Looking for writing-related posts? Check out my new writing blog, www.larrykollar.com!

Monday, December 29, 2008

FAR Future, Episode 66: Farewell, Sammy

Back to work, shortly after this post goes up. Happier times in the FAR Future?

Tuesday, October 25, 2022
Farewell, Sammy


Summer’s over, no doubt about it. We’re back to sleeping inside. At least it won’t be just us next summer… Kim and Serena at least should finish up their hitch(es) and come home this spring. I never thought I’d say this, but I miss having the house full of people. OK, I’ll be honest: I wish they were here to help cut firewood. Does that sound more like me? ;-) But that’s only half-honest. I expect Kim and Christina will be moving away next year, probably to Atlanta or maybe Athens (GA) or some other college town. Mrs. and Mr. Daughter Dearest are already out — they grabbed a place in town so DD can walk to school and teach. They’re talking about moving back to Seattle, but with fuel the way it is Dean has to do his training gigs remotely — and as long as he has a lectern, a video camera, and a decent Internet hookup, he can do that from anywhere.

The publishers are getting ready to start printing Christina’s biochem textbook. It will be available for the next school year, which is really something… and has already garnered her several assistant professorship offers from various colleges. Having done some work for Corettaville, which is probably going to take the first “Enclosed Community of the Year” award from ECHO this year, she’s also getting a lot of queries about doing consulting work for other wallyworlds. She’s not all that interested in consulting for a living, although she could certainly swing it, given the number of queries she’s had. Still, she would like to do occasional side jobs like that… she thinks it would help her keep her research practical and give her a chance to get out and see a little of the country (once things get a little more stable, of course).

With the junta gone, there’s suddenly more traffic than you’d expect going east and west on the highway just down from FAR Manor — mostly bicycles and walking tourists, but you see the occasional scooter. Someone opened up “Luke’s at New Hope Corner” — a sort of combination tavern and hostel for travelers who want some food or a place to rest — at the crossroads. Since it’s a 2-minute walk from the manor, Guillermo and I are getting to be “the regulars” there — Luke buys food from us (except beef, not too many people can afford that) for the business, so we have a good excuse to walk down there in the evenings and get the order together for the next day. He also brews a pretty good hooch, but we haven’t told the ladies of that reason to visit. As if they haven’t seen their two old men come wobbling through the door, with the evening’s revelry on our breath? Our old Happy Hound gives us an escort there and back, and enjoys the attention from the travelers (not to mention the scraps he gets from Luke).

Of course, the shale mining prisoners have been freed and sent home. I hope the people running the camp (and the rest of the junta, for that matter) are put to work mining shale themselves, under the exact same conditions they provided for the prisoners… yeah, vindictive. But we need to make an example of the junta, so nobody else ever gets any stupid ideas, which I suppose would mean we’ll have to go into Texas sooner or later. I understand that the cheerleaders at Fox Spew, and even a lot of the DC punditry, have bolted for their various ratholes or “gone to RoT,” as they say. I’m not sure where Shotgun Sam got himself off to… maybe he’s gone to RoT too, or he just wasn’t all that important and isn’t being bothered. Asset seizures have taken the place of taxation, at least for a few months.

The President and his caretaker government have been scrambling to get things to the point where we can have elections in two weeks, but now they’re talking about having a lottery: all registered voters ages 25 to 70 (you have to be 25 to be a reprehensible, so says the Constitution) get thrown into a hat and the “winner” gets to spend the next two years in DC, but I don’t know if they’d do the Senate that way or not. The election date isn’t specified by the Constitution, so as long as the elections happen soon enough to get the votes counted and the new congresscritters sworn in by January 3, no harm no foul. A lottery just seems a little drastic, but it would give the new reps a couple months to get their affairs in order and get on a train. As for the President himself, everyone seems to be content to let him serve out the current term (through 2024).

With the junta no longer a problem, outside of one (large) place, Sammy has pretty much stood down. Of course, there will still be samizdat for the Rotters who want it, but Sammy is redundant in the rest of the country since there’s a free press once again. Still, I wouldn’t mind if we keep an underground press in this country; Lord knows how quickly things can change. I think the new Congress will be doing a lot of clean-up, and it’s going to be important to have a news source that isn’t too chummy with either the old old gang or the new old gang. I just hope the new government can look beyond the junta’s trainwreck and start moving us toward some kind of civilization that doesn’t involve heavy dependence on fossil fuel.

continued…

8 comments:

  1. Hey Far, just as I thought and true to form, the partial recovery. Great!

    I'm going to miss Sammy! Not too many people can afford beef, eh? Yup, I can see that..

    At least you won't be among the shale mining prisoners, if the junta does make a come back! ha! Do you think you'll live long to see things slide down further?

    Hope so! ha! ha!

    Thanks, yooper

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey my friend! Happy New Years! (if I'm not back before then!)

    Do you think we'll see some kind of recovery in the new year? Any predictions? heh! heh!

    I sure lucked out stumbling onto the detroitblog, eh? I think your right about the writer, he sure has a smooth style, even though he's a drinker! ha! ha! We know all about that! ha! I'll very likely pic out stories and post the links and add them to mine own...

    I want to get this as right as I can and will be taking my time putting it together. Right now, I'm still struggling with Spengler's "discriptive" writing style! ha! What a hard read..

    Well, out to warm up the snow blower.........again.........

    yooper

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey Yooper! Yeah, I'm figuring that feedlot cattle (and factory-scale chicken houses) will be merely unpleasant memories in 15 years or so. I need to take a trip to suburbia to "see" what's changed there… just need an excuse. Maybe Christina will take me on one of her consulting trips.

    Predictions? Kunstler posted his, and I'm working on my own, to be auto-posted tomorrow evening. It's in the queue, but I'm still thinking of things to add or fix… so I've got a deadline!

    Yeah, that Detroitblog is something. For whatever reason, that phrase "urban prairie" is stuck in my head. But my favorite articles (as you might guess) are about the guy with the trailer & the crazy guy who has a shack down by the river (sounds like the cops have more important things to do than harassing homeless people or squatters, hey?). Like all the articles about the various mom&pop businesses, it's about people making things work in the circumstances they're in… heck, Detroit might end up being an example, just because they've already figured out how to deal with the situation.

    Drinking while writing isn't that difficult… I've found that a couple drinks shuts down the "not good enough" editor in your head & lets you get stuff down. Get it down, print it out, fix as needed, post. Just be yourself, tell your story, you'll do fine.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh, speaking of snow blowers, my bro tells me the latest rage in his part of Michigan is to put a plow blade on a 4-wheeler and have at it! I've seen them on riding lawn mowers too… although I suspect you'd need a bigger blade than either one could handle, heh.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hey Far, yup, I can't wait to explore the detroitblog more.. Those inner city prairies are really something... I used to get a lot of ring necked pheasants by tieing some screening to one end of a stove pipe and leading corn onto the other end into it. Once the pheasant is inside they're stuck, they can't back up... ha! Umm, don't think for a second you're going to grow crops forever on these sites as they been "capped over" with building sites buried underneath. Top soil, is very, very hard to come by and very expensive...heh, heh, I used to work for the largest inner city earth moving company there and was the only "token piece" ha!ha!

    It's just heartbreaking being around the homeless and squatters, day in and day out... However, I never developed a hardness to such people, as is often the case (thank GOD). I hope I can be sensitive to the people who must endure the circumstances, as I describe what has happened, is happening and will likely continue to happen...(As you might imagine, most cannot see it or don't want to believe it...)

    I've had my share of good times down there and eating fish fried over a fire in a hub cap was one of them! I just hope I can put down my words in an honorable way being ever so respectful of those that live there!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yeah, I'm sure the topsoil is fairly thin… but there are freekin' trees growing on top of abandoned office buildings!? If that can happen, proper composting should revitalize those soils over time.

    Fried fish in a hubcap? That sounds interesting!

    Oh, BTW, my predictions post will be up tomorrow morning, not evening. "We regret the error."

    ReplyDelete
  7. Yooper ~ did not know that part about the Detroit-area topsoil being so thin, or fragile, or beaten upon. That's bad news.

    Detroit is a place to watch, and I'm not talking about those gunny-looking Volt prototypes they showed in 2007 either.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Nudge, I fully agree with "Detroit is a place to watch." I'm becoming convinced that Detroit's fate will affect the entire county, and perhaps beyond. The good news is that there are a lot of resourceful people there who are making things happen in a hostile environment.

    ReplyDelete

Comments are welcome, and they don't have to be complimentary. I delete spam on sight, but that's pretty much it for moderation. Long off-topic rants or unconstructive flamage are also candidates for deletion but I haven’t seen any of that so far.

I have comment moderation on for posts over a week old, but that’s so I’ll see them.

Include your Twitter handle if you want a shout-out.

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...