Thursday, March 15, 2007 5:25 AM
Much to cover, no philosophy today free chickens. You'll have to make it up yourself, like I do. Lets start with pictures from yesterday.

Well, there is an intaglio just a mile from the trailer, and I never knew it. It would be best to float over it and shoot down, but not having a balloon these pics are the best I can do.You can check out Gary's blog, he may have the pictures he was taking from his very cool camera already up, and perhaps you can see better. We figured out the fish and the big pointer pointing across the valley to mountains about 15 miles away. Beyond that, no clue. I sure this one has a name but I haven't learned it yet. That is Gary in the two pictures above. We took my moto bicycle and his mountain bike and wandered around behind Love's truck stop based on Phil's directions and Gary spotted it within minutes.

We made the requisite trip to BK to sample the fine $1.00 fare and we not disappointed. IT was air conditioned which was crucial yesterday because by afternoon it was hot. How hot? Dam HOT! HOT HOT! (Robin Williams, Good Morning Vietnam). While we were riding Gary was appalled, incensed, sickened, nauseated watching my back wheel waiting for it to simply collapse. His revulsion forced me upon our return to hang the bicycle up in Casa Blanca and take off the wheel for truing and more spoke replacement. Before I got far Gary was over suggesting we try to make the new wheel, the one you may remember that I had given up on, another try.

I will not subject you to the afternoon of crying, frustration, and temper tantrums that Gary had to endure. Finally he took the bike and left and came back with it fixed, well diagnosed and now it is totally functional, the upshot being that the plastic big drive gear on the spokes is not perfect - not a perfect casting. This caused a whole host of things that weren't quite right to add up to me wanting to drive back and forth over the wheel with the truck. No I didn't want to return it, I wanted to pulverize it! Now it works fine. The lesson to me chickies is to always hang it up when you want to run over your project and wait for cooler heads. I do think I served as pretty good entertainment for Gary during my little display of petulance and frustration.
Gary came bringing gifts and I'll have a picture of them tomorrow. A little vice, wire brush, C clamps for my project, ultraviolet resistant plastic zip ties (the Harbor Freight cheepies get about 3 weeks in the sun here and SNAP). Many other cool things. Thank you Gary and Becky!

Rick sent a link to a compendium of alternative Energy topics, called Energy Planet, which is a huge place to start looking.

I'm rushing a bit this morning. Here is a link from Phil which explains why I didn't post last night - it was oddly intriguing, and I read it, instead posting on the blog. Possum Living is worth a look and provides some hope to the city dweller for what comes.

Rick has a preparation list which I will post as a word document so that you can modify it to suit your own concerns and tastes. This is a list of skills and materials to be acquired. That will be up later today. I'm off to the mountain to hike and then to petroglyphs!

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 9:51 PM
Hey chicklets, if you're in striking distance of the mcnalan-Spetzler compound tomorrow morning come on over. I'm thinking 8:30am if they're not up yet, we'll wake them up. Anyway, that's where I'll be before it gets hot. this invite includes the Elmira contingent which has been strangely quiet for some time.

The Spetzler residence as it appears from La Casa Blanca!

Gary got into Q about 3pm today and we got him settled about 120 feet from my airstream. I stuck one of the antennas of the wifi out the cat door (sniff), and he can get my signal OK, thus internet is shared. Above - Erika, Gary, Emily, and Becky. They are free chickens who have flown the coup forever. We shared some discussion, heated at times on being under sail on a sea of uncertainty with a collapse ahead - sorry to belabor the metaphor. I believe his ideas and direction will help many of the younger chicklets connect with this new reality where the rantings of a 57 year old male, unmarried and without children might seem less germane. Look for bold ideas and some deep thoughts. Gary and Becky already have me looking at some of my assumptions concerning SW Oregon as my go to point. More on that later.

Most importantly, Erica is interested in Indian artifacts so imagine where we'll be going! Petroglyphs! Also, as much as I think of Q as home now, I was shocked to learn that there is a prehistoric intaglio within a mile and 1/2 of where I'm sitting. I can't believe it and will walk over there tomorrow morning after the hill climb.

Phil Churchill stopped by earlier this afternoon and we got into some great discussions. One point we worked on, did a lot of heavy lifting with this one, are a few ideas that are targeted to changing yourself, and creative thought. In telling our stories - you know the stories you tell all your friends - about how you change from this job to that, dumped that one and picked up one remarkably similar - all those stories, we realized the apparent truth that most people - well us two, anyway - do not change when times are good, only when times are bad. The point of maximum stress, distress, disease, discomfort provides the motivation to do something different.

That is a luxury that won't work if you would like to do a little mental and physical preparation for that which comes, because the stress, the low point will occur in the middle of the collapse. The changes that we will face in the near future do not allow us the luxury of responding to the low point when it occurs. You must assume that change is inevitable and start those changes yourself, now.

We also talked about the common observation we share that people who do creative things with their hands, no matter how primitive or advanced, simple or whatever - something happens to them in the act of the actual hands on creation. In that time, they are happy, a bemused and timeless expression on their faces (I saw it time after time at the flint knap-in). What is happening when we create art? Our curiosity begins to be re kindled, sense of childlike play awakes. Sure it is obvious but put it together! If you want to change and be flexible, creative and open to new ideas, perhaps that will not come from bearing down with hard deductive thought, your face scrunched up in a constipative shit grimace, trying to squeeze out an answer of "What the fuck am I suppose to do about peak oil, global warming, and the collapse of all I've worked for all my life?", but simply from freeing your creative side to work with you. In creating anything, that is when that creative child you buried back in public school will sneak out. Creative passion, relaxation and thinking way outside your box is the key to finding your own way in the new world that comes.

Look chicklets it is simple. Find something you like to do that does not benefit your mate, society, your children, something that tickles you and you like to do. But it must be with your hands and heart. No computers, no books. The act is creation, the escape is from your own self limiting beliefs, and the value to yourself and other free chickens cannot be measured.
Don't pay attention to all this chicklets, he's just another gone bad bunny (Wilson commentaries).
Night chickies!

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 7:33 AM
Morning chicks! I woke up nauseous and with a headache. Pregnancy test was negative so I had some coffee and walked around outside before the sun came up. The sun's intensity is increasing, but the important news is that the baby doves are flying. Time goes fast for doves. I in mid stroke on many projects that must appear to them to be stopped as they have laid eggs, sat patiently, fed voraciouly, and taught the babies to fly all in the space of me putting boot grease on my new boots. The sun is why my head hurts. I don't have sunglasses and I'm getting increasing snow blindness. I may have to break down and buy something. Yikes!
Gary is in Anaheim and headed this way, either today or tomorrow I think. I've find a nice spot within 90' of me so that he can get good wifi signal from my wireless router and still have some privacy and afternoon shade.
I received a letter late yesterday and I love the sharp observation and insight that so many of you have. I don't always agree and thus will have my say of course (get your own blog if you don't like it - why don't you have your own blog, anyway?). Here's the letter.

I just love the idea that we are killer bunnies! My disagreement, really a divergence in view, is with the empty life, and empty soul. Yes I believe that in adaptation to Empire's programming, it can be, well, exhausting and provide little return to me. However the empty soul and the empty life is one thing you do have a choice in. You are the secret agents of the new millennium. As soon as you realize (the sooner the better if you haven't got it yet) that the Empire society is your REAL enemy, and not your friend, despite the commercials to the contrary you snatch your life, soul, and excitement back. It is pretty fucking intense to realize that you are living in a tolitarian state of excessive executive power that is actually your enemy, your children's enemy, and the enemy of the entire planet. As the sleeper bunny awakes he/she finds himself confused, angry, and under "observation."

But as a secret agent, how different Empire appears! To separate yourseflAs a secret agent you can put posters up at home. You can dust off that old picture of Che Guevera and hang it back up. You can begin to dress like Empire demands for work because you know that you are simply working undercover. Every day you can read CNN, waiting for the secret "activation" message. Thus your mission will begin. Some of you are sleeper agents, and some are in motion already. But I promise you, the moment you detach from the belief that you are part of a society that is for you and realize that it gives not one flying fuck if you live or die, but cares only for your return on investment to the people who already hold the wealth, whooosssh, the pain, the struggle to conform, disappears and the first page of your personal novel of daring do begins. Killer Bunny sleeper agents of the Post Carbon age! Sharpen your wit, sharpen your stick and poke Empire in the eye. Learn the mantras of weaving, sewing, planting, massage, conversation, and simple caring. Light sage and cover yourself in the smoke to keep the entities from trying to suck your soul. Appear to enjoy, understand, and EMBRACE every commercial for Hummers and lawn care products. At work, involve yourself in conversations about whether the Audi, the Volvo, or the Hummer will give your little loved ones better crash protection when driving them to military bible study and soccer. This is what good agents do, and it is very healing to bite your lower lip, look down, smile, and think Oh what a fucking load of shit!
There is a you, a me, that is alive inside, this soul, this power to heal and connect, and REJECT this dying meme. I almost said civilization, but of course it is not civilized and the revolution is not civilized and if you look deep past the learned responses, you too will find you are NOT civilized, because fuck it you are alive you are awake you are a miracle in motion, and while you're not much for strength and not very fast, compared to bunnies and momma lions, you are the most aware creature on the planet and you hold the future of this blue orb in your hand, your heart, your head, and most of all in your beliefs. Be the tooth, touch your canine tooth and remember that when you thought up Klingons as a character in Star Trek - it came out of our shared personality too - you are the tooth, you are the Killer Bunny, and you are the gentle heart and the sweet rain too. Can't you feel the skin cracking, the joints creaking, and the bowels loosening of this ridiculous way to live, this hollow life we inhabit? We have just been connected too long to the dumb down services of a culture that needs us docile, working, and ever more slaves to a system that exists only for a return on profit to the rich. KILLER BUNNIES ARE NOT DOCILE, but they often are free chickens, and awake, a human is something to see. It is time chicklets to comb your hair, brush your teeth and REVOLT.

Monday, March 12, 2007 5:16 PM
I was reading more about the Book the Great Turning and found a link to Peak Moment Television. I watched a couple of the videos on Youtube and then went directly to the Peak Moment Website. Their tag line on the one of the home pages is "How can we thrive, build more self-reliant communities, and help one another in this time of transition?" - that positive and I recommend their videos free on line to anyone with enough bandwidth to watch. Great stuff, and if you don't have a high speed connection try clicking on Listen, instead of watch from this page - Peak Moment Television. I found that each interview is an audio file - an mp3 so you can right click on Listen and download them to your computer (if using firefox - you're not using stupid M$ Internet Explorer are you?) then right click and chose "save link as" and you'll get a dialog box. Save them where you can find the later. There are many people who are much farther along in their thinking and planning than my small conceptions, and a lot of the heavy work of inventing a sane future is already being done.

Monday, March 12, 2007 12:13 PM
Thought experiment - the most important work you can do to prepare for an uncertain future is to walk through thought experiments. We as as a group of generations are going to experience a huge transition. From the hyper abundance of everything to a world of salvage within our lifetimes, even mine. As production fails and this civilization becomes unable to supply us with almost everything it behooves us to sit back and take a look in the mirror. A thought experiment. Once Einstein's wife was being given a tour of a physics lab in California, and the proud director of the physics lab was beaming at her with pride over the tools that had been amazed to plumb the depths of reality through physics. He said to her, "think what your husband could have done with these tools!"
She replied, "he changed the world with his thoughts, a piece of paper and a pencil."
The the THOUGHT EXPERIMENT on this Monday, March 12th in our year of oil-abundant 2007, what would your day look like if you could not buy a single thing. No food, no water, no fuel for your car, no electricity on at the house, and your toilets are backed up. Sit and think, how would you get water, feed yourself, pee and poop (and where), keep warm, keep cool, clean yourself and your children, and entertain yourself. - no tv is working, broadcast radio is just playing canned music (Oh, wait, that's what they do now).
Where are you going to start when you get up from your work and start walking home? This is not an futile exercise, try walking every step of this. If you make it through the thought process you will find that you either had turn to others to help you (meaning they will do for you because you can not) or you will do the best you can and have the experience of CONTRAST. These points that seem to have no solution - water if you live in the city, air conditioning if you live where it is hot, no toilet if you can't bear the thought of pissing and pooping in a bucket, food if you have nothing in the now warm fridge, these are your points of contrast, information to tell you where you need to look at how you live if you wish your personal transition to a new future to continue for more than a day or two. What might that look like? For each of you it will be different, but it will require you to be creative and careful, and frugal with your resources - such as your energy, and physical external resources like water and food. I'm not focusing on the idea of survival for a period of time because when the time is up there will be no one to resupply you. You must begin to think about tools, seeds, gardens, wells, solar and battery banks, welders, and food storage.
Right now our houses are built around weird ideas that are not sustainable. They are continuations of old societal ideals - dining rooms for example- and include master bedroom suites that you must sustain the heat, cooling, cleaning and construction costs for 10 percent occupancy time. What we need to imagine in the NEAR term change is homes that have workshops, tools for salvage, food processing and underground storage. The home used to be a safe place to sleep and a machine for family production of necessities. Only when we moved to climates that were inappropriate for the human animal (frozen north) did we have to now make the house large to allow us to actually live inside. If the salvage society transitions to a hunter gatherer society then mobility of your tools and protection from the elements must move with you. Perhaps we will be constructing yurts and moving several times per year. That would make great use of all those logging cables discarded in the Pacific Northwest woods. What a great trade item for people with the space! Heavily greased coiled steel cable. Every yurt needs a cable.
No matter what future you might behold, you have to get past the first 3 days. The corollary to the idea above, about making a list of what you would need to get you through a future day, today, you might also use your walk through day to see what is of no importance at all to you. Perhaps extend your thought experiment out 1 week. Then mentally walk through your house and see what appears silly, unnecessary. I'm not including personal mementos that define you and your past, I'm talking the junk in the other side of the garage from the third time you moved that you still haven't unpacked. IT is coming up on garage sale season and wouldn't it be nice to convert all that crap and things you will never need - exercise equipment for example - to an intermediate form - say dollars (held only for a minute), and buy the things you can see you should have. Tools, training, boots, native edible plant guide, trade items (gold, liquor, etc).
When you convert the useless crap you were given or bought to make yourself happy - that didn't of course - into something you need to have to learn about yourself, and the art you can create, and the food you can grow and store and eat, you take the load of crap maintenance and storage off your shoulders and have something of value to you now AND in our coming future.
It is time to do the lighten up chickies, everything extra that will not work in our near future better wear out in the next one or two years. Best simply to stop buying and start selling. If you just did that, just held garage sales of all your junk and thought not at all but only bought gold today in two years you would want to kiss me on the lips.
It's almost one pm and la casa blanca has one fan running and another about to come on line and this little chicky is going to put himself in the winds way with a big flask of water, a good book and bear down on IDLE TIME.

Saturday, March 10, 2007 10:43 AM
I'm thinking this morning about belly button lint and who I am. Who I am is always best approached through the belly button as it is a fools questions best answered with - I am belly button lint - or something similar. A facetious cynical discard of an answer because as good little Empire dwellers know, who you think you are don't feed the bulldog. That thinking - feeding the bulldog is bullshit. It is hard to discard that Empire twitch and my desire to be seen as smart at least because without that what am I? Maybe we all carry such destructive thought patterns in us (memes).
Most of these self destructive beliefs (memes) serve the Empire but not you. Change has to begin here, in my, honest loving self appraisal and reflection. And so I shall reflect for just a bit if you can stand it. There is a piece for you in this I think too, as much of the discussion in the last few months is really orbiting around my perceptions of the world as seen through my eyes. And you can get whiplash following my views because I whip all around the possibilities.
After a conversation with Phil yesterday afternoon in the afternoon heat, I came away realizing the limitations of my thinking engine. Just because I think I can I think I can think, it doesn't mean I haven't missed a major turn of thought. And I have missed a major turn of thought
There are bunnies outside my door and they get eaten by coyotes. Their behavior sure indicates that they know about coyotes. If I am a bunny I could easily believe that I will absolutely be eaten by a coyote because in my own personal experience I know of bunnies who have been eaten. So I spend my days preparing my defense. I try to think like the coyote, become the coyote, walk the coyote path. But as a bunny I make a lousy coyote, and my mind is filled with angst because I know the coyote is coming as he must because coyotes eat bunnies.
That is what I and many of you are doing in analyzing the coming collapse. We believe the COYOTE is coming for US. The coyote wants to eat but it does not mean that it will eat you, even if you don't prepare.

We see the problems of roving gangs and military units forcing conscription, and the government grasping the last wheat kernel from our starving grasp in a last gasp of taxation of the parasite of government on our backs, and we think, Oh boy, I must prepare against these coyotes for they will certainly kill me.

The thing is chicklets, the thing is that bunnies don't seem to worry about coyotes too much, and the coyotes do not EAT ALL the BUNNIES. No matter what horrible thing I envision, it will not be universal or as bad as your or my imagination can make it. We cannot prepare for the WORST, we must SEE the best, be cautious like the bunny, look, listen, but think about what you can create, not what you must defend against. We only make ourselves insane when we focus on lists of supplies, and try to envision every negative scenario. Many of you are having the experience of the negative scenario even without anything bad happening around you. You are still in the middle of privilege, power, and the ability to use oil to extend your leverage and your reach. If the bunny had lots of flowers buds to eat, would he huddle and await the grimp coyote reaper? NO he eats. Now is the time to prepare by seeing what you want your future to be. Now is the time to be excited about what you will create in our future. How you will be important to the people you love, serve yourself, dance, sing and create. In the game rock, paper, scissors, creation always trumps deduction. Stop planning for survival and start planning for a new ectopia.
Many of you know that I wear this tourmaline crystal around my neck to remind me that I don't know jack! Einstein said, any explanation that works in predicting the world around me to a large enough degree that I am not eaten by the coyote is a good and true theory for now. He said it a little differently. He went on to say that as exceptions build up, we then find a new theory that fits over the old theory and the exceptions and for a moment we think we have nailed it, we know the truth, but of course, tomorrow there is a new exception. He also said that we cannot dismiss the very real possibility that at the end of all theories is the actuality of creation which could still be witches and goblins as I forebearers believed.

Yet when I'm in my driving on the right hand side of the road, and hoping you do the same, mode, I have beliefs that control my every day actions. These have changed dramatically in the last few years. As I left the cubicle world more and more I found people who were driving on the right hand side of the road but at the same time believing and acting on the sure knowledge that they can see angels, cars full of angels. I met people who think that all of this is created by us out of imagination - the entire physical world - and what was more disturbing is that these were physicists and mathematicians, and for a science is truth kind of guy, this shit gave me a headache.

So today I believe different things all at the same time. I believe in cause and effects. I think I do things and try that I will get things in return. At the same time I believe that the busier I am, the less sane I am. I also believe that the world is a complex system of uncountable connection and affects, and that these require a theory of complex interactions to guess even remotely what stepping on a butterfly in Tibet will do to my world in the future. I also believe the opposite. I believe it is not complex at all. I believe that our expectation, those areas where we don't have to think because we are sure, is exactly what creates it and that we need it to happen and that is why we came to this little blue ball - why we came to the party.
I believe there are no evil people, but I strongly believe in the absence of good. I believe in the crippling self beliefs that make people strike out and kill and hurt all around them. I don't think they are evil, and like the Navaho I believe it is the duty of all of us to escort them from the party and wish them better luck next time - kill them.

I personally get scared. Not of big issues like the uncertain future, but of small daily things. I'm afraid of being alone forever, for I would be insane, I'm afraid of embarrassing myself - I want to do good and I want to be perceived as a good person. Memes and Mom, I don't know.
So I believe that what we think and what we do counts. Don't let the sounds of your own wheels drive you crazy, instead you might try this thought on for fit - the world, what comes, today are all infinitely more beautiful and deep than we have eyes to see. That force which brought you to the party is at your command to a large degree, so be careful of what you hate and promiscuous in what you love. Be careful like the bunny, but not so careful that we do not hop. We came here for the hop, I think.

As Vickie wrote today to me, if you are thinking about that piece on how you pay for each day of your life with a full non refundable day of your life, perhaps we should be careful to spend that day acquiring things that are really important to us. She made the point that most of us reading this blog are wage earners. She has decided to be more selective about the "comforts" she decides to own because she can see now that the labor she has to perform (currently dry-walling) costs her the precious moments of her life in excess of the comforts which turn out to often be hollow anyway. Don't sell yourself cheap.
In that vein I have gotten rid of stuff again and again and again. You have heard here before - what you own, owns you. I shake off the Ferengi laws of Acquisition and spend more time following the creation of things of beauty for myself. If all this is too stupid then jump back here to the In the Wake link and spend quality time choosing the best brand of duct tape for the coming collapse.

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