Tractor Yoga

Posted on May 28, 2013 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

It’s time to practice homesteading Yoga.

Step one is to start your tractor.  This might take a while depending on what piece of crap you have parked in your barn.  Exercise that doesn’t involve guns should involve piston engines.

Step two is to mount the plow.  The plow weighs a ton, the tractor’s three point hitch is all out of whack.  Did you bring a hammer?  It’s ok to swear.

Step three is to size up your field.  You know how it hasn’t been plowed in decades?  You know how you meant to burn the waist high weeds this spring but didn’t get it done before the weather changed?  You deserve what happens next.

Step four is to crank the throttle as high as she’ll go.  Drop the clutch in lowest gear.  Lower the three point.  Slide along the grass.  Swear, get off and adjust the hitch.  Try again.  Try  again.  Try again.  Don’t you wish you’d burned the fields loser?  Try again until it looks like you got the angle correct.

Step five involves steering with your left hand.  Don’t hold the wheel.  Use the suicide knob instead.  Hang on tight… it’s a rough field.  Drop the plow and smash your ribcage into the suicide knob.  Oh… now the name makes sense.  Whoops she’s starting to stall and the wheels are spinning like you’re sitting in a giant unsafe Cuisinart.  Hear the mighty roar of the little WWII engine as you’re working it to death.  Dream fondly of a tractor with twice as much horsepower, front wheel assist, and an actual roll cage.  Payments don’t seem so bad right now do they?  Lift the hydraulics until everything lurches ahead, then drop it until the plow makes a cut.  You’ll know you’ve gone too deep when you smash your chest against the steering wheel again.

Step six, get off and kick all the weeds and sod out of the plow.  After you’ve kicked 100 pounds of crap down on the ground the plow will cut the sod instead of just sliding along making useless furrows.  Repeat this process then thousand times.

Step seven, since the plow either goes too deep and stalls the tractor or too shallow and pops out of the sod you’ll have to manually modulate the hydraulics lever.  This is conveniently located under your right ass cheek.  Hunch over like a pretzel.  Keep your left arm strong against the suicide knob and try to steer in (or at least suggest to the tractor) an appropriate direction.

Step eight, you’ve got to monitor whether the tractor is actually plowing or just lurching along with a big wad of weeds in the plow.  So twist 3/4 in the steel seat and look behind you over your right shoulder.  Do this while steering with your left hand and modulating the hydraulics lever under your ass with the right hand.

Step nine, do this hour after hour.

Step ten.  When you’re too tired to swear, call it a day.  As a farmer… you suck.

Step eleven.  Thank the lucky stars that this isn’t your only source of income and the world isn’t counting on you to feed the masses.  You totally suck at this.  Look up chiropractors in the phone book.  They don’t even make phone books anymore grandpa.  Grab a beer and lay on the couch.

Step twelve.  The next day do it again.  At this rate you’ll have all your fallow fields plowed by October.  Your dreams of acres of profitable crops have totally faded.  Now you’re just hoping to cultivate the fields so they’re more reasonable next spring.  It’s a race to see if you can accomplish this before your spine explodes or the tractor throws a rod.  The bar was low.  Now it’s lower.  Next time you see a farmer, buy him a beer.

Posted in Homesteading | 5 Comments

I Didn’t See That Coming

Posted on May 13, 2013 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

I’m in a coffee shop in enemy territory a college town.  College towns make me nervous.  Is socialism contagious?  Will I forget my science background and be found years later smoking dope in a cult of global warming fans who genuflect while recycling?  Will I pawn my truck for a recumbent bike?  Will my student loans, killed dead and buried, ressurect and hunt me down like a fiscal zombie?  On the other hand the wifi is faster than my usual rural habitat and the coffee is good.  (No credit cards accepted…who knew hippies would take a stand against ATM card fees?)

Just now an earnest, young, conservatively dressed, polite, college student asked if he could take the unused chair at my table; “Excuse me sir, may I borrow this chair.”  I replied without thinking about it “Of course, go right ahead.”  In my mind I was thinking ‘what a nice young fellow’.

Oh hell no!

  1. Since when am I “sir”?  “Sir” is the name applied to me when a cop is about to issue  speeding ticket.  Shit!  I am so old!
  2. Since when do I think things like “nice young fellow“?  Who uses “fellow”?  Have I morphed into an 80 year old grandma knitting in a rocking chair?  I’m not going into that dark night!  I may be a grouchy Curmudgeon hunkered over a laptop simultaneously crunching numbers (because science!) and gritting my teeth over news (because freedom!) but I am not “Sir”.   It is my job to stand tall and bellow “get off my lawn punk”.  The words nice young fellow should not cross my lips in a non ironic manner.  Shit!  I am so old!
  3. On the other hand, the whole event is steeped in optimism for the future.  The nice fellow is studying what sounds like physics.  STEM baby!  ROI for college!  He’s accompanied by three young women (if I call ’em hotties does that make me a dirty old man?) and none of them seem like airheads.  Four (in my eyes “kids”) who are calculating mass and momentum instead of racking up loans to be a psychology prof’s fluffer!  Go team brain!  He was polite and none of them are acting like hooligans.  The scruffiest bastard in the room is… me.  Awesome!  At least a few members of the next generation are gearing up to kick ass and take names!  I’d stand up and give them a bow but they’d probably think I was having a coronary and whisk me to the hospital.

Adaptive Curmudgeon (a.k.a. “Sir”)

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

The Possibility Of Ridiculous Outcomes: Part II

Posted on May 8, 2013 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Once something has been done once, it can be done again.  This time in Valley Springs California.

“A region of oak-studded hills in California, where big-city dwellers come to get away from crime, was on lockdown Monday, two days after a mysterious intruder stabbed an 8-year-old girl to death.”

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

The Possibility Of Ridiculous Outcomes

Posted on May 8, 2013 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Discussions about current events and how they’ll play out in the future tend to  blunder into the concept of “slippery slope“.  The counteracting idea is “relax, nobody is going to go crazy“.  I, being a cautious Curmudgeon, tend to place more emphasis on “slippery slope“.  I’m skeptical of arguments based on the rationality of people in groups.

The reason I don’t assume that trends will self modulate is because I’ve seen lunacy happen far too often.  Sometimes it’s funny.  Sometimes its tragic.  Sometimes it causes erratic outcomes never envisioned at the outset.  In most instances we’ve been promised at the beginning that things wouldn’t go overboard.  (I honestly think most people who say such things truly mean it.)

The key when you’re looking for a slippery slope is to consider (or experience) a long time frame. Over years or decades (or longer) that which is “impossible” slowly, gradually, incrementally, evolves into “possible” and sometimes “unremarkable“. Society would never make the whole trip at once but it can be led inch by inch virtually anywhere.  Here’s an example:

On April 20th 1999 two murderous raging assholes went on a rampage.  (You’ll note that I refuse to apply politically correct terms.  I won’t pretend that Harris and Klebold were disturbed youths, domestic terrorists, or shooters.  “Raging asshole” is, in my opinion, a superior descriptor.)

During the tragedy, which was entirely constrained within a single building, the school was placed in “lockdown“.  That day was the first time I’d heard the phrase “lockdown” applied outside of a prison.  Maybe I’m sheltered.  Maybe I was naive.  Regardless, I heard the word “lockdown” and my frame of reference was a prison.  Something like this; “Inmates in ‘Federal Bad Guy Prison’ rioted until the warden ordered a ‘lockdown‘ while guards restored order“.

I couldn’t make up my mind about it.  On the one hand I don’t like the idea of innocent children being “locked down“.  On the other hand, children are not adults.  When I was in school I was not free to leave.  Precocious kid that I was, I tested the concept by occasionally skipping school.  I didn’t always make it out of the building.  Having read the last sentence you won’t be surprised to know I sometimes found myself in detention which is just what it sounds like.  You are detained and not allowed to leave.  (I’m not trying to sound overwrought.  To the disappointment of my teachers, I never considered detention a big deal.)  My point is that you or I cannot legally detain an American without the force of law but a math teacher can do it to an eighth grader.

In the end I decided that “lockdown“, regardless of its efficacy against a shooter, wasn’t a bridge too far; provided it applied to minors within a school for a couple hours. However, I foresaw the “slippery slope” and was concerned.  If you can “lockdown” innocent children, what else can you do?  To whom can you do it?  For how long? On who’s authority?

Three weeks ago two raging assholes set off bombs.  During the manhunt the entire city of Boston was placed in “lockdown“.  The public more or less accepted this as reasonable.  The slippery slope of “lockdown” had taken its next logical (and disturbing) step.

Thirteen years, eleven months, and twenty-six days.  That’s how long it took.  “Lockdown” had drifted from “prisoners“, to “minors“, to “everyone in Boston“.  Comparing Columbine to Boston shows it expanded from “a school building” to “a metropolitan area” and from “a few hours” to “a full day“.

There couldn’t have been a better demonstration of “slippery slope“.  I didn’t make it up.  It’s not my paranoid imagination.  You got to watch it on TV just last month.  I’m not saying the folks at either Columbine or Boston were motivated by anything other than the best intentions.  Yet the first event which was mildly disturbing set the conditions for the next event which went much further.

The slippery slope hasn’t come to it’s end. If Bostonians had ignored the lockdown order  the idea would have run out of steam.  They didn’t so the next step will happen when the conditions are right.  (Actually I’m not really sure it was an “order”.  Nobody seemed concerned with defining the authority under which a local government imposed something very much like martial law. That too is a slippery slope.)

At any rate the “order” was not rejected.  It demonstrated that Americans can, will, and do accept the premise.  Shutting down the subway system apparently made perfect sense to them.  They accepted orders telling businesses to stay shut.  They willingly stayed indoors.  They did not protest or resist meddling in their affairs.

I’m not going to make dark predictions and dire warnings.  Folks going overboard in Boston is not cattle cars and concentration camps.  It is, however, a step in that direction.  Each time the “unthinkable” becomes “acceptable” we are diminished.  The next time someone says “we’re just going to do this, but just for this emergency so trust us” remember the thirteen years between Columbine and Boston.  Implementing a “lockdown” on a rural village in Kansas would have been inconceivable in 1970; it actually happened to a city of a half million in 2013.

The Columbine / Boston progression is why slippery slopes matter.

Posted in Curmudgeonly Gems of Insight | 5 Comments

The Shafted: Paul Kevin Curtis (2013) and Richard Jewell (1996)

Posted on April 29, 2013 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

If forget my shopping list there’s no chance I’ll remember its contents.  However, I tend to remember the shafted.  In my eyes, the latter is more important.  Today I want to mention two of their number.

Lets start with Richard Jewell.  His story is covered quite nicely in Richard Jewell Cannot Accept Our Apology at Popehat.

Richard Jewell’s story played out in 1996.  The Olympics in 1996, like the Boston Marathon in 2013, was bombed.  Eric Robert Rudolph was the asshole who planted the bomb and he’s in jail now. (Sadly, he wasn’t drawn and quartered but jail will suffice).  Rudolph is convicted, guilty, and evil.  We know that now.  We didn’t know it then.

Richard Jewell was a earnest and slightly goofy mall cop who discovered the bomb, called it in, and got folks out of the way.  Everything he did was the right thing to do.  Law enforcement thought Jewell’s quick discovery of the bomb was “too convenient”, decided he must be the perpetrator, and (as is common) leaked their conjecture to the press.

Jewell was pilloried by the media, jailed and questioned by law enforcement, and generally treated by everyone as if he was bomber scum.  I still remember it.  Eventually level heads prevailed and Jewell was exonerated.

By then Jewell was a wreck.  By most accounts he was never quite the same until his death in 2007.  Tragic!

Suppose you did a heroic thing and found your life, honor, and reputation in shambles.  Would you recover?  Remember, Jewell heroically saved lives and they ran him through the meatgrinder.

……………………………………

Now lets talk about Paul Kevin Curtis.  Several days ago poisonous ricin was mailed to President Barack Obama, Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker, and Sadie Holland a judge in Mississippi.   Paul Kevin Curtis was accused, jailed, and questioned.

You might have heard about it?  It was shoehorned in the news between reports about Boston’s tragedy and their subsequent experiment with martial law (I’ll comment on that some other time).

Mr. Curtis sounds like a bit of a fruitcake.  He has a theory about medical malfeasance (which may or may not hold water) and he’s an Elvis impersonator to boot.  Much like Jewell, he’s an easy mark.

I’ll bet dollars to donuts you heard about the crazy Elvis impersonator with tinfoil hat theories who got all evil and terroristic.  One sure sign of his manifest evil was a quote taken from his Facebook page and plastered all over the Internet:

“To see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner in its continuance”

Apparently the ricin perpetrator used the quote too.  You could therefore presume Curtis is a poisoning monster and indeed the quote was formally mentioned as part of the charges against Curtis.  From my point of view it’s no more proof that Curtis is a bad guy than an indication he’s a deliberately moral fellow.  Ironic eh?

Here’s the part that is inconvenient.  Curtis didn’t do it.  Ricin isn’t the simple baking of evil cupcakes that journalists who failed chemistry make it out to be.  Eventually everyone agreed that Curtis could no more make Ricin than he could build a lunar capsule.  Shortly thereafter Everett Dutschke was arrested and charges against Curtis were dropped.

So tell me.  How many of you have heard news of Curtis’ vindication?  I found it buried on the web but I sure as heck didn’t see it widely broadcast.  Curtis is fortunate that he wasn’t pushed deeper down the rabbit hole like Jewell.  In a way, we are all fortunate too.

Let us pause a moment to honor Jewell and Curtis.  One a hero that got shafted mightily and one a bystander that was spared some (but not all) of Jewell’s fate.  Neither gentelman deserved to be shafted.

Posted in The Shafted | 10 Comments

The Best ISP / Cable Ad Ever

Posted on April 24, 2013 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

This video is hilarious (NSFW language):

It reminded me of a post I wrote a couple of years ago: The Unbelievable Lightness Of Kicking Jackasses To The Curb.  It was about telephones because I won’t pay for cable, ever.  (Since I’ve never paid for cable I’ve never had to bitch about it.  Thus the cycle of cable suck self-perpetuates without me). Back to the subject of cell phones this is what I said:

“As far as I can tell everyone hates their phone company.  The only reason folks keep doing business with them is because people put up with obnoxious companies like they are the victims of Stockholm Syndrome.”

Stockhlom Syndrome explains a lot.  I stand by that assessment.

Hat tip to Never Yet Melted.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

There Is No Monopoly On Stupid: Part III

Posted on April 21, 2013 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Ok, I’ve been dithering through two posts to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that:

  1. The Chevy Volt sucks so bad that even the craptacular Edsel (formerly considered the wheeled definition of unmitigated total automotive/financial disaster) was a resounding success by comparison.
  2. At least one guy thinks the Volt is totally awesome and we’re all missing out by rejecting what he perceives as the best car going.

I felt pretty smug that I, Curmudgeon extraordinare, would never hold an opinion that simply wouldn’t budge given real world experience.  I pride myself on putting mind over wishful thinking.

Then one recent day the news reported that the DOW had cranked out a record high to close at 14,673.  “Holy shit” quoth the Curmudgeon, “I smell inflation afoot!”  It’s true, I was mightily displeased with that report.

I don’t see the DOW hitting nosebleed numbers as a necessarily good thing.  With a federal debt of $16,806,987,247,849.34 and the Fed printing money literally faster than any physical printing press could muster… I see gains in the DOW as losses in the green paper I keep (when I can) in my wallet. It’s like when your get a brutal stomach virus for a week and wind up standing on the scales marveling that you’ve lost 5 pounds. Yeah, it’s cool to lose weight but the bathroom scale is missing the part about you running a 101 fever and vomiting. Such is my paranoia about the economy.

But wait! If I, Curmudgeon that I am, think a rising DOW is a bad thing wouldn’t I be pleased with a sinking DOW? Actually I wasn’t. Back in 2008 when everyone lost their shit and pushed the DOW to 7,552.29 (November 20, 2008) I was livid.  “Are they insane?” I ranted in that fateful year, “Every building, factory, bulldozer, and forklift what was around last week is still here.”  I interpreted a DOW at 7,500 as proof positive that everyone had taken leave of their senses and we’re valuing stocks based on whatever the hell floated into their empty heads.

Which brings me to my conundrum.  When the DOW went down I interpreted it as a bad thing; a disconnect between the true value of assets and the securities we use to trade them.  When the DOW went up I interpreted it as a bad thing; a disconnect between the value of assets and the green slips of paper we use to monetize them.

There’s the rub.  I think were screwed when the DOW goes up and when the DOW goes down.  Thus my opinion is not affected by a metric that I observe everyday.  In effect, I’m just like the guy who thinks a Volt is just groovy despite ample evidence to the contrary.  He thinks his Volt is groovy.  I think were screwed.  Neither of us are responding to outside information.  (Or at least I am unwilling to accept the DOW as a rational valuation.)

Now is the time when I’m supposed to wrap it all up with some pithy comment that proves I’m intelligent and Hippie Mc.Volt is a moron.  I can’t do it.  He and I both have opinions that are resistant to outside information.  I haven’t figured out a clever way to either get with the rainbow people and love our new Obamaconomy or think my way past hating rising and falling stock prices simultaneously.

Ah well, perhaps a conundrum of human existence is being aware you’re thinking foolishly yet doing it anyway.

A.C.

P.S.  Regardless of the DOW, I’m definitely certain that the Volt is horse shit.  I’m bitter about that.  I’ve been waiting for a real electric car since the Carter administration and apparently it’s not coming.  (Side note, the armed flying drones of science fiction are now real and blowing people away right now.  How could a decent electric car and predictions of housekeeping robots have been eclipsed by the Terminator?)

Posted in Chevy Volt | 11 Comments

There Is No Monopoly On Stupid; Part II

Posted on April 20, 2013 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

In my last post I referred to the Edsel.  The reason I brought up the Edsel is because the Edsel was a world class failure in car marketing the likes of which modern man has seldom seen.  Also a reader dropped me a comment leading to this: The Best Loved Car In The World.  I should warn you; it’s a link to an article in Mother Earth News by a fellow who thinks his Chevy Volt is the greatest idea since… everything.  Go ahead read it but be prepared to decontaminate granola from your keyboard when you’re done.  I’ll give the guy his due, he’s entitled to like his car.  More power to him.

For those of us back on Earth I decided to compare the Volt with the Edsel.  Why?  Because the Edsel and Volt were both heavily hyped, both were supposed to “turn around” an auto maker, and both were utter and complete financial disasters. Fortunately, both have been on the market a similar amount of time too.  I decided to investigate the following scientific question:

Hypothesis: The Edsel was the universal shorthand term for “catastrophic marketing disaster” for generations.  The Volt, being an electric car, massively subsidized, and hyped (by at least one lone hippie) as “The Best Loved Car In The World”, should be at least cool enough to beat Edsel.  Even I, the Curmudgeon, was willing to ponder that a real live electric car could beat the wheeled punchline of 1958.  Is it true?”

Study design, both cars were on the open market a similar number of years.  Now handy can you get?  That’s how I know God likes science!  Here goes:

  • The Volt has been in production roughly three years.  It came out in 2010 (2011 model year).  It will (as far as I can tell) be continuously manufactured until the Peoples Republic of America stops making that shit.  For purposes of my uncontrolled scientific experiment the Volt right now it has been on the market nearly as long as the Edsel.
  • The Edsel was in production for three years.  It was made in 1958, 1959, and 1960.  The ghost of Henry Ford probably exploded at the expense of cutting off production after such a short run.  I’ll give Ford Motor Company credit, they knew a disaster when it hit them in the balls and pulled the plug just about as fast as they could.  How many modern companies cling to a sinking idea for much longer?

Study metric #1, how many people were willing to buy either of these abominations?  Here goes:

Study metric #2, how much harm either did either car cause to innocent taxpayers?  Here goes:

  • The Edsel was produced by a for profit company which lost it’s shirt and went home bruised and crying.  No taxpayers were harmed in the making of this film!
  • The Volt has been subsidized so much you can see the haze of tax dollars dripping off its paint job; and that’s before you get a $7,500 tax credit when you buy it.  I’m pretty sure the government could air lift a Civic onto your lawn including a glovebox stuffed with cocaine and still do it cheaper than dragging consumer into a Volt.

Analysis, the Edsel dominates the Volt like a freight train hitting a hamster.  Here goes:

  • The Edsel during it’s short, ridiculed, disastrous, money losing run outsold the Volt by 240%.
  • The Edsel cost Ford dearly but it was entirely privately financed.  The Edsel cost taxpayers roughly $0. 

Results, it’s not even close.  From a market and financial point of view, the word “Volt” should be carved in stone tablets and preserved for all time as the worst business case in the history of the universe.

Further thoughts:

Of course, making fun of the Volt is shooting stupid fish in a small barrel using a nuclear bomb.  But what am I to make of the earnest fellow who honestly thinks “The Best Loved Car In The World” can be uttered in the same universe as “Volt”?

It occurs to me that for some folks there is nothing, nothing at all, no experience or evidence whatsoever, that could convince them that the Volt isn’t just groovy man.  For the guy who wrote the article, and possibly his target audience in Mother Earth News, it’s simply unquestionable.  If a Volt broke into his house and raped his cat, he’d still love it.  If Volts caused cancer, made your nuts fall off, and glued your sphincter permanently shut, he’d still love it.

Who could go so crazy?  Certainly none of us could have an opinion immune to evidence to the contrary?  Well stay tuned because I found my Curmudgeonly self slipping into such illogic.  Not about a car of course, that would be ridiculous.  Instead it was about the stock market.  Stay tuned.

Posted in Chevy Volt, Technology of Indignity | 3 Comments

There Is No Monopoly On Stupid; Part I

Posted on April 19, 2013 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

In about a thousand words I’m going to explain how I, the Curmudgeon, failed to be Adaptive and had a stupid thought.  Really.  I mean it!

It all starts in 1958.

In 1958 Ford Motor Company put all its weight behind a new product that was supposed to be the most awesome car ever.  It was sold to the public as being slightly more awesome than having sex while mainlining pure cosmic energy during your flight to Valhalla on a Pegasus.  After months of teasers the curtain was pulled back to reveal the Edsel.

You know you want it!

You know you want it!

The public, to their credit, took one look at this, the most market hyped vehicle of the era, and took a dump on it.  Ford struggled along trying to salvage their mess through 1958, 1959, and 1960.  Then they took it behind the barn and shot it.  They lost “the equivalent of $2,756,449,772 in 2013 dollars“.  Ouch!

Lest you think I’m maligning Ford I’ll remind you that when the financial world shit itself in 2008 Ford came out smelling like roses while GM and Chrysler became government squeak toys.   Even so, the word “Edsel” remained synonymous with “market failure” for decades.

Finally, after 27 years of Edsel jokes, the Coca-Cola Company decided to go nuclear in what was known as “the cola wars”.  (Just for the record, I remember 1985 and the “cola wars” really were a remarkably weird phenomenon.)  Their secret weapon of mass destruction was New Coke.  They’d done the impossible!  They came up with something that unified the nation, a white hot loathing of all marketing executives and a desire to bury New Coke at Love Canal.  (For the younger generation I’m not going to explain the reference.  Check the link.)

Lest you think I’m maligning Coke I’d like to point out that the company reversed course in less than three months.  Well done.  Then they came back swinging until Pepsi was spitting blood.  Huzzah!  Like Ford, Coke outlasted its mistake and thrived.

There is a point, and I’m getting to it.  But first I’d like to take a side trip to toss out a Curmudgeonly Gem of insight.  Here goes:

“The free market is the greatest, most successful way for an economy to give us everything we want and make us all filthy rich while doing it.  However, it’s not a flawless Utopian beam of truth.  New Coke was not made by Stalin and Red Chinese slave labor didn’t crank out the infamous “toilet seat” Edsel grill.  For-profit companies earnestly striving to dominate and crush their opponents sometimes faceplant horribly.  Galt’s Gulch might have an Edsel in the parking lot.”

Ouch?  Are the Ayn Rand people at my door?  I hope not because they’re definitely armed and have no sense of humor.

Tomorrow I’ll get to the point.  Unless I don’t.

Posted in Chevy Volt, Curmudgeonly Gems of Insight | 1 Comment

Word For The Day: Ingalls

Posted on April 18, 2013 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Ingalls – (Noun) A unit of measure by which all winter blizzards can be compared.

In the 1930’s Laura Ingalls Wilder published several books commonly known as the “Little House” series.  The most famous of them, Little House On The Prairie, is #6 on book club for men and if you haven’t read it (or preferably the whole series) you’ve done yourself a disservice.  The whole point of America’s westward expansion in the 1800’s was to produce the experiences later outlined in Little House On The Prairie.

You may think you’re too darned intelligent and mature to read a children’s book but you’re not fooling anyone.  You’ve already read Harry Potter and the Hunger Games so get off your damn high horse about “kid’s fiction”.  Read it.  Now!  I’m saying this for your own good.  Once you’ve read Little House On The Prairie you will never bitch about your fat luxurious modern lifestyle again.  Also, forget about the derivative TV show which aired from 1974-1983.  The TV show is to the book as dogshit is to pie.

During the many adventures of the Ingalls family, mother nature periodically tries to kill them.  Throughout the series, humble yet heroic father figure “Pa” Ingalls must venture outdoors in weather so bad that an American in 2013 wouldn’t consider it safe to don a Gore Tex jacket to go start the Subaru.  In particular “The Long Winter” will have you giving your furnace a bear hug and promising to never ever venture into South Dakota after August. “Pa” valiantly braves the elements and invariably survives (sorry for the spoiler but you had 78 years to read it before today) but each time he heads off into the teeth you know his world is one of risk and sacrifice.  You modern coddled wuss!

In honor of “Pa” I propose the “Ingalls” as the best unit of measure  for quantifying real winter weather.  This is also my formal rejection of that flaky crap where people start quoting wind chill factors and stripping Wal-Mart shelves bare when three flakes of snow fall in New Jersey.

A full Ingalls is when the weather simultaneously meets three criteria:

  1. It must be cold.  I’m talking about the kind of cold where every inch of your body that is not covered in wool is sure to fall off.  Going outdoors without a hat is an unthinkable mistake you’d only make once.  Here’s a hint; -10 Fahrenheit is enough to make your car hard to crank but it isn’t cold enough for a full Ingalls.
  2. It must be violent, particularly with blowing snow approaching a white out.  Here’s a hint; if you’re in a blizzard and hold up your hand in front of your face and can’t see it, that’s an Ingalls.
  3. It must be long lasting.  I’ve been in many gale force winds and massive snow accumulations that burn out in an hour.  A full Ingalls requires that you must have time to ponder your situation, mutter a hymn or two, and make peace with your maker all before the storm is halfway to it’s crescendo.

Examples of Ingalls used in a sentence:

  • “I always thought it was goofy to tie a rope between the house and barn lest I die in a white out, but yesterday was a 0.8 Ingalls storm.  I barely made it.”
  • “Last night’s storm was rough.  There’s a tree across the driveway and a hen froze solid right to the barn door.  It was at least a 7th of an Ingalls.”
  • “We’re having a 0.6 Ingalls storm.  The ice fishermen gave up because it was too cold.  My dog is missing and the mail hasn’t come since last Tuesday.”
  • “The weather predicted Armageddon but it was only a 0.1 Ingalls.  My relatives from Virginia all fled in terror and the SUV won’t start but it wasn’t that bad.”
  • “New York City was hit by a 0.005 Ingalls snow flurry last week.  It was said to be caused by George Bush, high capacity magazines, and global warming.  Roughly 40% of the population immediately died of hypothermia.  Survivors demanded a cash settlement from FEMA.  The New York Times devoted the entire front page to an article about a unemployed one legged black lesbian poet who’s cat died.  Their opinion page stressed the urgent need for Federally funded cat death counselors.  Countless fatalities were traced to trendsetters who hunkered down by the thousands at Starbucks.  Apparently their overcrowded state upset the balance of nature and they collectively overdosed on irony.  This had no effect on the economy.”
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