Bison Prepper: March 2017

Friday, March 31, 2017

thrifty part 2

THRIFTY part 2

Okay, so I found an actual thriftily priced thrift store. I knew they were there-they existed prior to my moving here. I had popped in one day long ago and looked at their sad and pathetic book selection ( the standard mass produced middle school reading level drivel ) and walked away never to return. Yet something or someone planted a bug in my brain and I was prompted to visit again during a day off during my two week notice period. I had ordered the grain grinder as my bread supply was going to end and I planed on now making my own ( I always eat first thing in the morning prior to coffee and vitamin pills, but now that replacing my work days with Visiting The B-POD Days I have an hour and a half commute and an hour heavy labor and need to eat again just a couple of hours later prior to returning or my energy level drops really low and I get weak. Bottom line is I’m going through a lot of bread or bread like products now ) and when we went to the feed store to grab a bag of wheat ( remember, low price not likely to last, buy yours NOW ) we swung into the new and improved thrift store.

Surprisingly, the book section had two great books. “Patriots” and another book whose title eludes me right now but was prepper related but which I also already owned. True to form however the rest of the room was a waste of trees. But that was not why I was there. I had a, hopefully, life time supply of shirts and the wool sweater supply was okay ( my wrapped and stored long term wool was plentiful but when the ex’s daughter last visited the B-POD she stole most of my sweaters so I still buy more when I see them just to build up my daily wear ones ), but pants were still problematic. I had plenty of old pants that didn’t fit well anymore ( typical Hank Hill build from middle age-the ass shrinks as the gut grows. I had lots of pants from pre-gut but they were good for Apocalypse Now Skinny only ) but I only had two and a half pairs of fitted ones. A brand new pair of Dickies, a pair I’ve worn about half way through their lifespan ( about two years before you need to start patching. At $25 from Amazon-cough, hint-they are $6 per six months wear. Wal-Mart slacks are $12 per six months if not $16, and you can’t mend them as the fabric is too thin. Wally the low price leader my dimpled white ass ) and one pair patched and mended. Since Elko is not a climate conducive to shorts for over half the year, I kind of need pants.

Now, prior to this I would have impatiently charged in, looked around half-assed and left empty handed. But not working for The Man ( cough, hint, buy through my Amazon links or buy my books so I can keep my sole job as a writer ), or in this case having conclusively decided in less than two weeks The Man could pack fudge and die, I have a lot more laid back of an attitude and am far more relaxed and take my time doing things right rather than rushed. That is one benefit I really hadn’t foreseen. My productivity has skyrocketed as I do things correctly one thing at a time. No more multi-tasking which is code for “do another persons job in no extra time and no extra pay”. The corporate job used to be a time I’d pre-write the days article in my head as I was tasked with physical labors but had degenerated into such stress and rushing I could barely mentally focus on the task at hand let alone this far more important job of town crier for the Apocalypse. They were barely paying for my body yet they insisted on my brain now-which is beyond rude, yo!

Do you know how hard it is to find my size in pants? Fat gut but far less fat than most and long legs. Most thrift store pants are really fat waist and really short legs. Yet, I find THREE pairs of slacks. All brand name, not Wal-Mart. And as a bonus a light weight wool sweater. All for $15. Here I was with only two pay checks to go and I spent some of the last money in my wallet at the thrift and feed store. And I was happy to do it. One cup of grain a day is three months of bread from a sack of wheat. It isn’t my main amount of calories but it is my main filler prior to dinner. For less than $4 a month. And the pants? I was looking at having to buy another pair of Dickies, a brand I love and swear by ( enough that I gambled $60 a pair of their boots. I haven’t wore them yet, but I feel confident. Well, especially since I won’t wear them eight hours a day but more like two. They should, in theory, last a LONNNG time ) but $25 is still a major investment now. Far better a $4 pair of thrift store slacks. My trip to the thrift store isn’t as much about being frugal, or stockpiling for the collapse, or keeping growing kids in clothes, or helping out a charity for Mongoloid kids. It is peace of mind eliminating yet another expense.

That is what puts my mind at ease. Yet one more thing I need that I needn’t stress over. It is like replacing those stupid asphalt shingles on a roof with metal or tiles. You spend a little bit extra and then it is worry free for decades longer than it would have been otherwise. Because to me, wanting to live on almost no money, a pair of new pants is 12% of a months income. Now it is either zero, for years to come, or at most 2% eventually. I can handle low single digits far better than low double digits. I can have one better than average month in income and suddenly I have another ten years worry free about pants and still have money left over for another odd item I finally needed to replace. Thrift store buying isn’t just stretching the budget, it is peace of mind AND reducing your needed budget. My bike will be needing new wheels soon, especially now that I’m using the washboard dirt road again, and yes that is going to hurt badly now that prices are up, but I can’t explain how much preferred that problem is to me. To most of you driving a car is necessary. To me, NOT having that need is an immense load of worry I’ll never again experience ( and a paid for home is even better! ). I’ve tried to emulate that feeling for almost everything I own or need to own. Remember Alfred P Newman from “Mad” magazine? “What? Me, worry?”. It is a nice feeling to have.

END

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. IF YOU DON’T SEE THE AD, DISABLE AD BLOCK ( go to the Ad Blocker while on my page and scroll down the menu to “disable this site” ). You can purchase anything, not just the linked item. Enter Amazon through my item link and then go to whatever other item you desire. As long as you don’t leave Amazon until after the order is placed, I get credit for your purchase. ***

I love you all, as few minions as there are you do very well in supporting me buying through Amazon. But plenty of you don't give ANY support to your favorite author. And that's me, and that's wrong. Unless you are in extreme poverty, spend a buck a month here for a book. I only get 35 cents so nobody is going to send me up to Idaho to live on their purchase. If you don't do Amazon, send me a buck and I'll e-mail it to you. Or, send an extra buck and I'll send you a CD ( the file is in PDF ). My e-mail is: jimd303@reagan.com that is three ZERO three, not three oh three. My address is: James M Dakin, 181 W Bullion Rd #12, Elko NV 89801-4184*** Pay your author-no one works for free. I’m nice enough to publish for barely above Mere Book Money, so do your part.***

*Contact Information* Links To Other Blogs * Land In Elko* Lord Bison* my bio & biblio* my web site is www.bisonprepper.com *wal-mart wheat*Link To All My Published Books
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

Thursday, March 30, 2017

thrifty

THRIFTY

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note: act immediately!!!!

ATTENTION! ATTENTION! Kroger grocery stores, or at least the local one, is having a markdown on a closeout item. The white can generic ground coffee, regularly $5 is now $4. I would imagine they are reducing the net weight in the can if not just eliminating that choice of coffee altogether. 20% reduction plus whatever price difference the future will bring. Just remember the last time I told you about a closeout, the generic shortening. That replacement was double the price so I hope you listened to me then. Now might be a good time to start. I spent close to a third of my monthly food budget taking every can they offered ( which is why you stock up on sales, to have the money free to buy even more sales, a self-perpetuating cycle of wonderfulness ). I NEVER need anything at the store except produce and that is the cheap stuff anyway-potatoes and cabbage, and hence only buy the sales. Spending that much of the monthly budget doesn’t hurt since I don’t NEED anything else that month.

You’ve heard me tremble with barely suppressed murderous berserker rage at the mention of Gott Damn Yuppie Scum Asswhore Bastards. I despise scumbags who think that their money makes them better than me. I look at males who have money and think that their wallet size is a pale substitute for a lack of testicles and I see women who have money and think of them as lucky prostitutes who have confused a less wrinkled and less loose sex organ with intelligence or skill. Anyone who thinks money is a good marker or an adequate gauge has their head so far up their ass they look like a Cheerio. Anyone who looks to moneyed instructors teaching that money is the only way to survive the destruction of a civilization which was caused by the greed of the wealthy in the first place is a illogical uninformed lower IQ evolutionary dead end and anyone who is one of those teachers is a charlatan, a huckster, a immoral twat and a scumbag. Have I mentioned that I really am not fond of Mammon worshipers?

Money is a tool, not an idol. But you would do better by molesting a zoo primate while wearing the skin of an endangered bald eagle while singing allegiance to the Dark Prince than you would denigrating the pursuit of wealth to the average member of the mob we call society. And some places are Yuppie Scum Central, unfortunately. Elko Nevada was at one time a charming little village on the banks of a trickle of snow melt erroneously misnamed a river. Today it is just one of many capitals of aforementioned avarice, a place to hang ones head in exhaustion after a days labor wrestling undeserved wealth from the equally exhausted yet unwary. I’ve never seen so many Yuppie Scum humpers in one geographical location in all my far too many days ( okay, Carson City was far worse, but that was a bedroom community and a retirement destination so it doesn‘t really count ). They have aged me unduly with their beady swine snouts held high in the air in undeserved superiority, my barely checked and suppressed rage an almost welcome fire to warm me on the many a winter night. Okay, enough waxing poetically. The greedy fecal stains just piss me off by their very existence, and that’s all we need to say about that.

Do you think that one retail establishment would exist to cater to the many shoe licking poverty stricken peon workers in this burg? No, of course not! Every swinging cheese dingus business owner here uses extreme high rents and an uncomfortably elevated cost of living as pathetic excuses to seemingly open their doors of business only to the vast minority of mine workers spouses. If I see another women’s fashion business, sushi restaurant or gourmet food establishment open I swear it will take every fiber of my being to resist firebombing the dive. The sad and pathetic part was that my former employer, the largest charity and thrift store in town, with NO rent as the building was a sheet metal hovel formerly owned by the city government and gifted to the organization, also fell for this pathetic appeasement to the leisured and wealthy. They didn’t own something so proletarian as a “thrift store”, oh no, they had to have a “thrift boutique”. Everything donated not up to a certain classy definition was tossed in the trash, and all less than gently used items were over priced.

Jesus Christ on a unicycle, it was a damn thrift store with a better designed atmosphere, a snobby pretentious craphole. I hated shopping there. Not because the Yuppies did, because unless I miss my guess most Yuppies are not short stature Latinos driving twenty year old automobiles, but because I’m not going to give any establishment anywhere close to retail for used items regardless of the worthiness of their cause. And that was AFTER our “employee discount”. That was as much a discount as my ONE raise in nearly a decade, a paltry nickel, could realistically be portrayed as anything other than a gross insult. So, while I was first working there I was able to sweet talk the back of the store workers into channeling wool garments my way and the manager into giving me a better discount. At irregular intervals when the public was given a sale day I bought golfing shirts by the half dozen. Other than that, I stayed away from the place and tried to part with none of my hard earned money. I was working “for the cause” by getting minimum wage ( that lonely raise had been prior to the state minimum wage being increased ) and increasing my work load every year ( yes, standard for every job, but a bit of an imposition when it is exponential over nearly a decade ), and principle dictated I give them as little else as possible.

So imagine my pleasant surprise when I recently began shopping at the areas other thrift store ( there are actually a total of three but the last one which has always been a sad and pathetic knee jerk reactionary copy of the My Former Employee Who Dare Not Speak Its Name charity. The number one thrift store helped out the homeless and lower income, and these guys had some other group of unfortunates to legitimize profiting off charity. Evidently the town citizens who made it their business to pass their lifetimes by forever buying newer retail crap would toss aside their old items by giving it to one of the three thrift stores and nobody had a very good reputation for not being greedy [ which is rich given the greed of the donors, but be that as it may…] except for The Other Thrift Store. So, number one in income were my ex-employers, the copy-cats were number three in donations. Their store had almost nothing, literally, inside for sale. So I discount their existence, if a half page of blabbering made sense as to why ) and actually came across fairly priced thrift store items. After nearly a decade of my former employers thrift store acting like a retail sector stuck up princess, I had stumbled upon a real bargain thrift store again. This breathtaking saga continues tomorrow.

END

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

retreat decay

RETREAT DECAY

*
Living Amongst The Dead, Dark Days by JN Morgan. I was so impressed by the original book in the series that I wasted no time buying the sequel. It was money well spent. If you liked the first one, the second is just as good. Better, if you really didn't care for the sex in the first one ( very little in this one ), and I'd even say better all the way around as JN is perfecting his craft much faster than I ever did. Highly recommended and I'll be the first to buy his next one.
click here to buy the Kindle version. Free if you have Kindle Unlimited.
*

You know I’m not a huge fan of retreats. You either live in the boonies or stop pretending you will survive. I hate bugging out and think it is the worst of both worlds-being in denial of reality and luxuriating ( wallowing, actually, a fat pig in slops ) in extra unnecessary toys. So, I don’t really have a retreat, now do I? That would be hypocritical. And no, I’m not just exercising semantics to confuse and redirect. I have a vacation/retirement house. A retreat is a place to go out of danger, and by definition is usually some good distance away from the teeming rabble you surround yourself with to earn a few extra Greenbacks so as to own a trophy wife ( nearly a sex slave, but with barely concealed consent, with a worse attitude and a lot less sex than traditional ) and all the cool toys only a Petroleum Age would permit and you are determined to take into the Stone Age. “Patriots”, a great book ( and his only one ) but one that unfortunately cemented this kind of behavior in lesser rational beings, was a social commentary. Whereas older books were community orientated ( the group survives. Even Social Decay ‘70’s era “Lucifer’s Hammer” had a better sense of securing community. The poor had a place ) Patriots is solidly “only the rich deserve to persevere”-at least in the sense the rich are not the 1% but the 10% guardians of the truly rich. The truly rich don’t have retreats. They merely travel between villas able to pick the current safest location from their Gulfstream.

When your off grid property is just outside town, it isn’t a retreat. Not from a tactical standpoint. I’ve made no secret that for me to have a serious chance of surviving the bulk of the local population will have had to relocate back before the collapse ( essentially fleeing due to the high cost of living here as the mines close down ). It doesn’t matter if I live in town or out at my property, population wise. Before it was a way to divert funds from rent to preps. Now it is a place to survive after the grid goes down. But it isn’t safe at current levels of population, which is why living in town is not a consideration for me. This isn’t “Miracle Mile” where one minute everyone is acting as normal as you can living in the city and next strangers are raping and shooting each other as missiles descend from the sky. Regardless of circumstances I have time to leave, for as much good as it will do me.

An actual retreat would be much safer. But my vacation home, my country estate if sarcasm is desired, was almost as bad as an actual retreat as far as maintenance is concerned. It doesn’t take long for issues to arise when you aren’t there to witness them. You can’t stop destruction but at least you can repair before other issues arise from that initial destruction. Not that I have a whole slew of issues. I built the place with fire and heavy winds in mind and the modern high tech miracles of plastic, aluminum and insulation assure few problems. So far, I’ve only had two severe turd floating gully washing rainstorms and one out of control plant colonization. The plants were from a perfect timing of rains coinciding with only weekly visits, then one skipped weekend when the weeds exploded six inches in growth. I come back two weeks later and my ankle high weeds are getting up to my shins. Then rains continue so the things stay wet and hard to quickly cut. That was when I had to go from sickle to weed-eater. If I had been gone a month the things would have been a much nicer fire danger.

The first flash flood saw my battery floating atop a small pond at the bottom of my B-POD steps ( any new readers here? That is what my underground hovel was christened “Bison Pit Of Doom ). I bought a new battery and dug a hole at the bottom step and placed cement blocks for a step, creating a sump. That has worked so far with rains, until now. Heavy prolonged rains created a ramp out of my steps, evidently also filling my sump, and then when a flash flood came after that my battery was toast once again years later. That is what happens when you aren’t there. I failed to clear the landslide and so the flood screwed me. The charge controller was fried and the connection cables to my inverter rusted and snapped off. Not a huge deal, I keep all my spare electrical parts and I have plenty of clamps from old failed inverters. The charge controller was more of a loss. I went to get the old one set up at the trailer, but old age killed it ( I’d been using it almost eight years ). Luckily I had a Faraday Cage unit I could use, it will just need replacing and I still have credit with Amazon from prior to switching from credit to cash for my lovely minions commission sales ( cough, hint ). I still have my old panels out there so I only need a 7 amp controller ( I bought several 100 watt panels but they are in storage as an investment. Either future off grid living or to sell once China stops exporting ).

The flood also washed away dirt from buried buckets, in a place I thought was protected. So while I was safer than normal from fire and wind, I still am tweaking the flood solutions. The buckets were no big deal, obviously. A shovel took care of that and no one the wiser. It is just like keeping an eye on any erosion over the pit. If plastic sheeting is exposed I cover with a shovel full of dirt to stop that solar radiation from killing the plastic ( kind of like it does to my skin-no one talks about skin cancer at these elevations, so it might be all in my head. All those skin spots must be from old age alone ). All in all, not a huge event. I’m out $20 for the controller. The battery was over three years old so if I had it somewhere besides underground the cold would have killed it already anyway. So I have to call that regular replacement. Still, I’m glad I’m going out there four days a week now, just so I can nip all problems in the bud. Yes, I’m still taking Wednesdays as well as the weekend off. A concession to aging. So, why did I write this besides enjoying the sound of my own voice? Apply this to what would happen at a real retreat you rarely visit. Word to the wise.

END

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

guest article-article 2 of 2 today

GUEST ARTICLE-article 2 of 2 today
*

Shooting for Accuracy

J N Morgan

Now I should probably start that I'm not a trained soldier, I've never taken any sort of formal 'classes' or 'courses' in shooting accurately, nor sadly have I ever been taught by a relative or friend on how to squeeze accuracy from my firearms. That said, I've reached 50m (55yd) with a pistol, and have rung an 8" gong at 200m (220yd) as well as an 18" gong at 300m (330yd). I've not tried beyond 300m yet, but I'm confident I could reach a man-sized target out to 400m (440yd). Some people who read this will probably have better accuracy than I do, and I welcome your comments below to hear about your own personal bests as well as how you manage to get the most from your shooting. For now, I'm going to share the things I've learned that have aided me in reaching this degree of accuracy thus far.

For accurate shooting with a pistol, the best accuracy I've probably ever managed is a 2.5" group at about 10-15m with 4 shots from my Hi Power made in Nazi-occupied Belgium back in 1943 or 1944. Never have been able to pinpoint the year; it's not on the pistol itself. That was all with different points of aim. I was shooting at an indoor range at a paper target with zombies on it, three of them, who were of varying sizes due to being at varying percieved distances. The final one was the 'farthest' one, the smallest one, who's head was probably around the size of a quarter. At 10-15m, it's not particularly easy to hit a quarter, especially with a pistol.

I had four shots left, and when I fired, it was probably 3" to the left. This was either due to the rear sight needing to be drifted, or more likely, I had 'not enough finger' on the trigger which was pushing the firearm left ever so slightly upon firing. If you have 'too much finger' on the trigger, then it would nudge the pistol to shoot right, but I digress. I compensated for this horizontal dispersion by aiming SLIGHTLY to the right, but not enough. Then again, then again, and if I had a fifth shot I'm sure I'd have pegged that zombie right in the dome. How did I get so much accuracy even though I never had any formal training, though? Not only that, but from a decades-old pistol? Here's how, and it's pretty simple.

Focus on the sight picture, specifically, the front sight. If the target gets a little bit blurry, and the rear sight, that's ok, but make sure you have a nice, crisp front sight that's beautifully square with the rear sight. That's a big part of it. Now next is that a problem with losing accuracy is anticipation of recoil; normally when you want to fire, your finger will yank the trigger back, and while doing that your brain is already knowing that recoil will be coming so in the LAST possible instance JUST before the shot is fired, you'll jerk forward. This will disrupt the aiming just before the trigger is finished being pulled, which can cause the round to deviate from point of aim. Here's how to keep from anticipating recoil, and it's quite cliche.

Puuuuuull the trigger. Nice and slow. Focus on the sight picture, keep steady as can be, puuuuull, puuuuull, puuuull, until the firearm just goes off. Let it almost surprise you, and that's the point; you don't anticipate it. After the shot is fired, instead of pointing the barrel downrange automatically like normal, you might find yourself holding the pistol post-recoil while the barrel is slightly pointed at an upward angle because you weren't already pushing forward for the recoil. That lunge forward when you go about firing the pistol but it doesn't go off, whether it's because of the safety being on or the trigger being slightly heavier than you expect, that's a tell-tale sign of anticipating recoil. Anticipating recoil will help get a quicker follow-up shot, but it will negatively affect accuracy, unless maybe you've got a lot of practice and training under your belt.

So in focusing on the irons, specifically the front sight, and slooooooowly squeezing the trigger so the shots 'surprise' me, I managed to get a 2.5" string of four shots at about 10-15m with four entirely different points of aim. The method of getting accuracy from a rifle is quite similar.

With irons you focus on a good sight picture, specifically focusing on the front sight. Sloooooowly squeeze the trigger until the shot surprises you, and though it's slow-firing, it will squeeze out as much accuracy as possible. If you've got an optic, it can help, but there's nothing special in a scope that sends magic into the action to make it sturdier, to make the rifling sharper, to make the firearm steadier, or any BS like that. It's still just a rifle, but now you can see the target a little bit easier at the cost of slightly more weight and bulk on your firearm. Get that bead or crosshair or whatever where you want it, slooooowly pull the trigger, and just let the firearm go off. Using this method, I managed to use my 1942 M91/30 Mosin with early-50s steel-cased laquor-coated Polish surplus (probably made for MGs rather than rifles), and run an 8" gong at 200m as well as an 18" gong at 300m. The Mosin was a standard straight-bolt rifle more than likely, once upon a time, because the 3.5x PU scope was a replica. Not an original. So essentially a standard Mosin but given a bent bolt and a replica of a simple WWII optic, and in my inexperienced hands managed to get a fair bit of distance out of it.

These are a few things I've learned in my brief shooting 'career' as it were. Sadly it has been quite some time since I've gotten to hit up a shooting range but it was with these little 'tricks' that I managed to do such, what I would consider, impressive shooting. Obviously for someone with decades of shooting experience and/or actual formal training, it's nothing special, but for me I was presently surprised at what I could accomplish. Oh yeah, and when I mentioned shooting at 50m with a pistol, that was with an old shot-out P38, all-matching, with a bore that barely had any rifling left in it. Took my final 8 shots at the perhaps torso-size paper target, and as I recall I got somewhere between 3-5 hits. This was months if not over a year before I did the Hi Power shooting at the indoor range. The P38 was at an outdoor range. Anyways, hope you found this interesting, and I hope it comes in handy on your next trip to the range if you didn't already know these little tidbits!

If you enjoyed this stuff and would like a bit of firearm-related reading material from someone who actually knows firearms, some reading material where you won't be rolling your eyes at a mag being called a clip or vice-versa, then you can check out a few of my books if you like.

Living amongst the Dead (Realistic zombie survival novel, Jim himself was quite a fan of it! You can check his review on the Amazon page!)

Paperback $7.99USD and Kindle/eReader FREE*

(*March 28-29. After that it'll be $0.99)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M7S2Z0R

Firearm Valhalla (Somewhat post-apocalyptic gun-porn novelette, only about 50 pages)

Paperback $4.99USD and Kindle/eReader $0.99USD

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XK5P6QV

Living amongst the Dead: Dark Days (Sequel to Living amongst the Dead, brand spankin' new novel!)

Paperback*+ $9.99USD and Kindle/eReader $2.99

(*Paperback might not be available on Amazon until March 29-30. eReader/Kindle version IS available.)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XWCKGZ6

(+Paperback presently available on the CreateSpace website below.)

https://www.createspace.com/7042438

(Guest Article End)

in the fishbowl-article 1 of 2 today

IN THE FISH BOWL-article 1 of 2 today

Do urban dwellers consider themselves living in a fishbowl? They are living in a completely artificial environment and mostly in total view of everyone, and food is dropped in on them from a far away place. Of course, if we are being honest, even country folk are the same. They have food and gasoline shipped to them and most likely electrical power. And yet, unless you are living rurally but confined inside watching an electronic screen, at least you get out occasionally and smell reality. You are still living in an artificial setting but you at least know it. In the city, if a lawn is your only connection to nature you are in a fishbowl. In the country, you can step out of that bowl and sit on the porch and breath real air and allow your lungs a reprieve from exhaust. You are also more in the bullseye of Mother Nature, which is in fact a good thing. It keeps you attuned to your real surroundings. In the unnatural cocoon of the city you quickly forget. Sometimes getting reminded by having a board hit upside your head is unpleasant, but it beats living in a coma then being rudely awoken to a pervert humping your leg.

The one big thing that encapsulates this for me is southwesterners watering their lawn. They are so out of touch with their surroundings that they think it is perfectly natural to soak a patch of lawn, then drive by a golf course on their way to a car wash. They flush after every urination ( are we so out of touch with our bodies natural functions that a smidge of yellow tinted water offends? Evidently, yes. I live in the NOL’s house. I am a guest here. My abode awaits if ever the need arises, but in the here and now I live at another’s pleasure. The Lady of the house desires the toilet to be flushed after every use. I simply can’t do it. I can’t. I compromise and flush if her family is coming to visit, and I flush every third time or so at all times, but every single time? We live in a desert and I find it beyond offensive to waste water ). They are living in an unreality. They view Nature as completely subjugated by Man’s Ingenuity. Of course nothing could be further from the truth but they know no better. They live in the bowels of a tree in a carefully constructed nest and can’t see the trunk they are in, let alone the tree or the forest.

I’ve lived in town for two years. Prior to that I was out at the B-POD for almost seven. During the two years here I started out pedaling twice a week out to my place to deliver the ex water and food and beer and cigs ( the ex had left to go live with her daughter and while gone I had met the NOL and moved in with her. Then the ex showed back unannounced after six months and declared her intentions to resume our relationship-yeh, I had me some real doozies before-but too late! ). Luckily she wasn’t there long and so I stopped commuting out there and we just drove out there a few times a month. I got pretty spoiled. Good cooking, good lovein, central heat. Well, starting the other week I began commuting back out by bike again four days a week. I’ve started digging the hole which may or may not be a future house ( as opposed to a hovel that I have there now ). As I sit there and eat a delicious wheaten snack, I’m reminded of how quiet and peaceful it is out in the country. Plenty of birds are squawking as they have a nest atop the trailer, but that isn’t noise. Not in the sense of rude intruding sounds. That is just nature. I missed it.

And I’m reminded of how I’m now living in an artificial environment. Nevada law makes it illegal to tap into the aquifer under 100 feet. I used to think that was bull, a nod to the drilling companies who must have bribed the lawmakers. Now I view it as the same, but at least it allows trees and plants a means of survival regardless of man’s shortsighted greed in raping his environment. The city has had over a hundred years of tree planting under its belt and the place is quit green. The only issue is the number of people drawing from the deep wells, as with every other drought surrounded city the urban leaders declare growth to be a wonderful thing so as to choke the tax coffers with extra. With all this greenery, and asphalt around that, it is at times difficult to remember where we live. It doesn’t seem like a desert at all. So how are people to be expected to think about conserving water?

The generic appeal of all cities is that you get the same one no matter where you live. No city manager is going to get uncontrolled unsustainable growth if he rubs the climate into residents faces. You might as well be living in an indoor mall. That is the danger of living in the urban environment. Artificiality. You can’t survive just by factoring in natural disasters indigenous to your locale, you must also learn to live with the climate naturally. Not with petroleum and petroleum like products. Yet the city by its modern nature supplies a surreal quantity of luxuries. You forget where you are as you busy yourself wallowing in decadence. You live in climate controlled, work there as well, look out the window at trees regardless of location of natural water availability and after a time see nothing else. I’m glad I’m commuting out to the country regularly now. It’s nice to be reminded how the future will look.

I can understand the appeal of losing yourself in the artificial environment. Living in the city sucks. The noise and the people. So you pretend they don’t exist. Covering up their noise with your noise and ignoring the very sight of their blank retarded faces in your electric cocoon. The danger is that after a time you forget where you are. The immediate danger then becomes not the population but your own warped perceptions.

END

Monday, March 27, 2017

elites minimum wage

ELITES MINIMUM WAGE

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note: Smashwords has post-apoc fiction. I chose "free", "over 50k words", but you can search differently. Here they are: click here
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Glen Beck, the fecal stain who wants you to panic and buy his sponsors freeze dried foods, but ONLY because there might be a tornado or hurricane victim nearby who needs charity since there is NO reason to panic as we have two hundred years of fracking oil available, and his retarded twin Rush Limbaugh who created a media empire trash talking the Klinton Kunts but then when Republican Bush was wiping his gonorrhea dripping dingus with the Constitution Rush was STILL blaming everything on Democrats, those two cretins would have you believe that God himself wants American businesses to be unhampered in their actions by the government. Hey, look how well that worked out when we let Enron write their own rulebook! And while Social Security is NOT welfare ( because most of their radio listeners are already sipping at that teet ), everything else including minimum wage most certainly is! Why, we could compete with the Chinese if we did away with that interference in the All Holy One Blessed Be They Name “Free Market”. Amen and hallelujah.

Now, I’m the last guy around who likes Big Government. To me, Social Security is indeed welfare ( although you can bet your last jelly donut if by a miracle it is available to me I’ll snatch it right up ) and I do NOT stand up and cheer the troops when they are engaged in imperial adventures. But if BigGov insists on handing a large chunk of the national wealth to big corporations and the banks, I’ll certainly cheer anything that screws me a tiny bit less. Such as minimum wage laws. Now, the only popular entertainment news out there regarding minimum wage is that the Unions agitated for child labor laws to increase the income of its members, accepting minimum wage at the same time, and that our benevolent Democrats ( probably originating with Big Daddy Commie Dingus Licker FDR, patron saint of all that is good for the Little People. Oh, wait. Is that Trump now? I get confused which one of the banker elites bitches was supposed to love the poor ) push for more minimum wage laws all the time which will force all the jobs overseas.

You rarely hear anything else. It was bad! ( bad Unions! No biscuits for you! Bad Democrats, costing business money! ). Every time the minimum wage is going to go up, business everywhere will immediately replace workers with robots and no more jobs can be had. I image those making the argument think they have a valid point, since we have lost all our jobs to China. However, if I may? What if, just mull it over a bit, what if minimum wage was ALWAYS for the benefit of centralizing forces? Big government, big business and big centralized banks. Because, if you strip away the ONLY argument against minimum wage which is that it hurts The Free Market, and instead Follow The Money, who benefits from minimum wage? Remember, the Free Market is only a law of physics to small business owners, the Mom& Pops. There, the Free Market kicks the crap out of the least efficient. Up the business food chain, where large corporations write the government regulations and Senators come to graze freely, there is no free market but rather mercantilism. Or, perhaps fascism. Whatever your definition, the three stooges of our nation, those blindly pulling levels which create money but do a whole lot more that is ignored, Big Business and Big Banks and Big Gov all feed and help each other.

So, if those idiots are in charge, and it is rather plain as the alcoholic induced burst veins on your nose that they are, why would they support paying workers more than necessary? Their whole lot in life is that of a parasite and so why get less blood than is possible? Here is what I’ve come up with as a working hypothesis. Minimum wage helps all three parties. It strengthens each. Corporations use costly workers as a means to destroy small business and as an excuse to automate. There is no profit in hiring more workers as far as the bankers are concerned but plenty in buying machines. And government sees more taxes on higher wages, amongst other benefits such as increased dependence and more Divide And Conquer. Let’s start at the corporate level. Remember, our entire economic history of a nation was one of abundant resources but dear labor. Indentured servants, then slaves, then immigrants from failed states, then petroleum slaves have all been used to make up for the lack of labor abundance. Elsewhere, serfs and other poor provided cheap labor. Here, it has always been a struggle to get that. Remember that big business hates materials or labor costing anything. To the capitalist religious fanatics, cost is a dirty word and profit is mothers milk.

With minimum wage, big business is better profited by automation, robotics and machines. It is cheaper to buy a machine on payments than to pay workers. So, you surmise, why not lower the wages to under that of machines? Because machines are eventually paid off and continue to produce but wages are forever. Because by paying for machines, wage costs are reduced, even if a few workers are paid more. And more importantly, if you don’t have big gov and big banks in your corner, you don’t get the tax breaks from automation ( regulations written to penalize competitors ) nor will the bank give you loans for the machinery. The banks love loaning money for more and bigger machines. And, if you ask why Chinese labor is encouraged rather than leaving American factories open, you are asking the wrong question. The correct one is, were Chinese machines cheaper than American ones? It was cheaper to lease time on Chinese machines to manufacture our products than to own them outright. It was a timeshare.

Granted, it would have been ideal to export our surplus, but only ideal to the nation as a whole and the workers, NOT to the elite. More profit was made in overseas factories than local ones. Certainly lower cost labor factored in but it wasn’t the ONLY consideration. Perhaps our CEO’s were tired of sucking in the industrial pollution along with the factory line workers. It doesn’t matter-you just need to keep in mind things happen for a reason and nobody just handed a gift to the peons of higher wages without a reason. The details are fascinating but hardly moot if slightly off. This has been an exercise in critical thinking which in and of itself is a neat skill to have for any apocalypse.

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Sunday, March 26, 2017

sunday reprint

Sunday Reprint
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Sunday's will now be Reprint Day. My only reason for doing this is to try to entice you to buy my books. I love you all, as few minions as there are you do very well in supporting me buying through Amazon. But plenty of you don't give ANY support to your favorite author. And that's me, and that's wrong. Unless you are in extreme poverty, spend a buck a month here for a book. I only get 35 cents so nobody is going to send me up to Idaho to live on their purchase. If you don't do Amazon, send me a buck and I'll e-mail it to you. Or, send an extra buck and I'll send you a CD ( the file is in PDF ). My e-mail is:
jimd303@reagan.com ( that is three ZERO three, not three oh three )
My address is:
James M Dakin, 181 W Bullion Rd #12, Elko NV 89801-4184

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The following was from "PEE" ( Prepper Emergency Essentials ), which you can buy here at a low price of one dollar, with a super deluxe bonus book included:
Click Here Now!
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PEE no10 PRECIOUS METALS

I almost hesitate to cover precious metals as they are ranked right up there with MRE’s and night vision goggles. Nice to have but rather expensive and if you don’t watch it, a diversion of resources that could endanger your life. So, from the onset, keep in mind that PM’s are NOT a necessity but rather a near-luxury that you can do without. All the Yuppie Survivalists think that you shouldn’t buy PM’s until after you’ve secured your beans, band-aids and bullets. I

will concur, but since you aren’t buying a $3,000 one year freeze dried menu, nor a $300 trauma kit nor $10,000 in semi auto poodle shooters ( one assumes, if you are still with me reading this ), you can buy PM’s sooner than the fat rich guy putting flat resistance tires on their Hummer. The thing to understand is that precious metals, while real money, aren’t necessary to survive. They are merely a safe transfer of wealth from one generation to another.

But come the collapse, you don’t want to be waving around gold or silver coins anyway. They are for AFTER the recovery, not DURING a die-off. If you never have them, you won’t be imperiling yourself. If you do them, they are nice for the grandkids to have.

But of course, given the choice between a box of ammo or a silver coin, I’d definitely pass on the PM.

Mankind survived for long periods of time without money. Since food was always precious prior to mechanization and petroleum inputs, it was quite enough to live by barter alone. You were able to buy your needed tools by agricultural surplus. Only recently has money been so central to living for the common laborer. Prior to the Industrial Revolution it was only city folk who needed or wanted it ( not to say a farmer didn’t want a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, but he certainly didn’t need it ). And then only in recent history. If money becomes mandatory you can be sure a banker somewhere is skimming off his share, be that money paper or precious metals. So, no, you don’t have to have gold or silver ( you can collect copper cheap enough if you put the ungrateful lazy e- game playing balls of pudgy goo you call your children into forced labor and have them sort through pennies, culling the pre-‘82. If you buy a sorting machine, sorry, but I’m calling “moron”. If you can’t get your children to do this simple and sedentary activity, you all might as well all eat a bullet come the collapse ). Beyond a few, half a dozen ounces, put aside as insurance for emergencies such as buying one of the few vials of antibiotics ( search under “fish medications for emergency antibiotics” or something similar for making your own stockpile ) left or even come chronic

unemployment needing to pay the property taxes so you don’t become homeless, I can’t see much need of PM’s.

Now, I bought myself several generous handfuls of silver coins, back in the day. That was when it would have been criminal to NOT buy them at $5-$7 an ounce ( and I was making two grand a month in tips at the casino. Of course, between taxes and child support taking 75% of my hourly wages, a lot of those tips just went to daily expenses. Still, I was able to buy land and silver by living frugally ). Nowadays, I would certainly not buy any silver at $20 an ounce. If you could find any. Enough paranoid folks are out there, not trusting King Kenya since he doubled our national debt the first term ( sorry, as asinine as the American people are I can’t believe they would re-elect anybody who did that. To me, tinfoil hat wearer, this is proof positive the elections are rigged ) are hoarding silver and gold to where the physical coins are not freely available anymore. I would not buy any without immediate delivery, not daring to trust the market which has suffered innumerable blows to its credibility in the last few years. If the e-markets are not more controlled than the elections I would be very surprised. You can of course still buy PM’s, but it is not so simple anymore as walking in with paper to a retail store and walking out with coins.

A very important point no one wants to believe is that for all intents and purposes, PM’s are disappearing as far as ore reserves. Fifteen years ago, the US imported something like 6% of its silver. Today, that is over 60%. We are running out of the supply from mines.

The whole world is. The ore available is mostly high energy input, high financed metal. What is left is very low concentrations requiring heavy machinery to extract ( gold is worse ). Without cheap oil, or at least affordable oil, we would not be extracting any new copper, coal, PM’s or frack oil/gas. And all those operations require bank financing. Come economic collapse or severe oil shortages, all new extractions for near about everything the Industrial World uses doesn’t reach the surface ( I can’t believe a

recent newspaper article where some dim-bulb from an Ivy League school said gold’s natural market price was $700. That is BELOW the extraction cost. I guess he doesn’t get out much ). My point here is that we will soon be out of PM’s anyway, and that compared to everything else we will run out of, it will be of little consequence. Yes, the price, if freed from central banker manipulation of the derivatives market, would skyrocket both from inflation of paper currencies and diminishing supply. But you would just be playing around with an endangered species. You could make a killing selling Dodo feathers, but soon enough you would be unemployed.

PM’s are best left as a rich man’s plaything. Stick with the soon to be real and the only wealth, food.

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