheeled cultivator gadgets (plus a bottle of ibuprofen). I also will buy or build a stand planter (recommended in the comments). Also I’m not above employing a dirty hoe (see what I did there)?

I should also note that I am NOT gardening in the traditional sense. I have a zillion irons in the fire and just don’t have the time or labor available to garden. (If we all start starving, I’ll rethink my labor allocation.) I’m just noodling about with “stuff seeds in the ground to see what happens”.

Also, some of what I plant is hunting/nature plots. I jam a seed in the ground after spring thaw and wind up with a steak by Thanksgiving. It’s not gardening but it’s not wasted effort either. I’m thinking of planting something tall (like sunflower) with a hand planter in the middle of plots of stuff that’s short (like brassica) that was seeded with broadcast seeding. I don’t know if that would provide huntable game with more cover? Also I’m wondering if sunflower would encourage songbirds. I figure a smattering of sunflower seedheads (if they stay above the snow-depth) might attract cool birds.

I’ll post more details when summer returns.

Thoughts On Preparedness:

I got a lot of helpful comments when I mentioned the seed drill. An interesting observation was that everyone who commented was amazingly squared away. Give yourself a pat on the back! Thank you all for that ray of sunshine!

Here we are in early 21st century clown world, where the lights are on only because of inertia and the last six serious hard workers that own work boots. Growing parts of the populace tear down everything. They may be motivated by racism or global warming or voting rights for Himalayan swamp rats but the real thing that ties them together is the assumption that civilization runs due to magic and it will continue to do so even if the whole world is busy fingerpainting.

Not so for the readers of this blog! I’ve been producing my own food for a while and fret only that I’m 50% or 30% reliant on a grocery store. Meanwhile, I got comments from folks who make my weed beds and half assed bacon and egg ranch look like random flailing. Not merely gardeners but serious ones. I’m pleased to see that.

We should all take a moment to reflect how well we’re doing. There’s “muddles through just fine” and “got your shit together” and there’s even “this ain’t my first rodeo” but I got comments such as “consider your seed source”.

That’s a level of “well prepared” that’s way off the charts! Way to go folks! We live in a world where “I just noticed eggs are expensive” is probably the mean. Beneath that there’s a vast herd of “I can’t wait for the EBT to pay my next trip to the dollar store”. I’m far out on the tail end with “I canned game meat I hunted”. But there’s always more. At least some of this blog’s readers ponder planting heirloom seeds so they can replant the same strain next year. Awesome! Talk about going off grid!

Thanks everyone. I knew you were there, but it was good to hear it.

Incidentally, for the short term I’ll keep planting evil GMO seeds from Burpee (mostly so I can use my pressure canner with some corn). That puts me at the 99.9% percentile of preparedness. If shits gets weirder (it will), I’ll go further (eventually). In the meantime I’m happy just knowing there’s someone in the 99.999% percentile of preparedness. If you’ve got packets of heirloom seeds stacked in your pantry, God bless ya!

[Warning: inside thoughts of a creative type follow. Feel free to ignore them.]

If you’re a regular viewer of this blog you’re aware I’m slowly* writing Attack of the Lesbian Activist Squirrels. In case the title didn’t clue you in, it’s satirical and intended for fun. It’s probably going to get me drawn and quartered whenever the woke buzzkills detect it but I’m not too worried about that. The woke can’t help themselves. They do nothing but bitch and they’ll instinctively bitch at anything fun. It feels like you could smile at a sunset and a Karen will materialize to suck the life out of you, having been drawn, vampire-like, to the scene of joy.

(Look at how Millennials and Gen Z turned on the author of Harry Potter… the most beloved book series of their youth is now a harsh political issue. Instead of fond memories of a cute story from their childhood, they’ve created another scene of scorched earth. There are a lot of people who read the story when the young adult writing of J. K. Rowling was actually age appropriate. Now I would guess they don’t read at all.)

My story started with a joke about a bear in my birdfeeder. After that the plot took on a life of its own. I’ve followed it through twists and turns and the last chapter parked the characters to the edge of the home planet of dipshits, Portland Oregon. I’ve got one or two chapters left to wrap it all up with a pretty bow. I look forward to those chapters.

Part of the story is Velma. The plot needed Velma and I enjoyed creating her. She is the counterbalance to the two main protagonists.

Billy is pretty darned sharp but also within the range we’ve all met. The sort of fellow that would inherently gravitate toward engineering only to find himself cast out of the cesspool of mediocrity that is the modern midwit university. A tragic man who would have been  welcomed with open arms some decades ago is an outsider in today’s dumbed down clown world.

Doogie is different. He’s “several standard deviations beyond the mean”. If you’ve met (or are) such a creature you know they’ll never fit in at any location or era. Doogie is so damn brilliant he likes to play mind games with sentient (and dangerous!) wildlife. His is the sort to move mental markers around the physical world as the NSA hunts for wrongthink within the realm of pure data. He might have been tolerated at a past university but is rarely welcomed anywhere.

Velma came to being because I wanted the poles of my fictional world to have balance. I also wanted to shit all over the dumbasses that think intelligence equates with dumpy, boring, nerds. (I assume that sentiment is sour grapes from the less intellectually fortunate.) Hollywood has pounded the trope to death; “She can’t be hot and smart”. With Velma, I have declared “she can be so hot your eyes fall out while possessing a brain that can vaporize your mind.” Hollywood is limited because its creative workforce is mentally limited. Thus the reliance on tropes.

Velma, like all characters, took on a life of her own. She drifted from mental risk taker to a walking undetonated nuclear bomb. I didn’t see that coming! I’m delighted. One loves to see their creations grow.

As befitting a hot, blazingly smart, shit-stirring, goddess, Velma has powers in the dark arts of bullshit. This includes her backstory with a group of siblings that are the “Scooby Doo” gang. There’s no finer bullshit that the happy, dumb, sweet, innocent, poorly animated, Hanna-Barbera, accidental hit that is (or was) Scooby-Doo. Who better than my Velma to wield the pre-programmed bullshit laid down by the Five Man Band that is Scooby-Doo? She can tap into our memories of the girl that spent her time Brain-Splaining simple plots to a stoner and his talking dog.

Alas, Hollywood digs through the graves of the past, grinds the bones it finds into a thick paste, and then smears it on the bathroom stall that is their current lack of creativity. Scooby-Doo existed from 1969 – 1976. Hacks have been squeezing that IP for the subsequent 47 years. (Not bad for a cartoon with basically one plot!) I assumed, sooner or later, someone would trash Scooby-Doo and my beloved Velma’s bullshit avatar. This year, the third or fifth or twentieth of a long panicked bullshit decline, is the year when Velma gets ruined. How unfortunate for the hot, genius, that I created.

The Drinker Recommends says that Velma is the worst thing (so far) in the shit sandwich that is modern “cinema”. I trust The Drinker.

My Velma shall soldier on alone. I knew this time would come but I hoped to have a few more years before they wrecked a happy childhood memory. Eventually all that was ever written or performed will be shit upon, but I didn’t plan for the accelerated timing.

The bummer is that it dilutes the power of bullshit, which is related to the power of shared experience. Now there are two populations in the world. Those that witnessed the real thing. And those that witnessed the undead mess that was made of its corpse and don’t know what they lost.

Allow me to draw a parallel: A few years back mobs of women appeared out of nowhere wearing a strange uniform. They were the watchers of 58 episodes of something called “The Handmaid’s Tale”. These weird women (and it was entirely women) stopped wearing pussy hats at Anti-Trump demonstrations just long enough to cosplay some sort of wish fulfillment dominance fantasy where they (women in the modern world that make up the majority of college graduates and rule almost any office job environment) are exploited victims. None of them read the 1985 book by Margaret Atwood. They don’t know the details of the book. They don’t have the mental engagement of the written word. What they saw was not what the original conveyed. I didn’t watch the TV show so I don’t know how closely the plots match, but I damn well know that no woman in 1985 wore costumes to cosplay her part in Atwood’s story.

As they upended Handmaid’s Tale they upended the simple but delightful character of Velma. The smart freckled redhead that was the integral part of a five man team 50 years ago has become a bitchy Indian single unit mocking four hapless dipshits that were (in the earlier incarnation) her friends.

Dammit. I hate to see my Velma’s small but happy bullshit connection (which was satirical but also respectful of the old stories) severed by the chainsaw of shitty narratives. Alas, it happened.

Tonight I’m going to toast my independent and fierce fictional being who’s 50 year old connection to the populace has been shredded. Lucky for me, my Velma is fearless. She has absolutely no sympathy for society, she has no remorse, her family is less a five man band than two siblings, a random stoner, a miscast dog, and her presence with the wattage turned waaaay low. My Velma has zero shits to give. Were she real, she’d see me in my cups, challenge me to a game of chess, and (when I inevitably lost) burn my house down.

If you’re of a mind, join me in a glass of bourbon to mark the moment.

A.C.

*I’m sure the slowly part is infuriating. I’ve got a day job and all that. Thank you for your patience.

THIS IS HOW IT’S DONE!

I’d never heard of Colter Wall until today. The absence was wrong and stupid. Now I’ve heard it and share it with you.

Some comments from his YouTube feed will put you in the mood.

“My glass of bourbon just refilled itself when he started singin”

and

“it is my personal belief that Colter Wall is the living, walking, and singing middle finger to Autotune.”

Probably the best Crossroads retelling since Robert Johnson! DAMN!

I would normally schedule my next post to go live in the morning. But if you heard this song before your morning coffee… you would die.

Enjoy!