Adaptive Curmudgeon

Let’s talk about homestead phenology, shall we?

Winter was average but with deep snowpack. I had expectations of flooding and emaciated deer this spring. That didn’t happen. In fact nothing happened as planned, partially because all the humans acted weird. Like it or not, humans are part of the environment.

The snow came deep and early last fall. It messed up the lake ice but gave snowmobilers orgasms. Last October I found myself “tire kicking” a few used snowmobiles. It was a near miss. I only barely pulled myself away. “Remember, they’re useless much of the year.” I admonished myself. (I also test drove an Argo and had so much fun that I named it Battleduck before I welded my wallet shut and ran away. I test drove several machines last fall. It was part of my planned walkabout. More on that this summer.)

Winter 2019-2020 was so epic for snowmobilers that I mildly regret not going for the snowmobile. Even if the clunker I was pondering died after one season, it would have been worth it. It’s a diem I did not carpe.

The messed up lake ice put ice fishermen off their feed and also cancelled a Canadian ice road trip I was pondering. Snow insulated the ice which kept if from getting rock hard and thick. (Ugh… did I just write that phrase? Get your mind out of the gutter.) It’s easy to tow an ice shack over a foot thick slab of concrete hard ice but it’s a bear to drag it through three feet of slush with no clear base.

The upside is that nobody dumped a truck or ATV into the lake. Or at least none that I noticed.

Snowmobiles kept at it much longer than usual. A few weeks back, in a fit of cabin fever, I was out on my motorcycle (in very very very unsuitable weather). I wound up running parallel to a snowmobile, both of us going about 40MPH. That’s something I’m sure neither of us has done before.

Deep snow is usually hard on deer but they look good to me. They also don’t give a fuck about anything. When I cruise dirt roads they are reluctant to dive back into the snow. They look at me as if to say “Really? We’re on spring break. Take a different road.”

I’ve seen no fawns yet. The elk report is classified. I keep waiting to see the bears come out of hibernation. During skunk mating season, one decided to raid the catfood. He’s dead now. The cranes arrived and have been having dinosaur sex all week. I’ve seen a few robins, and the birds are starting to sing… though only halfheartedly. I’ve seen snow geese but only a few Canadian geese and no ducks. The avian damn hasn’t yet burst.

The snowpack has mostly ebbed without drama. The best possible way to go. Melt a little, freeze a little, inch by inch. No flooding and that’s nice. (If I had quarantine simultaneous with a damp basement that would suck!) If I were in New England, weather like this would have been great for a sugarbush.

The woodpile held out. Yay me! (I purchased some wood too.) One bummer is that the woodstove needs servicing. It took the fun out of wood heat the last month. Obviously I’m not going to try to arrange a house call under current conditions. Also, the last time I had professional service, it turned into a fiasco. (Read: Wood Stove Repair As A Career. Someone Please Do It.)

The FedEx guy got his truck stuck in my yard. He did it almost exactly in the location, calendar date, and time of day where I got mine stuck very deep last year. It’s apparently a tradition now. Social distancing was maintained by a chain that had more than 6′ between his truck and my tractor.

I tried to jump the gun on some forest burning. Everything is wet so nothing will get out of hand. It wasn’t the best or most efficient timing but it was all that I could manage. Controlled burns on private land are hard. At the exact millisecond that biomass will carry a moderate fire someone in a suit freaks out “AAAAHHHHHHH HIGH FIRE DANGER…. WE NEED MORE MONEY!” The guys in suits live several hundred miles south of me and have no idea there’s a north/south gradient… in anything. They stop the supply of burn permits the exact moment it’s dry from the view of the office they never leave. Also, controlled burn season is often cut off because of national personnel issues, budgetary situations, or whatever is going on in offices I don’t know about. It goes like this:

“I’m Curmudgeon, I’d like to burn an acre in Bumfuck Nowhere on the Canadian border.”

“NO CAN DO! There’s a drought in Louisiana.”

“Um… Louisiana is not adjacent to Canada. You own a snowmobile; ever trailered it to Louisiana for a trail ride?”

“High risk in Louisiana means our personnel are all tied up with that.”

“Fires down there exceeding local ability?”

“Potential fires might exceed local ability.”

“But…”

“Buy a woodchipper you deplorable scum.”

Discussions like that are why I’m slowly using less fire on my property and more glyphosate. Don’t blame me, blame the system.

So, there’s this flu thing going on. You may have heard about it ? It’s in the papers. With half the nation’s workforce off line and the rest in tatters, I figured the default answer to anything asked of anyone would be no. I burned while it was still “winter”; far too soon but early enough that even the most paranoid bureaucrat can’t cut me off. It worked… sorta. I made a lot more smoke than usual and only got about half the biomass knocked down. But that’s enough. It’ll make me feel safer in August and that was the goal.

My camping gear lies stacked and sad next to the door. Called to muster and then cancelled… several times now. Spring camping may become fall camping. Who knows? Such are the variations that make life interesting.

One more note: if you aren’t looking at the sky every day, you’re missing something important. Every day go out there and look at a sky without contrails. Soak it in because it won’t last.

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Winston Churchill

Y’all have probably received 10X the “news” that I have; good and hard too. Sifting through the propaganda, it’s probably hard to find a silver lining. But I see one. I’m a ray of sunshine dammit! I sense a turning point as things turn from serious to flaky.

Bear with me as I theorize, when things were serious there was a brief time when politicians did one of two things:

1. Vanish and hide.
2. Rise to the occasion.

That’s when you knew shit was real. Actual adults did adult things. Unserious losers and  posing dipshits (aside from “journalists”) were noticeably absent. (Heard anyone bitch about global warming or 57 flavors of sexuality lately?) When I say “adults were doing things” what I mean was that nobody was dealing with this kind of dumbass (Hank Johnson, D. Georgia):

Now, as things gradually approach “handled”, human dead weight is coming back out of hiding. They were useless in the clinch and are now trying to get in front of the parade so they can claim they led it. This results in weird things that have nothing to do with contagion but everything to do with bureaucratic compliance.

That’s what I see when I look at the matrix. YMMV.

My first evidence of this is anecdotal. I just heard someone in a suit say “this is the new normal”. Whenever I hear an otherwise sentient being say something that dumb I know the truth is absolutely the opposite. (Same goes for economic predictions that start with “this time it’s different”.)

Whatever situation we’re in, it’s temporary. It’s going to change and I think for the better. (Not yet, there are still many days of deaths to endure.) I’ve seen it happen. In particular, I’ve seen the Carter and Obama economies change from “frozen this way in cement” to “launched like a rocket”.

Things get frozen because of people who can’t imagine anything but what they’re already doing. In non-emergencies it leads to stasis. While the dim ones are in control, things stay in a long slow glide-path to pathetic. Ask Soviet Russia about their dynamic and fast paced life in the 1970’s. Or Detroit about it’s awesome financials. Or California about how it’s managing water for human consumption.

Today’s situation is a contagion so it cannot be controlled by human fossils who lock things up in stasis. This is why we’ve gone from doom and gloom to two promising courses of treatment and vaccine trials in less time than it took bureaucrats to manipulate the diagnostic testing supply chain.

It’s a side effect of the nature of bureaucratic hiring. The ideal middle manager can only extrapolate current trends, they cannot suss out change or adapt to it. If they could, they’d have been removed from the chain of command long ago. Organizations eliminate rabble rousers who don’t know “how we do things here”. (And before you take this into something large scale, I’m not talking about Trump and his daily dog and pony show with doctors in tow. I’m talking about little bureaucracies and less than agile businesses and even local town politics.)

A second indicator is weirdness in “enforcement”. People intent on protecting their lives and their loved ones avoid stupid shit. People getting on the bandwagon after it’s already in motion are all about stupid shit. Look for “letter of the law” enforcement.

I haven’t experienced any of this personally. I’m in voluntary self quarantine and don’t give a flying fuck what some politician says. They can say “lockdown” or “house arrest” or “we’re passing the anti-toilet paper hoarding act of 2020” but none of it means anything at my scale. I just keep doing what I’m doing… none of which is interesting.

So look for stupid, irrelevant, knee jerk, lemming-like bullshit as a sign the sea change is happening. When people go all “letter of the law” it’s just fools enjoying the dopamine hit of compliance. The activity of survival is gradually shifting back to auto-pilot.

Here’s the now famous video of arresting a paddleboarder for violating “stay at home orders” There is no way in hell this paddleboarder was spreading contagion. Are we worried fish will get the flu? Anyone with a lick of sense would see a solo man several hundred yards from any other human, and simply ignore him. I submit that two weeks ago that would’ve happened. Now it’s all about compliance and not contagion. It leads to a dude in nature getting hassled at great expense and with lots of photogenic wheel spinning. Those two boats are filled with people who know they’re doing something stupid but now they’re not truly serious about a life threatening illness. Lacking a real concern they lack the backbone to use judgement.

https://youtu.be/Gqen1TQXe6E

Other examples involve standing at the border off a state that already has contagion within it (as do all 50 states) and stopping people from a different state that also has contagion. Remember, so long as the car’s windows are rolled up, they might as well be hermetically sealed. So stop them, roll down the window, and do a little song and dance about “respect my authoritah”… what the hell, why not give ’em a hug and lick the steering wheel too? Two weeks ago nobody wanted anything to do with that; there was a real question if cops would even show up to work. Now they’re present and doing dumb things.

Another sign of a tide turning is governors making dumb decision.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D. Michigan) threatened doctors against the use of of hydroxychloroquine. Why? Because we weren’t serious enough to tell her to shut the hell up and sit at the kids table. If you’re in a pitched battle with death, you don’t ignore possible solutions. If a doctor has an idea that you might be cured if you shove a kazoo up your ass and rub broccoli in your armpits you at least listen. “Really? What evidence do you have for the kazoo treatment? Someone get me a kazoo just in case.” When we’re not serious, politicians get on a kick of saying “no”. “Those kazoos are not medically acceptable because they didn’t have the medical device tax. I control the medical kazoo supply.”

Governor Steve Sisolak (D. Nevada) governor did the same thing. An executive order limiting the use hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus patients. Why? Because respect my authoritah!

Here’s good news; both reversed course in about a week. I think both banned on March 24th and realized they were in the wrong on March 31st. They both developed minimal self awareness and that’s better than going full jackbooted thug.

Look for other signs that the serious people are (already!) in retreat.

One example is curfews. Apparently contagions, like vampires, only operate at night.

Another is “shutting down” empty wilderness areas like Death Valley for example. (This gambit was tried in several budgetary shutdowns, it’s a common approach.) I’ve been to Death Valley (and loved it). I interacted with precisely zero people. Because it’s fucking Death Valley and there’s not a lot of people there.

Here’s a hint, if it involves driving a sealed car in the middle of nowhere or tents in the backcounty… just leave them alone. Stopping it is about compliance not contagion.

By the way, I get the idea of shutting down tightly packed places like Old Faithful or a the Smithsonian. I’m talking about dispersed recreation. Just look at that guy (photo of Death Valley); he could fucking explode and nobody would be affected. Stopping him has nothing to do with contagion. Ask Cartman.

One last note. If you’re in the country and the sky is clear, go look at it. A sky without contrails is an amazing thing. Take it in because you may never see it again. I’ve seen sky without contrails only now and after 9/11. Enjoy the little things.

I’ve tried to write about good humored stoicism, but I’m too irreverent; words fail me. When it comes down to it, nobody beats the Queen. It’s worth listening to her. Spare 4 minutes and take heart.

Hat tip to Never Yet Melted.

I’m sorry but technical difficulties just kicked me in the balls. Announcements of upcoming squirrel verbiage were incorrect. Damn!

Please disregard any squirrel related news today.

Here’s a biostatistic: it must get worse before it can get better. (If you wish to be pedantic, argue over “must” versus “will”.) I thought it would happen sooner. I was wrong. It took this long for exponents to do what exponents do. We lose about a thousand people daily. This doesn’t surprise me but I forget how few people understand math or risk. Nor did I expect folks to go overboard in the panicky run up to this moment. (Toilet paper and two trillion dollars?)

Something I did expect; snowflakes marinating in social media do not handle risk well. No death is irrelevant, but each of us is mortal. We must ponder death and understand. If death (as a concept) is not accepted on the path to adulthood, you get adults who make strange decisions about risk.

Regardless, the imperative is always the same: keep your head. Aside from dumb bullshit like toilet paper, there’s a darker sign that heads are not being kept.

We are seeing another cyclic rise of the Jew hunter.

Let’s back up a bit and mention where this is all coming from. My first exposure to this crop of Jew hunters was in an innocuous location… an ATV discussion board. You’ll find Jew hunters where they don’t belong, because they belong nowhere. It’s part of their empty souls. If they belonged somewhere, they’d be busy living life and leave us alone. Not long ago it was (famously) knitting discussion boards. This year, self-generating within panic, I saw them first on ATV boards.

This post is too serious. Here’s a happy aside:

Mother nature is dragging her feet but spring is finally approaching. I’ve seen the first robins, the first migrating geese, the cranes…

Oh how I like cranes! They’re not particularly common but they make up in presence for what they lack in number. Two of them cavort near my house. They arrived three days ago and made damn sure everyone knew about it. Giant birds that loudly remind us they’re the dinosaur remnant. I love ‘em! They hang out for several weeks having raucous dinosaur sex, and then (usually) move further north, where they settle down to raise 2.2 kids and drive minivans. Sometimes they forgo the flight into Canada and nest nearby. As with humans, once there’s a nest full of obligations to manage, they shut the hell up and live quietly. It is only early spring when they’re teenagers having a kegger. I like seeing four-foot-tall creatures flying overhead; low, slow, loud, and huge… God’s avian version of the A-10 Warthog.

(For an audio track of my backyard, click this.)

Back to my story: To distract myself from the slow spring breakup, I started checking ATV trail reports. I set out to collect an informal list of what trails still sport snowmobile snowpack to the north, what trails are dry and runnable to the south, and what’s in-between. This would map the purgatory zone of half-thawed mud season; the place where I find myself.

ATV people and snowmobile people are not political, nor are they dour. They just want to talk about their favorite toys. I enjoyed countless posts with photos of happy people perched on expensive machines. Most posts went something like this:

“Enjoying social distancing on Rock Ridge trail. The low elevation initial section is a little soft, so get in there early in the morning. Up high it’s rock solid and the snow’s mostly out. Here’s a scenic picture I took of a cool rock formation. Hit a tree on the way back out. I guess I’ll buy a new mirror. LOL. Great weekend!”

That post is a treasure trove of information. It’s also entirely filled with joy. Normally, a post like that will fall on a welcoming group of hearty, like-minded, souls. Responses like this:

“If a Polaris can do it, it’s an easy trail. This summer I’ll show you how it’s done on my Can Am.”

“Is that the rock Dave hit last year?”

“Yep, that’s why Dave bought his new Can Am. I bought Dave’s old machine. It’s is still in pieces in the garage.”

“Tell Dave to put some rock repellent on his Can Am.”

“I think I’ll try Rock Ridge next weekend.”

“Hurry. The first part is about to turn to oatmeal. If it’s over 40 don’t try.”

“I heard Curmudgeon bitching about the cranes. It’s probably thawing right now.”

“What about Beer Can Canyon? That’s further south.”

“I heard Ralf say it was already dry. Good place. Worth the time to trailer there.”

Notice the comradery. No politics. Just a happy group sharing happy times.

This is where the Jew hunter arrives.

The Jew hunter loathes even the idea of people living lives unrelated to the Jew hunter. Jew hunters have a character flaw: they want to make everyone else bend to their will. One method they use is to find a rule, viciously inflict it on others, and smugly preen about their moral superiority while doing so. It’s a repulsive failed personality. It could be some asshat turning the HOA into a thuggery or it could be the real deal; someone pointing out Jews to the Germans. Bad behavior is done on purpose and with pride. Malice inflicted falls on a spectrum but the motivation is always the same; pleasure at messing with someone else’s life coupled with the (false!) pretense that doing so is morally superior.

Here’s how it arose in the discussion thread:

“Nobody should be driving ATVs right now. Haven’t you heard governor’s directive 283(b)2?”

The micro-tyrant has seized on COVID as a tool. It’s only a tool to facilitate acting like the jackass they are. Not differentiating logic from emotion, bystanders honestly discuss the merits of the idea.

“The directive does not apply to outdoor activities more than 6’ apart.”

“Watch out for Dave and that rock, they got a lot closer than that.”

“Clause 27/b of the directive says we can drive an ATV during a quarantine?”

The Jew hunter has been watching:

“You’re putting everyone at risk. You’re spreading COVID.”

The discussion becomes a back and forth:

“How the hell is riding alone going to spread a virus?”

“What about all the people you infect while traveling?”

“I drove there in my truck. Do you think I use a bus to trailer my ATV?”

“What about the food you bought? The gas?”

“I brought a sandwich. Self-serve gas pumps.”

A few hearty souls try to help out.

“Gas is cheap right now. W00t!”

“The stores need the gas sales. I’m sure they appreciate it.”

The Nazi hunter is hyped up on their moral superiority.

“You touched the gas pump.”

People who live in reality aren’t having any of it.

“It’s a gas pump. I wore gloves. Do you lick the card reader when you buy gas?”

None of this matter. A sentient adult can pump gas and travel without issue, but the Jew hunter doesn’t care about COVID. Their goal is compliance.

“If you wreck what about the rescue people? Hospitals are overworked. It’s just not safe.”

Eventually the thread goes dark. I noticed the same thing in several places; discussion groups about 5^th wheel campers, fishing boats, motorcycles, bowhunting…

I tuned out. So, did everyone else. ATV people are still riding trails but now they feel oppressed. The Jew hunter has his sights on them. Posting happy photos of your peaceful sojourn might attract the Jew hunter. Will the neighbor will rat you out if he sees your ATV trailer leave the driveway? Is there some section of the governor’s announcement you misread? After a lifetime wandering the forest and never needing help, is this the day when an ATV trail will lead to an ambulance ride? How does one spread germs while pumping unleaded?

They’re cowed. The Jew hunter has pried into their lives.

I don’t like where this goes. We hear rumors and unreliable media about extreme cases. Are cars with license plates from State X stopped at the border to State Y? 99% of this is rumors and the rest is bullshit but logic doesn’t matter. We all know State X and State Y both have the virus. But it feels better to think the virus came from those people over there and so we should hassle them.

Mostly it’s about hating those rich obnoxious bastards from State X. Or keeping the lid on those Neanderthal meatheads driving ATVs in the forest. Or fretting over the scumbag who wants to go fishing. The only thing that appears universally accepted is sitting on your ass feeding on a diet of social media and bad journalism.

Signaling your superiority by hassling the other is irresistible to the wrong sort of mind. It goes to dark places.

When the weather is right, I’m going on a walkabout. Through practice and natural inclination, I can do it without interacting with another human. It’s merely a logistical challenge and an easily met one. ATV riders, fishermen, hunters, and so forth can handle a virus just like camping in grizzly country. A legitimate risk requiring appropriate precautions but no reason to sit inside moping.

If society is sane, I’ll blog happy stories about my walkabout. So will the ATV people. If the Jew hunters are in apex, you’ll hear little from anyone. It’s a shame because nobody wants to be in a joyless society. Except, of course, the hollow, empty, scolds of the Jew hunting sort. Fuck them!

A.C.

P.S. Smarter people than me long ago described how to evaluate constraints on liberty. “Jews in the Attic” is a very wise method.

I’m fascinated by this silver hoard. It affected my breakfast. Here’s a photo:

That’s a stash of 293 silver coins. About 1,800 years ago, some dude buried them in what is now Switzerland. The timing is interesting. AD 200 is just about the last era when Roman coins were fully silver. After that, the Roman government debased their coins. They inflated the fuck out of their currency; good and hard. Eventually Roman coins were nothing but bullshit and hope. Of course, the Romans lacked the technology for our impressively, almost cosmic, levels of currency debasement. “It’s electronic data representing debt.” (You thought inflation was new?) At any rate, the coins have actual value and that would be true in all times. (This is in addition to the obvious historical and numismatic interest.)

It got me thinking. What would I bury if I had anything of value? A mason jar full of greenbacks? Why? That shit’s bled so dry it’s barely worth anything now. For example, suppose some farmer in 1920 buried half a year’s salary in greenbacks. It would be about $1634.70. If the farmer knew math he might change it out to silver at “then prices” of a $1.30 an ounce, leaving 1,257 ounces of silver. Who wouldn’t want 85 pounds of silver? That’s about $17,000 at current prices. The moral of the story is this; burying currency is basically setting it on fire but burying silver is taking a risk that someone else will enjoy it but not you. (Put another way, nobody’s going to buy futuristic space beer with a green slip of paper buried by an irrelevant blogger 1,800 years ago.) Luckily, it’s just idle thought. I have nothing of value to fret over… or at least nothing I’d bury to hide from Barbarian Hordes. I’ve got a freezer full of bacon; priceless but not a good thing to bury.

I read on the news that the government is going to “fix” infectious disease by squatting over the nation and defecating $2,000,000,000,000.00 in debt. Is this the same money that was going to change the weather as a Green New Deal? I doubt viral DNA will recognize the gesture, but I didn’t expect you could use money to change the weather either.

I guess you can’t expect mediocre minds to think up anything better. Since Congress is a corralled herd of mediocre thinkers, they’re going to keep shitting money. Meanwhile, there isn’t 2 trillion of anything in your personal experience. Molecules in a burrito? Grains of sand in the Sahara? Our government just pissed away a number beyond human scale.

If I get myself a hunk of that “free money” what would I bury for archaeologists to find in 1,800 years? Green paper representing data that designates debt? An iPhone? Tax forms? Ammo in calibers long forgotten? Nope, none of that. There’s only one thing I’m going to bury in 2020 and that’s my dead dog’s ashes. (Waiting for the ground to thaw.) Let the future archaeologists ponder that one.

Back to the poor bastard that buried the coin hoard… he was a baller eh? The pile was roughly half the annual salary of a Roman legionary! I’d love to have a shoebox with half the annual salary of a Navy SEAL. What did our guy do with it? He buried it. And then what? He died.

Seems like a waste doesn’t it? Dude’s got a wad, he buries it with some sort of plan in mind, and then he gets whacked. For extra irony I wondered if he got nailed by an epidemic. Unfortunately, he buried his shit after the Antonine Plague (year 180) and before the Justinan Plague (year 541) so it wasn’t likely an epidemic. Lucky bastard! I’ll just assume he died when an ox fart exploded the hut where he was sleeping. (It’s my imagination, I get to make the rules.) Then, through the rise and fall of empires, nations, cultures, languages, and a brief horrific moment called the disco craze, his wealth just sat there.

Such a shame. He never got to spend it on hookers and blow. It was too early in time to buy a motorcycle. He didn’t use it to make the down payment on a nice little starter castle. Aside from sex, motorcycles, and a fortress; what’s the point of money?

Why was I pondering this? Because I’m in quarantine. Society is giving me a chance to avoid whatever crud is carried by Gladys and I’m taking it. Even if this isn’t the zombie apocalypse it’s at least a full-dress rehearsal for when the space aliens/Canadians/weaponized elk attack. And that means I have to allocate my scant resources in a different way right now.

What am I doing with my tiny bit of wealth? Short answer is “not burying it”. At some point, the time is now. How about a global pandemic of hyperventilating people who are bad at math and hopped up on social media? Is that not a good time to you use the food and resources you squirreled away? Why not?

Tomorrow doesn’t always come. Ask our pal with his bag of Roman silver. Yes, the ant stored food while the grasshopper fucked off… but the ant followed through. The ant ate the food in winter. He didn’t put it in a pile and lay on it like a dragon. If not now, when?

A few years back I liquidated my chicken flock (they were delicious) and now eggs are scarce. What to do? Do I go to the store and queue up with the other putzes trying to score a dozen eggs? Give that hag Gladys another chance to infect me? Fuck no! Use your stores. I dusted off some of my older cans of Mountain House. I hate to use them. They cost so much per ounce that I only use them while camping. Or perhaps for the end of the world? They make a pretty bang up scrambled egg breakfast. (Especially when paired with a shitload of freshly cooked bacon.)

If you’re the ant, remember the ant followed through. If there doesn’t come a time to use what you stored, you might as well be burying Roman silver.

Also, If you didn’t store, it’s too late. There is a time to reap and a time to sow. You don’t need more guns and more ammo and more bacon right now. You need what you’ve got. (OK fine, there’s never a bad time to buy ammo…. but there are better times and this ‘aint one of them.) If you’re scurrying to “stock up” at this particular moment, you’re doing it backwards. Stock up in times of plenty. Consume in times of disrupted supply chains. Whatever you do, don’t die in an Ox-fire, taking with you the location of the silver which will now only serve to amuse bloggers two millennia in the future. Kick back and be happy with what you stored… or learn what you should have stored but didn’t… but don’t bury a damn thing. Eat it all!

Happy freeze-dried eggs with fresh bacon y’all,

A.C.

P.S. I’ve already ordered chicks for summer. I love me some eggs for breakfast. It was always my plan to gear up again and now I’m a little more motivated.

Greetings from the most current end of the world. Are you chafing under the oppressive yoke of jackbooted thugs? Do you fret that political schemers are expanding their power (as opposed to the magic long ago imaginary time when they weren’t expanding their power)? Or are your merely taking generic flu season precautions with a bit more gusto? Perhaps while idly noting the press employs “journalists” who can’t do fractions yet write articles about infectious disease modeling? For me, it’s the latter.

Let me go on record as saying regular flu is awful and Ebola about made me shit my pants, but this is a fart in a windstorm. I may be wrong. Time will tell. In August, if this isn’t starting to feel like Y2K, I might reconsider. I predict that by late summer the press will be bored with articles about toilet paper and go back to baying about the imminent impeachment of Trump. What reason this time? Who knows? Whatever new improved reason they’ve invented from whole cloth will surely be entertaining. Secret Bolivian Nazi collusion amid dead voters on Facebook in Chicago?

If not, and we all die, I’ll acknowledge my error in judgement. Also, I’m comfortable supposing COVID19 (which is inexplicably less racist than calling a flu that originated in Wuhan the Wuhan Flu… because Orange Man Bad) is neither shit nor a fan but I’m taking prudent measures. I remain in voluntary self-quarantine (and not a bullshit half-ass version either).

I’ve been through several dozen flu seasons (you have too). They all suck, especially if you have kids. Public schools dip children in a bath of what I can only assume is Calcutta ditchwater and snot. Then they send them home; uneducated, indoctrinated, and drooling. It’s like having a kid in college, but with more germs. Meanwhile, Gladys at work sneezes her unholy pestilence on your workspace and the pierced wonder at the coffee shop shares her lack of hygiene with your coffee cup.

You can set your clock by it. Each year, around this season, everyone does everything they can to deliver disease directly to my face. Each year I withdraw a bit hoping to avoid it. Sometimes it works. Other times it doesn’t.

This year is different. I’m seeing a teeny tiny bit more considered behavior. Faced with a flu that is theoretically devastating (but still an unrealized threat), everyone turned the dial to eleven and freaked out. Most of it is pure bullshit but there’s a core understanding I like. Everyone is on board with my way of thinking; if you’re sick, stay the hell away from me. It’s a motto we can all appreciate!

Which is to say, this is the first fake end of the world that has been in my bailiwick. No wonder the media is awash in fake end of the world stories… they pick their own reasons to freak out and that means they can freak out over the things they like. This is why they’re prone to hyperventilating over Nazis. It’s some 75 years after WW2 but flaking over Nazis is fun for them. I finally get it.

In my next post I’ll explain how this relates to ancient Roman gold.

I’ve seen this movie before. You have too. It’s easy to forget but there’s a ready aid to recollection. Deliberately keep the events of the day at arm’s length. Perspective reminds us that most “momentous” events are forgotten immediately, the rest are forgotten gradually. Only a fraction leave a mark.

Here’s one example among many; the great depression left its mark but Y2K didn’t. Ironically, if you dig up news of the time, the opposite appears true. During the great depression the word they used for their momentous event was “just another shitty day”. In modern parlance that’s “this is the new normal”. It was a long slow transformation. One could experience it yet not even recognize what was happening. On the other hand, newspapers (remember them?) from late 1999 describe a people fretting that Y2K was lurking under their bed at night. Y2K loomed, it could have been huge, it wasn’t, it passed, it was forgotten. We know this. People in December 1999, did not.

The memory of past fads and mass movements makes you seem odd. Keep the press at bay and the phone on silent. In a few years you will will note but not swim in the swirling currents of public opinion.

This is why I privately mourn a dead dog and publicly write of spilled soda. I do this while pandemic is on everyone’s mind. I deliberately snub the gorilla in the room.

Why? Because the bastard doesn’t merit my respect.

Don’t get me wrong, gorillas are dangerous. I didn’t say ignore the brute. Show some damn sense! Never turn your back on him. Take precautions, handle his shit, and then carry on. That’s the adult way to meet any challenge.

This gorilla, infectious disease, is a once mighty adversary. In his heyday, he was a genuine bad ass; racking up a long and storied record of suffering and death. Even now, he’s no wimp. There will be suffering. There will be death. That’s what gorillas do. But we’re up for the challenge.

No death is insignificant and no suffering is irrelevant. But mankind has recently fought this gorilla and won. Won hard.

In the last two centuries, humanity learned to plumb toilets, bathe frequently, manage our food, vaccinate, and so forth. We beat the gorilla senseless. Our population went from a billion to nearly eight billion. We did it with flush toilets and soap. We also benefited from a handful of very smart folks in lab coats that regularly curbstomp this particular dumbass gorilla like a champ. Go team humanity!

Does this mean I won’t get sick? Nope. We all fight the gorilla. We fight him alone, or perhaps with medical attention, but also with warm houses, ample food, and running water. Some of us will lose. Such is the lot of mortal man. Regardless, humanity collectively and routinely kicks the gorillas ass. Enjoy that happy thought.

There’s a second part to my ruminations. This is a challenge, but it’s not yet transformative. Society after will be changed compared to before, but I think only incrementally so. A little here and a little there and much of it might be very good. But the talking heads on TV imply greater changes and I doubt that. Likely, by mid 2020, this will already be fading. In 2030 it’ll seem not unlike Y2K… the killshot that missed.

Why do I say this? Because it is not changing minds. (At least not yet.) An event is a big honking deal if and only if people start learning.

We humans are a dense lot; clueless hominids clutching smartphones like a battery powered talisman. We see but only dimly. We seek facts but usually only note the ones that are hurled at us. We hear but it is propaganda. We change rarely. We learn reluctantly.

That’s the tell for a big deal… learning. Think of the big turning points in your life. Real turning points imply learning. That one time in band camp when you did that thing? You learned something by it.

Don’t take my word for it. Look around. Who’s minds have changed?

Right now, people in suits are faffing about in Congress. They’re hyped up to “do something”. What are they going to do? Hurl money. Congress’ solution to everything is to cut a check. Will that cure a sick child? Will that stop a virus? Will that make breakfast for an ill single mother? Will that change social habits? Will that teach Bob in accounting to wash his hands? Nope.

I’ve never seen Congress learn. But I’ll tell you this, if they did… it would be a big deal. If members of Congress headed to a Baltimore hospital and started scrubbing the floors and disinfecting the walls… I’d fuckin’ pay attention! So long as they’re pissing away money it’s just “same shit, different stated reason”.

Someone somewhere rebranded “bread and circuses” as “universal basic income” (UBI). An idea the American people don’t seem to like (possibly because they have at least rudimentary experience with math and human behavior.) So when hypothetical (not yet realized) deaths of thousands loom they changed UBI to “Phase 3” (or whatever they’re calling it this millisecond). Same shit, different name. People that like the idea of UBI in general also like it as a respiratory illness. As if virus deaths and cash payments are related. Maybe they’re right and and this’ll make everything better. Maybe they’re wrong. Regardless, they sure as hell didn’t come up with UBI as a tactic to slay this gorilla. I recall it’s usually pitched as a solution for homelessness, or inequality, or racism, or whatever the politician uses for bait that day. Nobody’s changing opinions about spewing box lots of cash because of today’s gorilla.

What about the opposite side of the aisle, the sort that hates UBI but loves deregulation? Are they any different? Not really. What are they doing? Suspending regulation. I have more sympathy for that approach, but it doesn’t mean I’m learning. I like deregulation with or without the gorilla to justify it. Deregulators aren’t learning and neither am I. I’m just cheering people for doing what I already wanted them to do.

Consider “survivalists”; formerly called “pioneers” and now renamed with the balless Newspeak euphemism “prepper”. They had adequate reserves in advance. They see this virus as justification to their actions. I have sympathy with that approach. I have two freezers full of food and all sorts of associated shit. I keep a full pantry with or without the gorilla. Whether it’s COVID19, a Russkie ICBM, or a hurricane, advance stores is a tool some of us like to use. The folks that don’t like that approach (they correctly realize it’s a PITA) piss and moan about hoarding. Because that’s what they do. They piss and moan. It’s the tool they prefer. One man’s “preparation” is another man’s “hoarding”. As flu rampages through our imagination and slowly shambles toward reality, nobody is changing their mind. Everyone’s walking the path they already chose.

I’m a loner by nature. Introvert. More likely to talk to a stack of firewood than a stranger. (Better conversation.) I’m self quarantining. But I do damn near the same thing every flu season (with admittedly mixed results). Others are gregarious, desperate to be with the herd. So they’re breaking quarantines or at least bitching mightily about the situation. We are all doing what we do.

People who hate Trump are blaming him for acting too slow. Or acting too soon. (I can’t remember which… they’re almost interchangeable.) People who like Trump (or at least his actions) are supporting his choices; lauding progress but also forgiving what seems like a stumbling start to this particular race.

People who like open borders for political reasons are quiet that they’re now closed for biological ones. They’re not changing their mind, they’re just waiting for an opportune moment to press their chosen choice. People who like tighter borders are reinforced in their beliefs; even though no border stopped COVID19  anywhere.

Speaking of borders, nobody acknowledges that the TSA can barely stop a Glock much less a virus. In fact, the TSA is a decades old solution to another gorilla… a solution hastily conceived, launched amid panic, and laughably inefficient in practice. It persists in its current form because it already exists. No particular other reason. Its effectiveness will never be revisited. To examine actions and see it they’re working creates learning. We monkeys hate to learn.

People who favor private medicine are eager to buy whatever medicines and vaccines come on-line from whoever sells them. They tend to overlook the toll this is taking on hard working providers. People who favor socialized medicine are eager to increase government involvement. They tend to overlook the CDC screwing the pooch on testing kits.

People who like big government are applauding orders that we shelter in place and gleefully submit. People who like individual initiative shout encouragement for truckers delivering food and workers keeping the lights on… while doing exactly the opposite of self quarantine.

This is why the current panic of 2020 is going to fade. Our fight with this gorilla may have ripple effects but lead to only incremental change. I say this because of the absence of learning; no changes in behavior.

I look for indication I’m wrong. I look for a big government UBI fan fretting over the debt. I look for someone who would cheer a governor’s curfew fretting that future iterations of Dick Cheney can shut down Whole Foods. I look for a technocrat wondering why China, which controls subjects in a way California can only dream about, didn’t keep the lid on this. I look for an Obamacare fan who mocked Sarah Palin’s “Death Panels” trembling at decisions made to (inflicted on?) the elderly in Italy. And no, a loner like me isn’t about to join a group and work within their framework.

These aren’t happening. Everyone is doing what they can… which is great. Everyone is staying in their lane… which means it’s going to have limited effect on the future.

Good luck y’all. Kick the gorilla’s ass. And if you learn something… more power to you.

A.C.

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
 Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
 But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
   Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
   And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
   If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
   And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
 Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
   And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
   And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
   And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
   To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
   Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
   Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
   If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
   Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

“…this forced break from work also gives everyone an opportunity to lean in to the activities that have, historically, made American life so rich. I’d like to submit fishing as the perfect coronavirus activity — and your new favorite pastime.”

I have nothing to add. Read it all. It’s wise counsel.

Unfortunately for me, ice out hasn’t happened. It’s too sketchy to ice fish and too frozen for real fishing. I pace about the house and fiddle with my camping gear. I have needs to do a walkabout. Indeed, the current freak out has derailed a carefully scheduled and eagerly anticipated “adventure”; which was to happen in a warmer clime. Bummer!

I have my tent and some other gear roughly stationed for a quick getaway. I will be gone like a flash when conditions are right. This has nothing to do with disease and everything to do with living well.