NAVEL GAZING
Well, I think we've just about panicked over every possible thing. Inflation/deflation ( a case for both well made by professionals leaves us slack jawed and drooling in confusion ), solar flares, running out of oil, drought, blah blah. And some days I actually have to pay attention to work and can't let my two brain cells rub against each other and get all randy and give birth to a actual article idea, so once again I'm just pulling something smelly and most likely less than pleasant out of my butt and yes, trolls, I had to get my head out of the way first there does that make you happy? Always trying to please the trolls and I get no love for it. And, by the by, Humongous- I'm really liking your quips lately ( eject, eject! ). I just thought I'd throw that out there so the trolls smell fresh blood and go after you, like tieing my shoe laces as the bear is charging us.
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So, not having much of anything to say, and seeing as how I've exhausted my guest writers from my incessant demands that they write several weekends in a row and now they ignore me after I wouldn't sign them up for a profit sharing plan or even make good on their Bison Empire Publishing Conglomerate 401 ( k) losses, today you get half an article telling you I have nothing to say and the other half talking about wishful thinking. I titled it navel gazing because it makes me look busy while nothing is accomplished. We all know the world is going to end. I know it, you know it and Ross Perot, bless his cute little ears, knows it. We all act like it matters how, but in the end we're all pushing a squeaky wheeled shopping cart through the cold ash with three rounds left in the revolver and waiting for the cannibals to kill us with a sharpened piece of re- bar ( a reference to The Road, by the way- if you haven't read it, it has got to be the most depressing post-apocalypse piece of literature out there ). I'm wondering, though, just how much of this is wish fulfillment.
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Not an original thought here. But it is a good question. How much of our dread is realistic expectations, rational study, educated guesses and how much is simply the longing to go back to a simpler time after everyone we hate is dead? I'm rooting for the financial collapse so wife #2 has no more jobs available to her. I'm not content that FedEx cuts back a little, I want the entire commercial fleet of this country to be grounded through lack of oil or finances and never fly again. I want her on a street corner selling her ass cheap. Nothing else will pacify me. Is that wrong? So, am I letting wish fulfillment color my research of an impending collapse? I would like to think I'm still acting rationally, but as Ruff wrote thirty years ago, when you are a hammer everything looks like a nail ( I'm sure he didn't orgininate it but that was the first exposure through best seller books to it I'd come across ). When you hope others suffer to atone for their sins against you, can you read too much into each blip on the radar. I mean, I was really angry when Y2K turned out to be blatant government propaganda to extend the Internet Bubble so their butt buddies in the financial industry could keep raking in trillions ( that's my current theory on Y2K, subject to change without notice ), so does that tell me I was ( perish the thought ) part of the excitable crowd or just seeing only nails?
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Don't get me wrong, I am in no way saying we could live a happy life forever after in our SUV's and McMansions. I truly believe we are seeing Peak Oil and that we are all going to die. And I am prepping like crazy, even after a brief spell when I'd convinced myself I was well provisioned ( I apologize for my brief decent into optimism ). Every week I buy two months worth of emergency rations ( bag of corn, lard, pintos for $20 ). Every week I check to see if Wally-World has started to carry rimfire again ( I've about given up hope ). My point is simply that you should every once in awhile step back and try to poke holes in your cherished beliefs. It might save you from embarrassing yourself one day.
END
Tomorrow is a movie review post. Buy all my crap at www.bisonpress.com
14 comments:
Good post, I enjoyed reading it all the way through like I always do because I have an attention span greater than 2.5 seconds like the trolls.
Heck jim, life is going to kill us all anyway...
old fart
Sorry about that....computer error.
Anyway, good post even if it said nothing. Always amused by your wit Jim. Here come the trolls. Your loyal subjects are still around.
We read you because you are the anti-J.W.R.
He is just a little too earnest: x military, evangelical, raking in the cash, low on irony.
We need the balance you give.
To all the troubled souls, I bring news of redemption and joy.
We are on the cusp of the bright horizon. The guardians have arrived with love and salvation.
I say to you my brothers and sisters, let us open our souls to the wonder of Most High. Abandon with haste the dark power of the renegades. Do not fall into their trap of division and violence.
Please read this carefully:
The signs will be given in the form of octaves. Trust your hearing. The song of Gaia will be heard everywhere. Safe passage and protection from the 6th density guardians is for those that shun the paranoid mindset. Graduation day is nigh. don't allow yourself to be held back.
The Wanderers (of which I am one)
are here to assist in the cosmic crossover. My solemn prayers to those that elect to stay behind.
Earthmaster
LOL I usually read Jim for entertainment and the hope he might have some nugget of wisdom for us (I'll admit that's rare but one good idea is worth a year of reading and he does keep reminding me that I need some cheap grain from the feed store Which in itself is worth it) However the trolls have really outdone themselves today Earthmaster is hilarious! That was a good one!
Yea I hear ya Jim My favorite current theory is the blatant obvious idiocy, fraud and corruption in Washington is a deliberate trap for a revolution. They actually want us to rebel so they get to use their expensive military toys to crush us which then proves just how important it was to make a military based economy.
But I am willing to admit that economically speaking if that doesn't happen then the bailing out of the massive inefficient corporate conglomerates, banks and investment funds will most likely cause first deflation then stagflation lasting decades like in Japan.
Earthmaster: here is a quater go call someone who gives a shit what you think
First, thanks for throwing me to the wolves, Jim. I am just now able to walk upright again, after the trip to vertigo-land that I took, courtesy of you spinning me through the air. It's okay... abandon me. Tear my heart out. Leave it quivering and spasming on a cold, slate alter, just waiting for the 'trip-trap, trip-trap of the trolls. Yeah, they're coming, but they have no choice, do they? Just like a leach or shark, they cannot ignore their internal compass that leads them to blood. You can't have the good without the bad. Or is it the good/bad, without the ugly?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXldafIl5DQ
In case you don't want to waste your bandwidth, that's a link to the three-way duel at the end of the movie.
Speaking of your creations, which is what the trolls are, of course, I think it's an interesting existential quandary. You, Jim, would not have trolls if you didn't blog. Those turds would be sitting in front of their mother/grandmother's monitors, taking up precious phone line time even if you weren't their object of admiration. You can't pay for the internet connection with phone sex when your son/grandson is berating some dude he's never met. But these guys are 'your' trolls because they come after 'you'. In a way, they owe a part of their existence to you. So they don't have to be pissed only at grandma for nailing her son, and creating them, but also at you, for giving them a venue, or raisin de etre. Got that from 'Raising Arizona'. Wouldn't you be pissed too?
I keep waiting for it to happen. I figure there will be some great sign telling me it's here. Maybe a meteor shrieking it's way across the sky. Could be a huge explosion from the Northwest, followed by eternal darkness. Or, maybe Assmaster is right. Maybe the end will be signaled by the song of Gaia, whoever the flim-flam that is. Personally, if I've gotta go, I would rather have Mastodon 'playing me out':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BiOITZHC8I
But that's just me. You guys might prefer something more Gaia, who knows. To each his own. It's bound to happen. Too many things are screwed up right now. Our country isn't doing much of anything right anymore. But I've got a personal 'Murphy's Law suit' that I wear. No matter how non-sensical, how mind bogglingly-ridiculous it seems, my negative hunches usually play out, and my wet dream-worthy, personal victory scenarios almost always ride a plume of fire to the earth, just like that shrieking meteor. So who am I to say we're headed to Hellville? Heck, I mean hell, If I'm calling for it, it must be good for the country. But maybe this time it's different. Maybe this time I'm right about something... for once. Well, twice, if you're lending me some artistic license with the whole 'trolls owing their existence to you' bit. But isn't that a hell of a thing to hang your hat on? Don't you feel like a big old piece of shit sometimes? Shut it, trolls. I mean really, here we are getting bummed that the end isn't fitting into our own schedule of expectations. Pretty fucked up, isn't it?
-Humongous
One of your best posts - at least for me. I'd thought the very same things, i.e. how much of any preperation is just the wish to "show" the people who responded to ideas that Things Could Get Bad, with blank stares or, "well, I know where I'M going to go for help!" Or - thank you for your honesty - is it somehow a way to "get back" at those who have wronged us. That's unworthy...but I'd guess that most of us have such feelings, sometimes.
Also I liked the idea that preparing could also be the (unrealistic) wish for a simpler life. It is for me.
The trolls are amazing. I would guess that preparing is - for most people (out of necessity) - more of a hobby. If that's the case, then isn't it no more silly than collecting model trains? Yet some people are so venomous! I'm really starting to be convinced that these people ARE pimply, seventeen year olds, sitting in a basement, who can't get sex.
Finally - "but in the end we're all pushing a squeaky wheeled shopping cart through the cold ash with three rounds left in the revolver" - what a good book that was!
Keep up the good work Jim.
Sometimes your posts are lame and sometimes they give valuable insight into a real problem. At least you dont have everybody else write your blog for you by waving trinkets from the advertizers at them like rawles does. I mean he just parrots Tappan's stuff and gets everybody else to write his content while he draws the advert money. Am I the only one who sees this?
One thing that's bound to be good after a massive die-off (can we spell Toxic Fumes spawned by uncle Fedgov?) and the mass graves are filled is that we who survive will most likely have our pick of which McMansion we wanna live in.
Oops...hold on a sec...what if two or more want Michael Jackson's place?
Prepare for WW3, I guess.
"Earthmaster: here is a quater go call someone who gives a shit what you think"
for anyone interested in GAIA, and has the time and inclination, read THE COMPLETE WORKS OF CHARLES FORT. your reality will be forever changed, and you won't give a shit about the CREATION vs EVOLUTION pseudo-debate. in fact, you'll never give a rat's ass about 'experts' and their ego agrandizing pronouncements. free your mind first, you have nothing to lose but your chains.
"How much of our dread is realistic expectations, rational study, educated guesses and how much is simply the longing to go back to a simpler time after everyone we hate is dead?"
odd, how words like 'alienation' and 'discontentment' have dropped out of use in the english langauge... and the AMERIKAN SCREAM was turned into a 'shopping marathon'...
"I AM, THERFORE I CONSUME".
and for those who give up a decade or more of their life watching (it's free !) TV, what do you get: paris hitler and "the simple life", the latest exploits of brit-brit the queen of the trailer trash, or debates over "gay marraige" and 'transgender rights" ? [don't get me wrong, i truely feel sorry for those weirdos, but can't they just go and do their thing in private ? ]
so with new fronts in the 'drug war' opening in afghanisnam, wackistan, and mexico, mixed in with unlimited government fiat spending (and they are raising taxes on everything, btw), you can kiss your dreams of safety, security, a career, the good job, life in exburbia, "good schools" for the spawn, etc...
SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES. and it ain't gonna be pretty.
Jim,
let me brighten your day a little. You and Mayberry and the prepnetwork [and some others] tripped the switch or got a gummint geek's attention. They have blocked the minions from accessing your blog on the run of the mill .gov computers. "ACESS DENIED" .... My co workers are now allowed to eat their lunch in peace uninterrupted by insane cackling from my corner. F. Squirrel and friends are still available...so there ya go; a little info to feed your paranoia. I'm sure the drones are NOT using ground penetrating radar to locate your "excessive" rimfire stash located 30 paces sse of the mesquite bush at a 45 off the nw corner of the trailer. C57
Good post.
The interested might check Jack London's book also called The Road -- about pre-great-depression hobo life.
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