Maybe they were on to something with shag carpeting too

Well it's about time to head up to the ol' Fort Apocalypse.  The last of the snow melted two weeks back, except a few piles tucked back against fallen logs out in the woods.  I'm getting too comfortable, sitting on Shawna's couch watching Game of Thrones Sunday nights.  And I've sold most of my Malheur stuff, all the easy to sell things and the expensive things that I won't use. 


The few items left to sell will take more time than I want.  I told Shawna she could sell what's left, or give it away.  She's been real good to me.


Selling off that stuff  this past month made me think again about how the quality of manufactured goods in this country goes down every year.  One of the things I left with Shawna to give to one of her cousin's kids was a toy musket.  Don't ask me why somebody had it out at Malheur.  Real piece of shit, plastic and flimsy.  The fake flintlock broke while we were playing around with it.  Cabela's quality for sure.


I had a toy flintlock musket and a toy flintlock pistol when I was growing up.  This was back in the 1970s.  Each one was made of metal and varnished hardwood and had a working lock that you could "load" with red paper caps and then fire.  There was even a paint job on the wooden stocks.  Durable as hell. 


I found the old flintlock pistol last year, little rusty and dusty but otherwise fine.  Finish on the wood still good.  Some Rem Oil on the metal parts and some boiled linseed oil on the wood parts and it looked 99% like new.  Worked like new.  Gave it to a friend's kid, a tomboy.


No child today will ever have a toy like that, unless an earlier generation passes it down.  All you can get now is garbage that breaks in a week or two.  And it's the same with everything else, though maybe tools last a season.


My favorite lumber yard still uses a lumber saw made in the 1950s, because nothing made today comes close to that quality.  I've watched that saw slide through timber like a hot knife through soft butter.  One of my friends who lives the good life in suburbia bought a house built in 1950 that still has the original bathroom tiles.  Sure that particular shade of yellow isn't the greatest, but those tiles are twice as thick as anything I've ever seen at Home Depot and they're solid like concrete.  The sink is original too, looks indestructible.


I could go on and on.  If you're over 30 and you have the honesty to open your eyes and look around, then you could name things too.  Garden hoses that split open, tools that shatter when you put them to their intended use.  How did we come to this, an empire of garbage that you have to keep buying over and over?


Well, it all comes back to peak oil.  Because of rising energy costs, it costs more to make things.  In fact, it costs so much more that as a society we can no longer afford the quality that everyone took for granted 30 years ago.  Add to that the decreasing income of 99% of us due to actual inflation, and our parents' lifestyle is long gone from reach.


But people feel entitled to the standard of living that they had as kids and teenagers.  And for sure the oligarchy wants you happy, so you'll keep playing the economic game that keeps you at the bottom and not put their heads on poles.  So our economy closes down quality manufacturing here and shifts it overseas to where children, forced laborers and just plain exploited people will make you a cheap, shitty imitation of what you think you're entitled to.  You can buy toys, and clothes, and tools, and whatever else you need.  It's just a cheap imitation that will break on you.


But, we have the illusion of our parents' lifestyle.  Apparently that's enough.  And I guess we'll keep that going, a fraudulent imitation based on slave labor, until the cost of energy gets so high that it's no longer cheaper to import our goods wholesale from overseas.  I wonder what will happen then. 


Free advice from a man who's been there:  find quality products.  Check out garage and estate sales.  Plus, that gets you out and around.  Out and around is where we all belong.  Time I got there.

Is it spring yet?

So people have been saying, hey Bill where’ve you been?  Haven't heard from you since New Year’s.  Well you know how it is in the winter, you just sort of lay low and wait for spring.  And up here there’s still snow on the ground and ice floes in the lake. 

I been shacked up since February with this New Age woman, owns a rock and crystal store in Silver City.  She's got a clothesline pipe up in her backyard, painted a different color every foot.  I been watching that snow go down, from three feet through March to less than a foot now.  She’s been real sweet, and real appreciative to have a man around.  But pretty soon I’ll have to get up to the Fort, chase out the bears, take inventory, you know.

I did do one thing this winter.  Friends, I was at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, during that “occupation”.  I know, I know, you think I’m not the tax protestor kind, and I’m not.  I was just out in Oregon, running an errand for a friend who owns a marijuana dispensary below the bridge -- all COMPLETELY, or mostly legal -- and I heard about this sovereign citizen sounding thing, this takeover.

I figured I’d go by, mingle in there, see if I could score some of that CRAZY pussy.  ‘Cuz friends, there ain’t no pussy like crazy pussy, and these anti-government types are as crazy as it gets.  I was thinking of a nice blonde mama, wearin’ a big ol’ cross, talking about a thousand years of darkness with that crazy-ass shine in her eyes.  I mean Hell, if Chuck Norris could get one, why shouldn’t I?

And I got to the refuge at the height of the party.  Lots of groupies, coming and going, horses, ATVs, all the free food you could eat thanks to tons of donations.  You know some of those idiots were bitching because some smartass sent them lubricants and jellies.  By the CASE, for FREE.  Friend when life hands you a lemon, you just go find some nice body to squeeze it all over, and make lemonade together, over and over again.

But that party was a sausage fest.  Some of the groupies were women, but . . . well I don’t want to say they were all too old or ugly, . . . they just weren’t for me.  This long-haired nut David, kept posting stuff on the Internet, he was more attractive than some of those women, and he was always ranting about “Jew conspiracies” and crazy shit.  So, that party got boring pretty quick. 

But just when I was about to leave empty-handed, the cops shot Roy Finicum.  Friends, THAT was something.  When people heard about that at the refuge, it was like turning on the lights in my old kitchen at night.  All those fearless patriots, they scattered like cockroaches.  They ran for their toy trucks, they were spraying gravel on the way out.  I was a little too drunk to drive right, right then, so I just sat down on a stump and took it all in.

After I sobered up enough to drive, I wandered around the refuge and did some shopping.  Those bitches ran out so fast, they left most of their gear behind.  It looked like a Cabela’s threw up in there.  So I loaded up my ride with the choicer stuff, including some of that lube.  And then I rolled right on out of there, right past the FBI.

Oregon wasn’t quite done with me though.  I got turned around on those back roads, and there’s no reception out there, so I ended up asking for directions at this ranch way out in the middle of nowhere.  There was just this lady running the place.  Her husband had passed from cancer a few years ago. 

She was older, but she was a no-bullshit lady, and she’d taken good care of herself.  Anyway, I complimented her place, and she offered me some coffee, and long story short, I ended up staying in Oregon a bit longer.  And when I left, I was a bit lower on that lube.

Man, that was good coffee.