consuming to invest 15

CONSUMING TO INVEST 15

PV Panels & LED’s

If you aren’t off-grid, PV panels can be a hard sell.  Here you are, paying fifteen cents a kilowatt hour, perhaps twenty in really hard up areas, the whole reason you overpaid by a factor of four for your home was the nearby school and oh yeah, as a bonus you don’t have to live like a bare assed savage and you have city water and sewage and a power pole right outside on the sidewalk, and it just seems beyond retarded to buy a redundant system that performs poorly and costs a lot more.  Until that day that even fifty cents a kilowatt hour suddenly becomes a long ago historic deal unmatched by today’s numbers, which is a little harder to pay for on your reduced wages.  There is always inflation, if nothing else.  But the “something else” is Peak Oil, the frack gas bust, Petro-Dollar end, decaying infrastructure and economic decline.  Inflation ain’t going away, and will get worse.  If I have to write much more to convince you of that, you ain’t no survivalist.  Go back to feeling secure with your two cases of MRE’s and your AR-15, and do nothing else.  It must be nice, living in Prepper Lite Land where nothing really bad will ever happen.  Peak Oil is a rearview occurrence, easily discernable by the plateau of production the last ten years ( and, with “all other liquids” mixed with the “conventional crude” to even make that level stay flat rather than decline-it is more Peak Affordable Oil than just Peak Oil.  If it ain’t nearly free, our economy and even civilization hasn’t been set up to survive on it ). 

*

I’m still to this day six months or so later laughing my flat pasty white dimpled ass off  over the fracking oil/gas industry bust.  No one who had seriously studied the issue-and that took only about an hour which just goes to show you how thin this bubble was- ever had any delusion it was ever going to amount to anything.  Just like the quick face plant by the Ethanol Miracle ( the miracle is that we have any corn left for actual biologic consumption ), fracking, a decades old “new technology” ( okay, granted, the “new” part was horizontal drilling, but that didn’t make fracking economical, just LESS of a money pit.  It increased the net gain of energy slightly.  Our industrial economy was built based on Texas crude with a net energy return of nearly 100 to 1.  Fracking isn’t but about 5 to 1.  Without horizontal drilling, less.  Oh, and ethanol?  Only about 2 or 3 to 1 ) is nothing more than scraping the bottom of the civilization’s energy barrel.  Not hot crap new miracle sources.  The Petro-Dollar end is already nigh.  Remember what we had just talked about.  The worlds number two consumer of oil and the worlds number two producer are already trading without dollars.  And both have nuclear arsenals, so no American president is going to say “boo”.  And others countries are already under their orbit.  At the same time, our grip on the middle east fades and the Saudi’s are slowly but surely being left on their own.  How long before the Saudi’s also join the new bosses?  Or, how long before Saudi Arabian oil production is vaporized in a “misplaced” old Soviet nuke explosion?  I wonder who that would benefit?  The New World Order waiting in the wings, perhaps?  It is a miracle it hasn’t already happened. 

*

You have to be blind not to notice the entire countries infrastructure collapse.  And, no, it isn’t just the lack of money.  If it was, we would just re-do the Great Depression and rebuild everything while employing everyone.  It is lack of resources, both mineral and energy.  Do you remember the amount of airplanes we built in WWII?  Sixty thousand.  Remember how long it took to build Hoover Dam?  Three years, on budget.  They churned out naval ships in a WEEK.  Nothing is as it was.  Adapt and overcome.  My point here is that all of our crap we built is past its expiration date, and it will NOT be replaced-if we get lucky it is patched.  To include all those hydroelectric dams.  Even if they weren’t all raggedy and decrepit, you still have that little problem of drought.  And weather change bringing far more rain and far less snow.  Granted, dams even out water delivery.  But they can’t produce extra moisture ( the weather changes bringing more evaporating heat ).  And don’t you worry about that silt build up in those dams?  As for economic decline, kicking the can down the road with more debt at this point is, granted, the only choice, but obviously fatal.  The local political units will be right back at 2009 before you know it- broke and desperate for revenue.  Assuming the power is still going, there will be added taxes to it.  Perhaps a lot of taxes ( under the excuse of saving the Earth, obviously.  Nationally the carbon tax probably won’t fly, but locals will introduce their version ).  And the private companies that bring the electric?  Always pushing for rate hikes, always letting maintenance slid to increase this quarters profits.  Guaranteed.  

*

Now, after all that, isn’t a few hundred on solar panels seeming like wonderful insurance?  They will pay for themselves ( and their batteries ) quite quickly once any or all of these forces push prices up.  Then, you have free electricity.  Panels are going to be saving you a lot, as long as you buy now as they are practically giving them away from China, before the rate hikes.  You’ll need panels, marine batteries ( I would advise ONLY buying for lighting, not to run the energy pig appliances.  Illumination by solar-real light, not crappy flashlight or camping lantern illumination- is affordable by everyone.  Whole house electric, NOT ) and charge controllers, as well as 12 volt LED bulbs ( now in auto parts stores.  Not all stores sell the white light bulbs, however, so beware what you are buying ).  The regular household LED bulbs, the 110 volt types, are now quite affordable.  When you replace all your incandescent and especially the disaster of compact florescent bulbs,  you will most likely never need to buy another one.  LED’s last forever ( or, until a solar flare, whichever comes first ).  The energy saving on top of that is just icing on the cake. 

END

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. 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.  For those that can’t get the ads because they are blocked by your software, just PayPal me occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year.
*

 

The Old Bison Blog on CD
Over five years of work and nearly two million words of pure brilliance. Here is the link to order:
http://kunaki.com/sales.asp?PID=PX00KX7Z1I                        

 

Also as a free e-book, but not cleaned up or organized, at Lulu

 

*
Contact Information

 

 Links To Others,

 

 Top 20 Survivalist Fiction,

 

 Land In Elko,

 

 Lord Bison,

 

 my bio & biblio
*
My books on PDF ( ALL free!!  If you like it, most are available for sale in paper versions )  available at
http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=james++dakin&sorter=relevance-desc
*
By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

 

 

book review grid down v2p3 & one other article

Cc: – Down

BOOK REVIEW: GRID DOWN V.2, P3 & ONE OTHER ARTICLE We have talked at length here before about Bruce Buckshot Hemming and his books ( NUG alert-I like them enough to recommend them all.  Yes, a smidge stilted in style, and somewhat predictable.  HOWEVER…this is not some idiot with a keyboard and a Kindle account trying to make a fast buck by entertaining you with Hollywood level hokum.  This guy is far to the realism, teachable moment spectrum rather than the lowest common denominator one.  Now, I’m entertained when I read them.  They just aren’t mindlessly slick.  They have flaws.  Whose writing doesn’t?  You won’t just be bedazzled and distracted as with most Apocalypse stories.  You will be entertained enough to happily get through them, THEN you will also have learned something ).  Here is #4 of his series, “Grid Down Perceptions Of Reality Volume 2 Part 3”. With this one, a different turn is taken.  It took me by surprise, pleasantly.  I don’t really want to give a spoiler here, but the book practically hinges on just this one aspect.  Wild life from a refuge has escaped and is depopulating the area ( I can attest to the realistic nature of this theme, knowing a donation pick-up driver to a nearby refuge ) as they must turn to humans for food ( for some reason, cries of “soylent green is people” are going through my mind here ).  Oh, there are other events, one of which was a satanic cult kidnapping the young nubile sacrifices to be.  I kind of thought it would have been really cool if the Satan dudes psi-controlled a murder of crows ( or several ) to attack the rescuing group, but alas, me and author were of different minds on that because nothing close happened. Look, if you are going to have Satan worshipers in hoods chanting Latin, why not throw in some of Lucifer’s Minions helping the brothers out?  Crows are cool- they should be in every post-Apocalypse story. Perhaps next time. * Bruce is coming along on the human interaction thing.  Yes, still a bit stilted in narrative flow ( right, like I really know what I’m talking about given my fiction-I’m just saying some writing styles seem more like an outsider looking in rather than you feeling close to the characters ), but the romantic attraction thing seems a little less forced this time, a bit more realistic.  And, I read this whole book in one setting, which made dinner late and one should NOT eat chili when bedtime is only an hour away.  Is that entertaining enough for you?  This series keeps going on with no quality sacrifices, and with moderate improvements each time.  If you liked the other ones, you will definitely like this one.  Personally, I would recommend the paper version.  If all you can afford in Kindle, you will want to take notes.  This one is like the others, full of tidbits of instruction on wilderness survival and how-to shortcuts.  You know, for those not saving all those U-Tube videos.  And even then, paper is timeless, baring a fire or crows attacking you at your library.

END-more below

CONDENSED LAUNDRY SOAP

When the Internet groaned under the weight of a metric short butt ton of U-Tube videos and blog articles on making your own laundry soap for forty cents a gallon, I read and watched with mild interest but didn’t give it a lot of thought initially.  Okay, my gallon of liquid soap I buy at Dollar Tree pencils out to around $2, each jug being half a gallon.  But that is still cheaper than most so I was content just stocking up every time I went down to visit the parental units back west ( we have stupid crap stores like Dress Barn,  bitches clothes, even a friggin Yuppie Make Your Own frozen yogurt, but can we get our own Dollar Tree!?  NNNNOOOOOOO!!!!!  You would think I would have been happy once Jack In The Box showed up, but now they have disillusioned me.  My last taco order tasted “off”, not as in fresh but in taste,  and that night they cleared out my intestines.  I’m over those bastards ).  But then, my last few remaining brain cells woke up, yawned, looked around, fired electronically and came up with the long delayed but obvious observation I had ignored before.  It isn’t just that the homemade soap is oh so very much cheaper, it is the fact that it is condensed.  As in, oh so much nicer for stockpiling.  Just as powdered bleach let us store water disinfectant in a small space, replacing bulky gallons of bleach, now we can store condensed liquid laundry soap in dry form.

*

Here is the article I found:

www.mrshappyhomemaker.com/2012/09/homemade-detergent-plus-afree-printable-label/

Obviously, this isn’t rocket science.  The main thing is that since the ingredients all come in different size packages, you are going to have to noodle out how many of each will in the end equal the same amount of inputs.  The borax come in an 80 ounce box, but the Arm & Hammer is 70 ounces ( if memory serves ) and you need one bar of soap for every one cup each of the powders.  So in the end, they don’t all add up.  You can’t buy one of each every shopping trip, but rather dozens of soap bars per box of powder, and for every ten boxes of borax you buy nine of the A&H ( or something similar-I haven’t actually done the math ).   Hey, this shouldn’t be a big deal.  Somebody measure out how many cups of powder come in each box, then the math becomes pretty easy.  I’m at work, with the Internet down, AGAIN, so my research abilities approach zero.  And, yes, I’m aware they make powdered laundry soap already, smart ass.  But liquid works better in cold water (  which might be all you get later on ), AND you should be able to also use liquid laundry soap as a substitution for dish soap and hand soap and even body gel.  I don’t know if it is as effective, but it certainly can’t hurt and will certainly help.  Post-collapse, soap is your best friend for keeping healthy and vermin free.

END

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. 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.  For those that can’t get the ads because they are blocked by your software, just PayPal me occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year.
*

The Old Bison Blog on CD
Over five years of work and nearly two million words of pure brilliance. Here is the link to order:
http://kunaki.com/sales.asp?PID=PX00KX7Z1I                        

Also as a free e-book, but not cleaned up or organized, at Lulu

 

*
Contact Information

 

 Links To Others,

 Top 20 Survivalist Fiction,

 Land In Elko,

 Lord Bison,

 my bio & biblio
*
My books on PDF ( ALL free!!  If you like it, most are available for sale in paper versions )  available at
http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=james++dakin&sorter=relevance-desc
*
By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

 

 

 

 

consuming to invest 14

CONSUMING TO INVEST 14

Razr Savr

The Razor Saver, shortened to the brand name Razr Savr for inexplicable reasons, is available from Lehman’s, the Amish-ish manual tool company ( recently, they have introduced a lot of plastic products I’m not overly fond of.  On the other hand, they do now have LED lights which to my mind are more eco friendly than petroleum fuel lanterns.  Although, why I’m equating Amish with Earth friendly is mystifying me.  Being 19^th century tech doesn’t make on an environmentalist.  Although, organic growing might.  Anyway, I’m sure the Amish are as aghast about plastic as I am.  I’ll ask one if I ever get over that way-which, being in YankeeLand, will most likely never happen unless I get an HK armed farm owning  buxomly sugar momma sending me a lust letter.  And I’m flexible on the buxomly definition.  But not on the HK.  This is the Yankees we are talking about, after all ).  Now, I really like this thing.  Nothing more than a long piece of mirror glued to a plastic shell ( this being plastic doesn’t seem as obnoxious, probably since it is designed to elongate the life of other plastics ), you would think its asking price of $15 plus shipping is just another over-priced doodad from the company.  But their economics pencil out quite well.  If a plastic disposable razor lasted you two weeks before, and now lasts you two months, at twenty cents each ( you can still sometimes find them at ten cents each, but they are getting hard to locate ), the saver pays for itself in two years.  After that, you are in Fat City saving over fifty cents a month!  Wow, almost two cents a day!  Okay, not all investments pay well.  But they do pay, whereas other consumption just costs.

*

A superb minion specimen sent me a real carbon steel straight razor after I had written an article on them, and I treasure it still ( those suckers are not cheap at nearing $100 ).  But I don’t use it.  I’m glad I have it, as I might one day need/want it ( those disposables might be too dear to not sell, one day )( see previous chapter on my I think shaving is more a requirement than an option ).  But I am still afraid of it and use disposable razors twice a week and an electric one the other three days of the workweek ( I hate the electric but it saves water ).  By using the razor saver I can get the blade to last months ( hint: if you wait two or three days to shave, use a wooden toothpick to keep the hair clumps out between the blades on a double razor-the only use I’ve found for recycling toothpicks you’ve used enough times to snap in half or break off an end ).  All the saver is is a way to keep the blades from dulling for much longer than usual by using the old World War Two GI trick ( probably learned in the Great Depression ).  On the Pacific islands, when supplies went too long in arriving, the guys would resharpen their blades by twirling then around the insides of a drinking glass ( the old school flat steel blades you put in the single edge razors- I used to use one but they just tore up my face so I went to disposables.  I did try this trick though and it works well ).  The saver is merely a strip of glass just wide enough that the two side pieces of plastic holding the blades fall off the sides.  Which is why you can’t just slide your razor against a wall mirror.  Those two pieces of plastic stick out past the metal.

*

Now, you could simply measure the disposable razor, buy a glass cutter and a glass stone ( to grind down the cut edge to a non-cutting surface.  If you value your skin and blood supply ) and be in business yourself.  Supposedly, the plastic shell over the glass in the saver keeps the razor at the proper edge.  While I’m all for do-it-yourself, now that the 70’s have returned as far as lack of quality control for profit goes, I just simply deemed this one time purchase affordable enough and was done with it ( I’m also all for a SLOW return to do-it-yourself, since I still have a day job to go to ).  For half the price of a quality straight razor, I have thirty years worth of razors while using the saver ( at three times a week use of the disposables ), plus adding in the cost of the saver purchase.  I don’t think I’ll live long enough to use all of them, so, hey, enjoy your only inheritance, bitches!  I actually wanted the kids to live on my other lots I own, but they are Southern raised and cold to them is an evil.  So the razors it will have to be. 

END

 

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. 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.  For those that can’t get the ads because they are blocked by your software, just PayPal me occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year.
*

The Old Bison Blog on CD 
Over five years of work and nearly two million words of pure brilliance. Here is the link to order:
http://kunaki.com/sales.asp?PID=PX00KX7Z1I                        

Also as a free e-book, but not cleaned up or organized, at Lulu

*
Contact Information

 Links To Others,

 Top 20 Survivalist Fiction,

 Land In Elko,

 Lord Bison,

 my bio & biblio
*
My books on PDF ( ALL free!!  If you like it, most are available for sale in paper versions )  available at
http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=james++dakin&sorter=relevance-desc
*
By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

 

 

 

 

consuming to invest 13

CONSUMING TO INVEST 13

Insulating And Caulking

Insulating is a religious mantra, chanting far and wide throughout the land.  Why?  Because until the oil crisis of the 1970’s, almost everyone’s efforts at insulating, if at all, were a cruel joke.  Being a nation of plenty ( the reason we felt those lousy Indigs were incapable of adequately holding the place as they clearly had no interest in really developing it-so Baby Jesus must have meant for us White folk to put it to proper use ), energy was always, up to that point, abundant to the point of ridiculous.  We’ve all heard of the typical New England homestead requiring a dozen or two cords of wood for each winter.  Well, those winters are pretty bad I imagine, but I’d wager those houses needed some serious insulation.  Not that they’d think of perhaps having less rooms ( needing heating ) filled with less babies, because the one thing God has a problem with more than not killing heathens that don’t go to his approved church is not having enough kids to fill up the place you just cleared out with a good dose of smallpox.  Of course, being humans, and on top of that, being American humans, we took the religion of insulation and kind of overdid things.  Things like insulation improperly so now we just have leak proof stucco boxes that trap heat and cold in nicely, along with black mold, but are so flimsily built that in effect all you have is a structure of insulation wrapped around support beams with a thin shell of concrete surrounding it.  As soon as a couple of bullet holes or wind blown object impact at velocity, your insulating shell has its integrity breached ( think of it as a thin hulled spacecraft ).

*

Now, this is one of those prices we have elected to pay, to stuff many more bodies into this country than the place can adequately support.  At this point, even if all the suburbs are bulldozed, I’d wager we could not feed everybody organically ( read, without oil inputs ), so many people are being stuffed into our borders.  Obviously, we can’t decently house them.  Oh, we have Potemkin Villages for them, all right.  Whether apartment building or detached house, the design is similar, with warped two by fours, pressed board sheets on one side and sheetrock on the other, wrapped in plastic sheeting and then rigid board insulating sheets an inch think covered with an outside stucco, the whole concoction sheltered from the rain by asphalt shingles.  This mess is hurriedly slapped together by semi-skilled underpaid workers, then sold with thirty year financing at ungodly mark-ups.  For the poor but independent, there are mobile homes built at one third the “quality” but for only half the price.  Yep, those are well insulated though.  At least compared to what we used to have.  I’d call it one step above a terrorist gas attack proof room with all the air trapped out with plastic and duct tape.

*

Here is another wonderful story about the modern infatuation with insulation at the expense of ignoring everything else.  When I was growing up in California,  we moved on average once every other year until I was in sixth grade, where we settled down just outside Vanderburgh Air Force Base on the central coast.  My parents stayed together a year or two more but had decided to split before that last move.  Very modern and California of them, but how can you blame them if they hated each other and their job as procreators was finished?  So, Mom gets a job right away with the city of Lompoc ( former flower seed capital of the world, population 25k, now just a punk-ass middle class enclave of 60k+ with zero agriculture ) as an energy consultant.  She basically went around and counseled insulation to make homes more efficient.  And she had job security, as you can see from the 32 year population jump.  Yet, here is the thing.  If the dump goes below sixty degrees, it is a biblical apocalyptic event.  It is no where as hot as the southern part of the state, but no where near the cold of the northern end.  It is still almost Mediterranean.   At the same time as this takes place, the city is seeing its aquifer depleting at inches a year ( so God knows how much deeper the wells are now ).  I’m sure water conservation is also preached, but I’d wager never intelligently enforced ( by, for instance, levying heavy fines for having a lawn ).  They sure by gum did their part for energy conservation ( at the behest of the private power company lobbying-you know, socializing those loses and privatizing those profits ), but they wouldn’t curtail growth. 

*

So all this treasure and blood spilled for insulation, the first feel good response to losing energy independence, was not so much wasted as just used as an excuse to build more and more residences ( as efficiency rises, more people pour in to use the energy savings and in the end more energy total is consumed-I know there is a Rule/Law on that but can’t remember ).  And they aren’t built to last.  They can’t withstand abuse or neglect.  This system, like all we are living with now, has zero redundancy.  The reason you over-engineer is to weather emergencies.  When you under-engineer, ANY mishap becomes more of an emergency than it needed to be ( prime examples being the plastic panels on car bodies.  One ding and, presto, an $800 replacement.  When it was steel, you hammered it out and bondo’ed it.  Of course, strangely, that plastic car costs a lot more up front AND in replacement parts ).  Once you can’t replace shingles for $10k or put $3k into a new pant job, or fix the stucco crack for $500, your wonderful insulated home quickly becomes unlivable.

*

So, not only is your job to insulate very well, it requires you to do so with redundancy built in.  Over-build, over-support and over insulate.  THEN, you have a dwelling that can hold up to some abuse and neglect.  Insulating is the best investment of your money, as you start down the road to semi-independence from the System, but you had better be insulating a proper structure, not a modern McMansion.  And don’t half-ass it.  Insulate for far more severe weather than you think you’ll encounter.  It is not going to go to waste.  As energy becomes more and more scarce ( the practice of throwing money at exploration to get increasing yields is over many moons now-it is now far less bang for your buck ), and costlier, insulation keeps you comfortable even as your energy input declines.  One day, it might even save your life ( after years of saving your money ).

END

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. 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.  For those that can’t get the ads because they are blocked by your software, just PayPal me occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year.
*

The Old Bison Blog on CD 
Over five years of work and nearly two million words of pure brilliance. Here is the link to order:
http://kunaki.com/sales.asp?PID=PX00KX7Z1I                        

Also as a free e-book, but not cleaned up or organized, at Lulu

*
Contact Information

 Links To Others,

 Top 20 Survivalist Fiction,

 Land In Elko,

 Lord Bison,

 my bio & biblio
*
My books on PDF ( ALL free!!  If you like it, most are available for sale in paper versions )  available at
http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=james++dakin&sorter=relevance-desc
*
By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.

 

 

consuming to invest 12

CONSUMING TO INVEST 12

Shaving Brush

Despite what you might envision, a return to big fluffy beards after the Apocalypse is NOT a great idea.  Too much facial hair is hard on the eyes of others, is uncivilized and a very poor tactical choice when hand to hand combat is possible.  And trimmed beards look too much like a woman’s nether region, so don’t be surprised if unsympathetic taunts of “twat face” are hurled your way ( not to mention that unforgettable line in that Burt Reynolds film ).  Having a-mostly- shaved face is far better than sporting a beard ( yes, or course some guys can pull it off dashingly.  Some guys can also take a motor bike up to a hundred miles an hour.  That doesn’t mean you can emulate them ).  You can argue as to what hair removal device is best, and there is more than one way to skin that cat, but really there is no substitute for a shaving brush.  Spray foam from a can is an abomination and transferring soap lather from palm to face is unsatisfying.  A brush is a tool that defies common sense and delivers an exponential return. 

*

Back in the 80’s, while we were still battling the Evil Empire ( before they gave way to the Evil Colombians and then the Axis Of Evil-let’s face it, we surely must be some righteous mother humpers ), I found myself in my second tour in the Army in the nastiest butt crack on Earth.  Not Korea, which is a great place, but Camp Casey, home of the Second Infantry Division.  Take an unusually incompetent officer corpse ( competent officer is an oxymoron ), give them all small dingus’s and an inferiority complex when they compared themselves to Marines ( Army enlisted have no such neurosis- they were smart enough to stay out of the Jarheads  ), and there you have our glorious leaders in occupied South Korea.  To include our immediate supervisors who should have been more detached from the ground pounding infantry.  Since they didn’t have regulation issued Marine sticks to shove up their asses, they improvised their own and clearly didn’t do a very good job.  They were miserable and you know the direction a pile of feces travels.  Okay, having set the picture for you, here we were in January in Korea out in the field for over a month.  We ain’t getting crap for sleep, meals are three MRE’s a day most of the week since the mess hall guys are usually occupied elsewhere, there are no latrines even though it doesn’t matter much since we are eating MRE’s, we get to play Marine at all hours with simulated attacks and MOPP drills for chemical attacks and I’m the skinniest guy in the place so they stick me with the M-60.  I could go on and on.  So, this isn’t enough screwing with us?  Oh, no!  We wouldn’t be enough of a GI Friggin Joe if we didn’t shave with cold water, outside, in friggin January in Korea.  You ever try to lather soap in cold water?  The only saving grace was our youth and relatively light beards.

*

Now, here I am in Elko Nevada, which is only different than Korea in winter marginally ( at least in Korea, after winter is over you can really grow the heck out of crops- South, anyway ).  And a time or ninety I find myself needing to shave in the winter without heat.  I have hot water, but it stays hot long enough to wet your face and about one or two strokes into the shave.  Then it is ice cold-and I still need to re-lather ( another layer of soap reduces the pain cold shaving ).  Or, if I use the water first to wash my face and hair, it is cold before it makes it to shaving.  So, here is my point.  Canned shaving cream is the worst for cold shaving.  Don’t buy it unless a buxomly future wife is selling it, and even then throw it away rather than use it.  Lathering soap and applying by hand makes for too thin of an application, and is painful with a cold shave.  A shaving brush makes much more of a thick lather that is the least painful to cold shave with.

*

Now, I can hear the caterwauling already, and I don’t want to hear it.  Yes, Virginia, you will in the future be cold shaving, away from your fancy natural gas fired water heater.  Even if you have wood heat, there might be times such as when you avoid detection from smoke, that you can’t get much more than lukewarm solar heater water.  Or when you are in the field.  There is a reason the military has you shave, besides sanitation.  Staying squared away is a definite moral boost ( I didn’t mind shaving as much as I minded the sadistic introduction of primitive conditions.  Here we are, driving around, noisy as hell at camp, and the excuse for not running the heater is “infrared detectors”- we ain’t so stealthy a heater is going to give us away ).  Letting yourself go, in camp or in the field, is just the first step in letting your guard down and letting discipline slip.  You are going to need that just to make it through the day.  Without medical personnel or antibiotics, you need to discipline yourself to religiously observe sanitation and other good habits ( observe the lack of sanitation in every public washroom as few use water, let alone soap, after exiting the stalls in men’s rooms.  Americans are a brutally foul lot ).  Shaving might seem unnecessary, but the discipline is not.

*

So, there you go.  You are saving money by NOT buying cans of shaving cream.  Granted, it will take some time to pay off that $10 brush ( I know, right?  Like there is crushed gold in the bristles ).  But like a lot of other practices, saving pennies are more a benefit than a reason.  As for your soap, don’t you dare buy the purpose made round cakes that go in those shaving mugs.  Just save your soap scraps ( I find at about 20%, a bar of soap is no longer lathering up-so in it goes to the soap scrap bin ).  You can do one of two things.  Wet the few larger pieces, press down at the bottom of the mug and let dry.  They should stay in place reasonable well.  Or, if you don’t want to be bothered all that often, take many scraps and place in a small container ( I like the disposable aluminum mini-cake container, about the size of fist ) and put that in a pot of boiling water.  You can’t apply heat directly, so you’ve created a double boiler.  It won’t melt, but it will get soft enough to take the whole globe and press into the mug creating a soap scrap cake that pretty much stays together ( as per a minion, don‘t forget another great use for scraps- put them in a sock, wet, then rub on your skin bathing.  A combo of soap and a washcloth, it uses up all your scraps without waste ). 

END

 

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. 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.  For those that can’t get the ads because they are blocked by your software, just PayPal me occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year.
*

The Old Bison Blog on CD 
Over five years of work and nearly two million words of pure brilliance. Here is the link to order:
http://kunaki.com/sales.asp?PID=PX00KX7Z1I                        

Also as a free e-book, but not cleaned up or organized, at Lulu

*
Contact Information

 Links To Others,

 Top 20 Survivalist Fiction,

 Land In Elko,

 Lord Bison,

 my bio & biblio
*
My books on PDF ( ALL free!!  If you like it, most are available for sale in paper versions )  available at
http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=james++dakin&sorter=relevance-desc
*
By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there.