Just when I thought things had slowed down…

Just when I thought things had slowed down to where getting a hog to the butcher’s was the biggest thing I had to deal with, my brother and I have decided to put a house on the market.

We built this thing about 8 years ago – his money and my fabulous framing powers. He’s lived in it since I moved out – once the sheetrock was up it lost it’s allure – I like living in a construction zone! Anyway, I’ll be happy to finally reap some cash out of the project.

We are dumping it. I mean I’ll take the first low ball figure that comes our way as long as it’s maybe 10 grand over what he spent on materials and closing/realator fees. I’m not a greedy guy, and I’m really panicked that missles will be flying over Iran soon and bye bye housing market along with the rest of the U.S. economy. A 4 bed 3 bath conventional stick framed house dependent upon city utilities is a liability even though the thing is paid for (in my view).

I think I’ll put 10% of the money in gold coin, 20% towards back debt on the farm, and have some fun with other 70% – ten rolls of hogwire and a couple miles of 14ga 2 point barbed. Get the perimeter to where I can free range the goats, pigs, and future burro family. A really good quality bucksaw and a brace and bit set. No plasma tv or jet ski. Just hope the dinosaur sells before our President hears commands from God ordering the attack to begin.

Haulin’ Water

Working on a bicycle powered water pump. I need to get the water up about 90 feet in elevation over a 300 foot distance and from there it’s all downhill to the house. Here’s the idea:
Can get a 1,920 gallon per hour pump with one inch inflow/outflow ports. I can run a belt from a 26″ mountain bike to the pump pulley. Question- if the bike rim is turning at 200rmp, how big does the pump pulley need to be to achieve 4000rpm? I also gotta call the manufacturers tech guys to find out if the pump would work at lower rpms if the inflow/outflow ports were shrunk to 1/2 inch. The column of water would weigh a whole lot less at a half inch rather than the stock one inch.
If I can get this thing built pretty quick I may be able to talk the wife out of a god damn gas powered generator to run the well pump in “emergencies”. I’d rather spend a few hundred on this pump, hardware, and hose than feed the Home Despot and have to burn gasoline.

Anybody have any mechanical engineering tidbits that would be helpful? Thanks in advance!

When the power goes out.

     Ten days after this huge ice storm the electricity came back on. We are at the end of a two- wire line out here in a forgotten corner of a backwards county, so ten days ain’t bad. It was long enough to actually stop waiting for it to come back on and that is quite a change in my mindset.
     I keep ending up in the same place – it’s all pointless beyond eat, sleep, and shit. There is no higher purpose for me as a human than there is for the goat, just stay warm and dry and eat when hungry. Once you assume ambient temperature it’s game over, thanks for playing.
     To deal with this kind of cold boring reality we get fantastic – creating an infinite supply of diversion in the present and some bizarre mythology for an afterlife. Goats get all frisky and run around butting each other for a while when fat and happy in the sun, and people fly out to watch the Super Bowl. T.V., video games, all sports, clubs, and associations are diversions in the end. Of course that’s after the ultimately pointless 8 or 10 hour shift at the widget factory is over.  The only non pointless activity everyone engages in is sleep time, and that’s the first thing to cut into when we get all busy.
     So I stared long and deep at the level of the water barrel and the height of the wood pile during this “disaster”. Why have a two bathroom house when a big ol’ washtub does the job? Got 900 square feet under roof and we are having a good time in 1/3 of it. Nobody caught a cold or lost weight and I’m the only one who got some sleep interrupted by getting up at 2am to stoke the fire. If I had a bike powered pump at the spring a half hour’s peddling would have yielded the water we use in times of normalcy.
     So now the damn power is back on, and I’m wasting time pecking away here and surfing my favorite collapse sites. The wife has her tv at night and the toaster makes toast for the boy’s breakfast. Soon, the joys of that simple time will be a distant memory for everyone but me and I’ll appear even more crazy for doubling up on my efforts to create an off the grid world now that gas is under 2 bucks a gallon.
     Today I bought white clover seed for future bees to make honey and wax with. I will never let the woodpile get low again. And I hope that sonofabitch in the shiny black Hummer truck hauling a generator as I was humping a 50 pound log on my shoulder up the ravine has a nice life…. Fuck ‘em all.
 

RAW

Robert Anton Wilson assumes room temperature. Rest in peace, old man, I’m going to miss you. Nobody else could make tweaking your reality tunnel so inviting!

Softening the Intellectual Battlefield

Anybody else feel like we’re watching the pre-game show on the way to an Iranian invasion? That’s the best I can describe this “softening up” of public opinion that seems to pervade the usual media outlets. Everywhere I turn there is some low level demonization of all things Iranian, and I remember the same deluge prior to Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan wasn’t hard ‘cuz we were all pissed off about errant aircraft, But Iraq took a good year or so to make you feel the inevitable was righteous. Same old song and dance with the folks next door.
When’s the last time more than two aircraft carrier battle groups were ever in the same place without using ‘em for their designed purpose? Go check the naval buildup in the Persian Gulf. 20 thousand or more troops to be transited on the ground – easily diverted to respond to “unforeseen events”. The shit is getting ready to hit the fan, and the part that sucks the most is that there is absolutely no way to stop it. I’ve bent over backwards not to vilify the Bush administration up to now, but I’m fed up now. His generals on the ground say don’t escalate? They get fired. The voters threw out the neocon Repugnicans and with their ballots screamed for withdrawal but Mr Chief Executive blew us a raspberry and doubled the intensity and provocation. There is not one single Cabinet member left that isn’t just a syncophantic mouthpiece beating the drums of war.

Were gonna get our asses kicked this time around. Toppling the Trade Towers was one thing but sinking one of our aircraft carriers is another. The conventional wisdom is that they are invincible, but the “bad guys” got some new anti ship missles that are going to disrupt that fantasy. I guess Bush and Company don’t think shipping in the Strait of Hormuz can be halted by a couple of well timed and targeted Iranian missles, let alone one good hit on Ras Tanura, the deep water oil loading facility that handles damn near all of Saudi Arabia’s production. Hit that and its over. Suburbia dies at 6 bucks a gallon, and with it, the entire housing based economic house of cards.
I just don’t appreciate the absolute deafness of our gov’t to any criticism. Token discussion and condescending “listening” then let loose the dogs and man the guns. Yeah I’ve been a foil hat type for a long time, mostly as a pastime more interesting than watching t.v. but I think I crossed the line a couple of weeks ago. This week’s shopping included stopping at every feed store and buying up every kind of seed left over from last year. No hybrid shit either. Have 4 online hard to get seed orders being shipped as I type this. Next is getting some fuel stabilizer and filling a 55 gallon barrel full of gasoline. The vehicle gas tanks get topped off, and I got lots of 2 stroke chainsaw oil. At last count 14 clean plastic 55 gallon barrels to hold water in case the power goes out and the well pump is worthless. Neighbor has a portable generator I can borrow to fill the water barrels.
Remember the first gulf war? I blew 5 or 6 hundred bucks during the runup on tarps, tools, seed, etc. Silly me. Then again, I could have been right.