Titans clash, burrow in little chickies!

This Monday will be a memorable one in the history books. Yesterday Bear Stearns, the fifth largest investment bank on Wall Street failed. In order not to make it look like it went bankrupt, our government and the Feds brokered a deal for JP Morgan to buy what was left of Bear Stearns for $2/share. Friday Bear Stearns was worth $53/share when a bail out was conceived. It didn't work, so the gutted it and gave the problem the JP Morgan.

This set off a firestorm in the Asian markets while I slept - though I watched like a rube at the carnival watching the wolf boy eat the fat lady - until late last night. The Asian markets decline 4 to five percent, gold jumped to 1030/ounce, oil to 111/gal. When the US markets opened today is seen as the most dangerous day imaginable. Earnings reports on the other banks are do, and they are expected to be terrible. The market is in free fall, the dollar has fallen yet again to record lows against the Euro and everything else, including the Yen. Asian banks this morning ceased trading with Lehman Brothers, another investment bank, but the smallest, and it may flush down the toilet today. This does not make investors happy, so like the Asians they try to pull their value out of those that will die, and that kills the banks.

Example, a report this morning that Citi bank is borrowing at 10 percent and loaning at 6 percent. That ain't going to work long.

So chickies, our financial future is tumbling through space right now. It will affect what you can buy, and how much it will cost. It will force factories to close and jobs to be lost. Any retailers selling non essentials will continue to be unable to get credit to make inventory purchases and the real estate market is just beginning to go over the edge.

Rarely do we live in a time where we can actually see the collapse of a worldwide financial system. Of course market people won't use the word collapse, they will say that the market is resetting itself. Indeed it is. Many of us will be reset right along with it.

So, as I've said before, forget the giants, watch only to avoid being stepped on as much as possible, get your plants started and get your chicks and bunnies while you can. A pig and some goats are good too if you have the room. Everything you needed to get from China via Ebay and Walmart - better do it now - with the dollar in freefall - DOWN - all imports will be going up. Cars, tools, everything in fact, because in case you didn't notice in the last 20 years, we don't make much here anymore, except noise, and there is a lot of noise being made this morning.

Other matters, the next two scenes of the new chapter 6 will be up later today. Guess who is pregnant? Stay tuned.

Jerked McChicken

Dancing with Giantz

Gold at $1005 ounce and oil at $110/barrel. Unbelievable just two years ago, the press takes note but doesn't every show us the play, only the details.

Imagine you snuck into the theater on the cheap, are hidden in the alcove of one of the exits, and you can't see the screen but you can hear it sometimes. Sometimes you can see boot laces and fancy shoes walk by just outside, under the curtain. You report faithfully on the shoes, pumps, boots and sandals, and your readers know just what people are wearing at the movie but they don't have a clue as to what the theater is for, or what the movie is about.

That is where we are, each and every one of us, because all media reports are similar to our shoe reports above. True, but in being true to the detail and not the message, false. As to why the media would lie, because they are handmaidens to big business who owns both them, the appearance of government, and essentially the dance floor of our entire lives.

I've been somewhat peevish the last two days. The weather has been unsettled, I'm unsettled and the world of finance is under enough pressure to form diamonds where all the forces meet. I'm not going to write about shoes today, I'm going to talk about the theater and the real actors of capitalism, the giants and their dance.

Oil and gold are at record levels. From that we would think that the dollar must be falling – and if we check against other currencies, yep, it was at world record lows against other major currencies on Friday. So if I was the media, I could write, and would write if you paid me to, that gold rose on the dollar's fall. Yes it did. BUT WHY? They never fucking say WHY?

We are left to believe that it is because the housing market and the credit market is collapsing on some sort of shit that was done to give loans to poor people (those useless fuckers) who took those loans and now the deadbeats aren't paying. So the dollar is worth less and gold, measured in dollars goes up. We are always left with a simple answer by the capitalist machine of state and media. But of course we are not told enough to know what is happening.

Why, because you might react and cause more loss to the wealthy. So the sound bites end with gold and oil rise on the dollars fall do to inflationary pressure. Implicit in such partial truths – like the brown shoes under the curtain have brown laces generally – true but fucking irrelevant – so is the price of oil and gold to what you are doing right now.

We are dancing with giants. This is what really is on the screen folks. If you don't control the distribution of billions of dollars I'm NOT talking about you. I'm talking about the BOYZ.

Giants are the executive branch of every country that trades on the market. It is the Federal Reserve Board, it is the IMF, it is the big boyz behind the curtains one level ABOVE the governments, it is that 2 percent of the population that we do not see.

Gold and oil are rising in price because many of the boyz need to shift huge amounts of money out of failing investments and put them some place safer. This is necessary so that after the financial collapse they will have assets to shift back, buying again (in their theory) all the land, control structures, and methods of production with their preserved wealth. Friday the move to safe asset place was gold and oil. That is why gold and oil continue to rise – the big boyz are moving assets, liquidating especially real estate, and converting the money to oil future and gold bullion.

Gold is of no particular interest to them. They're not gold bugs – Oil is of no particular interest to them. Financial collapse that is ongoing is making the dollar less valuable every day, so they can't turn their money in to cash and store it in big shoe boxes. If they did, after the collapse which is a long drawn out thing, when they opened the shoe box they would find a much less valuable dollar, possibly near worthless.

If they left it in the real estate under the Trump Plaza, the new market value might mean they have lost 4/5 of what they have. No that wouldn't do.

Wealthy live by taking a percentage of what you do. Their wealth must continually be invested to make more. If they stood still eventually, well hell, eventually they would become, us, me. The work you perform, they get a cut of. Why do you think you have a job, because you're cute? You have it because you do something that allows one of the boyz somewhere UP THERE, to make more money than if you didn't have your job. That is why you work for them. In a time of economic recession, stagflation, and real collapse, the jobs collapse too. That is not good for them. They don't like this mess any more than you, but unlike you, they are willing and able to do something about it. So they are shuffling their giant feet on the dance floor, and moving huge amounts of wealth in and out of gold, oil seeking to reduce how much they will loss, where you, you will loose most of everything in this collapse.

I've heard it mentioned with horror that there are those who think there are parts of our government who are PLANNING the death of billions of people on the planet – fucking INSANE. True of course, google End Game. That's terrible right?

Well, not so much as it first seems. We are at a reset game point on this small beautiful planet Smarter and more normal and conservative thinkers and professors than I, not wackos, foil heads and white supremacists, agree that the carrying capacity of our little world topped out at 1 billion at the time of the civil war (1864). Since then we have been using coal, then oil and natural gas to feed people, and you know what we do when there is enough food, we fuck and make more of us. We we could and we did, if not you and I our parents certainly, and here we sit cheek to jowl on our little planet. All 6.8 billion of us.

Simple math. Oil and gas grew the extra food that created the more people. Less oil and gas equal less food. Less food equals LESS PEOPLE. How many can the earth support without using natural gas and oil? Woow boy. Well, we've kind of fucked up the topsoil and such and we've over farmed and under cared, so an axiom of this OVERSHOOT thing, that's the thing we're in right now, overshoot, is that when you stop destroying the top soil and cutting everything down, you're not back where you where started – you're actually quite a bit worse. So lets say less than one billion for the whole planet, and if we are sweet and sing all together and using humanure composting, and all of us play nice, in a century maybe we can support a billion and a bit again.

You counted how many we got now? Oh yea, 6.8 billion. So to those people who think that governments think tanks are not and have not been studying how to get from 6.8 to 1 billion, you are dumb as a rock or a perfect sheeple. Lets take a moment to all be shocked. You mean the population is going to have to FALL. Yep, it has to fall by 5.8 billion, not 4.5 billion. That's a lot of people. Hell it's a lot of compost. So if you lived in a democracy that you actually participated in, wouldn't you hope that someone was looking at this, making a plan, at least making sure your name wasn't on the list?

So be sure that government has plans if bird flu (when bird flu) hits, and most of those plans are about keeping people docile world wide while they die. I suspect that will not go well because we're becoming a bit unhinged (personally speaking of course). Oh, and reducing the birth rate wouldn't help as we right now could run to 10 billion just by restricting each person to only one replacement person. What's the math there, you're thinking. Well each person who has a baby doesn't have the decency, given our overshoot, of quietly and immedately dying. Shit some people continue to live on and become grand parents. That's how you end up with 10 billion, if every single person today said I can only have one replacement of me. But of course with the oil past the ½ point on the dip stick, we can't even continue to do 6.8 billion, let alone 10. So we actually are going to have living people die, not of old age. You figure it out. Flu, war, starvation, nuclear war, border wars, immigration wars. Is this a fun dance or what?

So with gold on the rise, all real estate plunging, banks not loaning to you or others, everyone calling up to see if you can pay them now or early or soonest, and food rising like gold and oil every time you go to the grocery store (what about raisin bran – four dollars for the little box in Q – what the fuck is that? -well it's wheat of course, we aren't growing as much wheat because we're growing more corn – why's that – for your car – for ethanol you dipstick). Don't go there, fuck Africa and those poor countries, yea were not exporting corn, yea they're starving, so what, didn't you just say there are too many of us. Besides, listen to the rumble of my Humvee, ain't she sweet?

So here you are, you can see today's movie on the screen – rich boyz moving assets preparing for the financial collapse and their re -entry into a new a more glorious control of power in the future.

What should you do. Well, watch out for the their feet on the dance floor, we are so tiny, I am so tiny I'm an insignificant and they will close that factory repossess and salvage the home right from under your feet, in order to put themselves in a safer position that all the rest of us. That's a given.

So what you should do, if you're still reading and not in the bathroom retching, or back to watching dances with the stars:

Buy as much gold as you can get. Not jewelery, coins bars, bullion, gold with no added value. Store it IN HAND not on deposit somewhere.

Buy as much silver in ounces as you can for when the dollar is being devalued and a new dollar 100 to 1 being printed and mandated, you won't be holding old dollars. Silver is small and can purchase things, normal things like tools. Gold is so valuable that it is difficult to get change. OK the Raisin Bran is $56 and the apple is $12 and all you have is an ounce of gold which by that time is $2000. Hard to make change.

You should not worry about anything the media says anymore and any politician that you don't personally control. Just turn off the shit, you'll know when hard times are here. Simple. If the power goes off for a while and the grocery store don't have no Bud at any price, and if Walmart's looking a little thin, then yep, that's an actual American Calamity, and don't worry, it's not an American problem it is a world problem. Watch out for them big feet then, they be a' flyin, you be a'dyin. None of these people are good dancers and you are very very tiny (speaking of myself of course).

You should either get rid of all debt or maximize your debt and max out every credit line in order to put cash into your hand to buy gold and silver and stash it. Then file bankruptcy when everything is foreclosed. It won't make a bit of difference by then. The only thing that will count is land you can control, gold and silver.

If you have stocks and bonds and a 401K try to shift them to gold funds – Fidelity has one for instance, and if you can't do that, go for the energy companies. While this dinosaur is dying energy is going to be a priority for everyone, and it won't take too many brown outs and grid failures to get the boyz to pour newly created cash into the energy markets. We'll drill EVERYWHERE, will support solar and wind and tidal, though they won't make much of a difference right now – too late baby!. Invest in anything we're going to run out of.

Energy,

Fresh water,

Food.

Buy freezers and solar panels and T-105 batteries and buy a junk yard, not one all stripped but a nice fresh one full of trucks and new cars. Buy a tow truck, get a four wheel drive. Get guns and ammunition and booze. Those are the new real assets.

If you don't have money, invest your energy into your own personal solar and wind and hydro, invest into food in growing your own, fuck if you own it, just plant and harvest until they start shooting at you.

Water, get close to running water. Get close to good shallow wells, did your own.

If you can grow enough, trap, fish and hunt, have water to drink and create enough energy to keep your minimal level of personal civilization alive (lights, communications) then you will do all right.

All above simplified. Take care of yourself now, break all the rules and forget everything the last four generations told you – they lived on the rising tide of free energy, you live on the ebb tide, their homespun philosophy and wisdom is a useless anchor that will drown you (mixing metaphors – sorry). Shrug off what dad and mom would think, shrug off what it means to be a good guy, a generous guy, and see to you and yours, and stay way fucking light on your feet, because the dance floor has professional dancerz who will stomp you flat during then next 6 months.

Business does not represent you, your congressman does not represent you and your parents have the wrong tools for new alien world. If you want to survive this, or if you want your children and grand children to survive this you must change, now.

And hold your close people tight, for you can't be everywhere, can't foresee everything, and no one will remain untouched. Balance is being restored, things are likely going to fall on your head.

Can't look away

Morning free chickens everywhere. FBR will be up by 10am today which is now your time if you're on the west coast, same as me here in AZ! Kunstler was rambling about a bit on an old topic this morning, still worth the read, and the piece that struck me was this succinct paragraph, and I quote:

"The US faces a pretty stark choice right now: it can let the losers take their losses -- both the big institutions who created and traded in fraudulent securities, and all the "little guys" who borrowed too much money trying to get rich quick, or trying live like the millionaires they see on TV. We can let them go down, and suffer the consequences of their bad choices (and maybe prosecute some of the culpable bankers and corporate executives), OR, in an effort to let these losers off the hook we can wreck the whole machinery of capital by making our medium-of-exchange worthless." -Kunstler, his blog today - click on Clusterfuck on the right.

The medium of exchange that is becoming worthless is the dollar. I myself am going to try to stop watching the price of gold in dollars which is confusing because not only is gold increasing in value, the dollar is losing value, so a rise in gold prices can mean either that gold is actually going up or that the dollar is becoming less valuable - for example perhaps the feds are going to reduce the prime rate by another .75 this week (wait for it) which causes all dollars to become less valuable (including the ones in your wallet and purse right now), and thus gold will appear to go up, when in fact in other currencies it might be the same. Perhaps we should forget about the dollar (and I suggest you do, and if you're holding dollars, don't look now, but they are shrinking in your hand every day), and watch the price of oil and gold only in Yuan, Loonies, and Euros. Each of them have their own movements but are less volatile than our free fall dollar at the moment. In fact the one you should be watching is oil, as gold really is stable unto itself. That is so hard for many people to understand. There is not much gold in the world, and there is only a little found and refined each year. It is durable but jewelery siphons some off to be hidden away and in thus gold maintains it's scarcity at about the same value. It is all the currencies that change and the increase in the number of dollars it takes to buy gold is a direct indication of loss of value of the dollar, not an increase in the value of gold.

That is not true for oil however. It is rising against all currencies because it has peaked and there ain't no more being made (at least not at any rate that would make a difference - though you could stop back in 120 million years and check). The rise of oil is real. Gold is just a safe place to store your work and asset energy while you wait to see what happens. No, you can't eat gold, but it is scare, and universally understood, two of the requirements of a medium of exchange. The dollar is not scarce, is not understood, except that you have to take dollars for oil purchases world wide, or we will huff and puff and put our military on your doorstep. Reserve currency status goes to the biggest prick. So money is actually a poor choice for money.

Lest you think I have any real knowledge of the markets and finance and money, please disabuse yourself of that notion. I'm not a real scientist, just another incredulous face pressed against the glass of change, unable to look away. An example, gold plunged $20 this morning, but for no reason that I can see, and when the Fed lowers the interest rate this week, it should go up to new unexplored heights. Will it? I don't know, but I know this, if you're holding a bunch of dollars in hand, in cash, it is time to exchange them for things of durable value, gold, silver, booze (good stuff - not Ripple), ammunition (especially shotgun shells), guns, handguns, tools, solar panels (if you got the space), and of course, OPEN POLLINATED seed.

But my not knowing what the fuck is going on does not give me comfort, nor should it, you. The insanity of wealth based on nothing but agreement -no value supports our printed currency except the belief of one retarded banjo player in Appalachia, who luckily can't be found because he's out back with the pigs. Heaven forbid he awake to the illusion and start the cascade of the dollar collapse and subsequent worldwide economic collapse. That is why he is kept in the dark - just like you and I.

I'm writing the end of chapter five of Foreign Body Reaction this morning, and if I can write it as I feel it -I think it is pretty good! Watch for it after 10am. That will complete chapter 5 and I'll have the pdf of one through five up later today or tomorrow.

FBR, Chapter Five, Scenes 3 and 4.

Foreign Body Reaction
Alan McNeill
Chapter 5 Scene 3.

“Five.”

“Five?”

Darlene leaned against the side of the truck and watched Mark. Ben stood near her, close enough to speak quietly.
“I called seven people. I felt like an idiot,” said Darlene. "Only five are coming, and I'm not really sure they meant it. They all thought I was nuts."

Ben understood. There hadn't been time to prepare for this. People needed time to digest, time to discuss.
“This is something we should have been discussing for a years before the flu hit. You did what you could,” said Ben.

“Just like you with your friend Jacob, right?”

Ben looked down, his foot scrubbing the dirt. “No, I've been having these discussions and what to do if scenarios for years with Jacob. I just couldn't convince him that something as innocuous sounding as bird flu was a big enough problem. He needs the comforts of normalcy, the city life, at least once in a while.”

“You mean Emily, right?”

“I'm not so sure it is Emily that is the problem, she's just convenient.”

Both watched Mark laying flat on a warm rock, scanning a valley below. They were thirty miles north of Grants Pass and west into the mountains. The Hellsgate area. They had stripped Darlene's Subaru and loaded the tents and supplies into the bed of Mark's truck. They were three hundred feet above the GPS coordinates that Ben had supplied for Darlene's friends. It was an hour past the time they had agreed on. No one had showed yet. Mark was watching the only road in and out of the valley below. They were on a road that had several campgrounds, but the road had been nearly abandoned when fuel prices climbed and campers had become rare.

The weather had surprised them all when it dawned unseasonably warm this morning. The gray late November winter seemed to have given way to an sun once again. If Ben could have forgotten what was going on up and down the west coast it would just been a pleasant day in the woods with friends.

Ben and Mark had unloaded supplies down below, enough for four or five days for three people. Whoever showed now, now that flu was in Grants Pass was assumed to be infected. Ben planned on keeping them comfortable and at a distance for longer than the incubation period. He had read that symptoms, coughing, sneezing, and scratchy eyes were demonstrated usually in forty eight to seventy two hours. If her friends showed no symptoms after four days they were probably alright. Ben would have preferred longer but they needed to get moved back away, deeper into the wilderness, farther from I-5. Though he hadn't discussed it yet with Mark, Ben's plan was to move towards the coast along the Rogue river.

They spent the next two hours taking turns watching the valley below and listening. Mark left several times and hiked down to check intersections for tracks. They ate, listened, watched and waited.

Darlene was slumped against one of the truck tires, her head leaning against her knees.

“We have to go,” said Ben.

Darlene shook her head slightly in agreement. "Not a one."

"Sorry," said Ben.

Ben offered his hand and she drew herself up and dusted her seat off. Mark came over the edge of the hilltop and shook his head negatively. Carefully they all checked to make sure they left nothing behind, no trace. Mark dusted out their footprints with an hazelnut branch.

They were loading up when Mark paused and looked at Ben. He listened and they could hear the distant crunch of gravel, followed by the sound of off two stroke and four stroke engines.

All three of them dropped to their knees and crawled out on the rock ledge, lay down and watched the scene below them.

Two four wheel drive trucks, one with a canopy, and two motorcycles pulled off the road below. They were only a few yards from where Mark had piled the camping equipment for the hoped for rendezvous. Two quad runners, both bright green slid to a stop behind the van.

“This will do,” followed by something unintelligible and then drunken laughter. Two of the men dismounted the bike and went to the back of the van. They pulled the hatch up. A man got out of one of the full sized pick ups and came around behind the van. The rear of the van was facing the rock promontory where Ben, Darlene and Mark lay, but the deep shadows inside the van didn't allow Ben to see inside.

Mark held up a finger to Ben and then handed him the binoculars. Ben took a minute to focus and could see two rolls of something in the back, one of them was squirming. The man from the truck was huge. He towered over others and his stomach hung over a thick leather belt. He had a biker's beard, and a bald head. The other doors of the second truck opened and several men got out holding machine pistols. Ben watched them spread out throughout the clearing.

The first lump from the van was pulled out and dumped to the ground. The fat man gestured at the two boys to unroll what was now clearly a dirty throw rug. They laughed and pulled the end up and a body rolled out and collapsed on the ground. Even from this far away, Ben could see blood on the man's head.

One of the group with the machine pistols shouted and pointed at Mark's cache. The tableau froze, and everyone moved over to inspect their discovery.

Darlene tapped Ben and gestured to be given the binoculars. Ben passed them to her. Ben had chosen this spot carefully and on the off chance there was sun today, he knew it would be from behind them.

Darlene focused and both Ben and Mark started at her quick intake of breath.

“Shit, oh my god, that's Benny on the ground. Oh fuck, he was one of my calls,” she said in a hoarse whisper.

“How many people where coming with him?”

“Three. I mean, three total. He has a sister that is staying with him and her daughter too. “

Mark tapped Ben again and pulled him towards him. Ben shook his head no, furiously. Darlene could see Mark's hands beseeching him, palms turned up.

“No.” Ben hissed.

Down on at the clearing, Benny was trying to get to his knees. He wiped futilely at his eyes and got to his knees. He struggled to stand using the rear bumper of the van and he leaned in, half collapsing trying to pull the second bundle out. He tore at duct tape that held the rug closed and managed to rip only a bit before the fat man had returned.

Benny's head slapped back as the giant's hand grabbed the hair on the nape of his neck and dragged him backwards. Benny fell to his knees and the man slapped him to the ground.

“Who stuff is that, asshole! Who were you meeting out here?”

Benny tried to see what he was talking about but the big man simply pushed him down to the ground with one foot on his chest. With his other hand he unrolled the second rug. The child rolled out limp. There was no sound. She wore only ripped panties, and the bruises on her white slim body were visible from the hill.

Darlene bit her lip and stifled a scream. “It's Jasper, the daughter. Oh my god, is she dead?” said Darlene her voice rising.

Ben shushed her, reaching over to silence her. When Ben turned back, Mark was gone. “Fuck!” said Ben in a whisper. Darlene looked and saw that Mark had left. She grabbed Ben.

“You can't let him do this alone.” Her hand dug into Ben's arm.

“Down below the sudden wailing of the young girl, rolled up the hill.”

“Look who's awake boys,” shouted the fat man.

“I told you a private party was what we needed.” The two boys left the pile they had been tearing apart and the two of the four men from the second truck we returning, their weapons ready but relaxed.

When Ben and Mark had decided on this rendezvous point for anyone of Darlene's people, they had chosen an area near Tin Can Campground opposite the to Galice very near the Rogue River. They were a rise south of the campground, looking down on it. Ben figured that if anyone who came could be comfortably quarantined in the campground for five days to see if any of them developed the flu. From here they would be able to go west in an arc that followed the Rogue River or south and loop back to Route 199 past Cave Junction and to California. Darlene's tale of soldiers on 199 gave the nod to running west.

Darlene rolled closer to Ben and repeated.
“You can't let Mark do down there alone!” she hissed.

“He shouldn't have gone down there at all,” snapped Ben, trying to keep his voice down.

“They'll kill him, we need him.”

“There will be many of these groups, many people will die, and I'm sorry that you know these people, but if they are infected, Mark is not only jeopardizing himself, but us too. They could be infected, they could kill him, or worse he will kill some of them. What will that do, these men will hunt us. Did you see the automatic weapons?

“Fuck Darlene, what we should do is get the truck out of here as quietly as possible while they're involved down there.

Darlene just stared at him. “But that isn't what we're going to do, is it?”

“Fuck!” said Ben. “We haven't even started to get out of this mess and already we're breaking every rule of common sense.”

“You know what we have to do then, if we start this you know what we have to do?”

“I know we have to get that girl, Jasper I think her name is, away from those men. That is all I know. If you where a parent you would no that too.”

“If Mark does that, they will track us. They have vastly superior automatic weapons and more than that. They are not the kind of people that would think that this was anything but fun. They have already slipped over to a different way of living. Have you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The men below in the campground are a certain type. A certain percentage of all populations are always controlled not by an internal belief in right and wrong, but rather by the rules of the civilization they are surrounded by. In prison there are rules, in cities cops and peer pressure control them. But in times of civil collapse, they loose their restraint, it freedom to destroy, take, stay drunk and drugged and to do whatever they want. For many of these people, that is terrorizing others, especially those they perceive a part of that world that controlled them.”

As Ben talked he had moved back from the edge of the rock ledge and to the truck parked in the shadows. He rummaged in the back of the flat bed, and found his Cache tube. Darlene followed, listening and watching.

“So if we are to join Mark in saving this girl, we may or may not live. But Mark decided that for us when he reacted as a 'normal' man in a normal world; last weeks world. And here I am, reacting the same way to my friend, who we need, and who is now part of our close people, our tribe for the next six months.

“Do you understand what we have to do now?”

Darlene opened her mouth to snap back at him, the obvious answer. But her breath caught in her chest. She had followed Ben's line of reasoning. She stared at Ben and realized what he meant. If they managed to save the girl and her uncle, They would be pursued. They could not afford or survive that pursuit.

Ben unrolled the Mexican blanket that cradled two long guns. Both were military surplus and thus quite inexpensive. Unlike sporting rifles they were heavy, ugly, and rugged. He handed her the Yugoslavian SKS that had been modified to accept AK47 clips. He slapped a 40 round banana clip into the bottom of the rifle. It had no scope, and was not really accurate above 150 yards even in skilled hands. Ben choose the other long gun, a 1944 Mosin Nagant that had a scope on a very ugly mount. It was long and accurate out to 400 yards with the scope.

Darlene accepted the lighter SKS with the clip. Ben put 5 stripper clips of Russian ammunition in his pockets and said.
“Ready.”

Darlene looked at him and said, “I don't know if I can do this?”

“Then stay here.”

“I can't.”

“You know what we have to do?”

“Kill them all.”

“Yes. Everyone.”

#

Foreign Body Reaction
Alan McNeill
Chapter 5 Scene 4


"Have you fired a rifle like that before?"

"I've never even seen one of these. Doesn't look like the 30-30 lever I used for deer hunting," she said looking down at the rifle."

It is not full automatic, you get one bullet per pull of the trigger. The sights are pretty accurate. Just line up the front in the middle of the posts in the back, all even height, and whatever is out there about from here to the van down there will get hit. Even if you miss, the noise will keep them pinned down. I want you to work your way back down this road to that bar of gravel above the creek."

He brought her around and they crawled to the edge. "See it down to your right?" Ben asked.

"Yes," Darlene said softly. "I don't know if I can do this Ben.

"Then stay here. I can't help Mark if you're taken prisoner too, or killed. If you go down there you must do what we must do, or we leave here right now, they finish raping the girl, kill the man, kill the girl and probably kill Mark too somewhere in there. But we will be alive. I would guess it is what Mark knew we should do."

"I'm not leaving him and that poor girl to those animals," she hissed.

"Then use that anger or get the fuck out of the way."

Darlene,s face was red, her carefully coiffured hair was hanging in dirty strands. She said nothing, but got in a crouch and began working down the road, keeping out of sight.

Ben returned his attention to the scene below and the long Mosin. He used the primitive distance measurement and saw that the men at the cache were about 200 archins away. This measurement is an 18th century measurement of the pace of a Russian soldier. Ben had fired the Mosin long enough to get use to the strange distances. He knew an archin was about 28 inches.

The men who were clustered around the girl at the back of the van were a little closer. No one in that camp was watching anything but the girl, including the men who had been on the periphery with the automatic weapons, possibly machine pistols.

Ben folded his sweatshirt that he had picked up at the truck into a neat bundle and tried to do everything as he had always done at the range. He was pretty good out to 150 yards with the Mosin, but the men who where were still standing around the supply cache were a bit farther away than that. Ben laid out the ammunition clips to his left, and rested the birch wood stock of the long rifle over the folded sweatshirt. He laid perfectly flat on the still warm rock at a twenty degree angle to the gun and tried to remember the Finnish method of slapping the bolt open and closed without moving the rifle from his shoulder.

He brought the stock up to his cheek and tucked the rifle firmly against his shoulder. The Mosin slapped hard when it fired and it was very loud. He used the scope to search the campground for any sign of Mark. Then trying not to feel anything he began to assess danger and risk as he looked at each man. He could see the fat pig rutting at the teenager spread on the floor of the van, and the other men cheering him on, waiting their turn. Two men were in the van but he couldn't see them beyond the leader. His finger curled around the trigger of them Mosin and the lit reticule of the scope centered on the back of the fat man's head. The scope was only four power but he could see the sweat dripping down to the seemingly lifeless girl.

Ben took his eye away from the scope and searched again for Mark. He could see nothing which didn't surprise him. He looked to his right and saw Darlene was in position, the SKS held awkwardly in front of her, but pointing at the men around the van, but she was looking at him. He held one finger up, pausing her.

The four men with the machine pistols had been drawn into the on going rape, and now were all focused on it. Ben brought the crosshair off the fat man and shot the first man with the machine pistol through the ear. Without waiting to see him fall, he slapped the bolt open and closed chambering the second round. The men below were just turning to react and he shot the second one low in the neck, the blood spurting on the his fellow watchers. The third round took the third man with the machine pistol in the stomach as he was raising the gun, looking for the source of the fire. The fourth man had dove to the ground and rolled under the van, bringing his weapon out before him. The fat man backed up off of the girl and there was a snapping, buzzing sound. He swatted at his temple as if stung and yelled at his men to get to cover. He took one more step and was stung again. This time he sighed and crumpled to the ground.

Ben chambered the fourth round as the men scattered below. Suddenly the sound of the SKS began a low snap, drumming bullet after bullet towards the men nearest the cache. The men all hit the dirt seeking cover and Ben shot one after another as they lay down. He dared not shoot at the two men who were now under the van as the girl remained unconscious on the floor of the van and the two men deeper inside were out of sight.

Dirt exploded close to Ben's face followed by a sharp crack a millisecond later. Dirt and rock stung his face. He flinched back from the edge of the ledge. He rolled backwards and to the right grabbing only one five round clip from where he laid them. He reloaded his rifle, safely back from danger and rolled back into position.

He saw two of the men farthest behind cache drop their guns and run into the woods bordering the campground. Another ran for a motorcycle, and was frantically kick starting it when he began to shudder in time with the rhythmic pounding of the SKS below him. Darlene was simply shooting one round after another, every second, another bullet and she had found the range. The SKS was chewing him up. The man fell over slowly to the left and the motorcycle tank was ruptured in turn. The sweat smell of gas filled the clearing.

Suddenly the teenager slid out of the van and dropped limply to the ground near the fat man. She looked at him, noting the two small holes at his temples. There was hardly any blood. The men who where behind her in the van pushed another rolled carpet to the door in front of them and brought handguns to bear, using the carpet as a cover and a gun rest. Ben almost shoot right through the carpet but then remembered Darlene's comment that there were three people. Ben felt a cold heaviness come over him. He knew with certainity that he could not keep this up even a minute longer.

He felt a wave of nausea swept over him. He swallowed hard, and without further hesitation shot both of the men laying in the van through their lower backs. Having paralyzed them, he worked up each of their spines with one more shot each. The bolt slammed back, open on an empty chamber and Ben pushed the rifle away from him. He couldn't see now, the chips must of have cut him. He wiped his eyes, no blood. He face was running sweat and tears. He was effectively blind. He rolled to the side and retched again and again until there was nothing left in him.

The steady wack wack wack of the SKS finally stopped. There was an odd stillness to the forest. The moment was broken by scream from the forest that was cut off abruptly. Ben couldn't look back below, but he forced himself to his knees and began to stumble down the road toward Darlene. He realized that he had left his gun, but felt the familiar gouge of the pistol in his belt. He made it to Darlene. There was no blood around her. But she sat dazed behind the SKS semi auto rifle. Ben reached to pull her to her feet. She recoiled from him without a word. Her carefully applied makeup was running down her face.

Ben hesitated and then continued down to the clearing. He made his way towards the van when suddenly the right sleeve of his jacket fluttered and he felt stung. He realized he was currently deaf from the Mosin's report but he couldn't remember hearing it as he shot. The plucking at his clothing occurred again and he saw the man under the van taking carefully aim with the machine pistol, spraying a creeping line of exploding dirt geysers toward him. The gun snapped from the man's hands, and he had only a moment to register surprise as a hand with a heavy hunting knife reached around in front of him from under the van and cut his throat.

Mark rolled out of the truck, a 10-22 Ruger carbine over his shoulder, so small it appeared like a child's toy, a K-bar knife in his left hand. He walked among the men, not looking at Ben, but kicking their weapons away from them. Ben heard a gurgle and looked up to see Mark reach down and sever another man's throat.

Darlene pushed by Ben. She squatted and pulled the girl by the arm out of the tangle of bodies at the open end of the van and ten feet further before she cradled the limp form of the teenager to her. Ben slowly made his way to the last rug. He was afraid of what he might find, afraid that he might have shot through the rug. He cut the duct tape and the limp form of a woman in a halter top, shorts, bare feet and long black hair rolled out on the floor of the van. The long black hair was stuck to the right side of her head with caked blood. Not a bullet wound, she had been hit. Ben left her for a moment, and looked for water. The truck had several cases of water bottles in the back. Ben took several of them to Darlene, then cracked one open and poured it over the bloody temple of the woman. Her eyes flickered open for a moment, saw Ben, then closed again.

Ben lowered her head and kicked the bodies away from man he had first seen come out of the back of the van, the brother of the woman he thought. The man was still, limp, on forest floor. Ben turned him over to find a round neat hole where his right eye should have been. Ben felt nauseous again, swallowed hard and turned to the fat man. He rolled the leader over. A chromed forty five automatic lay beneath him. It had been fired, and looking again at the dead man, the size of the wound could only have been made by the forty five.

Ben pulled the brother gently away from the van and covered him with one of the rugs. The woman in the van was stirring now, getting up, calling, "Jasper," hoarsely.

A hand clamped firmly on Ben's shoulder. Ben spun and realized it was Mark. He raised his hand to strike Mark, and Mark stood still and waited for it. Ben's hand fluttered down. With that Ben collapsed. Mark stepped forward and caught Ben as he fell. He slid him over to Darlene and laid him down next to her and the girl. Darlene looked up, her eyes filled with tears.

#

FBR chapter 5 scene 2

Foreign Body Reaction
Alan McNeill
Chapter 5 Scene 2.

Ben sat close to the campfire on an upended five gallon bucket that Darlene had brought. The tents were up and Ben was aware of the quick glances that Mark and Darlene where sharing, then looking at him.

Their campsite was close to the intersection on the hill above the truck. Darlene had pulled her Subaru around the truck close to where they were. Mark had been curious as to why they didn't return to his previous camp or to the lookout tower, but he said nothing. Perhaps he is hoping Jacob would change his mind, thought Mark. He said nothing, waiting for Ben to work out the next steps for their little band. Darlene was busy collecting more wood for the fire, and digging out some foil packs of Mountain House freeze dried food.

The twilight showed clouds starting to form from the northwest, it would be back to drizzle tomorrow. Ben scuffed ground with his foot.

Mark squatted next to Ben while Darlene was busy at the hatchback of the Subaru.

“Worried about Jacob?”

Ben glanced at him and then back at the small fire. “Worried about us.”

“Hell, we're fine Ben. Everything we need is in these mountains.”

“What do you think will happen now Mark?” asked Ben innocently.

“I guess up here we're going to meet a few hunters. People can't do much else down there, business closed, schools, so I guess people will hunker down and make do until this flu thing gets under control. But hell Ben, why are you asking me. You've been doing nothing but think about this since you started getting better.”

“I ask because each of us as a sense of 'normal' and return to normal in our heads. I have to know what you think will be normal, what you feel we're up against.”

Mark was quiet for moment, idly tracing designs in the dirt near the fire. He shifted.

“I think lots of things might happen but you can't plan for something real big like this. You have to ride it out, take care of yourself and your friends, what's that thing you say, that Russian thing, oh yea, take care of your close people. Is that what has you sitting here, kicking the dirt; that you couldn't help Jacob and Emily?”

“Hell Mark, I can't help anyone including myself right now. I have listened and I've read for years about how societies break down, but you know what? It's like an big pile of sticks and then you drop a boulder down in the middle of the pile and watch the sticks fly. Every possible outcome is logical when you look back at the boulder and the sticks, but that's looking backwards. I can't know what will happen to the sticks as the rock drops. There are too many variations, too many things all dependent on one another. Hell maybe there is some variation where Jacob, or really Emily is right and I'm just an idiot.

“I don't know what the fuck is going to happen, but I don't think that town is a good place to be. Too many feds.” he said.

Darlene had brought over a pot and had stood behind Ben listening.

“Honey,” she said, her voice a bit rough from the cigarettes, “You don't got to figure out where all those broken little twigs will land, you only got to see where the next one will land.” With that, Darlene drug over a bucket, sat splay legged on it and smoothed her dress between her legs.

Ben laughed a bit. “That's exactly right, we have to guess one stick ahead and we'll be fine.”

“So what's first twig?” asked Mark.”

“I guess the flu will spread from place that has an a airport, every town and city with a major road. If it is like other influenzas it will take about 2 months to reach most of the world. The 1918 flu took two years to reach everywhere. With planes and cops and feds moving around, helicopters and important people being ferried to hospitals, it will be much faster.”

“Shit we had the Hong Kong flu years ago and I don't remember anyone dying. Maybe this one will be like that," she said.

"This one's not like that. It's a modified Bird flu, that has been mixed up with another flu and this one likes people. It is worse than the 1918 flu, I mean how deadly it is."

"Well how many people died in that one?"

"The reporting fell apart, the world didn't have the communications we have, but most people figure fifty million people died," Ben said.

"You think this one is worse?"

"Much worse. In that one twenty percent of the people who caught it died or less. This one, this bird flu, it's more like three fourths of the people die, at least so far."

"Yea but what next for us, I mean I know you can't know, but what do you think?” asked Darlene.

“Fuck I don't know. Everything is going to be slammed right now; Is being slammed, right now. Commerce is going to die, trucks won't be able to keep up with the demand for food, Walmarts will get some supplies but people will get sick if they go to get it. Town mayors and managers will close the schools. Fuck! Everything is dependent on moving everything by road and rail and air, constantly. None of that is going to be easy. People are going to get hungry and sick. People are going to be mad that no one can help them, and they are going to look for someone to blame.

“People are going to think that the government should do something, they'll demand it, and the governments only response will be to use force to segregate the sick from the healthy. Oh, yea, and to extract important people from everywhere. Which will guarantee a uniform spread of the flu.”

“Jesus honey. Are you sure, I'm mean that's what could happen, but it ain't happenin' yet.”

“Darlene it is exactly what has to happen, and it is happening right now. What do you think that soldier was doing stopping you. It is like a river coming out of the mountains going to the sea, to the lowest point. We have a flu that is deadly, at least sixty percent of the people will die who get it, and almost everyone will be exposed this year. You tell me, start with this simple thing, how many will die, in numbers?”

Darlene recoiled from Ben's harsh attack. “Christ, that's just one thing that could happen Ben, the government has had four years to prepare for this, they must have something planned besides letting people just die?”

“No, they don't. For over six years they have been trying to figure out how you make a vaccine for a flu that doesn't even exist yet. They have somethings that might lower how many people get infected, but that is not enough of it, and it may not be effective against this at all.”

“He's a gloomy shit, isn't he Mark. How far down that rabbit hole do you live?”

Mark looked up at Darlene and just stared. He looked at Ben, then back to Darlene. She had stood and her face was red. Mark spoke quietly. “Darlene sit the fuck down and shut up. You're acting like those fucking sheep in town.”

Darlene's mouth worked, open and then closed. She sat.

Mark continued. “Ben ain't often wrong in what he has talked to me about, and he don't say it lightly. Seems to me we've got a big decision here in front of this fire. You can trust the government to do their job, solve this problem and believe that all will be normal in a couple of weeks, and go back to town. But the question I got for you Darlene, how often you think you have every had the government help you? What about your work with the eco folks? You of all people, what about your son?”

The color drained from Darlene's face and she looked at Mark stunned. “Don't you mention my son, don't you say one fucking word about my son.”

“Darlene,” interrupted Ben. Darlene!” She broke her lock with Mark's face and Ben could see tears glistening on her cheeks. The light was gone now, and the tracks of the tears glistened in the reflected light from the fire. The small pot that Darlene had put on the three stone fire boiled merrily, unconcerned over the exchange between the three people.

“I tell you what I told Jacob. There are eight billion people in the world right now in 2011. The depression has been grinding on since late 2007. People are out of work, and energy costs are rising. The democracy we live in, the capitalist state we live in is crumbling. You know it, you see it every day around you.

“Now the bird flu is going to have a vaccine. It will be nearly 100 percent effective. The distribution of that vaccine will absolutely be controlled by the various world governments, and corporations. They will prioritize. The vaccine can possibly be developed and rushed into production in six months. SIX MONTHS Darlene.

“Do you know how many people will have died in six months?” Darlene had turned away. Slowly she breathed and turned back towards Ben.

“How many?”

“Half of everyone you gets it or more will die. Despite the best and worst efforts of the governments involved, in six months more than half of the people in the world will have been exposed.

“Darlene that is four billion people. More importantly to us, right now, to you Darlene, half of everyone in Eugene, Medford, Grants Pass, Salem, Portland, Bend, Gold Beach, Coos Bay will be dead.”

“But don't you think with antibiotics . . .” she trailed off.

“Its a virus. Antibiotics don't work on viruses.”

“What are people going to do, what are we going to do?”

Mark shifted and looked up at Darlene. “They are going to get sick and die or get better. But Ben that's not the real problem is it?”

Ben shook his head no. “No, Mark, it is what the people will do to each other, to us and to themselves during the next six months that is our problem. That Darlene is the first branch that will break. People will panic when the bodies start to stack up. This isn't 1918. We aren't those people of a hundred years ago. They had strong religious faith, a strong patriotic sense, they trusted their local government at least, and loved their country for the most part. Do you think that is who we are now?”

Darlene shook her head. “No, we're not any sort of melting pot anymore, and you're right Mark, the government is not about helping any of us, but rather all about controlling us. Oh my god, what do we do? Fuck, there's nothing to do is there?

“Your telling us that two of us around this fire or one, will be dead in six months? she asked.

Ben was quiet for a moment. I can't tell you Darlene. This is the first step, and what we do right now has a lot of impact on our own survival.”

“What do you mean?” asked Mark. “Don't we just try to survive.”

“Yes absolutely, we try to survive. But you must see the cost of that, right?”

“What cost,” asked Darlene.

“Our survival is dependent on not being exposed, and you can bet there are others thinking the same thing, right now. Towns will wall off, cities and roads will be barred as people make their local governments take action. Just like a city under siege in medieval times, we are limited by food, water, time, and our own psychology.”

“Please, what do we do tomorrow, what about our friends and loved ones? What do we do right now?” asked Darlene.

“That about three minutes?” asked Mark, reaching in to pick out one of the Mountain house entrees.

Ben and Darlene stopped, looked at Mark, and for a moment the tension was broken.

After they were done eating, Ben said. “We have to stay in the wilderness for the next six months. We can't risk contact with others, we basically will turn ninety degrees from the world and disappear.”

“Can we tell our friends?” asked Darlene.

“I've suggest you do so, tonight. I don't think they're going to listen. But yes, use your phone right here tonight an call them all. I'll give you a gps coordinate that they can meet us at tomorrow. But here's the thing Darlene, when you talk to them, ask first if there is flu in their town. If so, you can't let them come, they may already be infected.”

“Jesus Christ.” said Darlene in a low moan. “You got this all planned out don't you?”

“Only this first step. You think I'm down the rabbit hole, you have no idea, no idea how deep this hole will get. Right now, we are like a Roadrunner cartoon, and we're Wiley Coyote, and we just ran off the cliff. We're looking down but we haven't started to fall yet, but fall we will.”

Mark got up and disappeared into the night. Darlene watched him go. “You're enjoying this a little, right?

Ben shook his head sadly. If you pointed out he obvious, did the math, simple one two three stuff and came to a horrible conclusion, people call you a chicken little, or insane. If the shit inevitably comes to pass, then well, he must be a crazy fuck who enjoyed being right at the expense of society. Ben knew he was neither.”

“I'll call right now, but why not have them come here?”

“Make all the calls you're going to make, and then we're going to through your phone away. Why not here? Because maybe they're already infected. We'll have to be careful.

“Jesus.”

“Have them bring camping gear, guns, medical, oh, just talk to Mark, he'll know what we need for six months.”

Darlene looked at him, stood and wandered off to look for Mark, stopping at her car to pick up her phone first. Ben called her back and gave her a slip of paper with the GPS coordinates for them to meet the following day.

Ben began cleaning up. He knew he had lied about the first twig that was breaking. He was torn. They needed to move right away into the off road areas. Darlene had mentioned that with the cops tied up, and everything in an uproar, some people, not the nice people, saw an opportunities. The social fabric was going to fray now and Ben didn't want to be anywhere near that.

#

Slipped and fell into another painful bout of clarity.

Clarity about our future is painful. Awakening from complete conformity is often accomplished accidentally by stumbling across blind spots. Places where the media will never lead us, never show us (except after the fact), and certainly never encourage us to explore. Our accepting the conformity is the natural result of a lifetime of not being told anything that would upset us and cause us not to buy the sponsor’s product.

We paid for and received exactly what we asked for. No BAD NEWS. If you want to know who brainwashed you, why you didn’t know about peak oil, global warming, LIMITS TO GROWTH, population overshoot, look no farther than yourself. You created a circular reference – a system where you watch what is presented to you by people that you control by purchasing their goods. How long would you have paid for a TV show that mentioned all the million ways in which you are currently fucked and how it is getting worse?

The habit of any “civilized” society is to conform and to explore only those things that our conformity delivery system suggests we explore. For example, bible scholars can made a life, gain tenure, and teach the distinctions they find on a single page of the Bible. They do not question the book, they question the logic and content contained in the book.

This world society, this methodology of consumption, is our book. We move within it, aspire to climb in power and material goods, but we don’t look to see if our society is a fact or fiction. We don’t question the book! Does this society pass the test of a “good” society? Does it present you with opportunity for exploration, personal growth, relationship development, as well as food, and water and the chance to procreate your genes forward into the future, forever? The society should have a set of cornerstone beliefs in stability and sustainability over a generational time. Do we?

We have a complex society, yet on the whole what do you think? Are we keeping our mandate to pass on a better world to the generations to come or rather are we the fat rats in the granary who can just hardly eat another bite? We sit on the precipice of societal collapse yet barely can hear a word about collapse or what we are doing without recoiling back into our comfort devices. We are the fiddlers at Rome’s burning.

Ok, so you know all that. You know we are not thinking into the future, indeed we are acting as if the party is infinite, the oil infinite, the land and water infinite. Of course we all know that is not true, we just don’t think about it. It has always been tomorrow and if we don’t look it always will be, right? We don’t look at the book, only at the pages. We don’t enjoy these brief moments of clarity.

But today I want to talk about what it feels like to flip back and forth between remembering that this is speeding train heading into a wall, and then snapping back to the daily world, the inside of this book, where we actually live. If you have been reading this and all the other sources of movies, books, websites, and blogs about peak oil, the collapse, global warming, and the die off, you come here already aware of the pain of that exploration. Ouch –yep, we’re even more fucked than yesterday. Yet when you leave, you go back to CNN, the new season on TV and nothing has changed. It’s all good! What do you learn? We learn not to look. The monster in the closet, the monster in our future doesn’t exist as long as we don’t look. What a crock of shit! What the fuck is going on? That’s the schizophrenia we all face as we learn that reality is not.

We each listen, read, and absorb as we can, and we can’t stand it any more we look away. No one wants to discuss this past the bad news that is finally received. If this is the Titantic, we just want to go back into the ballroom finally, because there is nothing to do. I know that, I’m sorry. I wish for all of us that it wasn’t so. But as math works, chemistry works, and 3 apples minus one apple equals 2, it comes.

Our hero wakes one day through a failure of the delivery system of the daily drug that was placed in his water system. A contractor has failed to provide a part in the water system on time, and for two weeks he has been slowly withdrawing from the drug that allows his conformity machines - his tv/ipod/radio/newspaper from effectively killing his curiosity, and numbing his cognitive processes. He is once again starting to subtract 84 million barrels of oil a day from the earth, the one earth, and coming up with “not enough.” Hmmn. He finds himself drawn to the shape of Hubbert’s curve in everything around him. He finds himself looking for things not made from oil and natural gas, surprisingly few.

He has been sleeping fitfully; he feels irascible. He listens to the morning news and it seems absurd. He is slipping into a brief bout of clarity. He hopes they will fix the water soon, he wants to go back, he desires the numbness, the unknowing. He wants the time before he understood when everything around us was supposed to be getting better and better and more and more. He wants the peaceful sleep of childhood.

Peak oil means peak power. We are right now at the top of the mountain of cheap energy via petrochemicals. We wield the largest number of energy slaves that will ever be fielded on the earth. We are the most powerful people who will every have existed. Of course, to generations to come we will be the most hated as we squandered the earth’s most precious treasure trove. Oil.

Lucidity at the peak of energy production - the peak of the Empire - is a shocking slap, that subsides to a depressive recognition, yet, yet, you could feel it there in the background all your life. You knew. This was not sustainable! You looked away, I looked away and waited for others to make the sacrifices to cry out to the great brainwashed crowd, “the emperor has no clothes!” I let it slide, you let it slide, and many of you, most of you, and I, knew it. That makes the moments of clarity, the moments where we think outside the box, even more poignant, painful.

The brainwashing is only effective because we desire the dream. We are willing participants in our own delusion because otherwise we have to admit our guilt, or lack of action, our truth of our species drive to procreate ever more, faster and to the edge of all resources. Our little trick – that of believing the absurd political “truths” of religions that said the earth was made for man let us destroy and befoul our very home. Shit I knew that was bullshit and so did you. Who are you kidding? We just wanted it, just because we could. It is good to be king.

So when you’re feeling all alone in your painful recognition the blatantly obvious, once you stop pretending not to see, seek out others who have the courage to let the guilt, pain, and hopelessness in. It is like an intervention. You can’t get to it until you let yourself go all the way down. But oh the painful moments of clarity, the stabbing wound of epiphany when we are not the heroes of future stories but the villains.

At the bottom we can start planning for the future for those who will be left. We cannot bequeath this world to even one more generation. We must give them a path out of this, even if only for the few. Find others who will look, who will hear, who can stand the pain, at least long enough to begin to plan.

It is hard to know what we can accomplish, but if we begin to see a future, if we can imagine the stories of any future that is sustainable we can begin to aim ourselves towards that future. If you can only work in brief moments of clarity – then do so, then head back to the comfort of TV, books, etc. However do not mistake your moments of clarity and pain as the “insane” time. Your time in front of the tube is the fantasy, the diversion, purchased at tremendous cost from your children’s future.

Perpetual Sacrifice

I never see the wind blow. I see what the wind blows. I see the tumbling mocha, triple shot, skinny, grande empty cup, tumbling down the street. I know it is the wind, for were I not to believe that, I would have to believe the cup has become auto-animated, or a whirling dervish has taken up residence in it. Thus it is the wind.

I'm listening to the traffic tonight on Warthen road. Friday sincerity, Friday night rushing speed, tires singing on the new pavement. Important people rushing to these good friends, those spread legs, this or that lonely bar. But all rushing. I wonder if it is the wind that pushes them, but more likely, it is the pre-breed, post fuck, spurting rush of the selfish gene pushing each person to deposit their genetics into the future. And if they both have to be drunk to make that deposit, the genes care not. And I think they are like the wind blown cup. I only guess the motivation, the shape of the push because I see their cars and hear their frantic intention in their speed.

I'm reading "The Ascent of Humanity" on line by Charles Eisenstein. This leaps out at me.

"Perpetual sacrifice. It is an ideology that invades nearly every aspect of our lives. What is being sacrificed? What is the common thread? Most fundamentally, it is a sacrifice of the present for the future. Cut back today so you will have enough for tomorrow. Work comes before play. No pain, no gain. Control yourself. Whether it is in diet, education, or personal development, we find the same sad prescription. Why is it that for so many people, the Heaven of physical fitness, or financial independence, or cessation of an addiction remains forever just as distant as technological Utopia? How long do your New Year's resolutions last? Well, try harder. It is like the man who decided to walk to the horizon, and failing to get there, concluded that he needed to run instead."

I have run enough. I ran because my father ran. He taught me with lines like "put your balls behind it" and "if you want to cry, I'll give you something to cry about." He was a kind but distant man that cared about technology, and the freedom from drudgery and labor more than he cared for his sons. He heard and believed the siren song of "progress, and a brighter tomorrow."
Well dad, you were no different than the boys who are driving up and down the road tonight. Everyone has sold out to the social need to find themselves a way to win in the mating game, and they are listening to each other, watching each other, believing that sacrifice today will bring them joy, success, love and prosperity tomorrow, even as the wealthy two percent of the world slink quietly away with the larger share of your efforts and material goods.

But the hell with that. Here's my Friday night suggestion, my recipe for ex-slave stew. Get naked in the wind, stand still with one hand tight to the collar of your animal self, keep yourself calm, centered and forget distraction of those people stuck deep in the fantasy matrix of "reality." Let the wind blow around you. Watch for the others that are looking at the horizon, their spears in hand, each calm, yet hyper alert for changes that are taking place NOW. These are the players of your children's futures. They have gone a different way, and even if that may be not exactly the best fit for tomorrow - it is by far a better fit than the industrial soup and nuts we are living in and creating every single day, en masse!
The majority of people are simply watching the wrong things. They are watching work, the market, the 401Ks, the home investments, the TV, the latest girlfriend or boyfriend, the latest prescription drug, the latest greatest hope for an every better future if you will only, if you will only, if you will only, continue to believe, continue to work, continue to shop, continue, continue, continue to be the little droid who does because he must, because really, he can't think of one fucking other thing to do.

I have a headset on listening to music that pulls me out of my little self and into my long view epic self, and I can see the forces driving that cup across the barren ground. There are others that see it too. All the hurry around me is like a film shown on fast forward, with monkey antics and frenetic pace signifying nothing. If you haven't figured it out yet, the TV, the cars, the houses, the clothes the jobs are all about your genetic fitness to procreate - to be chosen most fit to put your genes into the future. Unfortunately the fit the boys and girls are trying out on Warthen Road tonight is the WRONG genetic fit for the next half century.

This oil driven society is already creaking, groaning and farting to a halt. The talking heads of the economic priest hood are trying to keep you calm while they prepare their escape to another future where they wait with different chains in hand for us. Are you willing to put on a new set of chains after the crash?
Do you want your children to toil under the same stupid lies that stole your life? What if we just all fucking stopped it? What if we all just didn't lie to each other, didn't posture? What if we said, this ain't working, I quit this shit!?
Oh I hear you, " but we would starve, get a job bum!!!" We went down the wrong path. We sold away the quiet place of great power and creation within ourselves many many generations ago, but like the last one hour of a game of Monopoly we are in the boring part where you already know this game is done. It has not gone to the tireless worker of the capitalist state who worked hard and long and even unto death for the better future life his children. No, the future and the end was cast in concrete the moment we let money be more durable than the assets it was meant to value and purchase. We let money make interest, separate from the real world, separate from what we could make and eat and grow with our own hands.

We used to belong here on this beautiful planet. We used to be part of all that happened. Our need, drive, genetic imperative to grow to the edge of sustainability is no different than any other bug or plant or mammal. Except for one thing. Nothing tops humans. Of course only in the short run. Mother earth is shrugging now. She's found a little itch where it is hard to scratch, but she is twitching, shaking a little, and making antibodies to us.

So do not bequest the rich man's mantra of try harder and put off to tomorrow to your children. A slave begets a slave for the master, and who better to put the chains on a child other than his own father? I see no chains upon you except what you have forged. Rosseau said it and it is more true now than then.

"Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains."

It is obscene. We wake and we put our shackles and chains of perpetual sacrifice on ourselves. We are so used to the yoke that we do not feel it. They, I, are paid for our labor, and they , we, are conditioned, taught, instructed and NEED to buy what has been prepared for us that ensures our perpetual slavery, your perpetual sacrifice.

So put the head phones on. Play some music that pulls you out of here to a place where you are epic, mythic in size and fierceness. Find yourself where you stand strong against the wind that is blowing the Starbucks, the Walmarts, the General Electrics, the entire oil fueled and lubed world into the past along with most of the people you know. Look toward the horizon, be vigilant now, the artic is melting, the easy energy gone, soon no cars, and soon no economy and soon embrace a very different set of needs and expectations.

Ah, Alan is nuts tonight. Each day of your life is a choice. You can choose to open your arms up and look up from your life. Look up, look around. Let the obnoxious buzzing of the insect normals buzzing about, reassuring themselves that all is well cancel themselves out. They are the vacant shells of future ghosts. Find your real people, your close people. Make your tribe, find your heart, care about your children and grand children, really care, prepare them for what comes. Become that epic hero who lives inside you, you were born for this, you are the transition generation to a completely new future. Get mad, get happy, get up, get the fuck up, wake the fuck up! Look around!

We are truly aliens in a strange land. We constructed this. We can de-construct it. You were born whole with a birthright on this incredible world, do you want to live a small live of perpetual sacrifice forever?

Night chickies.