It was sunny yesterday, O wonder of wonders. I spent the day painting the back porch. It’s a tiny porch, but has four different colors and a couple different wall textures and it kept my body occupied for hours.
But my mind had betterother things it wanted to do.
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I found myself thinking about Amy Fischer, the “Long Island Lolita” and her main squeeze with the perfect tabloid name, Joey Buttafuoco. Why the heck would I be there in the sunshine thinking about some long-eclipsed “crime of the century”? I have no idea.
I was thinking about people who have no sense of responsibility. It scares me that about half of all the people I’ve hoped I could count on over the years don’t have one.
I wondered if the neighbor I just hired to trim shrubbery and cut brush would actually show up and do it. He seems bright, eager, and knowledgeable. But I realize I’ve quit expecting anything until I see it happen.
I thought about the first time, many years ago, that I got an inkling that a lot of people make promises they don’t try to keep. I was coordinating a community project and a young woman never showed up to do her bit. Nor could she be reached for days beforehand. It turned out she’d known all along she was going to be out of the country that week.
When I asked incredulously, “Why didn’t you let me know?” she shrugged as if anyone with a brain would understand. “It was only a volunteer project,” she sniffed.
I was too dumbstruck to ask, “So your word only counts when you’re getting paid?”
I sometimes wonder if I’m a self-righteous ass***e about things like this. It’s possible.
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I thought, “Nope, I’m not going to poke that hornet’s nest again.” But 35-year career Marine, Dr. Jimmy T. (Gunny) LaBaume, now he can poke at it all he wants
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I wondered whether the Hancock clan’s new plan for their Freedom’s Phoenix newsletter will do well. After 24 issues focused on events in the world, they’re taking it more personal with articles like this on neighbors and suburban survivalism.
Great pix. Great ideas. Would like to see more words to make the concept clearer.
Funny that they ask their subscribers to consent to scanning and targeting of all their mail — but folks who merely write to their subscribers aren’t given a choice in the matter, even though they get just as thoroughly spied upon.
Before Gmail launched, I swore publicly that I’d never correspond with anybody with a Gmail address. It was an empty threat. So many people, including close friends, embraced Gmail that I never carried through (oops, does that mean my word can’t be counted on, either?).
Now I’m seriously thinking about renewing that pledge, for any known spyware email system. Maybe. Problem is, if the hints are true, there are darned few email systems that aren’t somebody’s spyware, these days.
Katherine Albrecht’s and StartPage’s StartMail sounds promising, though details are lacking at this point. Beta testers wanted (at the link).
I sent some thoughts (and hope you will, too) toward Bradley Manning, whose trial finally begins today. He’s already spent three years in durance vile, sometimes subject to inhumane conditions, and could spend the rest of his life in prison. All for trying to make government more open, just as the politicians are always promising to do.
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Then the sun headed down. I washed up my brushes, rollers, and pans. I admired the paint job for a while (as much as I was allowed to admire it with Ava dropping her tennis ball at my feet 3,000 times a minute, which she does any time I don’t appear occupied; she must think I’m stupid for being so slow to take her hints). Then my mind and I wandered on into the house, tired but satisfied.
For crass commercial purposesTo encourage you to support this blog Because people have been buying some interestingly useful stuff via my Amazon links,* I thought I’d start a semi-regular feature on what’s hot at Amazon for preppers, self-sufficient types, rebels, Freedom Outlaws, libertarians, free-market anarchists, and general hellraisers.
I’ll kick it off by featuring a theme: preparedness items. If you just happen to see something you can’t live without, you’ll be contributing to this blog (and me!) by using these links. (Even if you don’t buy a featured item, everything you do buy at Amazon after entering via one of these links will send a little money winging this way.) The following are all items blog readers have bought recently.
Bungee cords. Seriously. You never see these on preparedness lists, but has there ever been a greater invention? I keep coils of them in every vehicle and toolbox — and I can cite a dozen ways they’ve saved my backside.
Prefer to make your own jerky? (Always a very good prep idea.) Don’t forget Hi Mountain seasoning kits. The lovely Wyoming couple behind Hi Mountain are supporters of this blog and dedicated animal rescuers, to boot. They not only make a delicious, easy-to-use product, but they’re the kind of people you want to be neighbors with.
More seeds. But these are Medicinal Herb Garden Seeds. Ten varieties of medicine for your survival garden or general health.
And yes — more seeds. People have really been buying a lot lately. Many are buying heirloom seeds packed for storage, like these 20 Easy-to-grow heirloom varieties, which supposedly can grow up to an acre of veggies.
And don’t you just have to have an EcoQue Portable Stainless Steel Grill? Well, I have to have one, anyhow. And it seems a few readers agree. It’s my very favorite alternative cooking method, which not only cooks on just nine pieces of charcoal — or darned near any other burnable you stick into it, but makes everything delicious and folds flat for carrying and storage.
And surely a CCTV security camera is just the thing for spotting feds zombies before they knock down your door.
Israeli military emergency bandages in several sizes also went into somebody’s (or somebodies’) cart recently. I guess those are for if the zombies get through the door.
Back to food — always a big prepper theme of course — those excellent, American-grown, Utah-packed Augason Farms emergency foods have been selling well. (These are the same foods lucky me can buy at a nearby Walmart.) Recently, the emphasis has been on bulk grains: cornmeal (38 lb. pail), hard white wheat (45-pound pail), and rolled oats (23-lb. pail).
Finally, there’s Crafting with Cat Hair. Okay, okay. Probably not an item on most people’s survival lists. But somebody did recently purchase a copy via my links. And you never know …
The Lulz Liberator. This one was made on a cheaper printer, fired multiple shots, and has a rifled barrel. Nope, you really can’t stop the signal.
“We’ve comforted ourselves in all of this with the belief that, while government might potentially have all of this power, it would rarely use it or that, when it did, its use would be well-intentioned and circumscribed. Plus we had rules and systems to stop any abuse: The Bill of Rights, the due process clause, oversight by the media and courts, the two-party system, and strong procedural requirements.” Ha ha ha ha ha.
I do find it odd, though, that in all this flapdoodle about Kokesh’s proposed armed march on DC, not one person has mentioned that the same thing was tried not so long ago in even more radical form. Big hoo-hah over it then, too. But that was in the Fidonet days when hoo-hahs didn’t make so much noise in the wider world. Linda Thompson. Ms “Acting Adjutant General” indeed …
Speaking of creepy: Skype. It could have been very non-creepy. But it’s a M*******t product; so what can you say? It’s creepy. (H/T Wendy McElroy)
Oh, that laugh-a-minute IRS. Turns out they also gave supposedly “private” info on conservative groups to a liberal group. And there’s so much more of this tale still to come out. Does Big O really think it can be hushed up with a couple of IRS resignations?
I’ve been meaning to do something deep and profound with that excellent PBS piece on the Stockholm Syndrome and money printing. Since I’m not brilliant this week, I’ll just link for the edification of anybody who hasn’t already seen it. Good one, definitely.
No fair! How come the CIA doesn’t deliver bags of cash to me? I’m sure I could stay bought at least as well as the typical third-world puppet. (We all know those standards aren’t too high.) It’s a sure thing I could find some cronies to share the loot with. Heck, I’d probably have cronies crawling out of the woodwork as soon as they learned I was the source of buckets of untraceable dollars. I’ll bet I could even find a warlord or two to fund. So why not me? Why not you? But since it’s not us, I’d like to ask the CIA: Are you being sure to write suspicious activity reports (SARs) on yourself for sneaking all that secret dough out of the country? Are you going to arrest yourself and confiscate all your own assets any time soon? P.S. If you ever do start delivering to me, I prefer gold. Paper is so ticky-tacky. Thank you.
Fans of the anti-snitch book: here’s some more good advice, particularly if you’re involved in any group activism. (Thank you, Hobbit, for the link.)
Creepy. Weird. Surprise school shooting scenario. At least the teachers drew good rural western conclusions. Still creepy. Still weird. (H/T MF from comments.)
Man spends (fortunately small) life savings. On a carnival game. Wins a stuffed banana. With dreadlocks. No doubt it was all the carnival operator’s fault. The idiot victim will probably end up getting compensation and tax-paid counseling.
This is not a good way to go Outlaw. Still, it’s pretty amazing this disappearing mom remained between the cracks so long even in the Surveillance Age.
NOTE: Somehow, comments got turned off on this post. Links posts don’t usually get a lot of comment, anyhow. But I just caught the problem and turned that feature back on, in case anyone’s interested.
Once again, the U.S. government is making noise about going to war (oh sorry, “intervening for humanitarian reasons”) in a Mideast country on sketchy evidence.
If gov-o-crats decide to side with Islamist rebels in Syria, the choice could cost us all — in more ways than one. Some of the costs are unforeseeable. One is obvious: The U.S. is going broke and will go broke faster.
Well, the U.S. is going broke no matter what, and We the People — or They Our Grandchildren — are going to pay. And pay. And pay.
So this seems a good time to ask: In your book, what is the best way to avoid spending your money and your effort to finance government actions you consider, at best, morally indefensible and, at worst, downright evil and catastrophic?
