Pavlovian People

Know what really floors me? The amount of effort people put into to running the rat race. Hang on to that stupid mortgaged dinosaur in the burbs. Bust ass to make those car payments. Work overtime to pay down the credit card. Wake up people – when you’re fourth and long, drop back 15 and punt. Throw in the towel – you can’t win so why stay in the ring getting the shit beat out of you? Why does the vast majority of people in this country accept the conditioning? The status quo sucks, man.

I bet anybody who reads my crap is somewhat off grid capable already, or at least in a fairly low density location. so I know I’m preaching to the choir. I have one doomer buddy who lives relatively close by but everybody else in my world is firmly rooted in business as usual. Even I’m playing the BAU game with spending the insurance money to rebuild the rental house in town… with an eye for selling it (bwahahaha) when it’s done. Wells Fargo only doled out the first 1/3 of 54K until I prove I’m working on the place instead of sitting around smoking crack, and if I really thought the world was tanking I would have blown that 18K on total doomer stuff and told the bank they can have the rest and the carcass, too.

But no, I’m stimulating the economy buying material and commuting to the job Ring bell, slobber. Get check, become a beehive of activity. The City of Joplin gets their couple hundred dollars of permit fees and sales tax on materials, the county gets their sales tax, and the State of Missouri and the Feds will tax me on the whole 54K unless I feed a tax preparer his pound of flesh to do the loophole with the tax return. Meanwhile, the bank has turned the 36K in the escrow account into a million dollars worth of collateral debt obligations, credit default swaps and other “exotic” financial “instruments”. More insulation to rain down on us when the ceiling lathe gets pulled down.

I think there is a good chance the whole system will go fucko bazzoo before I get the job done and the unspent funds into my wallet. I suppose when it comes right down to the nitty gritty I’m conditioned to play the same game as the suits on Wall Street. Coulda taken 3 grand on the insurance and carcass sale rather than invest the check for a 30K net profit at the end of the day. Or maybe I’m just another dumb sheeple, broke and fucked, feeding quarters into casino slots, myopically waiting for a jackpot.

Whine and Cheese

Yesterday I waltzed out to the garden with the tater fork and dug until I filled a 5 gallon bucket of potatoes. Took 12 feet of a five foot bed to do it – it was the shadiest and weediest part of the tater zone, too. Threw the foliage on the compost heap, hit the area with a hoe and planted a hundred purple hull peas on 9 inch spacings. Took one hour. I probably had one hour invested in digging, planting and mulching that spot this spring, and will get maybe two quart jars of cowpeas out of that area before frost. Sow kale and winter wheat in that spot a few weeks before frost and I’ll have winter greens for the rabbits and chickens, and some for the table.

All in all that’s most of a day’s work for 60 square feet intelligently cultivated when you work it in around all the critter chores and such. Toss a few of the cruddy spuds to the pig, feed the wheat grass to the milk goat, and kale for the chickens (and radishes just cuz I sprinkle radish seeds anytime I stir up dirt – a few of them grow under any conditions). So eggs and potatoes and milk and cowpeas and radishes and a hunk of pork. Maybe we eat for a day for a day’s work.

What will we eat tomorrow? I’m not in the garden today – it’s raining and I have a table to dismantle and move up from the basement, old nasty insulation to haul out of the attic getting ready for the ceiling job, banking hassles to tend to and Taekwondo tonight. And, to be blunt, my motivation level is in the toilet. The bread loaf is getting small… I’ll just jump right on the ol Country Living Grain Mill after I make the boy his lunch. Did I shit today? Better give the pigs some water… I’m obviously not going to get to Joplin today and get electrical permits filed so I can get power on at the burn out rental house.

Table dismantled, moved to the garage and reassembled. Get goats out of the road. Insulation out over the kitchen and living room. Puncture wound on skull from errant nail, multiple bruises. Stupid bank giving me the run around. Unload truck. Load insulation on truck. Taekwondo. Pigdogcatchickenrabbitgoatupfornight tuck in the boy kiss the wife.

Tomorrow looms.

8:45… and 27 Big Chickens

Pigs fed and watered, goats in their ghetto shed, young pullets and cockerels in their cage and the new chicks in theirs. Dog fed, bunnies transferred from their daytime playpen in the yard to the night cage, cats doing their cat thing and the big chicken barn count is 27 – no losses today. Grab a quick shower, blog a bit, surf the new clusterfuck nation update, cryptogon etc and flop into bed by 9:30 ish if I don’t screw up and stay up too long. Tomorrow comes way too soon.

Last winter I laid down a really good layer of grass clippings, leaves and horse poop over a number of garden beds. the planting in them was just too easy… scooch the mulch aside and drop the starts in. No weeds, held water – all is good eh? Nope. Just made a four star resort for squash bugs to overwinter in. They have killed off 95% of all squash and cucumbers so far. Diatomatous Earth saved 2 cukes and I have hopes for a watermelon plant – zapped everything with Spinosad, do a voodoo dance and replant.

I don’t want to kill bees, but I’m leaning towards selective application of sevin dust on new plants before they flower. Sprinkle it right down there where the stem meets the ground. Keeping the weed growth down eliminates bug breeding ground so I’ve read. The only reason I’m considering sevin dust is that it keeps for years. In case of real doom when it’s grow it or starve I can’t afford to play games with the bug population. Eventually I’ll have time to actually tend the garden, keeping the sanitation level up to par and have soil healthy enough to grow plants strong enough to ward off pests and disease if I get enough damn marigolds planted.

As I’ve said before, Grandpa drove a creamery truck and Dad was a CPA. Didn’t teach me nuthin’ that counts.

Summertime Again…

And the garden has gone to shit. No real irrigation system so half of it is burning up, the other half has gone to weeds or killed by bugs. Y’know, set out 25 cucumber plants X weeks ago and two survive. I got three carrots that made it, we’ve had two cabbages and the rest look like lace. Squash bugs 1, comrade 0. That’s out of 30 plants. Man cannot live on onions alone. I’ll have lots of potatoes but I gotta wrap my beat to shit hands around the tater fork and sweat like pig digging them up. Peanuts rotted before they could sprout, corn seed probably got eaten by garden rodents or it was too cold and damp for them to germinate. Now it’s hot and dry so I don’t hold out much hope for the corn I’m putting in now. Miss bucketing water to them once in this weather and it’s over for that patch.

God damn it. I gotta get my ass in gear for the fall garden. I need a hundred cabbages and shit sprouting yesterday. And winter squash. Reality sucks – you stand there sweating in 100 degree weather knowing the clock is ticking and the first winter frost is just over the horizon getting ready to kick your ass.

The only thing I’ve managed to do right is successfully fence the goats out of our “courtyard” so they haven’t hit the sapling fruit trees this year. Hooray for the future… late spring frost put the screws to the peaches and apples this year.

Doom hits and I’m relatively fucked. The tiller comes out this week to grind up this year’s failed areas and it all goes into cowpeas. I’ve never screwed those up… yet.

Okay, Back to My Old Self…

Nicklethrower made a comment on Kunstler’s latest blog entry:
http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/07/wobble-time.html#comment-1686

My father, a retired US Army NCO broke it down for me when I was a child. “No country on this planet is more than 3 meals away from a revolution. If that should ever happen here you must pick a side – soldiers get fed, civilians do not.”

Remember the line from A Fish Called Wanda… “What was the middle thing?” That’s what I’m doing out here… using the third handle to haul the basket with.

We’ve reached the carrying capacity of the Earth, and just like bunnies in a field with no coyotes, yeast in a bread pan, or rats in a corn crib die off/kill off is on its way to a town near you. I don’t intend to helplessly die off so I’m growing my own stuff to eat. Not volunteering for the kill off either, that’s why you won’t see me in a protest action or blogging away all gun happy ala the patriot movement. I’m probably on a list but the list is like, over a million people at last count, so big whoop. I think people like me should have our own flag kinda like the “Don’t Tread on Me” snake flag… ours being an Armadillo with the caption “Just Leave Me the Fuck Alone”.

So I enter the big town of Joplin today for more demo work on the town house and see an old will work for food guy. Pulled in and said it don’t pay much, dirty as hell, got a bathroom to gut down to the studs. He said okay so I put ten bucks of gas in his car, got to the house, showed him the job and said 40 more bucks when I see the frame or take the gas as a gift. He went for the dough, and 5 hours later I had some compassion for the guy who was obviously reaching the end of his gumph and called it a day. There’s maybe an hour’s work left to do in there so its all square in my world.

There’s one for the records… a will work for food guy who actually did.

Sonny's Dream

Usually at the monthly Community Meeting there’s some local …ahem… talent… squealin’ Jesusness but this month a lady with an absolutely beautiful voice and damn good on the guitar, too, treated us with the ballad Sonny’s Dream. I’d link to a youTube example but they seem to have been butchered up by the country music scene or just plain disregard Ron Hynes’ original lyrics. Our entertainer did the song true justice.

I’ve been crying for three days…

Sonny’s Dream
(Ron Hynes)

Sonny lives on a farm on a wide open space
Where you can take off your sneakers and give up the race
You could lay down your head by a sweet river bed
But Sonny always remembers what it was his Mama said

cho: Oh, Sonny don’t go away, I am here all alone
And your daddy’s a sailor who never comes home
And the nights get so long and the silence goes on
And I’m feeling so tired, I’m not all that strong

Sonny carries a load though he’s barely a man
There ain’t all that to do, still he does what he can
And he watches the sea from a room by the stairs
And the waves keep on rollin’, they’ve done that for years

cho: Oh, Sonny don’t go away, I am here all alone
And your daddy’s a sailor who never comes home
And the nights get so long and the silence goes on
And I’m feeling so tired, I’m not all that strong

And it’s a hundred miles to town, Sonny’s never been there
And he goes to the highway and stands there and stares
And the mail comes at four and the mailman is old
Oh, but he still dreams his dreams full of silver and gold

Sonny’s dreams can’t be real, they’re just stories he’s read
They’re just stars in his eyes, they’re just dreams in his head
And he’s hungry inside for the wide world outside
And I know I can’t hold him though I’ve tried and I’ve tried

Oh, Sonny don’t go away, I am here all alone
And your daddy’s a sailor who never comes home
And the nights get so long and the silence goes on
And I’m feeling so tired, I’m not all that strong

The trouble with being half pissed off all the time is when something gets through I’m just a wreck. Go out in the garden to weed and wind up irrigating the fuckin’ corn.

It probably has something to do with having a little boy who loves his mom and dad and really likes being a family and doing his part in it. And I know the world is changing, that his memories of car trips to town, Saturday cartoons, and all the other miracles of the petroleum age will hit him again and again as he looks at the road out front. I’m sad because I fear no matter how good I make it out here the magic time will always be in the back of his mind, untempered by years of wage slavery, “labor saving” devices, and the general clusterfuck of cutthroat consumerism and mindless bureaucracy we adults long to slough off.

If something were to happen to me or my wife… the song would sing just that much closer to the heart.

Hard Work, Hot Shower

So I get home all filthy dirty and stand in a hot shower washing off the grime… Ooooohhh! What’ya gonna do when the power goes out and there’s paper bags on all the gas pumps, eh bub? No propane fired water heater or pressurized water from the electric well pump anymore Mr Smartydoom…

I sure as hell won’t be covered in plaster dust, soot, and old dirt from gutting the burnout project. In the two hours I spent commuting to Joplin I could have cobbed together a rocket stove and run it under a bathtub down by the spring. Doom is relative…

I actually feel satisfied tonight. I got up this morning, fed the critters, weeded around in the garden for a few hours before loading up the truck with implements of destruction and the bent crank lawnmower to take to the mower shop. Took the boy with me so he could ride his new skateboard on real sidewalks, and just hang out together. Got home with a few hours of daylight left. Watered some thirsty plants in the garden, tended critters (new broodie hen hatched 6 yesterday), ate some dinner and washed me and the grimey boy. Technically made 300 bucks today for 6 hours work plus commute time. The kicker is I want to do it again tomorrow. All I gotta do is get to sleep before 10 so I can get up for sunrise coffee in the garden. G’night.

Fireworks in Topeka

Found this statement in the comments section of Kunstler’s blog from a Mark Ancona:

Our fiscal deficit has eclipsed the carrying capacity of the world

That really means something, and it dovetails with what I was thinking the other day – that even though collapse is not everywhere you look, things will have to change unless we can pump 85 million barrels out of the ground every day, and increase that number as needed, whenever it’s needed.

So I got a wild hair and took my son to his Aunt and Uncle in Topeka on the 4th – just got back today. They live in a neighborhood that was military housing for Forbes Field back in the day. Lots of lower to middle middle class families, and the amount of explosives going off in the common park was absolutely staggering. Some big ones too – y’know, the 30 buck apiece fancies. I had a good time and didn’t spend a dime, just 15 gallons of gas to get there and back. The Uncle did the grill thing both nights and the Aunt made brownies and stuff. 48 hours without feeding critters…

There’s just a massive disconnect going on in my perception of reality. How do the people that panic when it’s time to make the minimum payment on the credit card bill blow a hundred bucks on fireworks? How can anyone act as if the puddle of dino juice can continue to be sucked out of the ground at 85 million barrels a day? How can both the most trivial and the biggest issue of all time be ignored at the same time? I try not to care but it’s always nagging at me. It all has to blow up sometime and I wonder if I really have enough seeds in the ground, spare tools stockpiled, and farming infrastructure squared away to the point where I can feel like I won’t go down WTSHTF.

I gotta stop leaving the doomstead for holiday trips. Going to Joplin to work on the rental house is one thing, engaging in Normal American Activities is another. Maybe I’m too far out of my element if I go more than 12 hours without hearing a chicken cackle. I’m going off to work on the greenhouse…