Squirrels: Chapter 8: Part 01: Smartfish

Please enjoy the next post in Murdertrout, Chapter 8 of “Attack of the Lesbian Activist Squirrels“. Comments are always welcome. Tips via the PayPal link to the right are also welcome but always optional.

Merry Christmas and happy reading.


High in the gorgeous Rocky Mountains, pure cold snowmelt gathers into rushing frothing streams. There, nurtured in the chaotic rippling current, trout live, grow, and die… never once filing a tax return. Basking in the thin clear alpine light and bursting with vitality of mountain life they attract the attention of overwrought ape-descendants who occasionally lumber about the streambanks. One such fisherman was having a bad day. The fish were outclassing everything he threw at them.

Temporarily blind to the heartbreaking beauty all around him, the grumpy, slouching, woodsman clutched a slender fly fishing rod with hands more accustomed to shrieking chainsaws than a shaft of spindly carbon fiber. He cast his line into spruce trees. He twisted his ankles on wet rocks. During one near miss, where he and the rod almost wound up in the stream, he inadvertently dropped a perfectly good sandwich into the rushing current!

In short, he sucked at fly fishing.

Having snapped his leader yet again, and subsequently gone half cross-eyed retying yet another painstakingly created fly (this one doomed to be lost just like all the others) he stumbled on poor footing and found himself deeper than he’d intended. Ice cold water splashed onto the already soaked denim. Stoic but not stupid, The Curmudgeon paused to rethink his life’s choices. When your nuts are exposed to icy water, it’s time to step back and regroup. He admitted defeat. These fish were just too smart. The current too strong. The sandwich… lost forever.

He cursed and made his way across treacherous rocks onto the firm shore. He could see the fish out there. But would they rise to even his best cast? No! The little bastards saw right though him.

He stomped back to his truck. Time to make a tactical retreat and leave these wild and beautiful fish to their mountain redoubt. He’d shift to a place he’d discovered not long ago. It was further down the mountain. If he was going to catch anything at all, it would not because he’d bested these spirits of the mountains. Instead he’d have to find their dumber cousins; stupid gullible fish.

As to be expected of any proper woodsman, he changed into dry clothes right next to his truck; in front of God and everybody. Lucky for him, nobody was around. Actually, not lucky at all. His sense of modesty was more a sense that his life was none of your damn business. If the vicinity had held a suburbanite Karen doing whatever suburbanite Karens do (yoga perhaps?) it wouldn’t have bothered The Curmudgeon one bit. He figured he was in “his” forest. Up here, among the spruce and rocks, if you didn’t want to see his hairy ass, you’d better have the common sense to look away.

Fortunately, for the man had a tendency to derail plotlines, nothing of the sort happened. Soon he was sitting on his tailgate, enjoying the glory of warm dry clothes, and scanning the horizon. It usually takes chemical imbalance, war, or genuine psychosis to make a man as wary as he’d become about scanning the horizon. He was a special case. A recent “exploding oak incident” had taken root in a mind already leaning towards tinfoil hats. He ceaselessly scanned the skies; like a mouse on the open prairie (though perhaps an aggressive and armed mouse).

The skies were clear and empty. That was good. He took a swig from his flask and mourned his lost sandwich. Between now and dinner, he’d have to subsist on bourbon and M&Ms; not that this bothered him much. He was as tough as he was grouchy. He’d arranged his life as a series of personal challenges that would kill a soft urbane twit at twenty paces. His greatest fears were soft pillows, easy desk jobs, and Government stormtroopers. So far he’d avoided all three quite handily. Besides, bourbon and chocolate go great together.

He caught a glimpse of something aloft. He grabbed binoculars that looked like they could pick out grains of sand on the moon. He watched carefully. He was observing flight patterns and motion even before he could get a clear look at the object itself.

It didn’t have the mechanical signature of a drone. Nor did it exhibit the innate mastery of thermals a soaring bird such as a vulture or eagle would display. It wasn’t a fluttering puffball of a songbird meant for treetops. It lacked the purposeful motion of migratory waterfowl.

It was uncanny, clearly of natural origin, yet it was wandering to and fro like a fool. It descended a bit and The Curmudgeon got his first good look. It was a hawk. It was natural in appearance if not flight.

A hawk.” The Curmudgeon announced aloud to nobody (for there was nobody to hear it). He watched a bit longer and then concluded. “A stupid hawk. Probably an asshole.”

Satisfied, he stowed his binoculars and drove off. The hawk, erratically, followed.

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Squirrels: Chapter 8: Part 00: The Squirrels Are Back

It’s go time!

Another installment of Attack of the Lesbian Activist Squirrels will go live in a few hours! It’s my Christmas present to the world.

If you’re new here you might not know it, but the squirrel stories are a donation supported on-line serialized novel. Western civilization has been taking a dump and we’ve been forced to watch it on the internet. This is my candle in the darkness. I’m trying to use satire to remind us that the internet can be used for humor. Regardless of media, it’s my belief that the humor can and should be a beacon of hope.

Look around, we’re living the punch line of a world gone mad. Join me. Take a few steps back to see the forest for the trees. You’ll find yourself laughing too.

For the newcomers I’ll say the following right now:

This is satire. If you take this shit seriously you’re an idiot. It you get triggered, the problem is you. If you’re an idiot and problem; stop it. Level up and be an adult.

Attack of the Lesbian Activist Squirrels is about 450 pages and the whole novel is yours to enjoy for free. It’s at the Lesbian Squirrels Main Page. It may look messy but that page has every part of the story in order. Take a break to laugh. You deserve it.

A quick reminder of the last chapter in case you forgot:

The last chapter in the story was Thunderdome. In that chapter, a MMA fighter named Janice (or Gerald depending on which way the drugs in its system were trending) came completely unglued and left the ring in mid-fight. Legitimate female athlete Mindy, who was otherwise sure to die, won by default; much to the chagrin of Winston Jones. Jones had lured the entirety of Dr. Simone Moonglow Lenin Rothschild’s Advanced Grievance Indoctrination class into unwise bets only to get shafted by fickle fate and a mean fiction author.

Janice (or Gerald) lost the match in his rage at Robert’s cell phone. From Janice’s (completely addled) point of view the phone was plotting against him. Robert, who’d been dating Billy’s ex-girlfriend, wound up pummeled, not by Janice but by law enforcement officers of every stripe. Robert’s Audi is now a smoking crater because the Tri-county Anti-drug Community Interdiction Special Programs Environmental Task Force Team Pilot Project let Boy Scouts get too close to Chigger’s old man’s competitive Gatlin gun.

Meanwhile, Gertrude and Edna, had taken advantage of Gerald’s absence. They’d unleashed significant criminal underworld connections and SMEEDA (a “SOLID MATTER EMULSION & EJECTION DISPOSAL APPARATUS”) on Gerald’s apartment. Their brutally efficient effort to flush anything remotely drug related resulted in a spotless apartment, minor work related injuries, and the loss of one of two cats. As a final topping on the cake, they left a fully primed female claymore mine on Gerald’s replacement couch. Gertrude’s hopes for a grandchild rest on the eager ministrations of a slutbuger who might woof Gerald back into sanity.

It is the death-flush of SMEEDA that drives this chapter’s mayhem. Please enjoy Chapter 8: Murdertrout!

Also, we have always been at war with Eastasia!


Some housekeeping: as a blog, each post will show in the order in which it’s released. The most recent post will be at the top and earlier posts appear beneath it; which is about the dumbest way to read a book since common core brought illiteracy back from the brink. For simplicity, I’ll link things in the proper order at the Lesbian Squirrels Main Page.

Donations via PayPal or Patreon are always appreciated. Anything you buy from an Amazon link on my blog results in a shaving of a percent back to me. I also accept silver, ammo, whiskey, old cars, compliments, and comments. I will not accept the Nobel prize in literature… not that they asked.

There are donation links at the upper right side of your screen. It’s a scientific fact (as much as any other scientific fact you’re likely to read on the internet) that donations make you more attractive to the opposite sex, lower your capital gains tax, and keep your cat from scratching the furniture. To paraphrase a modern narrative, if you don’t donate to me you’re against the science!

Finally, I’m a reasonable man. If you’re broke, I get it. Keep your money to pay the rent. Read for free and pay it forward when you can.

Merry Christmas.

A.C.

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Cold Fury Needs A Hand

If there’s a loop, I’m not in it. If there’s a clique of people who know each other, I didn’t get the memo. I know noting personal about nobody; choosing to read blogs as if they spring from the earth of their own accord. But people drive the whole thing and they’re the whole point. The heart of Cold Fury is in dire medical straits. Mike’s in Deep Shit and it sounds serious.

“I just got word that my brother-from-another-mother Mike Hendrix, late of the famed rockabilly band The Belmont Playboys and more recently of the Blog “Cold Fury” http://coldfury.com/ has gotten seriously hemmed up medically speaking.”

That sucks. Rather than sit around fretting, one wonders what they can do. I’m glad you asked:

The Go-Fund-Me is here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-mike-of-cold-fury-and-the-belmont-playboys

I don’t really know how Cold Fury is run, I only know that I’ve been reading it for free for a zillion years. There’s not as many places to go on the internet as there once was. Each and every one is precious. Not to mention there’s righteous person in a moment of need; possibly mortal need. I’m glad there’s a way to help. Y’all know how it works. If you can afford it, please click to the go fund me page and toss a bit of money into it.

Thank you.

A.C.

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Squirrels On The Horizon!

Here’s a test:

Q: What’s 13,000 words, 14 parts, a week late, and has not one single mention of Covid?

A: The next chapter in Attack of the Lesbians Activist Squirrels!

It’s not done yet, but it’s done enough that I know it’s going to be posted pretty soon.* I was up half the night tying up loose ends. (The plot that seems so linear in my pointy head is quite a handful when typed into cold unforgiving text!)

I’ll need a few more days to find the eleven million spelling errors and make sure there’s nothing there that will bring about Edna’s ire. (It would not do to upset our beloved Grammarian!)

I know this is a teaser when you really just want to kick back and read installment one of the new chapter… but it’s what I can get done in the time I’ve got. Also, don’t fret, this isn’t the last chapter to the book. I had the desire to go into the weeds and took the reader with me. Why? ‘Cause that’s how I roll!

Stay tuned. I think you’ll like it.

A.C.

P.S. Anyone who has done a complex project knows there’s a moment when they have crested the peak. “The engine isn’t reinstalled in the truck, but now that I’ve rebuilt the turbo-encabulator, I’m sure it’ll run eventually.” It’s a good feeling, but it’s not a “the job is done” situation. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, turn off the Internet and build a boat.

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Dreams, Adventure, And Risk: Pics Or It Didn’t Happen

I recently expounded on my theory that people need dreams & adventure. I also gave a personal example (links: 1, 2, 3, 4). What was the example? I bought a hot tent* and stove* with which I intend to camp solo in “freeze your ass off” weather. (Note: the links to hot tent and stove go to Amazon. If you buy anything from those links it costs you nothing extra and I get a small kickback from Amazon.)

I want to make something perfectly clear. The goal is not to survive in a battle with nature it is to enjoy myself. (Any jackoff, including myself in younger ages, can huddle under a spruce bough; shivering around a smoky fire while wrapped in a cheap tarp until the dawn comes and a tired, beat, camper hikes eagerly for the truck. I’ve done that. Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it sucks, but it’s never comfortable. That stage of life is in the rear view mirror for me. I got nuthin’ to prove to nobody about me and my drinking buddy Mother Nature.)

As for blogging and photos, today I’ll try to strike a balance. This particular Curmudgeonly tilting of windmills is still in the “getting feet wet” stage. I’m entirely a clueless n00b but there are details of the technology I’m still learning. I don’t want to nudge any impressionable dreamers into following my foolish notions before I can offer more reasoned analysis. On the other hand, pics or it didn’t happen. On the third hand, I got sick of taking photos so all I’ve got is grainy snapshots. On the fourth hand… it’s been super fun!


Remember when American goods were top quality and Russian goods were a punch line? Yeah, I remember it too. It’s over! Don’t weep for it. Don’t complain. Don’t try to pretend otherwise. That time is gone like trustworthy elections and cheap gas.

Don’t cling to the past; adapt! I paid top dollar for more or less the best, toughest, tent I could buy for my purposes… and it came from Russia.

Russian tech was just right for my needs. Strong and designed like I might find myself hunting polar bears in Greenland. This isn’t REI shit. No man buns were harmed in the making of this blog but that’s only by chance. The tent was brutally expensive but it’s so damn macho it makes me smile.

The stove comes in a shipping box. A wood box. Holy shit!

The box isn’t an heirloom. It’s just plywood. But that’s a hint that they’re not screwing around.

The tent came in a cardboard box that looked like it had been trampled by wildebeests. My dog is suspicious of the battered box.

Inside the box, the woodstove has a very nice carrying bag. Pretty solid; which is good because the stove has all sorts of jagged edges that would eat a thin nylon bag.

Hot tent woodstoves sometimes have oils and residues leftover from the manufacturing process. You’re told to fire it up outside of the tent for an hour or so just to be sure that’s all gone.

I unpacked it and found all sorts of cool goodies. Now only did I have the titanium stove and pipe (as expected) but I had various gadgets and necessaries. Very thoughtful. It was packed like the box might be air dropped to a cast away on the coast of a lonely Norwegian Fjord. It has all you’ll need save matches.  The beige folded thing in the included materials is a heat/fire resistant mat. Put that under the stove if you use it on top of a fabric tent floor. The black shrink wrapped thing is replacement materials in case you break a fireplace window while in the hinterland. Losing a heat source is a very serious thing so it was wise to include it and the part is much appreciated by the buyer! The plastic bag is a smoke detector with battery. The green thing is a carrying pack with the stove’s four legs.

The sides of the stove have removable heat shields that are also protection for the glass windows. They’re easily removable or I you could leave them on if you wished.

The glass is not merely for show. Glass will not warp like metal will, thus keeping the stove more dimensionally sound. Plus the glass is vastly more efficient transmitting heat.

On a purely emotional level, a stove without a window to watch the pretty fire would be a tragedy.

There’s a heat shield in the back to keep the stove from burning the tent material that will be near it. The tent also has flame/heat resistant material in the appropriate place; much like a welding blanket. There’s a heat shield/ash pan on the bottom too.

There’s lots of nice details like the logo carved on the stovetop. (I’ll be cooking on that logo in due time.)

The front vent/door is weird. Nobody copies the Russians and the Russians don’t copy anybody. Then again the first part to go on small portable stoves are the hinges and the air vent apparatus. This design eliminates all hinges. The air intake control, despite looking funky, works like a charm. I had my doubts but it’s perfect.

There’s a spark arrestor for the top… because duh.

Here it is, all set up.

My cat came by to assist the burn in process. Damn cat.

The tent’s box looked like shit but the tent was pristine.

It’s a very nice carry bag. If you need to haul a body… this will do just fine.

The tent is a weird umbrella design. I’ve never seen anything like it. You set a 50 pound lump of fabric upright on the ground and release a strap. It pops out like a strange camouflage origami starfish. There are more details to the setup but you can see it on YouTube if you want the details.

It sets up ridiculously fast; especially considering this is a two layer, four season tent.

I set it up in an easy spot on a perfectly reasonable day. No wind, it wasn’t snowing, I set it up on frozen grass I’d plowed cleared of snow, etc… This was intended to be a relaxing overnight… not a backwoods forest challenge. I was close to a structure in case I needed to bailout.

At sunset it was smooth sailing. I kicked back in the toasty warm tent with a bottle of bourbon and a smug smile on my face. At midnight it started snowing hard and I got nervous. Around 3:00 am all hell broke loose. It was a genuine, no bullshit, hang on to your britches or you’ll be blown out of them, blizzard.

I should check the weather report more often.

The tent rode out a full on blizzard for many hours. I was warm and snug all night long. I was a bit nervous since I hadn’t tested the tent before but the tent was a damn fortress.

This is the lee side of the tent! This is the vent. I kept two vents open while I was operating the fire. All that snow fell in one night while I was in there!

The tent has an optional (you can install it or not) “hard door”. It’s a feature I’ve never seen in any tent. This is supposedly so you can’t freeze in if a zipper gets iced up. It’s also convenient. That’s the door right there.

A few days later, when the weather wasn’t trying to kill me, I set it back up and installed the optional um… It’s not really a vestibule. I’m going to call it an “airlock”. It appears to be a hexagonal hallway thing that allows this tent to link seamlessly to a very expensive vestibule that I didn’t buy. (The “vestibule” is practically a whole different attached tent.)

The airlock is crazy elaborate but I can see how it would make the vestibule / tent connection very warm and secure.

The tent is an octagon. There’s an anchor point at the base of each corner. There’s an anchor point at each “mid wall”. Do the math. That’s 16 places to stake it down at the base.

There’s a nearly equal number of waist high guyline anchor points. I rode out a “balls to the wall, Dan Rather clinging to a fencepost” blizzard with only 8 base points anchored and 7 guylines. The tent was very solid.

I bought cheap carabiners so I can clip guylines to whichever part of the tent most needs to be secured. The carabiners are my idea and I think it’s a good one. I will have anywhere from 8 to 12 guylines in the tent bag and simply use however many I think I need wherever is best. In most calm weather that number will be zero. An absolute outrageous amount of line is included but it’s not cut to any reasonable length. Maybe you need 30′ guylines to anchor it to an iceberg or something?


This has nothing to do with the tent. It’s about fuel for the wood stove. While camping this summer I was carrying pallet wood. A trash can of pallet wood in my truck is waterproof and enough volume for several days of brewing coffee, cooking food, and watching the flames.

For no particular reason, I started keeping “the good stuff” for future woodworking projects and tossing “the not good stuff” in the garbage can for camping. It took less than an hour of chopping up pallets to fill the whole trash can and also make this pile of rough cut kiln dried pine.

One warning. I was afraid that kiln dried, milled, pine would burn too hot for a small portable woodstove. I used some of the pallet wood but also mixed in a lot of not-kiln dried wood harvested from the forest in general. Such fuel still put off plenty of heat and once the fire’s going, it didn’t seem hard to use the colder slightly wetter fuel.


This is a squirrel’s ass…


So there you have it. The tent (and I) passed a brutal “maiden voyage”. There will be additional stories as I gain experience and camp more.

A.C.

*Note: Amazon gives me a small kickback if you buy something (anything!) from a link on my blog. It costs you nothing but I get beer money out of it.

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Well This Is Embarrasing

It’s the season of giving and I had a present in mind. It was a present for you (all readers). Alas, it’s delayed. Sorry about that.

Unlike most delayed deliveries, I can’t blame supply chain dumfuckery. It’s all my fault. I’ve been doing other shit with my time. What can I say, I’m a busy guy and apparently unfocused. (If I’m honest with myself, the whole “vaccine mandate” breakdown of social norms did a job on me too. One can do the right thing as they see it and yet still emerge from the challenge beaten and weary.)

Y’all deserve a present. I know you’ve been good (for certain definitions of “good”). I also hear stockings have been hung by chimneys with due diligence, fresh snow is exhibiting high albedo under moonlight conditions, and so forth.

But… there was cool shit to do! I bought a fancy tent and wanted to test it. In order to do this I camped out in a legit, no kidding, blizzard; which was both unwise and yet a success. That’s a story all it’s own. Then, I just had to crack open a bottle of tasty bourbon this weekend. Well, you know the story.

My plan was to launch the next chapter of Attack of the Lesbian Activist Squirrels with 12 posts culminating on December 25th. A sort of squirrely 12 Days of Christmas; with Extreme Greeters and disco instead of sugarplum faeries. Unfortunately, today’s the 13th and it’s not ready. Whoops!

Maybe I’ll get it flying next week. Maybe it’ll be a New Years Day present. I don’t know. The intent is there if not the delivery. Santa specifically told me to get my shit together and if Billy weren’t fictional he’d gladly kick my procrastinating ass. Regardless, about a dozen posts (give or take) are in the pipeline.

Thanks for your patience and Merry Christmas.

A.C.

P.S. If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, you may want to read my ongoing serialized novel: Attack of the Lesbian Activist Squirrels. Depending on how you measure such things, it’s about 400 pages. If you’ve got a comfy chair and better sense of humor than a woke jackwagon, you’ll love it. It has all the basics; violence, stupidity, a terroristic skunk, a racist bear, the dark secret of Swedish disco, the origins of the DudeBro, fractional reserve K-cups, the death of Rodney “Wet Pant” Slovosfeld, a trans-species raptor, semi-automatic assault style police shotgun revolvers, the explosive ruination of Billy’s Church of Plenty, a mink speedo worn by a creepy poacher, and of course, an examination of the most powerful force on earth… bullshit. It’s free (unless you care to donate) and if you start reading now, you’ll be up to speed by the time I finish typing the next chapter.

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Old But Relevant Satire

“I make three times as much money as him and I’m totally miserable.”

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Force Versus Choice

I’m not writing this to piss and moan about outrageous fortune. I’m trying to offer what clarity my limited, pointy, little skull has come up with. (Including ending a sentence with a preposition.) This is a thought experiment. If it pisses you off, I’m sorry.

Part 1: Torture:

Early in 2020, I watched a video that asked the simple question “does what is happening right now constitute torture as defined by the Geneva convention of 1949. That seemed a pretty overwrought analysis!

At the time COVID stuff was limited to mask mandates, shutdown schools and businesses, and various forms of “lockdown”. Mandatory injections were not yet in the mix. At the time, nobody had been fired. Though, famously, surfers and joggers had been arrested for being alone on a beach. Meanwhile, convicts were being put out of jails… possibly to make room for surfers? (I forget the link to the video, the point is the question seemed odd at first but then made me rethink my assumptions.)

I didn’t really like the tone of the presenter. But I listened and she articulated her point well. What she had to say changed my point of view. My knee jerk reaction was “of course this isn’t the same as a beating”. But that’s oversimplifying. If you listen to the definition in an actual damn treaty that came about after the Nazis were defeated there was something to it. The ever evolving lockdowns with rules and regulations emanating from not law but more or less just what some guy said under emergency powers for whatever reason… well that’s not business as usual (or at least it wasn’t back then). It started seeming eerily like the definition fit. Torture isn’t always physical. It’s also mental. There’s a spectrum; it might end just short of a bullet to the head but it starts with “privileges revoked at will by an all powerful entity”; especially if they’re temporarily restored for “good behavior” and then revoked again for infractions both real and imagined. That stuck with me.

I was like… yep I’m being tortured and didn’t acknowledge it because that sounds so weird. If nothing else, it steered me toward a different way of thinking. (Before y’all go pedantic on me this is just a thought experiment. I get it that a cloth mask isn’t a crowbar to the teeth. Also there are legal issues about civilian versus soldiers and international war versus domestic oppression and all that. Nor is one bad thing equivalent to a different also bad and much more painful thing. I’m just talking about a way of thinking about events that would have been unthinkable in 2019 and were happening in 2020.)

It’s easy to forget that there was one world in 2019 and a different one in 2020. It bothered me a lot how quickly everyone succumbed. If you’re wondering who’d hide Jews in the attic and who’d make a list to help load the cattle cars… now you know. You also know how far you’ll personally go. Or at least you know how far you’ve already gone.

And yes, for some definition of torture, we’ve been tortured. If some Governor suddenly has the ability to make big changes in our life… based on whatever strikes his or her fancy… that’s the slippery slope. Part of the issue is forcing people to do something that has no clear reason. It’s legal to run a liquor store but not host a church service. Really? Wear a mask from the front door of a restaurant but then you can take it off to eat (because the virus is afraid of dinner?). That’s some weird splitting of hairs going on… or in other words it’s arbitrary and capricious. Most of us know it’s stupid… but how many of us comply anyway? What about closing a corner grocery store but not Walmart? What about chasing down a dude surfing on an empty beach? How about stopping people in one place that has covid from interacting with people in another place that has covid. Why? Is covid a different flavor on the other side of a line? My favorite illogical issue is a curfew. Are viruses like vampires in that they only cause harm at night? What does a clock have to do with a virus?

Consider when a governor (or whomever) somehow has the power to force you to do illogical things… that’s not normal. The dude in a suit announces “you have not done as I recommended, so I have taken away schools, movie theaters, and more. If you continue to be disobedient I’ll shut down your job.” Is that not the same as saying “you are my bitch, do my bidding”. Is it unlike demonstrating power over you specifically so you know you’re not calling the shots?

Remember, this was all before mandatory vaccines were even a glimmer in Fauchi’s lying eye. By the time Biden invented the ability to fire anyone in America who doesn’t get the shot we’d been eating shit almost two years.

Incidentally the 2020 video was about “torture”. A portion of the Geneva convention covers medical procedures without consent. Lets face it:

If there’s a line, a needle in the vein crosses it.

Part 2: Force Versus Compliance:

Forget all about the heebie jeebies I get when the “Geneva convention definition of torture” starts seeming relevant. Here’s a second topic that’s even creepier. (I forgot the source of this too, but bear with me.)

Back in very early 2021, someone somewhere said “the one thing that’s guaranteed not to  happen is some big burly goon grabbing you and holding you down while someone physically vaccinates you with a dart gun”.

Interesting.

So far this is true.

At least in America, all this vaccine mandate stuff has involved forcing you to “choose” to comply. You might be threatened with firing, kicked out of college, hassled at the grocery store, publicly outed, called bad names, hear speeches about “lost patience”, fined, denied services, denied medical care, denied travel, hassled and manipulated in all sorts of brutal ways… but you’re still going to have to personally walk into a venue and offer up your arm. Why? Why not just whip out the tranquillizer gun and fire a round into your ass?

A big guy just grabbing you and holding you down while another one hits you with a dart gun is just not happening. And before you mock me, I’ve seen how reasonable that could be. I’ve worked with livestock. I know precisely how effectively a little brute force can be when creating herd immunity. (See what I did there?)

If they’ve gone this far… what held them back from the next step? Six mounted cowboys and one immoral veterinarian could sweep through a WalMart and drive everyone through a chute. At the chute you’ve got five seconds to produce the vac card or WHAM… vaxxed! Laugh if you will, but does Fauchi seem like a guy that wouldn’t enjoy that?

Of course, there are manpower and logistics issues. Someone somewhere might actually have some sort of kindness left in them. Plus some places and groups are more resilient than others. You might be able to sweep a suburban mall full of gutless puffballs or a college campus full of woke soyboys but ‘aint nobody got the balls to try it in Compton. Now that I think of it, if you pull that sort of shit in a Kentucky hollow nobody would even find the bodies of the vax enforcers. So maybe it has to be limited to the weaker parts of society. A Starbucks, for example.

Is it they know that every so often they’ll encounter someone like me? I’m not immortal, they could get me down if they use enough people. But once it’s on, I’ll give it my best go. It seems only fair to give an opponent a good challenge. Maybe it’s hard to know when a guy like me is in the cattle chute? I don’t look like much and ten beefy cops could get me down but I’d rip someone’s eyeball out on the way to the pavement; just ’cause.

Yet it’s still a puzzlement that nobody is trying it. Mistreat a guy without the vax until he breaks but always always always make him walk to the shot delivery station on his own.  Perhaps there’s a certain line that even the most evil overlords are reluctant to cross?

As far as I know, nobody’s doing it… nowhere. Not China, not England, not Russia, not Japan. There’s something to this. Show up at a vaccine required situation… they’ll turn you away or bitch you out. Why not whip out a hypodermic and throw down right there?

There’s something to it.

Australia is putting unvaccinated people in concentration camps… why?

Australia seems intent on being the worst so think about what they’re doing. Stormtroopers dressed like Robocop. Shields and helmets and no holds barred. We’ve seen videos where they grab someone, throw them on the ground, handcuff ’em… and then thrown ’em in the Paddy Wagon. Why?

Why make a concentration camp at all? It’s expensive to operate a minimum security jail. Why do it?

After they’ve got someone subdued and lying on the ground why not then? If they insist on inflicting the vax… there’s nothing stopping them on the person they’ve just physically beaten.

Yet something stops them. What is it?

For that matter, why did the Nazis make concentration camps? The evil bastards eagerly hunted innocent Jews… but then handed their terrified prey off to a bureaucracy. A pistol weighs 20 ounces and it’s sitting on an SS guy’s hip. A cattle car weighs tons. Is there something wired into the brain that the most unhuman of monsters still needs to feel like their victim chose their fate?


I’ll be honest with you, I have no idea why it is so, only that it seems more important that they break you to compliance than the vaccine hits your bloodstream. If there’s some unplumbed depth of human evil that modern man (so far) hasn’t effected; it behooves us to know what it is and why.


In case you’re wondering what started all this. I was set to rumination by three sources:

The Time is Now: Differentiating “Force” from “Choice”

and

The Babylon Bee

and

Fight Club

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Dreams, Adventure, And Risk: Part 4

I have taken up the hobby of hot-tenting. (A hot tent is more or less a winter specific tent with an internal wood stove.) To facilitate this new adventure I’ve ordered this* and this*. Once I overcame the stroke induced by the price tag I’ve been nothing but smiles since.

It’s gonna’ be awesome!

Like anything else I do, this isn’t for everyone. Just as my beloved TW200 dirt bike can give you a broken collar bone, overnighting in the winter can lead to:

  • Spending too much money on gear.
  • Figuratively freezing your ass off.
  • Literally freezing your ass off.

If you are inspired by me I’m delighted. However, I implore you to go into this with open eyes. A certain personality (myself included at times) can be perfectly happy crouched under a spruce bough in a blizzard… but if you’re of that ilk you already know it. Mother nature is a harsh mistress and she’ll kill you dead if you’re poorly equipped (or mentally unaware) in true winter. I don’t want to hear about it when you are down to eight toes.

As for me, I’m working on the learning curve of new (and quite impressive gear). I’ve already slept overnight and already nature has gone batshit insane on me. Sorry but I don’t have many pictures yet. Then again I don’t have hypothermia. So far so good.

Here are some videos that explain the ridiculous objects I just purchased. Note that they’re filmed in Alaska and Siberia. Also, two of three were filmed in snow. This gear isn’t for snoozing in Florida during a mild freeze.

The first video is from Far North Bushcraft and Survival:

The next two are from Survival Russia:

*Note: Amazon gives me a small kickback if you buy something (anything!) from a link on my blog. It costs you nothing but I get beer money out of it.

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Dreams, Adventure, And Risk: Part 3

Dreams are sneaky buggers. They’ll come up from behind when you least expect it. You’ll be minding your own business when WHAM; the dream is already in your mind.

It’s fuzzy at first. Undeveloped, incomplete. But the idea will grow. You’ll imagine all aspects of it. You’ll imagine all the fun times you’ll have. You’ll imagine the feeling of accomplishment, or beauty, or peace, or fellowship… whatever makes your clock tick is what you’ll imagine. This is good. A man without dreams is already dead.

You’ll try to ignore it. “I can’t do that thing right now. I’m broke. I’m tired. I’ve got to mow the lawn.” Still the idea will grow; the more spirit you have the greater the dream’s pull. Along the way a funny thing happens; the dream grows from your spirit but the spirit grows from the dream. Directed toward healthy ends, the dream is good for you.

Then comes the part where almost everyone fails. They fail to act. Actions don’t have to be grand; even the simplest step on the path is enough… just to take the step is the point. It’s when you begin to shake off life’s inertia. Fail to act, and you’ve done yourself a disservice. The brain learns your dreams are silly distractions. It stops having them. Deny yourself enough times and you’ll stop trusting your own heart. Then, five or fifty years after you’ve already died, they plant your ass in the ground.

Got your attention? Good, I take stupid dreams seriously and here’s a new one for me.


Many moons ago, as a young Curmudgeon, I loved camping in the winter. The forests were all mine. What others perceived as hassles, I experienced as adventure. As a Boy Scout I earned the Year Round Camper patch. I was proud of that. It did nothing to advance rank. I didn’t care. Ranks aren’t my motivator.

Later, as a young man, I’d drive whatever crappy vehicle I owned to nowhere in particular, wander around the frozen wood, sleep somewhere like a vagabond, and return home feeling renewed. It was pointless and I was always alone… which is to say it was deeply meaningful and I became at peace with myself.

I was limited to shitty equipment purchased on a budget of zero. The exception was my sleeping bag. I scraped and saved to buy the best damn sleeping bag I could afford. That was enough. Good boots and a top quality sleeping bag will get you pretty far. Sometimes I’d toss a cheap tarp on top of a snowdrift, plunk my sleeping bag on top, and nestle in as the bag sank into the drift. I’d pull the tarp over me, hope my nose didn’t freeze off, and sleep like a baby.

Time came and went and the distractions of life did what they do; college, and work, and broken down cars, and moving from place to place all seemed important. A job became a career, and there were kids, and marriage (to the world’s most delightful wife!). Day to day focus, took my optional winter camping trips out behind the barn and put a bullet in them. I still camped sometimes. Maybe one campout per winter at best and a lot of camping by canoe. However, a canoe (like my motorcycle) is a creature of warm months. I was generally trapped indoors until the waters thawed enough to float canoes once more.

Recently, I’ve been camping more often. I’ve enjoyed ridiculously easy “State Park” summer camping. Nothing impressive, just a base camp from which to sail my homemade boat or ride my off-road motorcycle. Those simple campouts felt like a “renaissance”. Perhaps the wisest use of my time is to sit under a tree?


All was well until two months ago.

I was sleeping in my wonderful “Supertent“* with my awesome cot*. I was on a motorcycle ride / grouse hunt trip. When I rolled out of bed, it was chilly. I shivered. It was a shot across the logistical bow!

I wound up huddling by the fire cursing at how long the coffee took to heat. It wasn’t a big deal. Within an hour I was nice and toasty. By mid afternoon it was sweatshirt (not T-shirt) weather… but I’d gotten the hint. Winter was coming.

That was to be my last campout of the year. Soon the motorcycle would be stored, unused and inert. The tent too. It was a downer in a tough month. President Potato’s vaccine mandates were worming their way into my life. All has been chaos with society for years. My off grid solo campouts had become less a luxury than a necessary line to sanity. I felt a stab of cabin fever. So soon! Before the first flake of snow I already felt trapped.


This is when the dream snuck up on me and stuck a shiv in my head.

I camped in the winter when I was young and stupid. Why not camp in the winter now that I’m old and stupid?

Why indeed?

I unpacked good memories of winter camping and examined them. I’m no longer that guy. My back aches just thinking about lying in the fucking snow. Was I tough or dumb? Perhaps both. Regardless, laying on snow is officially done for me. I like my cot!

The idea wouldn’t leave. In retrospect the idea has been growing for years. Just simmering beneath the surface.

Something about that morning a few months ago pushed it over the top. Probably because it was paired with the threat of losing my job and the friction of a society that’s slowly crawling up its own ass; the need for escape to nature seems more urgent than ever before.

Do it now!

The Universe was offering the adventure. The heart wanted it, the spirit craved it, and the body was on board so long as the cot came with the package deal. It was the moment when one makes their choice. Does one drift in a state of catatonic loss or take action knowing the attending risk, expense, and hassle?

You already know how I roll. I’ve ordered this*:

And this*:

 

Wish me luck. Things might get interesting!

A.C.

*Note: Amazon gives me a small kickback if you buy something (anything!) from a link on my blog. It costs you nothing but I get beer money out of it.

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