the ease of refugees

THE EASE OF REFUGEES


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Refugees are not just a “Golden Hordes Of The Apocalypse” issue. They are also a “dysfunctional economy” issue. Long before the end is nigh, hordes of ne’er-do-wells will descend as locusts and complicate your survival strategy. We have already seen a several decade long process in California where the politicians, so oblivious to anything other than buying votes that it is hard to assume they even have two brain cells left to activate let alone a pulse at all, not only encourage interior immigration but much, much more in the way of foreign immigration by offering everyone a free lunch. At this point, other than a few rural areas where no small businessman can hope to survive the toxic cornucopia of sky high taxes and unfathomable regulations in the north central and eastern section and dropping down with the Sierra’s ( with a few desert areas thrown in down south ), the entire state is so jammed with people that it is a 24/7 proverbial kicked over ant hill. The place literally teems with the dregs of the planet and they all survive off water stolen from other states and an inflated sense of importance as if being the most successful parasite in the year round constant temperature intestinal tract of the country was a rewardable achievement. You can bet that this scale of immigration will be duplicated all across the nation, although next time the rewards will be minimized and the time frame radically squeezed down.

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You want dysfunctional refugee examples, look at the Cuban boat people and then Hurricane Katrina. Although “Scarface” with Al Pacino was a bit cartoonish in its portrait of the mass criminal influx that were allowed in to this country, the kernel of truth it contained was enough. If you don’t control the movement of people, they control you. The Latino example is obvious for all to see. It wasn’t necessarily a dysfunctional example of refugees, but it certainly changed this countries entire cultural and economic way of life in just a few short number of generations. The short term benefits accrued by allowing a porous border ( pushing down wages, keeping Social Security alive far longer than it would have with falling birth rates, excess military recruits for the Oil Occupation ) will soon, very soon, all turn to dust as the overpopulation problem trumps all. Hurricane Katrina didn’t highlight an incompetent and aloof federal government. We already knew all that. It didn’t underline the lack of resources to rebuild. Most of us here knew all about that even if we try to pretend otherwise ( frac gas for all and forever! ). But it sure as hell should have pointed out how dangerous it is in comparatively normal times to be fist humped by even a small number of refugees. At that time, any ghetto gangster with welfare bennies could go anywhere they wanted outside the rubble piles of New Orleans and still stay on the Uncle Sugar List. Most, having no imagination and wishing to embrace a similar culture and climate, chose neighboring urban east Texas.

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Up went the crime rates. Section Eight Housing bitches moved in, helped destroy what property values were left ( the Feds, in their usual brilliance, felt that Sec8 housing in clusters or single building singled out the poor and oppressed unfairly so decided that they would allow any building in any neighborhood to turn into welfare housing-disperse the sight blight ), and the unemployed criminal boyfriends, fathers and relatives followed. Now, rather than having one section of a craphole city turned into a third world stain, the disease spread out to all areas in east Texas, enlarging or intensifying the existing ghettos there. Taxes go up as police beef up enforcement for increased crime even as the quality of life decreases with that crime wave and spread of infrastructure decay. But hey, we solved the New Orleans slum rebuilding problem ( I imagine right about now the politicians that advocated colonized Liberia are spinning in their graves and grinning a told-ya-so look ). I understand that the above appears racist, and that blacks would never take responsibility for their increased criminality but blame it on the white mans oppression, so you just make of it as you will. I’m not opposed to living with Blacks because of their skin color, but because of their tribal differences and their overt hostility towards Whites ( it’s okay to hate whitey even if his family never owned slaves, but mention the connection between Blacks and crime and you are a racist and A Very Bad Person ). As I keep saying, skin color is irrelevant. Tribal affiliation is paramount ( although I imagine those people shocked by the word “niggardly” both lack access to a dictionary and won’t listen to my rational explanation here ).

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But moving on to refugees in the future. In the past, folks moved to California or East Texas because the government paid them to, at least indirectly. But soon they will be moving just for survival. I wonder how many folks living in Detroit have already moved back down South where there is long neglected family ( reversing the trend from fifty and sixty years ago )? How many moved to the South once air conditioning was cheap? So how many are going to move there when heating fuel is in short supply in the northeast? If the states are not allowed to turn back people, how quick do the Southern cities swell from penniless refugees, bringing disease and crime and a wave that swamps any infrastructure? As States go broke, will they be able to handle these refugees? I’ll bet you a box of Dunken’s that we will soon see Darfur type refugee camps in the South. With the same level of violence from the natives. And it won’t be racial, because white Yankees are still just Yankees.

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Look at it from an individual point of view. As heating fuel become scarce, even if you have to buy on the Black Market you can still get some gasoline. Even at $20 a gallon, you can either sell useless crap for two cents on the dollar, or scrape up enough extra ammunition or a gun or silver jewelry to buy enough gas to get down South. Pile enough crap on the roof and the SUV “only” getting fifteen miles a gallon can carry two families. Each family needs only $400 and they are on their way ( or, they only need to steal gas from three full tanks ). Multiply by millions. In my case, I’m hoping it will be this easy so as to drain away population from Elko to Salt Lake, Reno and Boise. They need a lot less gas to leave. Because, in theory, as fuel becomes scarce, the gold mines shutter ( the gold in ore is so microscopic it is a fuel intense extraction- labor is inconsequential ) and I’m hoping Elko goes back to a near ghost town. For the rest of you, beware temperate climate retreats. Or farming areas. Refugees will be drawn to you as flies to turds, and far before the real collapse.

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

guest article

GUEST ARTICLE

NOTE-my regular article for today appears below
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5 Cheaper Ways to Get Degrees

The cost of college is no joke, and many students can graduate owing hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans. But this isn’t the way it has to be. There are ways to get a college education that don’t require students to take out huge loans. Below we have listed a few ways to get a degree on the cheap.



1. The Military – Are you torn between joining the military and going to college? There is an answer to that. All branches of the U.S. military have scholarship programs and even the option to learn while you’re serving. Check out the branch you are interested in to see what the options for students are.



2. Online – With just about everything online nowadays, schools are no exception. Online degrees can cost less than traditional and even offer flexible study times to busy students. And there are many credible degrees that can be earned online such as medical, information technology, and even business.



3. Testing and Advanced Placement – If you do well on tests, consider these options for colleges. Placing high in tests, such as the College Level Examination Program, can help you place ahead and make the pursuit for a four year degree shorter. Advanced Placement or AP classes in high school can also count as college credits.



4. Transfer – Many colleges and universities have transfer policies and students can save some serious bucks by utilizing them. Attending a junior or community college for the first year or two can cut tuition costs drastically and have students earning the same degree as those who spent all four years at the same college. Transfer credit policies vary from school to school, so this option should be done carefully.



5. Acceleration – Time is literally money in this type of degree program. Because classes are taught at an accelerated pace, students can cut the cost of tuition while keeping the time spent in school low. The downside is that students must be dedicated to studying and have lots of time for it.



Natalie Dawson owns the site
http://www.mastersdegree.com/Masters
. She enjoys writing articles about everything in the education field.

terrible parable

TERRIBLE PARABLE

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A favored minion ( defined as a Book Sender, that honored and oh too rare bird ) sent me the book “Paradise For Sale” which is all about the tiny island of Nauru- the infamous island that is being mined of its phosphate mineral, asking one to ponder who in the heck would export part or most of their land when they are smack dab in the middle of a big ass ocean. Now, I had the same question and if you’ll delve deep into your rusty and cobwebbed memory you will remember that I’ve covered this before. Alas, I based my ill advised drivel on a magazine article which as it turned out was about as educational as an infomercial. They barely scratched the surface and the scarcity of information did nothing to foster any deeper analysis. So, this book was very helpful in vastly enlarging the context one should have on this subject. The magazine basically just pointed a trembling finger and laughed heartily at the stupidity of little brown people. This book was not so much better in unearthing the reasoning behind everything, but it did provide so much background information I was able to do this on my own. The book was weak in its underlying assumptions, but that was okay since it pointed me in the right direction. You have to admit its usefulness even if their motivations were a bit suspect.

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“Paradise” was printed by the University of California Press, so you would expect that there is a bit of Fruit And Granola nonsense going on. And you would of course be correct. Yes, there was a mighty effort at clear and levelheaded thinking, but in the end you could discern the intent of an eco-warrior attempting to save Gaia from humans folly. Nothing wrong with it this time, because as I said at least a mighty attempt at rational thinking was made. This wasn’t just a Unibomber screed like most of them are. But it was clear that the authors would have liked the Nauruan’s to have turned back the clock at independence towards the historical sustainability and were a bit disappointed when they didn’t. The book had a lot of examples of other societies that crashed and burned due to resource depletion ( the book was from 2000, so it came out several years before “Collapse”- you’ll see a few familiar examples as they cited a lot of the earlier work of Diamond from magazine articles ). And it had one example of an island that recognized the danger and imposed draconian restrictions that restored sustainability ( and even then it took one friggin thousand years for the island and the surrounding ocean to replenish itself!! ) by limiting the population ( besides birth control and infanticide there was the young men journeying by boat away from the island- one imagines being forced out by unavailability of brides and still retaining the slime hope they could reach another island ).

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And that is the basis for this book. Showing what a few had done and what most should do, a path towards sustainable living. Living below the carrying capacity. Now, I have no basic fundamental problem with sustainability. That is the way we all will be living soon enough ( although, being totally honest I can admit towards feeling my age and wishing this whole rotten edifice can survive a few more decades and let me die peacefully with a good book in my hand- sure, dying with a boob in your hand is better, but a bit disconcerting for your partner ). My problem is the thinking that believes we can get there voluntarily. All cultural variations world wide are responses to local environments and the attempt to survive. Baring the threat of neighboring invasion, you can abandon growth and go to sustainable living. So, yes, a remote island could, if it has a homogenous population, all agree on the sacrifices needed to get to this level. The problem arises when you are threatened by outsiders.

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Growth is a really good survival strategy when the other tribe is a threat. Sure, degrading the soil might pose a threat in twenty years, or a hundred years, but not growing more food weakens your army and allows invasion next year. The philosophy “tomorrow will take care of itself” isn’t due to the inability to think clearly, or due to sloth, but a recognition that you make the best available choices with the problems you have now, and then you figure out how to sort out those consequences later ( the book would have you believe that this island philosophy was due to unclear thinking, and that only sustainable living decisions are rational ). In the case of Nauru, there was a very good reasons to continue mining phosphorus, even as it was recognized the economic and environmental problems that presented.

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The islanders weren’t stupid with the wealth that mining brought. They had a very large trust fund to invest with ( the fact that most of the investments which were tourist orientated [ Melbourne hotels, etc. ] was a good idea at the time but of course doesn’t work well in an oil down economic contraction ). They chose to mine the remainder, invest the proceeds and live off of investment interest dividends. This isn’t stupid at all, but rather what most middle class folks did here for their retirement ( which, in hindsight, obviously worked out just as well as for the islanders ). The authors make it seem oh so sad and tragic that the islanders didn’t take the sustainable path immediately at independence. But remember, this book was written before the current economic meltdown. Back in the late Sixties, investing wealth and living off interest was seen globally as smart and normal and even perpetually possible. But besides being the smart choice, there was something else that made this the inevitable choice. The near genocide of the islanders in WWII.

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When Japan invaded the island, both for its mineral wealth and for its strategic location, they imprisoned and relocated a lot of the population. During the fighting, much of the island flora and fauna was destroyed. Topping that off, the mines were dormant for years and no income was coming in to the islanders. This was still fresh in the islanders minds at independence twenty years later. They saw how easily the ecosystem was destroyed. If they relied on the market system, the were diversified globally. No one war or disaster would wipe them out economically. Nauru never blindly allowed their island to be mined for short term profit. They chose the best form of long term survival available to them. Just because that is now biting them in the ass is irrelevant. At the time, the likely path towards sustainability was death. One cyclone, one occupation during the Cold War, and the trees would be destroyed, the fishing reefs gone, and they would starve. By allowing the mining to continue, the islanders aligned themselves with the victorious western powers and were enfolded into the global market economy. If anyone is guilty of the problems mining brings Nauru, blame the Japanese. Not the islanders themselves.

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It is never as simple as we want it to be, is it?

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

no blade of grass

NO BLADE OF GRASS

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A minion or two reminded me more than once that the book “No Blade Of Grass” should be included in the best of survival fiction top ten or twenty lists. Usually I just ignore such nonsense, assuming that they are trying to distract me from the business of inflating my own ego. But because I’m not such the callus and uncaring automaton that you all think, I graciously included that book in the Wish List at Amazon. I put off buying it for quite some time since it was about $20 used. Very pricey for a 55 year old paperback. That originally cost sixty cents. But I finally got around to ordering it and I would say, in my humble opinion, not only was it worth the extra money, it belongs not in the top twenty, but the top ten of best survivalist fiction of all time. Damn, this book would have come in handy a long time ago when I could have used an example to point out a perfect illustration of how people will act towards others outside their own tribe in times of collapse ( hint: badly ). This is THE best fiction treatment I’ve seen to date on group dynamics and individual response to catastrophe. I can’t recommend the book if you are perpetually broke. But if you have a spare $20 laying around for you to buy a Christmas present for yourself, I don’t think you will be disappointed. Note- this was written by a very talented author that never went through politically correct sensitivity training. I’m sure he was influenced by several world wars and a Depression and long time food rationing. He doesn’t depict women as inferior, not like that uber-idiotic Gor series from the 70’s ( Oh, mercy, I’m a buxomly broad that secretly lusts after being dominated by a manly man- a bit much chapter after chapter, book after book ). But it doesn’t shy away from the reality of a male dominated and violent world. And the group survives in no small part because of one individual who won’t allow any action that isn’t totally pragmatic for the group’s needs.

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In the beginning of the journey in NBOG, the group includes a government worker with a talent for putting his ear to the grapevine and getting timely warning about future plans. An original idea of the new leader that takes over under less than savory circumstances as the Asian plant virus spreads to the West was to nuke many different cities to immediately cut in half the number of people needing to eat. In a way, it was more merciful than allowing almost everyone to starve, but you just know all the city folk are going to object to sacrificing themselves. Well, the group has sufficient warning to escape London, but here is the kicker. Even with insider knowledge, the group still didn’t know about a military cordon thrown up to contain the urbanites from fleeing. Now, here YOU are, with absolutely no insider information, and you think you can bolt from the city to your retreat in plenty of time to avoid a general panic? Take a smaller city of a million. If one percent panic, and they all divide evenly into the ten exits, you will have to contend with a thousand other people fleeing. And that is if there is no official decision to put up roadblocks. And I wonder, do you think more than one percent of the city is smart enough to flee ( by the way, this is a point also made by “Survival Retreats” by Black, a putrid vile piece of crap book worthy of nothing more than being a coffee table book- thick slick illustrated pages are its one strong suite )? It is better to not flee, but of course that means you must be smart enough to not live in the city in the first place. I would worry a lot more about government roadblocks than seems to be the current fashion. It wasn’t too long ago that the tinfoil hatters were warning about TSA random searches everywhere, and here they are. It is a very small step towards a Soviet style prohibition on internal travel.

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Moving on to other things to pad the article, my Thanksgiving was splendidly relaxing. I wrote for a bit, dug for a bit, then read the above two books. The weather was actually sunny, and I got my first shower in seventy degrees in weeks ( if not months- I’ve been averaging under 60 almost every day ). Lunch was quesadillas, the cheese being a holiday treat. Dinner was an easy but pleasing cubed potatoes, cubed ham skillet fried with gravy over them, with a bag of cookies for desert. Easy to cook, easy to clean, but a traditional dinner all the same. Of course, my work was a duplicate Monday on Friday, as I must be punished for taking any days off. But life is good.

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I see Rawles is going to route his site through Sweden in anticipation of upcoming blatant censorship of the Internet ( if I’m not mistaken, the recent trend of shutting down anyone who linked to an officially disapproved site ). So, here again is my solution. If my blog becomes unavailable, first go check my web site ( the Bison Press site ). If that isn’t up, you can always check under my full name ( James M Dakin ) at Lulu.com. If that is the only avenue for publishing I’ll use that, probably a weekly booklet. I’ll title it Bison Weekly or something similar so you know. Baring that, I’ll go to CD through the mail ( copy my 181 West Bullion address ). Other than that, I guess I’ll have been effectively silenced, and it was nice knowing you. Sure, one of these days all communication will be impossible, but I’ll continue to rant as long as possible. I like the blog since it is free for both of us. All other solutions will be sub-optimal, but I’ll use them as long as I have to, unless the cost exceeds income as my readers drop off. This could all be for nothing, but just in case here it is.

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

past as future

PAST AS FUTURE


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I would hate to think I’ve been just as guilty as eco-puke tree hugging Birkenstock wearing Volvo driving female armpit hair weaving commie humps or stick up ass Victorian explorer and colonizing dudes burdened egregiously with Being White And Saving The Other Unworthy Races From Themselves, both groups suffering from irrational fuzzy thinking. But it seems I might have ( I leave it up to you to decide ). Like the Gaia huggers I perhaps thought that wishful thinking could overcome human nature. And like the tea baggers I looked through Africa with a prejudiced prism. At times I have wondered, but of course without much deep thought or analysis, in my own defense, why man kept overrunning his environment with population. And I have looked at the example of Africa as our future fate, thinking as we break down in law and order we shall emulate them. But now I’m coming to the conclusion that Africa is our future not because they have broken down but because that is how man has always survived and lived, and the only reason we see that in Africa is because almost exclusively they were mostly bypassed by the Oil Age.

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Gaia worshippers always preach that if we could just stop eating meat and stop driving and stop consuming and live on permaculture farmlets we would all survive rather nicely. Of course I agree to some extent, but there are a few problems with the fantasy. First, man evolved over many millennia as a hunter gatherer. He evolved eating meat. He needs animal flesh ( one could probably last well enough eating lots of dairy and no meat other than eggs of course ). To argue otherwise is to argue that evolution is balderdash and you base your dietary theory on a book claiming to be from a divine being speaking in tongues to a select group of humans ( I’m not disparaging the religious aspect of it but rather the assumption that those humans didn’t lie or cheat, being human after all. I do know that Darwin and his initial followers were religious and had no other thought than evolution was Gods creation ). Just the fact that vegetarians die off in splendid gory fashion unless they eat strange factory and chemically extracted crap such as brewers yeast or what not in a vane attempt to substitute for what nature has penned up outside should be enough to convince you of the fallacy of their arguments. Just from their irrational attachment to soy should send up warning flares. Not to mention there are one other group that won’t eat bacon. Hint, middle east terrorist ( I wonder if Obammy eats bacon? ).

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Secondly, you can’t subsidize enough farmers, assuming we all turn into decentralized organic turnip growers, while at the same time keeping the factory farms and long distance transportation going. We don’t have the resources, whether in raw materials or money or political will or the willingness of hundreds of millions to turn from desk bound paper pushers into the role of dirt scratcher, hard work if there ever was any. So, obviously, it is great sport to make fun of the people advocating this kind of pie in the sky fantasy. And yet, there I was thinking people should see the looming convergence of overpopulation and resource depletion. But that was also pie in the sky silliness. I should have been asking, not if people can see, but rather can they act. And I believe the answer is no. Because we aren’t evolutionarily designed to do so. We see the danger of too many people, but too many people is also what will save us ( or, at least the victorious in war ). And this isn’t an abstract equation like “the bigger army wins”. It is also on a very personal level a truism held by all those pragmatic folks unencumbered by a life softened by excess energy.

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War is a way of life on a continent that is crowded, full of diseases unable to be conquered, with no excess energy. War is normal. And you know that your tribe can’t always protect itself or win trying to defeat the next door neighbor for its resources. Tribal life isn’t backwards compared to “civilized” nations. It is enduring because it helps the species survive. It is as bare bones and as ancient as when man first started expanding outwards. Africa never had the advantages of a lot of other places that man eventually moved to, so it never “evolved” into other forms of social organization. Remember, everything else follows how we get our food. Tribes work, because war for resources never ceased there ( and remember, without tribal warfare and prisoner of war slaves, the American slave trade would never had gotten off the ground- white boys couldn’t survive the diseases past the shoreline forts ).

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People bred like crazy. Not necessarily because the farm needed more hands to till, or because more soldiers were needed. That was certainly a factor. But the main reason is, like insects, man needed to have the numbers to survive constant attrition. Through disease and famine and war. You have enough kids, your tribe survives through a simple numbers game ( this isn‘t to discount the ability to live within your resource base. Through infanticide and other practices, tribes reduce their numbers as needed. But the replacements, if needed, the surplus, keeps being generated ). I think we don’t like this stark reality. We invent reasons to discount it and hide it. We genocide whole tribes away, take over the land and so make increasing numbers of us look natural ( growing to fill in the land ). Africa, through its unique circumstances, avoids that by and large. They just keep in a constant state of replenishment and survive all the abuse man and nature throws their way. Tough little bastards. You got to give them that.

END

The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

form over function

FORM OVER FUNCTION


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Here is a perfectly good example of form over function. I furrow my eyebrows, frown thoughtfully and get a constipated look on my face and everyone assumes I’m deep in thought and conjuring Great Things. In actual fact, I’m just confused, because I can’t remember if I’ve covered this subject before or not. But, it still fooled you, didn’t it? Look overworked, move briskly, and you are a manager. Form over function is everywhere you look. Our President is a complete idiot, but since he looks professional and thoughtful, he gets the front man job of captaining the Titanic. Your paycheck looks respectable and you have a nice car and a house in the proper school district, you are hence the prettiest peacock and attract the high maintenance wife. Of course, it is all from debt, you spend 101% of your paycheck and your job could be outsourced to India at any time. But it looks right, so it must be. Look at the global financial system. Most money organizations are leveraged twenty or forty or eighty to one, and just the failure of one payment in the few millions or billions suddenly requires trillions in Monopoly money to be used in bailouts. The system looked functional until the tiniest problem came along.

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The bridge you drive over every day has structural damage, but it was just repaved and painted, so it looks brand new. Your house has no southern exposure, taxes are 3% a year, without central air and heat it is uninhabitable, but you paid $150k for it so it must be a great house, right? Your car costs half what your mortgage payment is, but you keep a shiny coat of wax on it so people are impressed. Your job is too important for you to spend too much time at the range, but you can afford a top of the line semi auto carbine with laser and laser dot scope and night vision and 90 round mags. You shall simply overwhelm anyone stupid enough to show up to your pimpin gun fight with a substandard wood furniture bolt action rifle. Why, the mere sight of your mighty arsenal will leave your enemies soiling themselves in fear. And after you vanquish your unworthy foes, you shall dine on your luxury freeze dried dinners, their shiny metal cans gleaning brightly from the halogen glow of your bitchin light system powered by your new Honda generator.

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I don’t know who we are trying to impress, but I do know that almost everything you see is illusionary and faked. We descended down the rabbit hole so long ago we think it is normal. We don’t even know that there is a surface reality. The Red Queen rules all. Forget the Red Pill. Surely we all realize how shallow and faked our whole gerbil wheel existence has become? Is our contrived dramatic creations a need to exist for something else even marginally better? Or do we really think this reality is a great deal. Lifetime wage slavery in exchange for shiny plastic beads, guaranteed to break with the slightest effort? This is the great deal we’ve accepted willingly? Eight hours climbing up the colon of a boss that traded common sense for a college degree, sandwiched between an hour commute home each way, washed away by vapid television versions of humor at the end of the night and a twice a month spousal fluid exchange. You hate each other, but since you both look so happy together, so photogenic, what the heck, right? Which of course brings me to the very worst egregious form over function. Fake boobs. There was a day not too long ago that the sight of mighty breasts struggling to free the bonds cheating gravity was a rare and wondrous proof that Baby Jesus himself loved us. Because they were not common place they were special. And, because I love the fairer sex so and wish them nothing but the best, one could hence calibrate the good fortune of the owner of such chesticles since a well paying career in the movies or country singing was sure to follow ( not to take away from the talent of Dolly, but surely her endowment opened the first doors in Nashville ). Although, if you got stupid and let that artificial celebrity go to your head you had a very short career before the Secret Service staged an overdose. Now? Now, everyone with five grand, or more usually a credit line to five grand, can join the other 80% in laughing in the face of God by cheapening what was once a special gift. That can’t end well for them. You don’t mock the gods or fool yourself into thinking you’ve tamed Mother Nature.

*

Form over function also ties in with the Corporate vulture devouring the corpse of the country, its last act seemingly to be burying the continent under several yards of cheap broken plastic junk. I’ve been meaning to write about this for some time, and now seems as good a time as any since this article has petered out faster than most and needs a little righteous indignation to spice it up. Except in Florida where the humidity necessitated wearing cloth shoes, and the last half of living in Carson City since I had a wonderful pair of leather boots I trash picked, I’ve usually always worn Payless Shoes brand hiking boots. They were $20-$25 and I usually got them at the buy one get one half off sales. Not only were they cheap, they lasted several years without fail. I even have a half dozen pairs in storage for post-Apocalypse use they were so reliable ( they might be synthetic, without much support, but they worked great for my needs and in a pinch will last me the rest of my short and violent life ). But the last time I went and bought two pairs of shoes at their last BOGO sale, they had changed the shoes on me. I thought nothing of it, and held my nose at the new $35 price. But they changed the shoes. It is made of vastly inferior crap materials. In less than three months, wearing them part time ( I’m wearing the snow boots back and forth to work for the cold weather and slippers at home ), I had the tops start splitting apart on me in several different locations on both shoes. I’ll still wear them until they let in water, but I will never buy another pair of shoes from Payless again. Suck my ass you worthless whoring bastard pukes!

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/

*
My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
*
Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
*
By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

xenophobia

XENOPHOBIA


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*
Xenophobia has been another innocent victim of Political Correctness. Have I mentioned that any and all teachers of this particularly heinous crime against nature, common sense and rational thinking should be brutally and unmercifully eliminated after the collapse? Remember, I do NOT advocate violence during our current regimes rule! However, after their collapse and ruination, all bets are off and you can them unfurl your enemies list and start to apply a little elbow grease to clean up the gene pool. Lawyers, politicians, child molesters, bankers ( since both the bible and the Koran prohibit charging interest, and in case you are wondering why it is because interest requires perpetual growth which requires strip mining the resource base which kills everyone in the end, and so you can, if you are a religious type, go all jihad against those putrid humps ) and those bastards who tried to kill us all by imposing politically correct propaganda to our schools, all deserve to die. I mean, can you imagine the confusion of future archeologists who uncover a textbook full of such nonsense? If they don’t actually watch the movie PCU ( I would rate that movie as one of the all time top ten funniest movies ever ), which makes fun of most politically correct notions, they might actually think we believed in this crap. Worse, your future descendents might open up one of those books and think it is educational and then your best friends great grandchild would be forced to kill your great grandchild because the little bastard started talking about gay marriage and feminine voting and other such nonsense. Don’t let the insanity continue! So, what exactly is wrong with xenophobia? The fudge packing tree huggers would tell you that mean old foreigners don’t like you when you go to visit and how they are so intolerable and mean and yuckie!

*

Okay, first off, you are a fudge packing tree hugger. Of course no one is going to like you! We don’t like you! What makes you think you can go on over to another country where it is illegal to poke you buddy Earl in the ass and think they will appreciate your attitude? Secondly, there is a perfectly sound reason for hating foreigners. Not only do they suck at most everything ( although apparently it is still okay to hump the females since you are injecting an approved cultural virus into their gene pool ), you need to hate them to survive. The other tribe is evil, they will kill you and put you in the stewpot, and when it comes time to invade them to steal their resources, you need to really hate them so you can kill them. Xenophobia is a survival mechanism. Now, here is the really important part. Pay attention ( and, I apologize for my earlier efforts at making this perfectly clear ). You are not acting inhumanly if you kill foreigners. All those rules about treating people decently? They are only applicable to your own tribe. To your own tribe, you must not covet thy neighbors wife, or his property. You must render unto Caesar and thou shall not kill. All that great stuff. To the other tribe? No. You can steal from them, kill them, rape anyone’s wife, etc. This is most assuredly a double standard, and a darn fine one. You MUST respect your tribesmen, for they will save your ass if you follow the rules. The other tribe will go to war against you when they run out of food. Always. So there is absolutely no percentage in treating them decently. The ingrates will just turn on you and kill you or enslave you. So far better just to always hate them and treat them badly and do unto them before they do unto you.

*

Humans are social animals. They survive in packs. The pack leader is allowed certain abuses against you, but the norm is that all tribe members ( pack members ) follow the rules amongst themselves. Whatever rules are agreed on, other tribes members follow and respect. Why? Because you can’t have fellow tribesmen turning on you to eat. That is what the other tribes are for. Resources during famine. The tribe is there to help you survive. You pay in, you can cash out. If, on the other hand, it was expected that we were all equal And Can’t We All Just Get Along?!?, in times of disaster far too many people would show up for a handout, more than could be fed. The tribe has a self reinforcing survival mechanism which keeps their numbers in line with the local resources ( which is why, baring outside plundering, you can’t support a nation state too long- the climate and resource base is too varied for successful feedback ). You can’t just happily allow outsiders to show up like in-laws for Thanksgiving, that would upset the equilibrium. Xenophobia is necessary and good. Embrace it.

*

My attention span has been drastically reduced recently. That time of year, a hundred different friggin people wanting something all at the same time. Granted, I love them all, either volunteer laborers or people donating food, but collectively they act like a swarm of locusts devouring Jim Time. I still have 40% of an article from two days ago to finish up sometime. I can barely get enough time at lunch to finish up a half-assed article. Expect it through the end of the year, in bursts. So, that excuse aside, I’ll switch gears and rag on Rush for the remainder of the article. I love how Rush makes everything the fault of the Democrats. And his listeners, with attention spans averaging fifty percent of a couch potato ( which is to say, far shorter even than mine is now ). Uncontrolled

Immigration is Obammy’s fault, because since he is a Democrat he wants uncontrolled breeders who burp out more Democrats. Christ on a bent crutch! What happened during the eight years of the Bush presidency? Uncontrolled immigration. Of course, that time it was to swell the ranks of underemployed workers so corporations could eliminate all Unions. Once again, Rush, you silly twat, it doesn’t matter who is in charge, The Machine rules. Old boss, same as the new boss. Rush is a corporate paid whore that keeps the myth of political parties alive to mask the bankers rape of the economy. Wallow in your filthy lucre, you bastard.

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
*
My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
*
Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

be all things

BE ALL THINGS


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*
In the last couple of days I’ve gotten a slew ( slew described as about three or four, avalanche or cascade would be a half dozen ) of minion e-mail on two subjects, the Viet Cong using bikes as heavy duty cargo hauling down the Ho trail and a guy writing on his experience in Afghanistan about insurgents using old bolt actions to inflict a goodly amount of casualties. Which is today’s article, being all things. People have unrealistic expectations that something should perform all manner of activities. Survivalists are the worst of the bunch. Not my minions of course, I would never accuse of, oh, I don’t know, expecting your plastic carbine to smite all enemies foreign and domestic with the number of bullets fired substituting for talent. Let’s take the bicycle. Looking at the pictures of these idiots grinning for the official North Vietnam edition of Pravda, knowing that if they didn’t project the required amount of Party zeal they might end up in a shallow rice paddy somewhere missing their private parts, happily pushing four times their body weight, you might get the idea that a bicycle will be a wonderful Iron Mule of the future ( as I’ve written ). Up to a certain point that is certainly true. But the duration will surely be shorter than the original war in Indochina ( what were they fighting for there? Just rubber? Didn’t that war, I think starting even before the Japanese occupation [ although I could be wrong on that one ] last something like fifty years? ). Those bikes that the mindlessly happy draftees were using as mules were solidly made of real steel. Comparing those bikes to the flimsy turds made today is like comparing a solid body 1960 Chevy with today’s super plastic Toyota. In a demolition derby, the Toyota is a compact cube within seconds. In the future, as spare parts dry up, bikes will be cannibalized and their numbers quickly decrease as hard use ( being the only mechanized means of transport available, they will be rode hard and put up wet ) takes their toll and before you know it bikes will be another vaguely remembered Oil Age relic. Folks remember bikes being an all around wonder transport but they will soon realize that they devolved into marginally effective specialized tools. They aren’t meant to survive without global cheap transportation.

*

Next we arrive at a subject near and dear to my heart, attempting to dismantle the myth of semi autos. Even as the discussion board members read about the experiences of a Afghan war vet, they couldn’t take experience as proof and instead stubbornly clung to the Might Battle Rifle As Magical Talisman. If the extreme wonderfulness of follow up shots is the only thing keeping you from a gruesome death of ninja dog packs and attacking swarms of zombies mindless of their own casualties, I can see how you simply must have the newest and dandiest AR with laser sites and drum magazines. But in a long range weapon? Why are follow up shots so important? The experience of the Insurgents ( Insurgents always capitalized to Denote A Very Bad Thing, just like those rebellious traitors who defied the British ) was that one shot was all you wanted to take. More than that and you would more easily be found by your surviving targets. And yet, so as not to admit that a rifle costing two grand was a stupid idea, most folks think they must have rapid fire ( because, you know, those pesky rabid dogs packs go for miles and miles to attack Insurgent soldiers. You better have a means of defeating them ). I’m not saying that a semi-auto battle rifle is necessarily a bad thing. If you can afford it, it is a higher functioning tool. So is a BMW, but I can’t afford one. So instead of trying to get a rifle that Is All Things defense wise, I settle for one much cheaper that will do a tolerable job at most things.

*

Your wife can’t Be All Things. She can’t raise the kids, properly nurture them, work a good paying job and be ready to romance you every evening. A husband surely can’t Be All Things. He can’t work all day, spend quality time with both the kids and the spouse, have time to get in touch with his feminine side and do whatever else all those damn parasites demand of him. That is why a traditional household worked much better. One person did one or two things well, the other did the opposite tasks equally well. Stop acting like your sniper rifle needs to be a skinny wasted big busted nymphomaniac that earns a $100k a year and comes home to gourmet cook every evening. It is unrealistic and you can’t afford one if you could find her. The point here is that you simply must lower your expectations a bit. About everything. After the collapse, you won’t anywhere without walking ( and there will be a time without adequate shoe replacements as the skill must be relearned after the last shoe factories using synthetic materials close down ). You can’t afford to rely on an ammo waster when no more ammo is being made. You must substitute skill for firing a swarm of lead, hoping to hit something. The legendary Confederate sniper Hinson, an irregular, or, according to the Federal soldiers, an Insurgent, placed far more importance on site selection and potential escape routes than massive firepower to wage his war against the invaders. He made it through the whole war just fine. Sure, his rifle was custom made and he bought what he could afford ( being a man of means prior to the Federal War Against States Rights ). But he never considered the rifle more important than skill. And it was his pure grit that allowed an old man to outmaneuver an army of young punks, not the gun he was using. And of course, he never expected the rifle to Be Able To Perform Every Imaginable Task. History doesn’t have to be painful ( mindless regurgitation of dates ), and can be great fun. Try to learn from it.

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
*
Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
*
By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

die, part two

DIE, PART TWO

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*
Well, yes, I could have just left yesterday’s article alone. It would have stood alone nicely. But, having run out of time on Saturday to write because of working an extra day at the Real Paycheck Job ( I love you all, you are far more generous in your support than I deserve, but there aren‘t enough of you to pay for my food and child support, so I‘m chained to a regular job ), I only had half of Saturday’s article completed. Come Sunday, the Syphilitic Whore Mother Nature throws us another 15 low, 40 high but only after noon, cloudy day. I woke up to 34 degrees in the trailer and despite being massively bundled after three hours I’m so damn cold I can’t think straight. Writing this running sea of verbal diarrhea isn’t hard, as far as pounding on the keyboard ( one finger hunt and peck, but so practiced I can get 22 words a minute which is spell corrected first and last draft ). It is coming up with the ideas that is hard. Which is one of the reasons I’m constantly immersed in Internet sites and survivalist books. I have no control over the process, when I trip over a trigger word or phrase, my brain has its Eureka! movement and I’ve got my idea. Sunday, I can’t concentrate because of the cold ( although, as soon as it got above freezing [ and I’d taken a short nap to defrost my feet ] that surely motivated me in digging the new pit fast and furious in anticipation of fewer days like this in the future ). So I finished up Saturday’s article and just decided to continue it. I bring this up because I need to bloat this article, and because you need to know how this stuff works. I don’t go down a list of subjects, research and write them. Boring. I must be inspired, cause the pay sucks.

*

Yesterday, I wrote how understanding a frantic threat isn’t sufficient. You must act on it. I like to think I’m smarter than everyone, but then, look how long it took me to respond to the economic threat. I’m pretty damn squared away now, but I still rue the lost years as my ignorance denied me the truly frugal lifestyle until recently. I wished I had picked a better site far before the real estate bubble. I would have had the bitch paid off with far better ( and more ) supplies stashed. But looking back is dangerous. You just trip over something in front of you. Now, today, we blather on once again about what it takes to truly be in a safe place come the collapse. Distance from people. And water. You can cheaply acquire a junk lot of land, but it won’t be cheap if it doesn’t have year round surface water within walking distance. To find a cheap lot, with nearby water, you must forget about the farming issue. You can’t do all three cheap. Which is one of the reasons I liked the trapping in the woods concept. The alternate strategy is stockpiling. Wheat 60% and beans 30% ( the remainder lard and sugar and such misc. ). Call it about three hundred bucks a year, plus container cost. I’d go five years. You spend far more on a used car or a few firearms. And it allows you to buy that cheap desert land ( or swamp, or whatever ). The point is that this is your hidey hole. You don’t necessarily have to live here the rest of your life, so forget about that multi-generational retreat on the mountaintop which costs hundreds of thousands. We don’t have enough time left for that. You hide, preferably hundreds of miles from all but the smallest towns. You emerge after the die-off and mass insanity. Which, I’ll bet you a whole friggin dozen donuts, is guaranteed to happen and soon ( five percent decline in energy a year, mixed in with increased severe weather, added to unchecked population growth sprinkled with economic melt down equals global die-off ). And then, you go take the area you want for your family or group. Be it farmland or pasture.

*

I know this makes most people uncomfortable. You would rather stay stationary and defensive and wait for marauders to appear and then die a gloriously moral death. Hey, maybe while you are at it, your church will make you an officially sainted martyr. To you, if you are female, I say tend to your knitting ( ie, look after your household and leave the hard choices to the clan protectors ). If you are male, I say you are a worthless defender and will die. Life isn’t pretty and the only reason you’ve had the soft comfortable life allowing you to stake out the moral high ground is because of our energy surplus allowed the hard choices to be postponed three generations ( WWII was about petroleum control, not species survival. You ain’t seen nothing yet ). Guess what, marshmallow bitches? The end started several years ago. Welcome to the return of sucking it up and actually doing your job of protecting your family. We got away with outsourcing it to the professionals far too long. It will soon be time to do whatever it takes to feed your tribe. We all hate cannibalism. But the only alternative in a resource contraction/ population die-off is to steal the food of the neighboring tribe. You either mercifully kill them in battle, make them slaves and feed them, or take their supplies and leave them to starve. I’d give the moral brownie point to the enslavers or the killers, myself. And, by hiding out a few years ( don’t wait until the supplies are all gone, keep some in reserve ) before you go offensive and steal your food production resources, you are reducing the number of people you must kill. See, even being an asshat, you can do it as nicely as possible. Face the music, be ready to make the less than easy decisions, but try to minimize the barbarism.

END

The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
*
Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
*
By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

die, ignorant scum!

DIE, IGNORANT SCUM!


Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon graphics above and to the right of each article. Or, visit
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*
A guest article posted earlier.
*
Our freeze dry guy over at Survival Acres has given up on trying to save all the ignorant mouth breathing banjo players.
http://survivalacres.com/wordpress/?p=2285
Now, of course he was pretty cool about it and all sweet and lightness and didn’t try to insult anyone, so as you can imagine the above synopsis was purely my own. He’s been doing his things for five or six years or something to that effect, so I imagine that as the obvious end nears, he gets tired of answering the same stupid friggin questions. “If I buy a case of freeze dried beef colon, will that see me through any emergency including nuclear war, since obviously the Federal Emergency Management Agency has spent a quabizillion dollars to save my pasty ass rather than the President and his staff?” “Can I put my freeze dried food on layaway. I’ll pay five percent a year and in the event of an emergency, you’ll overnight FedEx it at no additional charge and then I can just owe you the balance, right?” “Now, when you say the entire planet is friggin doomed as the global temperature goes up a hundred degrees and nothing can save us, I can still continue my middle class lifestyle if I invest in stabilized gasoline, an AR-15 and an armored RV, right?”. Now, Survival Acres dude is all about making the Benjamin’s, selling overpriced over processed slop, but I think he also genuinely cares that people do something to survive in the coming collapse. So he probably burned himself out trying to help the idiots out there ( he plans on continuing posting, but it seems he will try to stop selling the collapse to the deniers ). Which, let’s be honest now, probably includes most of his customers since only the mentally challenged buy more than a smidge of commercial survival food ( stuff like powdered margarine or other items not easily duplicated, but even then sparingly because in a famine situation you want quantity over quality ).

*

This might be a courageous move on his part, because the money is in selling salvation to the ignorant, not so much in selling an education to those with some common sense. If you will, mostly, look at yourselves my minions, if you still insist on sticking around after a few months of caustic and insulting articles, most likely you agree with my famous equation, soon to rival Einstein’s, that money substitutes for brains. -$=B. You may not have the fortitude to make the necessary moves to survive, but at least you are not delusional about what needs to be done. And don’t take offense, I’m just as guilty as you are. We are yeast in the vat, knowing the end is coming, and won’t jump out of the container. Our family and friends are in the vat, and our jobs pay for a nice suburban home so we stay where we are and hope we die before our civilization does. We mostly play at this rather than make the hard choices. Which leads to my point, that education is worthless. It does no good to try to convince people about the dangers of collapse because 99% of them won’t listen. Of the one person out of a hundred that you convince, he/she will acknowledge that your insights are brilliant, your reasoning sound and that they agree with you wholeheartedly that verily, the end is indeed nigh, and then there will be 101 reasons why they can’t get adequately prepared and then they will die along with the rest of the unprepared.

*

In this category I include the delusional preppers. The mighty arsenal with two months food guy, the “we are farming and so will survive even if the surrounding twenty miles ( one days walk ) contains three million people” guy, the guy who thinks he can safely navigate through those three million to get to a fully stocked retreat. Or, the guy like myself who MIGHT have a sweet setup but only if the economy tanks first and the supply of natural gas dries up and most of the population migrates away due to the cold weather half the year. If that doesn’t happen, I’m faced with fifteen thousand people five miles away who will have no idea I’m packing food but who will find it regardless just by swarming the countryside after the town has been picked over. I’m just rolling the dice here, but then, so are the true rural dwellers that hope that gasoline remains available to them to commute for a job and supplies since they live so far away.

*

A small detail I think a lot of folks have ignored in all this survival planning is that a lot of our information comes from forty and fifty years ago when there were a lot fewer people living in this country. We went from a thinly populated energy self sufficient nation to a jam packed overpopulated Third World country ( both in terms of an economy and a contentious fragmented tribal state of conflict ) with too little energy for its population ( and hence a problematic food future ). All that extra population didn’t just go to the cities, it also turned most small towns to medium sized ones. And our economy went from Mom & Pop stores to mega retail centers. Which means that our population NOT in cities went to surrounding suburbs for the jobs and supplies. Even our country folk are too close to cities for comfortable prep planning, or so far away the fuel issue might leave them stranded. And while its true that the Internet somewhat alleviates the “living near a job” issue, remember that the Internet is built on three wobbly legs. Atop a crumbling infrastructure, a failing electrical grid straining past capacity and an imploding consumer economic sector. Educating folks about collapse might work for a few clear headed individuals. Who then find it impossible to move far enough away. Who have, at best, a problematic time with the surrounding population come collapse. You can survive with cheap preps, but the cost will be complete rejection of any lifestyle seen for the last seventy years. If you can live poor, without being a consumer, and live outside the Consumer Supplied Areas, and do so without modern transportation, you will survive. The Urban Survivalists, the Suburban Survivalist, odds are 99% they die in the mass ocean of rioting starving masses. Seeing the problem isn’t even close to being enough. You have to want to achieve a solution regardless of physiological costs.

PART TWO TOMORROW

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/

*
My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
*
Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
*
By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

guest article

GUEST ARTICLE
Okay, here's a fun one.  My article posted at 7am.
*
OK Sunday Jim did an article called no substitutions.I gave it some thought and I've


come up with a source of vast energy that is untapped and whole owned by corperations but

sits idle doing nothing . OUR POLITITIONS,we have payed them for years and got nothing

out of them but SHIT so i propose that we demand BIO GAS .They sit in offices all day

spewwing shit from both ends.There has to be a way insert hoses into both orifice's and

channel it to a digester.We have provide them with cushy jobs a home a mistress and off

shore accounts its time we got something good for our money.As long as crap is flowing

lets hook them up.I am sure some mad scientist from Nazi Germany had a system wrote down

for this lets use it.Just think of the potential 50 state capitals thousands of useless

officials free energy for their state citizens. Then you have county governments and city

. They wanted a job just to spew shit now its use full . Lets start with the federal

government and its bueracrocy.The train system and military could run forever on just the

gas from our capital alone . If you hooked up the T.S.A. and homeland security we could

pay off the national debt {they have 5 times the shit a congress man has} . wouldn't it

feel good to drive to work burning compressed senator farts. Yep i want to than Jim for

Sunday made me solve our energy crisis and find a productive use for our elected officers

and bloated government workforce. What do you think ?

bloody bike blathering

BLOODY BIKE BLATHERING


Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon graphics above and to the right of each article. Or, visit
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*
Last night I stopped by the bike shop with the new bike. The original bolt on the rack had unscrewed and been lost, a replacement bolt had done the same ( and I couldn’t find the right size in the hardware section of Wal-Mart ) and I had put a bent nail in its place which wasn’t making the bike or me too happy but it filled in for a week. And, because one bike shop visit a month isn’t enough, I had to make an appointment for the original bike which had cracked the part holding the pedal ( the crank arm metal itself had broke-something the mechanic had never heard of much to both our amusement- even though the petal itself was fine ). I’m doing my regular Wednesday grocery shopping and on the last one third of a mile stretch the pedal sheered off. I’m glad I didn’t have to push it too far, loaded down with cargo as it was. Now however, I have to come in to work Saturday ( the Boy Scout Food Drive ) with the pedal-less bike. I get to alternate between one pedal pedaling, pushing the bike, and coasting down hills for six miles, then spend the day throwing around heavy boxes of cans, then picking up the bike and dragging my ass home. And if the weather forecast is correct ( they are running about 50% right now ), I get to start out the day at eight degrees and end it with a high below freezing [ Saturday update- I had to pull the one bike in with the other as the shop doesn’t have the part- and the weather was a mild 25 but there was a thick sheet of ice on the road ] . Such are the joys of full time biking. Well worth it, what with double my book buying budget and the lack of stress associated with gas and insurance and registration money. Just trying at times. And to you, a near future reluctant biker, instructive. You can learn from my mistakes.

*

Ten years ago, a Wal-Mart bike was $60 and needed replacement about once a year to avoid any major equipment failures. This was the extent of your cost other than the occasional replacement inner tube when some ass whoring bastard staggered home drunk the night before and dropped his glass beer bottle and the shards sliced open your tire. Well, as the supply of petroleum and metal ores has shrunk drastically since then, bike manufactures, and not just those selling to the Marts, have been cutting back on the quality. An American manufactured part is usually rated for about one to two thousand miles ( not something like the frame, but the add-ons ) and if you buy a professional one at five to ten times the cost, it is only good for about five thousand miles. The Mart bikes are about four to five hundred miles away from the pot metal parts failing. Why? Because most Mart bikes never see that kind of mileage. The bean counters have done the math, and only a fraction of one percent of bike buyers are serious about their transportation. The majority are fair weather bikers. The yearly distance is measured in blocks rather than miles. Your average bike purchaser is either replacing the bike because Little Sue got too big for it or replacing it years and years later and so doesn’t see the low quality. This advice is for people not fixing their own like the gearheads, or putting serious miles on the bike. This is for those getting serious about replacing their cars, getting ready to haul their supplies by bike, and going long distances on poorly maintained roads.

*

You need to buy yourself an industrial model single speed bike with built in racks ( the frame looks like an X, with the crossbar going out past under the seat ). It seems that huge warehouses had a need your heavy duty bikes. Pepe the parts hauler got an order, hopped on his bike, pedaled way down to the other end of a warehouse, loaded the item on the bike and came back with it ( obviously, a warehouse dealing in single items rather than pallet sized items ). There is a company that builds these things. In fact, the specs were so much better compared to the regular bikes the bike shop sold ( number gauge of spokes on the wheel, spoke metal composition, etc. ) that the owner was happily impressed with what he was reading as he researched my inquiry on returning back to a single speed from my current geared bikes. And the cost is not unreasonable. About $350 after shipping cost. Now, this is far more than the $100 at Wal-Mart, but you will get far, far more than four times the use out of it. But that isn’t the only benefit. There are no rear racks to buy, or rear rack to replace. The rear rack is part of the extended frame. It can’t break! Now, the optional front rack is another $50, true. But let’s take a look at my current cargo hauler. It cost $300, without fenders ( this industrial bike come with built on fenders ). The rear rack cost $50 ( the heavy duty model to hold fifty pounds- the cheap ones are rated for less weight, and I haul fifty pounds of water almost every day ). The front rack would have cost about $30 if I already hadn’t had one ( the mounting rack had broke, so I zip-tied and metal banded it to the bars ). Also, in two years of riding a smidge under three thousand miles a year, I’d gone through two derailers. Add another $40 ( not including labor ). We are up to OVER $400, and the bike and racks are not the same quality as this proposed industrial model.

*

You can easily turn a mid quality range bike into a cargo hauler, but don’t expect the thing to go over too many potholes or too many miles before failing. If you are a mechanic, you can skirt around this issue with salvage and alleviating the need for labor. For the rest of us, buy quality the first time and forget about the constant hassle of maintenance.

END
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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no substitutions please

NO SUBSTITUTIONS PLEASE


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There were many of us that got involved in the study of Peak Oil, mostly because we had no lives and wondered what new hobby we could engage in that cost almost nothing but the odd book or two. And the main consensus evolved that we were all going to die because we had substituted petroleum for almost all inputs in our creation of food. Something like 20% of our oil goes to food, not including domestic energy for refrigeration and cooking. It goes something like this. Oil for tractors and machines in their manufacturing. Oil to run the machines. Natural gas to fertilize the soil that would otherwise be dead due to decades of mono-cropping. Oil to transport the food thousands of miles, package it, sell it. Before, we had a ring of decentralized farmland and dairies surrounding urban areas. The farmers put pasture aside to feed animals that provided fertilizer for the farm. With the industrialization of agriculture, that was all deemed too inefficient. And at the time it was. It was easier and cheaper to substitute oil for pasture, oil for diversified planting and fallow times. Obviously, oil substitution was cheaper than a lot of things, as we will see. But the way we produce food is the best known example. In a overflowing petroleum age, it made sense. But long term, it was as stupid as using a cheese crater to scratch an itch on the family jewels. It is already biting us in the ass.

*

We have substituted insulation and quality building material with cheap natural gas and heating oil, as well as hydro or nuke powered electric air conditioning. Almost no houses in this country can keep their inhabitants alive all winter long without petroleum ( any survival advice to survive the winter is usually only short term because of this issue ). These two things alone should raise red flags, our food and winter survival 99% oil based. But most preppers are growing their own food and heating with wood ( except the Yuppie Survivalists, who almost universally depend on Exxon-Mobil size storage tanks of carbon fuels to get through the winters in the style they insist on ) so outside that miniscule minority no one seems to sense any danger. Most towns will have issues with water supplies, being tied to the grid, other than the old cities that developed a gravity system prior to electricity. The main problem is going to be all the areas built up since WWII, mostly in areas that had no business seeing millions move in. Phoenix and Vegas and LA and San Diego, etc. They used oil to substitute for unexploited pioneer land ( when The West Was Won, and Alaska became a state, what was left for those wishing for elbow room? Only land uninhabitable without abundant oil.

*

Oil has been used as a substitute for recycling. Take a cardboard box. Used for nothing but shipping consumer items, trees are killed to ship Little Tommy a petroleum based plastic ( plastic containers being used as an oil substitute for collecting bottles and cleaning them. God knows that almost all jobs needing labor are candidates for oil-substitution. We simply can’t reduce the CEO’s valuable compensation with unneeded workers ) toy. The box is flattened in the store using a huge metal compactor ( metal smelted, juiced by coal fired electrical plants ) and a huge truck burning oil comes around and takes the boxes who knows how many miles away where oil is used to recycle the material, and the whole cycle starts over. And that is if the cardboard is even recycled at all. Usually we just kill the tree and bury it a landfill. Next up, as most of our jobs are pretty useless in the scheme of things, look at all the oil going to keep us all alive. As with most things in the Oil Age, everything has been switched over to quantity rather than quality. Before oil, a few of us worked for the benefit of ourselves, about 80% of our labor, and the other Kings Fifth we paid as protection money ( both literally buying protection from the neighboring king and bribing our king to prey on the other village rather than yours ). Now, with so many more people being put to work, there is a lot more serf’s to tax. And the Kings Fifth ( anything more was impractical and killed off the farming taxpayers ) has turned into the Obammy 50% ( which is only the visible portion. Most likely 75% is more realistic ). But, hey, food used to be subsidized and our jobs were pushing paper, so we didn’t mind too much. But as oil dries up, so do the make-work jobs.

*

Globalization was not much more than substituting high wages ( necessitated by the need to pay all the built in complexity costs ) with oil. We build ocean fleets and fuel them to run to newly built factories employing almost free labor living in countries that give workers nearly free food grown with petroleum as almost the only incentive needed to work. As that country turns to a higher standard of living, we move over to the next country that does the same thing. The beauty part was as you displace farmers with petroleum, you build in this self perpetuating cycle. Substituting a self sufficient economy with a short term oil dependent one. The importance here is that all these things combined, plus hundreds I didn’t think of, combined, equal a nuclear chain reaction of failure as petroleum starts getting too expensive or too scarce. Back in the seventies, we had the remnant legacy system of decentralized food and no where near the petroleum substitution we have today, along with ONLY higher prices rather than an actual supply contraction. We are so much more vulnerable today. But rather than cry, Havoc! And let slip the drill, baby, drill, how about trying to find something that isn’t petroleum substituted in our civilization. I’d be interested if you find anything.

END
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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fight or flight

FIGHT OR FLIGHT

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*
Don’t you just love how things have turned out? We sit atop a razors edge and either way you lean, you get cut. The economy WILL implode, but the question everyone asks is, when and how bad? Well, you know the How Bad part eventually is The End because of the oil and population issue. We have already passed the peak of easy and cheap oil and all economic activity was based on that. It isn’t so much running out because our economy will be over and done while the deep sea oil, tar sands, frac oil and artic petroleum pools remain unmolested. And of course we can all agree that long ago we passed the point where we had too many people, even with cheap and easy oil feeding them. But the people already born are still breeding and there isn’t the means to feed them very well ( with the capacity diminishing yearly ). These things are pretty well a given. You can’t argue that the world can support seven billion people without a sea of gushing petroleum. And by looking at what we are burning besides oil is proof enough that the Oil Age is sputtering along on Limp Penis Mode. The economic implosion is so bad, far worse than it should be, because most of the globe outside a few soon-to-be-lucky bastards that are feeding their herd of yaks in alpine meadows or scratching out plots of jungle land for a corn crop were forcibly chained to the money economy long ago. We have no choice but to bend to its dictates. As ancient man was dependent on the local weather for his grain harvest, today we pray to the gods of finance to provide us with a paycheck so we can eat.

*

The terrible thing is, the economy could end tomorrow, or ten years from now. We have no idea. It won’t be the collapse of society that will so bad, but the waiting for it. We are on permanent stress mode. Just like the anticipation of a doctors visit is far worse than the procedure turns out to be, waiting for the end of civilization is worse than what the alternative is going to turn out to be ( not including the messy reorganization, of course ). And being such a stressful time, our bodies of course produce an overpowering urge to Fight Or Flight. That chemical production was cool when we needed to flee a saber tooth tiger, but it really sucks the life out of us when it is prolonged in this kind of years long emergency. You simply can’t live on adrenalin for too long, so we’ve each made adjustments to cope. Most people don’t admit there is a problem. Those that see it usually choose to fight. In the case of survivalists, that is manifest in an arsenal of assault carbines and cases of ammunition, concealed weapons and fantasies of being the next Bruce Lee incarnate. Of course there is nothing wrong with this, we are all going to need to well armed to survive. I don’t even care overly much that you all rely so much on the semi-auto talisman. Mainly I disagree with it on logistical grounds, with the money issue not far behind. But put that aside. The question is, is “fight” good enough? I understand it reduces the chemical production, eases your mind, and allows you to sleep at night. But are you fooling yourself? Would it be better to put “flight” in the dominant position of needed actions?

*

Please take just a moment to think this out rationally. I know it will hurt, but I promise it will be over soon. Are you irrationally suppressing the urge to flee? We have cluttered up all our ancestral survival mechanisms with assumptions and arguments once again totally dependent on oil surplus. We assume that the entire area will be put on hold, all members of society will bend to our needs. Come an emergency, paramedics will ride to our rescue, police officers will impose order on the unruley. Federal planes will air drop MRE’s. Unless. What if all that fuel needed to pull your fat ass out of the fire wasn’t available? Because all our social mechanisms are overcomplicated and under funded, it will only take a very small percentage of things NOT working to begin a cascading failure. And that is not the time to be surrounded by surplus population or to be acting as your own military as you are improvising transportation. Safe travel is always dependant on an orderly underlying infrastructure made possible by surplus wealth/energy. Bugging out is such a poor strategy because it is made with the standard assumptions about an intact infrastructure. We are so used to safe travel we take it for granted. No survivalists, even with their “worse case scenario” are going to come close to reality. Actually making it to your retreat will be the exception rather than the rule. If your attacking crowd is big enough, it just takes one flanking dude with a primitive weapon to take you down. And it doesn’t have to be a suicide attack. Bushwacking, snares and traps, ambush. Plenty of ways to kill your ass. You know how the military deals with an ambush? They sacrifice a portion of their troops, because you are almost always surprised by an ambush, and that allows the counterattackers to find their target. Great tactics for the military. Really bad for the retreater.

*

Your primitive, reptilian brain is screaming at you right now. Warning! Warning, Will Robinson! Flee! Danger! You ignore it, buy another AR-15 mag, and continue to live in the big city. Mass firepower is useless once the crowds get large enough. Once the percentage of discontent gets high enough, governments fall. But you think you can do better against urban ghetto crowds armed, with no food. You think you can bellow at them with your “command voice” and disperse them? Today, an armed and confident projection might deter crime, in the future being armed in the city means you are walking stewpot meat with a needed defense tool. Target acquired.

END
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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mad scramble

MAD SCRAMBLE

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Two guest articles posted earlier.  Scroll down.
*
It used to be that I just assumed that child molesters deserved to be gruesomely tortured and killed. Yes, yes, I understand that if we were still observing the Constitution we wouldn’t be allowed to kill people in cruel or unusual ways. But, since we can no longer arm ourselves, or speak our minds, or keep the police from searching and seizing, and since the money is no longer precious metal and states are no longer supreme to the federal government, I’d wager a few paychecks that we no longer have a functioning Constitution. If you are going to ignore everything the document says, why not bring back really cool and vile deaths. Draw and quarter? No, too bloody- and what with AIDS and all, not very sanitary. My candidate for death to child molesters is to heat up a nice thick iron rod, red hot, and shove it up the ass of the offender. You want to shove your junk up a kid, we got a really nice penile substitute for you. I’d also wager that the fear of this punishment would deter a few sick bastards. Look, I understand that you are a foul and twisted and just not right in the head, but sorry, that still ain’t good enough for an excuse. We have to kill you. I thought I was on the same page on this with society as a whole. But, apparently, sports players are exempt from all moral norms. And if you like sports, apparently you endorse this.

*

I guess we all have our own “crossing the Rubicon” moment when we know things have gone over the edge, never to return. I believe this is mine. I’ve accepted a lot of bad behavior from people and chalked it up to normal human behavior when there are no restraints. When bad behavior is rewarded, you can’t blame the idiots themselves. You blame those that make the rules and provide the rewards. As much as I hate the ex-wife, it was really all my own fault for picking the whore that would do anything for extra money. I’m not surprised at the number of lawsuits out there since being a victim is both a growth industry and suitably rewarded. I should expect to be dry humped every time I make a purchase at a store, since the role of government has been for the longest time now to protect the corporation rather than the consumer. But some things you just can’t accept as regular bad behavior. I’m appalled that society is condoning the football coach child molester case. Rather than forming a mob and storming the campus with baseball bats and pitchforks and flaming torches and finding these perverts and killing them with blunt force trauma, the mob is rioting to protest the removal of the head coach. Do we really need another example of how far our society has fallen? You don’t get up from this kind of depravity.

*

Since shutting up the incident is worth millions of dollars, that is exactly what happened. You should expect that. But I wouldn’t expect that those protesting the head coach resigning ( he never should have even been given the chance to resign, but been taken away in cuffs ) should be excused. We go in with batons swinging to break up Occupy Wall Street dudes ( whose crime was questioning that the bankers should be profiting from our social meltdown ), when instead the riot police should have cracked the head of every jerk-off that places the final game of the season being played farther up in importance than punishing child molesters, and child molester enablers. I can understand that as we continue our slow implosion, while at the same time paying people to breed, there are so many more people around fighting for a shrinking wealth/resource base, bad behavior will result. I can’t understand how society can go beyond the accepted moral behavior that should be a baseline of acceptance. Hell, violent offenders in prison even hate child molesters. It used to be that even societies scum hated child molesters but now, as long as the child molester is a major sports figure, it is alright to violate small children. It defies all comprehension. I can’t wrap my brain around it, at all. Some things are not acceptable. And that isn’t something that is randomly picked by each society as things go wrong. It is universally condoned actions. Hell, even when people are reduced to something as bad as cannibalism they still have some standards. Chinese peasants would trade their child’s corpse with the neighbors so that they weren’t eating the flesh of their own offspring. Those people’s action, I can understand. Child molestation is so many times worse they don’t even compare. But for want of another Sunday college football game to serve as entertainment whilst consuming beer and nachos, fans will forgive the coach who ignored the underage buggery going on in the showers next door. I don’t know if I hate the fans or the sports managers more.

*

To me, this just seems like the low point in our civilization. I don’t think it can get any worse. I’d even wager that this will be the infamy that the American empire will be remembered for, as the Aztecs are only remembered for those human sacrifices on top of pyramids. Living humans were tortured by having their living hearts yanked out of their chests, for whatever reasons of profit the leaders enjoyed. The American Empire, at the apex of their power ( like how I’ve now incorporated the word apex into my vocabulary after being confused and dismayed at its earlier use? ) allowed small children to be sexually molested as reward for the leaders of sports teams that won. That is what it boiled down to, after all. I ask you, loyal minions, what further proof do you need that we are in a current, not future, collapse? Ask those family members still unsure, does a society with this kind of broken moral compass have much longer to survive? This isn’t bad behavior directed at outside tribes. This is unacceptable behavior directed inward.

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
*
Anyone can submit a guest article. No minimum word length, no writing skill necessary ( just get the idea across ). You retain copyright ( this must be your original writing ) and I’ll just use the once. I’ve yet to turn down an article, just don’t use the N Bomb or libel another that can sue me. Send by e-mail ( please, label as “guest article” so I can find it easily later ). Payment will be your removal from my enemies list.
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By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

guest article two of two

GUEST ARTICLE TWO OF TWO
The Women of Nottoway




by D. Ritchey









Part 3.







I had nine miles to my next navigational aid, Lower Nottoway. I remained in a state of fear; I could feel the echoes of that LCS, its terrible growling and its gunboat escorts... Every time a fish flipped the surface, I jumped. I was having second thoughts about trying for the ocean.



I made excellent way. The wind and tide were with me, and my fear had me working at peak efficiency. I learned the dif-

ference in energy between recreational and survival canoeing. I adjusted. Several hours, and before dawn I came to the mouth of the Lower Nottoway. I pulled in to rest, breathing heavily. The sky brightened as my eyes followed the course of the Nottoway upstream, to where it narrowed, among heavily wooded banks. Farmers and fishermen had abandoned the area long ago; the land had gone back to wilderness. Those who had found another way to make a living kept their houses. The rest moved on, and they were the majority. Again, wilderness marked the destruction of the old ways, or the absence of them. I would learn that government control was exaggerated; too many incompetents populated the bureaucracies. Fear of a Bolshevik police state had been implanted in the meme grid by government propagandists. For a long time it was highly effective, but new technology broke it down with competing meme grids. And it had come to this... But I had to wonder what people might do with this wilderness who had stayed. I wondered what sort of personality could do the job. I wondered what they could make of it.





The day promised to be bright and clear, with mild temperatures. It was a pristine fall morning; it looked to be good sleeping weather, if I could stay warm. The colors were strong; the trees were an electric carpet on both shores as far as I could see. In the conditions of human desertion it was a shocking vista. But for the clearings, it looked primeval. It was hard to believe that a major city was dying fifteen miles away. I still did not know how wide the troubles were; later I would learn. I would have taken different actions had I known. But we have no choice except take the best path we can at the moment, with what we know... I clearly remember my sense that morning. The impression was one of a mystery stalking the world, an incomprehensible menace... I felt it when I left home and now again. This might be the end of the world I knew. What happened? The machine had become God, and the people forgot the world. Yes, that fit.



That was the influence of one religion. There were others, other gods, more fitting for the time--more useful for survival. I knew that the pious were dying alongside the heretics, so I might as well pick the gods I like. As the sun rose higher I grew drowsy, but I could not give up watching the river. I wondered if I dare lay in the sun. I considered the beach, the far shore. Here it was nearly two miles across. The water was gray, and where sunlight hit a wavetip, a bare green. The water danced. Stripped of human presence, it looked like the realm of serpents again, which I expected would be coursing for prey, and I thought that anything might come out of that river, out of the forest. I wished I hadn't pawned my dad's shotgun.







I did fall asleep, and gunfire woke me. As in any dream the sounds of the interior become exterior as the dreamer awakens. It took a few seconds, no more, and I was crouched and facing the sounds. It was small-arms fire with military weapons, and I smelled nitrates. I saw nothing; the woods were dense, and the combatants out of sight... I heard screams, then explosions--grenades, I thought. Then it went quiet. With the nitrate stinging my nostrils I ran for my canoe, and launched out.



It was a rabbit response to danger, without a moment of deliberation. Looking back on it I think I would have been fine staying put. Paddling away, around the spit of land, toward the interior reach of the Lower Nottoway, I thought only of making distance; my first need, cover and silence, were not on my mind so much...





Now the Lower Nottoway's broad mouth opened before me. I turned upstream; on my right was the south bank. I made my way along, hugging the bank, fearing ambush. These bluffs were twenty feet high, thick with bush, with fallen trees and mud slides. I was an easy target, so close I might be killed with a heavy rock. And from the south shore too, an observer might spot me easily. Yet, as I was remembering, the Lower Nottoway might have refuge far upstream, where I thought the woods might be extensive. The Lower Nottoway penetrated miles into the interior, away from the dense suburbs which had spread from the original core settlement, New Danzig. Barely a port any more, New Danzig was renamed Indaba City by Presidential decree. And that changed the patterns of development. So now, by using the water routes, I flanked the outer suburbs and penetrated the rural. I didn't know what I might run into out there.



Now the waterways were the channels for mobility. And here was the rest of the puzzle; I saw few people out here because the majority did not know the river was here. The waterways were not in the consciousness of the majority.



I had explored the Lower Nottoway only once before, years ago. What I was seeing now did not fit my memories. Now I was seeing only a few features that I recalled. On the north bank would be ruins. One was the first monastery on the coast, nearly five hundred years old now. It was called "The Sancti"--only that. Surely it had a nomen, but it was forgotten. And farther up was another ruin, of a manor from the earliest days of the tobacco colony. That fell in, too, when too many changes came.



I was watching the southern shore closely. And I didn't forget that eyes were in the sky, too ... A skilled surveilleur on the shore would be invisible to me. As far as aerial surveillance, my main comfort was that the operations centers were disarrayed, and crippled by incompetence, and I wouldn't be noticed. So I concluded that my greatest threat came from the land, and anyone was the enemy. I belonged to no one. I was on my own. There was nothing for me in the old world any more. I wished I had a shortwave or CB radio, so that I could learn what the hell was going on. But it was time to head for it. I made for the south shore.



I grew so nervous in the open that I turned around to head back. I went a few yards and stopped when I saw something bobbing a few yards ahead. It was long and dark-colored; the swells were tossing it around. Very carefully I stalked up. It was a corpse, a white man. He was face up and his eyes were open and his mouth was open, and a part of his skull had been shot away. His clothes were black in the water and his hair was light; they were waving back and forth, back and forth. I saw two bullet holes in his chest. For an instant I thought about towing him in to bury him. That was impossible now. Impossible. And then I got scared again, real scared, there in the open. Terror flooded me. I turned again and headed for the south side. I paddled for my life.





When I pulled in I fell into the deep bush. I hauled the canoe in and covered it. I rested and drank my last few ounces of water. Where could I get more? I was combing my memory of the upper creek. There was a house, on the south shore, not far up from here. Maybe a half mile. I would try it tonight. I would go find what I needed. I was soaked with sweat. After a while I turned on my radio. The batteries were weak, the audio was bad, even right at my ear. I might not get another hour from them. I heard that Indaba City was under "limited engagement" by marine and naval forces. That meant the military was killing people. It didn't bother me; the world was falling apart because of overpopulation and downward breeding, and that was the heart of the matter. So here was the result of a century of anti-eugenics policy by the government, and egalitarian laws... I let the radio play, let it fade out, as I watched all around. The sun arced toward the west. I thought about saving the battery, thought I might find a way to recharge it. I sat there, in the chilling wind of evening, weighing the battery in my hand. I threw it away, and I threw the radio away.



I slept until it was dark enough, and started off. Was I escaping, or heading towards destruction? Why was I paddling up this creek, which ended way inland? Why did I not continue to the sea? I'm still not sure; but my reasoning then is valid now, with the power of hindsight. The bigger the river went, the more I would be exposed. Bigger water hosts more traffic. Eventually I would encounter heavy naval patrols. Why not stay up here in the smaller water, where the woods were heavy? And why not hole up in the region I knew? This reasoning was sound, and I knew it beneath all the chatter and fear. I knew that the thing to do is hide. And Nottoway had it all. Nottoway was remote from the thinking of the urbanites of Indaba City, and maybe from the military commanders. They would be looking at the cities, and at the patterns of refugees and marauders. If the refugees never made it this far, this place would come under light surveillance, or maybe none. I considered the incompetent people working for the government--a majority maybe. I figured I was better off here. I might learn to snare animals. I could learn to hunt and gather wild plants until something better came along. I could catch fish easy enough, although they surely contained heavy metals, especially the bottom feeders. But the young fish might be untainted. I thought I could make it here. It felt right. As I started away again this feeling became sure. I would stay here, in this wilderness. Maybe I would run into a band of my kind. Maybe they'd allow me to join them. And if they turned out to be hostile, I would move on. There were miles of purgatory between here and the sea.



I had to do was stay to the southern shore, where the channel was. And why should I be concerned in a canoe? I needed eight inches of water to make my way--less if I shucked some gear. I brought my prow around; I remembered that old house, and it was down this way. It was a living house, but very old. It was of brick and possessed massive chimneys, two on each end, in the early colonial design.





And in that brief video from my memory were several figures floating across the lawn. Close enough, I made them out to be women. And everything else, every component, fit oddly with the others.... The place felt insular--and nothing was insular anymore. That had been my impression years ago, and now this was my recollection. I did not know where I got it; but now it helped. But how many years ago was that? I wasn't sure, as I paddled along; I could not say anything; I was alone at the time. My wife had gone off on her mission, and I was alone. So that was but a few years ago. And why hadn't I recalled being here in more detail if it was so short ago? I didn't know... I was tired of paddling; I tried to bring my effort out of my stomach to ease up my arms. That helped, that worked, so long as I did it consciously. But I failed to sustain it; my mind kept pulling off into the fantasying memory, and again and again this four second video from my mind's eye. Oddity, that's what I remembered. The long dresses on the women; the shabby appearance of everything--not unclean, but shabby. Controlled decomposition--I might say elegant decomposition.



If my memory was accurate, their place would be about a thousand feet ahead, just downstream of the sand islands and flats. I closed to one hundred feet of the shore and paralleled it slowly. I held my following stroke for five seconds or so, listening. This made my progress a crawl, something like a bottle on the tide. I didn't imagine how much darkness remained, or who might be observing me. I had forgotten all that for the moment. The house was on my mind, and silence was on my mind, and staying alive, and that was all. I cleanly remember that was my mental state. I was extremely vulnerable, being tunnel-minded. But it came on me and I didn't know it, and there was nothing I could do. To the house, then. And what? Say hello? Steal their chickens? I didn't know.



I must be on it now. I stopped, and drifted, listening. I saw no lights. There was a vehicle parked to the side, near the clotheslines. The house was leaning, and stately. Enormous locust trees flanked it. A little farther out, the forest hemmed in. Its outlines looked woolly, soft, despite the chill and the dropping leaves--and very dark, nearly a black of the sort you see only in deep places at night. I realized this was a grave convergence.





A dog started barking. I didn't know whether to flee or... Or what? So I sat there, listening in place. The waves lapped the hull of my canoe, and washed the shore. I saw water-trees rocking in the surf, waving. The house, the ancient hulk, a hundred yards away. In colonial days the shoreline was farther out. Four hundred fifty years had taken half away, carried it to the sea. I paused, scanning the estate. Shadows and outbuildings--and where is the dog? I listened, scanned, but the night was a nightmare, and better to let it come to you if Fate wills you meet. I didn't see the dog. I pulled in to shore.









I could see enough, just enough, to avoid the big noise. I hauled the canoe up and went down on a knee. I sat there, listening. I thought about taking off my shoes so I could feel vibrations in the earth. I decided not. I crept into the bush and waited again. And I was calm. I sat cross-legged and felt comfortable. I watched and listened. The dog barked furiously a few more times, and went quiet. Then the deepest silence I had ever heard descended. It was more than my ears could apprehend; I felt it by other means, the way a hunted animal feels a shift. Something, I can't call it anything else, something pulled out. I mean pulled out of the world. Something withdrew from the structure of the world I had known. A thinness closed in over everything. The stars looked different. That's what I call it now--a thinness. The world was less dense. It might have been this: I was apprehending the reduction of chatter. If you look at the human species as an entity, here is a theory: every human is no more than a cell among billions of others; each is interconnected. But now, with fewer cells, less radiation. So I could apply this theory to my sensation of moments before, where I felt something leave the world. The entity was shedding cells. The entity does not make mistakes. I knew it then and today I know it is the supreme law.



There were outbuildings. I chose the one farthest from the house, a small barn it looked to be. "Hide the paddle," I told myself. I could see my feet. I moved carefully through dying high grass and weeds towards the treeline, and lucky it was damp. I made little noise. Every few feet down on one knee, soldier ears. Like in the books. Then I'd move on. The old house never breathed. Nothing moved, or called, or swooped or scampered. I saw the stars and I couldn't name one. And so I didn't know where the moon was nor what it would be if it arrived. I was a dethroned man, remoted from my instincts by technology. And there was no way out of that--except something like this. But I had gained enough knowledge by way of being a miscast; thus I had brought myself this far. And this was farther than ninety percent of the human population would ever go, until the next cycle.





I used the paddle to part branches. I had lost my club. I made it to the woodline and stepped into its shadows. I was familiar with this sort of woods. I made my way, and quietly enough. The damp was on my side. But I came along, pausing and listening, watching the house, tense for the vibration of discovery. When I came to the barn I had to cross a small clearing, back of it, to reach it. Down on one knee in the woodline, and I watched. The barn had the old swinging doors, and they were barely in square. I did not discern a lock. How convenient. I stayed put, refusing the bait. I waited and watched, losing heat and finally suffering chill again. The night was thin; nothing had arrived to replace what had gone away. I felt this horrible thinness; the only myth that connected is the concept of purgatory, a place of probation. That was before I became a Pagan. Now I know what it was: indifference.



I wanted to move. I had to move, but I still didn't trust the scene. Shivering now, I weighed the value of my idea of showing myself. I watched the house. I obserrved the sky, and what I could see of Nottoway Creek. I listened. The chill spread into my knees and my feet and up my spine. I waited. My heart was beating.



I hid the paddle in a tree and I came out of the woods. I crossed directly to the doors. A nail was bent through the hasp holding the doors shut. I couldn't budge it. I took out my sheath knife and went to work on it. I had little light. I cut myself lightly. I used a thin branch to bend the nail out. Finally I got the thing off. I made a racket; I expected an arrow or bullet any time. But I had no good alternative for a shelter, no moonlight to see my way through the forest. I might build a debris hut, like I saw on survival TV. But I couldn't see. Slowly, slowly I opened the door. It was dark, very dark. I pulled the door behind me. I saw rafters and partitions--a horse barn. I smelled no dung, and just a hint of hay. I saw no tack, no tools, no grooming station. The place was stripped. Down on one knee by the wall and listening. I heard nothing. My eyes adjusted and I saw the place was clear. It was a three horse barn, what you would expect on a declining plantation. This looked to be about one hundred fifty years old. I saw several hay bales at one end. I stepped into the stalls; in each the hay was decomposed to near dust. The bales were heavy with wet. I pulled one down into a stall and cut the wire and found the hay still dry in the centers. Making little enough noise, and with one ear cocked towards the outside, I cut all the bales loose and made myself a nest.





I burrowed in and soon enough my cocoon was warm. I could see out between the boards. I was looking directly at the old house. I knew a bit about architecture; this style went out about the year 1700; I was looking at four hundred years of endurance. What had the owners been about? To keep such a place through the upheavals would have required skill, and shrewd detachment from political trash. So who were they? I continued watching, listening. The house and the environment were dead still. It was horrible to a man close to death. There was no animation, no vibration, no breathing. And where was that dog? The trees were living, but shadows and no more to me. The scene was like a psychotic painting, a Van Gogh. It was more powerful than any photo or computer image. It was an entity, dormant, gestating. So my thoughts ran until sleep took me under.







A voice woke me. It was morning and I heard a voice as I saw more light, as I opened my eyes. The barn door was open and a woman was standing in the square of light. The light hurt my eyes. It was dead-on east, and the rising sun was burning my eyes. The woman was a dark figure in a long dress; the sun was blazing behind her. Her hair was long, and she was holding her hands in front of her. A dog was at her side, watching me.



"Who are you?" she said.









TO BE CONTINUED.