Adaptive Curmudgeon

In my last post I mentioned people who really truly wanted to get the vax. They’re happy. They got what they wanted.

What about the people who had the opposite and almost unthinkably harder path; those who didn’t want the vax and had the strength of will to hold out?

People who didn’t want the shot and also didn’t get the shot are happy with their decision.

Notice that people who deeply wanted the shot are happy and people who deeply loathed the shot (and held out against absolutely brutal pressure) are happy too.

Happiness comes not so much as a result of a medical procedure, it comes from the exercise of free will.

Life is not fair. You ought to know that by now but if you don’t have it tattooed on your ass so you never forget. Nothing about the vax was fair. Wanting the vax took no courage or effort but avoiding the vax never happened by accident for even one single human. It took a ton of personal will. None of society’s heavy hitters were on the non-vax side. Jobs were lost. Friendships were broken. To exercise personal agency in the non-vax direction was unpopular, prosecuted, and largely unsupported. This means nobody took that path by accident.

By now, everyone without the vax in their veins fucking means it. Every single person who’s vax free has personal agency. They’ve also got balls of steel. To be vax free required facing down social engineering, lies, propaganda, marketing, advertising, and political manipulation the likes of which I’d never seen in my life.

It’s still not over. The pressure still hasn’t let up. I still see pro-vax ads on YouTube. It’s still on billboards. I’m not sure why.

Anyone who could be swayed by an ad has been swayed by the ads.

Everyone on TV and Facebook and Twitter and every employer pushed the vax. There were (are!) ads on every form of broadcast, politicians insisted if you didn’t get an injection you were killing grandma, family court judges took custody away, hospitals isolated people on their death beds, doctors refused treatments, and churches claimed God wanted everyone to get the vax. This is one of the more unforgivable sins of the recent past. Churches (of most denominations) closed when people most needed spiritual support. An absolute failure of spiritual leadership!

Overall, it’s one of the hardest times to exercise free will I’ve ever seen. What a horror!

It would have been better if people were allowed to make their choice privately (as they make most of their important choices). That was stripped away. HIPPA regulations (created to protect AIDS patients a few decades ago) were utterly ignored. People tried to use walking around with bandannas on their face to ascertain other people’s compliance. When that wasn’t good enough governments created medical identification papers; immoral, illegal, and unforgivable. They did things over the vax that would be 100% prosecuted over other medical choices.

This was a bridge too far and in retrospect a lot of people acknowledge it. (Not that I forgive a mob for what they do when they’re in the thrall of being a mob.) Even now the pressure is just barely fading. Vax mandates in the military and so forth are only gradually ebbing; at the speed of reluctant bureaucrat.

Imagine an employer demanding ID related to other personal medical situations. Your boss wants a “ID card” with proof you’ve had or not had a procedure. “It says you wear contacts. You’re fired.”

Imagine the same “ID card” for abortion! “This document says you’ve had an abortion, you can’t enroll in college.” Such a thing would seem unthinkable yet “no vax, no college” was official, somehow legal, enforced, and it affected kid’s lives.

I’m forever amused (and warned) that the “our bodies our choices” crowd had zero fucks to give about any other bodies or choices involving the vax. People who freaked out when Roe v Wade devolved to States wanted a needle jammed or my public execution. They weren’t faking it and they weren’t subtle. I think they meant it. Never turn your back on people who can pivot like that.

Legal protections applied to other medical choices were completely ignored and that’s not just illegal, it’s evil. When you ignore laws, customs, and honor to subjugate someone, you’re doing evil. “Rights and protections X, Y, and Z don’t apply anymore because we feel like curbstomping this particular group today.” That’s the voice of evil. They could have said “We’re going to work this change through the legislature slowly and deliberately”. Had they done so there would have been at least some chance to maintain the basics of lawful society.

I keep coming back to how this medical issue became more than any other medical issue. Imagine a grocery store involved in other medical choices. “It says in our database that you purchased a hearing aid from a banned manufacturer. No food for you.”

Doctors were the worst. They have the most to answer for (in this world or the next). “I refuse your request for Ivermectin (which is known to be safe) because fuck you.” They tied compliance in one choice with all other treatment. Since when is this allowed? “Motorcycles are dangerous but you still ride one. I cancelled your oncology visit. You will die of leukemia because you didn’t do my bidding when I told you to stop riding motorcycles.” The government (both in USA and elsewhere) created profit motives to manipulate patients. Hospitals made more from a dead covid patient than a dead motorcycle rider. So, of course, we have data where “dead with covid” is commingled with “dead because of covid”. This is just what you’d expect. How else could an inhuman bureaucracy react?

Privacy was destroyed, dignity was shredded, trust was crushed, and every force in society in many different nations converged to force one and only one decision. Nobody stands up to that by accident.

Because the pressure was relentless, every refusal of the shot was with intent.

The personal feeling of making a choice is better than the horror of submission.

If you didn’t get the shot, you damn well meant it! Even if it was a dumb choice, it was not an unthinking one. To think is to be human. When anyone specifically makes a decision based on their own values and goals they have an internal locus of control. They are doing their best to be full adult humans. Vax refusers did not wimp out. They made their choice and they backed it up in a world against them.

Making your choice. Based on your values… feels right.

It’s a mark against everyone else that vax refusers were treated so harshly. Vax refusers did not deserve such treatment. Regardless, they made the right choice for their preferences and goals. A person earns pride when they act like a true human and make a personal decision from within. Perhaps there is no greater thing than to stand tall for your own beliefs.

Also, there’s an amusing twist. They have options that nobody else does! They can always change their mind. They could get the shot today. They can change their mind any damn time they want. Since they haven’t, you know they’re happy with the outcome so far.

In the next post I’ll ruminate about the sad, abused, beaten middle. People who didn’t have strong preferences either way. They all got an injection about which they were ambivalent.

[Note #1: My last post rambled about things that are within your control and things that aren’t. Now I’ll elaborate about choice and free will. Is not the new year a time to think?]

Regardless of the outcome, it feels better to have made a choice than be a victim of external forces.

Whenever you can, you ought to make your own decisions. It’s unwise to take the easy path and “let it slide”. Pretty soon someone else will have taken over the decision. This absolves you of responsibility but also makes you a less complete human.

From the minute you failed to make your own decision, you lost some personal control. Whomever made the decision gained control. They will not and cannot (even if they mean well) make the right choice for you. They’ll make the decision that aggregates their own power, wealth, authority, and control. Your reaction will be only one among the many to which the choice is applied (or inflicted). Thus your preference will be irrelevant, inconvenient, and ignored. If this happens too much, you’ll be miserable.

[Note #2: I intended to use car purchases and homestead gear as examples. However, there’s a topic that steamrolls all else. It can’t be ignored. My muse walloped me with a 2″x4″ and forced me to address the elephant in the room. My muse is a hard ass.]

Lets consider one of the most personal choices a human can make. “There is a new illness and an associated new experimental injection. Both have uncertain parameters. Do I get an injection or do I not get an injection?”

I faced that decision. You did too. What a special time to be alive! All of humanity had a moment when God (or fate) gave each and every one of us a clear experiment in the exercise of or absence of free will. How did your experiment work out?

It’s a classic binary decision; almost like something out of a textbook. There’s no middle ground with an injection; you either got the shot or you didn’t. Also, injections are “forever”; like losing your virginity.

So, did you make a decision? I did! Many others did too. Sadly, a tragic majority let the decision happen to them. How did it work out? Let’s examine ways it could play out:

Everyone who really deeply truly wanted the shot got the shot. They are happy.

Because they got what they wanted, they are happy. They will continue being happy. Whether the shot worked or not is practically irrelevant.

Why wouldn’t a pro-vax person be happy? It just makes sense. They got what they wanted. They were first in line. They got the shot long before governments started forcing them on people. It didn’t cost a dime! They were treated as heroes. They got to post on social media about how they’d heroically, awesomely, gotten the new thing. (Note: I’m talking here entirely about their choice and only their choice. Other factors, such as a widespread abhorrent behavior toward people with different preferences is a different can of worms.)

When a person stampedes to get the thing they most desire it’s still an internal locus of control. They felt in control. That’s why people who really wanted the vax are still happy to have the vax.

Even if it’s not working out as it was marketed, the fact that they got what they wanted is basically all that matters. If they subsequently got covid, they’re still happy. If they subsequently got covid twice, they’re happy. They’ll be happy no matter how many times they get covid. Even if they had a bad reaction, got covid twice, watched acquaintances suffer even worse reactions, someone keyed their car at the parking lot when they got their fourth booster, and their left testicle imploded for no reason… they’re still happy.

They. Got. What. They. Wanted.

I don’t try to change the mind of people who eagerly wanted the shot. So long as they leave me alone, it’s all good. I’m glad for them. They made a choice of their own free will. It’s none of my business if it differs from my preferences. If people who wanted the vax had extended the same courtesy to me we could be the best of friends.

Think about the opportunity we lost! There could have been a world where the people who stampeded for the shot could have been good friends when the ones who never got the shot. A world full of humble, mature, intelligent, kind people would have played out peacefully and in a spirit of goodwill.

Of course it didn’t happen and the reason is that people suck. Many people are narcissistic, immature, unintelligent, and cruel. That’s why things went off the rails. A planet filled with better people wouldn’t have turned a simple medical issue into a totalitarian shitstorm but we don’t live on that planet.

For the folks that got the shot, their happiness is cemented in stone. Further information is unlikely to change their opinion. Every bit of new information will be filtered through a mind that wanted the shot and also can’t change even if they wanted to. They’ve got the vax it indelibly in their veins for life.

It is almost impossible for them to be affected by contrary sources and experiences. Near-dead NFL players, spooky actuarial charts, happy healthy Amish communities, swarms of homeless that seem oddly unaffected, the unvaxxed neighbor that’s doing just fine… these are likely to be dismissed. It almost has to be. It’s in their damn veins, it’s not going away. It’s very hard to change your mind about a big decision that you willingly made and can never change later on.

This is hard for folks on the anti-vax side to recognize. Let it go. It’s part of what makes life interesting. The world is filled with people who make decisions I can’t understand. Face tattoos, disco, EV trucks, and $300,000 degrees in puppetry are all decisions. So long as nobody forces it on me; I’m cool with it. (You’ll note that politics tries to force me into supporting EV trucks and paying for someone else’s student loans. That’s why government pisses people off. I can only assume Federally subsidized face tattoos are somewhere in the most recent omnibus bill. Why not?)

You can see this confidence in their decision very easily. When someone who got a vaccine (a thing formerly defined in terms of immunity) subsequently gets covid they’ve got a go-to answer; “Imagine how much worse it would be if I didn’t get the shot.” Short of death (and maybe not even then) they’ll be happy. That’s how the human mind works.

So, if people who wanted the vax are happy because they got the vax, what about the other side. Are people who didn’t want the vax happy if they didn’t get it? Tune in for the next post.

[Forgive me, for I am about to philosophize.]

“There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves.”

It’s a line from an old movie starring an Austrian bodybuilder posing as a death-robot sent from a post-apocalyptic dystopian future (a future scheduled six years from now). I could pick a similar line from Marcus Aelius but I’d probably mess up the Latin. Regardless, it’s true. Whenever I make my own fate, I’m happier. You are too.

There are things I control; such as certain financial decisions. I embrace these situations. Nobody’s perfect but an average, normal, reasonable adult is right most of the time.

There are things I don’t control; such as the overall economy. Notice the examples I gave are two sides of the came coin. I embrace personal financial decisions because I have some control but I can keep fretting over the overall economy to the minimum I can. I have no control over the overall economy (according to some theories, nobody does). As for who either controls the economy or thinks they do; I’ll quote George Carlin “it’s a big club and you ain’t in it“.

This means when things based on the overall economy interact with my life it sucks. (This is true even if I benefit.) The overall economy is inflicted upon me. To the degree I can’t adapt or evade I’m just cannon fodder. The overall economy is managed (or mismanaged) in ways that were never meant to fit my preferences. I get pissed off even by little stuff. I can’t buy incandescent light bulbs because someone I never met decided I can’t do it; meaning that there’s an official light bulb bureaucracy that’s more powerful than my lightbulb preference. As a practical matter, heroin and incandescent bulbs are equally banned (unless I’m in Oregon where heroin might be ok?). If a stupid thing like light bulbs annoy me, imagine how angry I get over big stuff like printing money until my savings and retirement plans are diminished by inflation.

Consider a personal financial decision over which I do have some control. Lets assume my car still runs and I could also finance a replacement. What’s my best choice? Do I finance a new car or keep the decaying vehicle I’ve got?

External forces have a preference; oh God do they have preferences! They’re not subtle about it either. I’ve been awash in marketing and propaganda since I was born. (One of the first “big words” I could spell was “Chevrolet”.) The cretins at the bank would happily strap my ass into horrific debt. The sales drones at the dealer make a living talking people into a “trade ins”. They all have the same preference. Spend, spend, spend! Several consecutive presidents have suggested it’s my patriotic duty to buy something from Detroit and if I were a true patriot it ought to be an EV.

I want a new car. But do I really want a new car? Maybe I’m just so badgered I assume so? When you make a choice, consider if you really made the choice at all. Internally oriented decisions don’t necessarily match society as a whole. If you make a decision that’s easy and supported by society, it was probably not created out of your own heart. It was an external locus of control. If one fish in a school of ten thousand makes the same move as 9,999 other fish… was it truly making the choice?

The world absolutely loves controlling you. Governments and organizations want to manage all of your decisions! Their decisions might make you miserable but that’s irrelevant. They don’t care about you. They can’t care about. It’s literally impossible to make blanket decisions for millions of people and still care about your preference.

Surprisingly, given that nobody can know you better than you, a lot of people let someone else take the wheel. Personal control is indeed hard work. So weak people fall to the temptation of avoiding self-reliance. They don’t want the responsibility of decisions so they turn to some external force. Whether it’s the Pope, a President, or Google whatever happens next is done in the service of external forces. A person’s path in life becomes what someone else did to them. Maybe it works out and maybe it doesn’t. What it certainly did, was erode their sense of self.

Once you’ve evaded a decision you’ve reduced your role in your own life. You’ve become domesticated. You’re someone’s pet or widget or piece on a playing board. The ultimate indignity is to become a unit on a vote farm. No matter how the chips fall, when you let someone else decide, you lose a measure of control over your own life.

That’s the source of the helplessness that infects our populace. Many people aren’t steering their own ship. They gave up and now hope and pray that someone is steering. At first they’re worried that someone is steering poorly. Later they fear nobody is steering at all. That’s why every election is “the most important election ever”. The more things the government controls, the more we sense it’s inflicting events on us. The more things inflicted upon us, the more random and illogical they seem. Citizens encounter events in a natural and understandable manner only when they themselves do the encountering.

That’s the drawback of “just going along”, the desire to shirk personal decisions creates an infantilized non-adult; a failed sad thing that’s hopeless and prone to depression. Taken to extremes it creates a zombie that’s long dead and just doesn’t know it yet.

We who are still self aware are surrounded by people and systems that don’t have our best interests at heart. We must protect ourselves against that by managing our own affairs.

When “they” steer the ship (whoever “they” are), “they” don’t steer to our desired port. Learning this is part of becoming an adult (and if one is pushed too far, a cynic).

I’ll elaborate in my next post.

Mrs. Curmudgeon is the cook of the household. She’s far better at food than I. (I think that’s a matter of priorities. In general, if I’ve produced adequate healthy calories, I’ve done enough. If it’s bland but you’re not going to die… well that’s good enough. Flavor and spices and shit are nice to have but once I’ve cleared the “no starvation” bar I start to tune out. I’m not the only guy that’s like that.)

In the holiday season Mrs. Curmudgeon shines like a rock star! She goes apeshit cooking food. She cooks in what feels like buckets and truckloads. She could feed an army; and what a lucky army it would be! We regularly have more dishes than we have guests. She makes absolutely stunning food. It’s a sight to behold! It baffles me. Also it’s all done on the fly using skill (or magic) because I swear she’s never followed a recipe in her life. When she sees me messing around with a measuring spoon her first thought is to slap the offending implement away. From my uninformed point of view it looks like she “wings it” to culinary success.

I’m not kidding when I say it’s impressive. She’s been known to churn out more delicious pies (in various types) than people at the table!

“After dinner is over, everyone pick their favorite pie!”

No shit! A zillion assorted pies. Just pick one and have at it! Is that not awesome?

This Christmas she was a tired as I. At my prompting, she sensibly rested by the fire while I took the wheel in the kitchen. Since I’m me, I tried an entirely different approach than her dazzling creations. In a development near and dear to my Cro-Magnon heart, we had what I called a “down home, inflation-proof, bunker level, meal o’ heartiness“.

My plan was simple, I’d feed us all with food I’d raised or hunted. Why? Because real food is delicious. Also, I have a lot of it and we might as well get used to it. We’re probably already in a world where supply chains are… um… not what they once were. So let’s embrace it. There was to be nothing elaborate but plenty of what we did have. That’s how I roll!

One can go overboard with games like that. (I’ve yet to figure out how to hunt butter and I’m not going to make a rice paddy in the yard.) Like a sane man, I leavened idealism with realistic expectations. Regardless, I still got to where I wanted to go. Everyone was happy so I didn’t fret too much over the details. Also, there was no pie. I couldn’t make a Mrs. Curmudgeon level pie if my life depended on it.

Preparation for my Curmudgeonly Christmas Feast took all year and just a few moments on the day itself.

This summer I “experimented” with corn; planting half assed rows in an abandoned pig pen. I more or less ignored the crop after that. I specifically limited my labors because I’m already too busy; I wanted corn but not another job. I spent the summer wondering if the weeds or the corn would win the arms race. When the time came, I waded through a jungle to find corn doing ok right in the middle of the mess!

I didn’t get a huge yield but it tasted great. One afternoon we had more corn than I felt like eating. We’d already had corn on the cob several times. So Mrs. Curmudgeon and I “saved” several ears worth. We did it about the most primitive way possible. We cut the raw kernels off the cob, crammed the results in four large ziplock bags, and hurled them into the freezer. That’s it. Would it work? Only a Christmas meal would tell.

In November I readied the main course. I shot a deer and then did all the steps of butchering and preservation.

Butchering is an area in life where I’m “leveling up”. It took forever to become a reasonably competent hunter and I humbly think I’ve finally accomplished that. However, I’d formerly ignored butchering. For years I brought big game straight from the forest to a butcher. My main involvement after the hammer dropped was to drag the animal to my truck, haul it somewhere, and cut a check.

That’s not particularly cool as woodsman but I’ve no regrets. I’ve got only so many hours in the day and butchers are the only readily available labor pool. I’d much prefer doing my own butchering and spend my money on skilled services like plumbers. But there are no plumbers. Since I can actually find a butcher, I happily hired them! I wanted to take stress off my busy schedule and they’re literally all I can hire.

That was then and this is now. Now, it’s a recession. (Don’t let anyone tell you different!) For that reason and others, I wanted to level up. I’ve slowly been upgrading my butchering skills (it’s not hard but it’s a lot of physical work!). I after a few years “being my own butcher” I expanded into canning.

With the helpful mentoring of a friend who knows his shit, I gingerly ventured into “the pressure canning zone”. Pressure canning is not rocket science but I sure appreciated a nudge in the right direction.

Sealed pressurized vessels are a thing to which you ought to pay attention. Follow the instructions, don’t overpressure your vessel, don’t blow up the kitchen, be patient, etc… It works well with my personality which zones out when told to “add a pinch of salt” but targets like a laser when told “heat at X pounds for Y minutes”. Incidentally, I love pressure canning. It’s pretty cool to start with a critter and end up with a perfectly sealed jar.

Everything from the deer that was good enough to be steak got wrapped and tossed into the freezer as steak (thus burying the forgotten corn). Everything slightly less awesome than “steak” got cut into stew meat chunks, pre-cooked, and put into the canner. I used virtually no flavoring except some salt; which is fine because it smelled heavenly and tasted better. The remaining critter bits went through the grinder to become “burger”. Don’t think that’s bad stuff! I’ll take a deer-cheeseburger over cow anytime.

Canning was a lot of work but the process appeared to be a success. However, I hadn’t yet cracked open a jar to taste it yet.

You won’t be surprised that I get a whole lot more food out of a critter when I butcher it myself compared to when I hire it done. It’s an almost comically obvious discovery, but I verified it as true.

Well before Christmas our guests heard about the canned deer. This prompted a lot of inquiries. “How does it taste? Is it safe? What’s it look like? Does it have good texture?” I had no idea. Why not join us to find out on the holiday? It became like a present. “Lets open this jar and see what happens.”

I think of canned meat as “pioneer food”. I didn’t have any expectation it would be better than frozen. I was wrong! It was waaaaaay better! Pressure canning was developed for a time before reliable power girds and freezers but that doesn’t mean it’s bland. (Also, we might as well get used to jars. Reliable 24/7 power grid conditions came from a society run by intelligent serious adults. What will you do when dipshits make the whole grid “green” and your freezer goes without power every third week? Q: “What did socialists use for light before candles?” A: “Electricity!”)

I didn’t expect anyone to care about my experiments but interest was palpable. Then I tasted some. I get it now! Our elders were onto something. I was tasty! Just plain delicious!

In November, (after the deer) as “practice”, I canned a big bag of carrots. My second use of the canner and another addition to the meal!

A few days before Christmas I attacked a ten pound bag of potatoes. I prepared enough to fill all the quart jars I had left. I annoyed Mrs. Curmudgeon by leaving 4 unused potatoes in a 99% empty bag but that’s what happens when a nerd carefully celebrates his “canning volume”. Over a mellow afternoon I peeled, chopped, boiled, and canned several quarts of potato. It’s work, but it felt rewarding.

Like the carrots, this wasn’t a crop I’d grown, but you have to start somewhere. Potatoes were my third “batch” of canning. They came out pretty well if I do say so myself.

The Big Day:

On Christmas day we had guests coming, so I did the right thing and took a nap. One can get overworked trying to make holidays perfect! I decided to go “low stress” and I meant it. I enjoyed that two hour snooze!

After guests arrived I started opening jars. I expected the meal to be “quasi-instant” and I was correct.

The potatoes and carrots were stupid simple to prepare. Drain the fluid, dump the jar contents into a bowl, nuke until hot, add salt and pepper (if I remembered). A monkey could do it. Start with a pantry filled with righteously canned foods and you can’t go wrong.

I found a couple bags of the raw frozen corn under a ton of other things in the freezer. I dumped it in a bowl and nuked the raw frozen kernels. Just as everything else, it was stupid simple to cook and it came out delicious. It tasted like a summer afternoon!

The meat was too valuable for my attentions so Mrs. Curmudgeon took over. Even so, it was dirt simple. I drained the liquid into a saucepan. Mrs. Curmudgeon jumped in front of me lest I do something terrible like measure ingredients or consult a recipe. She did some sort of magic voodoo while I wandered around the kitchen getting in everyone’s way. Whatever she added turned the saucepan liquid into delicious gravy. For all I know it was uranium.

Meanwhile, I dumped the meat into a skillet and stirred lazily. I kept grabbing bits out of the skillet (even cold and unseasoned the meat was delicious!). Mrs. Curmudgeon grabbed a spatula and tried to defend the skillet from my predations. She also added a handful of elixirs and powders (she calls them spices but they’re magic to me). As soon as it was warm, the saucepan of gravy went on top. Yum!

Fresh bread appeared. I have a wheat mill but I was too lazy to make dough. Mrs. Curmudgeon somehow conjured the bread. I assume she has a magic wand or something.

Meat, gravy, potatoes, carrots, corn, fresh bread. Everything the product of simple cooking. Nothing we ate would be out of place in 1920 (or 1820). Most of it came from my own efforts and all the effort was on the front end. Once it’s in a jar, reheating is a monkey level task. (Aside from the gravy which is probably more complex than cold fusion.)

It sounds crude and it was… but everything was amazing!

We all had a great meal. I was pleased. If I’d been in a fancy restaurant I couldn’t have had more flavor. If I’d been a king I couldn’t have felt more wealthy. If I’d climbed a mountain to get the potatoes I couldn’t have felt more proud.

Obviously, I’ll never compete with Mrs. Curmudgeon’s gourmet pies but that’s not the point. This year’s meal was just right for the world in which we’ve been thrown. We ate like farmers from three generations back and it was perfect. It was better than the most expensive meal money could buy. Everyone was happy.

It may have been one of the best Christmas meals ever! Never forget the joy (and wonderful taste!) of simple things.

[Please forgive the disjointed nature of this post. Usually I have more time to think and thus arrange my words. This time I just typed and let it roll.]

Forgive Me For I’m About To Bitch:

[Feel free to scroll to “The Good News” below.]

Christmas is one of those variable experiences where I almost always take a vacation but the reason for the vacation changes. Sometimes it’s because I will enjoy the break. Sometimes it’s because I need the break. This year was the latter. That’s not great but it is what it is.

I started out strong but the year was long; all years are long lately. I might have gotten a second wind but the rear half of December dished out hard weather. Regardless, I give myself some credit; I did pretty well. I mentally and spiritually held my own line against the creeping malaise of a society determined to fuck itself into the ground. Who can do more? Unfortunately, no man is an island. I find it exhausting living among the suicidal.

We’re all feeling the exhaustion. The society that was the richest, freest, and more or less most pleasant to live in compared to all of human history is already half trashed. It’s cracking up not because the Huns are charging over the hill with swords and horses, it’s bending under the weight of people who’d rather rule over ashes than make the next layer of civilization. Whether you blame the Boomers as a cause or think it’s just coincidence of timing, the thing that rises in the wake of their passing is inferior. The nation that landed on the moon 50 years ago struggles to keep the lights on in a generic snowstorm.

It’s not just us. It’s everyone. Europe does the same. (This week there were videos of French streets with mobs setting cars ablaze. Paris should not look like a riot Bangladesh.) Australia had vaccination concentration camps just a few years ago. New Zealand has outlawed smoking beyond a certain generation. Imagine a person who’s 50 years old but simply not “mature enough” to make the decision to light a cigar! Canada is… well it’s Canada. I never expected Canada to lose their shit… but they did. Canada used to be stable and dull and my favorite place. It’s run by a clown who is proud of his socks. He started this year willing to set his own nation on fire lest a couple hundred truckers keep a few freedoms. What happened to you guys? I miss Canada, the fishing was great.

I wonder if it’s the Gutenberg Press Volume 2? Mass hysteria oozes from propaganda laden devices and humans don’t seem to have an immune system ready to handle it. Elon releases data that confirms what most of us already knew. It is all lies. Pretty much everything on social media is in the service of one party. Always one party. Always more centralized, always more authoritarian, always more control.

Serve up enough lies and you break people. They foam at the mouth; practically in synchronization. In the past a sizeable portion would have been removed, even if by chance. Back in the recent past a person could miss TV News that evening and inadvertently go 24 hours without programming or indoctrination. Such people might instinctively think before acting. Now the current fad is all encompassing.

Anyone with a sense of history knows how this will go. People who know what’s coming have no impact. They say “hey, this is a bad idea” and it’s lost in the howls of people desperate to vax-up, or manipulate children, or rat on the neighbor for having incorrect opinions, or do whatever the next thing happens to be.

Virtually every group has lost its way. Groups of people ignore basic core purposes. Football teams fret over racism instead of touchdowns, churches mask up and forget about saving souls, anything bigger than a bowling league is in service to politics. Lemmings, even when they’ve gotten precisely what they want, suffer. They’re victims of their own choices and so are we.

The Kool-Aid drinkers erode the firmament; the stoic try to be the firmament.

This… this is the mood that made me take an extended Christmas vacation.

I watched a video of looters tearing apart a dollar store in a Buffalo snowstorm. Everything in a dollar store is cheap shit. You can walk into a dollar store with $100 and buy more than you can carry. Looting from a dollar store is like stealing your neighbor’s trash can.

So now you’ve got a shiny new… trash can?!? Why?

Envy is sin, stealing crap because of envy is not only a sin but also remarkably stupid.

Even the most woke douchebag in creation knows this won’t end well. The fools trained to burn Target and Walgreens in 2020 are moving down the food chain. A society that can’t maintain a fucking dollar store is pretty much on its way to mud huts. Maybe it’s worse than that… would mud huts be superior to the tents used by the homeless on the left coast?

All that’s left is to adapt; which I encourage you to do. You didn’t loot a store in a snowstorm. You did your best. Your life happened in a particular era, that’s not on you. Society encourages chaos to happen. Don’t deny that the chaos is happening but don’t put it on your shoulders either. Eventually the lights go out and a mob is wandering the streets looking to see if there’s cool shit to steal from a dollar store in the middle of snowdrifts. Some of us live very far away, but nobody is immune. Adapt and prepare, but don’t fret over what might have been.

Adapt isn’t all about beans and ammo. This is key, take a week off if you can. You might need it.

The Good News:

Even as I piss about society, I was trying to light a candle. That’s the good news.

I took hammer to anvil and beat a new Squirrels chapter from my overworked head. Humbly, I don’t think it was half bad. Shortly after that, I pulled up the drawbridge, declared it “vacation”, and went mostly offline.

The timing of my posts was intentional. What may seem like a tactical error was a choice. The posts went live the week before a big holiday, a time when I traditionally get far fewer “hits”. Indeed my hit count wasn’t particularly impressive.

In general, when you’ve labored hard on a series of posts you try to serve it up at an optimum time to get the maximum impact. I didn’t. I posted my small offering to the world in a time when I judged it most likely to brighten moods. This could go two ways; either pleasing people already happy and celebrating or perhaps (and more importantly) a free chuckle for the few who might find the season less than glittering.

Did it work? One never knows. The best you can do is try.

So there you have it. In a world of TicTok “influencers”, I ignored “hits” in pursuit of something indefinable.

Wise or dumb, I made a choice that reflected my goals and not that of the device on which you’re reading this post. That’s what it’s all about folks!

Incidentally, this doesn’t mean I’m a monk. I got a handful of kind donations during my Chapter posts and that was grand. Some tips were very generous! I wanted to happily howl at the moon when I got them. (I live in the country, if I want to howl then by God I’m in a place where it’s legally and socially acceptable to howl. And I do!) Several other tips were small but still deeply appreciated. Y’all made my day! Thanks to everyone!

As I turtled into seclusion, nature played a bigger role than usual. I got the Squirrels out just as a cold snap and serial blizzards laid siege to my rural homestead. I scrambled to keep furnaces fueled, firewood stacked, driveways drift-free, vehicles running, and myself thawed. It was like tacking a second entire life on top of one that is already busy.

None of this is unusual for late December. It was a hectic time but it is December. Occasional crunches during storms are the nature of rural life. I’m still alive and my pipes are thawed; who could ask for more?

Just days before the Christmas, another curveball came across the plate. The whole family had plans to travel. One by one, every detail fell apart. Eventually we all agreed, by mutual acceptance of external forces, that travel just wasn’t happening. Frankly, the collapsed plans were good fortune in disguise. The snow put us in a mood to stay put. By chance or plan, Curmudgeon Compound became a haven of relaxed happiness. Even better, some nearby and well loved guests were more than happy to show up and brighten spirits.

It was probably the best and least stressful Christmas I’ve had in years! Rather than a nightmare of cancelled flights and frustration we became a joyous little bunch of guests smiling at the pretty snowdrifts. How cool is that?

I didn’t do much (any) decorating. I kept the house standing and that was work enough! By Christmas eve I was toast. I’d spent all day struggling with my tractor. Sometimes it operates wonky in the coldest weather. At -20 it complained mightily when pressed into service.

Nor had I properly dressed for conditions. Usually the tractor’s cab will eventually warm up to tolerable. At -20 it stayed cold. The glass box was like the frozen foods in a grocery store. I worked the controls and shivered.

My labors were compounded by hauling wood that was frozen and drifted. I wound up sore and tired. But I’d done my duty. The driveway was open for guests and the woodstove was merrily active. Success!

Again, this isn’t unexpected and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Brutal winters keep bossy people far from my life. Also, when you’re having an argument with a tractor’s iced hose clamp you’re “in the moment”. Unlike the world at large where formerly adult human beings claim to fret over concepts like “birthing persons”, I had intelligent and logical interactions with the real world (a frozen tractor).

I’d rather argue with a tractor than endure the shrieking of a purple haired college professor. I got the tractor to run. The tractor did useful work. I couldn’t make a purple haired college professor useful to society even if I had six months and a crowbar.

Rural life is amazingly REAL. If you’re missing that in life, you know where to find it.

My next post will make a lot more sense. See ya then.