General Doom.

The first family casualty of The Great Contraction is my younger sister and her family. Her husband got on with Ligget and Platt fresh out of college and has been there for maybe 12 years or so as a systems analyst. Came to work last week and got a Thanks For Playing pinkslip and 10 grand to go away. They are fucked because they are the epitome of all things suburban and have ignored my lunatic ravings for years. Huge house with a mortgage to match, car payments and I doubt the credit cards are paid in full every month – but that’s just a guess. I now have a ringside seat to a personal collapse story. My brother off loaded his sheetrock finishing career when the boss didn’t seem to have the money on payday, and Mom’s portfolio is shrinking every month. My other sister’s husband is the general manager for the local FOX tv affiliate so I’d imagine they are insulated against everything but catabolic collapse, being part of the propaganda machine.

And o’l comrade just orders more garden seed… heh heh heh.

Now that bush is on his way out it is safe for me to read all the stuff about the stolen election of ’01 and other horrors of this administration because I don’t have to live with being pissed off about it anymore. I’m gonna give Obama a pass for his entire term ‘cuz he volunteered for the world’s toughest row to hoe, and is no more or no less likely to declare Martial Law than Hillary would have, or push the button which McCain was salivating over. It’s all a wash for the next 4 years as the suds that ran the world swirl down the drain. So everybody relax use the energy to dig up the yard.

It’s time to dig up the yard, my friends. It’s time for fescue and zoysia to be traded for turnips, ‘taters and cowpeas. Time to rip out the Iris and install Jerusalem Artichokes, petunias for strawberries,  and houseplants in pots gotta go to make way for spinach. Ornamental plants in the yard must go away – the space is too valuable to waste unless it’s a flower thing for bees, and you ought to double down by planting flowering herbs.

I would venture to guess that by the time people truly wake up in a couple of months and realize they better plant some shit if they want to eat the seed companies will be out of stock. There’s your canary in the coal mine – out of stock, backordered or long shipping times for common garden seeds. The seed companies won’t be out of stock unless they are bombarded with orders, and won’t be bombarded unless the average shlub out there gets hit upside the head in his own personal version of collapse. And once the masses realize they are screwed you better be out of the cities, so if ya got a country place reserved or a travel trailer ya’ll best get moving. That’s all the raving I’m gonna do – just a low key offering of useful advice. I ain’t bending out of shape any more trying to open closed minds.

So the slow crash speeds up and cuts deeper this year. It got delayed last year from the economic stimulus package that kept a huge number of folks afloat and provided a wind down cushion for others but the fat is now out of the system and whatever got hauled to the curb with a for sale sign on it that didn’t sell for a quick cash input isn’t going to sell at all.  I see the empty strip mall parking areas on my merry travels to town, weeds in the newly built McMansion subdivisions, overflow crowds on the sidewalk in front of the mission. and lo and behold – actual hitchhikers in abundance vying for rides from a decreasing number of cars on the road no matter the price of gas dropped through the floor (and is on the way up again).

We’ve gone around what I liken as the winter curve – only two more months of the cold left to weather and while it may be a bit too early to “think spring” and germinate seeds the feeling that the worst is manageable re: cold, rain, and snow and the sun will shine soon and give us all a chance to fucking do it right this year.