Adaptive Curmudgeon

I always usually admit when I’m wrong. Despite my intense white hot hatred for the unsustainably political market failure that is the Volt; I was wrong. First I was wrong because I assumed I’d never see one driven by an actual human being on a non-theoretical road. I admitted as much when I reported seeing one in the wild. Now I am wrong because I have misunderstood their customer demographic.

Today, Mrs. Curmudgeon and myself saw the Volt for a second time. I can’t be sure it was the same Volt but that’s my guess. (I reason that when you see something as rare as the Loch Ness Monster and three weeks later you see a second Loch Ness Monster a mile away… it’s the same creature.)

Being an inquisitive (Adaptive!) Curmudgeon I began observing. My first observation was that the snow had melted off every car in the parking lot except the Volt. The absence of an engine meant the hood hadn’t shed it’s layer of ice. I don’t see anything wrong with ice on the hood but it was something I noticed.

My second thought was to quantify the Volt’s habitat. Shockingly it was not at a political rally, located in San Francisco (which is like a political rally with permanent residents), or in a dealer’s showroom. It was parked at a restaurant. Even more interesting, this restaurant doesn’t serve tofu. Surprises abound!

Nor was it a warm location. It’s not yet winter but it’s coming. I almost feel pity for any battery forced to live here. Can a Volt handle -20f weather? That would be impressive! I wouldn’t expect a Volt here in winter any more than I’d expect a robin to overwinter in Greenland. I root for it’s success just as I root for my diesel equipment to start on cold mornings in January.

Also it was in a smallish city surrounded on all sides by damn near nothing. Almost by definition this must be one of the “gas generator” Volts. I can’t see how a pure electric could get here unless someone towed it to the hinterlands and stranded in a 35 mile habitat. Gas or not, it also probably lives somewhere where it’s electric range would get it to it’s current location. Since ½ of its range is 17 miles I assume it lives within 15 minutes of this spot.

Then we entered the establishment where I began the game of “who brought the hippie car”.

I’d like to say something deep but one of the things for which I’m thankful is that this blog is not my job and I can ignore it.  Instead I’ll post a picture of “Christmas” (our sole remaining turkey) and presume you’re all having a wonderful day.

Sometimes I despair that dependency, government, regulation, shitty schools, and oh I don’t know… everything… is at odds with the ingenuity of the human spirit.  Don’t say it hasn’t happened to you.  I know it you’ve had that same nagging fear.

We should be an inventive creature.  We should be adaptable.  (With or without the Curmudgeonry.)  Yet here we are, the latest and most amazing generation of that overgrown monkey brained creature that started by walking upright and eventually became self-aware, and we sometimes get bogged down.  Sometimes we seem to forget that we rock.  We are meant to be awesome!  We were born to use our brain in the service of something unexpected and interesting.  Hopefully something fun.  We were meant to make the next version of the radioactive, glow in the dark, hovering, mousetrap.  Not, as many suppose, to shuffle papers or push around other humans.

The arc of history is not always upward and onward.  Sometimes it stagnates.  I don’t like the merest hint that I might be in a period of stagnation.  But sometimes it looks like it may be coming.  People without adequate technology to program PacMan flew to the moon.  They flew to the moon with sliderules!  Decades later I can have satellite TV but we collectively lost our shit and never went to the moon again.  Yes to “Bridezilla TV” but no to “space, the final frontier”?  Really?  Why?

On a smaller scale I’ve seen computers pop up everywhere but simultaneously dumb themselves down.  I used to meet geezers that had never seen a mouse and I found that understandable.  Now I meet kids who have never been without a smart phone that can call Hong Kong, yet they can’t swap their own batteries or understand where they’ve saved a file.  I find that reprehensible.

I don’t like sliding backwards.  I was promised hovercars and space flight, I got Twitter and Starbucks.  I demand a recount!

More desperately I get nervous at the local level.  The near universal lack of ability to “invent or fabricate” makes me nervous.  The market is awash with new cars but can’t always find a decent mechanic to fix an old one. For that matter I can’t find a stick shift car because apparently humans can no longer comprehend a clutch.  How can that happen?  (For that matter even with anti-lock brakes and auto transmissions have you seen how some people drive?  …but that’s another story.)

It shouldn’t be easier to find a surgeon than a plumber.  It shouldn’t be easier to have a new house built than find a carpenter to remodel a bathroom.  I can have a new garage built in a day but if the garage door breaks I have to fix it myself or go without.  Who saw that coming?

Luckily one can fight back against the sinking feeling.  First you turn off the TV (and set it on fire) and then you go fishing.  That doesn’t always work but you really should go fishing as often as possible.

If that doesn’t work I seek out people who like to display their manic works of creativity.  I’m talking about illogical but rabidly inventive gatherings like Sturgis.  South Dakota periodically hosts more lunatic mechanics per square mile than most places in the history of time.  Does a Harley need nitrous injection?  Is it logical to weld a chrome encrusted likeness of Marylin Monroe on a 30 degree rake springer fork?  Hell no…but it’s been done because it’s awesome.  Monster truck rallies, stock car races, 4×4 competitions, machine gun shoots, outlandishly intricate model train sets, steam-punked computers; some dude using a 3D printer to make something never before seen; these are the stuff of freedom leavened with intelligence (and sparked with a little craziness).

My favorite, all time best cure is an antique tractor festival.  There will be fellows there who wear overalls non-ironically.  They’ll nonchalantly talk of winching a rusted engine block out of a hedgerow and welding it back together from when a growing tree split it in half.  They’ll say this while leaning against the result which is now freshly painted and running smoother than it did when it was built.  (Often it was built when WWI was called “the great war”.)  The same goes for fellows who build their own steam engines.  I’m glad to know that hobbyists can and do re-enact the entire industrial revolution in their garage for fun.  What a relief!

That said I present the popinator.  This is well and truly the most useless gadget on God’s green earth.  On the other hand, look at what it has inside.  It is complex, it can target sounds, it can compute trajectories, it is something that could not be made without great technology and people with time to kill.  It, as stupid is it may seem, is the opposite of sliding into another Medieval doldrum.  It’s as whimsical as it is brilliant.  I have no intention of buying one but I’m glad to know that it exists.

H.T. to Musings Over A Pint.  (I might add that the fellow in that blog does a fair bit of brewing of his own beer.  Another ray of hope and push back against Brawndo Budweiser!)

It’s a sunny day at Curmudgeon Compound.  Squirrels are running around the oaks like the little maniacs they are.  The wood supply is ample enough that I can sit on my ass instead of attacking the cord or so that’s lying around waiting for “post-processing” (i.e. the wood splitter of doom).  The coffee was good this morning and tonight’s beer will be cold.  I just ate a meal of venison burgers and chocolate chip cookies.  The chickens have been unusually productive.  Our two turkeys, “Thanksgiving” and “Christmas”, are strutting around without the slightest clue what the calendar holds.  The chickadees (my favorite for birdwatching) are in high spirits.  Life is good.

I say this all to explain why I decided to re-consider my dismissive Any Rand post of yesterday.  Who can fret over a generator on a glorious day like today?  More to the point had I let my paranoia get in the way of a legitimate idea?  It could have been all in my head.  What sane person would have really stopped me from delivering generators to a people in need?

So I turned to the Internet to either prove or disprove my thesis.  I found three articles in ten minutes (the first of which specifically mentioned generators):

1. “The attorney general said his office has received hundreds of complaints from consumers in areas of the state hit hardest by Sandy – New York City, the Hudson Valley and Long Island… consumers also have reported possible gouging for emergency supplies like generators… General business law prohibits such increases in costs of essential items like food, water, gas, generators, batteries and flashlights, and services like transportation…”
2. “Before Sandy made landfall, the attorney general had issued an open letter to vendors across the state warning them that price inflation of necessary goods and services during a crisis is illegal.”
3. “Today’s action is the first in a series of steps my office will take as we continue to actively investigate the hundreds of complaints we’ve received from consumers of businesses preying on victims of Hurricane Sandy…”

How about that?  I can almost feel the hate.  Especially the first quote which specifically mentions generators.  Then I found this one which seemed particularly topical:

At one Sam’s Club store in Manchester, Conn., some customers complained that generators priced at $349 two weeks ago suddenly cost $999 as the storm approached, said Laura Lavoie, a nearby resident who visited that store Sunday.

“People were buying them and complaining about it,” she said. “One guy stormed out while we were walking in. … The guy said his wife wouldn’t let him buy (the same generator) three weeks ago when it was $349 and now he can’t afford to buy it.”

A spokesman for Wal-Mart, which owns Sam’s Club, said the store ran out of the lower-priced generator, a 3,600-watt model, and was forced to substitute the more expensive 7,000-watt unit.

“At no time did we raise the price of either model of generator in anticipation of, during, or following the storm,” said spokesman Mark Scott.

Isn’t that precious?  A $349 generator isn’t worth your time when the power is on but a $999 one is too expensive when the power is already off?

I can’t help but love the irony.  One sentence has a very special unicorn logic that wraps around stupid and goes all the way to pure comedy gold: “People were buying them and complaining about it”.

Can you imagine that?  People are voluntarily doing something and then bitching because it was necessary.  Suppose all hell has broken loose and there is one and only one thing that’ll make your life better.  It’s a specially built machine that can turn your house from a blackout to a semblance of normal.  It’s as if all of the industrial revolution is packaged into a lawnmower sized contraption specifically meant to solve your problem.  The store has exactly that machine.  It’s in stock and sitting there.  It’s waiting just for you, the lucky consumer, to purchase… right now, at the exact moment in all recorded history when you specifically want it.  Nobody’s holding a gun to your head.  You can walk out that door any time.  You voluntarily buy this special mechanical thing which can perform the special miracle you need right now.  (Incidentally, buying stuff is the purpose of cash.  Just in case you thought it was for some other reason that you go to work.)

You’ve got power.  Right now.  Wherever you want.  Whenever you want.  Ta da!

But now you, because you’re extra groovy important to the universe, do the super double nosedive into bullshit land; you complain because it “should be cheaper”.  It was cheaper.  When the lights were on.  You, clever being that you are, specifically chose not to buy it when the lights were on.  You wanted Sam’s Club to warehouse it for you in the off chance that some random time you might feel like wanting it.  Isn’t that great?

I lack that level of hubris.  If the power’s off and $999 puts it back on I’d be happy as a pig in shit to have my margarita blender up and running.  I’d be thankful!

Being thankful requires that one be humble, honest, and accept the world as it is.  Sometimes life sucks.  Bad shit hurts.  It’s no fun when the power goes down.  Nobody likes earthquakes, tornadoes, storms, war, famine, disease, or telemarketers.  But you pick your ass up and do what you can with the resources at hand.  When things look dire you might just have to bleed a little cash.  It takes galactic self absorption to deny that.  It takes a child in an adult’s role to piss on the people who have the stuff to solve problems, because they have the stuff to solve problems.  That’s why a lot of us rednecks are more than happy to laugh at cities.  Nobody would give a tin shit if we all died in a blizzard but cities invite their own despair and then act like toddlers when it happens.

In the immortal (crudely paraphrased) words of John Gault; fuck ’em.

It’s a sunny day at Curmudgeon Compound.  Squirrels are running around the oaks like the little maniacs they are.  The wood supply is ample enough that I can sit on my ass instead of attacking the cord or so that’s lying around waiting for “post-processing” (i.e. the wood splitter of doom).  The coffee was good this morning and tonight’s beer will be cold.  I just ate a meal of venison burgers and chocolate chip cookies.  The chickens have been unusually productive.  Our two turkeys, “Thanksgiving” and “Christmas”, are strutting around without the slightest clue what the calendar holds.  The chickadees (my favorite for birdwatching) are in high spirits.  Life is good.

I say this all to explain why I decided to re-consider my dismissive Any Rand post of yesterday.  Who can fret over a generator on a glorious day like today?  More to the point had I let my paranoia get in the way of a legitimate idea?  It could have been all in my head.  What sane person would have really stopped me from delivering generators to a people in need?

So I turned to the Internet to either prove or disprove my thesis.  I found three articles in ten minutes (the first of which specifically mentioned generators):

1. “The attorney general said his office has received hundreds of complaints from consumers in areas of the state hit hardest by Sandy – New York City, the Hudson Valley and Long Island… consumers also have reported possible gouging for emergency supplies like generators… General business law prohibits such increases in costs of essential items like food, water, gas, generators, batteries and flashlights, and services like transportation…”
2. “Before Sandy made landfall, the attorney general had issued an open letter to vendors across the state warning them that price inflation of necessary goods and services during a crisis is illegal.”
3. “Today’s action is the first in a series of steps my office will take as we continue to actively investigate the hundreds of complaints we’ve received from consumers of businesses preying on victims of Hurricane Sandy…”

How about that?  I can almost feel the hate.  Especially the first quote which specifically mentions generators.  Then I found this one which seemed particularly topical:

At one Sam’s Club store in Manchester, Conn., some customers complained that generators priced at $349 two weeks ago suddenly cost $999 as the storm approached, said Laura Lavoie, a nearby resident who visited that store Sunday.

“People were buying them and complaining about it,” she said. “One guy stormed out while we were walking in. … The guy said his wife wouldn’t let him buy (the same generator) three weeks ago when it was $349 and now he can’t afford to buy it.”

A spokesman for Wal-Mart, which owns Sam’s Club, said the store ran out of the lower-priced generator, a 3,600-watt model, and was forced to substitute the more expensive 7,000-watt unit.

“At no time did we raise the price of either model of generator in anticipation of, during, or following the storm,” said spokesman Mark Scott.

Isn’t that precious?  A $349 generator isn’t worth your time when the power is on but a $999 one is too expensive when the power is already off?

I can’t help but love the irony.  One sentence has a very special unicorn logic that wraps around stupid and goes all the way to pure comedy gold: “People were buying them and complaining about it”.

Can you imagine that?  People are voluntarily doing something and then bitching because it was necessary.  Suppose all hell has broken loose and there is one and only one thing that’ll make your life better.  It’s a specially built machine that can turn your house from a blackout to a semblance of normal.  It’s as if all of the industrial revolution is packaged into a lawnmower sized contraption specifically meant to solve your problem.  The store has exactly that machine.  It’s in stock and sitting there.  It’s waiting just for you, the lucky consumer, to purchase… right now, at the exact moment in all recorded history when you specifically want it.  Nobody’s holding a gun to your head.  You can walk out that door any time.  You voluntarily buy this special mechanical thing which can perform the special miracle you need right now.  (Incidentally, buying stuff is the purpose of cash.  Just in case you thought it was for some other reason that you go to work.)

You’ve got power.  Right now.  Wherever you want.  Whenever you want.  Ta da!

But now you, because you’re extra groovy important to the universe, do the super double nosedive into bullshit land; you complain because it “should be cheaper”.  It was cheaper.  When the lights were on.  You, clever being that you are, specifically chose not to buy it when the lights were on.  You wanted Sam’s Club to warehouse it for you in the off chance that some random time you might feel like wanting it.  Isn’t that great?

I lack that level of hubris.  If the power’s off and $999 puts it back on I’d be happy as a pig in shit to have my margarita blender up and running.  I’d be thankful!

Being thankful requires that one be humble, honest, and accept the world as it is.  Sometimes life sucks.  Bad shit hurts.  It’s no fun when the power goes down.  Nobody likes earthquakes, tornadoes, storms, war, famine, disease, or telemarketers.  But you pick your ass up and do what you can with the resources at hand.  When things look dire you might just have to bleed a little cash.  It takes galactic self absorption to deny that.  It takes a child in an adult’s role to piss on the people who have the stuff to solve problems, because they have the stuff to solve problems.  That’s why a lot of us rednecks are more than happy to laugh at cities.  Nobody would give a tin shit if we all died in a blizzard but cities invite their own despair and then act like toddlers when it happens.

In the immortal (crudely paraphrased) words of John Gault; fuck ’em.

The local hardware store just got a shipment of fine new generators.  Nice Hondas.  The quiet/efficient ones that are a cool and sleek counterpoint to the loathsome over-revved rattletraps that box stores crap out.  There were about a dozen lined up (a huge stock for my rural area!).  The price seemed fair.

I want one!  I lust for a Honda generator like other men lust for a Ferrari.  (Homesteaders are just as materialistic as anyone else.  I may scoff at a new iPhone but if you mess with my woodsplitter you’re going to die.)

Sadly I’m cheap.  I prefer money in my pocket to a new generator.  We all must make choices.

This got me to thinking about folks who need a generator far more than myself.  Lucky I’m not that screwed!  Aren’t there a bunch of folks penned up in NYC that are still wanting for power?  Imagine the horror of warm beer!  Last I knew they were protesting and bitching about FEMA and engaging in other time wasting activities to express their displeasure.  If I were in their shoes (which would never happen) I’d buy one of those Hondas no matter what the price.  I’d have it faster than you can say “smoking credit card” and never look back.

I suspect the supply of generators in Sandy’s wake is a mite slim.  Hmmm…  Soon I was scheming.

The price looked fair, there was ample stock, I’ve got a big ass truck, a criminally high credit limit, and a hankering for a road trip.  I’m not above “adventure” and the hardware store has a good return policy.  I could buy a bunch of these babies and deliver them to some poor slobs locked in the city.  Hopefully I’d swing enough profit to cover my time and fuel.  If, for some reason, New Yorkers would rather freeze in the dark than pay cash for a generator I’d return them to the store for a full refund.  I’m always willing to risk a tank of gas on a stupid idea.

Why  not?

If I added a couple hundred per unit to cover costs and another 10% I could get me one of those magic red power makers by delivering/selling ten.  Right now there’s a market of people who lack the technology to make beer cold.  Win win!

You know where this is going.  Reality set in.  There’s a modern word that’s routinely misused when someone adds a couple hundred per unit to cover custom delivery to the middle of a FEMA clusterfuck; price gouging.  And selling without a permit.  Without Union labor.  Etc…  In 2012 engaging in legal but informal trade is, paradoxically, de-facto illegal.

People who can’t legally buy a large soda sure as hell aren’t going to have the freedom to greet me and a truck full of generators.  They’re too busy protesting, or suffering, or whatever people who are locked in a city do when the lights go out.

I got in my truck and drove home.  I had a cold beer by the warm fire and thanked my lucky stars I’m not some Mayor’s pet.  As I post this I presume a bunch of city dwellers are still sitting in the dark.  That sucks but they’ve got to live in the cage they built and this particular redneck, who could help, isn’t going to deal with the drama.

See?  I just explained Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in 600 words.

Don’t laugh!  Everything short of getting kicked in the nuts has a positive side.  Here comes, in no particular order, my “glass is half full” reflections on the election itself:

• I was wrong.  I really thought Romney was going to pull it off.  I like surprises.  Even if it’s a bad one like finding a snake in your hat.
• The polls were right.  I was pretty sure a phone poll in 2012 was the most outdated and ridiculous way to measure public opinion imaginable.  I compared it to driving a Model T through a fog bank to a Tarot Card reader.  I was wrong.  Somehow, even when it took something on the order of eleven calls to get one highly suspect and biased answer, they got it right.  Impressive.
• It was beyond the margin of cheat.  I really like elections where one person honestly wins.  The Big O did just that.  None of the recent horseshit with hanging chads and Al Franken recounts.  Well done.  Further, aside from the innumerate yahoos in Florida, most states managed to count without screwing up.  I didn’t want another round of politicians and lawyers performing unnatural acts in my democratic republic.
• It was a contested election.  Until sunset on the last day nobody really knew who would win.  That’s good!
• Bitching about racism is getting boring.  Our nation of free citizens elected and re-elected a black president.  Even my dog knows it’s time to let it go.  Aside from people who make a living by inciting racism, America is incrementally turning it into a moot point.
• Bitching about religion is getting boring.  When politics goes far enough to the left you get folks who aren’t merely “not religious” but they go full retard and become vehemently, aggressively,  rabidly, anti-religious.  They lose their shit over piddly details like Christmas nativity scenes and wouldn’t vote for an overtly pious person even if their Prius begged them to.  When politics go far enough to the right you meet snake handlers who consult the Old Testament  about the correct choice for breakfast cereal.  They lose their shit over gays and wouldn’t vote for a non-believer if the guy was the greatest choice in a century.  The rest of us watched an election between two very different religious world views and didn’t flake out because of the contrast.  One smokes, drinks, and swears, and (in deed if not word) appears more or less unaffected by religion.  The other does not smoke, drink, or swear, and is so morally upright he makes Mr. Rogers look like the Hell’s Angels.  Both men had a good chance at winning and racked up significant numbers of votes.  It’s good that Americans pondered diametrically oppositional religious world views without losing perspective.
• Romney was squeaky clean.  Romney, regardless of his loss, was the first politician I’ve seen in years that didn’t have a skeleton in his closet (and the press sure looked for one).  It seems like nobody in D.C. can get though life without cheating on their taxes (or their wife) or some other dastardly behavior.  It feels good to know that at least one person has trod the straight and narrow and still made a good run for the presidency.
• Once you’re thrown out of the plane; incentives to understand the parachute become unstoppable.  Many of us have been forced to spend the last couple of years sitting on decisions because things, no matter how bad it looked, might be partially reversible.  No longer.  Planning for (and acting in reaction to) whatever shenanigans our government has cooked up can now begin in earnest.  Here’s one example; now that Obamacare is as unkillable as the living dead we will adapt.  Perhaps businesses will carefully stay under a certain numbers of employees or schedule them below certain thresholds of work hours.  Perhaps medical students will tweak their studies.  Perhaps we’ll all re-examine our health care choices and options.  Regardless of your politics waiting has no upside.  It’s now a matter of logistics and economics.  Abandoning hope for a better situation means we can get busy adapting to what we’ve got.  As you construct your personal lifeboat you’re better served knowing the manner in which you’re getting flushed.  Everyone reading this blog (including my dog) should be making adjustments based on the information gleaned last week.
• Whistling past the graveyard is done.  Ignoring looming issues is for children and fools.  I endeavor to stack wood when it’s sunny and intend to feel smug when the inevitable blizzard arrives.  During the election most of the Nation took a break from reality; much to the annoyance of this particular ant who gets tired of the company of grasshoppers.  We’ll that’s done for good.  Try this example on for size; before the election, everything economic was peachy keen and it made perfect sense to use statistics that ignored every unemployed person in California.  Today I heard the word “fiscal cliff” 28 separate times in one radio show.   (NPR if you must ask.)  The “cliff” was created on August 2nd, 2011 by the Budget Control Act of 2011.  It became acceptable to discuss it in public on November 7th, 2012.  That’s fifteen months of ignoring the lit fuse!  Now that Obama’s pet press has finished the coronation of their lord and master they have come to the surface for air.  Reality is clubbing them like the baby seals that they are.  (Oh…. I like that metaphor!)  Not everyone thinks denial is a legitimate state for an adult and folks like me welcome the rest of the crowd as they sample the air in this new environment called reality.

Back in 2008 America elected a fellow I thought both unqualified and damaging.  I was terribly disappointed; not in McCain for losing but for America for making what I considered an epically bad decision.  Shortly thereafter I read A momentous event that puts the Presidential race in perspective by Dave Duffy.  I filed that article in my head for future reference.  Then I redoubled my efforts to live as well as I could possibly live; if not accepting the slow motion innately predictable disaster going down in D.C. at least adapting to it.

Now, four years later, the same scoundrel has won another election.  I’m, once again, disappointed.  I honestly thought America had bottomed out and was looking to respond with a different path.  I was wrong.  On the other hand, I never expected his challenger to do much.  One man, no matter how earnest, cannot put an entire Nation back on track if the Nation doesn’t wish it.  So the failed attempt of 2012 doesn’t sting so much.  I’ve come to suspect that debts and “fiscal cliffs” and whatnot were (and continue to be) amassed by a people who simply must play things out to their forgone conclusion.  I’d rather not see us all take the ride but that is the apparent way of things.

Back to the wise words of Dave Duffy.

I see the Presidential election as a temporary spectacle like the Superbowl. Everybody is talking about it, but in the end it’s relatively meaningless, at least when compared to youngsters like Jake gearing up to solve the world’s problems.

It is a sad commentary on our times, I think, that so many people disagree with me on this matter. They think electing either Obama or McCain is one of the most critical decisions of their lifetime. They think it will dictate the future of America. It is a “group” mentality that has been fostered over many years by the colossus that makes up America’s large political and bureaucratic establishment.

Well, I’ve got news for you. If you think getting a certain politician elected is going to favorably affect your life, you’re in for a disappointment. Only you paying attention to the details of your own life will favorably affect your future. It doesn’t matter worth a damn who becomes President.

Dave is right.  As a group, our Nation isn’t going to deal with reality until reality is finished dealing with us.  Individually the story is much brighter.  We each have the option to choose to live every day in the best way we can.  I’ve tried to remember Dave’s little hint whenever some blockhead in a suit lies to me from behind a podium.  It works.  Politically, things are a mess but the things I control in my little life are going about as well as I can manage.  It’s a relief and it’s probably something that should have been obvious to me all along.  Good luck folks.

A.C.

P.S.  Once a newshound, I’ve pretty much given up on most print media.  I derive more joy watching my chickens crap on the lawn.  The single exception is Backwoods Home Magazine. It’s the only subscription I still maintain.

I wrote earlier that my mailbox harvested so much negative campaign pamphlets against a rather unassuming incumbent that I’d decided to vote for him. Later, even more negative pamphlets against the guy arrived and I wrote:

“I have revised my earlier support for candidate A.  I’m was going to vote for him.  Now I’m going to build a shrine to him.”

Today, against all impulses to the contrary, I checked my mail.  I had fourteen political ads!  Holy crap.

Here’s the count:

• Unrelated to Candidate A: 4 fliers.
• Related to Candidate A’s opponent: 2 negative and 2 positive.  The two positive cards were to the exact same person and address and were the exact same flier.  There’s nothing I want in a politician more than the ability to waste twice as much money to send the same redundant message twice!  I bow to the extra special level of dipshit I see in that kind of management!
• Related to Candidate A: 1 positive (from the candidate himself) and 4 negative:

I summarize the negatives below:

“Candidate A cut a particular program for the elderly.  You’re going to get old.  You’re going to  die.  Alone.  Because funding was cut.  Are you listening?  You’re going to die old and alone.  On November 7th.  They’re going to make you into Soylent Green.  You deserve it for supporting that evil bastard!”

“Candidate A supports big corporations.  The only purpose of a big corporation is to ship jobs overseas.  Did you know that?  People build big corporations and the only reason they do it is so they can ship jobs overseas.  Because they’re monsters that’s why!  Also he took money from the schools.  He just put on a black mask and grabbed a pistol and took that money right out of the hands of third graders.  And he started a corporation and made some jobs and put the jobs in little boxes and mailed them overseas.”

“Candidate A made local municipalities pay for the stuff that local municipalities want.    And that’s just wrong.  It’s wrong like setting fire to kittens.”

“Candidate A took money from schools and made it into tax loopholes for corporations that send American jobs overseas.” (This one is almost word for word.  I’d make a joke but… how?)  The front of the card had a whole lot more: “I’m candidate B.  The only thing I’m going to do is take that money the bastard took and gave to the companies that ship jobs overseas and I’m going to bring it back to schools.  I might use a wheel barrow to carry it.  Also here’s a picture of me with my family.  And there’s a little kid on the margin.  Aren’t kids cute?  Did you notice that I dressed in the family picture just like my butler says idiots at Wal-mart can relate to?  I’ve got a camouflage jacket and a hat.  I’m just like you unwashed peons.  And did you see that next to me there’s a picture of coffee and a donut.  Next to that bastard Candidate A there’s champagne and caviar.  Because when you hit a school with a brick and take it’s money and give it to a corporation that exists for no other reason than to ship jobs in little boxes to someplace stupid like not-America then they give you caviar.  Also nobody drinks champagne but big fat-cat jerks.  Not like me.  I eat donuts.  Please for the love of God vote for me!”

There you have it.  Candidate A can sleep in tomorrow.  He’s got it in the bag!  Anyone that generates literally dozens of negative ads sent to my irrelevant little farmhouse is going keep winning elections until the end of time.  (Partly because his opponents seem intent on bankrupting themselves.)  He’s got my vote and I’m going to name my most beloved possession after him.  I shall henceforth no longer cut firewood with a Stihl.  I shall now be cutting firewood with a Candidate A!