“It’s a repeating gitbox made in 1870, used in the American West. Out there, guitars like this didn’t enforce the law, they were the law. I didn’t write that, it was on some asshole’s website. I wish I’d written it. It’s a good line.”
Could it be that we’re in some bizarro world where we are forced to live through the most absurd comic satire possible? The whole legal issue was hashed out in cartoon form in 2004! There’s more below: Continue reading
Truth is stranger than fiction. Sometimes the truth is so batshit crazy that folks have trouble believing it. I’ll occasionally encounter something that is utterly verifiably true but it’s so counter to logic and reason that I subconsciously erect a brick wall of disbelief. This is unwise. The truth should be known, recorded, and accepted as such. This is how we adapt and learn.
Therefore I’m starting a list of seemingly unbelievable things that have actually happened…just so I can clear the air.
Let’s start with something that happened on August 25th, 2011.
Maggies Farm mentioned the history of the chainsaw.
So beautiful! Just thinking about chainsaws brings a tear to my eye. The two tools I value the most are my chainsaw and my tractor (and my *&^%$ tractor is dead). (Honorable mention to the woodsplitter. Theoretically you can live without a woodsplitter; but is that really living?)
At any rate a saw is essential for anyone who lives in any environment that grows any tree taller than a lamppost. (Which means just about everywhere but the Sahara and Manhattan.)
If you want to homestead you need a chainsaw more than you need anything else…including your trusty dog, your beloved truck, and even your banjo. Yes…they’re that important.
Here are some freshly invented Curmudgeonly facts about a chainsaw:
Here’s to the noble, dangerous, handy thing we call chainsaws… Huzzah!
Update: My good friend Dr. Mingo responds to #2: “I bought a chainsaw when I lived in a townhouse and didn’t need one; just because they’re so fucking cool!” He also sums up #8 perfectly “chainsaws can be both nimble powerhouse and obnoxious death machine; like a gun they’ll work no matter which way you point them”.
But the truck got hosed!
Random Acts Of Patriotism has an amusing post that fits in nicely with my subconsciously declared “chainsaw week”. Go there and enjoy. Money quote:
“Y’all are goin’ on You Tube.”
P.S. No…it’s not me. If I did something that dumb I’d immediately destroy the evidence. Duh!
I just came home with a load of free wood! It’s a win of the redneck lottery!
There’s more but I couldn’t haul it all. The trailer’s axles couldn’t handle much more weight and I’m going easy on the tow rig’s pathetic brakes. It’ll take several trips to get it all. That’s ok. Slow and steady wins the race!
Oak firewood for winter. Exxon-Mobil can kiss my ass!
Some of you might be complaining that the wood isn’t truly free. I had to purchase gasoline. And there’s wear and tear on the saw. Plus my not insignificant contribution in labor. Good points all…but lighten up! A hefty workout and a gallon of gas is nothing compared to the check I’d have to cut for home heating fuel.
I’m gonna’ stack this stuff and jump on it like Scrooge McDuck.
Life is good!
Homesteading is a surprisingly complex endeavor. You need an incredible amount of stuff to do the simplest tasks. There’s a lot to go wrong and always another delay or missing detail. But sometimes you’ve got it together and things get done. It’s important to keep those victories in your heart and enjoy their simple rewards.
Several years ago a windstorm knocked a huge spruce across my driveway. The obvious solution was to grab the chainsaw and clean up the mess. Alas, I didn’t own a chainsaw. (Shocking!) Of course, paying to have the tree removed was totally unacceptable! (If you’re asking why…you need to get out of the city more often.)
We spent weeks driving on the lawn to get around the mess. It took that long to save up for the saw. When the chainsaw fairy failed to come (sometimes wishes don’t come true) I ponied up our saved cash and bought a good new saw. The expense nearly killed me but it was an investment. It’s better to buy good equipment that’ll last a long time. (Also I’d wanted a new chainsaw for decades and I finally had one…sometimes wishes come true.)
The delay annoyed me. Many weeks passed before the driveway was opened. Longer before I cleared the branches and stump from the lawn. I considered it a failure.
A year later a couple Aspen trees fell in my lawn. This time I was better prepared. My saw was gassed, sharp, and ready. My shiny new wood splitter was ready for some work. The weather was clear. My schedule was miraculously free by the weekend. The trees fell on a Monday night. By the following Monday they were cut, split, and stacked. The lawn was also cleared, raked clean, and freshly mowed. (Unlike this year when the mower is dead.) The trees were heating my house by Christmas. I consider that a success.
From lemons…lemonade. Sometimes it works!
Since my thesis is that the shit has already hit the fan; what more can I say? That these are interesting times? How is that reassuring? It’s not. Yet I’m delighted (if nervous) that the unreality of past years has given way to cold hard fact. I never wanted false reassurances. False reassurances are bullshit. I don’t traffic in bullshit.
Things might get worse. Things might get ugly. Things might get weird. That has always been true. That large groups of people are suddenly pondering their own decisions and fortunes doesn’t mean it was any less true in years past. It just means they’re waking up from a very expensive and demeaning slumber.
It’s easy to wonder if America is done for. The Egyptian, Roman, and British empires all dominated their version of the known world. Egypt is in revolution, London had riots last week, and the Vatican can’t even manufacture a hatchback.
But these aren’t yet the worst of times. Every generation has it’s own existential threats. Folks who grew up in the depression were still hoarding scraps of yarn and old buttons in the era of disco. Intervening generations had to deal with Nazis and Imperial Japan. I grew up fully aware that the mighty Russian bear had ICBMs aimed at the baseball card collection on my dresser. As I child I saw gas lines and wondered if there would still be cars when I was old enough to have a license. Putin hasn’t re-enacted Red Dawn, I sold the baseball cards on e-bay, and my truck is bigger, faster, and stronger than the one my dad owned. The world is as wondrous as it is unpredictable. Uncertainty about the future isn’t the whole story.
America has an ace in the hole called “gumption”. We do the impossible with impressive regularity! America is the land where poor people are fat. Where you can have just about anything you can afford. Where you can do whatever seems like a good idea…regardless of what the neighbors (or Europe) thinks. We had Rosie the Riveter in 1945 and we’re competing with societies that still keep their women in glad bags. Regardless of Obamacare, when a billionaire or foreign president gets mortally ill they hustle for the Mayo clinic. Our kids run lemonade stands because they want to. We invented monster trucks, microwaves, the blues, pop-rocks, and cowboys. American gun nuts bitch because cannons and machine guns are expensive. American motorheads build muscle cars that’ll peel the paint off a Chevy Volt. Here it’s legal and common to tell your boss to stuff it and seek a better job.
Americans are adaptable. They’ll skip town if they feel like it. They can move to the exciting city. They can hunker down in the boonies. If they can afford it they might do both. Americans leave states that piss them off and flock to ones with better economic conditions (ask California and Texas who’s gaining and who’s losing). We’re the nation where rednecks who cling to their guns and religion vote and do it while wearing greasy overalls. We think “spread the wealth” is fighting words. Despite efforts to start friction between classes a lot of us don’t give two shits who’s riding in a corporate jet so long as we’re not footing the bill. Americans grow, learn, die, get married, have kids, make good decisions, party, laugh, move, make bad decisions, change, adapt, and generally keep on doing whatever the hell we want expressly without government approval.
The future, as shocking as this sounds, is bright!
Sometime you have a challenge before you. A big one. Maybe you won’t surmount it.
You dither. Hold back. Is there a way out?
Then, however it may happen, you’ve crossed the Rubicon. There’s no going back. You’re going to make it or you’ll fail. You’re no longer a passive observer. You’re in the shit for real.
That feeling is better than denial. It’s constructive. It’s positive. You cannot commit to success until you dispense with false illusions. Everything has changed. It’s hard to say when. Maybe it was a done deal before my blog was started. Maybe not. It’s hard to know the exact moment when you’ve gone past the point of no return. But it’s in the rearview mirror and receding.
Unreality is ebbing. Ossified thinkers can no longer hold the tide back. Willful denial has been discarded and cleaning house is the order of the day. Things are changing and they’ll continue to change with or without political leadership. They’ll change if you adapt nimbly. They’ll change if you stand in the middle of the road weeping. After the shit has hit the fan, there is no going back.
Washington is barely capable of propping up it’s own weight. But America is getting feisty. Americans once again care who has a job. Who pays the bills. And, more darkly, who doesn’t and why not.
Don’t believe me? Think America can return to sleeping at the wheel? Not a chance. Here are a few examples of unreality blown away by values rooted in the terra firma.
Examples from our craptacular two party system:
Examples from Washington’s pet called the press:
Examples of politicians applying the brakes on spending:
Examples of things that looked like paranoia which are looking prescient:
Examples involving other nations:
Have I made my point? Have I made the case that the shit has hit the fan, that Elvis has left the building, that denial is obsolete? I hope so. Denial was unbecoming of our great nation. I’m glad it’s over.
What would bring reality back into focus? How? When would it happen?
I had a theory. My theory was that the minute Baby Boomers began to retire they would withdraw their 401(k) from the stock market en masse. When they all sold regardless of the underlying asset’s value it would irrationally distort prices too low. Just as when everyone buying (in the guise of a 401(k)) regardless of the underlying asset’s value had cranked the DOW out of whack. Meanwhile, the government would be forced to irrationally devalue the dollar to paper over their Ponzi nature of Social Security. Both would certainly be stampedes to avoid. But when? Baby Boomers are a herd, not a single person. Some would retire first with others to follow. When would demographics finally pull the trigger?
Even if they didn’t light the fuse, Bush and Obama put the spark in the vicinity. When the economy lurched (as all economies do) I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe a “correction” would bring us closer to the realm of realistic values? How naïve I was! Rather than man up and ride out the storm, two presidents collectively shoved 1.8 trillion in euphemistically named bullshit up our asses. Destroying old Volvos in efforts inexplicably related to bad mortgages is a bad idea. In fact, destroying anything to get nothing is a bad decision.
Furthermore, money is just little slips of green paper. You can use them to buy Hondas and heroin only because people have trust in an underlying system. After flushing 1.8 trillion bucks debts reached levels never before seen in the course of humanity. There’s no way to sugar coat the truth; 1.8 trillion is a big enough number to destroy a currency. (I’m not saying we’re irretrievably doomed, only that the Government foolishly assembled the elements of a weapon they should have left alone. Dinking around with interest rates it’s playing with fire but they’ve been playing with the gateway to hell.)
Aside from the scale, this could have been just another in a long line of unwise but otherwise mundane bad decisions. After all, fiscally stupid moves permeate our world. But, and this surprises me as much as anyone, the veil was lifted. Reality didn’t come as Baby Boomers retired. It came just a little bit earlier.
For no good reason, people had come to believe that houses, unlike any other asset on planet earth, were magic. Assets that could gain but never lose value. All at once, people realized that it was untrue. Of course it was untrue. I have no idea how people could have conceived otherwise. But once everyone simultaneously got a whiff of their own shit; the jig was up.
From that moment until now, America (and indeed the world) has lurched from one economic crisis to the next. I no longer ask when everyone will simultaneously realize that bullshit is not truth. I no longer ponder “when will the shit hit the fan”. Shockingly, the answer is…now!
About a year ago I started blogging. It was a post titled “When something can’t go on forever… it won’t“. It wasn’t Shakespeare but it it was something I wanted to say. I gave a humorous reason (out of many possible stories) of how I knew shit was about to go down:
When the guy who brings your pizza is driving a brand new Escalade…something is terribly wrong. That was all you needed to know about the economy in early 2005.
I wrote it not because I care about the pizza delivery guy. I wrote it because America was awash with unreality. It wasn’t new. It wasn’t a secret. Everybody and their dog knew it. Yet everyone seemed to be “playing along”. Why?
Obvious signals were everywhere. Yet few acted rationally in acceptance of that knowledge. I did. It was lonely.
So I began a blog. Among other things I wanted to say “I see things differently. I have peacefully chosen to plan accordingly. If, for whatever reason, you also reach conclusions which differ from the crowd, you’re not alone.”
I’d staked my flag on earth amid a society where an unearthly sense of denial was (and had been for some time) ubiquitous. Trying to avoid political gamesmanship (with only partial success) I focused on economics. Anyone with a understanding of economics could see the writing on the wall. Unsustainable is not a patented trademark phrase of the green movement. It can and does apply to economic systems as well. My favorite complaints were McMansions perched on subprime loans, stratospheric stock prices without underlying value, and a deliberate refusal to deal with the Ponzi nature of entitlements.
I’m not trying to air a list of grievances. Those were just a few examples to set the mood. You’ll have a list of your own concerns. They might be entirely different from mine. Yet we might both agree that it took more and more effort to pretend things were progressing wisely. The more a sense of unreality abounded, the more self-defeating it became to entertain it.
Reality always wins. Wishful thinking is bullshit. I refused to indulge in delusion. Sometimes that stubbornness was perceived as if it were heresy. I needed an outlet; hence my little blog.
