Adaptive Curmudgeon

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Animal Farm, George Orwell

Recently I was pondering the U.S. Constitution.  This is nothing unusual.  In our politicized modern world it seems I can’t get to my morning cup of coffee without someone invoking a constitutional justification for doing whatever the hell they really want to do anyway.  The few of us that favor being left alone find ourselves clinging to the Constitution too.  It’s a life raft in a sea of actors intent on regulating anything from magazine capacity to Big Gulp sizes.

I was weary of the tit for tat that happens with constitutional arguments long removed from the source.  Honestly, how many talking heads yammering over Obamacare ever read the darned Constitution?  (Note: when someone asks “are you serious?” I am happy to truthfully answer “Yes I am.”)

I’ve also noticed how many people refer to the constitution for their favorite cause (first amendment freedom of speech) but then steamroll it for another (second amendment guns)?  What’s up with that?!?  Are they that secure?  Would they be so quick to turn the backbone of the nation into a pick this and ignore that exercise if they knew that sooner or later their diametric opposite would have their turn?  Why do we stomach their shenanigans?

Finally, as much as therapy as anything else, I decided to refer to the real thing.  Alas, it turns out that a complete printout of the Constitution, which shouldn’t be a big deal, isn’t as forthcoming as you’d think.

When I finally found it I copied it.  I’ll post it shortly.  You don’t have to read it.  (Though you should!)  Just know that it’s there.  It’s not in some empty suit’s law book.  It’s pretty simple language, as if generations past intended it to be read by citizens and interpreted by reasonable people.  This isn’t secret voodoo and we shouldn’t let it be treated as such.

When it is posted, I expect each of my readers to paint the whole damn thing, word for word, on the barn door in their backyard.  I’m not about to see my Constitution buried in errata like the manual to an old car.  Also, keep an eye out for Orwellian livestock with paintbrushes.

I have an alternative to the expensive new Naderite abomination of a lawn mower. It’s an antique tractor. It’s roughly 70 years old and it’s a working man’s machine. It’s not a spotless museum piece. It’s age is a badge of honor. It will not (cannot!) depreciate further. It simply is what it is. There are no new machines like it and there never will be. It has character.

(Could the presence or absence of character in a machine reflect presence or absence of character in the society which created it? Whoa!  That’s a Crimethink right on the tip of my tongue!  It’s also a rabbit hole into which I’d better not delve.  I’m part of the era that witnessed not only the cold war but the AMC Gremlin.  The mind boggles.)

Old tractors, like motorcycles and love, induce poetics in men who wouldn’t otherwise admit such thoughts. My tractor probably lived a fuller life than many humans.  Who knows how many more years it’ll run? It has stories it won’t share and history I can’t know.  Since it probably fed a lot of people and plowed a lot of fields its benefit to society might exceed several city blocks full of modern cubicle drones.  Imagine that!

It was built with the intention it would last forever. Like the Parthenon, my tractor will still be standing when all that’s left are ruins.

I like the permanence solid old machinery. With proper maintenance (or at least barely adequate care) I hope to keep it running as long as I can. I do this just to honor it’s bad ass original design. Someday simpletons clutching Obamaphones on the bus ride to Wal-Mart will marvel that ancient civilizations made such things. That day will either be the opening scene from the Planet of the Apes or next Tuesday.

I feel good about the old tractor. Buying a new riding lawn mower is consumerism. Fixing an antique tractor is a duty and an honor.

The old girl doesn’t have any Nader gadgetry. If you fall off it’ll keep rolling until something somewhere (whether a hundred yards or a mile away) finally flips it. You won’t mind because it will have already chopped you to shreds when you bounced off the mower deck.

Nor does it have a cup holder. I wouldn’t even look at this beast if I’d been drinking anyway.

If you can’t operate a clutch you’re too stupid to drive it. Which is as it should be.

It has massive wheels which will roll over anything smaller than a garbage can. I know this because I once drove it over a garbage can. I could, if I wished, drive it over my new riding lawn mower. Someday I might.

The hefty engine block has more metal than a dozen modern riding lawn mowers. You could line up ten grand worth of new mowers, throw in two refrigerators and a Honda Civic and you’d still have less metal than the block. The rear wheel hubs are dense enough to have their own gravity.

The throttle doesn’t have a freakin’ rabbit. If you can’t figure out what the lever does you need a different line of work. I suggest something where being stupid won’t hurt so much; possibly politics.

It could use some repairs. The throttle is a little out of adjustment. I’ll fix it when I get to it. There’s an oil pressure gauge which broke in when Reagan was president and an amp meter which conked out during Carter’s time. None have cartoon icons. The lights conked out again. I think my tractor wants me to stop mowing too late into the evening.

Installing the mower deck requires a deft hand. When the deft hand doesn’t work (and it usually doesn’t) you quit pussy footing around and use a big ass hammer. Don’t forget to install the PTO shaft which, in case you’re wondering, is the deadliest thing you’ll touch all week. You could caress a PTO shaft with one hand and a cobra with the other and it’s hard to know which is more likely to bite you.  Only after you’ve installed the PTO shaft can you try and start it.

Every time I start my tractor a microscopic wave of common sense reverberates through the cosmos.  OSHA hyperventilates.  Ralph Nader weeps.  Al Gore shudders.  Obama’s teleprompter falls over.  Nancy Pelosi drops kicks her armed bodyguard in the shin.  Michael Bloomberg spills his big gulp.  Domestic aerial drones lose their beaings.  Twitter is delayed a half second.  The NSA accidentally deletes someones’ Facebook profile.  I smile!

Mowing the lawn is a whole different experience with an antique tractor. The hefty little beast chugs along utterly unconcerned by anything in front of it, behind it, under it, or in the vicinity. It’s fairly quiet and oddly stately. It mows a swath twice as wide, moves twice as slow, makes half the noise, and inexplicably burns half the gas. On the downside it takes an acre to turn around.

It has brakes. You won’t need them.

There’s only one reason why I don’t mow my lawn with the tractor every time. It doesn’t always start. Tragic! I think my tractor wants to instruct me on the ephemeral nature of all things and does so by occasionally taking a day off. At least it’s running great this week! I’m enjoying our time in the sun.

Sooner or later it’ll have “down time”. I’ll have to tear it apart and swear until the beast is live once again. During that repair period (ranging from hours to years) I’ll resort to the modern lawn mower. I’ll fire up the same chipmunk powered, overclocked, market tested, rapidly depreciating, hydrostatically driven, litigation averse, piece of crap that everyone owns. The new mower will do an admirable job while it shakes itself to death.  The antique tractor will wait patiently because it knows it’ll outlast us all.

Rural folks know that lawns matter. They’re not for appearances. They exist to maintain territorial integrity of the homestead. People in the suburbs might not grok the deal but on a farm anything that’s not pasture, tilled field, or forest must be mowed. If you don’t keep vegetation in check, chaos ensues. First the unmowed area becomes a weedy habitat for ticks and critters. Soon it evolves into an impassible brush patch that houses chicken eating foxes and possibly partying teenagers. Eventually it’ll host packs of wolves which eat your cat and a wildfire takes out your garage. That’s the precise and irrefutable trajectory for homesteads with bad lawns! You’ve been warned.

As a result, country folks all have big honkin’ overpriced riding lawnmowers. Mine is new and shiny but I hate it. Why? Because it was specifically designed to be as big and honkin’ as possible while still being as cheap and wussy as they could contrive. It actively pisses me off.

Time for a Curmudgeonly Gem Of Insight:

“Corporate behemoths, liability issues, and a society full of pansies have colluded to create machines which actively piss me off. This happens when the purchasers of machinery are presumed to have the intellect of a puppy and the fortitude of a slug; in effect they’re like politicians. I am from a long line of tool using apes that all wanted their machines to be ever more awesomer so I’m not going quietly into that dark night!”

For example my new mower’s admittedly huge horsepower is a travesty. It comes out of a crappy little cut rate engine. How does it do that? By being revved like a Cuisinart that just mainlined thirty espressos. I call bullshit! High RPM is for sportbikes and powerdrills… not my lawn. Also, it’s ridiculously loud. Like a politician, it makes up for lack of substance by emitting an ungodly racket.

Fit and finish is of the classic early 21st century Wal-mart ethos. The whole thing screams disposable shit from China! Everything that’s not bolted down vibrates. Everything that’s not vibrating is made of plastic. Every part, should it break (and it will) is out of stock, expensive, hard to replace, and unavailable.

Also it’s laden with Nader gadgetry to keep anyone, no matter how stupid, from suing the manufacturer. Leaving the seat or going into reverse shuts down the mower deck. The transmission is dumbed down so much that there’s an arrow and you stomp on it to move. (I didn’t get the memo; when did homo sapiens devolve until a clutch is just too darned complicated for our tiny little brain?)

Did I mention that the tires are the smallest radius feasible? Did I mention that by “feasible” I mean barely suitable for a fat banker to roll around his irrigated suburban lawn. On my modestly uneven lawn it bucks like an ATV trying to inch around on skateboard wheels.

Furthermore if you try to climb the slightest grade or cross the tiniest pothole the thing will get stuck. It’s unmanly and a pox upon our society that a device costing a two grand and sporting twenty horsepower can get stuck on a ridge the size of a banana!

It’s not even very efficient. I get maximum decibels but far less work per gallon.

Also, I’m subtly insulted that the upper throttle position is a picture of a rabbit. Do I really have to live in a world designed for folks so illiterate and clueless that they need a cartoon character? Listen up marketing assholes everywhere “rabbits and turtles” are for nursery rhymes!

It does have a cup holder. That’s a good idea. Except it doesn’t work. If the tire radius was big enough that it wouldn’t spill my beer all would be forgiven. By God, when I mow my lawn with my stupid cartoon designated hydrostatic drive yuppie implement I want to drink and drive!

There is one and only one reason I use my lawn mower. It starts. OK, I’ll admit, that’s pretty huge. On the other hand its reliability has a shelf life. It’s depreciating by the hour. I’m pretty sure it’ll eventually shake itself to pieces. In fifteen years it’ll probably be such worthless junk that fixing it will be a waste of time. By then even the chickens won’t deign to shit on the seat.

Editorial note: This post was written before recent “unexpected” scandals about NSA surveilance of American’s phones and internet. I decided to post the text as it was writtten.

You’ll note that I listed cell phones as “a miraculously unexploited corruption niche” and was “puzzled” why it hadn’t been exploited. Apparently the deed was already done. Puzzlement solved!

You’ll also note that I listed internet privacy as a “mixed bag” instead of “your actions are being monitored by the NSA right now”. Silly me!

All this broke thanks to an active press.  Not our press of course. Since the 2008 election cycle the mainstream press has been nothing but Democratic fluffers.  Thank goodness the British press filled the role our domestic press abdicated. Eventually America’s mainstream news will stop being presidential cheerleaders or finish going broke. Since they dropped the ball (and buried it) I’m hoping the latter will go down quickly and open up opportunities for actual journalism again.  I miss reading newspapers!

Earlier I mentioned my theory that when a situation is ripe for corruption, someone will step into that role. Today I though I’d list a few random corruption niches. They’re in no particular order and not related to any particular axe I’m grinding. They’re just part of a game I play called “how long before someone does predictable evil and everyone acts shocked”.

Misused niches:

• Abu Garab: I’m not going to discuss this one further.
• Red Light Cameras: Studies show they cause more harm than good. In a corruption free world that would be enough to eliminate them.
• State Sales of Alcohol: The 21st amendment repealed prohibition in 1933. Eighty years later some states still maintain monopolies on liquor sales.  Al Capone would have been proud to seize power and keep it in a stranglehold like that!
• BATFE “Walking” Guns To Mexico: Illegally routing guns to criminals in another nation isn’t a good idea. That’s why it’s illegal! It takes a lifetime of smelling your own farts to somehow justify being the guy in charge of enforcing a law while deliberately breaking it. Not that anybody in power cares, but several people wound up dead.
• Strategic Oil Reserve: America wisely stashes oil for times of emergency; like war. Not long ago high prices were sold as sufficiently tragic to dip into the reserve. Thus a prudent idea became a political squeak toy.
• Japanese Internment During World War II: American citizens were hauled from their houses and imprisoned en masse. This travesty was implemented by people who presumably slept soundly after what they’d done. Remember this, Americans can and have hauled Americans into internment camps. The question is never “can the unimaginable happen in free America”; it has happened before and it can always happen again.

Miraculously unexploited niches:

• TSA “perv-scans”: TSA’s scanners take millions of “nude” images. Could there be a greater temptation to a pervert? I expected some of those images to show up on the Internet. I still do. The TSA has delayed the inevitable longer than I expected.
• Black boxes in cars: Modern cars collect data as you drive. As fas as I know this hasn’t been harvested too often for misused too deviously. Give it time.
• Cell phones: Cell phones (as required by law) are equipped with a GPS. Your phone knows where you are, is never off, and reports its location to cell towers without your knowledge. If you’re like most Americans you’re stupid enough to carry it around the way an anemic supermodel totes a Chihuahua. It also knows everyone you talk to, when, for how long, and how frequently. Even Orwell didn’t imagine everyone carrying around a tracking device that writes down your every move. I’m not sure why law enforcement hasn’t gone nuts with this juicy prize? This puzzles me.

Mixed bags:

• Drones in America: In 1984 the Terminator was a silly movie. By 2001 armed Predator drones were killing people in Pakistan and Uzbekistan. On March 6th Rand Paul filibustered the Senate just to answer the following question; “Is it legal to kill an American in America with a drone?” Talk about an easy question!  The answer should have been “No” and sane people could have answered within minutes. The slow and murky response to Paul’s simple question tells me more than I want to know.
• Internet Privacy: Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, credit card companies, etc… They’ve been aggregating personal data like it’s their religion. So far the worst they’ve done is gradually upgrade “v1agra” spam to “targeted advertising” that’s laughably inaccurate. Privacy hazards are terrible and ubiquitous but so far the dial hasn’t been turned to eleven.
• Public Schools: Our public schools cost a fortune and many truly suck. They often employ spectacularly incompetent people under the management of equally incompetent administrations. They seem intent on (and successful at) creating the next generation of illiterate dolts. There’s no doubt some teachers are lazy, others are morons, many are bullies, and a few truly rotten apples are pedophiles (a pox on them!). Then again it’s not universal misery. Some teachers actually teach, a few do so very well, and not every administration is a disaster. Some kids even reach adulthood without being pummeled into intellectual mush. Good for them! On the spectrum from “excellent” to “hell with ample funding” schools could be vastly better or they could drift a little farther into the depths to which they’re prone. I call it a mixed bag and am thankful I’m neither a student nor a teacher.

I recently mentioned “undernews”; news that floats around the Internet but never gets past the mainstream media.  I’m not alone in assuming that most undernews stays undernews because it doesn’t fit the media’s ample, endless, overwhelming, predictable, defeatist,  and incontrovertible bias.  Lucky for us, journalists are driving themselves out of business.

I’m still annoyed that the media desperately hoped that Boston was bombed by a Tea Party nutter.  They where shocked shocked once the truth came out that the perpetrators were exactly what the rest of us expected.  The reality was terrorists from central casting but they were rooting for Bubba and his deer rifle to be secret monsters.  Who thinks like that?  The spin… it gets too much.

Well screw them and their bullshit!  As long as I’m cursing the darkness I might as well light a candle.  I’ve decided to go out of my way to mention positive stuff that the media buries.  Here’s something I’ll bet you didn’t know:

“2013 will have the lowest murder rate in a century”

Didn’t see that coming did ya?  Turn on the TV and you’ll find talking heads either encouraging the decay of society or moaning that society is crumbling.  Frankly we’re not necessarily always going to hell in a handbasket.  If trends hold (and things could change) we’re looking at the lowest rate of murder since buggy whips were a real industry.

Think about it.  The last time things were this good a family vehicle could be purchased for $550 and tanked up for eight cents a gallon.  2013 is likely to have a murder rate so low it predates the invention of chocolate chip cookies, Chia pets, Alaskan statehood, television, NFL football, Superman, McDonalds, and Shirley Temple (who is still alive by the way).  Isn’t that great news?  Of course it is!  Be happy and don’t forget that the talking heads on TV whine that life sucks because they are paid to look concerned and act depressed.  We don’t have to follow their lead.

A.C.

Hat tip to The Miller.