Adaptive Curmudgeon

Four years and one month ago, people were running around wearing pussy hats and setting cars on fire. I thought “these people are hurting, I hope they return to mental health soon.” They had been discussing impeachment since the day after elections some two months previous.

Last fall, I was weary. People in my society and many places all over the world, spent the summer burning cities. They entertained the strange logic that anyone who gathered in a group, unless for purposes of destruction, was “killing grandma”. I thought “it’s sad to see society tear itself apart like this. I can see that folks are suffering.” I also selfishly thought “I hope they come to their senses before we’re all living in mud huts.”

Fall came and I enjoyed it. Fall is my favorite season; with the glorious sights and smells of a world wrapping up prolific summer and preparing to experience the winter season of death. Such a beautiful and bittersweet time. Each moment is precious. Soon it will will be dark and frozen. Everyone knows it too; squirrels store nuts, geese fly south, and I stack firewood.

One sunny afternoon, I sat on a log and talked with the dead. I turned to people whom I’d respected and loved but who’ve moved on. They’d seen madness come and go. What could they tell me? As always, commune with nature and meditation brought peace. A deep contentment came to me.

I was granted peace, but not prophesy. I thought the American people (my society) would speak in November… loudly. Then, rationality would return. Such did not happen. You may place your bets on whether they did not speak or they were not heard. That’s a topic for another day.

What is clear, if anything is clear, is that “will of the people” is not the same in 2021 as it once was. What can be earned can be unearned. It won’t return for generations… if at all.

I still think of that moment of peace. How much better the world would be if each individual human would mindfully accept the quiet forest and sort themselves out? More to the point, if you have done so but those that surround you are still spastic, what is their consternation to you? That seems obvious in retrospect but I was missing it at the time. I’m neither responsible for, nor bear the burden of, a whole world losing itself. Some things are beyond my pay grade. One can only seek to do the best they can with their personal life, given the world in which they live and the times arbitrarily granted them.

Today, a third impeachment effort is underway. All this aimed at a man who is technically not the president. Can you imagine such hate? Can you imagine it of rational origin?

Meanwhile, the man who sits in power is said to have earned more votes than any living being in American history. Imagine such a mandate! If it were true he surely would be the most excellent choice to calm a seething people. “Here’s the guy who earned the most votes in history, let us all relax and be happy.”

So is it true? More to the point, is truth what happens if someone screams a fact at you until you simply scream it back. If I find a man who believes the sky is green, do I need to beat him to death lest others fail to look up and see the sky with their own damn eyes. If it’s self evident that the sky is blue, why would I care about some demented rarity who sees green?

Today, the people who “won” are acting like losers. They remain locked on a goal they chose over four years ago. Can they do nothing more? Impeachment before swearing in, impeachment during office, impeachment after. Is it sane to impeach an election’s loser when the man who earned more votes than any other candidate in history is comfortably in power? Quick, look up. What color is the sky?

We are told we have steady, rational, logical, strong, caring “leaders”. They don’t act like that. They cower like scared children; wrapping faces with fabric and circling buildings with chain link fence. Those of us who breathe free and speak our minds are “subversives”. They speak of hunting us down. Do they fear we’ll look at the sky and declare it the wrong color?

Do winners destroy any with whom they disagree? Is that rational “leadership”? Even kings and popes have detractors… Stalin and Mao had only corpses.

I wonder too if this is a demographic inflection point. Mortality is a hard thing for a human to accept. Maybe some cannot. I observe a large and powerful generation acting in odd ways. As if determined to burn down all that stands before time drags them kicking and screaming from the smoldering ashes to their mortal end. I’ve seen wise and reasoned generational use and transfer of power, this is not it.

There is madness everywhere. It is the true contagion of our times.

Madness is a fact of the time in which we live. None of us escape unharmed. Yet gloom is not mandatory. There is hope. Even as witch burners stack fuel and media soaked bots dream of guillotines, there is hope. There is always hope.

Time does not go in reverse. There is only forward. In a time of madness, as each day follows day; each stampede follows another panic. Hang on and hope. Aspire to still be standing when the pendulum swings back.

These thoughts caused me to change my header’s tagline. A tiny signal. An infinitesimal speck of light in a dark night. It’s nothing, but any port in a storm is a good one. My old tagline, from Orwell, was apt but in the time since I posted it, society has careened off level. I (and many of you) must disengage. Today is bigger than one election in one nation. Today is a good day to think at another level. First comes lust for power and then, if it’s unjustly attained, madness.

Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor and stoic philosopher led the greatest empire of his time. He led it when it was doing well. Sadly, no longer a Republic, yet still strong and stable. Aurelius spent a lot of time admiring and practicing stoicism; honor, self control, respect, etc… Rome eventually grew soft and imploded in a chaotic orgy of destruction from which it never recovered. Aurelius could not save Rome for all time. He only could attend to his time. Which he did. Rome did not fall on Aurelius’ watch. Well done sir.

Here are his words:

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

Do not let the contagion of madness ooze from inflamed masses into your soul. Do well. Live properly. Be at peace with yourself. Good luck to us all.

Situation update: hampered by logistics but still endeavoring to create.

Writing “Attack of the Lesbian Activist Squirrels” is a hell of a lot of work. Here’s a peek at how the sausage is made: Much of my verbiage starts with pen and paper. Other parts begin on my beloved Neo (the bit shovel). The rest is hammered straight into my laptop. That’s followed by a merging process and then endless edits where I change and rearrange every damn word (often three or more times).

The end result is a complex document that was digested through whatever word processors I’ve used and is now properly organized in word processing software called Scrivener. From there it’s backed up in 378,267 locations or I can’t sleep at night.

Scrivener has a bitch of a learning curve and doesn’t like running on Linux but those are my only complaints. It’s probably the best thing for long documents. Word seems to shit itself when documents get too long. Microsoft never seemed to manage subdocuments well. Oh WordPerfect… how I mourn your loss. (Also, one of the worst things about writing big stuff is bad advice about word processors from people who’ve never done it. The world is filled with folks who’ve formatted a three page memo and think this will scale up to a thousand page novel.)

Scrivener isn’t the end. From there I compile the beast into the 300+ page unfinished novel which it is, print it, write all over the fresh printouts, edit more, waste a mountain of paper, and then… more edits. Finally, when all that’s done (or at least done enough that I’ve hit the wall on tweaking it), I slice and dice bits and pieces to cut and paste into WordPress for blog posts.

I’m sure there are more efficient writing methods. My approach sure seems convoluted. But it’s the only method with which I’ve been able to reliably extract the quality I want from the brain I have.

The problem is that my laptop has slowly gotten older and creakier with time. (Like me.) Unlike me, it’s damn near slowed to a halt. It’s frustrating to use. That’s my fault for not upgrading sooner. I knew it was necessary almost two years ago. I dragged my feet with all purchases during the year of spastic fuckery we call 2020. If there ever was a time to let a laptop slide… we just saw it.

Recently, I pulled the trigger on a brand new computer. I about died from analysis paralysis picking it out. Then, it took forever to arrive. That said I was pleased as punch with the mini-pc form factor. I put it up on my sidebar as an Amazon link; on the off chance that anyone wants to buy their own. Supposedly it’s a computational bad ass. All I know is my old laptop is gasping for breath and begging to be put out of its misery. I half expect it to croak before I finish this post.

Sadly, the snazzy new computer arrived in a manner that was… fucked. I could describe the problem in a more technical manner but fucked covers the situation just fine. I made some calls and Amazon is sorting out a return. Supposedly, the cretins that shipped me an electronic disappointment are trying to “fix it”. In 2021, “fix it” means I wait double the lengthy delay for delivery, waste a bunch of my own time trying to suss out the shitpile they initially sent, in the end Amazon/Seller get every penny initially agreed upon, and then they pat themselves on the back for having succeeded on the second try. Good thing they don’t sell parachutes.

It is what it is. Thirty years ago I bought a 486DX from Gateway for a different but equally important project. The service, delivery, and quality was orders of magnitude superior to the psychological beating I’m taking on this computer. Remember this kids: the arrow of history does not simply point one way. We’re all living through the “adapting to a declining society” situations that we saw approaching on the horizon half a lifetime ago.

The Amazon link remains on my sidebar. I think, after this bad start, I’ll still be pleased with my choice. YMMV. I just wanted y’all to know that there have been “issues”. Anything I link to or recommend on my blog is something I’ve personally experienced and approved. Should this all work out, I’ll give a head’s up… sometime in the future. When the mini-pc has been tested and Curmudgeon approved. If it all goes to shit, not only mini-pc link to Amazon but all links to Amazon will disappear from my blog forever. They get one chance to fix this. I suspect they will, but only time will tell.

The standard caveats apply; this product was only driven by a little old lady to church on Sundays, it’s gluten free but causes peanut allergies, and is known to the State of California to cause cancer.

Modern governance is a shitshow because it’s subverted by evil. Evil cannot build. Evil did not obtain consent. It’s such a mess that our society can’t properly support the shitheads in Panem even if we wanted to.

But here’s the real question. How do you know you’re not part of the problem?

Ouch! Hurts right? Well, time for some introspection. If you’re in a spiral of despair because shit’s getting weird, maybe it’s because you’re hoping for some external force to save you. It doesn’t work like that. You have to save yourself.

How do you start? Easy. Build something.

Pissed off about Frankenfoods? Plant a garden.

Pissed off about ammo prices? Load your own.

Pissed off about life in general? Stack some firewood.

Just build something.

God did not put us here to complain about the universe failing to meet our needs. He gave us great big monkey brains to imagine a better way… and a soul to yearn for it.

Build! Plant a seed and grow a better world.

Which brings me to my recent absence. After the horror of 2020 and the brazenness of the election and the slavering craven corruption of January 2021 I was toast. Too much stupid. It burns. I set out to build. Which is to heal.

In my garage, I fired up my welder and… nothing. I just couldn’t do it. My heart wasn’t in it.

I’m building “a cool thing”. It’s in parts all over my shop. But who cares? Another cool toy for me? It’ll be fun to have and more fun to make. But my soul told me I was barking up the wrong tree.

What need is filled if I make “a cool thing”? Not the right one. Better to make a thing which others might enjoy. It’s the dark cold heart of winter. People need to laugh.

I went to my scrap heap and dug through my piles of materials. Every build project starts with the idea and the gathering of materials. I gathered up 26 letters and a pen. I started writing the next chapter of my serialized book “Attack of the Lesbian Activist Squirrels”.

Chapter 10: Thunderdome, is just about done. I’ve written about 47 pages. I expect about 13 posts. Scrivener tells me I’ve picked up and arranged just shy of 80,000 letters. Each and every person, including the dickheads in DC, has access to the same 26 English letters that I do. From those crude materials I have built a story. For I may be weird, or mad, or whimsical, but I am not evil. I can build.

It’ll go live in the next few weeks. I hope you enjoy it. I hope it makes y’all laugh.

And if it sucks? Tough shit. I tried.

Stay tuned and keep on keepin’ on!

A.C.

Watching shenanigans in DC all I can think is “these are messed up people”. They don’t look right. They don’t act right. They don’t talk right. They don’t seem healthy and well adjusted. They don’t seem nice. I can’t imagine them being pleasant company. Nancy Pelosi is a harridan, Mitch McConnel is an embarrassment. Biden is a shell. As much as I liked Trump’s accomplishments, he’s not a guy with whom I’d enjoy a long road trip.

They’re all assholes.

More to the point, they’re evil.

I don’t say that just because I’m pissed off. I say that because of this:

Evil cannot build, it can only destroy.

Nothing we’re seeing out of DC is building. They’re tearing themselves, our society, and a 250-year-old republic to bits. To what end? What is the great accomplishment they’re going to produce out of all this destruction? They’re running around like rats on crack but all they create is activity, not improvement.

They’re not building because evil cannot build.

We were once a global economic powerhouse. Now the house of cards is so weak that politicians and technocrats are messing with market rules. They’re trying (and failing) to protect a hedge fund trying to drive a stock price down. Imagine that, people in power absolutely shitting in terror at a stock’s rise.

In November 2019 we finally became energy independent. In January 2021 we’re rolling that back. Everyone go home. Leave your work undone. Park your heavy equipment and find a job at a solar panel plant. Imagine that, people in power totally pissed off that our oil doesn’t come delivered by ocean tankers from OPEC nations. In the 1970’s OPEC handed us our ass. The middle east is pretty much always at war and most of that id financed by oil. You know what’s best? Best is not having to deal with that bullshit. Youngsters will have to trust me on this, the OPEC embargo sucked. Eventually you might not have to trust me at all. We can experience it all over again. Is it hard to imagine Biden borrowing Carter’s sweater and telling us proles to turn down the furnace? Maybe we’ll all tie yellow ribbons on trees over Iranian hostages too.

Between 1969 and 1972 the US landed six times on the moon. The government cannot do that now. Nobody on Earth can do that right now. Let’s repeat that. Nobody on the entire fucking planet can do what a bunch of nerds in the time before Pac Man did! What happened to building?

Between 1981 and 2011 there were about 130 space shuttle flights. The government cannot do that anymore. Over the last several years private enterprise has made great strides with better and cheaper craft. So, they’re setting out to fuck that up too. Two weeks into Biden-land and SpaceX is under investigation over HR practices. Personally, I don’t give a flying fuck how SpaceX operates so long as they build cool shit. I like cool shit. I like flight and exploration. The twits in power fret that the most important thing about SpaceX is HR practices. It’s because they cannot build.

The government built Hoover dam between 1931 and 1936. It was a big challenge. Serious engineering done by serious people. Hard work done by hard workers. When they were done, a thing that hadn’t existed had been created. Compare that to the years of 2016 and 2020 when the government twisted itself in knots trying to build and not-build a border wall. Trump accomplished upgrading 452 miles of border fence. Then, it stopped when a new band got on the stage. Same as the oil thing. Building is bad; limit yourself to Zoom meetings and spreadsheets. Park your heavy equipment and find a job at a solar panel plant, or SpaceX might need HR people. Why not just collect unemployment and watch Netflix like cattle on a vote farm? One can debate whether either construction is or was wise. That doesn’t matter to me. What matters is that a dam is a whole lot harder than a fucking fence. A century ago we managed the dam but now we cannot build.

If you see something and wonder if it’s evil. See what it can build. Evil cannot build.

Almost done… one more post coming.

So, it’s two weeks into a new administration. I can already see where it’s going. You can too. Everyone from your crazy neighbor, to deep thinkers, to housecats can feel it in the air. We all know.

Does anybody think 2021 is shaping up better than 2020? Why not? That’s the very big question that attracts the focus of my stoic investigations.

Why should everyone be so pissed off? Covid is backed into a corner. Were currently at war with nobody. Gas is cheap (for now), the power grid’s still running, pot is (in some places) legal, and the McRib is back. Tom Brady is apparently immortal and winning football games. My chainsaw has been running like a top. My coffee is hot and my breakfast was tasty.

Why aren’t we delighted?

It’s that consent thing. It mattered. You feel it too. Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. No consent, no just powers. It’s just naked raw ambition. That’s thug shit and we don’t like it.

I was perfectly happy to have my guy lose an election. That’s part of voting. You know you’re sometimes going to lose.

Even after a weird midnight recalibration, I would have been perfectly happy to read all the nerdy details of audits that proved the election was clean. Do an audit like you mean it and I’ll accept odd results like you earned it. I was willing to grant consent, if it were earned. Heck, I might have granted consent if they at least tried to earn it. We know hat that worked out. It couldn’t have looked more crooked if they’d hired Shakespeare to work it into a production of Macbeth.

Right now, in the very early beginnings of the year, we’re seeing why “deriving just powers from the consent of the governed” mattered. Everything that could be “normal” is replaced. A substitution of power for consent. Twitter bans, impeaching a man no longer in office, concertina wire on chain link, protests, some of which are peaceful and some of which are “peaceful”, and so forth. I’m amused to read of weaponized autists blowing a hedge fund to smithereens. Partly, because that’s just about the only news left to read. Because there’s literally no news left in the sea of propaganda.

There is no consent. Those in power crapped in the punchbowl and nobody’s happy. They might, if they had the capacity for self-reflection, regret their actions. But they don’t. They can’t. Once you’ve broke one moral code… the next one is already a done deal.

But here’s where I stop the rant.

Put on the brakes. Slow down. Breathe.

I’m not writing to bitch about it. There are other venues for such things. I’m here to think about it.

Stay tuned…

Two weeks ago, I witnessed the worst in a cascading series of bad elections. You saw it too.

I’m not talking about the outcome; politicians come and go. The election itself was a complete mess. Regardless of your political bent, it was a clusterfuck. Biden may be in the White House without a shot being fired but it’s scarcely a good transition. He’s pretty much the least popular guy to be sworn in since Lincoln. Nobody looks good after this. Even if you’re a Democrat it sucked. If you wanted a strong, respected, person to honorably represent your Democratic Partly aligned interests… you still got a shit sandwich. Hell, even Bush Jr. arrived in better shape than Biden.

A big huge portion (a majority!) of the populace is calling bullshit. A halfhearted basement “campaign” to the White House may create the least popular president anyone has ever witnessed but how can that possibly match with the ultimate recordholder in number of votes?

Can you imagine that? I can’t. I’d like to. I tried. I can imagine a lot. I can imagine talking squirrels. I can see the sun going down and the eyes in my head see the world spinning round. But I just can’t imagine a geriatric potato broke every previous vote record.

Reluctantly, I must digest this new experience. It’s a multi-step process and it’s not optional. Each new time someone pisses on your shoe and calls it rain is either a moment of personal growth or you slowly go mad. (Ask yourself if madness seems in low supply throughout the populace.)

Personally, I always seek the best in a bad situation. If there must be disillusionment I aim to move quickly through cynicism and into stoicism. It is stoic to learn from disillusionment and grow wiser.

Do you remember other steps on the same path? I do. 2020 taught me a whole lot about a great many things. If that’s too radioactive, I’ll mention an experience two years ago. When Epstein was busted (and actually jailed for once) I waved off all the jokes about Arkanicide. I felt reassured. Epstein was in maximum security. The unholy bastard was going to spill the beans so that justice could prevail. Can you imagine I actually believed that? I really did. What a dumbass!

So, is it true? Did Epstein really kill himself? Was 2020 a wise and proportionate response to a new health issue? Did Biden win more votes than any candidate in history?

You don’t have to respond to me. Just ask yourself if the three fit a pattern and if they do, what are you going to do about it?

Back to 2021, the purpose of an election is to determine the will of the people, and thus obtain the consent of the governed. Whatever song and dance we just witnessed utterly failed at that purpose. No matter how the press spins it, consent of the governed was not secured.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

More in my next post…

…and you don’t either. It need not have gone so far, but it has. Waste no more thoughts for what might have been. Nor resignation. Nor remorse. These are moot. Make yourself right and walk forward.

American Thinker has a good idea.

“My guess is that Big Tech thinks it can destroy us by killing our communication avenues.  So let’s fight back.  We can still communicate with each other and get around the ban by dusting off that old fax machine in our closet.

Maybe my fax idea is not workable anymore.  So I challenge our side to look for alternatives and not give in to the censorship crowd.”

What’s happening right now is what sci-fi predicted as “cyber war”. So far it’s not that impressive (losing Facebook and Twitter is hardly the same as losing the local grocery store) but no matter how much they may try to put the toothpaste back in the tube; right now is clearly “something”.

Despair is unwise. It’s better to slowly and intelligently adapt. They can’t stop the signal… but we’ve got to do our part. Feeding on the crap floating by in Facebook’s aquarium of allowed thoughts isn’t sufficient. A free people need more.

Think things out and when you’ve got a good idea… spread it around.

Happy Monday y’all. Enjoying 2021 so far?

I’ve found a video showing the logic behind Nancy Pelosi’s most recent announcement. Impeaching Trump (attempt number 3!) sounds super extra sane to me. In just 10 days Joe “Most Votes In History” Biden will be sworn in. There will be his usual crowd of literally dozens of supporters and the press will have a collective synchronized orgasm. Meanwhile, everyone  in America knows the election was absolutely completely trustworthy. We won’t worry our heads about it anymore. Ten days before inauguration is exactly the moment when a sane and confident leader who’s party is winning would toss gasoline on the fire.

Best of luck to California’s own Dean Wormer.

Who knew? 2021 is making 2020 look tame… which is saying a lot!

Without getting into the weeds, let me connect a few dots just to keep this post manageable. Pence pulled a Judas, shit got kinetic but not too kinetic, and I drank a bottle of Champaign to celebrate my people acting like citizens instead of subjects. For the third night in 2 months went to sleep thinking “this shit is going to get sorted out”. For the third night in 2 months I woke up to “the narrative has won and deplorables can suck it”. You ever get that feeling that going to sleep isn’t worth it because the next morning is going to have even more dumb news?

The election “process” continued overnight. Nothing says “this is a good idea” like things Congress does at 3:00 am. The people are livid. So, the best thing to do would be to meet in the very building had just been occupied by a crowd of angry citizens and do exactly what they don’t want.

Personally, I’m averse to pissing off people in groups of several million at a time. No matter what side I might have favored, I’d have been like “fuck this, lets everyone cool down for 48 hours”. This is why I’m not in congress. (Reflecting on the “lets do this thing right away” approach politicians apply to their actions, I start to understand why so many of them have crappy personal lives. But, I digress…)

By dawn, Biden, who everyone seems to have forgot about in the chaos, was super-extra-officially the complete ruler of the universe. Anyone still harboring suspicions about vote counts was served a nice steaming plate of “fuck you”. Did ya’ all notice that virtually nobody actually cares about Biden? I’ve also noticed swamp dwellers completely gave up on “the election was clean” and shifted gears to “it’s too late, blow me”. Funny that.

Anyway, the Orange Menace was gone. Gone where? Who knows. Doing what? Who knows. All anyone knows is that he was yoinked off Twitter by “People Who Are In Charge”. I don’t do Twitter but I’m oddly impressed that yoyos in a media conglomerate have the balls to censor the fuckin’ President. You wonder if they ever think about what they’re doing? Facebook went full retard but that’s just another day ending in “y”. Every piece of the media is going full press propaganda but… I mean what else can they do? So, everything was just as it had been 24 hours earlier… sorta’.

I shrugged my shoulders and worked on the most important issue of the day. The damn chicken waterer keeps freezing up. That shit’s a serious challenge! Whatever’s going on… out there… among those who would legitimately represent or illegitimately rule… it’s not going to feed my chickens. Also, I was hungover.

I figured it had been a great finale. Now we’d have a slow suck of stupid until the weather gets warm and people go back to their hobby of burning cities. I was wrong! At this point anyone who’s trying to predict anything is wrong all the time.

A video appeared from the man that’s still the Commander in Chief of the US Armed Forces but apparently too dangerous for Twitter. It was either an oddly phrased concession or a promise “this ‘aint over yet”. People view media and see whatever they want to see.

What was your opinion? The link is here. (YouTube link, not Twitter). I wouldn’t recommend you watch it; your favorite propaganda outlet has already told you what you should think about it and you might very well agree. Being a contrarian, I watched it… all two minutes. My takeaway was the most interesting thing is what it doesn’t say and how it goes about not saying it.

Traffic analysis is a powerful skill. What I saw was the uncanny valley. It looked weird. I’ve seen Muppets look more convincing. Also, I didn’t hear the words “Biden” or “I concede”. The video came from an unusual source, arrived on a “locked account”, has a green screen background (or so it would appear), sounds decidedly un-Trumpian (which is a word I just coined), and has low resolution. I got no idea what the hell it means.

My Windows computer will display it. My iPad won’t. WTF is that all about?

The whole thing has a deeply odd and robot-like feel to it. That’s nuts because Disney can make Wal-E huggable so I assume even the fakest video doesn’t have to look fake? I’m not a video editor but it looks more like a Lego figurine reading a script than Captain Talkative in all his extemporaneous Orangeness.

I’ve got a theory that’s just as supported as any statement you’ll hear on network news. The video was broadcast by Big Time Television in 1988. They sent through a time portal to “the apex point of bullshit”… causing it to hit Twitter in 2021.

My theory is as good as any. What an absolutely beautiful and awful and fascinating and horrifying time in which we live.

Big Time Television; day after day making tomorrow look like yesterday:

https://youtu.be/-oF9pnIupZ4