An Open Letter

From: FARfetched
To: “Climate change skeptics” and other Global Warming deniers

Undoubtedly, many of you have been strangely warmed by the first Alberta Clipper to come south in about five years. Those video clips of snowbound New Englanders and Chicagoans, even if you’re one of them, have given you that warm fuzzy feeling of vindication… here’s your “proof” that you know better than those intellectuals — what do they know? After all, they’ve only spent their entire careers studying the incredibly complex system we call the Earth’s climate.

Well, here’s a news flash for you, Bubba… have you checked the calendar lately? This is the season known (in the Northern Hemisphere anyway) as “winter.” The birds fly south to warmer climes, snow falls in the north, people put away their boats and get out their skis? Remember? It’s cold because it gets cold this time of year. Do you really think that global warming means palm trees will start growing along Buffalo’s Lake Erie waterfront? Don’t be silly.

Winters are a lot less harsh than they used to be, not only in my lifetime but since I moved to Planet Georgia in 1982. Back then, hard cold snaps like this were a yearly occurrence, and below-zero (F) temperatures something you’d see roughly every other year. Not any more — the weather dudes tell us our single-digit temps are the first in 5 years, and we haven’t seen below-zero weather for 10 to 15 years. In Michigan, people now complain bitterly about large amounts of cold and snow that were commonplace when I was a kid.

Don’t take my word for it, look at what’s been happening to global temperatures over the last 160 years or so:



Sure, there are blips either way, but since the Industrial Revolution kicked into high gear the trend has been up. This year might be a blip down, maybe not. I noted last year that August was a lot more pleasant than usual; only the first few days were over 90F here.

There’s also that little minor detail about the Arctic ice cap, and how it seems to be getting smaller nearly every year. By the way, the chart above depicts average temperature rises; the Arctic is warming much faster than… say, the southeastern US.

So enjoy your shot of cold weather; it will be gone in a few days. I know I enjoyed a milder than usual August last year; if a few days of bug-killing cold is the price to pay for that, I’ll pay it. None of us know exactly what the weather is going to bring us in two weeks, let alone a month; the farther out we go, the more we have to rely on trends (which suggest warming overall) and computer models (ditto). But I do know that we’ll all be bitching about how hot it is in 6 months or so.

Full of Empty Buildings

Winter #3 has arrived on Planet Georgia. I bundled up and took a little walk around the block at lunch yesterday.



Empty parking lots, quiet shop floors… It could be a Saturday. But it was Wednesday at lunch, and this is one of several buildings, within a short walk of the office, that stand empty. Of the businesses within sight of the office, three of them went away in 2008. Sure, they might have found bigger or cheaper digs, but it’s more likely — since the buidings remain empty months later — that they simply faded away.



So what do developers think of this? Why, put up more office space, of course! This went up in the last year, down a cul-de-sac across from the office. The awnings and faux towers at the corners, in my mind, give it a sort of retail-ish look. It’s huge, it’s pretty… and empty as a politician’s promise.



Traffic during rush hour gets pretty horrendous along this stretch of road, that connects two major thoroughfares, so they’re working on four-laning it. Of course, that’s not stopping “them” from putting up more construction alongside. That’s a retail development on the left, so far with only one State Farm office and a restaurant “coming soon.” Just about all the buildings on the right are “medical office” space, with the last two buildings empty and the closer ones maybe half-occupied.

So this is what the beginning of a recession looks like… new buildings going up while the old ones are emptying out.

The Riches of Doing

Yesterday, Merlin Mann wrote a thought provoking blog piece: Re-Potting with Resources: What Would You Make? (43 Folders). He asks the question: If, tomorrow morning, you had 60% of the time and resources you needed to start making anything you wanted, what would it be? And, what would you do first?

Then this morning, my blog-buddy Nudge wrote a piece she called What is Wealth?

These two posts started resonating with each other, forming a chord that was greater than the sum of the two notes. The context, or key (as in the key of G) if you will, is what Mann calls “a blood-curdling recession.” Nudge speaks of the laid-off millions, wondering how they’re going to keep the lights on and their heads under a roof… and Mann asks them all you have plenty of time, and you have some resources… now what do you do with them?

My answer to Nudge’s question sounds flippant, but I was dead serious: screw the dictionary definition, wealth is whatever you say it is — because wealth means not only different things to different people, but different things to the same people at different times. For a long time, my personal definition of wealth was “not having to work for a living” — but that’s a binary definition of wealth. That definition says you either have it or you don’t, when in fact you can have some wealth, but not enough to give employment the finger and walk away. Before allowing myself to be saddled with FAR Manor, we had the old place paid off and no car payments, just a bunch of credit card debt that we were working off. I wanted nothing to do with a mortgage before getting rid of all other debts and building up a decent down payment, so we could make a house payment and still put some savings away. Way-ell… anything that wasn’t “yes dear” was summarily ignored until I wore down enough to say “to hell with it, if we get foreclosed we get foreclosed.”

These days, my personal concept of “wealth” is simply the time to do what I want to get done. Subtract sleep time, commute time, work time, meal time, cleanup time, then whatever little “surprises” wait for me when I’m home, and there’s very little left over for wealth. Sure, I have all the “stuff” I want and then some, but what I don’t have is the time to do much of anything with it. In this vein of thinking, getting laid off would make me wealthier, simply because I’d have more time to work on my own stuff (whatever the heck that is now). The way things are now, I have a hard time taking Mann’s advice to Imagine you have almost what you need. Then, just start something. — if I don’t have the time and materials to finish what I start, God only knows when I’ll be able to get the last remaining time or materials to finish the job. My garage and studio are littered with projects that died half-finished, simply because they got derailed for so long that I either forgot about them or lost track of where I left off and what I needed to finish. I was able to finish the cold frame because I had 100% of the tools & materials, and insisted on making time for it, before I really started. But it’s not really finished; I still need to paint it and I either need to scrounge or buy some paint (and, again, make time to apply brush to wood).

What I can do, though, is make plans for doing things if/when I get laid off. And there are things that I can nibble on a little at a time… for example, I’ve nearly completed FAR Future, a work that will end up at least the size of an average novel, in odd hours or fractions of hours over the last year & a half. Focus on the positive, look for things that you can do, and (most important) use your successes to kick-start the next project.

FAR Future, Episode 68: Starts Off with a Bang

This one’s a little shorter than usual, but that’s how they go sometimes. There’s a longer one coming up that will partially make up for it. :-)

Sunday, January 1, 2023
Starts Off with a Bang

On Planet Georgia and other places, there’s a tradition of shooting off fireworks to begin the new year. I guess they couldn’t get fireworks in Tulsa this year, so they firebombed two refineries instead. The fire department managed to get the Conoco fire under control pretty quickly. Sunoco… not so much. Kim texted us before we even knew anything had happened: OK here, wasn't anywhere close. Christina is still worried sick. The rest of us… we’re just worried.

Of course, most of the nation got the word when they went to watch the first Rose Parade since 2015, and were instead treated to night video of a raging refinery fire and the President blaming Rotter terrorists for the incident. The news ran an interview with a refinery employee who said something along the lines of “a bunch of guys in masks came in, pulled guns on us, then drove us outside the fence and set off their bombs.” They also said that the army has imposed a 72-hour curfew in both Tulsa and Oklahoma City, and various curfews in other cities around the country — Atlanta’s is fairly minimal, midnight to 6 a.m., but they have checkpoints and random searches for anyone crossing I-285 in either direction right now. (Which makes the “Perimeter” truly a perimeter, at least for now.) Local media are broadcasting contacts for anyone who needs food (in the total clamp-down areas) or emergency services. As a “balance,” they provided a press release from the Rotters denying responsibility for the bombing.

Some Rotter-symp blogs are claiming it’s a false-flag incident — in other words, the government bombed the refineries to have an excuse to clean out the RoT. Um… you mean, like trying to assassinate the President and inciting riots isn’t reason enough? Putting any kind of crimp in the flow of what little fuel we’re getting would be grounds for violent overthrow, and insta-polls are suggesting that nuking the Rotters outright wouldn’t be considered objectionable at the moment, even in the more junta/RoT-tolerant parts of the country like here. The news isn’t carrying much of anything but the refinery fire and the reactions, but I’ll bet the columns are already rolling toward Texas.

Rene is incommunicado — probably working double shifts — and Serena was able to get a quick email to us: Calls home suspended for a few. Sorry. Hope Kim's OK. I'll call when they let me.

Anyone else remember a book called The Texas-Israeli War: 1999? Only 24 years behind schedule, and Israel has too many problems of its own to be doing mercenary work for anyone else. At least they got the oil part right.

continued…

Cloudy days

Spring #2 is winding down, with Winter #3 set to arrive Sunday or Monday. It has been rainy except when it was relatively cold. Yeah, the sun comes out and it gets cold. Even the weather is psychotic on Planet Georgia.



This was hanging over my head yesterday morning on the way to work. A little blue sky poked through here and there, but mostly it was dark and threatening. I thought I’d get to that lighter edge, or even past it, but it was either moving in the same direction (things were moving quickly yesterday) or was farther away than it appeared.

When Animals Annoy

Being at FAR Manor, an in-law freakout wasn’t necessary to cut my staycation short and get me home — they were right there, after all.

The last few days, basically the weekend, was spent being farm labor. The poultry company decided to try putting four houses’ worth of chicks in two houses, the idea being it would cost much less on heat and they could move half of them after they got a little bigger. Sounded great on paper, but the crowding caused a rather large die-off — about 3000 chickens per house, more than usually die in an entire grow-out, croaked in the first week. Thus, much of the weekend was spent getting the other two houses ready; Sasquatch and Jar Jar were there to help as well. But a chicken house screw-up, as long-time readers probably know, is not unique or even much noteworthy.

Saturday afternoon, I was getting ready to take a nap when Mrs. Fetched piped up: “Call Dad, ask him if he’s going to feed the cows and see if he needs you to help him.” ARRRRRRGH!!! The timing is… incredible. How do they do that, and how do you make it stop? Anyway, the drill is that the helper goes down in the truck to open the gates. So I went on… and found eight cows already in the hay barn. I opened a gate and cussed them out, which got two of them out right away. Six to go… I climbed up over the hay, nearly falling down a hole of unknown depth once, and cussed out the other ones. Three of them left right away, leaving the three all the way down at the far end. I climbed across the hay and got them moving… and the $#!@$%!!! stupidogs chased them right back in! Lather, rinse, repeat. By the time my father-in-law got there with the tractor, I was entertaining thoughts of butchering a cow with my bare hands and BBQ’ing it on the spot, and launching dogs in a trebuchet to entertain myself while the beef was cooking. We got the dogs away, got the cows out, and fixed as much of the fencing as we could before it got too dark to see. I hadn’t planned on making any New Year’s resolutions, but I thought about resolving to eat more beef this year.

Went to bed Sunday night, hoping to get some sleep and get a good start back at work. But at 4:30 a.m., I was awakened by a plink plink plink sound from the bathroom.

“Oh, crap,” I said, waking Mrs. Fetched. “The toilet’s backing up.” I got up, not putting on my glasses, and went to see if I was right and how bad it was going to be. The water level was normal, but there were what looked like two “floaters” in the bowl. But… one was swimming.

“It’s a rat!” I bellowed, and slammed down the lid. “Or two of them!”

“How big?” Mrs. Fetched asked. “And how did they get in there?”

“I don’t know.” I was already looking for something heavy to sit on the lid, in case one of them managed to get to dry porcelain and tried to get out, and found a magazine rack. I dropped that on and went back to bed. I considered flushing for a moment, but was afraid it might clog the drain… and who’s to say it wouldn’t climb right back up?

“How do you think they got in?” Mrs. Fetched asked again.

“No clue… but I haven’t seen any rat droppings in the house. Maybe they got in through the drain vent — or maybe it was a squirrel that got in — and they came up from below.”

A thunderstorm an hour later pretty much put the kibosh on my getting any sleep, especially when Mrs. Fetched’s alarm went off at 6 (she had to be there to greet the chicken moving crew). Since the plink noises had quit a while back, I figured whatever it was had drowned, but I wasn’t taking any chances — I slipped a piece of glass between the lid and bowl, then raised the lid to find:



One small squirrel, not exactly alive. I grabbed the fireplace tongs and a bucket, and got it back outside where it belonged. I also managed to feel a little pity for a brief moment… but that was all. Not only had he taken a third of my night with him, he’d gone crawling into someone else’s den.

Only at FAR Manor.

I’m sure if I stuck my face in a squirrel’s nest, I’d get it bitten and scratched. Think of it as evolution in action.

FAR Future, Episode 67: Letters on the Eve of War

Funny how this episode mentions Detroit, with all the Detroit-related chatter on some of the blogs I read. But I wrote this one in mid-October. Go figure.

Wednesday, December 7, 2022
Letters on the Eve of War

I suppose the government was willing to ignore the “Texas oil is for Texas” rhetoric coming from the Rotters — that kind of thing is often meant for “domestic” consumption, and a recent Gallup poll suggested that even Texans would be willing to ride the train and drive fuel-efficient cars if exports meant lower taxes for them. The government was probably willing to overlook their keeping a “little” extra oil for local consumption.

What they aren’t willing to overlook is an attempt to assassinate the President, and their agents provocateurs torching off riots in Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Detroit.

Things got a little tense at FAR Manor last week: Kim got re-assigned, sent to St. Louis to help restore order, and got wounded in the riots over the weekend. “Not much,” he said, “shot in the arm, a little flying glass, it looked a whole lot worse than it really was.” Christina was halfway to hysterical, but Mrs. Fetched and Maria got her calmed down. He was able to call and let us know what happened, so we knew he wasn’t seriously injured, and that was probably the point the ladies hammered on until it got through to her. Christina is in better spirits now, fortunately. This morning, she told me, “As soon as Kim gets home, we’re going to have a baby. I’m not going to pass up another chance.” I think she was joking. Rene is still doing whatever it is he’s doing, probably cracking Rotter traffic. He sent us a text message the other day: Holá, y’all, we scored a big one for the good guys! Later! We’re guessing they intercepted some chatter about the assassination attempt, which make Guillermo and Maria really proud of their son. Heck, we’re all proud of him. And Kim, Serena, and Christina, in no particular order.

We’re all worried about Kim right now… after the frying pan of St. Louis, they’re sending him into the fire of Tulsa. Tulsa and OKC are both Rotter-symp, and Kim tells us:

Maj. Buckley was in Iraq, and he said it’s a lot like Baghdad was. Most of the time, the civilians just glare at us, if they pay any attention at all. But every once in a while, someone will throw a Molotov cocktail or just a brick or something. We’ve got orders to not retaliate for bricks or rocks, but if there’s ever gunfire, look out. You get the sense that things could boil over at any time, for no good reason, and everyone’s on edge. Everybody knows that when we go after the Rotters, we’ll be using Tulsa as a staging point. We expect trouble, and lots of it, when the roll-out orders come.

We’re all on edge, and not because of the rock-throwers. Nobody really wants to shoot at our own people, as the junta found out, but now it’s working against us instead of them. We’re enforcing a dusk-to-dawn curfew, and we have to disperse assemblies of more than five people. It got really tense the other day when we had a couple dozen peeps gathered in front of a theater. I thought it was going to turn into a firefight for a minute, but then they finally broke up.

The Rotters want a fight, and it looks like they’re about to get one. I wondered whether they were going to bring in some of the bomber groups from Europe, but Serena tells us there isn’t any activity like that over there. Just a bunch of guys wanting to get in on the action, and a few Texans more than a little conflicted. We have plenty of Air Force bases in the country if it comes to that, anyway. Speaking of Serena: I had one of those dreams where I’m wandering down hallways and through endless doors and rooms, trying to get somewhere. In this one, I was in a theater or some other kind of venue, and trying to get to the stage. These dreams always feature me talking to someone I can’t see, and this was no exception. Somehow, I ended up down on the floor, looking at rows and rows of empty seats and a stage raised too high to climb onto. “So what’s the sense of getting on stage if there’s no audience?” I asked my invisible companion, then woke up. I emailed Serena about it, figuring it would amuse her. She replied, “You’re having acting withdrawal because I haven’t been there to put on the Thanksgiving skits! I’ve got something this year for when I’m home.” Obviously, she’s doing well.

Rene sent a pretty funny message too:

Holá, y'all. Sammy T got picked to be one of the Congresscritters from DC, so he got a discharge! Lucky SOB! Another EDID unit lost their commander (retirement), so they reassigned them to us. Maj. Shevchuk made me his second, so I’m getting promoted to corporal. At least I won’t be a grunt for my last year in, jejeje.

Other than that, we’re still doing our thing here. Very busy! Will write more when I can.

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of activity in and around local churches. The Rotters, so say the rumors, have turned a lot of the more conservative ones into a fifth column and using them as recruiting centers and command posts. It does seem like a lot of the people caught trying to sabotage infrastructure and the like are affiliated with a right-wing church. At least none of them (that I’m aware of) are associated with Penitent churches like ours. Unfortunately, it looks like a major backlash is building — and I hope it doesn’t turn into full-fledged persecution. There have already been cases of arson against certain churches on nights when nobody is around, and tires being slashed (or outright car-B-ques) in parking lots during services. We haven’t seen any problems yet, but we’ve started to assign people to watch the parking lot during services or meetings. In some places, congregations have added “A Penitent Church” to their signage… no telling if it will be the pass-over sign or not.

We’re worried for our kids, especially Kim, and praying for them all. Christina stays worried these days.

continued…

My Predictions for 2009

Jim Kunster posted his “Forecast for 2009” on his blog Monday morning. What follows is based on a comment I left in response, with my own predictions. I’ve done some rearranging and expansion on that original comment.

January → March

The year will likely begin with a quiet period, relative to the rest of the year, after the inauguration euphoria. Retailers are declaring bankruptcy (Circuit City, KB Toys) now, so it would be inaccurate to say the implosion starts early next year. But it will start picking up steam. The Obama administration, even with a high initial approval rating, will dribble out bad news slowly to prevent panic.

Most everyone will admit that the auto manufacturers, currently on life support, won’t recover. GM will break up, maybe voluntarily, into three companies: budget/consumer/sport (Chevy/Pontiac), luxury (Buick/Cadillac), trucks/industrial. Auto workers will own a significant portion of the companies, which will help with wage concessions (the best way to bust a union, after all, is to turn the workers into owners). Ford will swallow some of Chrysler, the rest will wither and die. The Japanese companies will scale back their operations. The job losses will ripple through the supply and dealership chains, and outward from there. Herculean rescue efforts will slow but not stop the hemorrhaging.

Some thousands of people will be caught out without converter boxes when the analog broadcast TV signals are turned off in February. There will be much noise made, and much pressure put on the FCC to push out the date. Eventually, the networks and local stations will dish out freebie converter boxes. But some people will find out they really don’t miss TV at all.

April → June

Fox Spew will begin referring to the “Obama depression.”

While mortgage resets continue declining to a summer 2009 minimum, job losses in retail and (later on) auto sectors will lead to increased defaults. The Obama administration will likely enact a law requiring the actual owner of the mortgage to initiate foreclosure, so there will be a mad scramble to figure out just who the heck owns the paper on all those houses.

Republicans will obstruct, spin, and do anything they can to tear own Obama (and the country be damned). Obama and a mob of angry constituents will begin forcibly implanting a spine in congressional Democrats.

July → September

The first steps toward universal healthcare will be taken. We won’t get there immediately, or even quickly.

Rolling blackouts may begin in isolated regions, but they won’t be seen nationwide until around 2012 (see FAR Future #1). A lot of people will leave their A/C off as much as possible to save on electric bills. There may be some spot gasoline/diesel shortages in various regions, like the upper Plains saw last summer (and the Southeast in the fall), based more on refinery or pipeline issues than any kind of crude shortage.

Through the summer, some dozens of unemployed bloggers will take cross-country road trips, talking to people and photographing the economic devastation. They will travel by various means, including hitchhiking or just hiking, and eat from government-supplied food pantries (below). One of them will break through to a book deal, and be hailed as “the 21st century Kerouac.”

Mortgage resets bottom out and begin the next wave in late summer. A foreclosure moratorium will be imposed, probably 60 or 90 days, followed by tax incentives for surviving banks who voluntarily refrain from foreclosing (with partial success). Squatting in abandoned houses will be widespread, but most squatters will keep up the properties they occupy and nobody will worry much about it. There will naturally be a few druggies and bangers taking over abandoned houses, and they’ll get all the media attention.

The government will either buy or seize food stocks in response to reports of small pockets of hunger/starvation. Agribusiness will take a big hit, and perhaps be nationalized to prevent an ongoing food crisis. The “victory garden” concept will make a comeback, under a new name like “food security garden,” and people will be attending classes and gathering information and tools for spring planting.

October → December

Argentines will begin consulting with unemployed American laborers, explaining how they took over shuttered factories and began producing things of value. It will mostly stay under the media radar in 2009, though.

There will be a mad scramble to ensure people have enough heat to survive the winter. Some low-income northerners may be relocated south and installed in otherwise abandoned dwellings for the winter, triggering howls of outrage from right wing locals.

General Economic trends

Inflation? Fuhgeddabotit. Whatever money is printed to keep the economy afloat will follow the old money right down the rathole. There’s just too much money evaporating in the finance sector to worry about inflation. The only way inflation will be an issue in 2009 is if Obama declares it a Jubilee Year and wipes out all debts, public and private, with the stroke of a pen. That would free up all the money going to service debts for buying stuff — and is about as likely as commercial fusion power being deployed next year.

Part & parcel with (lack of) inflation will be a more stable oil price regime, compared to 2008. OPEC will continue to chase demand down the price curve; whether they actually catch up is the question. Cash-strapped producer nations might tell OPEC to go pound sand (not oil sand though) and keep pumping. Leaving out so-called Black Swan events, as the 800-pound consumer gorilla (the US) continues to lose weight, oil prices might fluctuate between $40 & $80/bbl (you may remember me saying we’d probably never see oil under $100/bbl though, so add salt as needed). Spot shortages will have external causes such as refinery fires.

…and Beyond

Mortgage rate resets, according to a couple graphs I found online, will be less widespread in 2009 than in 2008. Last year was the year for major sub-prime resets; 2010 will see the Alt-A and Option ARM resets balloon though, and mostly keep climbing until autumn 2011, dropping off precipitously by summer 2012.

Given the current lower demand for oil, new sources won’t be developed and the more exotic sources (tar sands, deep water) will be too expensive to continue producing. Production cuts are currently aimed at a stable market; in the next couple of years it will shift to an economic base (i.e. uneconomical to increase production) then hit physical constraints (the whole point of peak oil). The initial parts of FAR Future are merely extrapolating current trends a few years ahead.

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…

Staycation, Winding Down

Now it’s Christmas Past. And the staycation is entering its final weekend (although I only have a two-day week next week, good way to ease back in after two weeks off).

I’m SO glad to have “all Christmas music all the time” in my rear-view mirror. They didn't do that when I was younger; they'd just mix in holiday music with the normal programming & that was fine. But I get burned out real fast on the same stuff constantly, and I about went nuts the year “Christmas Shoes” came out because they played it over and over… and over… and over… seemed like 3–4 times an hour. And I’m not a big fan of depressing songs anyway (I mean, come on, the kid’s mom is going to die at Christmas, and how is that going to affect his outlook in the years to come?). On the other hand, there are a few holiday/Christmas songs that I could listen to throughout the year — the instrumental version of “Sleigh Ride” comes to mind — just as long as it wasn’t a steady diet.

OK… I know I was good this year, but this good?



This (Canon EOS 40D) was the camera I wanted to get before my old PowerShot died… and would have, if the company stock hadn’t tanked in front of the rest of the market. I had pretty much hit the limits of what the PowerShot could do, and I used it to take photos that ended up in my documentation. According to the counter in iPhoto, I took just short of 5000 pictures with it… of course, I deleted a bunch of shots that didn’t turn out or were redundant. When it died, it wasn’t quite like losing a hand — maybe a finger or two. You can mostly get by without the missing pieces, but there are times when it gets annoying and a prosthetic (i.e. cellphone camera) doesn’t quite get the job done. It’s been too rainy for a photowalk, but maybe I’ll have a chance tomorrow. Fog in the morning may make for some interesting shots.

When I got Clickzilla, it came with a Metz flash. The battery pack is all but dead (good for like three shots), but looking around I find I can get it rebuilt for $60. That’s a dang sight cheaper than $300 for a new flash. Interestingly, with the Metz flash attached, I have to hit the shutter button twice: once to flip the mirror back and once to get the shot. I’ll have to go through the camera manual again to see whether that’s normal or if I can change a setting. There will be some learning once I get the battery pack rebuilt, but with that I’ll be set… this flash can reach out and light stuff up.

I think the camera might have seen some service as a floor model… there was a 2GB CF card already in the camera when I got it out of the box and there were a few pictures (that looked like stuff shot in a camera store) on the card — but hey, a free 2GB card is nothing to sneeze at. I also found an old Pelican bag that had a dead camcorder in it (a Sony, Mrs. Fetched’s first DV) and dedicated it to the EOS. Mrs. Fetched has some interesting stuff in her XL-1 bag, including some close-up filters that will fit. The lenses are supposed to be interchangeable between the two cameras, so I might have to borrow the humongo lens off her camcorder and try it out too. I’ve also heard of adapters that will let me use Clickzilla’s lenses with the EOS, and that would be nice.

Mr. Sunshine is up to play some Wii Golf. Hope everyone had a good Christmas. The new year will be quite happy about 20 days in.

Christmas Eve

More rain, and even a thunderstorm a couple hours ago. I don’t remember ever having to yank the DSL on Christmas Eve… but on Planet Georgia, even the weather is a little neurotic. Winter #2, as I expected, is over after two days; Spring #2 is drooling all over us again. But if I bundle up, it looks like I might be able to ride the motorcycle to work Monday & Tuesday mornings (and then we’ll be out the rest of the week… too bad all work-weeks can’t be two days long).

We spent much of yesterday afternoon cutting and splitting wood, then stacking it behind the manor. The pile is fully replenished, and should last us a month if we don’t cut more sooner… we probably will though.

Daughter Dearest’s boyfriend Sasquatch (yup, it’s official… they’ve been “dating” since October but waited to tell us although we expected it anyway) has been spending a lot of time here. When he’s been gone, DD has been with him. I’m OK with it, and Mrs. Fetched seems to be. He’s somewhat transportation-limited, but he got over to the college once or twice somehow. I suspect that she gave him mono, but it didn’t hit him nearly as hard as it did her. But both of them are pretty much over it & (at least to me) are highly entertaining to have around.

Today was much less strenuous… A package from Mom arrived (which I’ll open tomorrow) and I took Jam down to Woodstock so she could pick up her car. She, Brand X, and Evil Lad NOT are headed north, into some much colder weather than we’ve had here at all. So is DoubleRed, although she’s going elsewhere.

Maybe the kitten can wait up for Santa, but I’m pooped regardless. See you in the morning.

FAR Future, Episode 65: Run, Run, Run, Run Away

You know, I was so looking forward to writing this one.

Saturday, August 20, 2022
Run, Run, Run, Run Away

Wingnutistan delenda est.

I can’t imagine there’s much of it left, anyway — they did their “strategic redeployment” from Planet Georgia night before last. The news has been burning up the phone lines all over the place, about how they all disappeared overnight. Turns out a lot of vehicles were found at the Atlanta Airport — in this area, they must have all drove to the airport, drained the remaining fuel from their vehicles, loaded up, and flew away. Atlanta’s been one big street party since the word got out; most of the army wasn’t exactly married to the junta (even if they didn’t defect) so they handed the baton to the local cops and retreated to Fort McPherson and Fort Gillem.

The local 'Riots got disbanded, I guess… I bicycled by one guy’s place yesterday, one I know who was part of the gang. He had a big truck parked sideways across his driveway with a hand-lettered sign on the side:

NO TRESSPASING
WILL BE SHOT

Someone with more moxie than I have wrote across the bottom of the sign: But can you please get this truck out of my driveway? Cute. I haven’t heard any reports of Riot-cleansing around here, at least outside of Atlanta metro. They might get laughed at a lot, though… after carrying water for the junta, being the local bad dogs, they were abandoned to their fate.

If you had your TV off the last few months, I can’t really blame you… but now is a good time to turn it back on if you have juice. There’s a lot of news — real news — being broadcast. It turns out the junta bolted for Texas. Or “The Republic of Texas,” if you want to call it that (they do). Sounds more like Iran with a cross in place of a crescent, if you ask me — that fat televangelist from San Antonio, one of those monopolizing the TV until recently, is part of the inner circle, with the title “Minister of Moral Values.” The Taliban had their “Virtue and Vice Commissions,” looks like the Rotters (Republic of Texas → RoT → Rotter) have a Moral Values Ministry. Iran is dead, long live Iran. The question is whither the oil, as it always is these days… I suspect that if they want their own wingnut homeland, most of us would be happy to let them have it. But only if they don’t try playing games with the resources, and power tripping is what those guys are all about.

It’s good to see the President on TV again — he’s on his way back to Washington. His term expired while he was in exile, but I don’t guess there’s a problem with him running a caretaker administration until they get things put back together. He’s taking the train cross-country, stopping along the way to talk to people, and spending a lot of time on the phone. He’s called all the surviving congresscritters to come back and help, demanded the resignation of the Supreme Court (who went along with the junta), most of the Court of Appeals (ditto), and much of the lower federal courts. I suppose that the reconstituted (ahem) Congress will impeach and remove the ones who don’t go on their own.

At least the army is the US Army, and not the Grand Army of Wingnutistan or something like that. The Joint Chiefs issued a joint resignation, claiming that the laws didn’t allow them to take sides in a political conflict but they understood that there would be bad blood if they tried to stay on. At least we heard from Rene: “Hola, y’all. Still can’t talk about what we’re up to, but glad to be working for the good guys. Manny deserted, but the rest of us are on the job. Hope to be home soon.” The President has already said that he would honor the service-for-citizenship deal that the junta offered to the signees, but they’re cutting it off at the end of the month. That came up in one of the status reports that he delivers in the evenings, wherever the train has stopped. After the brief, he takes questions from the locals. One question that comes up at just about every stop is a variation on “When will we start getting fuel again?” The answer, “Probably never. We need to make other arrangements,” usually doesn’t go over too well. After 10 years, you’d think that people would have started getting used to the idea that we depend(ed) way too much on a finite resource that was running out. I’m amazed that some people still think we can bring back the glory days of SUVs and Outer Suburbia… or maybe I’m reading too much into the question. Maybe people don’t understand that what used to be the prime world supplier is now a radioactive no-go zone. Or maybe they’re hoping to hear that Pacifica came up with a techno-fix during the junta days and was just waiting to gift the rest of the country with it when we got back together.

It might sound a little early, especially since people like us are still sleeping outside where we can get some cool air, but the President has already started asking people to get together and make sure all their neighbors can stay warm this winter, or at least not freeze to death. I’ve never been able to figure out why people won’t think of these things themselves, but when the junta didn’t seem to care about what people were going through, it never occurred to many people to just go out and take care of business. At least we’re getting some prompting, and with enough lead time to think about what needs to be done before it starts getting cold.

Hey, the net’s up! Off to get this posted while I can…

continued…

The 12 Seasons of Planet Georgia

Friends and relatives back in Michigan sometimes ask me how I deal with the weather here — “at least we get four seasons here," is one common refrain. I reply that on Planet Georgia, we have 12 seasons: summer, fall, winter, spring, winter, spring, winter, spring, winter, spring, winter, spring.

Winter #1 was fairly long, spanning much of November into the first third of December before it reluctantly started warming up a little. This week has been Spring #1, warm, wet, and smelling like spring; we let the firebox go out some time this week and I shoveled out a good-sized bucket of ash this afternoon. The forecasters have had a heck of a time with this system; the rain has stayed on much longer than anyone expected. Lord knows we need the rain, but it’s starting to get to the point where people are complaining about it. But when it’s not raining, I’ve been wandering around outside without a jacket and not missing it and driving with the windows down. As long as the rain hangs on, though, it will not be cold. But…

The meteorologists have been waiting for a cold front to sag south and bring us Winter #2. It looks like that will finally happen late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, just in time for the solstice, and it’s supposed to be 18°F Monday morning — which, of course, is when Mrs. Fetched gets her chickens again. But if the extended forecast has any credence, it will only get below freezing for two nights.

As for today, we spent some of the morning at a video shoot — for a poultry processing company, of all things — and the afternoon Christmas shopping.

Building a Cold Frame

I actually managed to get one of the things done that I wanted to while off work!

Ever since I’d heard about cold frames, I’ve wanted to build one. Getting the tomato plants started a little early is never a bad idea, after all. We have plenty of scrap lumber around the manor, but not much scrap glass, so on Saturday I asked the local FreeCycle chapter for a glass shower door. By Saturday afternoon, I had two pieces: a 5½-x-2 foot door, and a 39x35 inch random piece of glass — both just straight glass. Sweet! So...

So after helping Mrs. Fetched with the chickens today, I started sorting through the scrap lumber we had, then measuring out each piece against what I needed to build the frames. Interestingly enough, using the shower door frame worked out slightly better with the least wasted wood, so that’s the way I went. Naturally, I couldn’t find my circular saw (I think it got used at the chicken houses and “relocated” by one of the workers), so I borrowed one from Mrs. Fetched’s mom. It’s kind of cool; it has a laser pointer… not terribly practical for cutting 2x4s (as seen below) but really nice for plywood.



With the 2x4s cut, I proceeded to put the long sides together. I didn’t have nails long enough, but I had 3" screws and a drill… so I screwed it up, so to speak. I did managed to screw up a Phillips screwdriver bit, but fortunately I had another.

Once I had the long sides done, I fastened them together with a pair of 2x4s on each end:



It turned out to be easier to cut the plywood on the table saw, so I struck my chalk lines and fired the big guy up. After that, it was simply a matter of screwing the cut pieces onto the frame and dropping the shower door on top… well, I had to remove the handle from the side facing the wood and find a couple of shorter screws to keep the handle I wanted, but that was a minor detail. Here’s the completed project, minus painting:



The astute reader may notice a pair of 2x2s screwed to the front of the completed cold frame. There’s also a matching pair in the back; they’re to keep the door from slipping off when propped up. I didn’t put the glass on hinges, which lets me take it off so it’s not in the way when putting seedlings in or taking them out. It also lets me prop the thing up on either side, so the wind doesn’t blow straight in.

Considering I had all the wood laying around waiting for a purpose, and I got the glass for free, I’m pretty happy with the result. I just need to paint it & put it outside.

Staycation, Days 1-3

Busy days… but a good kind of busy. Mostly.

Saturday

I decided I’d like to try building a cold frame while off work, and I've heard of people building them using glass shower doors. I asked for a shower door on Freecycle in the morning, and by afternoon had a shower door and an extra 3' square piece of glass… I figure to build one for me and one for Mrs. Fetched’s mom. I’ll probably get started on it tomorrow; yes, there will be pictures. While out, I hopped over to visit The Boy at his new place. He finally got his power turned on, and hopes to have the phone/internet moved over this week.

Somewhere in all this, Mrs. Fetched found the computer ornament, then picked up the beer ornament off my dresser and hung them both back on the tree! W00T! I guess when the second and third opinions she got didn’t go her way, she decided maybe it wasn’t so horrible after all. 'Course, this means I’m on the hook to help with the decorating, but if I get some ownership I can deal with that. I also helped Daughter Dearest re-derange her room in preparation for her own decorating.

Sunday

Sunday was Cantata Day. Our choir joined forces with a church in town to get a fair-sized group for a Christmas cantata. The only downside was that we had to do it twice — at their church in the morning and ours in the evening. The upside: we threw a potluck after the evening performance, and everyone chowed down. In the afternoon, I made a big batch of rolls and brought home an empty bowl.

Today

Mondays, even on vacation, can be Mondays. Or Monday Lite, anyway. I got to sleep late, but I’d taken the time off forgetting that I had to attend a meeting this afternoon. Since there was a small batch of errands that had to be run near the office anyway, I got the list together and took care of them before popping into work. Unfortunately, there’s this manager (not mine) wanting to stick his nose in my business again… since my boss was also invited to the meeting but didn’t show (the others assume he doesn’t care), I guess I need to write an email. I left about an hour earlier than I would have under normal circumstances, and was surprised to find the traffic heavier than usual… I figured more people would be off work by now.

This hasn’t been too awful, so far…

FAR Future, Episode 64: Summertime, and the Junta is Sleazy

I’m hoping to have something to say, and the opportunity to say it, this week.

Friday, July 1, 2022
Summertime, and the Junta is Sleazy

As hot as the weather’s getting, it’s getting even hotter for the junta. It was probably like this for Argentina: their junta started the Falklands War to distract the people from the problems at home; after they lost the war, it was pretty much curtains for the junta. Freedom is eating its way into what was once (and soon may be again) America, a piece at a time, and the junta just can’t seem to stop it. (Having an army that won’t shoot seems to have that effect.) Anyway, whoever my benefactor is at the local junta office/outpost is still looking out for me. I had occasion, and enough fuel, to ride into town and pick up a few necessities this morning. After making my rounds, I came back to find an envelope taped to the handlebars. That took me back… seven years. It seems a lot longer than that since the Pat-Riots came blustering into FAR Manor to take Guillermo and his family to some unpleasant fate, and went away empty-handed.

Kim and Serena still have about a year left in their hitch. Rene got signed for three years, so he won’t get out until after they do. We hear from all of them, especially Kim since he’s at some version of Camp Baker, but from Rene we only get variations on “I’m still here, doing OK, love you guys.” I guess that’s why military intelligence is an oxymoron: you don’t know what they do, and the brass prefers they don’t know what they do either. Serena says they tool around the base on electric golf carts nowadays; Germany went big into solar a long time ago so they have enough juice to keep them charged up. Christina looks forward to Kim’s twice-weekly calls, and otherwise spends her time finishing up her education. She’s looking into interning at the university, with the possibility of getting on as a professor. From there, she figures she could get Kim in, either teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) or Spanish. Or both.

But I digress. The envelope, please. It contained a printed email. I’ve reproduced it here, redacting info that might identify my mole (as much as I’d like to know who it is myself):

From: HQ
To: XXX
Subject: SR Preparations

The Council has determined that Strategic Redeployment may be necessary in the next 6 months. It is beyond the scope of this Memo to detail the reasons for SR, or the timeframe. Orders to all Field Offices are as follows:

1) FO Post Commanders are tasked to keep the FO orderly and ready to redeploy at any time.

2) PCs are to notify detached personnel [Patriots? –FARf] to take precautionary measures, as they have been targets of unlawful action after FOs redeploy in many cases. Advise all detached personnel to complete outstanding reports ASAP and to deliver any signed-out materiel to the FO immediately. Avoid informing detached personnel of any pending redeployment.

3) PCs are tasked to identify staff who are: a) essential to the day-to-day operations of the FO; b) available for redeployment.

4) PCs and essential staff are tasked to identify essential personal items and effects. It is preferred that all such items and effects fit in a duffel, but in any case must not exceed the capacity of a single standard foot locker. Do not include toiletry and similar items as they will be provided after redeployment. Keep essential items packed and ready or, if necessary, ready to pack at a moment's notice.

5) Non-essential staff should be dismissed as soon as possible without disrupting day-to-day operations of the FO. Such staff should not be informed of the potential for redeployment.

6) PCs are tasked to identify the vehicle(s) necessary to redeploy staff and materiel. Such vehicle(s) must be maintained and have as much fuel as possible at all times.

7) If a redeployment order is given, time is of the essence. The identified redeployment vehicle(s) should be packed with all files and materiel ASAP. It is recommended that packing and movement be performed overnight. The actual redeployment order will include route information, including emergency refueling stops.

8) No FO should be redeployed before removal (preferred) or destruction of all files and materiel that could be exploited by the enemy. All fuel stored on-site should be removed, even if it requires extra vehicles to transport.

It is important to maintain morale at this critical juncture. Redeployment will allow us to concentrate our strength and eventually recover lost territories. Further details are of a strategic nature and will be distributed only on a need-to-know basis.

I can’t imagine them needing to bug out from Planet Georgia, but I might be underestimating the amount of resistance around here — it’s not exactly smart to post a personal ad saying “Looking for friends who are just as tired of Wingnutistan as I am, here’s my number.” What I do know is that it’s really hard to go anywhere right now. We get enough fuel to run some farm equipment and chainsaws, and to go get more. I could bicycle to town, but at my age it’s getting painful, and the RoadTrain is shut down anyway. I got a text from a friend in Atlanta: “Bus and train run at rush hour, not much else. Amtrak shut down. Everyone is stuck, but where would we go?”

Indeed. It seems like my world has been shrinking for a long time, and now it’s contracting to FAR Manor and the few places I can walk or bicycle to. It’s not like there’s anything better out there, though… not even Moscow or Dallas are choked with traffic these days. Maybe I can catch a train to the beach when this is over with. But for now, I’m stuck here and jonesing for coffee. We ran out last week, and it doesn’t stay on the shelves very long. I attempted to bribe a cashier to stash a couple cans away for me, but she wouldn’t go for it. I guess only the managers get to take those kind of bribes.

continued…

Staycation, Day 0

The policy at work is that you can’t carry over more than two weeks of vacation each year, and we get three. I’d only used one week this year, so I had to unload some more days. Fortunately(?), my workload hit a lull point — that’s the life of a technical writer; you’re either swamped or bored to death. I’ve been dealing with minor projects I’d had to let slide for a while, with a side of occasional brushfire, but most of those are starting to wind out. So I put in for the time.

Between the screwy chicken house schedule (the next batch comes in on Christmas Eve, for cryin' out loud) and a profound lack of funds, we had neither the means nor the opportunity to go anywhere… so we’re staying here at FAR Manor. At least Daughter Dearest is home from college; there may be some levity on occasion. She got a B+ on one class, and has good hopes for the others. Due to the mono, she has an “incomplete” in algebra, so I’ll be helping her out with that. No biggie.

Arriving at home, the staycation started pretty much the way I expect it to go for the next couple of weeks: Mrs. Fetched gave me a minute to drop my stuff and use the bathroom, then sent me down to her mom’s for pizza. Her mom, in turn, sent me back to town with $100 to buy lotto tickets. Ohhhhhh… kayyyyyyy. If you’ve got that kind of money to waste on lotto, why not shut down the chicken houses?

Eh. I’m hoping to get some writing in during these next two weeks. Somewhere in between Christmas shopping, baking, parties, algebra, and a little wood-chopping. But I need a lot more booze than there is in the house at the moment. Then again, I get paid on Monday…

Weekend Cinema

Weekend Cinema is back, and still (like the perfect date) always fast and free!

Many of us have found ourselves at the office far later than we’d like — but sometimes, there are compensations. Tonight, see what one office worker finds — both good and bad — when faced with The Black Hole.

Hat tip to the Evil Twins’s dad for this one.

A Reprieve(?)

Warning: this is not fiction. Do not adjust your browser.

The Citgo station close to the office is selling gas under $1.50 a gallon, and I managed a 6 under par in Wii Sports golf this evening. In other news…



I remember $1.50/gal gas back in 2000. At that price, it’s now roughly 1/3 the price it was during the late summer (assisted by a couple of hurricanes, if you remember the fun we had in September). Here I issue my OOPS: I never expected to see this. $2, maybe. If I’d been asked to name a “floor” price in July, the absolute lowest we’d ever see again, I probably would have said $2.50.

So… what happened?

The easy answer would be, “the credit bubble popped.” A more involved answer would involve the general drubbing the economy has taken since the housing bubble popped, which led to the credit bubble popping, which led to just about everything else we’re seeing right now… including the FAILouts for the banking and auto industries.

Actually, a lot of this (excluding the FAILouts) was predicted by one of the Peak Oil models. The general plot is that as high oil prices drive up the price of pretty much everything, people cut 'way back on purchases to buy gas and the economy collapses; demand craters, oil prices plummet, lather rinse repeat. But I think even that model didn’t predict that oil would get downright cheap again. Some pundits are predicting $25/bbl, and that might actually happen briefly… right now, distributors are building inventories during a time that they usually deplete them to avoid inventory taxes. Once they reach capacity, that particular price prop goes away. Normally, I’d say something like “fat effing chance it gets to $25/bbl,” but maybe I’ve learned my lesson.

The big question is, what happens when low low oil prices start to stimulate the economy? I think that’s going to put us right back in the soup. The “free market” is reactive, but not quickly… which is at least part of our problem here. The market reacted to demand hitting absolute oil supply constraints earlier this year, and sent oil prices skyrocketing. When that happened, gas prices spiked to $4/gal, higher in some places, and diesel was even worse. Since pretty much everything depends on oil these days, prices of pretty much everything went up (i.e. inflation). Without a corresponding rise in wages (yeah right, in a Bush-league administration?), people started watching their spending — they either had to buy gas to get to work, or buy bus tickets, so they let everything else slide… which meant the retail economy went to hell in a handbasket. The US economy depends far too much on people buying stuff they don’t need, and don’t particularly want, so there was a huge ripple effect.

But while oil prices have collapsed, so have the business models of “non-conventional” production like the Canadian tar sands and many of the deep-water projects… at $40/bbl, they lose money, so I don’t expect to see them going for much longer. The “fun” part is, the world oil production figures reached a plateau in late 2005 and have been there ever since. In 2008, the numbers went up a bit, but included tar sands and some deep-water projects. In 2009, there will likely be a significant drop in world oil production — partly because of peak oil and partly because OPEC is chasing down demand. The question is, will the world ever be able to reach 2008 production levels again? I suspect not, partly because the oil companies will shut down expensive projects which would be needed to offset normal depletion rates. But as depletion sets in, it’s fairly likely that the economy will start to recover… and push up demand for oil. And this is the jumping-off point for FAR Future.

As slim a hope as it is, I thank God that Obama got elected. If anyone can at least slow down the biggest problems coming our way… it certainly wouldn’t be a Republican.

FAR Future, Episode 63: The Peasants are Revolting

I’m probably going to be scarce through the rest of the month. Never fear, episodes will continue to auto-post every Monday at 7 a.m. until the holiday season lets go.

Sunday, May 1, 2022
The Peasants are Revolting

It’s interesting to watch a government unravel, especially when you’re not a fan. Ironically, it looks like Philadelphia is once again the epicenter of the American Revolution.

With a little encouragement from New England, Pennsylvania joined the “Rebel Alliance” last week. According to Sammy, people poured into the streets of Philly to celebrate, and as night fell the celebration turned into a thorough Pat-Riot cleansing. As much as I despise some of those yahoos, arson, assault, and even lynching… goes a little too far. Of course, the junta agreed and sent a battalion to “restore order.”

And thus the junta forced the issue onto the soldiers. Many of the grunts, even “fast-trackers” (i.e. Latinos recruited with the promise of citizenship) had no intention of turning their guns on American civilians. About half of them deserted along the way (or defected, as you’ll see) and the rest almost started shooting each other as they approached the city on I-95. The deserters, ironically, put an end to it — they regrouped and followed the remnant north, then demanded their surrender as they argued among themselves. The grunts were relieved and quickly switched sides; the junta loyalists, mostly officers, found a clue and gave up without any serious bloodshed.

In the next few days, about half of the entire military has either deserted (junta’s claim) or defected to the rebels (Sammy’s)… and I’d say some of both is going on. Naturally, the regular news channels aren’t carrying this info — in fact, they’re not carrying much of anything. The TV seems to have been given over entirely to certain televangelists, mostly preaching some variant of Hebrews 13:17 (“Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.”) — funny how they never quoted that particular scripture back before the junta, huh?

From what I’ve been hearing from Atlanta and other places, the army (the side that hasn’t defected) is patrolling all the cities under junta control at the moment. You wouldn’t know it from here, a few hours away on the RoadTrain, but Atlanta is all but under martial law right now. I guess that also goes for New Orleans, St. Louis, DC, and probably everywhere. The army may be alert for looters and insurrectionists, but a certain street preacher pretty much goes where he pleases and draws a crowd wherever he puts down his cardboard box. I got hold of a smuggled video, never mind how. :-) Hush now, The Prophet is about to speak:

Hold fast, Jerusalem, for the Lord has heard your groaning and your cry for help. I say again, hold fast, for you will be oppressed only a little longer. But behold, the day of deliverance is drawing near! Be vigilant, Jerusalem, for you know not the day nor the hour of the Lord. Though you have only a little oil in your lamps, use it wisely and it will be unto you like the oil jug of the widow in Zerephath, which did not run dry until the day the Lord opened the heavens and sent the rain.

Keep the Lord’s commandments, and ignore not the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. Share what you have with those who have not, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, be blameless in your conduct, and you will receive the crown. But to those vipers, who have polluted the church with their greed and lust for power: pray for their souls, that the Lord may forgive them in His day. For thus the Lord commands: bless those who curse you, pray for those who persecute you, for some may yet be saved.

For there was a king, who conquered a distant province. He sent ten of his servants, saying “serve the people, heal their hurts and comfort them, and tell them of my mercy and kindness toward my faithful subjects, that they may not rebel against me when I come.” And the servants went through the land, and were favored by the people. But after a time, the servants began to speak among themselves, saying, “Behold, these people do not follow our laws, and the governor does nothing about it. Let us see to it ourselves.” But one of the ten said, “The king has appointed the governor to enforce the laws, and us to tell of the king’s mercy. Let us do what we were appointed to do.” The others turned away from him, saying, “You fool, if the people do not obey, how can the king show them mercy?”

And so the nine servants went through the province, demanding that the people obey the king’s laws, and the other servant went his own way. When he would speak to the people of the king’s mercy, the people jeered and said, “Those other servants, they have spoken to us of the king’s laws and chastised us for not following them, though we knew not what the laws were. And you speak to us of your king’s mercy?”

After a time, the king came to the province and found the people in rebellion, so he called his servants together to demand an accounting. The nine said, “Your governor, whom you appointed, did not make the people obey your laws. We were dismayed, and saw to it ourselves — except for that worthless servant there. He did only what you commanded.” And the king grew very angry, and the servants all trembled before his wrath. “You wicked servants!” he cried. “Would that you had done as this other servant did — what I commanded, and no more! For once the people loved me, I would have given them my laws and they would have gladly obeyed them. For the sake of the one servant who obeyed me, I will spare your lives, but for seventy years will you have no authority, and live in the land as pariahs.”

One of them said, “Sir, what of the one who obeyed? Does he share our punishment?”

The king said, “He does, but it will be no burden to him, for he was serving the people and not abusing his authority. His light will shine forth and he will again find favor with the people.”

You who have ears, hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

People have typed up transcripts and went around nailing it to church doors. You can imagine how that’s going over in many churches, especially around here. But some churches, and I’m glad to say including the one I go to, are taking it seriously and praying about their role in the community. Someone has developed group prayers of confession, like the ones in a communion service, and distributed them through Sammy and other means. It’s already got a name — the Penitent Movement — and I do hope it spreads.

continued…

Orn(ery)ments

This morning, I went hunting for my ornaments. I didn’t find the computer, but I found the 6-pack and put it back on the tree where it belonged.

After lunch this afternoon, Mrs. Fetched pulled up a chair right in front of the tree. I still don’t know why. But I was getting ready to help her when she spied the 6-pack ornament and yanked it off the tree. “I don’t want this on there.” I gaped at her. “Well, I don’t.”

So much for helping her clean up. It’s her project, and I have no ownership or say in it. So it’s all hers. I went to get some cat food, since we were out and Sprite was attempting to break his personal best climbing up the glass door to see where we were with the food. I took my sweet time coming back home… no reason to be there, anyway.


When I came home, this is what I found sitting on my dresser. Nice try, but I don’t know how the thing stays up without that ornament pulling it over.

And I still don’t know what happened to the computer ornament.

A First Attempt

Christmas may have come to Whoville without boxes, ribbons, or tags, but at FAR Manor they are all standard equipment. The Boy happened to be around, and Mrs. Fetched recruited him to crawl under the stairs and eject the Christmas stuff. We had to throw back a box of Hallowe'en decorations that he sent out, but he did throw out my reindeer antlers. Daughter Dearest and I had a great time last year, wearing those around the Home Despot and passing them back & forth.

After the ejection was finished, Mrs. Fetched poked through all the boxes to see what there was to see, and then stacked them all up as you see here. It's a marvel to me how we can put up that much stuff every year, but we (as in, “I”) manage.

So with the living room full of the not-so-spiritual end of Christmas, Mrs. Fetched went off to the chicken houses. After poking around the net for a little while, I thought it would be a nice gesture (and the beginning of cleaning up the living room) to get the tree up and throw some stuff on it. Wonder of wonders, the tree was all in one tub and all the pieces were there. (We bought a fake tree like 20 years ago, and have used it ever since. Why kill a perfectly good CO₂ scrubber?) I only had to swap one row of branches, at the very beginning, to get it right.

With the tree up, I grabbed the light strings and plugged them in to see what we had. Out of seven strings, only two lit up completely. Several others had sections out, and a couple more were completely dead. Meh. I took the two completely working strings and went to work. Unfortunately, one was a really dense string and the other was not so dense. Can’t be helped, so I went ahead and rummaged around in the boxes of ornaments until I found my ornaments; I hung that box up. I knew that Mrs. Fetched would want to clean it off and start over, and I’m rarely (if ever) wrong about that, but figured I’d done my bit.

My ornaments, you say?

I don’t remember who gave this to me, or when, but I think it’s cute. The computer itself looks like an old Commodore PET (minus the embedded cassette drive), which I fondly remember from college.

I suppose if I was hard-up for ornaments, I’d grab a handful of old computer parts out of the studio. An original ADB mouse, a 3.5" floppy, maybe some components or cards… Merry Geekmas? But who am I kidding? We have hundreds of ornaments… and they all go on the tree.





Here’s my personal favorite ornament. This is the only reason I’m glad Daughter Dearest isn’t at home right now… she keeps taking it off the tree. And I keep putting it on. And she keeps taking it off.

Of course, Mrs. Fetched took it off this evening. But she took them all off. I’ll put it back on later.

“We need another string of lights,” she said. Little did she realize that we didn’t have any… or none that were completely working. I shrugged and watched her waste her time. If I’m not mistaken, two hours later she’s still wasting her time trying to get a string working. It was our week to vacuum the church, so I volunteered to take care of it so she could either rest or work on the tree as she pleased. Of course, we needed milk and eggs, and I needed beer (and rum, she used it all up last weekend), so I ran into town first. Once in a great while, things work out the way you want them to.

That’s Christmas at FAR Manor — the usual chaos with pretty lights.

Friday Roundup

Lots of little and not-so-little stuff going on this week…

Monday started off with a little snow. Of course, it didn’t stay long — it rarely does on Planet Georgia — and was gone before I got home.

Tuesday saw our runoff election here… being Planet Georgia, of course the good guy (Jim Martin) lost. Just about everyone is relieved that it’s over — the ads were nasty and nearly constant on TV. Remind me again why anyone even bothers watching TV? This evening, I saw some wrestling thing on one of the major network channels… and to think I’d figured TV couldn’t get any worse.

Anyway. For whatever reason, I couldn’t sleep Tuesday night. I wasn’t watching election returns or anything; in fact I went to bed at 11 and laid there until 12:30 before giving up for two hours. I finally came back to bed at 2:30 and Mrs. Fetched said I kept waking her up & she left.

Wednesday, due to the lack of sleep, was pretty much a blur.

Thursday began with power outages, each one lasting 20 minutes or so. Daughter Dearest called me after the second one and said her power was out too, so it was more than local. Very strange. Thursday is usually my work at home day, and we had tickets to DD’s chorus concert (plus a large instrumental section) at Reinhardt, so naturally it was the night to catch the chickens… meaning Mrs. Fetched was stuck here. I picked up the preacher and his wife instead. DD and I had texted each other earlier in the day to meet after the concert, and maybe get something to eat. The concert itself ran a long time (until 9:30), and the restaurants were closing before we could get there. Of course, we went to Waffle House — they never close, and DD and her roomie like the people working at this particular instance.

In the picture, DD is the blob of pixels all the way to the right, poking up above the music stand. Cellphone camera + low light = sucky picture. The Magic Camera Fairy needs to drop an EOS 40D on me some time. :-P

Friday is not much of anything. We’re probably going to put the tree up tomorrow… but with the kids not in the house anymore, I don’t see the point of going whole-hog. A small tree would be fine. Like anything I say makes a difference?

FAR Future, Episode 62: Slip-Sliding Away

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving weekend. I’m still here, another year older and still refusing to grow up…

Monday, March 28, 2022
Slip-Sliding Away

With Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota — along with Chicago — joining the so-called Rebel Alliance, the junta is growing ever more paranoid. Colorado, Pennsylvania, Maryland, are all wavering in the east, Colorado and New Mexico provide the western counterpoint… rebellion in stereo! Indeed, there are few places that the junta can consider safe territory — most people agree that the Final Oil War was botched (sound familiar?) but are happy to see most of their loved ones safely stateside.

There’s been some selective discharges of “non-essential” troops, although it seems to be mostly from states thinking about breaking away — which means that Rene, Kim, and Serena aren’t home yet. Serena’s still in Germany, in fact, but things have been mostly quiet there. They’ve “suspended” the draft, so Christina at least doesn’t have that to deal with, but the service-for-citizenship program is still going. So Kim’s still teaching English to Hispanic recruits, but Rene has “gone dark.” He sent us a quick email after he got stateside: “Holá, y'all. Being redeployed, no leave, can't talk about it. Sorry. Let you know more when I can.”

We’re all relieved that he got back, but are concerned about what he’s doing now. I certainly wouldn’t put it past the junta to use their EDID units against the “enemy” here in the fragments of the US. ’Course, the spooks were tapping MAE-EAST (the major east-coast Internet hub outside of DC) in the Bush-league days, and probably before. I’m not sure why they’d need a military unit involved now.

Kim, at least, is making the system work. He finds out who already speaks passable English in his classes; usually 10% of them do. Those he assigns to help their classmates who need it most — nobody sits there bored, and the grunts who need extra help get it. Meanwhile, the junta actually wised up and brought back fuel rationing. Having a farm at last means we get some gas and diesel — not as much as we’d like, but better than nothing. The “rebel” states are in at least as bad shape, supply-wise, but they do get fuel from Canada and Alaska. Again, not as much as they’d like… like the rest of the world, with a few exceptions. Rumors from Russia and Norway suggest they’re experimenting to see how much oil they can take off the domestic market and sell to the rest of the world without triggering local insurrections.

I wonder if the junta ran into the same issue everywhere that they did here: the Pat-Riots and official junta reps would tool around in their faux-military trucks like nothing ever happened, and several of them got bricks through the windshield — or hijacked for their fuel. Now they get around on foot, hoof, or bicycle like everyone else. Emergency vehicles have diesel, but nobody’s going to begrudge an ambulance or fire truck using fuel on a call. Guillermo caught someone trying to steal some cattle earlier this month, and held them at gunpoint for a couple of hours until the cops arrived. “Next time,” they told us, within earshot of the perps, “just do the three S’s: Shoot, Shovel, and Shush. We don’t have to hear about cattle rustlers unless they actually get away.” Yipe!

It’s already getting warm. We’ve let the wood stove go out, and still have a pretty good stack of firewood left. Oh well, we’ll use it next winter. It’s that much less wood we have to cut. Since the draft is over with, we’re going to get DD and Dean married off shortly. I was hoping to do it Friday, which would be April 1, but they both insisted on Saturday. Dang. But they’re looking at places to live close to town, at least for now (Dean would like to get them both back to Seattle, which I can understand). DD is looking into remote teaching, since the school district is turning toward facilitating home schooling rather than running their own facilities — they see their role as making sure the students have material and help if needed, more than anything else — and there will be plenty of kids needing tutors while their parents are handling the emergencies of everyday life. Dean did academic training in his previous life, so maybe he can work with older kids if the school district is willing to pay for it. I think school taxes mostly go toward paying catering bills for school board meetings these days.

So anyway, if Dean and DD leave soon, we’ll be down to five at FAR Manor: the two “older” couples plus Christina, who’s doing some graduate-level work in between consulting on biofuel recovery projects for anything from individuals to wallyworlds. I’ve been urging Guillermo and Maria to go with her on her consulting trips, but now that they can travel at will they seem content to stay here. They’ve gone to a couple Latino-centric wallyworlds, but other than that they pretty much stay put. To be honest, I doubt that we could have held FAR Manor together without their help; they’ve jumped into every task with both feet and looked for more. But they should still be able to get a vacation once in a while.

Speaking of vacations, my job dried up a while back… just in time for me to retire. I have to admit, I never thought things would quite turn out the way they have, but isn’t that what John Lennon said? Life is what happens while you’re making other plans?

continued…