Adaptive Curmudgeon

Part of why I volunteered to be an election judge was to see for myself “how the sausage is made”. It is better to know than either assume or merely bitch.

I could sit down and write reams about what I did and did not see but I’m not feeling it. However, I did want to mention one thing. It relates to this:

“A nonprofit group alleges that in two precincts in Virginia, election machines reported counting more votes than actual ballots, an irregularity that could have decided two key congressional races.”

Every state is different (in fact elections are one of the rare times when States act like States and less like vassals of DC). But there are some commonalities. Let’s see if I can flesh out a few details:

Generally speaking and painting with a broad brush, one part of the election system determines if a ballot is to be issued, a second part issues the ballot, and a third records it. This is a good idea and I like it.

The first step is where a sane State (or really any sane organization trying to do any business transaction) would use ID. The ID should be matched to a good solid registered voter database. (Yeah, I know. Just bear with me as I discuss how it works in theory without getting into the weeds of Chicago’s dead voters.)

Suppose Bill Johnes registered to vote at 1 Maple Lane in Rationaltown, USA. It’s a good sign if a dude shows up at the polling place in Rationaltown, USA with ID that says Bill Johnes.

In theory, one of the election judges addresses Bill Johnes and asks “where do you live Bill?” Bill says “1 Maple Lane”. Notice the judge doesn’t say “do you still live at 1 Maple Lane?” It’s up to Bill to provide the information and not just agree to whatever the judge says. Plus of course, only a raging asshole would assume great swaths of our population are too stupid and lazy to obtain ID… but that’s a topic for another day.

So now Bill has established who he is and where he’s from and the ID matches the voter registration. This happens pretty much instantaneously with almost all of what I’ll call “normal, average, non-weirdo, sentient, voters”. (The spaz that doesn’t know their own name, or the planet where we live, or if they have pants on… is a different story. These losers add a lot to the workload but they’re not a big part of society overall. They’re just a fraction of the in-person on-the-day voters… or for that matter humans on earth.)

So the judge thinks “yeah, this is pretty solid” and agrees that a ballot should be issued to Bill. They also check Bill off the voter roll for that election. This keeps Bill from voting a second time. Bill! What were you thinking! It also keeps some other jackass from pretending to be Bill and using Bill’s name to make a fraudulent vote. If Bill’s purple haired freazoid sister in law tries to pretend she’s Bill, the poll judge will say “Bill has already voted, would you like to discuss it with my supervisor?” at which point the bitch will run into a wall of rules and regulations meant to stop her from misusing Bill’s legitimate vote. (You can see now how every single bullshit entry in a voter register is a dangerous thing. Every unused record is a place were a fraudulent vote can be parked!)

At least in my limited experience, that person doesn’t issue the ballot. In America we try hard to have voter privacy and also (at least in theory and in “the old days”) it’s a check on cheating (or mistakes!) to have two separate people isolating tasks. One for checking voters and the other for handling the ballots.

So Bill is handed off to the next step in the process. Someone who has not the slightest idea (or care) who Bill is, hands Bill a ballot. The judge at the next step does this because the first part of the process cleared him.

Assuming a State has paper ballots, that is to say it’s a sane State, Bill goes into a little booth to mark his choices. Then Bill goes to the next step. This is the third independent part of the process. The judge that issued the ballot has no clue who Bill is, only that he’s allowed to vote. The judge that checked Bill against voter rolls doesn’t get to play with ballots at all. Neither of them sees the ballot after Bill has thoughtfully (we hope) made his choices and approaches the nearest machine (or as I like to say “controversy generator”).

Bill, in total anonymity, stuffs his ballot into a scanner. The guy manning the scanner just makes sure the scanner received it properly. He doesn’t know about or mock or hassle Bill about his choices. Plus he hands out dumb little stickers.

In theory, the scanner reads the paper ballot, interprets the scan, and (one would hope) properly records the results. In theory, the scanner isn’t in communication with anyone. It’s supposedly not sending messages to the State capital, Russian bots, Bill Gates, or Space Aliens. It’s also keeping a paper tape recording of everything that happens. It also keeps every damn ballot in a locked box!

It’s supposed to be a dumb fuckin’ machine that does nothing but count. It should never ever have odd communication capacities or the ability to count in non-integers. (I’ll leave further discussion about that for a later time.)

Then Bill gets a sticker and goes home to work on his turnip farm. Well done Bill. I hope you didn’t vote for a dumbass, but if you did, we’ll count it just like we’re supposed to.

Here’s the important part; there are three things that can be counted and they are completely separate. One person (or group) counts how many people were matched up to the voter registration and thus were cleared for a ballot. Another person (or group) counts how many ballots were handed over to voters. A whole different person (or group) and the infamous “machine” count how many ballots were received. In my case, all the ballots in the locked box in the machine were hand counted too. I consider that to be part of the third data stream

Each of the three counts MUST match.

Multiple counts that crosscheck each other. This is one of the simplest and most rudimentary concepts in collecting data. It’s the sort of thing every statistics student learns as freshmen (are there still statistics students in colleges?). Every single accountant in creation (in any culture and from any nation) would also recognize the idea of crosschecks too. It’s not rocket science and it’s not a new idea. I’m pretty sure you could unearth a wheat merchant from a shipping dock in Spain from the year 1653 and they’d understand it too.

Also, it’s “put up or shut up” time. When I volunteered, I was told “nobody leaves until the count matches up”. If we differed by even one ballot. Even one! Everyone stayed right in that room and counted and re-counted until the issue was handled.

I was told that a mis-count was a huge PITA and everyone would be pissed off if it happens. Apparently it sometimes occurs and it would burn a lot of time on the end of a taxing 15 hour day. But the training was clear… tough shit! Nobody leaves until it’s figured out. You’re not done until you’re done. No excuses, no bullshit.

In my case, it went as smooth as butter. We wrapped it up in half an hour. Everything matched: number of people approved to have a ballot, number of ballots issued, and number of ballots counted (AND we hand counted the physical ballots in the machine’s lock box too). Not “sorta’ matched” but “every damn one accounted for”.

Half. An. Hour. Close doesn’t count. Must. Get. It. Right!

“In P-612 in the 7th district, 531 ballots were reported as having been scanned by the machines, even though workers counted just 504 ballots. In P-104, there were at least 10 more ballots counted by the machines than counted by hand.”

In that example, P-612 in the 7th district counted 105.3% of the issued ballots. This is utterly and completely impossible. Someone fucked up. It must be fixed. Until it is, the count is complete bullshit.

In this particular example, I’m not taking a position on “cheat” versus “fuck up”. Nor do I want to beat up people in Virginia who either cheated or fucked up. I don’t even care whether it’s a cheat or a fuck up. All I know is they had one job and they failed and it should be rectified.

There are times when your numbers have to match. This is a serious business (even in our declining corrupt society we still pretend votes are accurate) and it has to be that way or “the will of the people” doesn’t reside with our representatives. (Which, you’ll note is a thing that can fade with abuse!)

Regardless of whether Turd Sandwich or Giant Douche wins, the numbers MUST match up. In this article they didn’t. It’s not open for interpretation and it’s not a subtle issue. Something went terribly wrong. It should be made right.

I don’t care whether it’s incompetence, malfeasance, or a combination of the two. Fucked over by accident and fucked over by a cheat have virtually the same effect on our society. My concern is that a society that can’t count three data streams to get a perfect match is already halfway down the drain. I don’t want to live under a totalitarian madman or in a mud hut… yet here we are. As I said before, this ain’t rocket science and it’s not a new idea.

Also, I was there. I saw it done. It can be done. I did it.

Nobody leaves until it’s done perfectly. It’s not as hard as it sounds. It matters!

Update: Here’s an article from New Hampshire that covers a similar error. In this case, they got to the root of the matter, though perhaps slowly. I salute the New Hampshire Secretary of State for getting to the right destination… eventually.

In this case, the players performed honorably and fixed the mistake instead of circling the wagons and/or putting up a wall of obfuscation. Well done! That should be the baseline default behavior everywhere. There were no excuses, the error was not due to malice, which made it dirt simple to catch.

The point is there’s a time and place to be accurate. Particularly in a nation that has multiple hazy, drawn out, potentially biased elections in series, clean elections are deadly serious. America is jittery like a chihuahua on meth. We don’t need and cannot indefinitely endure rule by people who have not secured “consent of the governed”.

To restore order, election shenanigans have to be minimized, handled transparently, and corrected rather than hidden. Even in this dirt simple situation, the 11/8 mistake remained uncorrected until 11/14!

Based on what we saw in 2020, and what we’re seeing from 2022, and the howls of indignation in 2016, and the hanging chads of Brower County in 2000, the system is only good if it’s kept on a tight leash. In general, when there’s an error (particularly one that might have a malice in the mix and therefore covered tracks like carefully mixed ballots, disposal of things that ought be retained, or complete absence of chain of custody). The courts want nothing to do with it. They stampede to call it “moot” and I can see their reticence. Governments do what governments do. They’ll simply deny any errors until corruption is so rampant that even little old ladies on Facebook lose faith. Then the whole house of cards collapses.

It does nobody good to shout “it’s a conspiracy theory” while deplatforming complainers. It does everyone good to audit the living shit out of every precinct until they become as squeaky clean as the bore-fest I witnessed.

In the middle of my busy and eventful “vacation”, I disappeared for a day of election judging… which was even more exhausting than the hauling and lifting of butchering.

I may (or may not) give a full report on that later. Mostly it was the pure hell of good natured gossip (I don’t gossip and don’t care to hear it) and endless talk. I was working with nice, kind, sweet, generous, well meaning people but they just talked so much. Some folks start the day with their mouth running and keep it up until they go to bed. I’m used to long periods of silence. I just don’t have that much shit to say. I found it difficult to think.

BTW: the voters were near universally awesome. With very few exception, everyone who found time to go to a place to vote in person were just plain old normal people and not the flaky lunatics that one tends to notice when you’re out and about… we may see human train wrecks everywhere but there’s still a large group of sane citizens out there. Many people arrived, voted, and left having said less than a dozen words. I wished I could have gone with them. But I cooled my jets in a cheap plastic seat for 15 very tiringly verbal hours.

During a few brief moments in the afternoon I got to look at internet memes gloating about the red wave. That was fun. Later I heard third hand that the election (which I’d hoped would be fairly straightforward) was already going full retard. Ironically, I was too busy managing and counting ballots to bitch about the results. I was literally 100% focused on getting them to the people who needed them and had no time to get all judgy about their votes.

I also made a few quick checks on my blog to approve comments (love ya’ guys). I found out my previously posted quasi-metaphorical stories of hanging out at my campfire with the eternal were accepted in the spirit intended and not misinterpreted by some jackwit SJW looking for an excuse to spread their own misery. Nice! The comments, both public and private, really made my day! (A handful of “coffees” were nice too!)

Aside from the nice comments and the good people voting, I wound up just plain tired of human interaction. In case you’re wondering, I expected everything in my tiny little rural nowhere to be squeaky clean and it was. Everything I observed was completely up to snuff.

Also, we didn’t have to count many votes (small town y’all) but we did everything by the book and it took no time at all. We closed at 8:00 pm and had a hand counted “audit count” that matched the “machine count” done by 8:30. Half. An. Hour! There was none of this “still waiting on a truckload of ballots from Chicago” crap that infects population centers. We had “completely done, three independent counts of three data streams matches perfectly” in the bag with absolutely zero drama. Yeah it’s a small town but still… Suck it Arizona!

Stay tuned…

It was shortly after the pre-dawn gloom. A critter walked into view; a fat doe followed by a smaller doe. I hesitated. When would I process it? Wasn’t my freezer already full enough? I had shit on my mind. I eased off the trigger and waited.

My hunting partner wasn’t so clueless. He was 50 yards off to my left. BAM! Good shot! The fat doe bucked like a bronco and tore off into the forest.

My partner tried a follow up shot on the second doe. (We had ample tags.) I couldn’t tell if it was a hit. The doe trotted toward the forest. I decided to put it down just in case. Unfortunately, a tree branch blocked my view. Damn it! I watched through my scope as the doe trotted off. Based on its stride, it had zero fucks to give. The doe next to it had gone airborne and then hit the land speed record for the forest edge. This one was in no hurry to do anything. I took it as a good sign. It was probably mortally wounded.

A few minutes later, my partner showed up and we were both very happy. My concerns about election volunteering were completely forgotten. Now I had visions of steaks and full freezers.

He was ready to gather his critters and begin the arduous work of gutting and hauling. I wanted to wait a while. Better to let them die quietly than harry them lest they run. He agreed. As we were happily chatting and planning a future of steak dinners, another doe showed up.

We already had two. That’s plenty of work and plenty of meat for two guys. Wouldn’t a third overload our limited available time? Then again you get the chances you get. One must choose among what is and not what might be. As a meat hunter I rarely pass a fair shot. Three deer might work us to death but meat ain’t cheap and there’s a time to put up or shut up.

At my partner’s urging I took aim. The deer turned it’s ass toward me as it grazed. I could have taken the shot. I know my marksmanship ability (both the good and bad). I’m 100% sure I could have taken a shot that would have been fatal, even on that small-ish target. But what a mess it would be! I had visions of a big gooey deer-splosion. Imagine a bullet entering near the rectum, mushrooming out, and blasting through the organs like a cruise missile. It might ruin some meat and I’d have to gut it with a ladle. I noped out on that idea!

Patience grasshopper. I spent long agonizing minutes watching that ass through the scope. It clearly had no idea we were there. But every second was a chance for a shift of wind or a stray noise. You can’t wait forever!

It turned crossways and I felt pretty smug. But immediately it disappeared behind some brush. I was shit out of luck. Egad! I’d held that shot for such a very long time only to have no shot at all!

Regardless, I held still. It ain’t over until it’s over. Every nerve was vibrating but I was willing my heart and breathing to remain calm. So far it was working.

It stepped forward and through the brush that was blocking my view. I finally had a clear shot. Breathe out, squeeeeeeeeze.

Bam! It took off like a rocket. I was sure I’d hit but I had not visually verified the strike. (When you take a shot you almost always know if you hit or not. But it’s better if you see some blood through the scope; that way you really know for sure.) I followed through the scope it as it ran and racked the bolt. Before I could do a follow up it dove behind some more brush. (I suck at follow ups!)

I swung to where it would surely emerge. Nothing. It was like it stepped behind a blade of grass and teleported away.

Ten agonizing minutes later I could wait no more. My deer (or wombat!) had piled up not a foot past where I’d lost sight of it. It was small but well within my tag; it was just what I wanted. Small, young, critters are more tender than old ones and they’re easier to carry out. Also, I wasn’t sure I could fit a large animal in my freezer. (Two overly full freezers! What a delightful first world problem!)

The first doe had barely made it into the shadow of the trees. With a better view we’d have seen both drop, but we’d had to spend several minutes before we found out the truth.

My partner wasn’t sure he’d gotten the second doe. Replaying in my mind I thought about my initial impression that it’d been hit so hard that it was moving slow out of a mortal wound. I remembered that the doe had stopped to grab a mouthful of grass on the way to the forest. A severely wounded animal will sometimes walk slow but they’ll never stop for a snack! It had been missed and was probably utterly confused as to why the deer next to it had run off in such a hurry. Even so, I tracked the area carefully to make sure there wasn’t a hint that it had been affected. We upended every leaf, twig, and stem of grass over a goodly area; just in case. It was a clean miss. Whew!

Three deer would have been excess work but one split in half would have been minimal food. Once again, providence had dragged my idiot ass into the ideal solution. I’ve got to get better at trusting fate!

Then came the hard work. This is the internet so y’all are required by law and tradition to tell me that your grandpa could gut a deer in 5 minutes with a pocket knife but I’m not him. It’s hard work in my book. Then again the drag wasn’t too hard and soon I was enjoying the electric heated seats in my partner’s truck as we hightailed from hunting grounds to my place for butchering. (This hadn’t been part of the plan but thankfully my friend never bitched once about my crazy ass dedication to the election judge conundrum.) Even with the heated seats, my back ached the next day.

The rest was a flurry of work. Since I’d cocked up the schedule we were in a hurry. We violated every OSHA regulation in creation hanging the carcasses from a nearby tree.

Then came the next decision. Was I going to “level up”? Most of my hunting “career” I’ve hunted solo and then hauled my animal to a butcher. I’ve sheepishly paid a fortune to have someone else turn it into steaks and reasoned that one man alone only has so much labor to expend… which is just an excuse. My partner is made of sterner stuff than I (and has all sorts of cool butchering equipment too!). The initial plan had been to butcher them ourselves.

Tough schedule or not, I wanted to do the whole thing. Hunting turned to butchering. In the middle of this I slipped off to vote absentee for the first time in my life. I didn’t like that but I’d been backed into a corner.

(I’m opposed to just about anything other than “vote in person, with ID, at the specific place you live, on the single day of the election”. I didn’t always have that opinion but I’ve grown hardened with time. I’ve seen the corrosive effect of trying to squeeze every vote from fuck ups who can’t even make one appointment every other year. As far as I’m concerned, part of being a civilized human being who’s got his shit together is the ability to get to a place on a day with ID in hand. Everyone who’s done a job interview, gotten married, flown on a plane, attended a rock concert, or made a golf tee time has gotten to a place at a time. If you can’t make it to the polling place, you haven’t skin in the game. That may sound cruel but if you’re too busy then you’re too busy. Also if you choose not to make the appointment, it shows you placed a higher priority on whatever else you might care to do (like go hunting). Call me a Neanderthal if you wish but unless you’re on a ship at sea, in a coma, or deployed with the military you should either hump it to the polling place or not vote. But it is what it is and I voted absentee specifically because I’d be an election judge in town B instead of town A where I live.)

Butchering is a bear of a job. I’m at best modestly skilled at such things. I tried to learn everything I could by watching my more skilled compatriot. I hacked at my smaller animal (and wore myself out in the process) while he sliced and diced like a Japanese hibachi chef. Damn but what I’ve got a lot to learn!

Having sliced, diced, wrapped, labeled, and played Tetris to cram it all in the freezer. I was exhausted and smelly. Oh did I mention that we burgered the grindable bits? I can say with complete honesty that catching the output of a meat grinder in the little plastic bags feels exactly like when a baby takes a dump while you’re holding it. TMI? Too bad! I’m sharing the experience so y’all can enjoy the cycle of life in all it’s yucky glory.

Through this all, the dog absolutely lost it’s damn mind. The hanging carcasses and skin and garbage can full of “icky bits” drilled into the poor dog’s mind and fried it’s circuits. Our cute, fluffy, puppy has always been completely amenable… but when it smelled the discarded bits it just lost all semblance of rational thought (or what passes for it in an airhead dog). On periodic walks, the dog had to be physically dragged away from “the garage of enticement”!

More to come…

[Note: my hunting partner is an honorable fellow for whom I have considerable respect. He has no idea I write a blog and he deserves every bit of privacy I can offer. I don’t want him unfairly involved in my petty bullshit literary endeavors. I mention him in passing only to flesh out the story. Out of respect for his privacy, I’ve changed any details that might identify him (or our hunting spot). For example, his name in this story is Beetroot McTavish and I’ll say we were hunting deer even though we were hunting wombats. I’m pretty sure no human has ever been called Beetroot and wombats taste great with a side of fries.]

So, where was I? Oh yeah, the furnace was out of oil, my truck was on it’s spare, the TV was broke, and my HAM radio was not fully assembled. That’s not too bad. There are little sacrifices one makes when they’re in a recession. (You know what it is when you’re in a recession but DC changes the definition of “recession”? It’s a fucking recession because changing definitions doesn’t change reality. Suck it Orwell!)

I needed a break, I’d planned for this hunt and tilting at windmills over being an election judge had gone for naught. I figured that was a gold plated all-clear signal by the eternal. Time to hang out with nature!

I left Mrs. Curmudgeon with a warm fire in the woodstove and a full box of wood nearby. Then I tanked up on the most expensive diesel I’ve ever purchased and rolled out. A few days later I was hunkered under a pine when my cell phone vibrated. (I knew I should have left it in the truck!)

After months of rejection, I’d been called to be an election judge. I barked into the phone “you gotta’ be shitting me”, but it was true. My small irrelevant county has a million little old ladies that do the election thing and it sounded like they wouldn’t need me until someone died. Fortunately, nobody died but someone was on chemo. I had promised, to the darkness near my campfire, that I would come if called. So I agreed and hung up.

What now with the logistics? Election judges are occupied the entire voting day. This meant I had to somehow vote absentee at the last minute and definitely do it before the day in question. Then I had to get my ass to the place at the time.

Why? Because if honest people do nothing then honest people will have done nothing.

Even if it amounts to nothing… even if we all wind up in concentration camps after Fauchi has become a robot overlord that shouts “I am science” and nukes Baltimore… I’ll know I did the right thing. If you do nothing but sit at home bitching about things, you will have done nothing but bitch.

Unfortunately, I was busy with the entirely unrelated endeavor of hunting. How the hell was I going to accomplish both? I decided to hunt when I could hunt and bail when time was up. This event’s timing, like so many in 2022, was uncertain, rushed, and decided in realms I don’t’ control.

Stay tuned…

Don’t think I was overly wigged out about the TV. Like I said, it hasn’t been on since early spring when I last heated the house by woodstove. Another week or month or year without large format YouTube videos won’t kill me. But it did remind me how little true news I’m getting.

As a counterpoint to the TV, I’ve been upgrading my HAM setup. The internet is great but when (if?) it goes full totalitarian (or more totalitarian) then what? Will your fancy VPN do Jack-shit if your ISP shuts you down because you have an unpopular opinion or vote for the wrong party? Are you going to use TOR and Linux to find actual news and even then will it be true? If you’re using this marvelous communication technology to read Wikipedia and Twitter you’re ill informed anyway. HAM is one alternative in our decreasing toolbox. It’s not perfect but it’s (partly) analog and it reaches actual living breathing humans. (Unlike the human-ish bot people of Twitter.) Soon (in theory) I’ll be able to use radio waves to peek over the horizon and sniff about for minor but relevant information.

All modern news sources are filtered through media systems that are flat out propaganda machines. Most of the time it’s a complete lie. The rest of the time most of the potential truth is missing some key piece of context. Other times it just plain doesn’t mention things you’re not supposed to see. (Are there still riots in Iran? In France? Is Venezuela still the remarkable socialist success story it was when NPR was abuzz about it? (Have they finally run out of zoo animals to eat?) Heck, modern media can’t even report the weather without somehow tying storm damage to global warming or mean Republican politicians. When they say “this incoming storm is the worst thing to happen since chlamydia” does that mean it’s a legitimately bad storm or that someone wants disaster funding added to the next omnibus bill?

This is the case for me and it’s the case for you too. You might not like to think of it, but your knowledge about real events happening right now is surprisingly limited. It’s likely that an American with broadband, cable, and cell services in 2022 is less well informed than an American reading a three day old newspaper they found lying on the counter at Dennys in 1980. (Remember when you could read two newspapers from two different locations and compare TWO points of view? Seems quaint doesn’t it?)

Here’s one example among many, Russia, in it’s war with Ukraine, has supposedly been losing incredibly hard. They’ve been reported to be on the brink of total collapse (according to damn near everyone who draws a salary to say such things) since day one. How long before we acknowledge that at least the early reports were incorrect? If Russia has been inches from total defeat for three quarters of a year; how long can one be inches from a defeat without actually being defeated? Meanwhile, every talking head that says so has a pristine record of accountability. They assured us that Hillary was robbed in 2016 but to question 2020’s election is treason. They told us the vax would protect us from COVID. (They still try to say it.) They said that the two consecutive quarters of declining GDP is not a “recession” because it’s 2022 and the president is from one of two parties so the word “recession” has a new definition.

Given they all spout the exact same geopolitical evaluation, I can conclude from it… what exactly? That Russia is losing so hard that they’ll be a smoking crater by noon tomorrow? Or that two months hence they’ll still be reporting that Russia is still losing and still on the verge of implosion? I have no clear way of knowing the situation. (Note: I’m not inviting you to post your opinion on the event, only reflecting that the media has an incredibly bad track record for accurate reporting.)

Suppose you really want to know the true nature of things and you live in our modern hive mind clusterfuck of “narratives”. How can you check what you’ve heard against reality? Often we’re forced to parse bits of propaganda. Back in the cold war, there was a word for this: Kremlinology. People used to listen to what Soviet Russia announced, knowing full well it was a total lie. From the lies they’d try to piece together the truth. Reading the tea leaves of Soviet pronouncements was a genuine profession. Serious and otherwise sane people worked diligently using that method in an attempt to discern the truth.

Yet, when the USSR caved like a house of cards, the US was taken completely by surprise. Parsing propaganda to discern the underlying truth had been a complete failure. Why were doing it now… and in our own nation, is beyond me.

So anyway improved HAM radio capacity is coming into being and I picture it being useful at least within the US. Suppose the press announces that everyone in Baltimore has died of COVID and I have no way of knowing if that really happened. Theoretically I can use the radio. I’ll either bounce across several repeaters in the VHF (2 meter) band or use something more technical to get a message through directly to the area. “This is <Callsign> from Curmudgeon Compound calling Baltimore. Are you guys all dead?” “Baltimore responding, nope we’re fine. CNN said everyone north of the 45th parallel froze to death because of global warming. Are you frozen solid?” “Nope, when we get cold we go ice fishing. We’re fine. Have a nice day Baltimore.”

See? When all is lies, a way to go straight to the source may save your ass. I wish I’d planned ahead to detect areas that were the most “masky” during the Nuremberg nightmare of COVID.

Alas, my new (NOS) HAM radio is still in its box. It’s sitting on a couple of expensive cables. It’s adjacent to a boxed up antenna that annoyed my UPS driver and which I haven’t yet mounted. So, the election would have to happen without me having the slightest idea what’s truly going on. I neither could watch the song and dance on TV, nor could I radio for on the ground reference. I’m in the dark. (How is that different from what everyone else is experiencing?)

Consider this, I’m writing this post week after the event and Arizona is going through a full week of discovering new votes that lean a certain way. (They always lean a certain way.) I’d dearly love to radio Arizona. “This is <Callsign> calling Arizona.” “Arizona here. Go ahead <Callsign>.” “I have just one question. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?” “Arizona here, we’re as mystified as you. Maybe the ability to count was lost when we went to common core?” “Are you guys OK? Blink once for ‘yes’ and twice for ‘rescue me’.” “We’re fine, by the way, didn’t you freeze to death due to global warming?” Etc…

So yeah, I was more off grid than even my average. For “normie” events like elections I was about to go under a rock.

Despite tinkering with the radio I was oddly OK being in the dark. I felt drawn to the idea of isolation. After my camping trip I was noticeably relaxed. Whatever happens will be what happens. I care. And I do what I can. But it’s not my job to carry a collapsing society, kicking and screaming, into each new day.

I shrugged my shoulders, packed my shit, and went off to slay Bambi.

More in part 3.

[Warning: this story touches on spirituality, elections, and hunting. Third rail topics all. If you’re the sort that freaks out over such things, run.

Actually, if you’re the sort that reads “trigger warnings” why are you even here? In fact, I’ve changed my mind about the first paragraph; if you’re here, you’re an adult and I don’t need to tell you to relax and have a good time. If you’re a dipshit, a “trigger” warning won’t help anyway. All the false and pretend “trigger” shit is yet another layer of self-censorship foisted upon us by people who’ll keep “tweaking” society until we all have Munchausen by proxy. I’ll just keep wordsmithing as well as my pointy little head can manage and post as if I still lived in a society of adults.]

I had second thoughts after I wrote my last story. It wasn’t helped by the reaction of an acquaintance with closer connection to the zeitgeist than me. For example, he’s a normal human being and therefore would never use the word zeitgeist.

“You did what?!?”

“It was a metaphor.”

“Jesus shows up at a campsite. He’s hammering cancer sticks. Then you ride a motorcycle in a forest and it’s church? Are you mad?”

“It was a form of communication. People need a story of inner peace, just as I needed to live it.”

“People need soma* shoved up their ass. There’s an election in a few days and you just know it’s going to be a shitshow. They’ll be all riled up. Put your dumb little story on the internet and you will be savaged by the woke mob!”

“Meh, I’m not popular enough to be savaged. Plus, it’s the truth, metaphorically speaking.”

“Nobody tells the truth. Even losers like you aren’t unpopular enough to tell the truth!”

“I’ll risk it.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“It’s been said.”

Pause…

“So, aside from outing yourself as an idiot, what are your plans for the week?”

“I’m going to vote and then go off line and hide from everyone. I want to spend some quality time with my pressure canner.”

“Off line!?! During the election! Are you mad?”

[*Note: The universe has gotten so fake and gay that when I Googled “soma” it didn’t come up with Huxley’s Brave New World. (Technically, I have a non-Google search engine but that’s not the point.) The point is that there are people who think “soma” refers to “a drink having intoxicating properties from ancient India”. The poor bastards lacking context are clueless and our reference materials won’t help! Ironically, that’s part of what Huxley was talking about!]

Anyway, I wrote a story that ranged from shitting in a bucket to encounters with the eternal, timed it for release with the auto scheduler, and then ran like I’d lit a fuse. I had some concerns but I’d already planned outdoor time and the cure for internet concerns is the real world! However, maybe I’d take Election Day to sit on my ass like a “normie” and watch the results on TV. Who knows, things might happen in a reasonable manner? (Quit laughing! Everything turned to shit, but it didn’t have to be that way.)

During my planned off-line “vacation” I was very busy with real world issues. My truck is still on the spare and my furnace ran out of fuel. The latter became non-trivial as the weather turned chilly. You might think I’d just call 1-800-frozenballs or fill out a form at furnacefuelatBidenrates.com but that’s not the way of things. Fuel delivery never worked well in my rural area. Even before society crawled up it’s own ass it was frustrating. For decades I’ve made calls to fuel delivery people and for decades they’ve arrived late, refused to go down my driveway, showed up at inconvenient times… or (most commonly) just ignored me. This time, they promised to call back, didn’t, and never showed at all.

That’s OK. The thing about declining society is that it’s (in some ways) predictable. Simply assume a world of incompetent dumbassery and plan for that. This is why I own a tank with which I can manually retrieve my own furnace fuel.

It’s a bitch to mount it in my truck so I hadn’t used it for several years. Then some components broke. That’s my own fault. I got weak during a time of plenty and stopped using the tank.

The Orange Menace’s brief window of thriving economy was a time when fuel delivery was cheap and reasonably efficient. Sandwiched between Obama’s non-existent but perpetually reported “green shoots recovery” and the death spiral of the Bidenverse it was a time when I ordered cheap fuel long in advance and was never in a rush. That was then, this is now. I’m in a strange dying parallel world where I’ll bleed hard to fill a 250 gallon furnace tank. (I found a receipt for about $450 to fill the tank just a couple years ago. It’ll be TRIPLE that now! Unless I’m almost maniacally carefully about it, I’ll burn more than one tank per year. Drop well over a grand and a few months later do it again!?! As Obama said in 2009, elections have consequences.)

Like one does in a tough economy, I played at the edges. I couldn’t swing a refill this spring. I ran real low hoping for cheaper prices during the summer. (Furnace fuel usually drops in price a little during the summer but not this time. Seasonal cycles don’t apply when politicians are fucking the supply chain like a cheap hooker.)

Anyway, I made a dozen calls, got nowhere, was told to expect a call back (which never happened) and ran out of fuel on the very day it started snowing. Poetic no? Now I’m going to have to bleed the lines before the furnace will start, but that’s a second order hassle because the tank is still empty.

So I said “fuck it” and lit the woodstove. Sadly, my wood supply reflects another moment of weakness. For many years I cut and stacked all the wood I’d need for the long winter. It’s an absolutely herculean task. During the rule of Cheeto Jesus, which still has people quaking in their boots for some reason, fuel was dirt cheap. I went from stacking 120% of my needs to about 85% of my needs. That 15% of “give” made a big difference in my life. It’s just plain easier living in a time of sound governance and thriving economics.

Before you mock me and my inadequate wood supply, remember that a man who supplies 85% of his heating needs in the cold north, entirely with his own efforts, is still doing a pretty manly task. Nobody gets to laugh unless they’ve done more; and if you have done the deed you already know all about your personal your awesomeness. I briefly enjoyed the less intensive workout and even now I figure I’m more self reliant than 90% (or is it 99%) of the populace.

Anyway, I dug into my inadequate woodpile and lit the fire. This is when I made another discovery. The TV was dead.

I don’t watch much TV; as noted by the fact that the TV hasn’t been on for months. I hadn’t realized it but I’d fallen into the habit of sitting in my chair, toasty warm and sipping whiskey, while I watch YouTube. Nothing goes with a warm fire like a video of some dude freezing their ass off. All hail Lars from Survival Russia! A shout out to Emporium Outdoors. Well done Lonnie. Etc…

Also, I’d decided to watch the first post-2020 election in real-time. Would it be a return to reasonably ordered transfer of power? Would it be another shitshow with weeks of half assed excuses and strategic truckloads of mystery ballots? (As an aside, I’ve often thought of that night in 2020 as a step into the looking glass. I went to bed in what appeared to be a reasonably orderly world with a more or less routine election. I woke up on the first steps in the path to the Bidenverse. The disenchantment of strange statistical anomalies stings more because I, for a brief moment at least, stayed in a world where things in politics seemed to follow my experiences in real life. Subsequently, I got to feel that naïve belief ripped directly out of my body and I was forcibly plunged into the clown world we inhabit now. Which is to say, it’s one thing to read a newspaper about Chicago’s permanently corrupt elections and it’s another to watch them spring up everywhere on animated maps.)

With the TV dead, my main connection to real-time “moron level news” was severed. This seemed ominous. It was at that moment I started thinking “this is definitely going to suck”. Predicting that the election immediately after 2020 would go full retard isn’t a difficult guess, many people were more cynical than I. Yet, for some reason I felt pretty optimistic right until the dead TV seemed to bring forth sorrow in my mind.

More to come…