We Pause for a Cloud Break

I really didn’t want to write more about the Big Gooey Kablooey today. Fortunately, after a rainy day (the first in at least two weeks, so it has been seriously needed), God gave me something else to post this evening:



I was admiring the sculpted clouds among the puffballs, when I reached a place to pull off and get a picture. I see a big arm coming out of the sky, either pointing south or offering up The Mother of all Spliffs. :-P

Heh… I suppose that was appropriate, given that I thought of a Crosby, Stills, and Nash song when I saw the cloudscape:

How come I have to explain,
People are worth all the pain?
I just wanna see the love in your eyes
After the storm has passed you and gone.

Slip-Slidin’ Away

The credit meltdown continues with the occasional temporary break in the action. Looking at the 5-day Dow(n), it looks like the shorts temporarily took over yesterday — running prices down through the day, with a partial recovery in the last hour or so as they unwind their positions and get out. Today, though, the minor blip up turned the other way and down she went. Another 500-point drop. OUCH.



The bailout package, as I expected, has done little to fix the problem — or even calm the “markets,” which I expected it would for a couple of weeks. It seems that CEOs don’t like the restrictions on their salaries or golden parachutes, so many have decided to “tough it out” and not take the bailout money. After all, the companies they run can go to hell as long as their own prosperity is ensured. The occasional punch in the face is small potatoes compared to leeching $300 million out of the company treasury, right?

In 1969, we fought the Vietnam war, sent some people to the moon and back — and balanced the budget. Of course, the highest income tax bracket at the time was 70%. If you look back, the most prosperous years of American history (that is, low unemployment, high savings, the most good for the most people) coincide with high taxes on excessive incomes. We lost our way, partly because we reached national peak oil in 1970–1 and became a net oil importer about the same time, and partly because we embraced this Randroid notion that wealth somehow equates to virtue. Then Reagan blew “morning in America” sunshine up our pants, and we took our eye off the energy ball.

Over the next few decades, wages essentially stagnated (except for the top execs, of course) and debt became a way of life for both individuals and the government. There was a brief period in the 1990s (the Clinton years), when the tax structure temporarily got saner, wages and employment improved markedly, and we had several years of budget surpluses. But that blip was followed by Bush-league and his record deficits and declining wages (almost as if he was trying to make up for lost time). So now we’re facing a huge glut of debt.

There are essentially two ways to destroy the excessive debt clogging the economic pipes: hyperinflation and outright cancellation (we can assume, probably correctly, that expansion is no longer an option). I don’t expect hyperinflation, as it’s a good way to destroy the wealth of rich and poor alike. Cancelling debt sounds like a messy affair, but in fact it can be done with much precision. It’s quite likely that they will cancel some debt (theirs) while leaving some other debt (ours) intact.

The guerilla war that the rich have been waging on the middle and lower classes is about to become an all-out war. Fortunately, some people have found a way to fight back: when you get the foreclosure notice, pay a lawyer $100 to write a letter asking for proof that they hold the note. Several people have said after that, they haven’t even been contacted for over two years! I suspect that, barring legislation that is extremely unlikely under an Obama administration, this ploy will work for a long time — to defeat it, they would have to detach the loan from the CDOs and all the other instruments that it’s a part of, which would mean all the mortgages would likely have to be unwound, and they don't want to do that.

At least for right now though, peak oil is no longer an issue. The entire world is staring at an oncoming major recession, maybe even a depression. Fewer jobs → fewer people commuting → less fuel being used → falling oil demand. We’ll go from just barely having what we need to having plenty, although most of us won’t be able to enjoy it. The question is, do we go down; and if so, how fast? Can we forestall, or even slow down, the decline by putting an end to telephone-number salaries?

James Howard Kunstler thinks we’ll go quickly now that (in his opinion) the decline has started. His theory is “The Long Emergency” — the combination of declining energy resources and the suburban lifestyle (long solo commutes from “McMansions” in oversized, inefficient vehicles) has irrevocably sent us over a cliff, where we’ll land with a messy splat in a de-industrial world. On the other hand, John Michael Greer espouses a theory of “catabolic collapse,” and backs it up with several historical examples. The word “catabolic” means to break down from a complex to simpler state; he envisions a long decline with occasional partial recoveries, or a drop to a level that might come to be thought of as “the new normal” until the next crisis sends the world down another stairstep. Eventually, we could (after several centuries) recover and invent an “ecotechnic society” in which technology combines with sustainable sources of energy and material. Such a society would support much fewer people than the current one, which is partly why it would take several centuries… the population would have to decline to a sustainable level first.

Crisis brings predictable folks out of the woodwork:

• The “imminent Rapture” crowd — but there’s no mention of the US in the Bible, unless you reeaaaaaaally stretch the interpretation. Nothing about “from across the Sea,” or “the uttermost west,” or any such. So if you buy the literalist End Times interpretation, we pretty much have to be removed from the scene before the Tribulation.

• Gold bugs — their disdain for “fiat money” is so obvious you can almost see them sneer as they type the phrase. Which is silly. Gold & silver have been one form of money — but so have pretty pieces of paper, cattle, and big stone discs with a hole in the middle. Money is basically whatever enough people say it is; if things collapse suddenly I’d rather have the food than the gold… if I really wanted gold for something, I could trade some food for it.

• Survivalists — beans and bullets, all too often with a terrible attitude about community.

Most of these folks tend to be “doomers” — the type who say disaster is imminent, billions of dead, etc. Whatever floats their boat, I guess. Doomers are saying that this is the week where “it all begins,” but I would have to disagree. It all began in the latter half of the 19^th century, when we became dependent on fossil fuels to run our civilization. “It will run out some day, certainly,” they might have said, “but we’ll find something else long before then.” This might be the week that it becomes obvious, but I rather expect that “bargain hunters” will create a minor rally later this week or early next.

FAR Future, Episode 54: Iraq and Ruin

Wow. How could I have missed the Great Financial Meltdown of 2008? Some prognosticator am I, huh? ;-)

Thursday, September 17, 2020
Iraq and Ruin

The right wing still cringes at the mention of Iraq, their crowning achievement. When some wingnut starts yammering about what a horrible job the “librul socialist gubmint“ was doing and how much better off we are under the junta, I just laugh and say, “Right. So say the folks that gave us Iraq.” They usually screech something about Bill Clinton and walk away at that point. You name it, Iraq went w0rNg for them — the outright lies they used to get us in there, the way it went sour on us, flowers and chocolates, letting museums and military bases get looted — all of it. Even the real goal (grabbing the oil) didn’t work out. I always wonder how things might have gone had Bush-league just admitted that invading Iraq was the only way we could put off making huge, painful changes in our way of life for a few more years. The people who opposed the war from the start wouldn’t have come around, but I suspect that a lot of others would have decided war beat walking (or riding a bus). Honesty is the best policy, something Bush-league and the junta have never learned.

We left Iraq one huge mess, but al-Sadr agreed to cover our exit in 2010 and he kept his word while we “declared victory and left.” And things did get a little better for a little while. He had close ties with Iran, of course, and the Sunnis were suspicious, but al-Sadr learned pretty quick that it's one thing to whine from the sidelines and quite another to call the shots. They all mostly kept things pasted together — and Iraq actually exported more oil than Saudi Arabia last year — but some suicide bomber got al-Sadr on Friday and chaos rules once again, especially in Baghdad and Kirkuk. The Iranians have already sent a “peacekeeping force” to Basra and southern Iraq… and I agree with the junta analysts that they won’t be leaving any time soon, if ever… and to the wingnuts that it’s a pretty transparent oil grab (they should know, after all). The Kurds and Sunnis have told Iran to stay out, but they can’t do much more than hold their own turf. Kurdistan has been quasi-independent since before the invasion, and have been inching toward full independence ever since. This will probably be the final push.

It was an obvious move for Iran, though — their exports have been dropping fast the last few years, they’ll be a net importer in a year or two, and they want the oil as much as we do. They thing is, they’re slightly more welcome there than we were. They’ve mostly secured the oil fields around Basra, but (sound familiar?) are having issues with pipeline sabotage.

The junta brought back Shotgun Sam, and he’s having a conniption on the air, resurrecting the Domino Effect (“Iraq now, then Kuwait, then Saudi — and they’ll own all the oil!”) and saying we have to do something. I wish he was still taking callers; I’d have asked him if he would set an example and be first in line for an “expeditionary force.” Of course, he would have hung up, mumbled a few excuses, and gone to commercials. I'm old enough to remember what Reagan killed that Jimmy Carter started, and how much better off we’d be now if we’d stayed the course to energy independence… but nobody can call in anymore, and they probably would have blocked my number anyway. Oh well.

Kuwait may be a different story… rumor has it that they’ve quietly asked for a buffer force “to preserve stability in the region.” As if Americans with guns would be considered a stabilizing force these days! The Iraq adventure pretty much killed that one. The Saudis haven’t objected to having a carrier group docked at Dubai (the troops call it “Dooby-Dooby”), either.

The Prophet had something to say about the matter earlier in the week: “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but do not be afraid; for such things must happen, but the end shall not be yet. Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in different places, and there shall be famines and troubles.” Straight out of Mark. “And do not say to yourselves, ‘Where is God? He has abandoned us,’ for it may be His will that we endure the results of our folly, but be very sure! He has not abandoned us, nor has He deafened His ears to our prayers! Hold fast, Jerusalem, to the hope we have in His salvation! For as He chose to raise up our nation, if it is His pleasure to raise up Persia, who brought His people out of captivity in the days of old, then it shall be done. For who can stand against the Lord our God? Who among us can tell the Lord, ‘this You shall not do,’ and command the obedience of his Creator?”

Needless to say, that hasn’t gone over too well with the junta mainstream. “America has been God’s nation for over 200 years, and if that’s no longer the case, look no farther than who was running things until recently,” goes the Baptist honcho downtown. Quoth the head of a Pentecostal mega-church, “My spirit of discernment is troubled when I see this man shouting on a street corner. It is troubled when I see the crowds he draws. The devil can speak with words of honey, and attract the unwary.” Attendance is waaayyy down at the mega-churches, but The Prophet draws a crowd every time he sets down his cardboard box and begins to preach. Jealous much? Well, I shouldn’t talk: I haven’t had The Prophet’s sermons take a shot at my worldview yet. I might feel the same way when that time comes, and if he’s really preaching God’s word then that time will come. I don’t doubt that I’m flawed in my way as much as the guys on TV are in theirs.

But if there’s not a war, there’s rumors of wars. From Sammy and everyone else. I worry about Kim and Rene a lot these days.

continued…

The Great Gas Panic of 2008 Winds Down

Some stations have their pumps bagged, but more stations than not have gas to sell now. The lines have faded away and the four-lane was choked with day-trip traffic. Tourism-based businesses are undoubtedly breathing a huge sigh of relief.

Yet Matt Simmons speaks of low nationwide inventories and warns that a run could deplete the system again — and not just in the southeast.

Something I thought I’d mentioned in earlier gas panic posts, is that gasoline and diesel distribution is very much a regional thing. We don’t have a nationwide grid of pipelines for fuel like we do for electricity, so when the southeast (or west coast, or upper plains states, etc.) has a problem, there’s not a whole lot that other regions can do to pick up the slack. We saw this earlier in the year in the plains, where several refinery problems led to acute shortages much like what we saw here on Planet Georgia… but being “flyover country,” you may not have seen much coverage unless you live there or follow the peak-oil news.

So why is it even a problem? For starters, refinery margins have been exceptionally tight — if they’d had the same margins now as just a few years ago, we would have been paying $5/gal instead of $4 this summer. For whatever reason, probably political, they were eating some of the increased costs this summer. However, some of them tried to squeeze expenses out of their system to make up for it… thus the spate of refinery fires and explosions we’ve seen this year. There also isn’t much incentive for them to increase capacity — given the world is at or near the maximum production rate now, by the time they finish a new refinery or expanding an old one, they might not be able to get enough oil to take advantage.

So with margins tight, refineries have been producing just enough gas to keep things going — if they start getting better margins (and probably will after the elections), they can ramp up production to rebuild inventories. But under the current circumstances, inventories declined to 40-year lows just before the hurricanes hit (graph from TheOilDrum.com:



Had inventories continued to drop, we may well have seen spot shortages (or outright panics) even without the hurricanes.

Now that our regional gas crisis is starting to recede, we can start dealing with the worldwide financial crisis. In some ways, we’re in a similar situation: the entire financial system is seriously shaky, and a few bank runs could easily bring the whole thing down. But that’s the way it’s always been — banks take your deposits and lend them out, making money off the difference in interest they pay you (if any) and the interest they charge their borrowers. Great racket if you can get into it — but most of us don’t really care so long as the ATM spits out twenties, the checks don’t bounce, and the credit cards continue to work. But in the end, all banks only hold markers and a certain reserve cushion (usually 10%–20% of total deposits) to cover problems. The next couple of weeks could be very interesting, as major banks totter on the edge and nervous depositors try to reassure themselves that the FDIC won’t run dry.

Sinnertors FAIL (as expected)

Well, the Senate had the bailout vote today, and (along with both Obama and McCain and ¾ of the Senate, dangit), both sinnertors from Planet Georgia voted for it. One of them is up for re-election, and the race has been tightening a bit lately… although I’ve often said, the pod people would elect Satan if he ran as a Republican, and call him a “defender of moral values.”

Anyway. I wrote both of them earlier in the week (as well as my reprehensible, Nathan “Raw” Deal), urging them to vote NO and come up with a better idea. I was 1-for-3; Deal voted the way I wanted him to… I think for the first time ever. So here’s the excuses the other two had to offer.

Sen. Isakson:

The cause of the decline was the funding of marginal credit mortgages (subprime) through the creation of mortgage-backed securities… The market for these securities declined and ultimately evaporated, thus causing a liquidity problem for the financial institutions and a credit crisis for American consumers and small businesses.

… The Treasury has proposed using up to $700 billion dollars to purchase, at a discount, these mortgage-backed securities. … If the Treasury properly discounts the securities to, say, 50 or 60 cents on the dollar, and holds the securities to maturity there should be little or no cost to the Treasury. …

While I am not a big government regulator, if the investment bankers on Wall Street were held to the same standards of transparency and accountability as our national banking system, this would not have happened. …

… Not a dollar of the $700 billion will go to the brokers who created the securities. Instead, they will go to the investors who bought them, and then only after they take a significant discount or loss. Properly executed, the Secretary of the Treasury and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve believe this proposal will restore liquidity to the credit markets and return confidence in the financial system.

Mrf. I’d like to believe our tax dollars would be buying discounted paper. The bill, though, says only that the purchase price is not to exceed 100% of the stated value. FAIL. There’s nothing in the bill about accountability… indeed, the bill removed “mark to market” requirements that forced companies to value their paper at what it’s worth. FAIL #2. Finally, the “investors who bought them” are (in many cases) foreign banks that demanded their cut at the trough. FAIL #3, hit the showers dude.

On to Sen. Saxby Chambliss, running for re-election this year. Amazingly, Jim Martin is giving him a real contest at the moment, and even the pod people think this bailout idea is a stinker. So you’d think he’d be a little more circumspect with his ayes and nays? Well… you know, I’m going to have to take this one down point-by-point, and I didn’t want to do that.

I strongly believe that doing nothing will destroy the financial security of millions of Americans and possibly lead us into a depression. I just as strongly believe the bill as now negotiated will arrest the crisis and begin to turn our economy around.

Ah yes, lead off with the false dichotomy. Voting this bill down = do nothing. How about: flush this steaming load and come up with something that actually addresses the problem? FAIL.

I know that my vote in favor of this package was not the politically popular thing to do, but this is not a popularity contest. This is about the future of our country and the future that my children and grandchildren will inherit. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind or my heart that my vote in support of this measure was the right thing for our economy, for Georgians, and for our country.

Translation: I was paid well for my vote. But where have I heard that “this is not a popularity contest” cant? Oh yeah: McSame during the debate.

I did not support the original proposal submitted by the Administration because it did not address the critical needs of the American taxpayer, community banks, retirees, and small businesses and it concentrated too much power in a small group to administer the plan. …

Moreover, when the House rejected the plan, the economy suffered a $1.2 trillion dollar blow in the stock market, which only made more apparent the impact this credit crunch is having on Main Street. Specifically, in some cases, Georgia community banks are unable to make auto loans.

And the new plan does? As I understand it, it’s the plan the House rejected with a few tax credit extensions and a bump in FDIC coverage. FAIL #2

Oh dear, a $1.2 trillion dollar blow, and no mention that 2/3 of that came right back the next day. And banks are unable to make loans? Making loans is what banks do; either they make loans with necessary and prudent conditions attached or they close. End of story. If they can’t make loans, they might as well shut down.

TAXPAYERS ARE PROTECTED. In its current form, the legislation before the Senate protects taxpayers in many ways. Accountability, safeguards, and oversight measures are numerous. …

NOT A BLANK CHECK. I opposed the President's initial request to simply give a blank check to Secretary Paulson. I also opposed the second version submitted by the President and Congressional Democrats that would have given taxpayer money to liberal groups such as ACORN. …

NO GOLDEN PARACHUTES. CEOs and other executive officers who drove their companies into the ground will not be able to walk away with millions leaving taxpayers holding the bill. Those companies that choose to participate in the program will be subject to strict compensation limits.

NO NEW GOVERNMENT SPENDING. The language is clear - all revenue generated through the repayment of any assets purchased and any sold must be used to pay down the national debt. No money will go to pork projects, new government spending, or liberal groups such as ACORN.

Oh gasp! Liberal groups! Dude: would you please point me to a conservative advocacy group for low-income housing? Fouled it off, still 0-and-2.

HELP FOR MAIN STREET. As this crisis continues, community banks are being affected more and more. Car loans and home loans, even to those with good credit, are drying up. … If we allow this to continue, jobs will be lost, more retirement accounts will be impacted, and credit will get even tighter.

So handing Wall Street a huge wad of money is going to fix Main Street? FAIL #3, hit the showers. If we’re lucky, you’ll hit them permanently come Nov. 4.

But wait, there’s more!

PUNISH CRIMINALS. The Federal Government is actively investigating cases of fraud and abuse. Where wrongdoing is found, the perpetrators, including, if implicated, members of Congress will be brought to justice. …

ADDRESS THE UNDERLYING CAUSE WHILE WE TREAT THE SYMPTOMS. We are seeing the symptoms now - lack of trust in the banking industry, daily tightening of the credit markets, losses in personal retirement accounts - and while this legislation addresses those issues, it also goes further to treat the cancer that got us here. This legislation authorizes the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to modify the 'mark to market' accounting procedures that magnified this crisis by forcing banks to mark down the value of assets they had no intention of selling in the near future. This mark down of value caused a corresponding loss of value to the institutions. The SEC has already begun the process to modify this procedure.

whiff Sax-dude, you already struck out. You can stop swinging. Any time now. So banks can hold a big steaming load of crap, and call it solid gold as long as they don’t try to sell it? Um… exactly how is this going to do anything to help with the lack of trust in the banking industry?

RETURN TRUST IN THE BANKS. By increasing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) protection on bank accounts from the current $100,000 to $250,000, taxpayers and bank customers can once again trust that their money is safe in the bank of their choice.

DEBT REPAYMENT. Toxic loans will be purchased at a discount and 100% of the monies repaid to the government will go to reduce the debt we incur in this process. While we shouldn't expect full repayment, it is possible that all of the money expended will be repaid.

Yeah, and it’s possible that I’m the Queen of England. What’s the discount rate? 99 cents on the dollar? Whiff again.

PROTECT OUR NATIONAL SECURITY. If we do not act and this crisis spreads like a cancer to every segment of our economy, it will destroy not only taxpayer savings but it will erode our ability to fund our military, supply our troops with the resources they need, and protect our homeland.

Oooo, and I thought the terrorism card couldn’t be played on this one! You might have fouled that one off if there had been a pitch and the umpire wasn’t busy trying to push you out of the batter’s box.

NO TIME FOR POLITICAL FINGER POINTING. There is plenty of blame to go around but now is not the time to throw stones, now is the time to address this crisis and get our economy moving again.

Too bad you didn’t think of that before you started whining about ACORN. Whiff and the umpire dodges while the pitcher scratches his head and goes, “WTF?”

blah blah blah However, history warns us against inaction by hard lessons learned. Delaying to act would be a repeat of the mistakes of the 1920s, when thousands of banks failed before significant confidence was restored to our financial markets.

Dude, you just made it harder to actually FIX the problem. Like Mrs. Fetched, your rush to DO SOMETHING NOW is wasting time and energy while doing little to solve it.

And the ump gets some help from the 1st- and 3rd-base umpires, the catcher, and a few fans… they escort Saxby “Ignorance is” Chambliss off the field, still swinging at a ball that has long gone by.

Judas Priest. The pod people tossed a guy who left pieces of himself in Vietnam for this?

Mid-Week Cinema

This one’s too important to wait for Friday…



I hope nobody actually needed to see this, but just in case!

Start Bailing, Everyone

This brief clip shows a younger Bush-league speaking at a high-dollar fundraiser: “Some call you the elite, I call you my base.” Here, in the waning months of a far too long Reign of Error, that was enabled by a single vote (in the Supreme Court), Bush-league is trying to throw one last meaty ol’ bone to his “haves and have-mores” base. Of course, I’m referring to the Wall Street bailout package, known by some as the Paulson Plan.

In perfect Bush-league administration form, they ignored the problem until it became a crisis, then started beating the Fear Drums and attempted to ramrod a real stink-bomb through Congress — what amounted to a check for $700 billion with carte blanche for Paulson to do with it as he pleased, even including a pre-emptive Congressional pardon for violations of any laws along the way. Basically, he could have pocketed the money and bought him a nice little palace in the Keys without any repercussions even possible.

Amazingly, the goplet lapdogs in Congress and their media talking heads opposed it — some on the Dem side suggest that the idea was to force it through Congress without goplet support, then use it against Democrats running for re-election. Two problems: the Dems insisted on bi-partisan support (knowing it was going to be unpopular) and people overwhelmed Congress with variations of “there’s nothing in it for us, we’re not paying for it.” I was one of millions who beat the house.gov and senate.gov servers to death this week, I’m happy to say, telling my sinnertors and reprehensible what I thought of this bailout. I got a detailed response from Sen. Isakson, the only one of the three not up for re-election this year, who called for several sensible modifications. Of course, none of them appeared in the version voted on today (and Sen. Isakson supported).

After the bill went down in the House on Monday, the so-called revision is basically the same bill with a couple of tax credit extensions and an increase in FDIC coverage — basically, the same pig with a fresh coat of lipstick. And the House and Senate servers continue to get hammered.

I’d like to think Speaker Pelosi was playing a subtle game on Monday. The goplets blamed her for their decision to vote down the package on Monday, after she mildly criticized the right-wing economic policies that led to the current problem. I want to think she’s dangling tax cuts in front of the goplets (ooh, shiny!) so that the bill passed with their support (while peeling away votes from her own caucus), but this Congress has been way too quick to roll over for Bush-league for me to believe it.

I remember writing a story during my high school days that had, as a backdrop, “the economic collapse in 2000.” We are being told that this bailout package is necessary to avoid a real collapse in 2008… but many economists say it won’t help. If we do end up with an economic collapse, at least the people who perpetrated this massive theft will go down with the rest of us — of course, if things stay together, we’ll probably drown while holding the fat cats out of the water. I can only hope that if Obama gets elected in five weeks, that he’ll give each congressional Democrat a shiny new spine for Christmas. You know the Republicans are bought and paid for by Wall Street, and they’ll do what they always do: shovel as much money as they can at the people who need it least and blame the rest of us for not working hard enough or whatever. They will obstruct, filibuster, whine like the crybabies they are on every show that points a camera at them, but we can hope that by 2010 they won’t be more than a noisy non-entity.

Gas Panic: The Light at the End of the Tunnel

They (who’s “they”? You know, “them”!) say the pipeline is full and the gas is on the way to Planet Georgia. Given that fuel moves through pipelines at 3–5mph, though, it’ll be at least a week before the Great Gas Panic of 2008 is officially over.

Yesterday, nearly half the stations I pass on the way to work were pumping, and had lines spilling this way and that. Of course, cheaper gas equals longer lines… people are still people. They were pretty much all dry on the way home, but that’s to be expected these days.

I’ve got a lengthy rant about the bailout cooking, but haven’t had time to get it down just yet. Maybe tomorrow.

FAR Future, Episode 53: Sunrise, Sunset

Now that I have this one posted, and the next eight about ready to go, I’m hoping to press on to the end. At one post a week, we’ll reach The End in May or maybe June.

Saturday, February 15, 2020
Sunrise, Sunset

…swiftly fly the days.

Discontent with the junta has become more vocal in the wake of the flu pandemic. If this wasn’t The Big One that public health officials were warning us about since the turn of the century, I’d hate to see it. This one was bad enough. As happens so often, the junta’s attempts to suppress info — or downplay the situation — drove millions of the formerly incurious (or fearful) to start listening to what Sammy has to say. And take it seriously. And to start asking the obvious question: if the junta’s lying about something this important, what else are they lying about?

We all survived it at FAR Manor, thank God — it completely passed over Daughter Dearest, and her fiance got a flu shot in Pacifica that worked for him — but it was touch and go with Kim and Maria for a while. Christina may have saved them, and a lot of other people besides; she finally realized what that hydration/electrolyte drink needed, and made it easier to make and improved its effectivity. We got word back to Sammy, and those who had ears to hear (or eyes to read) benefitted. The junta stole the recipe and claimed that some doctors at Walter Reed came up with it, but everyone knows it as “the CC drink.”

Christina, in fact, about hurt herself trying to care for the two people she loves most. Kim did his best to stay hydrated, so she could either tend to her mom or rest. Guillermo and I had to force her to take breaks; she had the flu too and wasn’t giving herself a chance to recuperate. It reminded me of how Mrs. Fetched and her mom used to nearly kill themselves working at the chicken houses and doing a bunch of other stuff besides. (Both her parents passed on a couple years ago… Mrs. Fetched took it hard, but held up pretty well in the end.)

Kim and Maria had plenty of time to talk… ironic that he knew Spanish better than anyone of my family, and they never tried talking before. That could have saved a lot of the friction in the manor, but that’s (finally) all behind us. Maria talked to Guillermo, they talked to Mrs. Fetched and me, and we talked to Kim while they talked to Christina. Then we all got together. We couldn’t give them a government-sanctioned wedding, given that Christina and her family are still officially fugitives, but some things don’t need a piece of paper to make them real. They’re still awfully young (17 and 18), but when it’s time it’s time. Rene and Serena stood as their wedding party, and everyone insisted that I officiate. Mrs. Fetched took video (and I transcribed the following spiel from that). We cobbled up a ceremony in the living room: Christina entered from the kitchen (my right), Kim from the hall. As I did at my mom’s second wedding, so many years ago, I started whistling the Wedding March… and as happened then, everyone else took it up with a grin.

“Dearly beloved…” I started, then shook my head. “Yes, you two — all of you here — are dearly beloved, of me and of each other. No doubt.

“Back when I was your age, though, it was unusual for people to get married so young. But times have changed, mostly — but not completely — for the worse. We’ve watched you grow together — and I’m sure you know how closely we watched you for the last five years!” They laughed.

“But all of us have discussed this, and we all agree that it’s time to take the next step — if you’re ready. You’re about to enter into a commitment that — if you both honor it — lasts a lifetime. So if either of you aren’t ready to take that step, or if any of us here have second thoughts, this is the time to speak. Let any who have doubts, speak now, without fear of reproach.” I waited; nobody spoke but Maria twirled her hand in a “get moving” gesture. I was kind of surprised; in a matter of days she’s gone from the most fearful to the most supportive about this relationship.

“Kim, Christina,” I said, “Look at each other.” They did. “Now look at me. Are you ready to make a lifetime commitment, both to each other and the respective families? It’s not just two people that are married — your families are joined together as well. Think a moment before you answer.”

Christina, that brilliant and eccentric star, barely gave it a second before saying “Sí,” loud and clear. A moment later, Kim nodded and smiled. They joined hands before I had a chance to tell them to.

“OK,” I said. “Christina: do you promise to take Kim as your husband, to love and honor, to recognize temptation but not yield, for the rest of your lives together?”

She surprised me. “Before God and our families, I do.”

Kim’s turn: “Kim, do you likewise promise to take Christina as your wife, to love and honor, to recognize temptation but not yield, and to try to understand her, knowing you never will?”

Guillermo and Dean (DD’s beau) chuckled, and Daughter Dearest snorted, as Kim fumbled to follow Christina’s response. “Before God and our families, I do.”

I motioned for Mrs. Fetched, Guillermo, and Maria to join us. Mrs. Fetched handed off the camera to Daughter Dearest, who looked puzzled but figured I wasn’t going to be silly… for a change. “Kim and Christina have pledged to each other and to us, and now it’s our turn,” I said. “I wasn’t just saying words about commitment to the families. This is for us as much as it is for them — they swore their love to each other years ago.

“Guillermo, Maria: do you promise to take Kim into your family, to treat him equally and fairly, and above all to set an example for their married life through your own?” They looked at each other for a moment, then nodded as one. “Sí,” said Maria; “We will,” Guillermo added.

“Mrs. Fetched: will you join me in making the same pledge? To take Christina into our family, to treat her equally and fairly, and above all to set an example for their married life through our own?” She said, “I will,” and I responded, “And so do I.

“Kim, Christina, we’ve watched the two of you grow up together, and we recognize the depth of your love for each other. And as you have pledged yourselves to each other before God and your families — and your families have pledged to support and guide you — as ‘lord’ of FAR Manor, I pronounce you husband and wife. But if there ever comes a time when you can repeat your vows in public, I expect you to do it… OK, I’ve made you wait long enough. So kiss already!”

After a minute or two, I started whistling randomly until they got the message.

The newlyweds scored the following haul. From me: two large boxes of condoms and an admonishment to hold off having kids for a few years. From Guillermo: a bottle of tequila he’d been saving all this time for a “special occasion.” From Daughter Dearest: her studio for a week. (“I’m sure you won’t have any problem keeping warm!” she laughed.)

We are going to have to come up with some new sleeping arrangements, now that there’s three couples in the manor. Dean gets to move into Kim’s old bed, until he and DD get hitched… then they say they’ll move out. I guess it’s time; the kids are as ready as they’ll ever be to take the HSG (High School Graduate, the old GED) exam.

continued…

Fiction: The Last Drop

Slightly edited and polished for the 19 Feb 2010 #flashfriday entries. If you’re visiting for #flashfriday, welcome to the free-range insane asylum! You’ll find several short stories, a completed novel (FAR Future), and a novel in progress (White Pickups). Hang around and feel free to drop a comment.

This is what happened when I spent over an hour sitting in line, waiting to buy gas during the 2008 fuel shortages in the southeast US. It’s a lot darker than the stuff I usually write. A slightly different version appeared toward the end of FAR Future, and I’m eventually going to expand it to a short story.

The Last Drop

I threaded my way between lanes of long-abandoned vehicles choking a city street. All faced the same way, as if in a hurricane evacuation. They had been there a long time; what tires weren’t flat and dry-rotted were sagging and dry-rotted. Driver-side doors often stood open, and I sometimes had to push them shut (with a horrendous creak that the stillness swallowed) to get by. The glass was intact, but caked with grime and dust and streaked perhaps by a long-ago rain. The buildings on either side loomed over the street, their windows looking down on me like a maid watching a roach scurry across a clean tile floor. Clouds roiled overhead, bringing neither rain nor relief from the heat. Stifling gusts of wind puffed from behind me, then from ahead; all directions carried unpleasant smells.

I went through intersections where endless lines met and tried to merge in vain with the endless lines I walked through. Out of curiosity, I climbed onto a pickup truck — bumper, bed, toolbox, cab — for a longer view. Behind me, and to either side, the jam continued as far as I could see. Up ahead, the lines seemed to jumble together at the edge of my sight. I climbed down and continued on. After what seemed far too long, I climbed atop another truck. I was still a long way off, but could see a little more clearly. Something changed up ahead: perhaps this street would turn onto another, or perhaps it would be what everyone had tried to reach.

Eventually, the lines veered to the left and right and tangled together, then became a solid mass. I climbed up and over, picking my way carefully: trunk, roof, hood, hop to the next trunk, on and on. Climbing atop a van, I finally saw it: a great traffic circle with what looked like a gas station filling the island. The vehicles were packed around it and inside it in a chaotic tumble — anyone who had managed to get that far had no chance to get out. As I drew nearer, I realized that it had been a gas station — the signage was long faded or crumbled, and an overhang had fallen and crushed pumps and vehicles alike.

“Over here,” I heard someone say from behind the fallen overhang. I climbed toward it, and at last found a stretch of open pavement. It led me under the overhang and to a thin black woman, lounging in a car seat resting on the pavement. A pull-along cooler sat between her and a second car seat, and she waved me toward the seat. “Grab you a water, I bet’ch’er thirsty. Ice is long gone, but that don’t matter.”

I did what I was told, sat with a water. She waited for me to unscrew the cap and drain half the bottle at a gulp, then said, “Name’s Daisy. I wanted to shoot my mama for hanging that name on me sometimes, but it’s another thing that don’t matter now.”

“Yeah,” I said, introducing myself. “What the hell is this?”

“This? It’s a gas station. Or what’s left of one. But that’s not what you meant.” She gave me a grin. “This is what happened when the last tanker brought the last drop of gas to the last gas station. Everybody wanted to get some, and… well, I bet you can guess the rest.”

“Yeah,” I said, imagining the scene. “But it must have happened a long time ago. You’re the only one left, as far as I can tell. Why are you here?”

“Me? I’m… the Judge.” I heard the capital. “I was a nobody, livin’ on the streets, scroungin’ to get enough food, tryin’ not to get raped by some loony or high school jock. One mornin’ I was downtown here, thinkin’ maybe I could get someone to buy me a coffee and biscuit, and all these cars rushin’ to get a fill-up. One of ’em run right over me.”

She handed me another water while I gaped at her. “Yeah. So God comes for me and asks me what I want, and I said ‘payback.’ He says, ‘The fruit of the Spirit is forgiveness,’ and next thing I know—”

She climbs out from under the Expedition and stands glaring at the driver babbling “God lady, I’m so sorry…”

“You want gas?” she cries. “Come and get it! EVERYONE COME AND GET IT! AND I HOPE YOU CHOKE ON IT!”

Night, then day. People swarm over the trapped cars, gas cans in hand, only to be set upon by others behind them. Fistfights become gunfights. The pumps have long run dry, but they keep coming. The attendants abandon the station, and she replaces the oddments of life in her cooler with drinks and ice. Night again, and now the shades come. Some ask for forgiveness, and she grants it. Some see just another homeless nobody, and those she judges. One of the forgiven tells her of a toolbox in a nearby van, and how she can remove the seats, and now she has a comfortable place to sit. On a whim, long after the last shade goes to its reward and the overhang falls over, she pulls the other seat.

Sometimes she weeps for the departed. Sometimes she laughs at their folly. Most of the time she just sits… and waits.

“For what? Not me, I hope,” I said.

“For someone living. The Judge has to be judged — or forgiven.”

I looked around, thinking about how it must have been, then turned to Daisy. “If it’s in my power, then: I forgive you for this. I can understand why.”

Daisy leaped across the cooler and kissed me hard. “Too bad you didn’t know me when I was living,” she laughed, and… was gone.

“Wake up, honey!” my wife said, shaking me. “Lisa just called. The tanker’s on the way! If we hurry we can get there before the line gets too long!”

Weekend Cinema

Short, quick, and free — like the redneck’s idea of a perfect date — that’s Weekend Cinema!

Tonight, we bring you a little documentary of sorts. Urban farms might sound like an oxymoron, but people are doing it. Some because it’s the only way to put some fresh food on the table, others because food sovereignty is important.

So tonight we travel to exotic Milwaukee and see what a little Growing Power can do.

You can learn more about Growing Power and their goals at their website.

The Great Gas Panic of 2008 Continues

The media says things will ease up tomorrow. And theoildrum.com suggests it gets worse for the next 2–3 weeks. Frankly, this is worse than Katrina, at least from a supply standpoint — it’s like living in an early episode of FAR Future! If it gets any worse, and I mean any worse, the South will come to a standstill next week.

When a gas station gets a shipment in, people start calling around to tell their friends and relatives, everyone rushes in to fill up, and then they’re out again. We got a phone call this morning, and I took the Civic in to get half a tank (my last $20 of gas money). But except for the occasional fistfight, people seem to be taking it in stride. They’re blaming oil companies, politics (yeah right, like Bush-league would hose his party’s base in an election year), whatever, but otherwise they shrug and line up. I explain what’s really happening: oil production in the Gulf is still only 1/4 normal; refineries in Texas are restarting more slowly than anticipated (see link above); and this all went down at a time when inventories were well below normal to begin with.

I figure it’s highly unlikely to happen, but here’s a few lessons we could learn if we really wanted:

1) Seeing as a similar situation happened 3 years ago, this isn’t a once in a lifetime thing. Or even a once in two terms thing. In a world of tight oil supply, we need to understand this is going to happen again. And again.

2) Our leadership needs to, um, lead. Planetary Governor Bok-Bok could have done more than wag his finger at gouging (necessary, but not sufficient). What he should have done was told us, “Look, supplies might be tight for a few weeks and we’ll all have to work around it. I’m asking gas stations to place a $30 limit on purchases through the end of the month, and reduce that to $20 per purchase if necessary. I call on employers to let people work at home where possible. All citizens should avoid making unnecessary trips, and use carpools or transit when they can. If you have to drive, take the most fuel-efficient vehicle you can."

3) When you have to haul a work crew and gear around, using a big SUV is smart. For solo commuting on highways, the same vehicle is not so smart. Maybe the Magic Drill Fairy will put some oil under our pillow in 5 years or so, but if people insist on driving barges to work, it’s not going to make a difference. We need to discourage that behavior, by whatever means necessary: from huge surtaxes on huge vehicles not used for construction work, to just pointing and laughing. If it gets the gas hogs off the road, it works.

4) A good regional passenger rail system would be good for tourism, business, and citizens — and be fairly immune to gasoline supply glitches.

I don’t have a whole lot of faith that people will do the right thing, though, until they can’t do anything else.

FAR Future, Episode 52: It’s The Big One, Elizabeth

Note the date — things will continue to jump ahead over the next couple of episodes.

Monday, December 2, 2019
It’s the Big One, Elizabeth

It’s been almost four years, but what more was there to say? Electricity is more and more something produced where it’s consumed, people grow more of their own food, gasoline and diesel get more scarce, the junta sucks more all the time. You didn’t need me to tell you that.

But the junta might have finally sucked in something too big for them to cover up or ignore. Public health officials (or former officials, in any case) have been warning for 20 years about preparing for a flu pandemic. There was at least a start before the junta, but public health — heck, just about public everything — got thrown out the window after the coup. Now, it looks like the flu version of The Big One has arrived, and the junta’s feeble attempts at travel restrictions did nothing at all to slow it down… and their usual “downplay anything that might make us look bad” strategy probably did more to help it spread than anything they did to prevent it. And it’s ugly — some former public health people are keeping Sammy well-supplied with info about what’s happening, and putting out better info about precautionary measures and home remedies. (The junta is, in some cases, stealing the latter and offering it up as its own. Shameless SOBs.)

Like the 1918 pandemic, and the “bird flu” that f(e)athered the current strain, it’s hitting the prime-of-lifers the hardest. Sammy got hold of a report that estimated 3–5% of the population may die by the time it’s over. That’s on top of, or at least exacerbating, the “normal” deaths related to the usual winter fuel shortages (which includes fire, asphyxiation, and hypothermia). I wouldn’t be surprised.

The health care system is already collapsing under just the initial onslaught. The local radio said the hospital is triaging patients; mostly they pump incoming cases full of fluids and send them home with instructions for caretakers (if any). The report talked about big tents in the parking lot outside the hospital; they triage patients in one tent and the ones they keep move to the next tent until a bed (or floor space) opens up inside. And from the percentages, one of every 20 or 30 are too far gone to help; I presume they send those back home and tell the caretakers to make arrangements. The question is: where are the fluids (presumably saline and electrolytes) coming from? Are they using a similar recipe to what Sammy and the junta both published for oral use at home? Are the nurses and doctors getting any rest, and how likely is it that they’ll be stricken next?

Mrs. Fetched and I are either side of 60 now, so we have the usual old-people worries about flu. But I think if we stay hydrated, we’ll get through it. It’s Daughter Dearest and her fiance who came in from Pacifica last month that I’m worried about most — they’re in the dangerous age range — with Kim and the other kids a close second. Christina has sort of taken charge of the situation, working up batches of an electrolyte/hydration mix we found on one of Sammy’s web pages (I figured I needed to take a risk and bogart some Pat-Riot bandwidth), and looking at the formula carefully. “It’s like it’s whispering to me,” she said, “that there’s a way to improve it, but I can’t see how just yet.” She’s really something… I never mentioned that field trip we took to Corettaville a couple years ago; they emailed her about a paper she wrote on digesters and wanted some more info. One thing led to another, and they ended up inviting her to visit (with me as an escort). They were shocked to see a 14-year-old girl behind the paper, to say the least. It took a word from The Prophet himself — but only a word — to convince them. He recognized me from the other time I saw him, which pleased me for some reason. I was a bit less pleased when he told me I was to speak to the Assembly, but that went okay too. I spoke about taking in people who needed a place to stay, and how they can turn out to be prodigies like Christina or even angels. It went over well, I guess. By the way, if you’ve never been in a wallyworld, the funk is amazing even in early spring when they start ventilating more. There’s almost a thousand people living in Corettaville now, and more coming all the time; even if they spend a lot of time outside and try to stay clean, that many people living together is bound to concentrate the odor.

Serena has been producing plays at the Thanksgiving get-together the last few years, getting the other kids (and sometimes me) to act in them. Most of them are little one-acts with some political overtones that a kid can get away with. But she (and Rene) are 17 now, and she has to start being careful. She sailed pretty close to the wind with this year’s production, a Shakespearean-style thing she called The Discomposure of Lord Riot. The fun part for me was that I got to play both the evil Lord Riot and the kindly-but-clueless Lord Farfet — she thinks I’m a decent actor, but it’s really a matter of studying my lines and getting a feel for the character. Or characters, in this case. The love interest was played (quite willingly, I assure you!) by Kim & Christina, who are no less intense than ever, while Rene and Serena herself played the lovers’ friends. It’s based pretty much on how the four of them (along with Guillermo and Maria, of course) came to live at FAR Manor… although in the play, they were being pursued by a Lord Riot who wanted to sell them into slavery. Lord Farfet takes them in, knowing that Riot is after them, but the kids lay his plans low. The story ends with Lord Riot making a pact with the devil “And thus can I continue to serve God.” One of the neighbors said Serena ran it right to the edge and maybe just a little over, but it was a gutsy play and well-done. I’m sending it to Sammy the same time I post this; some of her other plays have been pretty popular out there.

Unfortunately, the first local flu case hit a couple days after the Thanksgiving dinner. I guess that means we’ve all been exposed.

continued…

Plants of the Moment

But first: happy b-day to both my parental units, Mom yesterday and Dad today!

Despite the drought, the plant life has managed to hold up reasonably well through the summer. Maybe the rainy spring gave them enough of a start.

Back in February, I mentioned diverting the kitchen and laundry drains into the back yard. We must have had a few seeds go down the drain — literally — because now there’s a clump of tomato plants springing up.

Mrs. Fetched was like, “Do you really want to let them grow?” Heck yes — I want to see what kind they are, if nothing else. I can’t blame her for moaning about it — the tomatoes have done very well this year and Mrs. Fetched’s mom is ready to yank her plants out of the ground so she doesn’t have to pick any more. It’s not just the tomatoes… her scupperdine vine got so laden it pulled down the tree she’d used for a trellis; I found a persimmon tree at the bottom of the driveway that’s weighed down pretty heavily; her fruit trees are doing very well too. Only one of my yellow pear plants survived, but it has done quite well despite not being staked… it just sprawls everywhere. But if these particular plants do well, and the frost holds off long enough, they'll be ripe around late October.

Out for a walk on Thursday, I saw some wildflowers managing to grow among the kudzu.

The kudzu itself blooms, a pretty purple pyramid with a grape-y smell. But the blue blooms here were not of the kudzu; it was some other plant trying its luck among the tangle.

This kind of thing gives me a little hope. We’ve only begun to see how much our climate change is going to screw things up… but once we get out of the way, nature will adjust and fix things.

Oh Joy. Another Boarder.

I guess Mrs. Fetched couldn’t stand having the nest empty. If I had any say in the matter, we’d have a smaller nest.

At least this one is more mature… as in, roughly our age. All inmates, please welcome DoubleRed (she commented on Daughter Dearest’s post as RedRedRobin, DR is shorter) to the free-range insane asylum. She was DD’s co-worker, back before DD went off to college and found that work on top of college was just a little too much.

So we (that is, The Boy and I, with a help from a friend of DR’s) got her moved in today. Mrs. Fetched, always a paragon on planning, has the former contents of the guest room closet strewn all over the living room (and there it will sit until Christmas, when she’ll need to move it somewhere else to make room for guests). I’m hoping the rent will be steady, although I think she was trying to “manage expectations” this evening, but I’m hoping more that she’ll be cooking as much as she says she loves to do. It would be nice to come home from work, knowing there will be supper. Shoot, if she does the cooking, I wouldn’t worry much about the rent.

So… we’ll see how this goes.

Whew

So today was the father-in-law’s catheterization, in which the docs would seek (and perhaps repair) any major blockages.

They found a couple of minor blockages, but they weren’t enough to impede blood flow. Given that he’s been feeling better since they replaced the Lasix with a different medication, one that wasn’t beating on his kidneys so much, they now think perhaps the root of his problem was kidney- rather than heart-related.

He’s going to spend one more night for observation (post-catheter thing) then send him home tomorrow. There will likely be more tests to confirm the current guess diagnosis, but he seems to be out of the woods for now. I hope he wants all his stuff back. ;-)

UPDATE: You know, last night he was in a semi-private room and didn’t have O’Liarly on. And he was feeling better. Coincidence? I think not!

Gas Update, Father-in-Law Update

Yesterday, the three stations closest to the office were out both morning and evening. But they all had “product” this morning. Things may have settled in for now; as I mentioned on Nancy’s blog this morning, I expect to see the occasional “no fuel” sign over the next couple of weeks, but there will be gas when needed. Prices are converging toward either $4.09 or $4.19 for regular now; there are outliers on either side but they’re getting fewer every day.

Meanwhile, my father-in-law finally got to the hospital. He went to the doctor yesterday, and the doctor sent him “upstairs” so to speak. His attitude is the scariest thing so far… he’s acting like he doesn’t expect to get out. But like I told him last night, he needs to hang around for two reasons: 1) he wants to see the farm (i.e. chicken houses) paid off; 2) it’s just not right for your mother-in-law to outlive you, therefore he needs to hang around for another 10 years. He found that amusing, which is what I’d hoped for. Of course, he has Bill O'Liarly on every night and that can’t be good for the soul. They transferred him to the hospital in Gainesville this evening, which is good because it’s a top-notch cardiac facility. Mrs. Fetched figures that as soon as they figure out (and treat) what’s going on, he’ll feel a lot better. I agree with that, but he needs to get his attitude in the right place.

FAR Future, Episode 51: In the Blink of an Eye

So begins the transition to the next sub-series…

Wednesday, May 25, 2016
In the Blink of an Eye…

…six months go by.

Well, sort of. Interesting that my last post was on my birthday, and this one is Mrs. Fetched’s birthday.

The junta obviously backed down on cutting off the net, for now — I think someone figured out how many people are working from home and how much fuel it would take to replace the net. But they’ve nanny-blocked just about everything but commerce. Ironic, when you consider that the Net originally disallowed commerce. The Favored Ones aren’t so restricted in their net usage, but more on that shortly.

Perhaps another factor was the number of people taking college classes from home. Christina has been doing that for a while now, mostly biochemistry and related subjects. She has some amazing brainpower, but her writing skills are closer to her chronological age and she needed to do a full-blown paper. Fortunately for her, technical writing is how I make a living, so I taught her what she needed to know: writing an abstract, structuring the paper, the conclusion… she also had plenty of examples from other papers in her field. I was pleased to find that there are things I can still teach her. ;-) She sort of hoped I’d write it for her once she told me what was needed, but I only agreed to help her structure and edit it. It turned out OK; she caught on soon enough and got a 3.2 (B-plus-ish) score on it. Most of what she got dinged for was the technical content, and the prof has no clue that she’s 12. She was a little bummed about that — she was hoping for a 3.5 at a minimum — but she found out later that nobody scored over 3.4 and only two people in her class got a higher score than hers. She plunged into her books, actually ignoring Kim for a while (and it was interesting to watch the mixed relief and dismay there), and vowed her next paper would be worthy of publication.

The Prophet has been flying under the radar for a while. I was starting to worry about him, even though I knew if the Pat-Riots had caught him they’d be shouting it from the rooftops, but he surfaced recently. It turns out he’s been helping to found a wallyworld between Decatur and Atlanta. Of course, they wanted to name it after him, and he wouldn’t have it. Nor would he allow them to call it “The Prophet’s Mission.” After some back and forth and left and right and give and take, they finally settled on calling it “Corettaville,” after Coretta Scott King. Junta symps, as you can guess, call it N-town (and no, they don’t pronounce it how I wrote it). A video might be available out on the West Coast, but all I managed to get was a series of photos that still tell a story of a seriously dedicated group of people. They’re tearing out the parking lot, and using the asphalt to build a security wall (there have been some vandalism attempts, what a surprise) and to build garden beds. They’re working hard to make the place self-supporting to a level that no wallyworld has yet achieved — their goals are no waste at all, and to be self-powered. The other spaces in the strip are becoming community kitchens, schools, a library, and whatever other services a small city might need. Someone donated a large-scale wind plant, and they’re working on installing it now. Solar panels on the roof, skylights, you name it, they’re doing it. Sewage goes into a fermentation chamber, built partially from the torn-out asphalt, to make methane and fertilizer (Christina’s paper was about large-scale digesters like this, and she’s wishing for a field trip). I doubt they can raise enough veggies to feed several hundred people, but they’re giving it the ol’ college try. Inside, they’re laying out streets and building individual apartments, two floors and a large open area for assemblies. I really hope they make it — but with The Prophet leading them, I imagine failing would be rather difficult.

Sammy had some less happy news — disturbing, actually — about the junta running a labor camp out in Colorado. Criminals, or anyone the junta finds inconvenient, end up mining shale. A “loyal opposition” member (someone like me, in other words, who doesn’t like the junta but has helped them out in the past) got appointed as an ombudsman of sorts at the camp. He didn’t stay long, but managed to smuggle out a few photos on his cellphone and told the story of what’s going on out there. I suppose it makes sense… you get to be a productive member of society whether you want to be or not. It’s not pretty, but I hope you can find his report or Sammy finds you with it. Sunshine is the best disinfectant, right?

On the lighter side, Sammy sent this list along recently.

You know it's TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It) when…
- You get out a deck of cards to play solitaire.
- You actually *talk* on a phone.
- You've gotten to know these people called “your family.”
- A trip to town is something you dedicate most of the day to.
- You've had so many candlelight dinners, you forgot they're supposed to be romantic.
- You see more people walking somewhere than jogging nowhere.
- You say something about “bumper sticker logic” and your kids ask, “what's a bumper sticker?”
- You ride a bus every day, and you're not in school.
- You've been woke up at 3 a.m. when the power comes on and the bedroom lights up!
- Checking your mail means walking to the end of your driveway.

Heh. Remember when lists like this would be followed up with an exhortation to “pass it on”?

The local junta folks have caught on to me… or at least caught on that someone is out here borrowing bandwidth. I’ve been pretty careful with my Gadget, keeping the usage to a minimum and trying to be pretty random about which hotspots I hijack, but maybe I cut it too close. Or maybe just got a little unlucky.

I was sitting on a curb, pretending to talk on the Gadget while batching up some stuff for Sammy, when a Pat-Troll stopped. “Hang on a second,” I told my non-existant party, and did the two-finger double tap (which turns off the Wingnutistan mode). Probably a good move on my part.

“What’cha doin’, buddy?” one of the 'Riots asked me.

“Phoning home,” I said. To the phone I said, “Look: some Patriots stopped and want to chat. I’ll call you later. Bye.” To them, I said, “What’s up?”

“Just lookin’ out for funny business,” he replied. “Hey, is that an iPhone?”

“Yeah, one of the first-generation versions. I’m surprised it’s still working.” I stood and offered him the phone.

“Hm. Looks kinda beat-up.” He poked at it for a moment, but didn’t seem too enthusiastic about it. “Yeah,” he said, handing it back to me. “Thing’s practically an antique now, huh?”

“Yeah. I don’t like to throw out stuff that still works, though. It’s been a good little phone.”

“I bet. I’d like to have one of them new ones, but they don’t sell ’em here. I guess if you went to New York or something, you might get one.

“Well, you be careful. There’s someone out here breaking into people’s computers, and there’s a reward if you catch him. Keep your eyes peeled.” And they drove away. No problems, but a bit closer than I’d like… especially when I’m not on my own turf. I might have to read Sammy on paper for a while.

continued…

Spiked by Ike; or, The Great Gas Panic of 2008

Current music: Lifeline – Simon Slator

Y’all remember Katrina, right? Ike may, at least in terms of gas prices, turn out to be worse. Back then, we had a 20% jump… which turned out to be about 55 cents, ending up at $3.12. Depending on how things settle by Monday, it could be as much as 40% this time.

While Gustav hardly budged gas prices, the second large hurricane in a week to hit an oil-producing part of the coast triggered the Great Gas Panic here on Planet Georgia. By early evening, local gas stations were running out and the remaining ones were getting drained by long lines. Some of the smarter operators starting putting purchase limits on their fuel. The rumor mill was rife with talk about how gas would be over $5 on Saturday, perhaps even to $6. This seemed like crazy talk to me — a 20% jump from Friday’s $3.59 price would put us around $4.29, which was a little higher than the summer peak price. Local stations had jumped to $3.79 during the afternoon, perhaps a vain attempt to blunt the growing onslaught. By 9:30, only two stations had gas to sell — both BP, which ironically had the most trouble keeping gas on hand after Katrina. The one at the highway had jumped to $4.29 (and still had a long line), while the station in town continued selling at $3.79. “No limits,” the guy told Mrs. Fetched. “We have 1500 gallons left, and we’ll sell it until it’s gone.” The premium pumps were bagged (i.e. no gas left), but most people weren’t after the high-test anyway. Things were a little complicated by a friend who was nearly out of gas and bopped around to several stations before finding the BP in town.

Meanwhile, there were several people parked at the pumps at the Shell station, even though all the nozzles were bagged up. I was amused by the sight of a Dummer cruising through, looking for some more gas. We made our way to the BP in town, where I got in line to tank up Mrs. Fetched’s mom’s van (plus a 5-gallon can of ours) and managed to get it. A car tried to go around me and ended up in the ditch, which was entertaining since nobody got hurt. Local cops showed up to direct traffic and perhaps keep the peace… there was a near-incident where someone either didn’t figure out how people were coming in or didn’t care, but it was defused without drama. That wasn’t the case at Kroger, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The crazy stuff started in the morning. The BP in town continued to post $3.79, the local Citgo stations moved to $3.99, and the rest jumped clear to $4.49 or even $4.59. I heard (from P.O.D., not the most reliable source) that the gas stations along the freeway were charging $5.09… and people were making phone calls. Planetary Governor Bok-Bok got on the idiot box last night and said he would deal harshly with price gougers, and supposedly these folks got slapped with $40,000 fines. Mrs. Fetched had offered to take Jam to Mal-Wart, while we had another errand to run, so I suggested we combine the trip and I offered to sit in back with Brand X and Evil Lad NOT. That worked out fairly well, since Mrs. Fetched got to drive and bottom out the suspension on the bumps (and she couldn’t give me her patented Dirty Look about it for a change, heh heh).

Part of the errand-running included a trip to Kroger, since ice cream was on sale and Mrs. Fetched’s mom wanted some (which gave Mrs. Fetched a convenient excuse, which gave me a convenient excuse to replenish the Moose Tracks). While we were there, we ran into the store manager (who we kind of know since The Boy worked there back when he was like 15). I asked him about what Mrs. Fetched had heard from an EMT the night before: there had been a fist-fight at the Kroger and the cops shut the place down. “No,” he said, “I shut it down. There was a fight alright — some guy in a big truck tried to jump in line and I wouldn’t let him. Then he tried to hit me with his door. I’m not having that… he went to jail.” I’m not sure I believe the rest of this though: “We had to pay $5.02 for premium — wholesale — and I’m selling it at a loss ($4.49), and people are telling me they’re calling the state to report us for gouging.” Hey… if he has the receipts, let ’em call. I did wonder, though, what the deal was… if Citgo was selling gas for 50 cents less, and Kroger was still selling at a loss, the distributors might be gouging. Or perhaps they’re taking care of their own brand(s) and letting the indies fight over the scraps.

The last thing he said was “We’ll be at 60% capacity, best case, for the next two weeks.” That was about how long it took to get things more or less put back together after Katrina, so that makes sense. I guess there will once again be spot shortages for a little while. At least this time I have a little motorcycle that’s immune to purchase limits. Mrs. Fetched admitted to being annoyed when I bought it, but now she’s thanking God I had the opportunity and took it.

But if $4.49 is the price where everything settles, that’s a nearly 27% jump in prices. Worse than Katrina, in both absolute and relative terms… at least as far as gas prices go. I’ll post an update early next week after the next FAR Future episode.

Weekend Cinema

Welcome back to Weekend Cinema, where the entertainment (or in some cases, horror) is quick and free. Just like a perfect date. ;-D

All of us, even us Mac users, have likely hurled the occasional obscenity at our computers. But this kid goes waaaayyyy over the top. (In German, but with English sub-titles. Mucho vulgarity here.) Frankly, I think it’s a put-on: that webcam would have been toast long ago.

Hat tip/fling against the wall to Brand X