Freedom

Posted on August 20, 2010 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

This chicken is tougher than you.

Parts of modern life are like prison; especially offices. Part of desk work is accepting that a portion of my life involves sitting in a small fabric covered box looking at a glowing screen. Some people reading this also work in offices. Together we merely change the invisible information behind the glowing screen. Then we retire or die. I’m not entirely pleased with this development. I’d much rather be fighting dragons.

This isn’t to say that civilization is a total loss. I like things the modern world provides; food, heat, beer, motorcycles, porn, little packets of beef jerky, medicine that lets me live past 35, coffee, two ply toilet paper. It’s a good bargain to suck it up and “do time” in the office to pay the damn rent.

Would any of us be brave enough to simply live “in the now” like an animal? The family dog has the IQ of tapwater and licks his own ass but he has a pretty relaxing day compared to overworked schmucks like us paying the mortgage. But that’s just borrowed time. The dog stays contented because you took over the job of feeding him. The dog isn’t free. The dog is on welfare. A wolf gets off his ass and kills a moose. If a wolf is lounging on the ground the wolf damn well earned it. That’s freedom, bought and paid for!

Which brings me to our homestead flock of chickens. Commercially raised chickens live short appalling lives locked in lunchbox sized pens in a loud smelly fluorescent lit Orwellian dystopia. It’s a lot like working in sales. For most chickens, as it is for many office dwellers, life is a shit sandwich. But not our flock! We have genuine, no bullshit, free range, chickens. Each morning I fling open the door and the chickens are free to roam. They charge out looking for tasty things to eat; clover, dandelion, grasshoppers, worms, whatever… No fences. They range as far and wide as their chickeny hearts’ desire. They love it. Compared to penned chickens, ours have a spring in their step. They run around like children and it’s obvious that they’re enjoying themselves. People who visit invariably lean down to pet one of them; usually because they hassle any passing human seeking treats. An afternoon frolicking on green clover under shady oaks sounds pretty nice doesn’t it?

But freedom has it’s price. Hawks and raccoons (and for all I know Grizzly bears) occasionally make off with an unfortunate chicken. Life is like that. If you’re going to venture in the big exciting world you’d better keep an eye open. Luckily, few predators attack in the day.

Our chickens come home to roost at night. Nighttime brings far more dangers. Aggressive predators; coyotes, foxes, tax assessors, and lawyers come out of the woodwork. Chickens know this and have the good sense to get inside before sunset. Thus, proving that a chicken has an understanding of curfews and self-responsibility that exceeds a teenager.

At night the door is locked to keep threats out and they’re provided with all the food and water they want. They could get all their food outdoors but there’s always plenty inside. It’s a good deal for the chickens but they’re not paying their own way. They’re free in the day but dependent at night.

One chicken, for reasons known only to itself, decided to go feral. It utterly refused to go inside. At first we tried to shoo it toward the open door. Soon it was apparent that the bird knew darned well what it was doing and it wasn’t about to let some lumbering human oaf force it into the barn. I take a libertarian view of such things. If it’s not in the barn, it’s not eating the feed I paid for. Thus it’s no longer my problem. Let Darwin sort it out. Something will either eat it or scare the hell out of it. Surely it will get with the program if it lives through the night.

To my surprise the hen did just fine and still refuses to go inside. She’s been outside 24/7 for weeks. She is always there to greet the other chickens when I let them out at dawn. Chickens are social creatures and apparently like each others company. (I’ve been told humans are the same but I disagree and submit my loathing of my fellow man as an example.) The flock emerging from the door and the brave loner hang out together all day. At sunset the rebel hen ditches her lesser wimpy dependent companions and makes her own roost in the forest.

She is free. Totally absolutely free. She doesn’t owe anybody anything. She doesn’t take my food or my protection even though it’s available. She doesn’t need it, doesn’t want it, and clearly intends to go without it as long as she can. How brave is that? We’re not talking about a lion here. A hen in the forest is not the biggest fish in the pond. By now she’s seen and outwitted countless marauders with nothing but cunning and luck. She seems a bit leaner and quicker afoot than the rest. She should write a book.

She’s tougher than all the rest of us. Could you, a fat well fed human, spend every night in the forest for a month? Would you stand out in the cold dark night and willingly let that barn door close? What if you were the size of a hen and there were coyotes and owls? Would you turn down free food and housing just because you’re that tough? Indeed, the bird in question is making the rest of us look bad.

I’m rooting for her. We nickname our birds and she used to be “Rebel Hen”. Since she’s made it this long I’ve upgraded her name to “Freedom”. She might be dead tomorrow but she’s aware of that and apparently can handle it on her own terms. Way to go Freedom!

Posted in Libertarian Outpost | Leave a comment

The Dirt Gnomes Visited!

Posted on August 19, 2010 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

The Dirt Gnomes bring road gravel to all the children who've been good.

Curmudgeon Compound is on a dirt road.  This is not by accident.  The dirt road dissuades yuppies, congressmen, evangelists, lawyers, bankers, and other assorted hoodlums from settling here.  I remember carefully explaining to our real estate agent that I wanted a place on a dirt road lest “some dickhead builds a WalMart across the street which will force me get all bullety and indignant”.  My agent was a patient woman who nodded politely and asked if she could talk to my wife.  (Real estate agents know full well that men left to their own devices would happily live in a two stall garage with a chain link perimeter for landscaping.  They consult wives for everything.  My wife backed me up.  Yours didn’t and that’s why you live on a cul-de-sac with homeowner’s association fees and the crazy spinster cat lady across the street who measures your lawn with a ruler and calls the cops if it’s 1/8th inch too tall.)

Alas all good comes with bad.  Dirt roads erode like a politician’s morals.  Every few months washboards develop.  Periodic maintenance fixes it.  In my case a 90 year old man driving a 60 year old road grader arrives according a schedule unknown to logic.  This makes everything perfect.  Sometimes they’ll dump a load or two of gravel.  No matter how bad the ruts get (even if I need a Lewis and Clark style expedition to get to the store) I never complain for fear that the county will put in a six lane superhighway with Obamabucks, quadruple my taxes, and I’ll wind up good and truly Californicated.

Yesterday, because pixie dust was in the air and the moon was in the seventh house, trucks bearing blessed dirt arrived and started dumping it on the road.  Cool.  This morning a grader was smoothing it.

For a moment I was panicked.  Could it be the beginning of a Pavement Demon onslaught?  No sign of the dreaded pavement equipment.  I think all is well.  Looks like a simple visit from the Dirt Gnomes.  Oh Happy Day!

Posted in Libertarian Outpost | Leave a comment

Double Dip Recession

Posted on August 18, 2010 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

A brief period of recovery in the midst of a single continuing calamity is not a double dip. Also that burger looks nasty!

Recently I’ve heard journalists and other disreputable fools refer to 2010 as an example of a “double dip recession”. This is spoken as if it were actually an intelligent statement.

Of course “double dip recession” is verbiage borne of wishful thinking and a desire to make simple ugly truths not be so simple or ugly. Me? I’m already both simple and ugly so I don’t buy into this semantic horseshit. Here’s a story that explains the meaning of “double dip recession”.

I know this will shock the very few people who read this blog but occasionally I partake of the dreaded demon liquor. (Goodness gracious will I get kicked out of choir practice now that the secret is out?) But yes I definitely do imbibe. Some years ago I was imbibing the shit out of a bottle of vodka while careening around the forest with a half dozen like minded maniacs. Somehow the bottle became magically mostly empty. Over a few dim moments of addled thinking it dawned on my single functioning synapse that everyone around me was drinking beer. What had I done? This is called an “economic bubble”.

I was about to have one hell of a morning after. I wisely capped the bottle and tottered off to avoid causing more damage to my liver. It’s one thing to mean to do something smart and it’s another thing to be falling down stinking drunk so all I managed was to bounce off a tree and collapse head first into a snowdrift. This is called “reality”. You can deny reality for a short time or deny it for a long time but sooner or later all houses of cards collapse. My time had drawn nigh.

Time stopped. Somehow, apparently before I died of hypothermia because I’m here to tell the story, I got myself indoors. Good for me because I’d be dead by dawn otherwise. This is called “almost but not quite destroying the entire system”.

Time stopped again. It was dark. Maybe. At any rate I was still very drunk but already sporting a stupendous hangover. A real doozy. The kind of Old Testament hangover that caused me to doubt the reason and purpose of all the suffering of all humanity…and specifically why all the misery on earth was happening to me all at once. If I’d had even a single thought it would have been to wonder why the side of the toilet feels like the only beacon of salvation in a life devoid of hope. But alas all I did was endure misery. This is a “recession”.

Eventually I recovered enough to take an aspirin and sprawl on the carpet trying to hold the damned floor still. I’d also managed to get some water into the shattered husk of my body. Perhaps that would keep me hydrated and stop my brain from bashing out through my ear and running away from all the pain? After an unknowable amount of time things began to feel better. I was still drunk and still hungover. But I thought there was maybe just maybe a chance I wouldn’t die (or beg to) before I rode this thing out. In 2009 they called this “green shoots” and “hints of prosperity” or “anything positive we can imagine or make up to say now that the election is over”. (A classic “journalist” angle throughout ’09 was to gleefully report that while things were getting worse they were getting worse more slowly. This is why I think it’s funny that print newspapers are screwed. They stopped even pretending to report reality and just became cheerleaders without tits. As we all know, and the New York Times has discovered, cheerleaders without tits are far too annoying to tolerate. Especially when you can find all the tits you want for free on the internet.)

So there I was; feeling bad but maybe not so terribly bad as before. Was the recession over? Ask yourself this; had my long suffering liver processed the poisons I’d dumped on it? Of course not! All I’d done was to splash some “stimulus” on top of the underlying fact that I’d dumped a truckload of Russian rotgut down my throat. Anyone watching me twitch and shudder there on the floor would have easily seen I’d merely masked the misery. I hadn’t yet changed a damned thing. My optimism was naïve self-deception.

Then, like clockwork, the aspirin wore off and the next wave hit. Just as brutal and heartless as the first. Not only did the toilet no longer cool my face but the damn thing smacked me on the nose. I’m also pretty sure someone picked up Thor’s hammer and beat my skull until the walls shook. I was once again in a “recession”.

Now I’m no fool. Looking back (and shuddering at the memory) I know what I had was a full fledged out of body experience professional grade hangover from hell. But just one hangover. Not two hangovers with a small break of “green shoots” and “modest jobless recovery” in the middle. The tiny bit of peace in the middle was just a fleeting illusion in the greater maelstrom. But what would I say if I were a journalist (possibly of a bankrupt print outlet) in 2010? Well I’d say it was a “double dip recession”…because somehow that would make it seem better.

Now you know the true definition of “double dip recession”.

P.S. The events described above happened in the early 1990’s. This is why, and as far as I can tell the only reason why, I didn’t blame it on George W. Bush. How could it possibly be that there was misery in the time preceding “the Dipshit before Obama” as the media’s default object of blame? Some mysteries are unknowable but I’ll admit that in the throes of my personal “recession” I would gladly blame anyone but me for my disastrous state…which is why I’m a lot like a typical voter.

Posted in Where vocabulary goes to die | Leave a comment

Word For The Day: Re-Homed

Posted on August 17, 2010 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Cats packaged for shipping to their new home in Guam.

Recently I was reading the newspaper.  (Making me one of the last six Americans left who reads print media.)

Towards the back of the slim product (should I even call these limp pamphlets newspapers anymore?) was an article about the Humane Society.  (Or as I like to call them “Dons of the Cat Mafia”).  The “article” was the usual fluff where some hack copied a press release verbatim and called it journalism.  All articles about all things in all newspapers are about the need for more money and this was no exception.  Apparently if the Humane Society doesn’t get more money there will be chaos in the streets and we’ll all die.  (That was the gist of the article.)

In order to justify their benighted existence they mentioned how many critters the local organization had shuffled to new owners.  This, of course, is good.  I’m not in favor of cats and dogs starving in the streets.  Nor am I in favor of shoveling them into incinerators.  A critter in a good home is good karma for all of us.  But I do contest their choice of words in describing the transfer of ownership from abandoned/feral to owned by someone who will actually feed the damned thing.

I myself would have used the word “foisted”.  “We here at super loving facilities have foisted 65 cats, 97 dogs, and 16 badgers on willing new owners.”  Yeah I like the way that sounds.

Traditionally they’ve used the marketing term “adopted”.  “Due to our immense dedication 14 iguanas and 3 fruit bats have been adopted by new owners.”  I can live with it.

The new term was “re-homed”.  “We deserve a huge bunch of money because we have re-homed 64 toads, 18 aardvarks, and 928 cats.”

I can’t abide by that level of horseshit!

No animal that I have possessed has been “re-homed” to me.  Many I’ve acquired because I truly want them, some have been foisted, a few have been adopted, and some have just showed up.  But I will not go into the dark night of “re-homing” anything.

In my opinion, people who use the term “re-home” in reference to critters should be whacked repeatedly on the nose with a rolled up newspaper wrapped around a lead pipe and/or beaten with a large heavy dictionary.  Journalists who cut and paste it without comment should be stripped naked and left on an Antarctic ice floe.

As always.  Thanks for listening.

Posted in Where vocabulary goes to die, Word For The Day | Leave a comment

Depreciation Curmudgeon Style!

Posted on August 16, 2010 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon 
[PHOTO DELETED]

The tractor you see there, operated by the most handsome and intelligent male model I could find, is an Allis Chalmers C. It was (probably) made around 1941 and listed for about $1,200. (Source.) I picked it up in North Dakota from a nice fellow several years ago for about $1,600 in cash. He helped me load it and told stories about how much he liked it and we drank beer together. I didn’t so much buy it as adopt it for fair market value. The former owner probably cried when the rusty old beast left with me.

It’s a work tractor (albeit “working” on my tiny and insignificant little homestead and not on a real corporate farm). It’s almost cosmic that she’s still running. She’d already put in a lifetime (or two) of hard work before I was born. She’s probably logged more hours pulling hard loads in the baking sun than all my readers (if I have any) combined. It’s an honor to know her.

So it’s a lovingly restored garage queen in the hands of a yuppie wanna be eco-weenie? Nope. It works for a living and it knows that anything on my farm that doesn’t pull it’s own weight gets taken behind the barn and shot. (I’m looking at you cats…make with the mousing or you’re next. This is not a union shop!)

It could use a lot of repairs. Everything that can break is broken. Everything that isn’t necessary is gone. Everything that can warp, dent, or tear is well and duly warped, dented, and torn. I use a mallet to remove the mangled oil filler cap, never fill the tank more than halfway because it leaks if too full, and charge it between uses because the generator has been gone since the Carter administration. (It’s a total loss system. Theoretically I can hand crank start it but I’m hinky about that.) It lacks an “off” switch and probably never had lights. Etc… But old tractors, unlike new consumer goods, can be nearly infinitely rebuilt so I don’t see it as “trashed” so much as exhibiting “deferred maintenance”.

But still…she starts and runs. I use it at least twice a week rain or shine. Hauling firewood in the winter and mowing grass in the summer. I feel an affinity for this old piece of junk and am joyous each time I use it.

Also, I consider it a solid “investment”. Why? Well since I mostly use it to mow (and I really need it’s monster sized mower deck) lets compare it to a new lawn tractor that can do what the aged beast can do. It’s got a 60” mower deck and roughly 18-20 HP. Sniff around the web for a 60” mower and you’ll get sticker shock from John Deere (price so high I refuse to type it!) or settle for a narrower mid quality machine for about $2,000.

Are new machines better? Sure, they’ve got cupholders for beer, various Ralph Nader safety features, and more ass friendly seats. But they are weak and hard to repair and I very much prefer stuff that’s built like a brick shithouse. A lawn tractor is likely to last about ten years before it’s more or less shot (yeah I know some folks can make them run forever but they usually avoid the modern plastic clad toys). Nobody in their right mind thinks a tractor from a box store is going to last until 2079. On the other hand the old critter in the photo has already done just that and shows no signs of going belly up. I fully expect it to outlast me. Maintenance free? No. Depreciation proof? Yes! So I could sink two grand in a lawn tractor and in ten years have a lawn ornament or limp along with this one for a good long time and (maybe when it’s needs can no longer be ignored) rebuild it. If I spent the same two grand rebuilding my piece of junk I’d be able to mow the lawn during the week and ride it in parades on weekends. Try that with the shit they sell at a box store.

Tractors of the WWII era, it seems, are one place where machinery attained a level of bulletproof strength and rock hard simplicity that almost nothing since (certainly nothing for sale at WalMart) can match. I mow my lawn on a piece of art that can be infinitely rebuilt, wont depreciate much from it’s current level and makes me smile. It’s one of the little things that can really make my Curmudgeonly day. If you already have a consumer grade lawn mower I suggest you set it on fire and replace it with a nice ugly 69 year old hunk of iron!

Posted in Brilliance and Simplicity | Leave a comment

Game Theory

Posted on August 13, 2010 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Suppose you’ve got a teenager who isn’t afraid of work. (A miracle!) He’s making a few bucks mowing lawns. He started doing that years ago when he mowed the neighbor’s lawn at age twelve. You’re lucky to have such good neighbors. Your kid strings together a few customers by going place to place with the modest vehicle you (as a kind parent) have given him. All is well until the vehicle needs a couple hundred dollars in repair. He’d saved maybe half of that but can’t quite swing the full cost.

The kid has a choice; park his ass on the couch and never work a day again or sell his beloved collection of dusty Pokemon cards and vintage Xbox games to buy a muffler. Being a product of public schools he makes a decision that makes sense to him and doesn’t move from the couch for six weeks. The school system approves since they take a dim view of child labor. Good parent that you are, you drive his car to the mechanic and have the damned muffler replaced. This is called a bailout. Soon he’s mowing lawns again. It’s nice to have the couch back!

What you don’t know is that the day he saw the car running again he took the $50 he’d saved toward a muffler (still not enough) and blew it on a Twilight poster and collector’s edition X-Games memorabilia. At least he’s working. He drives around mowing lawns until the next time the car needs repair. He’s already spent all of his earnings on skull motif skateboard graphics and platinum tipped iPod earbuds. He didn’t feel the need to save for repairs because he knows you’ll bail him out. Remember this the next time a politician claims a particular business needs a bailout. I’m looking at you GM! The kid lies on the couch like a beached whale. Speaking of bloated and immobile I’m still looking at you GM!

You try to ignore it but it you can only stand so much. One day you trip over a line of Cheetos bags leading to the couch and blow your top. You tell him to get his ass back out there and make some money. All he does is grunt and wave listlessly at an estimate for a new transmission. Ouch! You don’t want to do a second bailout because two bailouts means the first one was a failure. I’m looking at you Chrysler!

You offer to pay half the car’s repairs? Too late. The kid is fossilized in place. Car or no car he’s busy watching South Park. So you offer to pay half his car expenses and all his gas from now on…if only he’ll get off the damned couch. You hand him a gas card. The car repair is a matching fund and the gas card is a subsidy. The kid springs into action and anything he owns that isn’t nailed down goes on e-bay. Soon the car is fixed and he’s out there mowing lawns again. You’ve made a wise move.

Wrong! You’ve distorted the economy…or at least distorted it for this kid. Any time you tinker with anything economic you risk unintended (or intended!) consequences. Sometimes they can be bizarre. I’m looking at you Congress!

The next month the gas bill comes in and you realize he’s been driving to Pasadena to mow a lawn that only pays $10. Good grief that’s a lot of miles for a ten spot! The kid shrugs. With free gas he can drive a long way. You learn that a hot girl lives at the house in Pasadena. There’s another hot girl in Fresno. Possibly a few more you don’t know about. Your kid is racking up a thousand miles a week and making a pittance mowing lawns as an excuse to stalk anything with a skirt that likes short grass. At least he’s off the couch.

The next month the gas bill comes in and you have a coronary. Your kid dumped the lawn gig and is delivering pizzas. Since his gas is free he’s making bank. Your neighbor’s kid was delivering pizza before your kid showed up and offered to take the same job for a nickel less per hour. Your kid can afford lower wages since he’s got all that free gas. The neighbor’s kid is now unemployed and parked on his parent’s couch watching daytime soaps. The neighbors are pissed and talking about some sort of fair trade agreement. You never liked the neighbors anyway! Meanwhile your kid is dropping all his money on the hottie from Pasadena, including buying her a tattoo of Che Guevara put in a place you can’t believe she posted on Facebook.

When she dumps him you brace for him to camp out on the couch and cry. Instead he pours his soul into his work and drives the wheels off the car. Soon it’s worn out and he must choose a new one. He struts past the econoboxes with good MPG and buys a Hummer that gets 4 MPG. He uses his wages to buy a stereo so loud that it makes birds fall from the sky and God himself weep. The gas card is smoking but he holds up his end of the bargain and pays his half of the car purchase. The couch is blissfully empty. In fact he’s working so much he more or less disappears. You’re pleased with his work ethic.

Six months later you get a gas bill that causes your sphincter to implode. Unbeknownst to you, your kid has hooked up with a trucker named Large Marge and is using the gas card to fuel a Kenworth en route to Fargo with a load of Kumquats. But that’s not all. Tanks of diesel have been purchased in Abilene, Winnipeg, Miami, Seattle, Des Moines, Huston, Las Vegas, and Guadalajara.

Eventually the gas card bursts into flames. Watching the bills come in has given you a working knowledge of just how much fuel a semi can consume. You realize that your kid and Large Marge have been team trucking where one drives while the other sleeps so the truck has been running coast to coast 24/7 on your dime. Your neighbor’s kid is still on his dad’s couch and moss is growing on him. The deadbeat neighbors piss you off! The credit agency puts you on a payment plan. You can just barely make ends meet if you stop taking your heart medication and sell your dog. It’s worth it. Then they repossess your couch.

So what’s the moral of the story? Nothing. The kid didn’t show morals so there is no moral to the story. Cool eh? Instead of morality the kid showed cool calculating economic logic. Free gas was a resource to be exploited. In subsidizing a resource, you made it logical to maximize consumption of that resource to the exclusion of others. In the absence of morality it makes perfect sense to seek and exploit subsidy to the greatest extent possible.

Why write this story? Oh, no reason. Did I mention that they’re discussing another stimulus plan in congress? Or that it’s an election year? Nah…that’s off topic.

Posted in For Your Education | Leave a comment

Dependency And The Leather Clad Cure To It

Posted on August 12, 2010 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

New Orleans is built partially below sea level. Occasionally Mother Nature takes a swipe at the Gulf Coast and on August 29th 2005 she landed a solid punch. New Orleans got hammered by hurricane Katrina. Bummer! When the sea kicks your ass it’s a bad day and my heart goes out to the people who lost loved ones or property in the disaster.

Now for the part where I get all non-PC. From the moment the storm made landfall, blame was assigned to virtually anyone on earth who wasn’t actually a resident of New Orleans. Inexplicably George Bush got plenty of it. I doubt the President has magical powers over the weather but apparently no drywall in New Orleans was damaged but that Bush caused it. Listening to the news I got a malady I call “Gripe Fatigue”. After the fiftieth time I’d been presented with some clueless rube (who has never left their neighborhood much less the city) bitching about who was responsible for all maladies in their life, I tuned out. If you think the urgent infusion of truckloads of money will make New Orleans into heaven on earth you’re incorrect. (Giving me money, however, is a very good idea so send that check right away!) Meanwhile I couldn’t ignore the fact that hurricanes happen every year and the city just happens to be built under sea level. Let me repeat that last part; under sea level. Aren’t storms in the Gulf of Mexico to be expected; like blizzards in Alaska or heat in Phoenix?

Luckily folks rose to the occasion and faced a challenging time with dignity and resolve. Just kidding; they went apeshit. FEMA trailers and the Mayor’s insistence that God wanted the city rebuilt with the proper racial mix and guns seized from civilians and looting made me wonder if we’re all just animals. Surely some residents had the good sense to get out of Dodge before the shit hit the fan but I never heard about them. Too many losers cowered and bitched and blamed Bush. The deplorable lack of self reliance filled me with despair. Sadly, Katrina is merely an example. Every year in many locations for many reasons voices cry out that they are in misery and it’s everyone’s fault but their own.

If you knew nothing more than the Katrina saga you’d conclude that America is totally hopelessly irretrievably dependent and inept. But wait! There’s a counterpoint to the blame everyone else game I associate with Katrina. Bikers!

The author out for a ride.

The author out for a ride.

Every year, like the migration of a great amusingly chaotic species, well over half a million leather clad yahoos on motorcycles descend on remote little Sturgis, South Dakota. I’ve been there too. It was like the bar scene from Star Wars but with more boobies and louder machinery.

Broken Spoke Saloon, Sturgis SD.

Broken Spoke Saloon, Sturgis SD.

I enjoyed the partying and general mayhem but I also gained a new source of patriotic pride. It’s heartening to witness a multitude of bikers drifting in from all over the continent merely to built a city out of beer cans and noise. There is no Federal Program to subsidize motorcycle based frivolity, so by some points of view Sturgis shouldn’t exist. But its there in all it’s leather clad glory! Many hundred thousand men and women and kids and dogs and bikes and Elvis impersonators and drunks and mechanical wizards on custom bikes and t-shirt sellers and scantily clad women and ugly old farts and silly dentists and genuine hoodlums and every piece of humanity across the spectrum. All self motivated. Nobody forced to go. No tax dollars needed. No FEMA trailers. No blaming whichever party is in office. No bullshit.

This year they may break 750,000 participants; all of whom have deployed a considerable outlay of logistical, financial, and personal resources. Consider what you need. Motorcycles are big expensive powerful machines that don’t come cheap and if you go to Sturgis without one you’re a big whiny loser. Nobody goes there without a ride and rides aren’t free. Every bike is privately owned and operated. Fewer subsidies are expended on the half million bikes in Sturgis than on a dozen Priuses shuffling around Starbucks. (And just for the record motorcycles can be shockingly fuel efficient. So you can be “green” and still scare the shit out of the neighbors. Win win!)

If this isn't how you do your morning commute, you're wasting gas and Al Gore hates you.

Money alone doesn’t get you there. You either ride there (I did!) or (if you’re a poser) trailer your motorcycle. Riding means piloting a powerful rumbling machine hundreds of miles in the heat and wind and noise and bugs and loving every minute. Ralph Nader weeps when he thinks of all those citizens not wearing seatbelts. Can’t operate a clutch? Don’t like the heat? Miss the safety of your Volvo? Stay home! I don’t know what portion of bikes are trailered (my motorcycle would be insulted if I put her on a trailer!) but even trailered bikes represent considerable resources. (You’re still a wuss for not riding!) Got no truck and don’t want to ride? Stay home with your momma!

There is no light rail. No metro-bus. Obama won’t airlift your motorcycle for you. One way or another you drive your ass to the middle of nowhere all by your damn self. You pay the maintenance of all that machinery. Gas and insurance and tires and helmets and skull motif chrome keychains and silly bandannas and everything else are purchased with your cash. Don’t ask FEMA. Can’t afford it? Stay home with the kiddies.

Nor is it a visit to the Hilton. The majority camp in the middle of fields in a place that doesn’t even have trees. You bring your own food or pay for burgers and beer and meals and beer and trinkets and beer and concert tickets and beer. You set up tents or reserve overpriced hotels years in advance or just pass out in the grass. (I had a tent.) Neither FEMA nor the president is flying out to a field in South Dakota to tuck you in. If it’s windy it’s windy. If it rains you get wet. If it’s hot you sweat. Most people sleep on the dirt and that’s that.

All this…and not a single tax dollar. Every participant is a volunteer. Everyone is skilled enough to handle a hefty bike, responsible enough to amass the money they’ll need, and tough enough to sleep on the ground and call it a party. In short they’re a nation of silly but consenting and fully self-reliant adults roaming around in loud mechanical packs. So long as America still has goofy hordes that do something as improbable (and spectacular) as to amass an army of motorcycles in the empty prairie just to party we’re on the right track. Bikers give me hope that our society is not yet fully spineless. Have a great vacation riders!

Posted in Wussification and other modern hazards. | Leave a comment

Book Review: The Road

Posted on August 11, 2010 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

I’m mentioning this book long after the excitement has passed. The Road was written several years ago and was popular at the time. It was made into a movie (which I haven’t watched) and it was endorsed by her royal Oprahness which apparently is the gold standard in some minds. I read it several months ago myself too. So why am I posting about it now? Because when you read this book is irrelevant. The Road is not drivel that is only interesting when it’s popular. It is perfect and, in it’s simplicity, timeless.

You should read The Road in an appropriate frame of mind. The Road should be read alone. In a closet. In the dark. While hungry. Watching it on a big screen while munching popcorn is missing the point. On the other hand it’s a book that tries it’s best to leave you dazed and spent; so don’t go overboard. I bought it to read while ice fishing and decided not to. Reading “The Road” while alone in a remote icebound landscape is like locking yourself in the Bastille before reading The Pit And The Pendulum. This way lies madness.

It’s a post apocalyptic book. If you think about it, it’s odd that such a genre as “post apocalyptic literature” even exists but it’s one of my favorite genres. A book that starts on page one with everyone (or almost everyone) dying gives the author a clean slate upon which to paint a new world. However, I’m of the opinion that most “post apocalyptic” books are Quixotic fluffery written by overfed English majors who couldn’t fix a flat tire much less survive when the underpinnings of civilization have gone off the rails. I detest reading about an interesting situation but mid chapter having my illusion broken by the undeniable feeling that the text was hammered out on a Mac in a Starbucks. The Road is an exception. McCarthy gets to the point and stays there.

It’s really an exploration of a father and his son and their relationship amid a situation that is more or less hopeless. Cormac McCarthy goes to great lengths to make good and sure you understand there is no easy out. No Fairy Godmother is coming to this story and that’s refreshing as it is rare. Modern literature (our whole society in fact) goes out of it’s way to avoid situations that stark. McCarthy has balls of steel to go there. Furthermore he has a real touch for showing the small incremental struggles that loom large in a brutal environment. I’m sick of authors that churn out a ten chapter story about taming dragons but can’t describe starting a fire in a wet place. Nor can they explain that no fire means cold and do it in a way that pierces our smug protected overly civilized lives. McCarthy knows what he’s doing.

Some caveats. First; my wife hated it. In fact I’ve never met (or heard of) a female who liked it. Sorry but it’s true. This is a book about survival and it comes entirely from a male point of view. How Oprah endured reading it I’ll never know. Second; you either can go with the whole post apocalyptic tone or you can’t. If you can’t willingly suspend disbelief enough to visualize a world where there’s not a cold soda in the fridge and the power is off for good…don’t bother. You’re going to think it’s trite and repetitive. Turn back to the TV and pay no attention to loners and their creepy stories.

But if you’re of the right mindset (especially if you’ve experienced even the smallest hint of a “survival” situation) it’s just plain the best book you’ll buy this decade. If you’re nodding in agreement get a copy of The Road and read it. Just do it. It’s short and spare so I don’t want any bitching about long books or how you’re too busy. Kick everyone out of the house, turn off the phone, sit down, and read it. Then, when you’re done, take a deep breath and be really happy it’s just literature.

The Road, By Cormac McCarthy

Read this book.

Posted in For Your Education, Reviews | 2 Comments

Airlines; Business model of indignity and revulsion.

Posted on August 10, 2010 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Steve Slater

Steve Slater is a man who knows when he's had enough. Go Steve!

If I had any readers they might have noticed my postings are sparse. That’s because I’m in the clutches of that great Kafkaesque clusterfuck called air travel. Nothing can save me.

A vengeful impotent rage developed when I couldn’t get on-line to check my travel arrangements while at the terminal. At first I was pretty blasé but every twenty minutes a recorded announcement blared that Philadelphia Airport provides free WiFi “because they care”. It started drilling into my psyche. I care too. I care that Philadelphia once was the heart of a fledgling experiment in democracy and (based on this airport) it’s been in decline since 1790. A pox on the disembodied recording telling me that which I have verified is untrue. (Note: if you’re from Philadelphia and wish to defend your fair city; don’t. Even if your city is Paris in Pennsylvania, the seat of the next Renaissance, and the savior of civilization…without WiFi in terminal F it’s just a third-world slum with a different smell.)

Commercial travel is not measured in miles or dollars but indignities. It could be delightful! You can get from East Cowschitt, Montana to a bordello in Bangkok using intermodal technologies that would make our forefathers gape in clueless admiration. But the indignities are too relentless. Airlines shovel crap at the innocent customer that go beyond merely annoying and descend into creative evil. Why should a trip from point A to point B cause me to become a chew toy for “Fuck You Airlines”? (F.U. Airlines is a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton, the US Government, and a group of companies that regularly go bankrupt as part of our business plan. We care.”)1

Everyone knows the spirit of failure that is the TSA. But making fun of the TSA is shooting exceptionally stupid fish in a small barrel so I’ll ignore them to look at the bigger picture. The real travesty is that everyone in an airport is lying all the time. A politician might redirect your attention while he grabs your wallet (or ass) but the airlines punch you in the face while telling you they love you. I’ve had airline agents insist a flight is sure to be on time when anyone with an IQ above room temperature knows it’s not true. Once, during a blizzard in Fargo that would kill a sled dog they insisted the plane would fly. I’d nearly died like a scene from a Jack London story just getting across the parking lot. This same person announced (with surprise!) three long consecutive delays before they admitted that the plane, like sanity in Washington, was never coming. By the time she was done screwing me over the nearest hotels were booked…including rooms for the flight crew on the plane which everyone (including apparently the airline) knew wouldn’t fly. Who makes a business plan like that? Stalin?

Airline indignities are so ubiquitous they seep into your pores. A company with hundreds of multi-million dollar planes insists it can’t afford magazines to read in flight? Bags of peanuts have shrunk to sub atomic size and a vending machine quality sandwich costs six bucks if you’ve got correct change and beg for it. I’m supposed to sit amid 200 passengers knowing that no two of us paid the same price. I’m told that a peon flying steerage like me can’t use the first class crapper “for safety reasons”. (Be honest and say it’s because I’m a chump!) I’m supposed to believe that putting the seat back upright somehow makes the plane land better. I’m supposed to think oxygen tubes and floating cushions will matter when a Boeing disintegrates at 30,000 feet. I’m supposed to “feel safe” because they’ve searched for nail clippers and knitting needles. Nobody wants to fly on a plane that can be taken down by knitting needles. I want a plane where you can carry a chainsaw because it’s tough enough to handle it. I also want pilots who swagger like John Wayne and should anyone threaten the cockpit they’re willing and able to dismember the bastard with their logbook and a bic pen.

Planes inherently suck so they should try to liven things up. I want stewardesses to be so hot I can’t think straight and keep me pumped up with a steady supply of cheap booze. Keeping me liquored up is an excellent way to make me happy about levering my American ass into a seat that was engineered to fit a four year old Asian midget.

And the electronics thing is just pathetic. If an iPod is going to hose the navigation computer then improve the damned computer. Telling the pierced degenerate two rows ahead of me to turn off Depeche Mode because otherwise a nav computer malfunction will corkscrew us into the dirt near Des Moines isn’t even trying.

The airlines are failure writ large. They have a natural monopoly. (If you could get from NY to LA in a day with anything else you’d never fly again.) They have an immense subsidized airport infrastructure. And frankly flight itself is pretty cool. Yet they still go bankrupt on a regular basis. They could lose money selling air to people chained underwater. This is all you need to know about airlines and their customer service.

But you all know this. The last person to like air travel was a Croatian pig farmer who died in 1986. Right now I want to talk about someone else who met his match. While I was languishing in terminal hell, steward Steven Slater2 finally blew a circuit and told the whole world to “take this job and shove it”. He grabbed two beers and bailed. I’m with ya’ there Mr. Slater. Nobody, even convicted felons, should have to fly commercial air day in and day out. That you lasted this long makes you a man among men. Being a steward has got to be the most unpleasant job this side of an ethics officer for congress. I hope you wind up on Letterman and get rich with a book titled “Peanuts and Assholes”

1I favor the return of dueling as a conflict resolution technique. I guarantee that airline service in an age of dueling would improve!

2Hat tip to Joe Soucheray.

Posted in Technology of Indignity | 1 Comment

iPod and the Curmudgeon II

Posted on August 9, 2010 by AdaptiveCurmudgeon

Huey Lewis in a jar.

In theory I have nothing wrong with Huey Lewis and the News. Like, light beer and rice cakes; he served a purpose despite being light and unfulfilling. I’ll even admit that in younger and more naïve days I once actually shoved a Huey Lewis cassette in my truck’s radio (though never in public).

(Note: those of you who aren’t quite as dinosaur-like as me can review the novel concept of a “cassette tape” by going to the Smithsonian and looking for objects classified as; “It was cool back then and people laugh at it now”. This includes medical leeches, Sony cassettes, and a form of black arts called shortwave.)

Of course I soon came to my senses and Huey Lewis wound up in the dirt on the truck’s floor amid empty cans and bits of wiring that had fallen out of the dash. I’d somehow acquired a Steppenwolf tape and (in the words of the Doors) “broke on through to the other side”. (Get your head out of the gutter, I’m not talking about getting stoned and dancing naked at Woodstock…I’m just talking about music that doesn’t suck.)

Fast forward several millennia. Recently I found myself en route from my secret rural bunker in an undisclosed location to a city which shall be unnamed. This was the beginning leg of a multi-week, multi-state, multi-mode trip. Tragically, (nearly unforgivably!) I was not on my motorcycle. This was because I had my kid with me and at some point I was forced to accept that two weeks of luggage and a kid aren’t compatible with rocketing down the road on a lightning bolt of cool (if I have to explain you wouldn’t understand).

Bravely trying to save face I commandeered my kid’s iPod (which was plugged into a Honda Hatchback) and clicked it over to “Born to be Wild”. Immediately my spirits soared and somehow the little Honda was going a mite faster than wise. The trip itself is indeed an adventure to my kid so he was in the spirit of the moment. Soon the inside of our unassuming little puddle jumper was vibrating with two out of pitch male voices screaming ‘Get yer’ motor runnin’!!!!”.

All was well with the world. Sure I wasn’t on my beloved bike. Sure I’m a fat balding middle management schmuck who works some of the time in fabric covered beige boxes. Sure I’m (how did this happen) a…gasp…dad…but I can still howl at the moon!  And who wouldn’t enjoy hearing their son belt out “fire all of yer’ guns at once and explode into space…”?

The happy haze lasted 50 miles. I love Steppenwolf. My kid does too (following my example if for no other reason). I’m road trippin baby!

Then my subconscious interrupted my happy reverie. You know how a song gets stuck in your head? A song I hadn’t heard in ten years drifted into my mind and took root. “It’s hip to be square.” Huey Lewis, that evil monster, somehow knew that I was “square”. (Under “square” in the dictionary it says “When a generic slob in a hatchback hopelessly clings to a mental state of adventure”.) Mr. Lewis struck with superb precision…that focus grouped monster! Be warned. He’s in your head too. Set down the Viking Hammer for one minute and you’ll quit hearing the echoes of Ragnarok and hear Huey’s bubbly voice. It’s there like elevator music on the way to Purgatory. You’ve been warned.

Posted in Technology of Indignity | 5 Comments