Dust in the Wind

Doom takes a break

2011-12-11T20:10:00.000-08:00

It was with great pleasure that I had the opportunity to meet another Llamedos (and former latoc) member: "Bones" this weekend. This young man drove in from California with soul searching wisdom beyond his years and a shiny trombone. He had just driven in from Austin, Texas having had spent some time with Dignity of struggle. Not much money, but a soul that was priceless, he embarked on seeing New Orleans for the first time. He did this after a night by the fire pit drinking beer and smoking a cigar while ruminating on life's deepest questions and great mysteries. Michelle from Latoc once remarked, "every doomer when meeting for the first time must have the talk." How was it this man was still in his twenties, I wondered? We had ours while the haloed moon was high overhead and a biting chill gripped the darkness as a dog barked and howled across the distant swamp. Like two doom shamans we compared notes and took turns at the podium preaching our particular view of "dust in the wind." Only thing missing was a peace pipe and some bear fat.

The next morning I showed him all my old haunts - or nearly all of them - down in the french quarter where I grew up, and he was able to fulfill his personal wish in coming to New Orleans; that is, to play with a real honest to goodness local New Orleans jazz band. Bones is a very good trombone player, and most interesting, I as well. Though I had not touched my instrument since the great Katrina hit in 2005 and not really played with any interest since 1990. Embarrassed I pulled the forty year old corroded horn out of the attic and displayed it to him. Finding my old mouth piece we made it sing once more despite the dents, holes, and blackened patina. Maybe there was some hope for the old antique after all, and I as well.

After filling up with some scrambled eggs we made our way across the marshes of Lake Catherine and forts of old to find our rhythm and blues. Bones had longer legs than I and a heart beating a decade and half younger easily outpaced me as we made our way to Jackson Square. He sought the most ideal spot to pop open the horn case and play under grey skies. It may have been grey and chilly, but the atmosphere was alive and breathing. After passing up a blind trumpet player on the levee, the kite graveyard, and the canon topped moonwalk, he chose a spot right in front of the St. Louis Cathedral. If you're going to do it, might as well go to the heart of the matter. If you ever had any social anxiety or stage fright, the moment Bones took the horn to task would have been difficult for both species as people turned all attention on the man from St. Louie (Bones is originally from St. Louis, MO).

Let's just say that I was impressed with the talent on display - this boy could play. Bones was able to make his memory and add to life's tapestry. The moment only detracted briefly by a nearby artist, whose lousy paintings adorned the fence, warning him that cops don't take kindly to musicians playing towards the church as the sound carries in the hollowed interior. The tourists didn't seem to mind, and the locals wondered why this young man wasn't playing for thrown dollar or coin....but was in fact doing it "just for fun." Hope wasn't lost as Bones spied a even better location nearby. A middle aged heavy set black man who was wearing a Santa hat sat holding a well worn tuba covered in stickers. After coming over for a chat the jazz and moment was on. He managed to attract a very large crowd of tourist I might add too.

So let's say that I was uplifted and renewed with the music, the beat of hambone-hambone have you heard and the bluesy soul that played out at the ole place de'la arms that we call "Jackson Square." The Jazz tuba player who was playing for a meager living was more than happy to have the man from St. Louie at his side while giving Bones some local tips playing New Orleans style. The brassy notes brought out the most interesting of characters from the Cabildo, that old 18th century jail for pirates.

Bones remarked that New Orleans was a city that "still had a pulse." From the fine food to the artists that hung their hand crafted crafts from the fence, old America was still faintly alive in a country now filled with box stores and chained restaurants.

Bones and I relished on some beignets and chicory laced coffee at the old cafe de Monde on Decatur while escaping the unusual chill that was blowing in from Dumaine before pondering the crafts on display down at the famous french market.

I myself picked up a hand carved skull bracelet from a voodoo priestess and Bones swapped notes with a trumpeter who was shot in the head. I also introduced him to another member who owned a shop for witches on Decatur before showing him my old elementary school "Mcdonald 15."

All in all a fabulous day that rewarded us with sore feet and full belly's. Bones spent the evening galloping in and out of the Bourbon st jazz clubs while I spent time chasing my nephews and nieces under the twinkly lights of "Christmas in the Oaks."

Sometimes all the doom takes a break when friends visit from afar.

Greatest country in the world?

2011-12-04T10:17:00.000-08:00

Bill Hick's fantastic blog "The Downward Spiral" had me thinking this morning. In one of his latest posts he points out that the OWS movement might be co-opted in DC by political parties. http://billhicksisdead.blogspot.com/2011/12/occupy-movement-may-be-about-to-jump.html

I personally have been watching from the sidelines at these protests when they started in New York city months ago. More than once I've been tempted to lace my boots and join their small encampment down in New Orleans only to have the demands of work and property labor impose their necessary obligations. I could be just making excuses like many others. Meanwhile, I've watched my countrymen tear gassed, pepper sprayed, tazered, beaten, cut, boot stomped, and swept away from their encampments by riot police acting in behest of what Bill Hicks sharply points out - by liberal and Democratic mayors. From what I hear around the proverbial water cooler, more like hanging out in front of the ambulance drinking coffee, it's all good riddance of the hippies, communists, and filth that bum up parks and sidewalks. I see the corporate owned media has mind fucked my coworkers exceptionally well. Why are we so against protests these days?

We often tout that America is the greatest country in the world, but even the slightest understanding of history shows that every freedom we now enjoy came after much protest, blood spillage, and cries from the downtrodden. It took courage, momentum, and action to make blacks equal to whites,

women equal to men,

to give land back to the Indians and to treat them with justice,

to save beautiful unspoiled nature,

to end child labor,

and to provide for the welfare of our neighbors and fellow countrymen.

The worshipped founding fathers created a nation with all these afflictions - slavery, the submission of women, child labor, exploitation of nature, and the decimation of America's native population. Oddly enough, you find all these social constructs also in the christian bible, so maybe the argument that this nation is, or was, christian holds some weight. It took people dying and bravely throwing themselves against police and their government to institute any meaningful reform in this alleged land of the free. Equal freedom, love of your fellow man, and conserving nature doesn't seem to equate well to slavery, the submission of gender, and slash and burn resource management. So knowing how America once was, and which is so oddly glorified with statues and panegyrized writings, how is it now that we vilify these protesters and their judgement of today's capitalism? We live in a self professed capitalistic nation whose alleged values of love, caring, and support for those who are unable is under constant assault by politicians seeking to kill Mexicans, setup electrified fences, strip health care from the poor, old, and disabled, allow the military to arrest its citizens without trial or jury, be subject to execution at the whim of a military commission or the executive order from the president (yes, all of this is true and there are examples already), and the removal of any and all environmental regulations. Yes, can you believe that the above is actually alive and well in the "greatest country" in the world?

Since it doesn't seem that we have the same mass will behind OWS type protests, as say the civil rights protests of the 60's, I'm not at all encouraged that my country man will stop any of the insanity creeping back into our laws, regulations, and policies that was so hardly fought for in decades past. It took countless hangings, cross burning hate, and public humiliation years to be defeated with thousands of marches, the endurement of German Shepard injuries, and skin peeling water cannon attacks. Only after all those bloody protests did blacks finally manage to force the government to write in laws enforcing their natural constitutional rights as human beings! Even now we have to fight our government for the right to marry who we want, to protect our waters from massive oil spills, to permit vegetable gardening, and hundreds of other things that seem obvious to me as being natural rights for us, the animals, and the world we live in.

The latest example is a recent bill that was proposed that would allow the military to arrest citizens who were deemed terrorists and to hold them indefinitely without charges. Also, an execution could be meeted out by order of a military commission. http://endthelie.com/2011/11/25/s-1253-will-allow-indefinite-military-detention-of-american-civilians-without-charge-or-trial/#axzz1fPJtwval

a) Clarification of Right- Section 949m(b)(2) of title 10, United States Code, is amended--
(1) in subparagraph (C), by inserting before the semicolon the following: `, or a guilty plea was accepted and not withdrawn prior to announcement of the sentence in accordance with section 949i(b) of this title'; and
(2) in subparagraph (D), by inserting `on the sentence' after `vote was taken'.
(b) Pre-trial Agreements- Section 949i of such title is amended by adding at the end the following new subsection:
`(c) Pre-trial Agreements- (1) A plea of guilty made by the accused that is accepted by a military judge under subsection (b) and not withdrawn prior to announcement of the sentence may form the basis for an agreement reducing the maximum sentence approved by the convening authority, including the reduction of a sentence of death to a lesser punishment, or that the case will be referred to a military commission under this chapter without seeking the penalty of death. Such an agreement may provide for terms and conditions in addition to a guilty plea by the accused in order to be effective.
`(2) A plea agreement under this subsection may not provide for a sentence of death imposed by a military judge alone. A sentence of death may only be imposed by the unanimous vote of all members of a military commission concurring in the sentence of death as provided in section 949m(b)(2)(D) of this title.'.

Isn't that frightening? That a bill like this would even have enough politicians to support it says much about this greatest country in the world thing. It took a consternated effort to keep it from passing with Senatorial maneuvering by Rand Paul to have it defeated. It won't be the last time that a piece of legislation like this is written, as we're probably only one domestic terrorist attack away from a bill that's even more draconian from actually passing. The Patriot act was the first step of a two part piece of legislation that will police America. This is but one example among a list of bills and laws being suggested or passed, and orchestrated to destroy the protests of the past, and to restore the even more ruthless America of old. The America that openly enslaved people, killed Indians after lying to them, tortured communists, worked kids to death, turned the power off to a family, had people eating dog food, and left old people to die in the street. Is that what we want again? While the bankers and capitalists fly off to some tropical isle and enjoy their decadent opulence at our bailout expense.

If people want a better country they're going in the wrong direction! Protesters changed America. Riots changed America. Being cynical and dismissive while eating turkey never did.

The Spin doctors

2011-12-01T08:24:00.000-08:00

I could today blog about the world fleeing Iran as if they knew the country was about to be bombed, or the US sweeping OWS sites like the midnight street sweepers during Mardi Gras, or the market orgasm over global bank interventions, but instead what drew my ire was today's spin on manufacturing, construction, and retail sales. What I'm about to demonstrate isn't going to come as any surprise to my peak oil friends and doomy economists.

Today the weekly unemployment claims come out and measures of construction spending and manufacturing levels. Plus we hear about car sales and retail successes. How these reports are dessiminated out into the media is a carefully crafted method of spinning reports as "getting better." A mandate that's been followed since Reagan who setup the plunge protection team, a team that seems to illicite help from fellow corporate media networks to spread the persistent good cheer. Acting like cheerleaders and motivational speakers they deliver the economic news, whatever it is, in the most polished light possible and with the knowledge that most readers don't even read past the title.
So here goes exposing their trickery. http://www.cnbc.com/id/45508352 Construction spending rises for third straight month! Wow, just wow, isn't that a sure sign that things are getting better? More construction spending? Wait a minute, in three months? What about since 2008? Doesn't matter, the reader see's "rises" and see's consecutive months. But let's dig around inside this deceptive title. What you find is this, "The Commerce Department said construction spending rose 0.8 percent in October to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $798.5 billion.

That's barely half the $1.5 trillion that economists consider healthy. Through the first 10 months of this year, construction spending is 2.9 percent below the depressed levels of 2010." Nearly 3% lower than the already depressed levels of 2010, much less pre-recessionary levels. Construction is flat and bouncing on the floor of a recession.

Then we have http://www.cnbc.com/id/45508189 Manufacturing Growth Hits Highest Level Since June! Yay! Can you see the pom-poms yet? But again, let's dig into the article and actually read,

"It was certainly a decent outcome," Tom Porcelli, chief U.S. economist at RBC Capital Markets. "The internals suggest that manufacturing activity should remain at a fairly modest level and I think that's probably the best you could say about this report. You're not falling off a cliff but you're not gaining much momentum either."

"It's better than the alternative that most people were talking about even just a few weeks ago when there was talk of a recession and things were falling off a cliff," Porcelli added. "We're holding above break-even."

Break even! Does the title sound like we're breaking even? We've been bouncing around on the floor of a recession since 2008, and we've only been able to do that because of massive treasury and deficit intervention, a completely out of control formula to ruin.

Take away government spending, a necessary requirement when you're running a 1.5 trillion dollar deficit, and you have a huge cut in GDP. Factor that cut into the above "uncut" figures and you get a depression many times worse than the one in the 1930's. One could only imagine what a starving 1930's farmer would do to a cheerleader who cheered when the bankers came for the farm.

Then we have the persistent rah-rah that's been pumped by every network since Black Friday that Christmas is so much better this year for retailers. Well yeah.....if you open hours earlier and sell with even less profit margin to a recessionary consumer who knows this is the only day they can afford Christmas presents, you sell more. It's still flat bouncing on a deficit floor made of thin glass, and break it will.

The truth is American can't handle the truth.

Humans are animals

2011-11-29T07:41:00.000-08:00

Humans are animals and are classified as such. Biology makes no special provision for our perceived divinity or specialities. We are chordates, vertebrates, mammals, and primates - that's right, lumped in with monkey's. Part of the hominidae family of homo sapiens. We are animals and as such we occupy, hunt/kill/domesticate, feed, and eliminate as any other animal. We are destructive and constructive like the elephant and the ant. We are social animals like chimps, dolphins, and prairie dogs. So if we're just animals where does the problem of our existence come from? It isn't because we bulldoze a forest to build our homes, or when we throw our byproducts into giant landfills for the elephant will knock down tree's to get to the fruit and ravage the landscape too. Kudzu will smother a forest completely. Army ants will kill every other insect caught in their hungry march. Swordfish will eat every sardine in a school, and carp will decimate whole river systems. Animals do the best they can to eat well, to live long, and most importantly to procreate. They are biologically equipped to these ends, or they perish through competition or lack of adaptation. That's just how it is. Without any doubt whatsoever, the human animal is the most successful animal that is alive today. We have procreated to the ends of the earth, we dominate every other living creature as sources of food or amusement, we pile up our waste, and leech toxins into every biome. 85% of the great forests are gone because of our presence. Tons upon tons of our industrial gases fill the atmosphere, into the very stuff we breath and require to exist. We are animal kings. Top of the food chain.

Let me conjecture the problem isn't with the man animal per say, but simply in the mathematical and calculated outcome of our "success."

Over 40% of all tropical forests have been destroyed and another acre is lost each second.

Each year, humankind adds six to eight billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels and destroying forest

The annual catch in 13 of the world's 15 major fishing zones has declined and in four of those - three in the Atlantic and one in the Pacific oceans - the catch has shrunk by a startling 30%.

Millions of pounds of toxic chemicals, like lead, mercury and pesticides, pour into our waterways each year contaminating wildlife, seafood and drinking water.

The US just burned 25 million gallons of oil in the time it took me to blog this.

4 billion pounds of pesticides were used in the U.S. this year- eight pounds for every man, woman and child.

Americans are exposed to 70,000 chemicals, some 90% of which have never been subjected to adequate testing to determine their impact on our health.

We throw away 17 billion pounds of plastic in packaging each year.

200,000 people a day are moving to cities from environments that no longer support them.
Average person consumes twice as much as 50 years ago.

Average American creates 4.5 lbs. garbage a day -- an amount doubled from 30 years ago.

The U.S. burns 10,000 gallons of gasoline a second

700 million gallons of lubricating oil, 200-250 million tires, 138 thousand tons of lead from discard auto batteries, and 9 million passenger cars are disposed of each year in the U.S.

I could go on and on with environmental statistics and facts that show how successful we are as a species in resource distribution and allocation. As any other animal we pollute too, but none hold a candle to our capacity in doing so. We're talking huge numbers, numbers that most couldn't even fathom, that are literally altering the atmosphere, the soil, and the water. We're so successful that the numbers are exponentially accelerating, doubling what once took centuries. If one elephant knocks 2 tree's over per day to eat fruit it isn't too destructive, but if 7 billion elephants were doing it, it would be total destruction of every tree on the planet. We are the 7 billionth elephant, and we seem to be constructing our own extinction.

I'm typing this blog on my laptop that took many different mined resources to make, gallons of fuel to distribute, and even more fuel energy on my part to generate the money to buy it. Is it killing the environment in so doing? No, but when billions more are purchased similarly, yes. Guilt is written with each key stroke. I just cleared an acre leaving maybe fifthteen or so shade tree's to plant a large vegetable garden, setup a chicken coop, and dig a pond for more sustainable purposes. Add a billion or more of me doing the same thing and you have a billion acres gone. "Get a bike, recycle, stop consuming so much," and other green philosophies are commendable, but it isn't going to alter the human animals basic behaivor to utilize resources, tool make, consume, and eliminate (pollute).

There can only be one conclusion for our success - a hammer stroke, a karmic sledgehammer that will shocked our species into extinction or possibly frighten the survivors into intentionally modifying their behaivor. Much like my dog which has the instinct to run the neighborhood looking to procreate and can only be fenced in with a shock collar/invisible fence system. One or two shocks and he never crosses the fence line while the system is active. I believe humans need a similar shock to modify their behavior. Much like a person who experiences chest pain and a heart attack suddenly becomes health conscious. Fear and pain are the most powerful biological motivators known next to sex. I feel no pain in my personal consumption habits, nor you, but the pain of which I speak is swiftly approaching. Let us hope our childrens children learn from the pain, and are frightened into adjusting themselves accordingly, or our extinction becomes the worlds gift. Wisdom has to be experienced and learned.

US Healthcare implosion

2011-11-28T08:09:00.000-08:00

If you didn't already know I work for a private ambulance service contracted by a dozen southern MS counties for 911 emergencies and inter facility transports. I've worked in the health care field for over 20 years as a paramedic, and what I see about to befall this country is no less than a catastrophic meltdown in health care. The supercomittee, an oxymoron is there ever was, has failed to come to any resolvable solution for our current fiscal woes. It just isn't possible to cut the fat out of government spending without causing immeasurable social misery and hammering GDP (20% of which is government spending)to the point of collapse. That's what happens to a nation that has generated economic growth with debt spending instead of actual productive capacity for the last 40 years. Instead of having a simplified universal health care program paid for with tax dollars we have a hodge podge mish mash of wacky private insurers paying percentages, deductibles, and what have you, a medicare system for the old, and medicaid for the poor, and a lawyered up rule book governing the administration of it. That doesn't even consider the state to state differences on what is paid and isn't paid. It's completely unsound and just plain nutz. Most Americans really don't know how bad their health care system is until they find themselves old, disabled, or poor. A group that is expanding since, well since we were counting. Now that we are forced to address our debts and make the necessary cuts these gross facts are going to feel like a rock to the head to anyone unfortunate enough to be old, injured, sick, or just plain dealt an ill fated deck since birth. Just one example of which I could tell you about is a young man that I run on frequently. Just eighteen years of age who is seeking gainful employ in a rural MS town. He has seizures, bad ones, and he requires Kepra to control his seizures. $1500 a bottle! Does he have the money for them? Obviously not. It's hard as hell to find a job right now and made even harder by the fact he has a preexisting medical condition that most employers care not to have behind the forklift. So he's on MS state medicaid and receiving food stamps. What does medicaid pay? Well about $600 towards his prescription and he receives about $100/month in food stamps - them rama noodles make good eaten, huh? $600 is not $1500, so he has seizures at least twice a week. He has busted his nose twice, stitches to his head, and now has a broken elbow. Is it his fault that genes dealt him a ill fated hand? Obviously not, but he is also unfortunate to have been born in the USofA. If he was Canadian this would not be a problem at all. He would get the prescription he needed and he might even find a job because his seizures would be properly managed. Then maybe the rama noodles might be replaced with fresh fruits and vegetables, and some quality meat.

But not America! We have bombs and bullets to make! We have trillions to spend in our global policing. Taking care of each other is socialism, that dirty word. We can't have that. Instead, what we're going to see unfold here is a bureaucratic implosion in what is paid for and what isn't, and if you're the unfortunate one falling in the ever widening crack of doom than you will be swallowed up utterly. Bereft and dead in the land of the turkey eaters. Meanwhile, in the field of health care, there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth in the ranks of the providers as their previously untouchable professions will see widespread cuts and reduction in pay or benefits. A sizable amount of all health care spending is Medicare, it's old people, it's people who have been dealt bad hands, and then it's a growing group that is psychologically ill. What do you expect when the American dream becomes a nightmare? People are losing it! Trust me! I'm seeing it right now!

Who calls an ambulance most of the time? Old people! Old people with their strokes, their falls, their chest pains, their smoking related COPDer's, their GI bleeds, and everything else that infirms the human being as they wither and die. Medicare or Medicaid! Medicare pays the bill, it pays for the ambulance ride, it pays the wages to the medic, it pays for the treatment, it pays for the ER visit, it pays for the doctor, it pays for the hospital treatment. It pays. The guy shot in the projects isn't paying their bill. The working stiff at the corporation paying for his United, Blue Cross, and what have you isn't the one getting sick and calling an ambulance. That's a rare 911 call indeed. So listen to me, it's old people, and old people are not working people. They've done their time for the most part. They have what's saved, pensioned (a source being attacking on all fronts), and provided for by social security (also broke and defaulted), and that's it, but they're the ones that need health care. So it's medicare not United, that's paying for the bulk of the entire medical industry, and if Medicare - no, not if, but when - is cut it'll also be cutting the primary source of revenue for doctors, nurses, medics, technicians, hospitals, clinics, rehab centers, psychiatric wards, etc. It's the one American industry that has been a solid source for jobs in this land of job scarcity.

Not anymore! Game over folks. I pray that you are well, that you are fit, because this nation is so up the creek without the proverbial paddle that millions will be doomed to old school medicine and hope for the best bedside prayers.

It won't be military cuts coming despite what you might have heard on the news. A world war is the making, and it'll crop up at the opportune time to pour every cent into its bloody endeavor. Old people, sick people, disabled people, nothing more than unproductive refuse, capitalistic rust, and dead weight to the 1%ers and their American corporate fascist scheme. Trust me.

"We can't afford these people!"

(As he himself gets complete coverage)

Turkey eating Americanism

2011-11-24T11:17:00.000-08:00

Another turkey day for America, and if anyone is paying attention, one wonders if there will be another. "Happy thanksgiving," people say as they scan the newspaper for black Friday deals from Walmart, Best Buy, JC Penny, Sears, Macy's, Academy, Home Depot, and every other corporate juke box of Chinese manufactured goodies we Americans feel so compelled to partake in.

Like a manic moment of consumer voyeurism we light up with excitement at seeing a 42" TV for $199 as if anything worth seeing ever comes across that now infamous plasma nightmare, and just how many TV's do we need anyway? Hey look, a Xbox with kinetics for under $200! More time for which we can become virtual soldiers shooting our way to victory! An extension of our madness without ever getting dirty or feeling the effects of bombs and bullets, a conviency not felt by the countless families in the cross hairs of a real crotch ratcheted, former video gaming, frat boy looking to showcase his training with some acrobatic drone strikes.

Followed by a turkey dinner and a video chat with his knocked up girlfriend stateside who let's him know that you can buy a laptop for under $300! Be home for Christmas might be her secondary wish.

Meanwhile, back in central park, we have our generational parade dedicated to the adulation of triumphal capitalism. Like the Israelites worshipping the golden calf, we parade our symbols of corporate greed and American silliness at the end of long ropes up and down the throng of spectators while half naked women dance in mock worship to the tunes of countless uneducated youth playing their brass and woodwinds.

Floats filled with more silliness and exponential goofiness fills in the road between big balloons and titillating sexism. Since I think 99% of us are unplugged from reality we find the show fun and by all means - traditional - while we eat one of the 30 million turkeys slaughtered for us and stuffing our already massively overfed and undernourished tubby girths. Meanwhile, the rest of the world bows to Mecca, washes their torn threads over beaten rocks, and cook their meal worm invested rice while watching the sky above for predator drones piloted by American turkey eaters. God help them if they happen to live by anyone that looks like they could be Taliban or Al Queda, because ya know, it's unnecessary to truly identify a hostile from a group of kids trying to get their goats back in their pen.

We Americans have to have our blu rays for $50 bucks and our gas at $3 a gallon after all. China give us more junk! Arabs, give us your oil!

The sad fact is that hardly anyone knows what the hell I'm talking about, being that our soldier boys are over there under the cross hairs of evil forces protecting our freedoms, the latest programmed meme as we cover our hearts singing a ode to war, the American anthem. I must be one of those hippie communist occupiers to say such "truths." A nice evil slot in the American mental architecture to put my kind of commentary. A nice slew of propagandists, who are paid millions, are then broadcast into our living rooms while we swallow FDA approved cancer causing fake pizza's to swallow it down with diabetes making concoctions.

This American experience to be followed by a week long run of fuel consumption to haul our lard asses to and from our "work for the man" corporate institutions, paid for of course by those same goat herders and peasants mentioned above. Never once questioning whether this is right, how people should be living, or what it might do to the environmental womb that is mother earth. Oh sure, there are those that care, those that realize our iniquities, yet these glitches in the system are quickly tear gassed and pepper sprayed or shot in the head with what they call harmless rubber bullets despite needing a dozen stitches and repeated CT scans. The blood stains can still be found on the street in front of the stock exchange. Water cooler nightmares cheer on their demise.Yet this is nothing as the blood could fill a whole lake in a place half a world away and out of sight of the turkey eaters.

So remember what I say in that every transaction made with the above blood dealers (Walmart, Best Buy, JCPenny, Macy's, Mcdonalds, etc) pollutes a river, enslaves a child, tears a mountain apart, spills more blood, and steps on the accelerator to oblivion and extinction. Can you break the hypnosis of consumption and live up to your promised divinity, or do we embrace the destruction and pass into history? So far, all I see is the clutching of self destruction.

Smoke coming from the machine

2011-11-05T11:49:00.000-07:00

Can you see it? Smoke from global economic machinations? Smoke from grass root frustrations? Smoke from Iranian centrifuges? Smoke from European bond markets? Can you see it? There's a real glow in the embers of future fires, where the kindling is piled high in flesh and blood, and the fog of revelation lifts from the mound of falsities. We're in the time in history where the wolf, the real one, the one believed by most would never show up, has started knocking at the door, and whether we open it or not, it will huff and puff until the architecture of capitalism is blown to pieces around us. We, all of us, unless buried in some bunker somewhere sipping expensive wine with fellow elites, will be left naked and exposed to the villainy and brutality the wolf brings. It's only a question of how many times the wolf will knock. Will it be once more, or twice? Only the wolf knows, and it doesn't share its secrets with the likes of me or you. It gets orders directly from those bunkered elites parading themselves on red carpets as they smile and wave at the camera's they own. They tease us with their plans, their promises that a solution will be found, their gifts of austerity that they say can be successfully endured, not by them of course, but by the electricians and bus drivers of the world. "Keep smiling you bastards," I think as I watch people by the thousands shutdown major US ports, occupy banks, and endure the icy test of winters onset while be insulted by corpobanking mouth-pieces on CNN and Fox. It is but a natural reaction to the same, and the momentum of outrage grows. When I see the rubber bullets, tear gas, batons, horses, and shields come out, I know the fires are lit, and they are! "Keep shooting marines, you cowardly tools of the rich," I yell! "See what happens!"

Smoke over here, over there, and everywhere. I see the fires being lit in Iran, a big pit of lies and geopolitical manipulation, and it's not being manipulated favorably for Iran, a land that's frequently represented as the gates of hell instead of the reality - another ME country with sweet easy to get oil. It's beyond stupidity to think this graph of global oil production has nothing to do with Zionist worshipping Western thuggery, unless you believe those who say we can become energy independent if the president would just give big oil everything they want (reckless unshackled drilling anywhere and everywhere).

A ridiculous claim if there ever were, and as much nonsense from the Pollyanna's that conceive a transformation from combustion to the whine of electric motors in the time the president can waive his magic wand. Leaves my own calculations smoking to weigh the variables in this crucible of disaster, and even more so in knowing no one is telling the truth. Crunch time is near, and where there's smoke there's fire. Where do we get the energy to keep up the burn? How many people must die to reduce the need? This is the truth, this is what's being calculated. The fires of that decision are smoldering all over the place. You don't get 7 billion people eating, sheltering, and breathing without millions of barrels of oil per day being produced, much less so when speculating on the exponential nature of people making. We're about to enter the hurt locker as a consequence. I'm sorry, that's the truth.

So sing a song, smell a flower, admire a tree, and go paint a mountain for the time where such beauty is despoiled by the darker side of man is near, and what remains must be fought over instead of shared. I hope future generations learn something from it all, and that we don't die off entirely.

Bless the children

2011-09-29T19:57:00.000-07:00

If you recall from prior blog entries, you know that I desperately want a family and struggle with adoption and fertility costs. So when I get summoned to a pregnant women with no job, their third pregnancy, a baby-daddy who beat the death a pregnant mother, or some neglected kids suffering abuse from a bipolar one eyed prostitute it really gets to me. This all happened over one week in a town with 12,000 people. What a statement in of itself in what constitutes the state of my local community. I'm willing to bet this is played out all over the country as people struggle over the general dystopic state of our global civilization. Arguably more zombie and clown like in the nation called America. Frustration isn't a strong enough explanation for how I feel when 3 small kids, none of which are older than nine, come stumbling out of smelly stained single wide with a one eyed prostitute smoking a cigarette and a toddler propped on her hip. The five year old had the family's medicaid card...what a little helper. None of the children had shoes, and most had torn pants and smelled of pot. My head was screaming inside as I wrestled my demeanor into the necessary professionalism to ask the necessary question required to explore why I was called. Fever, a kid had a fever, and she never gave any tylenol either. A kid with a low grade fever does in no way constitute an emergency, but this sorta thing is very common with the folks welding medicaid cards. Like it was a health care credit card to the VIP ER, and in some ways it is. Nevertheless, I was happy to obliged knowing I'd have the opportunity to report the situation to DHS at the soonest opportunity, which would be in a few minutes at the nearby ER. So the whole dirty gaggle hopped into the ambulance module to watch a paramedic blow up latex gloves and draw funny faces on them. Settled in for the short trip, vital signs taken, I open the ePCR (electronic pt care report) to begin documenting my findings when the rough one eyed mommy leans over to ask if I had found Jesus Christ and had been saved? This question has always made me uncomfortable for a number of reason, least of which would be guilt, but after so many questions along these lines from fundies I'm become a little more resolute and hardened when I answer. No. I have seen too much in my line of work to believe there's some paternal, trinity family residing in the heavens above that looks out for us. But I won't say there isn't one either, because how would I know. Seems like superstitious nonsense to me though, a belief structure that gives comfort in world full of grief, pain, and misery. When I die, if there is a god, a soul, life after death, and so on, then god can judge me. But if I'm sentenced to hell because I didn't accept this Jesus despite my life of sacrifice and caring for others, than to hell with god himself. Wouldn't want to hang around a being like that anyway. I didn't go into all this with the mother of course, but that's kinda how I feel after two decades of putting myself into the human circle of tragedy.

I find out en route to the hospital that the mother was just kicked out of her house last night by her husband, and that she was writing these long letters with religious scripture quotes. Her plan being to send these to her evil husband. She was also hearing voices and desiring to tattoo the children with crosses and other such nonsense.

The kids sat quietly darting their eyes around the ambulance trying to ignore their mothers insanity. I sit still myself ruminating over what I would tell the receiving nurse. With such a frivolous complaint we were sent to triage on arrival, just as if she had walked in. Apparently, the ER staff were familiar with this mother, and told me about her house being covered with wall to wall bibles, or that was what other EMS crews had relayed to them on prior visits. DHS was called just as I left for another call. This time a 22 year old man who just up and died, and it wasn't because of drugs either. How bazaar. Hours later I call back to the ER to find that social services had been in the room talking with the mother but that the child had been discharged with her mother a while later. "You've got to be kidding," I'm thinking, but most don't know that it usually takes many repeated DHS activations to take kids from these types of parents. Me on the other hand, oh no, well I have to have perfect credit, a detailed house inspection, can't be over 40, and a steady job to get the state to allow an adoption to occur. Only after handing over 20 grand to make it all happen too. But natural mommies and daddies are given GREAT leeway it seems. The social rot I immerse myself in dissolves the tolerance I have with the so called "system," and with some invisible man in the sky.

The radio squawks again for a pregnant woman involved in an assault out in a part of town known for drugs, poverty, and what can only be described as human baby mills. 18 year old, 3rd pregnancy, no job, no diploma, who had been beaten up by her so called boyfriend and father of the current one. Elbowed with primitive abandoned straight to the 8 month belly and she was bleeding heavily. Give me a bat and 5 mins with this little punk daddy want-a-be and his progeny making ways would end in blood and bruises. She lost the baby and nearly died herself. There's a god? Really? Meanwhile, no kiddies for me, I'm now 40 with bad credit, so the great state of MS that just released some kids to a Jesus freak hungry for coco puffs and pop smoking babies thinks my wife and I are bad candidates. Obviously the above two examples are the preferred environment to raise children. Not my household it seems which has a nice paid for house, a white picket fence, a dual income earning family with the love and compassion ready to give.

God? Where? A sunset maybe; whereas I must be in the valley of death.

Eating poo

2011-09-24T15:36:00.000-07:00

OK, the title probably has you wondering what the hell this post is going to be about, but here goes - as the first day of Fall descends on the deep South the rednecks begin scanning the roadside with their spotlights looking for future game; that is, deer. The mornings are a little cooler, but compared to my foray in Vermont, I'd have to describe them as mildly cool given that our Summer sees morning lows in the mid 80's and at least now we're making it into the 60's and 70's. The kind of sauna that doesn't require any specialized services. They call it Indian summer around here. Football, whether high school, college, or NFL, is the prevalent topic on the tongue of many. There has to be something entertaining to attune to other than wondering whether you're going to make enough to pay the mortgage, and while many appear to be "getting by," others are down right taking drastic measures to survive. For instance, there are more than a few scrap metal thieves searching properties in these rural counties looking for copper, aluminum, and whatever else they can turn in. There was an incident not far from where I lived where a homeowner shot a metal thief after he caught him brandishing a hatchet while cutting out copper. Allegedly, the thief came at him when he was discovered. Self defense...I hope. I've had a number of neighbors, impoverished people in their old beat up pickup trucks come by my house asking if I had any metal junk to get rid of. Any metal that I find clearing the property I put out on the curb for them to take as a consequence. I have a friend that works at a scrap metal processing center that reports being inundated with people bringing in old batteries, cans, metal pipes, copper wire, etc. Things like that tell me the local economy is echoing current and future troubles. But wait, there's more. I'm out on a car crash at the interstate waiting for the tow truck to show up when I overhear the deputies talking about a rash of air conditioners that have been stolen for scrap. Whole units ripped out of windows and even the big central units. My dogs have probably kept me from suffering the same fate.

If the thieves get past my beasties than I'll know for sure that our economy has deteriorated to the next level. It's not just the increase in scrap metal theft either, I'm noticing it at work too. I've seen young mothers, 8 months pregnant, being beaten by their husbands/boyfriends to the point of losing their babies. Why? Because of the emotional turmoil surrounding losing a job, a home, or a car...if you can believe it. Embarrassed desperation is expressed as they stare speechless into my transparent supply cabinets on the way to the ER. They just wish it to end. Most people have no idea what's going on out there because people are so private about it until they express it violently - sadly. More people than ever are calling for psychiatric help too, whether it be depression or two in the morning panic attacks. As paramedics, we ask our pt's what medicines they're on and I regularly find anti-anxiety and antidepressant. I suppose that's keeping the pharmaceutical companies in business, that is, as long as the federal government continues to backstop Medicare and medicaid. There's no guarantee these social backstops will survive given the GOP cheering executions and promising healthcare elitism. The rolls of medicaid continue to grow until their political deficit cutting barbarism is full expressed, and I certainly do believe it's coming. That has to be one of those straws of violent protest ready to be broken.

I find these signs of social calamity on just about every emergency run I make. Last night was no different, except by which that social parabola is measured. Responding to a residence in an especially poor part of town that I find a young man crouched on the floor of his bedroom. Something wretched stifled the air as we came to care for this person. The man was nude, shaking, and covered in excrement. He turns to see who has come into his room while stuffing a turd into his mouth chewing it as if it was a babe ruth candy bar. My partner couldn't stomach the sight and was backed up behind the police. Trying not to let the profound grossness effect my care, I come to find that the man had just lost his job and this behavior was supposedly making him feel secure. I know it seems incredulous and extreme, surely the man is crazy, but if it isn't poo eating, it's people cutting their arms, beating their heads, to having someone pee on them.

People are scared, and looking for security where there is none. I guess we're all eating poo to some extent.

The Summer of Hell begins

2011-06-21T23:11:00.000-07:00

The first day of Summer began with a thunderous boom over my house. The heavens unloaded after months of drought induced retention, while puddles lasted only so long as the dusty earth allowed before absorbing the waters, and leaving behind a muggy steam that accumulated in the darker recesses of the piney woods. When it hasn't rained for such a length of time the phenomena becomes virginal and miraculous. A string of Facebook posts erupted online declaring the event, with pictures included, while I imagined my neighbors coming out to look upon falling water droplets as an infant would for the first time. It's moments like these that you realize the miracles that occur as a matter of inconsequential unrecognized irreverence. By my rain gauge there hadn't been any appreciable rain in more than sixty days, a day count that as long as I've been alive I can recall no such equal in droughts. South MS wasn't alone either, the drought is even more magnified and disastrous further West, on into Texas and Arizona where a string of historic wild fires continue to burn and remain visible from space. Thousands evacuated and whole communities gone up in smoke. If the drought hasn't burned your house down, it's destroying vital cropland, farming, and livestock that the rest of the world depends on. Farmers out there are having to make difficult choices yet again, as repeated years of drought have left them with little, a dwindling herd, and rationing. To pile on even greater misery is of course what we're all having to deal with - expensive fuel. Thankfully, it has come down some in the last month as the dollar competes with the Euro, and the obvious unarguable sign that the US economy is "not well," that is, if one actually looks at the numbers. Apparently, a lost art among economists as it seems hedge funds, large banks, and day traders rather play off expectations than asset valuations, demand, and consumption. Those expectations revolve around the Greek bailout, the Fed asset purchases, and "better or worse than expected" analysis (after revisement, of course). Economic bets and day to day Dow watching is hardly worth mentioning anymore because it has no basis on whether I'm able to find a job or not, and speaking of which has become harder than ever. The drought just makes for sweaty interviews with a Dominoes Pizza manager that tells you there are only PT positions available. The weather it seems has become a mirror of opportunity.

If it's not a drought that's ruining the day, it's a climate weirding flood and there's no shortage of global occurrence in this regard. Wave after wave of six inch pounders continue to sweep the Northern prairies, flooding the Missouri river basin, which of course all run into the MS river, a river that has already been hit with record levels this season. The Rockies are still full of snow while a series of Nebraskan dams and spillways are pressed to their engineering limits. The precipice almost certainly leaves one to conclude that a disaster could happen any minute. The media, like CNN, FOX, CBS, etc, seem totally incapable of reporting on any of it, even though a US nuclear power plant has turned into a industrial island beset on all sides with flood water.

Officials assure us that all is well, and that there is no risk to the public from radiation. How can any of us feel assured of anything after Fukushima, another global event the media has chosen to pretend is over, and a recent report of widespread radiation leakage - http://enenews.com/radioactive-tritium-leaked-75-nuke-plants-drinking-wells-contaminated-illinois-minnesota Despite all this I see the nuclear industry proponents weathering this, publicly speaking, as some of us slowly die from diseases we will have no idea were ever caused by radioactive particles. It is truly a gaffed and polluted world we live in. So if you didn't know about this particular nuclear power plant I urge you to pay particular attention as it could be the next 3 mile island story...or not. I am somewhat encourage to know that the critical infrastructure is 32' above flood expectations; however, there are issues with drains backing up, wiring going to shit, risk of fires, and leaking into what is essentially "clean" rooms. Alot of nuclear regulatory rules will requiring bending, a skill well honed by the commission. Meanwhile, the dams further up river are tested while various levees continue to fail and flood a home that might or might not be covered by the local news station. The lack of coverage of this unfolding disaster and the intentional blackout of Fukushima - which by the way is being considered a level 8 event (worse than Chernobyl), a whole new category - can only leave one to confirm that anything tied to radiation is taboo by corporate think tanks. Too much is invested in nuclear power. If you're lacking media coverage though, one can always turned to Al Jazeera....now isn't that ironic?

Well that's enough talk about droughts and floods on this Summer solstice so let's move on to an environmental report regarding our oceans that's been circulating the Internet on just about every major media site. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/oceans-on-brink-of-catastrophe-2300272.html Marine life is facing extinction within one human generation. Why? Us...that's why. We're dumping in them, spilling shit, over-fishing, and basically polluting the waters with every type of toxic residue from industrial society. All creatures pollute, and many of them are quite destructive, but it seems mankind takes it exponentially to another level, a level that has the capability of quite literally wiping life from the planet...a ELE event. There's just too many of us, and if you know anything about ecology there's a term they call "carrying capacity" and what happens when a species exceeds that limit. We're past it already, thanks to black gold (oil), and we're in the process of destroying and permanently lowering the carrying capacity. All known biological examples of this occurring results in a die off, a radical population reduction that brings the species below the "new" carrying capacity, a capacity now lower than the one before thanks to ecological scarring. Call it what you will, but this is real life, in the now, process of dying. That means we're in for starvation, rampant disease, and wars, all of which will be in magnitude to the growth acceleration we saw in the last hundred years. I believe it will happen much quicker than anyone expects, just as all the global warming consequences are now occurring much faster than what was once predicted.

It's a sobering thought as we begin the Summer of hell, and our children looked to us and ask
"Why did you destroy my future world???"

What do bugs teach us?

2011-05-15T21:49:00.000-07:00

Long ago, before seven dust, Furadan, Temik, Diazom, and all the rest of the 21st century's arsenal of chemical weapons there was a time when the human animal stared over his food crop helpless to defend it against the hordes of insectae. Did he muse and paw over his squash and beans like a chimpanzee grooming its kin? Maybe picking and eating them (the bugs) one-by-one too, like multi-colored Halloween candy, or perhaps it was more sophisticated; as in, did he scrounge around finding predators to drop into the gardens battlefield? Maybe they just shrugged and went fishing leaving the women to fret over wilting leaves and festering fruit. The latter seems quite amusing.

I contemplate this as I take up my eggplants leaf in my hand while cradling it like a wounded puppy. Top leaves all curled and furled up like it was cursed with a disfiguring form of elephantitis.

A few aphids wander the stems being chased by a long march of ants, and a nearby assassin bug climbs a squash canopy while I consider the crime scene. I peer up at the garden rows to see carpenter bee's, honey bee's, beetles, stink bugs, and all manner of unidentified flying objects darting amongst the bounty of zucchini, cantaloupe, tomatoes, and peppers. Scaled up it would make for a great alien invasion sci-fi opening scene....just add the lasers. You could sense the excitement in the tiny life creeping, crawling, and flying around. Despite this attack my eggplants were bearing fresh pods that grew a little every morning. I have the white version making the fleshy pods dangle like ivory earrings. My cantaloupe vines were racing to the Southern fence and already bearing fertilized bulbs hidden under large green leaves. Long cayenne peppers dangled nearby while tomorrows zucchini swelled to picking size. Except for the effected eggplant all was looking good. Life was surely being drawn here like to a banquet or buffet, and with this drought it was one of the few areas that received regular watering. I could just imagine the life that was crawling unseen in the dirt, through the roots, and under the toiled clay. Surely microscopically there was even more buzz and commotion taking place. There was so much going on it was as if the earth itself was "breathing."

So as the aphids swarm and the stink bugs suck I contemplate our own infestation on a planetary scale. Where is our preying mantis? Where is our lady bug? Where is the seven dust to sprinkle on the human swarm? Now that I think of it, the idea that a xenomorphic mantis; like in the movie alien, chasing us around ready to punch a hole in a few brain pans sounds kinda interesting....scary...but interesting. Can you imagine a human suck head slurping on Sarah Palin's brain, I know it's a small meal for sure, but can you picture it? Maybe some tiny parasite or bacterium is ready to clear the deck of humans too. Our numbers really haven't soared to these unprecedented levels until the last century or so, so maybe the lady bug man killers are just evolving in some pool hidden in a dwindling rain forest. Some say we'll just go the way of yeast, killing each other over the last spoil of resources until there's none. Well darn, a human hunter killer sounds so much more suspenseful. Could be just a rock from deep space playing pool with the universe. One big galactic fireball that sends a state size plume of rock and earth into the stratosphere. Save us all from the slow misery of starvation. Probably all happen given enough time.

Humans aren't special.....just another bug in the bushes.

Right before our eyes

2011-05-11T18:49:00.000-07:00

Under the blue skies and right before our eyes.......

There are two different worlds. One of them is in the minds of men, and the other right before our eyes. Very few of us see the real world. We've been blinded by this shroud of human illusion, a shroud that thickens and smothers the light as we solidify our ideas and beliefs. It's a slow and steady process that begins from the moment we're born and ends with our blinded soul having grown weary of the darkness. It's not a question or idea that's new - that we live in a world of darkness - as enlightened people have been telling us this forever. Wise guru's and mystics have rooted themselves to cliff tops and retreated to caves in solemn contemplation pondering such musings for thousands of years. Nothing new in revelation that hasn't been revealed before, yet we still see the shadow of illusion cloaking the world of men despite this. Why?

Especially since the light of truth is "right before our eyes." Let me explain. Imagine that you're one of the lucky ones, an astronaut, and you're up in the international space station orbiting our gorgeous planet. You stare out one of the ports pointed towards Earth and see the planet, its continents, its oceans, the clouds, the tree's, the lakes, the rivers, and so on. You see the continent of Africa coming into view. The Congo, Tanzania, Libya, Ethiopia....oh, but wait, you don't see any such thing. All you see is mountains, jungles, deserts, rivers, grasslands, and coastlines. You don't see countries, nations, dividing lines, tribes, dictatorships, and all the illusions of what humans pretend exists. It's all made up. It's all illusion. Truth? It's right before your eyes - One pretty planet, one species of man, oceans, rivers, and land.

Not this....

It's not just whole planets we've woven a fictitious world around, it's people too. Do we really see each other? People walk around with a false world in our heads that we seldom see them clearly. I assure you that we have mapped out a whole world of expectations upon meeting a stranger. Black (check, he might be loud, like tacky jewelry, the world owes something, etc), blond (dumb, shallow, sexual), Republican (watches Fox, god fearing, likes the rich, hates welfare), etc, etc, etc, yada, yada, yada. We sit and talk online, at water coolers, on the phone with our friends about people and places we've never actually been to, lived, or experienced. We speak with authority and arrogance, a kingly ego that pompously lays judgement using illusionary concepts. These ideas and belief's can spin a lifetime of meaningless conversations, arguments, and debates. It destroys our power, our unity, and obscures wisdom. What an absolute shame and a corruption!

If great teachers of the past - Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Solomon, Rimpoche, etc - could not remove this falsity from the minds of men, than what hope is there? Why do you think they meditated? Why do you think they were of few words? Why do you think they were in control of their emotions? TRUTH! It takes mediation to clear the illusions. Because truth is simple, it takes few words, and emotions come from illusion.

Truth is the light! Light is in everything around us, a reflection of creation, and it only takes an innocent eye to see it.

Nature could care less.

2011-05-05T20:46:00.000-07:00

Today's weather was one of those rare days where temperature, humidity, light, and wind become a window into conditions found only in heaven. Two Blue Jay's engage in playful aerial acrobatics while I sip my morning joe of hazelnut coffee. A cardinal and his mate dine on the sunflower seeds I put out for them. Everything alive was out and about celebrating Spring time in their own unique way. I was but a witness.

Unbeknowest to the woodland creatures that play in my world, the mighty river north of here was spilling its banks, breaking levies, flooding farmland, and destroying homes. A drought had withered and destroyed most of the crops in France. Another fire broke out in the ongoing nuclear disaster an ocean away, and somewhere in the world people were plotting to kill one another. Scientist release a report that shows the Cryosphere melting far faster than their worst predictions a year ago. Jobless claims soar like a giant industrial hiccup, and European finances give a shutter. Anxiety and worry everywhere....but here. It was as if the energy of life was immune to these disharmonics, and it carried on in its natural state of bliss. I was absorbed in it...a genuine rapture. The wisdom of things playing out around us each and every day has stood the test of time, it has seen animals of all sorts come and go, the mountains washed to the sea, and the new ones rise from them. Surely, the proclivities and moribund decay on display presently has been seen before. Surely, the dynamo of creation will weather it. I ponder this as I stare at a lizard pondering back at me.

It doesn't seem to care....in fact nothing around me seems to care. The breeze seems to laugh at my worry as it tickles my fancy to pull the canoe out and try that new bass lure. Ha, ha, ha, it chuckles blowing across my neck. Ah what the heck, life is too short and miraculous not to carpe deum heavens window. Everything is simplified on days like this. The canoe and gear loaded on the back of my small truck, a back window busted out of it, and a bill collector hounding me in payment - of which I told the caller that if they show me the road to economic recovery I'll show them a payment. The humor was missed by them in their cubicle world, and I merely shrugged off my worries thinking of the redwing blackbirds that would be dazzling me with their aerial show.

A small family was gathered at the boat launch with poles cast and a small toddler throwing marshmallows to a baby alligator a few feet away. The scene was charming and would make a great painting. They were very friendly and encouraging, "going out to where the fish are?" Why yes I was. Tackle bag, cooler with cold water, pole and new lure, paddle, knife, and cell phone. The Canadian made canoe slipped smoothly into the swampy waters as a loud bullfrog croaked and grunted. I was off into unknown coves filled with alligators and mysterious swamp monsters. My paddle dipped into the murky rich waters making my conveyance slice a path to the unexplored Eastern cove of "White's Kitchen" bayou. I tested my new fofangled bass lure along the banks as I drifted. The jitterbug, or so it was called, was shaped like a frog and designed to skim the waters surface. It's antics of flipping and flopping like a wounded toad would surely pull the delicious bass out from their hidey holes. I sent my cast here and there with a steady retrieve while watching all manner of swamp life croak, chirp, burp, crack, whistle, slap, bellow, purse, moan, gurgle, and what have you. So much life talking. What were they saying...I wondered. The red crested black bird was busy chasing the ducks as they quacked when my lure plunked into the water.

No fish reeled in after nearly an hour cruising the eastern banks. I continued taking the canoe into a twisted cove that looked forlornly like the den of a giant alligator. Surely, I would look to big and ugly to be messed with, but who would see me if something did happen? I laughed at the thought letting the idea drift off like a fairy tale. The sunlight was reflecting across the green expanse of hyacinths, pickerel weed, swamp milkweed, and spider lily's. Dragonflies, butterflies, damselflies, and love bugs flew about like wicked fairies. The muddy water was still and beckoning. It was time......

I cast the lure across my private gator den listening to it hit the water and paddle back on retrieve. After a while of this I became indifferent to whether or not anything would ever strike, but then, then it happened. Bam! The fish hit with vigor and I had my first fish of the day. The feeling of a catch strikes a primitive cord. The human animal triumphant once more!

Then another....

Once again, nature freely provided. 5 in all and I even had a chance to tease a three foot alligator gar as it chased the bait back to the canoe. Fish, turtles, and gators were all having their meals too. All the life around freely giving and taking. No money involved at all. No law. No rules. No leaders. Just the freedom that natures gives at birth. It is only humanity that makes up the rest in order to enslave.

You only have to look outside to see that nature doesn't care about our worries, our fears, our rules, and our effects. It only gives and takes....freely. Something so resilient, so lasting of hardship, so endowed with wisdom can surely endure us.

Nature could care less.

Dust to Dust

2011-05-03T20:46:00.000-07:00

For a blog dedicated to the musings of "Dust in the Wind," the month long weather we've been having in coastal MS epitomizes this description. Once again, another cold front has swung through only to fizzle East of Baton Rouge. My friends in Texas report even more dire drought conditions. The dark and cloudy day teased and tantalized but gave no relief other to usher in a cold May evening. I was down at the volunteer fire station picking up my bunker gear, jump suit, radio, and medical gear when one of the firefighters complained about the chilly wind. I only smirked and said, "this is but a Vermont heat wave." Having endured a long New England winter I wasn't complaining about temperatures in the 40's...ever...again. The next few days here are destined to be delightfully March like with temps in the 60's and lows in the 40's and 50's. No rain unfortunately, so I'll continue working the sprinkler feeding my growing vegetable garden.

This picture is from several weeks ago, but I have tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, cucumbers, peppers, cantaloupe, lettuce, and butter lettuce planted. All of them growing well in a tilled bed of horse manure and dark earth. I'll try and get a more recent photo. While we pray for rain, the dry weather has been perfect for what I needed to do around the house; that is, my friend and I have been steadily clearing the acreage for further use. This would've been impossible if the season was typical of South MS this time of the year.

Working out in the woods, chopping, and chainsawing tree's while chaining up to the felled pines was brutal work, but I could only imagine the vigor of pioneers armed with a mere axe and set of draft horses. Whole days were spent working on ONE stump in the old days. It's days when I'm drenched in sweat, my joints ache, and I'm fussing over horseflies that I pause at imagining life without oil age contraptions. I thought I'd take advantage of my unemployed free time, no waiting at the diesel pumps, and the dry weather to get this done, a long over due project. I still have days of dragging small tree's out of the woods to toss on a 20' high burn pile. I don't know when it will ever get burned with no rain and a persistent burn ban. I've been trying to work out a deal with the fire chief to carry out a practice event using my conflagatory tower of pine tree's.

Tomorrow I'll be volunteering in Slidell, LA at fire district 1's station helping them cover 911 while the regular station crews attend the funeral of David Smith, a firefighter that was helplessly gunned down at his house. http://slidellsentry.com/articles/2011/05/03/news/doc4db73c4fd24a0223411893.txt

May our brother make a happy transcendence.

(This is the oak tree behind the house that I wish to be buried under)

Dust in the Wind

A lesson in bugging out

2011-05-03T09:39:00.000-07:00

Many of my friends and followers are probably aware by now that I have left the green mountains of Vermont to my old home in the marshy coastal woods of South MS. There was no one reason for this to have happened, and I my decision was not an easy one. From January to March it was becoming all to clear that the transplant to Vermont was not "taking." My heating bills were piled up, my home back in MS was being robbed, ransacked, and generally trashed by renters, and my wife was full of melancoly and vice over being so far from family. The teaching opportunity that I had so hoped for at White River Valley EMS never really materialized thanks to a Vermont rule that there can only be one state instructor per district. Under all this pressure I began to focus on the qualities of Vermont that I didn't find so attractive - cold for most of the year, attrocious roads that destroy vehicles, no family, and little opportunity to ever have a place of our own. Property is crazy high for a state that has little in the way of industry or jobs. Owner finance was profoundly rare. I was also having trouble adjusting to New England society. I'm not reserved or secretive - my heart is on my shoulder, and I never did figure out their sense of humor.

Still....I wanted this to happen, to make this work, and to stick it out. It was an adventure! If I wasn't married, a decision that I don't regret, I would still be in Vermont today despite the difficulties, but alas providence meant for this to be a lesson. To all those members that sent me money to help out in moving to VT, I thank you from the deepest of my heart. Maybe there's no meaning to it at all...I don't know....I'm just human. I made a friend with a forum member that lived in Montpelier a few weeks before I made the decision to leave (back in March). I of course had no financial where-with-all to up and move back despite the financial situation necessitating it. After several commiserating conversations, and a spendid drink of bourbon, he was kind enough to lend me the necessary money. I had the decision to use it to get back, or to catch up on my bills, but since my home back in MS was robbed and now rentless with copper thieves on the prowl, I made the decision to move back before my financial window was closed. I knew gas prices weren't going to improve so my exit window had to be made quickly. Expectently, this didn't sit too well with my landlord or my employer, but I acted on priorities of survival - financial or otherwise.

Even with the money that was loaned to me the trip back would be prohibitive. For some unknown reason Uhaul and other moving companies charged nearly twice for a truck to go back as it was to move up. Logistical demand is what they told me. I called my very dear friend, close friends since third grade (more than 30 years ago), to come up with his 18' trailer and F250 4x4. I looked into renting a uhaul trailer, and found it fairly inexpensive compared to a moving truck. I rented a small enclosed trailer that my pickup could haul and we loaded everything else on my friends trailer. But of course I had to pay for my friends fuel to come up, to go back, my fuel, the trailer rental, and so on. It was no easy achievement financially to pull the move off. I still owe Gillespie hundreds of dollars in heating oil and my VT utilities still are not paid. I left the home in Brookfield clean and well cared for, hoping the landlord would just let me go without pursuing the remainder of the lease legally. By grace I haven't heard anything since in that respect.

My wife had left a month earlier, in Febuary, to go back and look for a job. After looking for over a month she had found one in Metairie. She works for a property insurance firm now. Not much money but it gets most of our MS bills paid. I knew my job search upon coming back was going to be very difficult as I had heard that paramedic positions were far and few. I wasn't to be disappointed. So my days since returning I have been sharing the time looking for jobs, clearing my property, fixing what the renters destroyed, planting a vegetable garden, and days taking my Canadian canoe out into the bayou's to fish. Any activity that we can find that doesn't cost us anything. I have tried to advertise some teaching revolving around suturing, emergency medicine, and IV's on the various forums. There's been some encouraging feedback that suggests there is a desire out there for that type of stuff. I hope to be making trips to teach in the near future. My first visit will probably be out west with some members in California and Arizona. Suturing lessons seem to be the most popular. http://www.theoilage.com/megadooms-consultation-outline-t3266.html.

Let me know if anyone that follows my blog would be interested. I'd be happy to offer these lessons for free, but I need the money badly at the moment. Still running from the debt hounds. I also have been out harvesting water hyacinths to sell on ebay http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170632804952&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT

Suturing and IV's will become a very valuable set of skills when societies depravidity evolves into a full blown meltdown, and mother nature comes in to sweep up the pieces.

BP oil, ungodly summer heat, and mighty hurricanes are concerns of mine once again, but at least I'm back in my element, my wife is happier, my family and friends near, and my Vermont experience enshrined in my soul. Like the nature of this blog, I too, am "Dust in the Wind."

Goodbye Vermont, I will miss you.

Digging in & digging out

2011-02-08T18:21:00.000-08:00

Like everyone else in these mountains I'm out in the snow with my shovel. Several world war I style snow trenches encircle the house as I make pathways for the dogs to do their business, and for me to get around and rescue the back porch from certain collapse. I stare at the roof and watch the snow slide imperceptibly over the edge, only to come thundering down in a sudden and surprising collapse. I imagine our civilization doing the same, and with everything going on right now - in the world - I'm certain we are at the melt point dangerously over the eaves and ready to fall suddenly. The global economic system has the burden of heavy debt and overcapacity. Gravity, or as it were, reality, will bring it all down like so much burdensome iniquity. I ponder these musings while I work up a sweat shoveling four feet of snow pack from the back porch, and at the same time nervously staring up at the roof waiting for the unfallen snow to crush me. My survival plan was to shift inward to the exterior walls and under the eaves if I heard the looming calamity. My guardian angel was on duty and after several hours my only misery was a sore shovel arm and a set of sweat soaked clothing. Southern boys can survive!

Came inside to cyber talk with www.oilage.com forum members and monitor unfolding global events that 99% of my fellow Americans choose to ignore while taking their Disney trips and spending nights with American Idol. Speaking of Disney, they had a great showing on Wall st sending Dow industrials even higher, or was it McDonald's profits since the ever poorer debt laden citizen chooses their frankafood over fresh produce. People seem to be using their credit cards again, I figure out of desperation and the need to keep their dystopic narcissistic worlds intact. And of course the media chose to largely ignore reports that jobs have not kept up with population growth, and housing is showing cardinal signs of further deflation - at least 20%. Bankruptcy is also up...again. I'm amazed that the media pundits choose to follow script with so few willing to break the recovery meme. What in the world are those producers saying in those ear mics? I did come across this online that compiles government action over the last few years - We can see now how this environment has been wonderful for equities (Stocks):
-The Chinese government stimulates to the effect of 13% of GDP in late 2008 and this spills over globally.
-The T.A.R.P. money is distributed around the financial and industrial sector in the U.S.A.
-Bank shares are bought by the Treasury; ditto for shares of auto companies.
-Accounting rules are changed so the banks can start showing a profit.
-The Fed radically steepens the yield curve by cutting rates to zero and then promotes financial sector profitability by purchasing mortgages en masse. The mantra is that the Fed and Treasury saved us from a Depression.
-The Fed moves to expand its balance sheet even more in November but unofficially announces the extension in late August.
-The U.S. government embarks on a spending spree in early 2009 and runs up a record debt bill and then extends the stimulus in late 2010.
So the corporate sector has been receiving tremendous support from the government.

Bond market yields inched up higher today as the fed found little in the way of foreign bank investment. QE2 continues on while the world struggles to pay for food. Egyptians are still embattled with their government not realizing that no one from a dictator to Ghandi can save them and keep them fed.

Droughts and run away inflation in China http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-china-drought-global-impact.html, cat 5 hurricanes, fires, and profound biblical flooding in Australia http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/02/idUS380823123420110202, crop failures in Russia, drought in Brazil http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/brazil/101102/amazon-drought-climate-change, massive flooding in South Africa, and winter storms sweeping relentlessly through the southern US and dumping record amounts of snow, and all of which marked by startling events taking place in the Artic. The climate is destabilizing. Between inflation and global crop failures a large portion of humanity is destined to starve. I'm sure we're set to see even worse.

"How is it you cannot see the signs?"

I continue to do what I can from my Vermont outpost, a old antique house built up in the hills by a man whom I'm sure saw 19th century difficulties. I add to my food stockpile weekly, and I found a nice second hand food store down in Bethel, VT that provides staples at a marked discount. I snap up the mac and cheese at 35c a box and flax cereal for 2 bucks while shopping with people barely able to keep the heat on in their houses. Money is profoundly tight in my household as it is with many of my neighbors. Most are too proud to admit their difficulties. I see a desperate and depressive look on my operations manager at work. Our ambulance service, the one I work at, is locally supported and budget revenue's are dropping everywhere. She hasn't said we're in trouble, but I wonder when I see few calls, whether hosp to hosp transports, or emergency's coming in. There is continued equipment breakdowns at the station, from 200,000 dollar trucks with air suspension failures to people running over gas lines with snow blowers, the price of maintenance is high. I think too that the state's snow clearing budget is nearing it's max and we have still a ways to go before escaping Winter's embrace. More snow tonight and later this week. Inch after inch the plows weather on draining what's left in the coffers. What oh what will we do when the snow becomes too expensive to move and 21st century lives become entombed up here in these cold mountains? I question my reserves and choice of this isolated place so far from friend or family. The toil of this has taken a bite in the harmony of my marriage.

My providence is tested and my God bats last.

Penguin Plunge fundraising!

2011-01-21T10:58:00.001-08:00

I'll be plunging into the freezing cold waters of lake Champlain on Feb 5th, 2011 in Burlington, VT. It's for a good cause - Special Olympics. Any small donation would help tremendously.

Thanks for helping! Oh, and I'll be sure to post pics and video of my....uh...insanity.

Mud worse than snow

2011-01-03T18:31:00.000-08:00

If you're going to move to Vermont you've got to come to terms with mud. Vermont's mud season is typically in April but apparently we can get spells right in the middle of winter that'll be just the same. Anytime temperatures get above freezing for more than 24 hours it turns the roads to pure pig heaven. It's a vehicle's worse nightmare. I come from a pretty muddy state, but nothing like Vermont. Most of the roads here are made from sand and crushed limestone, and it makes for a squirrely trip anywhere. I can't imagine any other state that isn't harder on a vehicle than this one. I find my Matrix becomes unrecognizable on a regular bases, becoming caked in a salty mix of whatever it is they spray on the roads, and the sand they spread on the back roads. My car is red but you could hardly tell, and god help a cop trying to read my license plate. Could be a good thing. Not that you'd see a cop in these parts, so thank goodness crime is non-existent.

Yesterday, my wife and I took a 45 min trip South of here to Lebanon New Hampshire, a small city that has commercial amenities to purchase what we need, in this case something for fleas. You'd think with these temperatures we wouldn't have to worry about fleas, but no, we do...er the poor dogs. Fleas these days seem to be becoming more and more immune to whatever pesticide we decide to splash them with. All of them becoming very pricey too, only to find they did little in the way of killing them. Many a product I've spent money on only to find these damn parasites leaping and frolicking on the dogs. I added biospot spray and medicine to the product line, a combination that cost me about $40. We still had comfortis for the Chihuahua, but that requires a vet trip and a prescription. Works as long as you don't have a massive infestation. We did back in Pearlington Mississippi, but so far not in Vermont. Anyway, this trip down to Lebanon takes us several miles on Vermont's back roads - all very muddy from the recent warm up. My wife gripped the "oh shit" bar with white knuckles as our little car slipped and jostled uncontrollably from one rut to the next. The trick was keeping up your speed as not to bog down, but slow enough not to lose control. Really dangerous when other traffic shows up, both of you have to perilously navigate the muddy ruts without smacking into each other. For being a little afternoon errand run it's quite the adrenaline rush.

Without a doubt I prefer frozen back roads - icy and hard, then to deal with 6 inches of mud. Once we made it to the interstate, the local I-89 heading south, the car's steering wheel vibrated terribly at speeds of 65mph. Why? Well simple, all that mud riding causes mud to cake in behind the front wheels and it throws them out of balance. Fun huh? Nope, give me snow and ice any day.

Life in Vermont

2011-01-03T18:19:00.000-08:00

I've been up here now for 2 1/2 months, er since October 10th if I recall, and there have been misgivings, surprises, and attractiveness to the transplantation.

Vermont, well it's more rural than even I expected, and seems to be a state that got stuck in 1950 and perhaps even further back. I live in Brookfield which is pretty much smack dab in the middle of the state situated on a mountain. You could easily pass through the town and never really realized that you were in one. Farms mostly and all scattered in the hinter lands around these tiny hamlets that go for towns...at least to the locals. Think Norman Rockwell with 18th century shops lined up on a single main street punctuated by a tall steepled church and if you're lucky a 18th century library. Every town has a town hall, New England style - rectangular and white with a bell tower. There are a few 20th century interloping companies popping up, but they're still cloaked in 18th century adornments - small shops, antique lamps, and 200 year old bricks. The bank I use is located in Bethel, and when you walk in it's like stepping into a wild west movie set. Original iron bars at the counter, ornate ionic interior artecture, and smell of an antique shop. I'm a little surprised the teller doesn't have one of those little bow ties and a waxed mustache. That's what I mean by having modern commercialization blending in with the Vermont time machine.

The people are quiet and a bit stand offish at first. Their humor escapes me as I find them laughing when I'm left wondering what was funny and vice versa. Their accents vary considerably as many are from Boston, Philadelphia, NY, and Maine. My boss at work is from Maine and has a squeally fast talking jibe that took a little at first to get use to. She's also a open and proud lesbian. Married in fact to one of the supervisors and they have a kid. VT is very liberal and open minded about marriage, god, and the gay community. I'm not bothered by it in the least as I grew up in the French Quarter of New Orleans - gay central. Those from Boston seem to be the most bothered by it, and also the most outspoken about politics in general. Very racists too, and not the kind of racism you find in the South. The South has pretty much gone underground with their racist feelings, keeping it between themselves and in their private worlds. Some of the people I've met from Boston have no problem using the vernacular and hate spittled colloquialisms in the South's hay day. Very Republican, very conservative, and very opinionated.

Vermont strongly supports their troops, and it seems they are firm believers that we're over "there" to protect our freedoms over here. They're not conspiratorialist by nature, but many despise government in general. They vent these feelings at their town halls, and they're not shy about it too.

There is a strong organic hippie movement here. You'll find organic whole food shops in pretty much every town - raw milk, fresh eggs, and cheese is readily available to anyone. You can't be afraid to ask though. I pass up cows, chickens, goats, and horses on the way to work everyday. I might care to mention to that the roads are pretty much without traffic, and about the only time where you might find yourself slowed is if they're working on the streets or power lines. There are few to any cops, and about the only time you have to obey the speed limit is in the towns. They'll get you for speeding in their school zones, they're very protective of the old and young, but outside that you're on your own. The local youth drive too damn fast if you ask me and I regularly find their stupid asses off the road and into a ditch. Most towns specifically require their cops to stay within the township and NOT to patrol the rural roads outside of that. So there is a certain wildness to where I'm at.

My neighbors are splendid people who probably out of necessity are eager to help if asked. I have a large farm next to me with horses and cows. Their freezer is full of turkeys and chickens from the Fall slaughter. He comes to plow my driveway if the snow gets above 4". That's what is worked out by the landlord. He's told me though that if I need help with something he would be happy to come help, and I told him likewise.

The home I rented here is situated up on a hill next to my neighbor and we're both close to 2000' in elevation, so we get quite a bit of snow compared to the valley's. The closest town to me is Randolph - can't really call Brookfield a town, doesn't have anything but a church and a library - and I'm 20 min's via long winding mountainous road. A road that turns to mud at the first signs of any thaw. A big thaw recently as the temps got up to 50 degrees and with the recent snow base, hmm maybe 12" there's been lots of mud making going on. A real challenge for my low to the ground Toyota matrix. One of the first things I did when I got up here is go and purchase some good snow tires, studded no less, and took care of the brakes. The pads were just about gone on the front rotors. My small pickup truck is parked for the winter, being a rear wheel drive and no snow tires. It does have much better clearance though. I just hate driving non-4x4 trucks in the snow and mud. The house is 200 years old, one of the first homes built in Brookfield, and the original owner built the famous floating bridge - a antiquated historical structure that spans Brookfields pond. Old wooden blanks tied to giant barrels. The poor old thing has been rebuilt numerous times and is currently closed for repairs again. The township was able to procure some federal funds to fix it, so I should be able to get some great photo's of me driving across it one day. If we don't run out of fuel before then. I wish I were kidding.

The house was a bad pick for me though, since the landlord doesn't use a wood stove and won't allow one either. It's very leaky to the elements and uses a heating oil blown furnace. A wasteful monster located down in the stone basement. When it gets below twenty degree's it kicks on just about every 15 min's and I keep the thermostat set to 65. Any lower and my wife might leave me. Even at this temp we pretty much dress up when relaxing in the house, and have two thick down comforters to sleep under at night. I've done what I could to insulate the house and make things cheaper for me, all based off the advice given to me by the locals, and it includes sealing all the windows with plastic, caulking the trim, and sealing off unusued doors with blankets. I've also sealed off the upstairs so it'll only heat the one floor. Nothing's air tight here and most of the hot air escapes the ceiling joists and warms the upstairs nonetheless. There are 200 year old rough cut beams spanning the ceiling, and are quite lovely to look at, admiring the workmanship and sweat it took to hand cut and whittle them into 40' square timbers. We have a bare earth basement with original stone walls, and would make for a great root cellar, for which I'm sure was once used as. The house is located on 9 hilly acres that descend towards a big lake or pond. I've taken the trail down to it many times, and it's now frozen over. Pretty soon I'll try my luck at ice fishing, something I've never done. Gonna have to be careful though, I'm a big fella and I'm have no inclination to join the power bear club. Think I'll be taking a rope and and ice pick with me.

Someone pull the alarms!

2010-12-09T18:34:00.000-08:00

How many Americans pay attention to bond yields, treasuries, currency, and other fiat jazz? Not many I suspect. It seems, thanks to movies like Wall st and that Kevin Bacon flick, we rely on the Dow to gauge where the economy is at. Hardly. The Dow is nothing more than speculative liquidity. A far greater concern for all of us is the perceived value of our currency. The bond market entices investment by raising interest rates and thereby creating a greater return on these bonds. The higher the yields the worst our situation is perceived by those interested. They're weighing the risks, and these days where our fed chairman is pumping virtual nothingness into a broken bank cartel there are many! All of it hidden behind the veil of economic gibberish that most worker drones are utterly clueless to the freak show going on in that federal reserve den.

The US deficit is 1.6 trillion dollars. No one is buying our shit, it's all being supported by super banks - federal reserve, ECB, and IMF. We don't even have a hope in hell of paying the freaking interest! Do even our politicians get it? Doesn't seem like it, they'd rather play politics and argue over tax cuts, unemployment, and welfare. There solution? Work out a deal to keep tax cuts for everyone - including the wealthy - and extend unemployment. I don't know about anybody else but does that signal an attempt to reduce the deficit? Sounds more like a government trying to keep the slaves hopeful and less rebellious.

The truth is we don't have the productive capacity to recover from the morbid debt situation. We are circling the drain and will eventually default. What I see is a country that has grown slovenly stupid, corrupt, and moribound in the assumption that with enough government spending the economic engine will restart. It takes sacrifice, which no one wants, hard work, which no one wants, ingenuity, we have some of that, and sincerity, which is completely and utterly absent!

Europe is exploding with protests and unrest and things are just getting started there. Ireland was bailed out, a country in which all the economic fundies were saying would never be in the same boat as Greece just a few months before all hell broke loose, and placed the IMF austerity measures on the citizenry who had nothing to do with the mess. Meanwhile, like in our country and others, the banks become enriched. A massive shift in wealth is taking place globally. How? Through the currency. There will be rich and there will be poor, but those in the middle are going bye bye. Over the next several months the bond crisis and fiscal calamity striking Europe will manifest itself with greater and greater violence. Banks will burn, airports will closed down, trains will stop, and the Molotov's will fly. Don't worry, the party is coming here too. Oh wait to our Wally world goons have to pay 4 dollars a gallon for fuel again, and the banks stop working. The money is going to be worthless in the future.

So keep an eye on the bond auctions and interest rates. Oh Ben is going to lose control over his monster. BTW, Ron Paul is now on the board of finance subcommittee....and this should be good.

Little bit of this and a little bit of that...and you've got War!

2010-11-12T19:22:00.000-08:00

Like two stag bulls staring each other down, the US and Chinese figure heads have begun their grunting and bellowing behind the close doors of the G20. Why? Well everyone should know why by now: oh Ben Bernakie, our reserve chairman has begun his printing again, his shady wall st manipulations, and his purposeful devaluation of a already devalued dollar. They call it QE2. Most citizens haven't a clue what that means, they only want their current lives to continue as if the future most certainly owes them the same as their parents and grand-parents. No one dares do anything about the current system in which a select few hold tremendous power over monetary exchange rates. 1913, specifically that year in which we handed over the reins of this country to a PRIVATE bank which now holds vast power and sway over our current predicament and the future and security of all Americans. They say Ron Paul will put a stop to this darth sidious force with a FED audit at the very least, or outright abolished. Guess which one I would prefer? Don't anyone hold their breath though, the central bank is THE most powerful force in the global empire, and they plan to nuke the world economy, and force choke grip on anyone that might oppose them.

So while the bauble heads put on a show for the sleeping masses - unless you're French - the real cartel begins setting up the next mass human liquidation. It begins with the instrument of money - currency. A intentional devaluation of our currency is a direct attack on Chinese exports, and sets up Europe to begin falling first. Boy is it too, have you seen Ireland bond spreads? So while fiat currency's around the world begin to implode we'll start to see the greater plan begin to emerge - war and a new world currency. NWO and amero nonsense you say? Yeah, I used to think that was pretty far fetched too, but the same looney's we call crazy for warning NWO and a global currency are also the ones that told us gold was going to go up and up. Popped through 1400/ounce recently, and I won't be surprised when it breaks 2,000 soon. Gold too rich for your blood? Buy Silver, that's going to break 30/ounce pretty soon. Gosh, I can remember when it was 5/ounce back when I was teenager. Anyway, getting back to collapsing currencies and such, we have Ireland imploding as I write this, and the ECB will be stepping in like they did for Greece to impose austerity and a comprehensive bailout plan. The same clowns that said Ireland would never go bankrupt and Greece will survive it's austerity measures will come on various economic shows to tell us the Ireland humpty dumpty dollar shall be made a whole again. What rubbish, it'll be Spain and Portugal next. ECB can step in there too, but with each bailout measure you undermine the currency and financial instruments of a functioning European economy. As this keeps up China's going to find that the only customer it has is itself.

What about us? We are only just now beginning to feel the pressure of financial events that started back in 2008. State fiscal structure will continue to fall apart, the US consumer will find oil, gas, and food increasingly unaffordable, and god help you if you're one of those citizens that have fallen off the unemployment dole. You know, the people the government no longer counts in order to make the unemployment figures look slightly better than they are - 18%! Oh lord, better find a tent city or shack up with the parents. Food stamps, welfare, and food drives are all skyrocketing economic indicators being largely ignored by the rich on Wall st. Speaking of those chaps, they've been riding the QE2 wave for weeks raking in the junk change injection while the serfs out on the street are wondering why the coffee packages are getting smaller, and the price of fuel is almost 3/gallon again.

Hey, if you're not one of the unlucky serfs wondering where you're job went, or why you have to stand in line to get a check, surely you've heard about your state's inability to balance the budget? Right? That's part of it! When real estate values go down, the tax appraisals go down, and when that happens they don't bring in as much revenue. Also, retail consumption has dropped markedly with so many unemployed....oh wait, you want to point out the profit margins of Walmart and Best Buy to say that retail ain't so bad. Oh say now, tell those chains to hire back all the people they layed off back in 2009, or the crimped stale paycheck, benefits, and hourly fucking of their employee's to ensure some board member suits get to continue taking the yacht out! I tell you, the corporate media is damn good and convincing everyone of the supremacy of capitalism and greed. Gordon Gecko "Greed is good," except we ain't Gordon Gecko. We're the dumb peasant who has forgotten to sharpen their pitch fork.

This all comes back to currency, that fiat bill that ain't worth the paper it's printed on. Watch the money, the fluctuations are going to be the drum treble to war.

You can find it all here at www.theoilage.com, a forum that I administer. Come over and learn some techniques that will equip you in "attempting" to survive WWIII.
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On the home front I just celebrated my wife's 34th birthday. Had a delicious bowl of Gumbo, cake, and now snuggling in with the wife. Keep your family close, the stored stuff fresh and dry, and the weapons accessible. The day could be tomorrow.

Escape to Vermont!

2010-11-06T17:29:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the generous help from forum members - Lifeaftertheoilcrash - and the perseverance of perpetuity I and my sweet wife have found ourselves deep into New England - Vermont! A mere 1600 miles from the deep south, a place I have called home for all my life. We've been up here for nearly a month now, only now have I really had the time to settle down and do a little blogging for those interested, and I must declare the scenary, atmosphere, and the new job becoming deeply rooted to my soul. Only feeling the tug of home when I worry about our Winter heating bill, or when my wife becomes sadden at seeing her nephew via skype and knowing she'll only see the family maybe once or twice a year.

We know no-one up here in the capacity of just hanging out and sharing anxieties, but thankfully my forum friends around me in these hills are planting, storing, and herding the goats away from prowling coyoty's and they're within an hour or two of me. Their experiences and nearness settle certain transplant anxieties when they crop up, and of course my family and friends are just a phone call away too. I've started work for White River Valley EMS, everyone just calls them Wirva (WRVA)around here, and the shifts are the best I've ever had to sit through in my entire career. First, I come in for my first 24 - really just 18 hrs on the clock - in which I sleep from 1am to 7am (I'm secondary if the other crew gets a call during that time, I'll start getting paid again), then I work 7a - 7p as secondary (second out on a call). I will go home for 12hrs from 7p to 7a, and the final 24 hr shift is a repeat of the 1st for a total of 48 hrs. After which I'm off for 5 whole days. A very friendly family schedule, and I certainly do love it. They are not that busy usually.

The weather has been what was anticipated - COLD. 30's to 40's for highs and lows from upper 20's to lower 20's. A few nights last week it was in the teens already, and November has just begun. It has snowed a half dozen times, especially at the altitude my house is at 1500', but it hasn't yet stuck to the ground for any length of time. Lately, it's been a slushy mixed, and the skies are typically overcast and dreary. Wet and rainy cold days too. This is Fall, it's the transition to the bitterness of New England Winter. I find it charming, but also alarming as I hear my heat furnace regularly kick on and off. The house I'm in is 200 years old, the original owner was the man who built the famous floating bridge in Brookfield. Long hand choped beams support the floors with 4' wide planks for floors and ceilings. The DC living landlords, in their infinite naivity, decided to go with heating oil and propane for heat. Anyone that is truly a Vermonter knows to go with wood heating. To fill my heating oil tank up costs 800 dollars (at today's heating oil prices), and they say we'll go through a tank a month come January and Febuary. I'm deeply concerned about this. Today, I bought the shrink wrap kits for the windows in order to try and seal up this old house. The insulation is missing in places too, but at least the owners are trying to fix that. Their contractors have been a thorn in our side too, ever since we started to unpack around here. We just got use of our kitchen a few days ago, and are still waiting for the garage to be cleared out. New doors have been ordered, better insulated ones, and their proprieter is attempting to figure out how to gain access to the subfloor of the master bedroom. The house sits atop a stone quarried basement and the subfloor under the bedroom has very little crawl space for the spray in insulator.

In the meantime, we have installed studded snow tires on the car, and just had a brake job done that was long over due. Got 140,000 out of the pair on the matrix. Tomorrow I'll be setting up the invisible fence for the dogs, which will allow them more time to chase moose and turkey on the property. Truthfully, I haven't yet seen a moose, though one was seen last year, but I have seen several flocks of turkeys running through the woods in the back. The Canadian geese keep flying their V formations headed south as I watch the Northern skies signal the approach of the Winter soltace.

So it begins. I'll be discussing the effects of hyperinflation, at an economy near you soon, tomorrow.

Politicians have a pulse?

2010-07-30T21:47:00.000-07:00

Don't believe me? Take a look: http://www.breitbart.tv/rep-anthony-weiner-loses-it-on-house-floor/

Then take a look at people's comments to it.

americans overwhelmingly oppose the health care bill. yet this communist wants to jam it through. i'd like to tell him where to jam it. socialist pig.

at least weiner is named right

OK, once and for all, let us define what Socialism and Communism are.

From Wiki

Socialism is an economic and political theory based on public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.[1][2][3]

In a socialist economic system, production is carried out by a public association of producers to directly produce use-values (instead of exchange-values), through coordinated planning of investment decisions, distribution of surplus, and the use of the means of production. Socialism is a set of social and economic arrangements based on a post-monetary system of calculation, such as labour time, energy units or calculation-in-kind.[4]

Socialists advocate a method of compensation based on individual merit or the amount of labour one contributes to society.[5] They generally share the view that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through a system of exploitation.

Now that we have defined Socialism, let me clarify something else....there has never been a socialist nation based on the definition as outlined above. Got it? Russia, NK, Cuba.....either dictatorships, or party system power...but certainly not Socialists. Defamation and slurring of the definition by capitalistic propaganda - to illicit an emotional response rather than an intellectual one - has been the bread and butter for polarizing government subjects. We being their subjects of course - the top 1% of our nations wealth. They could give a rats ass about us other then to force us into two propaganda confession boxes - Democrat or Republican. That's how "they" control our vote - the tiny little illusion of freedom they dangle for us, and they do this through politicized propaganda.

Communism

Pure communism" in the Marxian sense refers to a classless, stateless society, one where decisions on what to produce and what policies to pursue are made in the best interests of the collective society with the interests of every member of society given equal weight in the practical decision-making process in both the political and economic spheres of life.

And once again there has NEVER been a "true" communist state...not even close. The ones politicized as such - Cuba, NK, China, Khmer, etc are/or were all authoritarian. The last thing the top 1% of the worlds wealth want is for people to adopt Communism, much less Socialism, for they would have no legitimate claim to the extreme wealth and power they hold. So what do these people do? They educate people that Communism is evil, and that nations that pursue it will be attacked or cutoff from trade, yet if you closely look at the targets of their propaganda - NONE were ever following the parameters of Communism or Socialism. That would take an intellectual initiative from people, and most people react on emotion....like our good politician that started this outburst.

So every time I hear someone say Obama is a Socialist pig, or a Communist, it's a face palm moment for me.

Obama is an ivy league politician who comes to the bar of the top 1% to get his marching orders. All his good friends make up the top corporate world CEO's, the top banking giants, and the elite financial mega powers - ECB, IMF, and the FEDS. His ear is to their lead. It's not to the little people - the subjects of fascist corporatism. The party system - they control both - is their method to play us. A Machiavellian take: Get party A and party B to fight among themselves, and party A and party B will never know what party C (the bankers and to big to fail corporations)are doing.

Just wanted you to understand all these matrix codes. So what was Weiner all hot about? This bill would cost a little over 7 billion, and it would take care of the 9/11 responders, the ill consequences of ground zero. Government spending, you betcha, but the politicians had no problem passing 60 billion more dollars to an already exceeded trillion dollar budget to kill people half way around the world who had nothing to do with anything other than growing some wonderful opium, herding goats, and praying to their god. The whole link to terrorism and 9/11 is just more propaganda. You won't see any of these politicians, bankers, or corporate heads taking up a rifle, and patrolling some IED infested roadside...they have our youth to do that. No...you'll just see them bitch and moan about spending anything on the "little" people.

What is the Matrix?

2010-07-29T21:24:00.000-07:00

"It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth."

(Neo) "What truth?"

"That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind."

This movie resonates with people at many different levels. For me, it's astonishingly bold and upfront with the truth while remaining cloaked in science fiction fantasy. The meaning lies past the entertainment and strikes a perfect cord with the fabricated reality we call civilization for the analogy is real - the matrix is real.

Let me show you the matrix.

A federal judge today blocked controversial aspects to a law passed by the state of Arizona pursuant to the identification and detainment of illegals. The law is the matrix, every law. The judge is matrix code. Illegal is a matrix code (label). The border of Arizona is the matrix. The right for the police (code) to detain illegals (code) is the matrix. The reality is that none of this exists but in our minds. There is no line in the sand between Mexico and Arizona - it's all earth. The border is fictitious. There are no Mexicans - they are people - same specie as any other homo sapien. There is no US, no laws, no state of Arizona - it's just what people believe - it's a prison for their minds. The matrix is absolutely everywhere, we walk around with civilization formulated and fabricated inside our minds. Right and wrong - completely made up.

The matrix enslaves us. The ones that enslave us are the ones that first formulated laws - the matrix. Story making by way of the whip and spear. The origin of the matrix goes back to the foundations of agrarian civilization, language, story making, dream making, it is all a creation of the mind and for the mind. It is the forbidden fruit.

Your labor is being harvested. Your productivity is being harvested.

Think about this next time you find yourself in a political argument, fighting for the red team or the blue team, when your paying your taxes, or paying some fee at the DMV, or when your working most of your life away inside a cubicle while the CEO of BP (all matrix code) goes to yacht races, plays golf at a million dollar country club, or jets off to France to tour a winery after running a company that ruinously neglected safety concerns and thereby murdering 11 hard working subjects and killing most of the life swimming in the Northern gulf! The system that made all of that possible is fully functional. It is a system of laws to keep you doing what you do, and them with the worlds riches - harvested through your obedience to the matrix.

"Welcome to the real world."

The real world is simply what you "can" or "cannot" do. The rest is the matrix. You have to walk through that door.

"A world without rules and controls, without borders and boundaries. A world where anything is possible."

Looking for escape in Tennessee

2010-07-28T15:12:00.000-07:00

My wife said it would be a disaster....she was right.

The drive up to Chattanooga was really a delight as we passed by towns and cities on our way through the MS delta and on into the bible belt of northern Alabama. A nice contrast in accents and hard working people. The summer heat cooked up a few thunderstorms to make driving interesting, but I found it little to be bothered about as the Smokey mountain range came into view. I love rock, especially that dark organic limestone that's famous in Tenn.

I have grown accustomed to using the GPS so I felt a little lost trying to navigate by my toughbooks street atlas. My GPS was stolen last time I worked on an ambulance...yes, even in EMS there are thieves.

After a long day driving we pulled into the Best Western at the Lookout mt. exit, Lookout mt is famous for Rock City & Ruby Falls, both worth seeing if you ever come to Chattanooga. The room was $90 , but too tired to bump from place to place searching, I dished out the dough to the skinny Indian behind the desk. Apparently Indians own the hotel monopoly up here - the country of India that is, not to be confused with "real" Americans: Native Americans . The Patel's and Purohits. I'm always amazed at how all these foreign nationalities manage to come to America and open hotels, restaraunts, and gas stations - India, Vietnamese, and Arabs. I heard once that they get grants to do this, don't know if this is true or not. The room was nothing to brag about - flat wore out King and an a/c that couldn't keep the room cold - and outside I saw a few sullen family's out by the standardized square teacup pool watching their kids exhaust there energies splashing each other. It was hot and muggy, I could hardly tell the difference between there and home. Lookout Mt was on our Eastern horizon hidden behind a smoggy haze.

My wife had a headache and was too tired to go out and find a place to eat, so we ordered Pizza. I enjoyed it - Mr. T's or something - but my wife was less than impressed. It was a hot restless night as I tossed and turned with the anxieties of possibly moving somewhere new.

Monday, it was still hot outside . Not to be made a fool again on an overpriced hotel, I handed the Indian back the card as he asked me how everything went. I lied - "fine, great..." Who cares, it's not like he would lower the price anytime soon or fix the a/c or replace that hard ass mattress. lol. I figured our first stop would be the Lifeguard EMS station in Chattanooga. The hotel had one of those tourist made printouts for the major streets in the area, and I had mapquested the location during the night, so we had some idea where we were going as we drove the Matrix down and around the base of Lookout mt. towards downtown. Wherever we were, we found ourselves in what would best be described as the 1930's, or the town that time forgot. Weeds growing up through the concrete, businesses long since closed, for lease signs in store front windows, and your neighborhood crackhead spasticating at the corner as he listened to music emanating from the fourth plane of la la land. I was shocked at how little traffic there was. The neighborhood we were in reminded me of the New Orleans ninth ward...before...Katrina. Passed up one of those 60's bygone architectural ideas called the projects, and a long chain of drug dealers was ready to sell their goods as we passed by with the doors locked and my trigger finger you know where. Compared to the streets of New Orleans, the dealers seemed peaceful .

We find the weed covered entrance to the Lifeguard EMS headquarters and turn in passing up two homeless wino's acting as guards - I shit you not! The entire headquarters was surrounded by 18' high fencing with constantine wire at the top. Not knowing what to expect I came in to speak with Holly, their human resource gal, and was interviewed by the on duty supervisor. Large stocky pot bellied medic who seemed less than enthused with the day's ongoings. I was impressed with the scope of the station, all recently built, and the organization that was setup - 2 on duty mechanics, large bay for the units, ample spaced stockroom, large classroom for in-house recerts and education, and a com center that was state of the art. There wasn't much to complain about. Holly was busy doing orientation with two new recruits and the supervisor said he would call me in the afternoon to make an offer, so I came outside to the misses - who was PMSing - to take a spin around Chattanooga to check things out while we waited for Lifeguard to get back with me.

Once we made it out of the dreadfully poor section of town we wandered the vacant streets of downtown to see what Chattanooga had to offer. More than anything we were looking for a place to stop and have coffee...maybe a some eggs and bacon too. The aquarium down by the river was new and modern but as it was still before noon, there was few to anyone there. I thought for sure if we head up main st and over by the university we would find a nice little breakfast joint to patronize but alas, all we found was the community kitchen and large throng of unfortunates standing outside the unemployment offices. Very much the same as what you might see in New Orleans downtown near University hosp. I was surprised there was nowhere to eat near the university, at least not breakfast, and despite our best efforts there was no coffee chain, breakfast joint, or otherwise to stop at anywhere we drove downtown. Plenty of lunch and dinner places that were only beginning to open and prepare for evening tourists. I text a fellow latocer - Michelle - who was watching her kids what we were doing. I wanted to hook up with her to talk about the area and possibly make a friend.

I figured the best bet in finding breakfast would be a chain restaurant off the interstate, so we got back on the 75 headed to Knoxville and found a Cracker Barrel near the Hampton pl mall. We were stuffed with blueberry pancakes and eggs, and gotten our coffee fix, it was late enough for Michelle to break away and meet somewhere.

The weather turned a frightful fit after our conversation, and Lifeguard still hadn't called me back...leaving me to worry a little. I headed over to that den of iniquity, the scourge of mankind, that pit of vipers, the Illuminati HQ's - Walmart to purchase a new GPS. Damn shiny and nice inside too. If I was going to be looking at properties, and with so few days to do so, I needed it to get from place to place efficiently. Poof...there went a hundred. Pulling out of the parking lot the rain was coming down so hard that it almost flooded the car. My wife said "is this any different than back home?" A foot of flood water was racing down the hilly terrain with happy vehicle vengeance. We have a Toyota Matrix, the sucker is really low to the ground, and it wouldn't take much to have water come in.

We took Michelle's advice to snag a hotel down in LaFayette, GA - a hop skip across the state line - a Days Inn. Another Indian running the place, but this time the room was $50/night and the bed and a/c worked perfectly. So far, I'm really impressed with how nice the traffic in the Chattanooga area is - not crowded at all - and on our way down to LaFayette, GA we passed through a famous civil war battle field. Cannons, statues, monoliths placed in green grassy fields between the hickory and oak. My soul could still hear the cannons, and the artillery Colonel ordering "FIRE!" I imagined the shades marching across their battlefield under the glow of a full moon.

We drove down the road from the hotel some, took the advice of the Indian receptionist, to eat at a local Mexican restaraunt. My wife was happy TN and GA had fat people. One large bloke sat with his 3 kids across from us, geez must've weighed four or five hundred pounds. He looked very happy though as his kids enjoyed their time with dad. Across from them was a muscle bound marine - semper fi T-shirt - sitting with his cute blond of a girlfriend. The young ladies in GA were gorgeous. My wife didn't like that. So if you ever get to LaFayette, GA, I highly recommend Don lolo (I think that's what it was called, right across from the Sonic), Megadoom approved chicken quesadillas.

During the evening hours I went online and did more property searches and found some more contacts. Tuesday morning, I started to make phone calls to the realtors and the contacts for homes I had found. Still hadn't heard anything from Lifeguard so I emailed Holly as a reminder. We drove up some back roads near the hotel towards a property that had been listed on Craigslist for some time. Something that seemed as though it would work for us, owner financed home on 8 acres. Beautiful contry, horse pastures, and gorgeous half million dollar homes. The one were looking for was far less than impressive, but a doomer gem if it only had cleared land. The home looked rough, cracked drywall, broken windows, etc. The cleared yard though was not even a quarter acre, and it was right up on the roadside, the rest of the land was on a steep slope towards the back and all heavily wooded. Too expensive for us anyway. I called the realtor for Dunlap who was going to show us two properties that seemed right up our ally in price and needs. GPS said it would take an hour or so to get up there.

The drive through Chattanooga was without traffic and the scenery divine. Richly adorned mountains covered in green with mountain streams and creeks cutting through it all, and the valley of Dunlap was to die for. It was ad midst this beauty that the floor was yanked out from under me. Lifeguard called and said they were only hiring PT due to the drop in call volume and that the pay for a FT paramedic was 14/hr. Get the fuck out of here! A nickel for every year of experience. Get the fuck out of here! A Popeyes manager makes 14/hr! It takes 2 years of intensive training to be a paramedic. A paramedic is responsible for intubating people, starting IV's, making life and death decisions, pushing narcotics and hundreds of other meds and all they're going to offer is 14 fucking dollars an hour? I imagine TN has paramedics who do it for altruism rather than a workable paycheck.

So, sitting outside the realtor's parking lot contemplating our next move, I said to my wife I could stay offshore and commute. She wasn't having any of it as she wasn't going to stay up here in the hills, knowing no one, while I was gone for 2 to 3 weeks at a time. Well fuck shit, witches spit, the whole trip was pointless. Then of course the phone rang with a perfect rental home with 4 acres (OK for all our farm animals) at 700/month down in LaFayette GA for offer. Now what?

I'm back home in Pearlington looking at ambulance services in NW GA. Shit, I wish Excelsior would call for a CPNE test date so I can get my nursing license before the end of the year. This is BS.

Earth, Wind, and Fire

2010-07-08T17:55:00.000-07:00

The heat is on! Across the globe we're seeing reports of sizzling temperatures, melting Arctic ice, and scorching records. I can just imagine all the right wing Republicans putting their hands to their ears and chanting: "la, la, la, la, there is no global warming, there is no global warming." Oh really? Tell that to the Russians who are literally having their soles melt off their shoes while standing on the asphalt road! http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2010/07/hundreds-drown-in-russia-during-record.html Comrades are so hot they're jumping into rivers and lakes trying to cool off and some of those happy Vodka drinkers end up drowning. What a way to go. Teleport to the good ole USA we have record high temps cooking our good people throughout the Northeastern seaboard. Temperatures that have never been seen since, well since they first put a thermometer in NY city or DC. I won't stoop to poor science like the deniers do in pointing to record cold temps to disprove AGW, and so I'll point instead to the record loss in Artic sea ice...again. http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2010/07/nsidc-june-arctic-sea-ice-saw-lowest.html

Put it all together my fellow humans, and we have raped ourselves straight into hell. The equilibrium of the whole freaking planet is dangerously out of balance, we're talking about the very planet that we need to survive! Call me an alarmist all you want, but we've refused to listen to the scientists, and now mother nature has caught our hand in the cookie jar. Remember when your mama use to slap your hand? The last thing we should want is nature bitch slapping us....oh but I fear she's about to, and in a much bigger way than a few continental heat waves. I think we're setup to see planetary events we haven't seen for thousands of years. The bible says the greatest wisdom is fearing God. I'm not religious, but I'd take that to heart if I were you.

Oh, but there's more, especially in my neck of the woods - SE Louisiana - where I'm dealing with BP's mess everywhere. A couple of days ago oil showed up in Lake Ponchatrain and the Lake Borgne marshes, my favorite stomping grounds to catch redfish and speckled trout. Oil has also showed up in Galveston which makes every state that shares the Gulf of Mexico a equal partner in wallowing in toxic misery. The LA governor is trying to put up these ridiculous sand berms covering a mere 80 miles of coastline, and also a mere fraction of protection, and when every hydrological & marine scientists is warning him of how perilous and futile his efforts will be. But hey, it makes for great publicity to be out their screaming and cursing federal authorities for not doing enough while he stands in the foreground of a dredge building up this silly berm. http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2010/07/sand-berms-dubious-solution-to-gulf-oil.html

Although the dredging doesn't leave a visible change at the surface, it alters the subsurface profile of an area and reduces the bottom friction that formerly absorbed hydraulic energy during approaching storm surges.

On the basis of 22 years of academic training and experience in coastal science and 18 years of policy experience in the Governor's Office of Coastal Activities, I'm strongly opposed to the governor's sand berm project for the following nine reasons:

Oh, but Mr. Bobby Jindal you won't listen to people who have some knowledge regarding this, will you. Nothing like a politically charged atmosphere to get everyone screaming at everyone else while on TV. Meanwhile, the oil continues to roll in, and I'll be the first to tell my compatriots that it will continue to roll in all year long. That's right, all year long, despite any miracle that happens in BP's attempted August kill of the well. I'm sure mother nature will have her word in before then too as hurricanes - Alex being the first to stir things up - will show up to show coastal humanity how foolish they were in pursuing "drill baby, drill" at all costs - well not all costs, we know how cheap BP has been.

If you live on the gulf coast I urge you to plan to evacuate PERMANENTLY. I know I am just as soon as I get in from my current offshore project. I'm on the Fugro boat: the Enterprise and they call me "bones" (I'm the closest thing to a ships doctor). We've been headed down the Achafalaya river all afternoon after fleeing Alex earlier in the week. Oddly enough, I spotted a Navy PT boat headed up river towards Patterson. P-301 was pulling its rib boat on board at the stern when I took this shot.

Strange huh? Wonder what they're doing. I'll have to keep an eye out for other military vessels after we get out of the pass and to the open sea. I'm hoping to photograph some marine life, something other than this - thanks to BP.

Oil Catastrophe

2010-06-07T13:47:00.000-07:00

We are doing much better today collecting oil. Despite the forcast for rain the day has been nothing but sunshine and a warm breeze. As the Enterprise off our port burns off gas and steadily produces what the top hat is collecting we continue to skim the polluted seas. The ocean is a dreary dead zone, and a endless expanse of zigzagging crimson streaks of oil. The small boom boat relentless seeks each patch while the manager who sits perched high atop the birds nest - we really have one of those - radio's commands to come to port, or come to starboard as we tack towards our prey. Our holds nearly full now, and soon we'll be heading to the barge to offload.

They keep the ships insides the temperature of a meat locker, but despite this I spend most of time inside having remembered what those VOC fumes did to me last time. I have examined a number of crewmen with headaches that are likely related. The industrial hygienist continues his vigil to monitor the VOC's, but never once has a warning been given to evacuate the back decks because of a high reading. The fumes, no matter what the meter may read, cannot be good for anyone. When I need to defrost from the chill I reconnoiter the bow giving myself a walk about. My spirit sinks when I look 360 degrees from horizon to horizon and see no life, no birds, no fish, no whales, no dolphins...not even a jellyfish. I let my eyeglasses defrost while leaning on the bow railing, and stare sojourn at the tea colored chop while mentally absorbing the catastrophe. I imagine the BOP 5,000 feet down spewing a black cloud of death that forms underwater cumulus clouds widening out near the surface catching various currents and chasing away the sharks and tuna. It's all in my head of course, god knows what it must look like down there, and I don't mean just what the ROV's show us.

The crew on board fully expect to order a Christmas tree for the galley and lounge. A disaster with seemingly no end in site. I wonder how many fellow humans now driving their cars, picking up their groceries at the store, or spending that tax check on some new electronic gizmo made by suicidal Chinese slaves ever make the connection to the sin that I stare at from the deck of this ship? "Forgive them father, for they know not what they do..." is the only quote that comes to my mind. I'm just as contributory too, just as sinful, and I hold myself in contempt for knowing not what I do, or what alternative I could drag my love ones into. What possible population could we live in that is bereft of oil?

This is the beginning and the end.

Oil Spill Chronicles

2010-05-25T19:43:00.000-07:00

This is as good a time as any to retreat back to my blog, and express all the horror that now surrounds me. A contaminated sea is lapping at the shores not more than a mile from my house, and somewhere out there are pelicans struggling to fly free from the oil that grips them from beneath. A beautiful sea turtle is looking for a hole in the oil to pop up and breath only to inhale a toxic stew of petrol death. The images of pain and suffering seen out there in my recent travels - acting paramedic to a MSRC skimming vessel contracted by BP - has me intuitively sensitive to that which largely goes unseen short of being captured by a greenpeace activist and posted to a CNN livefeed.

It's now been over a month since BP's Transocean rig suffered a catastrophic blowout killing eleven workers and scaring the souls of over a hundred survivors, and still we see no end in sight for stopping this apocalyptic ecological tragedy. When it first occurred people were concerned and mindful, but soon the story became secondary to other events like Fergie taking a bribe or N Korea accused of sinking a S Korean warship; that is, until the ugly goo began washing up into the marshes and staining the beaches of Grande Island. Until that began to happen it was of little concern to all but the fisherman who depended on the gulf for business, or the rare Southern environmentalist - count me as one. The report and video of oil spilled up and down the Grande Isle beach stirred up local officials and recreational anglers like someone hitting a hornet's nest with a big stick. Then, and only then, did the response by BP appear inordinately slow - it was of course, the oil spill was huge - and the finger pointing, demands, and rumors flew fitfully between state and parish officials, the feds, EPA, Coast guard, and even celebrities (Keven Kostner and his miracle machine). Everyone seemed to have an accusation that supported their claim that BP wasn't doing enough - quite obvious - that they could do it better (I doubt it), and every hair brain out of their garage idea that could be conceived of to absorb oil...even hair from the barber shop was balley hooed on the nightly news! It isn't that I don't believe any of these methods can or would work, they do, but there are many more things that go into oil spill mitigation than a good idea. There's logistics, quantity, testing, safety, costs - although this shouldn't be a factor - and on and on. It does make people feel like they're playing their small part, being the hero, or simply hoping to make a killing on a patented idea. Little does everyone know that this spill is being organized, controlled, and manipulated by the orchestrations of corporations and their endless bank accounts. While many people who are employed by BP care about the environment and feel impassioned to defend the wetlands and pelican rookeries, they are easily eclipsed by the power of the corporate entity. That entity is completely apathetic and calculatingly cold. People have a tendency to project their morals on a company that has only one capitalistic goal - profits and the protection thereof. That's the hard truth behind the power.

Meanwhile the oil gushes out from broken pipes, leaking BOP's, and some say even the sea floor! There's endless debate over how much exactly is leaking, the official amount 5,000 bpd - grossly underestimated in my opinion, an opinion based off 3 weeks of direct observation during skimming operations. If it's 5K bpd than why did 10 300 ton vessels skimming for oil in one day haul in 40,000 barrels and we didn't even make a dent in the oil that was spreading across the gulf? Why have scientist found huge plums of undersea oil that still, as of yet, reached the surface? Why have MIT scientists, using fluid dynamic models, calculated a figure far exceeding 5K bpd? I'll tell you why - it's not, it's a made up figure, or one that NOAA calculated by looking at some satellite photo's, imagery that in no way shows the full extent of this spill, and that brings up another issue - dispersant's. BP has been using dispersant's since day one, without consulting EPA, and using a product that has been banned in Europe for over a decade and has never had any toxicological studies done on, but hey, this is BP, they can do anything out there they like - right? The clear demonstration of their corporate power came when the EPA ordered them to switch to a less toxic dispersant and BP refused citing that there wasn't a product that was less toxic and readily available, which if anyone did any research at all (a simple google search shows many products that would easy to get on site too) would show that wasn't the case. Also, it has been established that the company that makes the dispersant has a profitable deal worked out with BP before hand - naturally. The issue I personally have with corexit dispersant is that it makes the oil impossible to skim up, miscilizes the oil into huge red underwater clouds that will likely do untold damage to reefs, fisheries, and oyster beds, and no one knows what it does to the respiratory system of clean up workers - but who cares about them? Certainly not corporations which have a long history of treating people like disposable inorganic machinery. I know because I still have chest congestion from working out in that spill...do I sue BP? I'd never see the money, and so what if I did, it's not like money is useful while rotting away in my deathbed, or will it give me any consolation while I wait for the gamma knife that's warming up to zap a tumor buried in my head. Oh sure, the MSRC vessel contracted a industrial hygienist to measure gas readings - VOC's, benzene, and hydrogen sulfide gases, but the respirators were never utilized when the readings regularly exceeded safe limits. One day out there the VOC's exceeded 120 ppm, twice what is safe, but the project manager brushed it off as too much trouble to get the respirators out. If something doesn't kill you today, corporations will care less if it kills the worker multiple decades later because they know it becomes near impossible to connect the two.

Tomorrow, BP prepares to conduct 12 hrs of testing before initializing a live top kill which I expect to fail. Even BP is preparing for just such an eventuality - as if they already know. The president has ordered BP to keep the live ROV feed up during the procedure, originally BP was against this because they know that if they fail their stocks will plummet on the news. Concerned citizens will watch in hopeful rapture.

Here's a link to my offshore experience with pics and video (found on utube - pelican rescue: megadoom911) http://www.doomers.us/forum2/index.php/topic,67380.0.html

Kamikaze

2010-02-22T18:13:00.000-08:00

"It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder." Frederic Bastiat

BOOM! "Burn baby burn," I thought after watching someone fly a plane straight into an IRS building in Austin, TX. Mr. Stack's bold suicide sent shock waves throughout the country after filing an online manifesto for the reasons why - http://www.doomers.us/forum2/index.php/topic,62363.0.html
If he hadn't killed a innocent father of 3 in doing so, I might even say he was heroic, but that wasn't the case. A vigorous debate ensued on latoc regarding his laundry list of complaints aimed at the tax law. Oddly, I found myself identifying with him and his desperate cornered grief, even though his murderous act was wrong in so many despicable ways. A man at the end of his wits. Surely, something we'll see more and more of as our governmental structure falls more under the sway of money and banks. The wealth in this nation are jumping to the life boats, and demanding the less privilege and ordinary stay on the sinking ship. People who lose everything, lose it.

This brings into the question freedom, society, governments, and morality - all in one, and that question is why? Why must a governing body that has demonstrably shown it's incapable of serving and obeying the people extort taxation on its citizens? Why must we pay property tax? Doing so means we never really own the land. We pay taxes for the services government provides, but those services now serve mostly the rich, the corporations, and the military industrial complex. People, like me, have become like a tax crop or a financial "battery," something akin to the Matrix where everyone was reduced to a battery. I don't believe we need the kinda military monster we currently have - military bases all over the world, vast strategic armaments, and a ponderous monstrosity that is a mountainous battalion. We don't need 3 million census workers when the NSA knows what my favorite color is, and I'm quite sure we could get what we need from the demographic consumer files Walmart or Monsanto has on each and every human "battery." I also shouldn't have to pay the billions our country spends to aid and abet foreign countries, like the 7 billion Obama signed over back in September to Pakistan. How dare you spend my productivity like that! Why should I have to pay for the health care of congressman and senators when they endlessly bicker whether to provide health care for me because of what it might do to wealthy insurance companies. If I dare not to pay my taxes, guess what, I go to jail. Freedom?

I daresay that if this country had stayed within a budget and stopped using debt as a vehicle to expand and conquer, I would be more willing to fork over some tax money. If my government would listen to me and serve me I might be more willing. Polling shows that the government, especially the last two years, has repeatedly ignored public wishes - TARP and bank bailouts, GM bailouts, the ME war, and on and on. Additionally, we can no longer vote these rats out because corporations can contribute an infinite amount to who we get to see on the ballot. Once in office they follow the Jerry Mcquire meme - "show me the money," and we, the people, have none.

It boils down to the foundation that got this tyranny started - taxation without representation.

Maybe Mr. Stack was thinking "give me liberty or give me death" when he soared into that IRS building. Truly tragic set of circumstances the end of civilization brings.

The Truth

2010-02-05T23:36:00.000-08:00

The truth? People can't handle the truth.

The truth is most of us are going to die very soon.

The truth is the TV's, the computers, the cars, the trucks, the planes, the food, the water, the health, the clothes, the a/c, the microwave, the hot showers, the dinners out, the very veneer of civilization is about to be ripped assunder!

People can't handle that. We have become like babies - fat squisshie blobs that need to be fed and told everything will be all right.

We will have to be put through the fire to be of any use again - "God must char the wood before he can write with it..."

If you're planning for a retirement, watching your kids grow up - get married, get a job, buy a home, raise a family, or anything that this generation has come to know as modern life is about to end. Many will read this and interpret it as the ramblings of another nutty survivalist, branch Davidian, occultist, anarchist, prepper, or whatever the latest talk show host wants to call people who tell the truth. It's a long time coming, the end of the world, and I don't mean the end of the planet, but the end of Western civilization. We refuse to see, to learn from our mistakes, to wise up and live as peaceful intelligent spiritual beings - our potential, but instead we choose to consume ourselves, to take the Kalimar, the kiva of death and bring about the annilation of all order and judgement.

Our cup runneth over in blood, and we will drink a bitter wine indeed.

Chicken chase

2010-02-02T18:50:00.001-08:00

An unusually warm sunny day down here. Mind you I'm not complaining but the sun's intensity was quite miserable against the side of my face while painting the outside patio wall. Soon it will be Summer when the horse-flies, gnats, and mosquitoes will come out to dine on many an irritated person, and the stifling heat will drive the heat hardiest inside to the shade and luxury of air conditioning. The swampy muggies around here get the best of anyone, and our Winter - a cacaphony mix of warm and cold, short and boring, is typically bipolar to the extreme. So while the heat had me sweating today, I was freezing just two days ago. The peas and beets my wife and lovingly planted weeks ago were ready to go in my stylized pots - leftover steel bathtubs that I painted yellow to match the house trim. Taking bags of top soil and mulch from piles that I had tended to since October I mixed the organic humus together in a large wheelbarrow.

Two large trellis were stuck in the back of the planters, and the peas planted in front of them, their future climb. The beets I stuck in front of these as I imagined them to be very decorative once everything fills out, a bonus to their practical value.

The ducks continue to grow each day, but I lost 4 two days ago from an accidental escape, as they ended up in the mauls of my dogs. Six left and I think I've worked out the kinks to their pen, and I always take the time to corral them into a secure coop for the night. Coons, possoms, and owls patrol as I write, the night a time for hunting. The chickens, still a small flock - 3 hens, 1 rooster, roam freely in the backyard on days that I or my wife are off. The beetles, crickets, warms, and doodle bugs probably run for cover when these perfect insect predators come pecking forth from their coop. The rooster, who I've come to call Bubba, crows most of the mornings as a cliche or when I come fussing with a hen or their eggs. He magnificiently looks out for the "girls."

One of the hens, who I named mrs. Trouble today, found an ingenious way to fly up and out of their pen by slipping through a small crack in the poultry wire that had come exposed when I slid the metal roof to the side for more protection from the rain. Additionally, she has been in the habit of roosting towards the early evening away from the "good crowd" who conviently go back into the pen for safety. She roosts deep in the heavy thickets that surround the pen and in the pre-Katrina woods. A cluster of small tree's, blackberry, and devil vine network in and out of the old wood, a nightmare for a big lumbering man animal like myself trying to corral her back to where she will be safe for the night.

Blackberry throns are not pleasant tearing across your arms and face. This is when every farmer must think to himself "chickens are stupid," but this isn't entirely true if you watch these magnificient farm animals. I find that they exhibited a strange earthy intelligence, a sense of awareness of life between death. There nightime coma is a mystery as is the rooster's crow. Mrs. Trouble had me stomping through the thicket around and around the pen trying to steer her to sanctuary, and after fifthteen minutes of madness, yelling, and unhitching my skin from thorns, I had her back in the pen. There they would stay for the next two days. Some bad weather was due to come in on Thursday, adding to the mud that was everywhere.

Another State of the Union

2010-01-27T22:07:00.000-08:00

Here we are a year later, and what as the president done for us lately?

Continues to spend a trillion dollars a year fighting Muslims, goat herders, and children. Expansion of the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and now Yemen. Iran will be next.

Guantanomo still open.

Healthcare bill brokered by insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

Multiple bailouts for "Too big to fail" companies. How can this be a free market?

Deficits added to, national debt ceiling increased, wall st crimes gone unprosecuted, glorification of Ben Bernakie, co-conspirator to the housing bubble, no real curbs in industrial emissions and green house gases, no real energy plan that takes into account production/demand oil economics - except maybe Iraqi oil contracts, refusal to sign the land mine ban, and nothing has been done to curb rising unemployment.

Wall st rallies while people get layed off, foreclosures rise, and credit cards are defaulted. Allowing banks to hide toxic assets with mark to market rules - banks set their own rules.

I could go on, but why bother, most people are still enamored at his skin color. There's only one good thing I can say about Obama, his wife planted a garden, and that's about the best advice he could give citizens - plant a garden...before it's too late.

Here are some latoc comments regarding the state of the union - Picasso Moon answers back....

I liked that he said that we had a surplus in 2000, and that when he came into he inherited this HUGE deficit. And pointed out very succinctly that the deficit was not made by him. And that he also brought up that the policies that the Republicans were wanting to continue were the same ones that got us into this mess in the first place.

Neglecting to mention that in 2000 the surplus came as a result of the TECH BUBBLE, when it burst so did the "surplus". And the deficit since he has been in office has grown by over a trillion, more than 3 times the deficit of any particular year. The policies he wants to pursue are little different from those the Republicans have. What do expect from Geithner, Summers, Bernanke?

I liked that he pointed out some of the things that Health Reform WOULD do for people... and how it would require insurance and drug companies to stop (reduce ) their greedy practices.

No it would not, the present bill was drawn up with the active collaboration of the insurance and drug companies, including even Billy Tauzin, while single payer advocates weren't even allowed near the White House.

A certain worry

2010-01-25T19:17:00.000-08:00

It's a Monday, a fresh start to the final week in January, and the relentless march towards collapse. Topping the headlines for the day -

Haitians torch bodies in the streets - What can you say? The Haiti earthquake is a small glimpse of the horror that's about to befall the world. This is what collapse looks like, in all its ugliness, with all its misery, and certain dispair. Bodies in open pits, the smell of death everywhere....it's hell on earth. Most of the world looks on with morbid curiosity, feeling glad it isn't them, and after a few text messages donating ten bucks they feel better. Hear me now...Port ta Prince, Haiti will not be rebuilt before we are all living lives among the rubble.

Obama proposes freezing domestic spending for the next three years- This one had me laughing. Why am I laughing? Well for one thing this will amount to looking for some change in your sofa pillows and paying a tiny extra on your next credit card bill, a bill for the US that amounts to trillions of dollars...not billions. This proposal is suppose to save 250 billion over 10 years. Are we kidding mr. president? That's nothing in the face of spending 1 TRILLION dollars each year fighting foreign wars, and this doesn't include franchising our military hardware, foreign government stipends, and other imperial pursuits. Most Americans have no idea that domestic spending amounts to a pittance of what is spent on National Security and fighting an endless war on the "boogey man." A war that could end with two simple actions taken by us - 1) Stop all support for Israel, 2)Pull out of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan (at least stop sending drones over the border to kill innocent familys along with leftover cold war CIA created Jihadist). Course then we would have to worry about that oil thingy that tout TV says we don't have to worry about.

DOW - 23.88 (That's it? After a 400 pt drop last week?)

Meggido, a latoc member with a scandelous history, scandelous in the sense of believing the Dow would rally to 14000 in the Fall of 08' has encouraged everyone to jump in while the market takes a transitory dip and then heads to new highs. I couldn't tell you whether he will turn out to be right or not, if we go hyperinflationary (no signs of that - yet) that shouldn't be a problem, but if fundamentals are ever made transparent then the Dow rally of 09' will crumble.

Homefront news:

Headed for a cold night, but the 8 week old ducks don't seem to mind. I have the younger ones under tarp and heat lamp for the night. My coworker and friend at work is preparing to buy a backhoe/front end loader that should come in mighty handy in clearing some of my property. I have all kinds of drainage issues and soggy land condtions that will make making a duck enclosure and aesthetic pond very difficult to setup.

It was another hard day at work. I transported a pt that is slowly and painfully dying of cancer. We've watched her go from being able to get up and sit on the stretcher - taking her to radiation downtown, to chest tubes, heparin drips, and a ventilator. She still fights on. She is 52. We still managed to illicite a smile and a laugh talking about the Saints and an old movie being played on a cheap TV University felt fit to stick in her room. With the recent win of the Saints I don't see how any of the locals could see the doom that creeps at the cities fiscal edges. New Orleans will be singing in the streets while the buildings burn and fall to the ground.

Lessons in January

2010-01-24T19:47:00.000-08:00

It's mid January and still here. The ducklings are growing their first real feathers and swiming like, well like ducks, and the chickens are starting to produce more eggs much to my wife's delight. A stack of pea's has germinated on the window sill, twisting towards the light while the Sun filters through the broken tree trunks left over from Katrina. It has been a very productive weekend. From getting my hardwood floors installed to the mulch piles turned and the trash burned (left over boxes from my floors). Didn't discover the meaning of life but did get four green colored chicken eggs started in the incubator. I'm trying out my egg turner for the first time too.

Discovered a festering pair of sores on the bottom half of my dogs throat while giving her a bath yesterday. For weeks I thought she had rolled in something dead, like some rats she's been known to chase down, but instead she had these weeping necrotic sores caused by the electric dog collar. Not really sure why she would develop them now, after years of wearing one without incident, but maybe her advancing years has lowered her immunity and allowed an opportunistic infection to set in. A good lesson to the apocalyptically minded, like us, that infection can quickly do you in. It also revealed what was missing from my medical pantry, an unbelievable item - AAA ointment or neosporin. I had equipment to intubate or suture someone but didn't have something so mundane as neosporin. That quickly was remedied with a quick trip to Walgreens and the purchase of 4 bottles. It just goes to show you that the best prepared medical personnel can missed something so common and so important. I could kick myself. Plus it revealed how important it was to organize my medical supplies rather than dig through a 2' deep box that my wife had put together. We are still renovating this home of ours and things are discombobulated.

Outside tonight the air grows crisp and cool after a brisk cold front swept through last night. I can hear the town's revelers and drunks firing off fireworks leftover from New Years and shouting at the night sky - THE SAINTS WON! They are finally going to the Superbowl, and it reminded me of the Gladiator scene where Maximus kills the Emperor, the Roman drunken hordes screaming and throwing confetti, while the Roman Empire crumbles at the border. The border is definitely crumbling my friends.

Duckarama

2010-01-09T21:09:00.001-08:00

Quack, quack, so goes the duck.

Cute little suckers as I watch them piddle around in their box, already splashing in the water with their little flipper feet, and imagining them waddling by my - as of yet - undug pond. I found these Mallard ducks on craigslist for $2/piece, the whole crew for $20. I bought them from a police officers wife down in English Turn, a small semi-rural forgotten district of New Orleans near the Algiers levies. The road to her house was fraught with deep pot-holes and drug dealing hoodlums roaming the streets just a mile from her house. She should tell her husband to get to work! Alas, she and her husband had a beautiful home on 3 or 4 acres, a huge back yard with outside play equipment and two little rugrats playing in the recent rain puddles. The kiddies were wearing booties and heavy jackets as it never made it much above freezing today, record cold not seen since the early eighties here, and their mother couldn't chastise them enough to encourage them to go back inside where it was warm. The ducklings were milled together under a heat lamp in a small cage. She had been keeping them in the garage and away from the cold. I couldn't help but take them all. Some of them should be good eating by Christmas or........sooner, depending on how fast we all need to be eating food that's not procured from the soon to be empty food shelves. I didn't have the heart to bring up doomerish conversation as I looked around at her little homestead brimming over with 4x4's, atv's, and a mountain of plastic Chinese junk. I'm sure she was happy. So after placing some hay and wood chips in my box, I grabbed the squirrelly suckers one by one and put them all together so they could cuddle for warmth. It was a long drive back home.

I would give these guys a good home with a nice pond before one day sacrificing a few for the dinner table. That's my plan anyway, just like the chickens out back who are as of right now bravely facing the bitter night. They sit on their roost gathered together under a clear starry night, the Artic North wind blows in between the pines, and the vultures that call my property home stare down at them with what intent I do not know. The ducks have been brought inside, and they chirp and splash in the water behind me as I surf the net looking for my doom fix, and my bread maker churns away making me some honey bread. The first loaf didn't turn out too well, too salty.

I've done pretty well with chickens, three successful hatches, a murderous rampage by a neighbors dog, and lots of eggs that attest to my homesteading prosperity. Hopefully my fowl thumb will show itself.

Dire warnings

2010-01-04T21:59:00.000-08:00

It's all over the internet tonight, or at least the sites I frequent, all tied into a nexus of doom that indicates a world war is developing.. Furthermore, a significant military buildup, by a number of nations, is developing in the Gulf of Aden. Pakistan's refinery are unable to maintain the national energy infrastructure and it may be lights out on a otherwise failed state, which is dangerously on the precipace of a Taliban takeover, and by a most unfortunate set of circumstances - a nuclear power. A frightening geopolitical setup is developing when you consider the recent false flag terrorist attack, a failed CIA operation - the evidence is over-whelming this time, that is justifying the military buildup in and around Yemen. A number of war games, simulations, and drills are being planned and conducted now and into next week revolving around two key natons: Israel and Iran. The saber rattling is taking on a sharp hue of reality - that war could be immenent. This, following Israel's recent ambassador recall over the holidays to discuss the "future." I wonder what future they envision. Their eunemical rabbi's pushing for policy changes that would make Israel even more imperialistic and dogmatic, which ironically is through ethnic cleansing of Arabs. Oh what religion and this god has wrought!

That isn't but half of what's coming across the wire and what I'm digging up spidering through the global news into the cold early hours of January 5th. The icey cold is settling in outside, a frigid January for a southern Mississippi town, so located in a marshy delta at the bottom of the Pearl River basin. I pray my chickens snuggle on their roosts and continue to lay, for with all that's going on in the world right now I might need their services real soon. I've brought my dogs in too, and they lay quietly on my couches watching me look for the truth.

Wall st. rallied again today on upbeat manufacturing news, but why was that up I wondered? Christmas sales were either flat or lower than in years past. Chinese domestic demand for vehicles could be the culprit. The bond market is signally great alarm with insiders running for the exit. The market ticker has a good explaination on the situation: www.market-ticker.org. Oil was robust today as speculators bid it up to 82 a barrel as a frigid artic air mass descends on a number of countries plunging them in various degree's of record cold. I don't think this will help the scientists trying to standby their argument for global warming, although surprisingly, the Chinese feel differently about this in believing the extreme cold is in fact related to AGW. Interesting analysis if you care to google it. I still believe the over-whelming body of science that says AGW is real and getting worse. This winter will likely be a temperature anomaly, a dip in the upward trend.

There is a Russian theory being circulated concerning a certain "electric" comet that was spotted zipping towards the sun a few days ago, and at the same time Russia unveiled a multi-million dollar plan to come up with a strategy with modifying the future Earth impact trajectory, a comet/asteroid heading for the Earth. I'm glad someone is taking it seriously, especially since it's happened more than once in Earth's past, and most certainly will occur again. Though by judging what humans have been doing for the last few thousand years I might be inclined to say "bring it on," and let the damn thing plow into us and thus rid the Earth of our ad hominem cruelity. For the smartest animal species we sure act like some of the dumbest and by all means the meanest.
Doubt me? Watch this - ">

Maverism, my new religion

2010-01-01T18:50:00.001-08:00

Well, would you look at that, it's 2010. A whole decade into the 21st century and the drumbeat of human civilization beats on, a palpitation or fibrillation here and there, but beats none the less. Cars driving, planes flying, ships sailing - or at least they use to, and bombs keep falling. People go to work, they sleep, eat, shit, have sex, build, tear down, laugh, cry, fight, scream, hit, grow old, get sick, and die. The planet spins about an invisible axis, the stars burn furiously in the empty regions of deep space, and gravity pushing and tugging everything to and fro. The earth trembles beneath us, the seas crash against the shores, the winds howl from every direction, and the living breath moves over all of it. As we enter this new decade, we are surrounded by power, forces beyond imagining, and I am reminded of how fragile we are as a civilization and as a human being.....in fact we are Dust in The Wind. I fear the very foundations of our world are about to be shakened and come crumbling down around us, as shocked as the Atlanteans were, we will cry for mercy in the dark days ahead. The last decades events (Katrina, tsunami, earthquakes, 9/11, wars, etc) were but warnings, this decade will be the real deal! I'm not speaking as some prophet, but as a person of average intellect and awareness who says with his own personal certainty, that our civilization is about to be tested like it has never been tested before (in recent memory). They say Karma is a bitch. Well if she is, than she's in heat. Civilization, population, and life depend on one comprehensive quantity - resources. In the last 100 or so years we have behaved as though those resources are unlimited, but the facts that many of us refuse to face is they are not. We will pay for our lack of wisdom. We are quite literally billions passed the carrying capacity of this planet.

What we need now is a maverick, and more than one, to spring forth from this human hoard. A maverick that can cry out from the wilderness and begin the awakening! A person that goes against the prevailing paradigm, a person that thinks outside the box, and strikes forth a bold individual plan of enlightenment, and that will begin with me. It will be my own belief structure. I will chronicle my journey in developing this new religion, a religion built around a future that I believe is sustainable, noble, and balanced with truth. Today, I fast, cleaning out my body and meditating on what changes I plan to make to the universe inside me. Care to join me?

Avatar, "we are like babies."

2009-12-21T19:11:00.000-08:00

I've been anticipating this mouth watering CGI 3D movie for a while now, ever since I saw the previews over the Summer, and I can say unequivocally it has lived up to my expectations and then some. It also sends a message, that only James Cameron could render so vividly, that we are like babies. No, no, not like infants crying in a crib, but naive, innocent, foolhardy, and wreckless in our ways, the ways of modern civilization, a techno 5 year old who believes the world revolves him. We, the humans, seem to lack the wisdom that lies in the message of Avatar. I particularly like the part in the movie where the alien native explains that we borrow energy from the Earth, life spring, God, whatever you want to call it, during our lives, and all living things must eventually give it back. The energy is never created and never destroyed, it's shared, and because of that all life is to be respected and appreciated - not raped, mined, and pushed aside as we like. Humanity has done a great deal of that for a long time now, because it seems we have forgotten an ancient wisdom, a wisdom that we are not the only living things in the world that deserve to be here. The wisdom that life energy is shared, transferred, and should be revered and gratitude given. Also, that money doesn't have to be a part of it. A different kind of civilization that can prosper and mature without all the techno gadgets that seem to make our lives that much better, when in essence they only destroy our freedom and rot our soul.

I post some more comments on this thread at latoc: http://www.doomers.us/forum2/index.php/topic,58882.0.html

Also, I found this blog entry from the "Doomstead Diary" particularly good concerning the movie. http://doomsteaddiary.blogspot.com/2009/12/avatar.html

I can think of another movie, about American Indians - whose culture I have great affection for, called The Last of The Mohicans in which there is a great scene (near the beginning of the movie) where they give thanks to a deer they have hunted and killed. You won't see the rednecks around here who go stomping through the woods drinking beer, driving their 4x4's and ATV's, or sitting in a tree stand after scattering corn bait, giving any thanks. No what you typically see is abunch of testosterone driven retards standing over their kill whooping and carrying on as they spit chew over the carcase and take pictures holding up some horns. There is no respect given, but rather egregious disdain for their "brother" - the deer who has given up its life for their sustenance. Think about that next time you wolf down your next meaty meal, that that animal has given up its life so you can live, it has given some of its energy to you, but just keep in mind one thing - in the end YOU WILL GIVE BACK ALL OF YOUR ENERGY. That nugget of wisdom that modern culture seems to lack, thanks to Mansanto, modern farms, and chemical agriculture, that we are all connected, dependent, and supported by the living Earth. It is not a thing that is separate from us in any way shape or form.

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Listen here to this scene where the main character clearly describes the differences between our current culture and the wisdom of ages past. "Greed for more than we can use." That is the way of the Europeans - Western civilization (Ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt). We are like babies.

California dreaming

2009-11-17T20:30:00.000-08:00

So the US economy is slowly and secretly decaying (apparently, if you watch cnbc) while the traders on Wall st. add bank to their presumably vast fortunes, or at least fund their nicotine addiction or tip a little more in their latte' worlds, while the rest of us worker drones labor on in order to pay credit cards, mortgages, car payments, taxes, gas and grocery bills. Well, I say screw that. My wife and I will cast off our worker exoskeletons and hit the road...one last time before fuel prices soar. Yes, that's right, I fully expect gas prices to spike like never before in 2010. I'm going to lay my predictive dick out there and call it as I see it. I'm kinda like that if you didn't know, willing to boldly go forth where no man has gone before (too much Star Trek as a kid). Going back into my blog you'll see that I posted something about Cantarell's production falling off a cliff (Mexico's offshore oil fields), and if you didn't know we import 20% from Mexico, so yeah....this event IS A BIG DEAL! Oh sure, we have some reserves and OPEC and others will pump out more to "try" and meet demand, but as I'm looking at the numbers on oildrum.com and comparing trend lines it doesn't seem very likely. So I plan to take some money and buy some gold ($5k worth?) and oil futures/energy equities. The New Year should go off with a BANG!

So what's this "hit the road" talk about? My wife and l love to travel, road trips to be precise since neither of us like to fly, and truth be told, I'm not very eager to entrust my life with airline companies who are struggling to cut the bottom line. Admittedly, at least for me and not so much for the honey, I love the view from high above drifting over the puffy clouds and patch worked landscape. The thrill doesn't over come my nightmares of instant death plunging out of the sky, asphyxiating from a smoking fuselage, or being sucked out at 30,000'. Nope, not even a 1 in a million chance event, is worth dying like that. So I avoid the opportunity whenever possible, but in this day in age, it isn't always possible - like when I helped a family member move to Dallas, Tx and then had to fly back. That was just before 9/11 too. Then all those helicopter flights transiting to various offshore oil rigs in 2008, it's all a bit nerve racking for me now, however great thrill of it. So what does that mean? We drive, that's what, and why not get a good road trip in before $5/dollar gas hits next Summer?

16 days from Pearlington, Ms to San Diego, Ca and everything in between and above and below. First stop is San Antonio, home of the Alamo, a historical site my wife has never seen, and the last I saw it was back in 1989. I was at Fort Sam Houston training to be a Army Combat Medic. Then on to that bordered sister town to Mexico, El Paso where I hear the murders are up to 5 a day as violence spills over the border from Ciudad Mexico. Must be careful passing through. We'll drive through New Mexico and into Arizona stopping in Pheonix or Tucson on our way up to Las Vegas and the Hoover Dam. Maybe toss a few worthless coins into the leeching machines we'll head on over to Death Valley. A good first stop entering California for a blogger named Megadoom, then if luck holds out, we'll slip into Yosemite before the snows cover the main park road. Here's hoping for global warming and all, lol.

After Yosemite, we'll visit Mammoth lakes and the Lake Tahoe area for maybe a day of skiing, one my favorite pass times as it's just too good to pass up, but I'm sure the wifie will hang out in the valley to browse as she loathes zipping down mountains on two pieces of fiber glass. Then off towards Mt. Shasta to visit a well known latocer - Broil and enjoy a fine brunch at a local eatery. After seeing how he's doing I'll take the well worn Colorado pickup through the hills on towards the Pacific. We'll ride the famous hwy 1 right through Big Sur and into San Francisco, cross that famous vermilion bridge that spans the chilly bay, and take a ride on the trolley bus. We'll do all the touristy stuff right down all the way to San Diego visiting Hollywood, Santa Monica, and the Monterey Bay aquarium. Lots of pictures and video. I'll consider it a nostalgic ride through the hay day of cheap oil and gluttonous ruminations of yeast people. We'll meditate at the Northern rim of the Grand Canyon on the way back before meeting back up at the homestead to plan our

next great escape, but this time, it'll be to a piece of land that'll plant the seeds for a new future. A future that first must pass through a great tribulation of sorrow and pain.

A Cafe of Pity 11/6

2009-11-06T18:33:00.000-08:00

Oh yes, another day filled with tragedies, whether from a gunshot wound ten years ago or a motor crash last week we are exposed to the long term care effects of disease or trauma, all of it a sad journey into the morbid human condition. I took care of a huge ton of a man paralyzed from the neck down ten years ago after being shot in the neck. The news today rarely talks about the GSW survivors and what becomes of them. So many people end up paralyzed today because of this type of injury. It happens way more often than people probably realize. Horrible way to live - connected to a ventilator through a trache inserted in your neck, constant suctioning required to keep your secretions from building up, tubes inserted in your genitals, sores festering on your pressure points, the fecade smells and odors that whiff from your diaphoretic skin, all of it caused by the marriage of modern medicine and human violence. A murderous mix of fury and torture. It's days like this I hate my job. I try not to think of the advances in curing paralysis that would've surely been realized by now if we'd spent the money that we have so far spent in killing brown people in far away lands. We appropriate 1/1000th of the money spent on designing new weapons as we do on medical research. Another example of our nations priorities.

So while I keep this man's body alive festering from lack of use, the politicians play their party games and spend tax dollars into a oblivion of violence and corruption. Jesus only knows when it will end. If there even is a Jesus. Congress looks to pass some healthcare reform, but what most people probably fail to realize is if it even manages to get all the way to the presidents desk the reform won't be implemented 100% until 2013. It's not singled tiered so it's not very encouraging to me anyway. Won't really matter either as peak oil and all of its ramifications will be felt long before then.

You'll see.

Economic Weekly 11/2 - 11/6

2009-11-02T06:44:00.000-08:00

Monday: Pending-home sales; ISM manufacturing; construction
Tuesday: Auto makers report October sales; factory orders; Kraft, Mastercard, Viacom earnings
Wednesday: Weekly mortgage applications; ISM service index; weekly crude inventories; Fed statement; earnings from Comcasts.
Thursday: October retail sales; weekly job claims; earnings from Toyota, CVS, Sirius, CBS, Nvidia, and Starbucks.
Friday: October jobs report, Geither speaks, Droid phone launches, wholesale trade, consumer credit, Fed's Duke speaks.

Ford posted some interesting profits today, and that's helping the market rally this morning after CIT expectantly announced its bankruptcy despite the billions pumped into it, but it's a small footnote to the announcement that their sales are still at 1980's levels. Ford also took 5.9 billion in bailouts. No one seems upset that taxpayers money (billions) was spent for nothing, wasted, and never to be recovered again. A perfect example of last Fall's insanity, and let's not forget that our president; then Senator, raced to Washington to vote for the bailout.

I'll be back..... (at work)

October 14th, the dying dollar

2009-10-14T18:34:00.000-07:00

Well, I was afraid of that, the powers that be went with inflating equity assets and killing the dollar, but maybe there's still time for a late October Black Swan event - terrorist attack, Iran hit, oh I don't know, take your pick. I called the Dow rally this morning with this post to latoc: http://www.doomers.us/forum2/index.php/topic,54715.0.html, and I'll say it again, the Dow is the NOT the economy, but you've heard me say that before, but at any rate what we have here is a dollar that has had its legs cutoff by the worlds central bank and the equities are inflating because of it. Any speculative "better than expected" news will be a strong catalyst in such a capital market to spurn the Dow to new highs, and the plebeians and sleeping sheeple will grin merrily with holiday optimism, that is if they still have a job, and the others....well they'll probably go shoot themselves or maybe take their whole family out. It's obvious the media has done a terrific job at making people feel depressed and guilty for the circumstances they find themselves in. The way they do credit scores is a nice example. Usurping higher and higher interest from people who might've run into a economic speed bump certainly doesn't help with their predicament, now does it? JP Morgan, GS, AIG, and the rest of the big banks will have a very merry Christmas indeed as they add maybe a room to their mansion or purchase a new bigger and better yacht. Meanwhile, the hordes of layed off workers will busy themselves applying for the millionth time to that craigslist ad or monster.com posting only to listen to the sound of silence emanating from their phones. Big Pharm and drug stores, I'm sure are due to make a killing selling anti-anxiety drugs and pills for depression come this Christmas, and few more liquor bottles will be downed in attempt to blur the reality of being a unsubstantial nobody in this country where you're measured by the size of your wallet and not the strength of heart.

I really think the powers need something significant to happen or the media they control won't be able to sustain the illusion of recovery much longer. Certainly not after Christmas when the results come home to roost, the retail sales will be like boomerang statistical explosives that will sap the investor buying power. Furthermore, peak oil worry will be gouging the remaining employed with income ripping harvesting speed as they pay record high fuel prices. The shirt tearing and gnashing of teeth will be quite the spectacle as people beat their chest in 401k defeat. We'll also see if that little boy down in Columbia that is acclaimed for predicting future events holds true, where he predicts Obama will be assassinated or an attempt will be made. Now go and think about that as you head off to bed.

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October 13th

2009-10-13T16:53:00.000-07:00

I think the market's scratching its head wondering what to do, those Goldman's Sach's puppet strings you know, as we saw J&J missing expectations and Intel beating them. J&J US sales dropped 8.1%, certainly not the sign that the economy is improving, but since when has that matter lately? No, the dow lingered in the +/- 20 pt range all day and finally settled out a little down. Funny thing is if the J&J's report had been more positive we would've seen a 100 pt rally, but we get a bad one, and the dow muddles a bit waiting for some more positive news. How about that Intel, it's a winner, no body can get enough of virtual world windows (computers). Just wish they could make a decent and stable OS. The poor dollar is lingering at the critical support level of 76 and this is important to me, because if we're to see a rally the dollar will crash right through this level and god knows how low it will go. I can proclaim with certainty that the dollar died. However, if the dow's 6 month rally is knocked on its head they might just save the dollar and that would certainly help drive down oil prices. The powers that be, like I said, have a few choices to make. If I were them I would go with deflating equities, and god knows it could afford to lose a few points as it is waaaaaay over sold. Either way when you think about it, we're stuck in some muddy economic doom, and here's a final note on that - http://seekingalpha.com/article/165994-commercial-real-estate-lending-problems-hitting-the-smaller-banks The big difference between the different size banks comes in the area of real estate loans. Overall, real estate loans dropped by $113 billion over the last quarter, $48 billion over the last 5 weeks. But the decline in small banks was $68 billion for the last quarter and $38 billion over the last 5 weeks. The figures for large banks were $41 billion and $6.3 billion, respectively.Here we find the startling difference: the small banks experienced most of the drop in real estate loans in commercial real estate loans. The drop in commercial real estate loans at small commercial banks was $36 billion for the full 13 weeks, but most of the decline came in the last 5-week period as these loans dropped by $24 billion during this latter time.We have been hearing for months that there was going to be a problem in commercial real estate lending and that this problem was going to be centered in regional and local commercial banks. It looks as if this problem is finally hitting the banking system and is showing up in the numbers. This is an area that we are going to have to continue to watch, for the economic difficulties in commercial real estate could continue to paralyze the smaller commercial banks for quite some time going forward. And, with the large number of problem banks identified by the FDIC being smaller institutions, we could see a rapid increase in the number of these institutions going under.

Oooooh, commercial defaults hitting a banking system that is already hiding its toxic residential load securities, and that my friends is the making for some market blood. But let's forget the economy for a moment and consider the mult-year brooding war with Iran and let's consider the latest rhetoric and chest thumping moves that might just be the real deal. Meet the multi million dollar latest baddie: the MOP (massive ordinance penetrator) - even sounds sexy, like one big fucking dildo, that the West is aiming to ram down Iran's nuclear bunkers. This 30,000 lb monster is the most powerful non-nuclear weapon yet developed and gee....I wonder what it's meant for and why it was rushed. Why the rush folks? I bet you can guess.

I'm just waiting for the false red flag that will allow everybody to take a bite out of another Muslim oil country. It's coming and the weapons manufacturers are already gearing up for it.

There is only ONE Culture

2009-10-11T11:40:00.000-07:00

One of our members on latoc (doomers.us - from lifeaftertheoilcrash.net) posted a very good description of "modern" culture and its origins. I'm posting it below.

These are thoughts that have been gelling in my mind for the past eight years. It has been a very hard road for my spirit to follow because I used to be a deeply religious person and was committed to my own religion with intensity and fervor. The depth of pain I have felt along the journey of discovery has been sometimes too overwhelming to bear. But, my conclusions are, to me, inescapable today. I started my journey with the book, "Ishmael," by Daniel Quinn. It opened my eyes to a new comprehension of the entire system of the dominant culture contrasted with the many indigenous cultures in the world.

In order to think about what might happen with a new emergent culture, we need to have a
strong grasp on exactly what is the culture of the world today. The indigenous cultures of the world are many and varied. There are bushmen in Africa who still maintain their culture and Inuits in the upper reaches of Canada who are struggling to resist the lure of technology. I believe there might even be a few Laplanders in Europe still in existence, perhaps a few Native Americans within the United States but most of them have sold out to food stamps and welfare checks. The Mayan culture in Mexico has survived mostly intact in some of the mountainous areas and there are other pockets of humans in various places throughout the world that have clung to their indigenous roots.The dominant culture that flows across most of the planet actually originated from one place: the fertile crescent. This is the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Iraq/Iran area. It spread out in both directions - into Asia and Europe and from there across the world. This dominant culture includes all of the European nations of the Anglo-saxon and equally the Asian populations of China, Japan, etc. This culture has a characteristic that is easily recognized regarding its food source - it follows the path of totalitarian agriculture. This is agriculture that says anything that slows down the spread of our fields must be annihilated, whether that is a counter culture of hunter gatherers, a deer eating the wheat, or a micro-organism living in the soil and attacking the roots.There is one very specific commonality to all of these various dominant populations that runs through them - and has run through them from their earliest beginnings.

This single commonality is easily bypassed by people examining the "differences" in the cultures - the eastern mind versus the western mind, the inscrutability of the Tibetan monk versus the macho posturings of the Norwegian viking, the deadpan humor of the British people versus the
slapstick comedy of the Appalachian villager. It is this single common characteristic that I believe is the single reason for the destruction of the planet and of all its indigenous people.This is the concept that there is only one right way. It is most easily seen among the Christians who missioned their way across the world, bringing death and destruction to anyone who dared
contradict their edict that the only way into heaven was through Christ. But the "one right way" exists in every governmental action, every dictator's edicts, every single expansion of the culture across the world. It says, "our way is the only right way and therefore we have the right to annihilate you, assimilate you, subdue you, or destroy you." The part that has caused me so much deep pain is the realization of the other commonality among the entire dominant culture.
It is the commonality of religion. I identify the major religions as these: Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Christian, Islam, and Baha'i. Most people think there are major differences between the major religions of the world. They aren't different at all. They all believe that their way is the only right way. Most people also do not realize that all of these specific religions came out of
the fertile crescent area of the world. The Jews and Christians are not the only ones who claim ancestry back to Abraham. Buddhists and Hindus have a genealogy that points back to Abraham as an ancestor to both Buddha and Krishna, and the same is true for Zoroaster and Mohammad as well.What it comes down to is this. One culture and one religion, originating in the Euphrates valley, that believed itself the only carrier of the one right way, has become the single dominant culture of the entire planet and is intent on forcing it's rightness onto all the peoples of the world. Until we can break free of the shackles of the "one right way," we will continue to destroy the planet. It is not nationalism, patriotism, or political aspirations that must be eliminated. It is the belief that there is only one right way. The one right way of the dominant culture believes that man is separate from the earth, not a part of the rest of creation, somehow elevated above the other creatures on the planet, and heading for a "better life" somewhere after this life. As a consequence, the one right way includes the right to use up the planet on the way toward that better life. In the end, this has resulted in the destruction of the planet; the possible extinction level event in our future, the resource depletion all over the planet and the end of the world as we know it. The indigenous cultures of the earth still live with the planet rather than exploiting it. Resources are one's neighbors rather than tools for technological advances. They understand that the earth is our mother and to destroy the earth means we destroy ourselves.

Iraq - The Real Reason

2009-10-11T07:29:00.000-07:00

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Iran, which has already come out publically and said it will switch to euro's in trading oil, and rumors that the Saudi's are too, will be the powder keg for conflict in the near future. If this is the case, and I think so given our unsustainable debt levels and financial toxic assets, it is a recipie for WWIII that will be ignited with a Israeli attack on Iran.

Nobel War Prize

2009-10-10T18:23:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm driving to work yesterday morning and listening to NPR on the radio when I hear the most ridiculous news - Obama won the Nobel Peace prize for "promoting" peace in international relations. Stunned, shocked, dazed, wasn't good enough explanations for the fury that was soon welling up inside. This was made especially true after spending the night earlier researching the Afghanistan conflict and the resultant civilian deaths, yes civilians, you know those people who have nothing to do with fighting, like women and children, farmers, bus drivers, etc. I've been cataloging hundreds of photo's of the victims that are ghastly in scope, and sickening in retrospect that I find it appalling that the president wins a peace prize while conducting bombings and strafes small villages in 50 cal cannon fire. Little children burned beyond recognition, women missing limbs, old men with their bodies ripped in half, and all of them neither Taliban or Al Queda. A president that since coming to power has BROADENED the war in the Middle East, adding troops to Afghanistan, sending unmanned drones into Pakistan, and spending even more tax paying dollars into the military coffers. I mean can anybody seriously see Obama as a equal to mother Theresa, Jimmy Carter, Dalai Lama, Elie Wiesel, and Martin Luther King? All these people spent years striving for peace, and what is Obama's call to fame? First black president? What? Talk is cheap, what have you done sir?

I'm disgusted over it, and I have no respect for the Norwegians and their decision. The prize means nothing to me now and ever more.

I wrote this in latoc regard a very contentious post: http://www.doomers.us/forum2/index.php/topic,54394.135.html

This isn't about giving him a chance, this argument is whether he deserve it or not. It should be blatantly obvious he does not! Yeah, sure, he got it, fine, I and I bet a bunch of other people no longer hold the Nobel peace prize as anything significant anymore. They've turned the whole award into a political joke. Obama is spending our country into oblivion and you're still asking us to give him a chance? Obama is still waging a relentless and infinite war with people half way around the world regardless of who gets hurt and who had nothing to do with 9/11. We're attacking the Taliban, Islamic pashtuns who controlled Afghanistan - we put them in power decades ago, and they were accused of harboring terrorists. Then, without UN approval, we bombed them to oblivion and invaded their country to replace the government with what amounts to a puppet government. This is about controlling nations, opium, resources, etc, not about terrorism. If it was about terrorism, we would be bombing the fuck out of Iran, Syria, SA, Egypt, Pakistan, India, China, NK, Malaysia, and on and on...they all harbor terrorists. Don't for one minute try to play off Obama as being a nice guy. This guy is as militant as ever! Military budgets have increased since he got into office...increased! His answer for everything is to spend more of our tax dollars and borrow from other countries to inflate, inflate, inflate, and more than anything he's inflated the military coffers. How's that for deserving a peace award?

Talking about a world with no nuclear weapons is a damn pipe dream, he knows it too, but it's all for political aggrandizement. I don't see him calling for Israel to remove their nukes like he is for Iran. You're right though, we'll have to live with it, just like we'll have to live with the inflation, the tax increases that are coming, the wars that our children will have to go off and die over, etc, etc, etc. Obama's zeal for all the things we so fervently abhor on the latoc (bank bailouts, tarp, dual tiered big pharm healthplans, patriot acts,) should've been enough to recognize this snake that has slithered into the White House. We don't realize it now, but we elected a smart evil person vs. a dumb evil person, and I ask you: who would you want to live under? I couldn't stand Bush, but I am afraid that the old monkey's last words will go down in infamy: "Some day, my actions will be vindicated."

Below are just some of the pictures that I have compiled that illustrate the human tragedy that the world's Nobel Peace Prize winner has wrought.

The Elder's Speak

2009-10-02T20:49:00.000-07:00

The purification time is upon us.

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GSW Training Intro (Post apocalypse management)

2009-09-23T20:54:00.001-07:00

Introduction

Part 1

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OK, as promised, this is a multi-part series I'm compiling to teach GSW management from a post crash perspective. Study carefully, your love ones might one day appreciate these skills. This is just the introduction, tomorrow I will be demonstrating with a group of firefighters, who need the training too, and with manikins on how to provide treatment and what to do specifically. I will also be going over what you need in your medical latoc kit....you do have a medical kit, right? Not just some First Aid kit you picked up at Wally World....right? Get one, there are all kinds of tactical medical kits available on-line, or email me and I'll send you one for $150 (gmegacode911@aol.com). Below are a few pictures that I'll use to illustrate several scenario's and how to effectively manage each one. Plus it'll give the more squeamish of you some time to adjust, and think about what you would do when its a love one that's been hit by a armed MZB.

Economic assesment 9/22

2009-09-23T07:42:00.000-07:00

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National unemployment is at 9.7 percent, higher than last year's 5.8 percent, with double digit jobless rates in 139 metropolitan areas this July, compared to 14 last July.

The number of foreclosures is greater than last year: nearly 2 million new foreclosure filings occurred in the first half of 2009, up 15 percent from the same period in 2008.
While homes in some areas have begun to slowly sell again, they are doing so at deeply depressed prices, in many instances below their mortgage value.

Wall Street bonuses are back to pre-crisis levels. For some firms, such as Goldman Sachs, they are even higher.

Bank leverage, or excessive borrowing on the back of risky assets-a major cause of the meltdown-is rising again.

Geithner recently reported that his program to enable private financial firms to buy up toxic assets with government help will wind up costing less than the $1 trillion he had first envisioned. However, he did not mention that there are less toxic assets available to buy partly because the Fed has allowed banks to use some toxic assets as collateral in return for cheap loans.
Big banks are bigger than they were last year. Since the Fed blessed more mergers last fall, the nation's three largest banks-Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo-hold the maximum percentage of legally permissable US deposits or more.

Mid-size and smaller banks keep closing. This year, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has closed 92 banks and depleted its deposit insurance money in the process.
We still don't have detailed information on the trillions of dollars of loans the Fed handed out to the banking sector or about the quality of the collateral banks provided in return.

WORK SLAVE, WORK!!!

2009-09-19T08:16:00.000-07:00

"We did not ask you white men to come here. The Great Spirit gave us this country as a home. You had yours. We did not interfere with you. The Great Spirit gave us plenty of land to live on, and buffalo, deer, antelope and other game. But you have come here; you are taking my land from me; you are killing off our game, so it is hard for us to live. Now, you tell us to work for a living, but the Great Spirit did not make us to work, but to live by hunting. You white men can work if you want to. We do not interfere with you, and again you say why do you not become civilized? We do not want your civilization! We would live as our fathers did, and their fathers before them." . . . ." - Crazy Horse

330 million people spread across this land now. Working, consuming, wasting, and dying for what? It seems to me there is no freedom left, that the spirit of humanity is a decayed visage of its former glory, and the collective grows ever more powerful in the name of WORK SLAVE, WORK! I don't know why. I sit at my laptop - made by a person on the other side of the world working in what amounts to a electronic sweat shop, transported to me by way of oil and more servitude, and exchanged with paper that has no real value just so I can access a portal to the world. My window to emptiness. My life confined, hemmed in, and scrutinized into a technological facismilie of virtuality that any semblance with life's richness is lost in cognito.

What has happened to us? Where is the survivor? Where are Earth's people? Where is freedom from government? Where is freedom to move about? All it is, is work...work....work and then go and give some paper for virtual worlds. Why are we shitting in our own bed? Working, consuming, SHITING in our bed, in a endless march towards civilizational decay. This doesn't feel right to me. I'm so sickened by this world, I wish for doom. I really do.

The old ways seem impossible now, too many people getting in the way, and too much technology making our lives easy - silly easy while swallowing chocolate chip cookies with a half gallon of milk after consuming a giant pizza. Our austerity, integrity, courage, honor, fidelity, strength, cleverness, lost to the reverance of pop culture and viruality. A few souls crack and go on a killing spree, a murderous rampage, or produce a reality of a twisted demented demonism from their mental hell. I think we know why. We're lost in this collective. Most of us choose to stay in our little cells, work, consume, waste, and die....like I said before.

The machine, collective, NWO, globalism, TPTB...take your pick, they're all telling us it'll be OK, they will take care of us, just keep working and consuming. Be a part of it all. Well, I won't be a PART of it much longer. I know the truth. The machine has an expiration date, brazened by entropy, and catlyzed by discord, it'll bring us a new world like a mother first giving broccoli to her kid - he likes it or starves. That's how it'll be.

Few Words

2009-09-18T23:06:00.000-07:00

"It does not require many words to speak the truth."

- Chief Joseph, Nez Perce (Nimiputimt)

"Wise man listens while a fool chatters."

- Proverbs

Tomorrow I will be conducting a interview with my friend Daryl Arnold. He survived hurricane Katrina in 2005 and barely escape with his life. It is a legendary tale that needs an audience, and it's appropriate because it is a story of survival in the face of a biblical disaster.

On another note, I'm almost finish with a video on dealing with gunshot wounds from a post crash perspective. I will be uploading this on Sunday or sooner perhaps.

I keep finding good deals on craigslist for MRE's, $20 per box/12 units, I highly encourage my subscribers to do the same. Tick tock, your time is running out.

Road kill for survival

2009-09-16T19:25:00.000-07:00

Last night my white rabbit, the tomato rabbit from the video, jumped out into a car speeding down the road. He was hit in the head, not run over, and not mutilated in any way, so I came out to inspect his still warm body. So much for my favorite "free" living bunny, but seeing opportunity I picked up the body and skinned it. Cutting off the head first, than the feet and proceeding to deglove the skin, I gutted it and cleaned up the meat. Gutting out the intestines wasn't exactly pleasant. Took only 30 minutes and now I had a fine meal, and I didn't even have to do the slaughter - which I hate to do. Damn bunnies are so cute.

Anyway, I admired my handy work while taking the time to spread the fur out to dry. The mosquitoes were tearing me up while I worked well past my pre-work bedtime, but I had to get everything finished without letting the meat spoil. I bagged the rabbit up and stuck it in the refrigerator for "tonight's" dinner. I looked up some of my favorite rabbit recipes and set about basting the rabbit with seasons and olive oil as soon as I got in from work. Set the oven to 325 degrees and baked for 1 hr. YUMMY!

The moral of this story is to always look for opportunity in a survival situation. I can't stress that enough. A survivor looks for food from all available sources, conventional and unconventional, and road kill; assuming the meat hasn't spoiled and turned rancid, is as good as any source. We must learn from nature, and that lesson is that nature doesn't waste anything and neither should we.

The true state of the economy

2009-09-16T07:08:00.000-07:00

Economic collapse very soon

2009-09-16T05:36:00.000-07:00

http://market-ticker.org/

Please read.....

yes, yes, everyone says we are out of the downturn...except for that pesky unemployment....and that pile of debt over there that the US government has to do something about....and the housing foreclosures...and the commercial foreclosures...and the credit card defaults - you've got to look at this!

Discover Financial Services Reports Aug Master Trust; Net Charge offs 9.16% v 8.43% m/m
JPMorgan Chase and Co Reports Aug Master Trust; Net charge offs 10.07% v 7.92% m/m
Bank of America Corp Reports Aug Master Trust; Net Charge offs 14.54% v 13.82% m/m
Citigroup Inc Reports Aug Master Trust; Net Charge offs 12.1% v 10.03% m/m
American Express Co Reports Aug Master Trust: Net write offs on managed basis 9.0% v 9.2% m/m (v 9.9% in June)

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Don't let the media fool you, the dow rally is not the economy, and those shares are not worth the same as they did back in March since the dollar has fallen just as much as the dow has risen. Go to market-ticker and look at the debt to gdp graphs Mr. Denninger has posted. IT'S NOT SUSTAINABLE, a crash is inevitable, and it's going to be far worse than if they hadn't bailed out the banks in the first place. So what do I mean by a economic collapse? Bank closures/bank holiday, martial law, extreme economic protectionism, currency change, homelessness, joblessness, and starvation. You might be thinking to yourself that you don't believe this insignificant backwater blogger, some moderator of a fringe survivalist peak oil forum, or a lowly blue collar paramedic, but you do so at you and your family's peril. Don't believe me, fine, but all I ask is for you to look at the charts, the graphs, the hardcore data and draw your own conclusions without being clouded with media spin, the fed chairman declaring the recession over because he was able to pump enough fiat dollars into the gdp numbers, or the president pontificating his glory that the free fall has been arrested.

We are running out of time! Get enough food for at least a year, enough guns/ammo to protect you and your family, a source of water - without electricity, and think about the ramifications of a worldwide apocalyptic collapse. Prepare your mind, body, and soul for survival.....then pray to whatever god you believe in.

Read my Katrina diary for a "mild" insight into what's coming - http://www.doomers.us/forum2/index.php/topic,46497.msg686812.html#new

Rain, rain, go away, come back another day.

2009-09-12T19:09:00.000-07:00

The rain keeps coming! Broke down and bought a rain suit at Academy this morning while working. XXL and it was too tight in the arms...since I have big biceps, dang it! We had to transport another idiot from Lakeside to Tulane Main after he came to their ER with chest pain. Either call 911 or go to the right hospital for flipping sakes! Lakeside delivers baby's, a small rehab floor, and that's about it. East Jefferson, a nearby hospital would've been the next logical choice, but as it's all too common, he went a block away from his house. He had atrial fibrillation with RVR (rapid ventricular response) and treated with Cardizem enroute. Ding, ding, he's just won a 10,000 dollar bill for going to the wrong facility. The inefficiency and waste is astounding. Lakeside does nothing to advertise that it doesn't have any capacity to treat medical emergencies, cardiovascular accidents, trauma, and dozens of other medical problems. If you're having a baby...go there, if not, go somewhere else. Anyway, just wanted to rant about that, just a small complaint in a world of problems.

A new latocer was asking on www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net forum about Katrina death statistics and how many people went missing, so I addressed his question with the officially released figures and let him know about the legend of the missing Catholic priest from Lake Catherine. Father "Red," as he was known locally, bravely and foolishly refused to leave his church with Katrina bearing down. He was never seen again. I attempted to document the story and post to utube so the newbie could get a better feel for this legendary tragedy, but alas, it rained cats and dogs all the way out there. You couldn't see anything, and at one point I could've sworn a tornado was about to sweep me off hwy 90.

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Average EMT day

2009-09-12T13:03:00.000-07:00

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Jazz up your day.

New Orleans isn't ready

2009-09-11T18:14:00.000-07:00

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I filmed this outside Touro ER today, and it was another wash out. It got so deep at one point they had to block off the street and the ambulance crews couldn't get to the entrance. I had a pickup on the fifth floor so I missed showing the street closure but the water got another 6" deeper than is apparent in the video. Touro, if you didn't know, is located in uptown and it's at a higher elevation than most of the city with the exception of the French Quarter. It only took 3 hrs of rain to completely overwhelm the pumps and drainage. A number of other streets closed today too. Now that the city has to close the canals, the infamous breaks from Katrina, with massive gates and a string of pumps; that the Corp admittedly doesn't have faith in, when the next tropical system heads our way, there is no way the city will keep up with the deluge. I also foresee higher tidal levels at the existing cat 3 levies. Unless a TARP level federal commitment heads this way there is no way New Orleans will get a cat 5 protection system in place, and now the feds are running up the national debt there is no way those billions will materialize. New Orleans will flood again, and I fear it will be even worse than before. Another Katrina event and we're done. People will not want to persevere through another recovery. Recovery won't be possible next time anyway, but that's the topic of another discussion, and in any case I have my scuba gear.

Audit the Fed NOW!

2009-09-11T06:23:00.000-07:00

I really can't explain this better than Karl Denninger, but one thing I can say is that we must face reality. The financial reality for the US is that we're in a deflationary credit cycle that must be allowed to unwind. Continued borrowing and stimulus is false growth that increases the gap between what we're producing (labor, income) and debt. This is leading up to a catastrophic collapse. I've said this before on my previous posts and I'll say it again for those who think the economy is improving because Geither said so and Goldman Sach's/JP Morgan cartel is cycling flash trading/inside trading that pushes the dow ever higher. Unemployment is ugly folks, retail sales are NOT improving, and once the tax credit for homebuyers ends the real estate will continue to deteriorate. Meanwhile, the US dollar index continues to decline in sync with equity markets which is readily making oil more and more expensive. The last thing we need right now is for fuel prices to soar when so many people are unemployed, and BTW, the 9.7% is not an accurate statistic - many of my followers already know this, but if you didn't know the U3 method shows 16.7% (the same method used in the 30's). Defaults (credit card collapse) and foreclosures are at incredible levels right now, and more will only bring further demise to the labor market and consumption. Why is it we can't see the signs?

Anyway....here's Denninger.
http://

Tomato Rabbit

2009-09-10T13:13:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I let some rabbits go from my burgeoning horde, and one of them stuck around to hop in and around my homestead. The white bunny, haven't named him yet but probably should, greets me each morning as I head off to work or mess around in my garden or tinker with the house. The little guy manages to stay out of the way of my dogs, and this is no small feat, as my aging brown mutt has killed a rabbit, snake, chicken, and rat in her day, and sleeps during the hottest part of the day under a old piece of paneling. My Collie painstakingly stalks it just outside the invisible fence wire, barking at it letting me know the little sucker is hopping around, or perhaps my dog is begging for rabbit stew. I suppose that's more likely. Anyway, I've been concerned about my Fall crop of tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, broccoli, and green peppers being eaten by the little fur ball, but alas, it seems to enjoy my grass over the succulent vegetables. Let's hope so anyway, and that's been the case so far, but one day I'm prepared to come out and my vege's will be gone. Maybe my little wolf friends will keep him/her at bay and preferring grass. LOL. Stay tuned.....

http://

I've joined my volunteer Fire Dept

2009-09-06T16:57:00.000-07:00

I've been a paramedic for 20 years but I also dabble in fighting fires, at least since I was 15 having fought a dozen or so house fires in my youth, and since hurricane Katrina my local community has taken a big hit in volunteer support. Considering my paramedic certification and experience they practically begged that I come back on board (been absent since Katrina), so I threw the firefighter bunker gear on and took up the challenge yesterday. They're also thrilled that I'm a CPR, ACLS, and PALS instructor capable of getting the rest of the department certified.

My local community, West Hancock (Pearlington), has a very large area of response - Pearlington, hwy 90 to old 90, port Bienville, the most dangerous section of the interstate in the whole state (first 5 miles into MS from LA), and the first 5 miles in LA on hwy 90. We have about 1-4 calls a day, mostly medical rescue, owing largely to the huge response area. All volunteer, no pay and no benefits other than altruism and good will to help total strangers, we will brave burning buildings, crushed cars, floods, and all manner of rural emergencies. It's a tremendous responsibility that I didn't accept lightly having known what the demand was before Katrina. I had to think long and hard before joining again, but since things will be going to hell in a hand basket in the next few years I thought I'd sacrifice the time to do what feels right before we're all eating each other to stay alive. Maybe I'll die saving someone rather than have to kill anyone to defend myself, that would be a better way to go.

Kim Jones, the fire chief, told me about a recent call that they had last month in which a man was making pipe bombs; to throw into the bayou and kill fish, and one detonated in his hand. His left arm and right leg were blown clean off and other shrapnel injuries to his head and chest. It wasn't a pretty scene, a local bar on Cowan's bayou - "turtle landing", and the nearest ambulance (AMR) was 35 min's away in Pass Christian, MS. Our rescue team requested a medical helicopter but AMR (a private ambulance service that has the S. MS 911) refused to call one until their paramedic had arrived on the scene. Unfortunately this paramedic was inexperienced and when they finally did arrive he wanted to take the patient to Hancock Medical Center, a small town hospital in Waveland, MS. It was very ill equipped to deal with a major multi-system trauma patient and when the ambulance arrived there, a good hour after the explosion, the ER doctor came out and said that they had called for a helicopter to land there and take the patient to New Orleans (Tulane Medical). The ER physician was pretty pissed too that the AMR paramedic had decided to transport to this small hospital rather than a facility that could meet the unique the patients needs - a trauma surgeon. Needless to say that if I had been with the fire department I could have made the call and had a helicopter sent. Paramedics are the ones with that authority here in MS.

Kim Jones then went into the bad public relations the department had experienced since that call. It had made AMR look bad. A couple weeks later after the incident one of the firefighters collapsed at home and was suffering from a undiagnosed diabetic coma, blood sugar was 1600, and when AMR sent the fire chief the bill it was 1400 dollars! Normally, the fire department personnel, since they are volunteer, are exempt from ambulance bills, but AMR corporate (located in Denver, CO) pressed the case that West Hancock firefighters would pay from now on. Naturally, this was likely due to the ugly PR received after the pipe bomb incident.

The way people sometimes treat each other is monstrous.

Why aren't we mad?

2009-09-06T06:29:00.000-07:00

If you're a long time member of latoc than I'm quite sure you're mad as hell at this fascist corporate run government that espouses freedom, liberty, and justice for all. "We the People" must've dissolved into useless puddles of mall shoppers and reality show fans while the Republic (we're not a democracy!), a supposedly representative government, went ahead and saved banks and investment firms from their poor decisions, and it has the nerve to continue to do so! It would be like you being in so much debt that you're on the verge of going bankrupt and then the government using someone Else's money comes in and saves your ass, then to make it worse, gives you extra money (same source) to buy more stuff! We're the source folks! This has to be paid for and the only way that our president, our congress, and our senate - if they ever were, is by eventually raising our taxes....stealing from us! Why do I say stealing? Because the bank bailout bill was opposed by 85-90% of Americans so where is the representation? I think the only people they've been representing all along have been the banks and corporations.

Instead we've turned our liberty over to a political swampland of red vs. blue, and fail to ever play the field, or coach the team, but choose to sit on the sidelines and cheer our favorite team (Democrat, Republican, or independent). That's not representation, that's Machiavelli pleb control, and it keeps us from actively engaging the governance of our lives. We have become so brain-washed into subscribing to this type of control, maybe even stemming from our love for sports, that we don't see how we've been neutered of our power. We the People need to become the football coach and direct the players (representatives), that's what was envisioned in a Republic. We are so far removed from this that only a revolution will reverse it. A lot of pain, suffering, soul charring, and sadness must be demonstrated before this brain-washing can be cleansed.

http://

Knife fighting

2009-09-02T10:09:00.001-07:00

I have a big shipment of these in so if anybody is interested in purchasing them just email me: gilson9971@aol.com ($25 for a pair/holster/straps)

So why a post on knife fighting? While undoubtedly a firearm is superior if your life is in jeopardy, it isn't as easy to conceal or as quiet as a knife would be. This is a unique advantage if caught in a unpredictable situation (all dangerous encounters are), and I highly encourage a good assortment of concealed knives as a fall back. The trick is learning how to properly engage in a knife fight without your own bowels being eviscerated. I support knife fighting called "Eskrima" - "Eskrima" or "Escrima" refers to a class of Filipino Martial Arts that emphasize stick and sword/knife fighting. It takes alot of practice to perfect this art, years in fact, but with daily practice one can acquire enough skill to deal effectively with untrained knife wielding thugs. A key observation to make when entering a knife fight is how your opponent wields his weapon. If the assailant holds it over-handily then it's likely wielded by someone lacking training, but whatever you do, don't assume that. If they wield the knife under-handily then you better watch out, they likely know enough to put a few holes in your gut and chest. Why is that? Simple really, a over-handed attack for one is much easier to defend against, and two there is no vital targets aimed at when striking from above except the head, which if you didn't know, is rather hard and not nearly as susceptible to being penetrated as say your belly or chest. A under-handed attack is trickier to defend against, and is setup to come from below and slide between your ribs traumatizing some vital organs. A master knife fighter can slice open an opponent in seconds. Here are a few video's to watch, and I highly encourage professional training.

http://

101 items - must have

2009-09-01T06:56:00.000-07:00

1.Coffee 2.Sugar 3.Salt 4.Pepper 5.Hard candy 6.Paperback Bibles 7.Kitchen Matches 8.Needles and sewing items 9.Nylon cord 10.Duct tape 11.Cigarettes 12.Pencils, paper, note pads 13.Toilet paper 14.Tooth paste 15.Soap 16.Rubbing alcohol 17.Peroxide 18.Aspirin 19.Baking soda 20.tooth brushes 21.Reading glasses 22.Liquor 23.Socks 24.Tarps 25.Tools for gardening 26.Condoms 27.Wooden matches 28.Skills 29.Hand Tools 30.Boyscout Manual 31.22.LR ammunition 32.12-gauge shot shells 33.Water Filters 34.Firewood 35.Coleman Fuel 36.Knives 37.Manual Can Openers 38.Vegetable Oil (for cooking) 39.Lighter Fluid 40.Charcoal 41.Diapers 42.Washboard 43.Vitamins 44.Tampons 45.Thermal Underwear 46.Aluminum Foil 47.Garbage Bags 48.Paper Towels 49.Garden Seeds (Non-Hybrid) 50.Clothes Pins 51.Fishing Line 52.Fish Hooks 53.First Aid Kits 54.Batteries 55.Spices 56.Solar Calculators 57.Belts 58.Flashlights 59.Lightsticks 60.Garbage Cans 61.Toothbrushes 62.Toothpaste 63.Nail Clippers 64.Mosquito Repellent 65.Duct Tape 66.Rope 67.Candles 68.Sewing Supplies 69.Non Scented Bleach 70.Canning Jars and Lids 71.Knives 72.Sharpening Stones 73.Bicycle Tire Tubes 74.Bicycle Chains 75.Air Pump (don't trade the pump trade the air) 78.Board Games 79.Playing Cards 80.Mousetraps 81.Baby Wipes 82.Razors 83.Tang 84.Gloves 85.Underwear 86.Glue 89.Broad Brim Hats 90.Files 91.Pad-Locks 92.Laundry Detergent 93.Kerosene 94.Tea 95.Axes 96.Slingshots 97.Binoculars 98.Disposable Lighters 99.Magnesium fire starters 100.Plastic sheeting 101.Over The Counter Medications

(Get one of these too - $150 on ebay)

I particularly like these too (only $11 on ebay)

My friend in Pensacola asked me the other day how to determine how long we could survive off pantry storage (prepping for peak oil, financial collapse, nuclear war, etc). I wanted to discuss that in this post since it's more than appropriate. The best way that I have found is to add up the calories of everything in your food storage (can food, dry goods, etc). A typical man trying to survive in a hostile environment or living off grid will need about 3000k calories/day, a women 2500 - these are averages and everyone is different; therefore, take whatever your total is and divide by this number and that's how many days you have preparations for. I highly recommend 2 years worth, and no I am not a mormon, but in this sense they have it right. Now take the total calories and divide by 2000 calories, as if you had to ration and go into survival mode - trying to make it last. You will be losing weight but it is survivalable. That's your survival time on what you have; although you won't be as robust or as strong as you need to be, as in dealing with hostilities, building shelters, or just plain running away from danger, but it let's you know how much you have stored.

Personally, my favorite type of food to store, and high calories are a plus, is ramen noodles. Easy to make in a pinch, loaded with calories, and who can complain about the price? SAM's has giant boxes for $8. I also store macoroni, giant 50lb bags of rice (you must freeze these to kill the bugs first before storage), and can goods. Keep this in mind that most prep food is loaded with salt, and Ramen noodles are no small exception as you get a whole's days worth of sodium and then some, so this will have to be dealt with by plenty of water unless you remain physically rigorous (water will still be very important).

I want a family.

2009-08-29T18:37:00.000-07:00

In case you didn't know I don't have any kids, and since I was adopted at the age of five I must delineate between my "adoptive" family and my "biological" family to describe why I want to have kids. My adoptive family is dead. They were a large family at one time (Grandmother, 4 aunts, single mom, 4 uncles, and dozens of cousins), and we did all the traditional things a large family does - Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthday parties, etc. I have many fond memories of it all, but in the span of a few years everything that I had come to identify with and love came crashing down. My mother died in 1999, then precisely one year later my Aunt died of cancer, and oddly enough (one year later) my grandmother died. Once these relatives passed away the rest scattered like they were running away from the grief or some resentment I knew nothing about. My remaining Aunts took little interests in my ambitions, fulfillment, or outcomes, and I suppose I didn't try hard enough to find out why they felt the way they did. Part of me thought it had to do with me being adopted, not really blood and all that, but maybe I represented the heartache of their loss...who knows.

My biological mother lives up in Alexander City, AL with my crazy (schizophrenia) half sister and her ill conceived daughter. Her and I aren't talking, and not that we were ever close, but she is all that remains of my past. We had a falling out last year because she didn't want me to adopt Autumn (my sister's daughter) despite the fact she was about to turn 70 years old, had been diagnosed with colon cancer, crippled with arthritis, and was living off social security. She was being selfish and in my opinion was trying to payback some guilt for failing to raise her other children. Regardless, her and I are cut from a different cloth, despite being genetically related, as it seems that I have taken on the mantle of my true mom. Anyhow, that saga of my life seems closed and abandoned by both parties.

I've been married for five years to a wonderful woman. We had both wanted to start a family, settle down, and enjoy that element of being truly alive, but alas, fate had something else in store. She had PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome), uterine fibroids, and endometriosis which makes pregnancy near impossible. It apparently runs in the family as her sister had the same diagnosis. We did everything we could to fix the problem - surgery, clomid, lupron, insemination, etc, and none of it worked despite the thousands we spent at the fertility clinic. The doctor said we would have to resort to injectable hormones, but we had a problem, they were $800 dollars a pop and she would need 5-6 for a "chance" of getting pregnant. We just didn't have the means after spending so much already. I mean, paramedics don't exactly make a killing and my wife was an insurance CSR making less than me so it just didn't figure into our budget.

This was of course before I became peak oil aware and into overpopulation scenario's, survivalists sites, and economic forums. Years later I am more then aware of the present situation with exponential growth and resource demands for the world we currently live in, but the fact remains, I can't help wanting a family. I'm sure it stems from a desire to restore what was lost, the abandonment that damaged my Id complex, and my biological urge to father someone...who knows, maybe a shrink could tell me. I also to like to teach, instruct, and guide people...it seems I'm very good at it.

Anyway, I wanted to get that off my chest as I had the time at work today to browse Internet adoption sites. Care ambulance wasn't very busy today, although, we have a pediatric critical care transport to the airport first thing in the morning. Go figure.

Megadoom....wanting to be a dad even if civilization collapses. Strange, I know.

I am not an Ambulance Driver!

2009-08-28T18:13:00.000-07:00

I am not an Ambulance Driver! Whether it's nurses, doctors, or the guy at the gas station, and for the millionth time, I am not an ambulance driver! I've been doing this for twenty years, and still to this day people do not understand the scope, the skill, the capacity, and the training that's involved to be an EMT, and most especially-a paramedic. Let me elaborate for those who don't know: it takes 8 weeks of training (2 solid months, 5 days a week) to train for the EMT-basic level, and there are a variety of different ways to achieve this qualification. It's certainly more training than a "driver" would ever have to do. I might even tolerate the label: driver if the training stopped there, but it doesn't. The EMT-paramedic level involves extensive training, typically 2 rigorous years of course work, hot days at the hazmat extrication junkyard, long weeks of OR intubating, and long unpaid hours working the ER starting IV's and pushing drugs. Additionally, we must obtain CPR, ACLS, PALS, PHTLS, EVOC, HAZMAT, Advance Airway techniques, NREMT certification, state certification, and sometimes county certification. Does that sound like the skills a "driver" possesses? What do you think?

(Paramedic practicing intubation)

Some people will want to point out that we DO in fact drive an ambulance using this to support their assertion that we are drivers. While this is true that we do drive an ambulance, an EMT-basic typically drives the pt. and the paramedic to the ER in a EMS capacity, we should not be called ambulance drivers. Here's why: "would you call a police officer a police car drive?" I mean, they do drive a police car, and they do transport criminals to jails which is analogous to emts transporting victims to the hospital. So why don't we call a police officer a driver? RESPECT...that's why! Nurses and other healthcare professionals lack respect for EMT's. Citizens lack RESPECT for medics, especially when we come up behind them while driving with our lights on. Would you call a firefighter a fire truck driver? I could go on. So why do we do this? (This isn't us anymore!)

After careful review and many years thinking about it, and putting up with it without being rude to people (well sometimes) I've come up with a theory. EMS is a very young profession, so young in fact that memories of funeral home hearses, gurneys, and two attendees wearing clean white pressed uniforms running to the victim, scooping them up, and tossing them into the back before scurrying around to the front; whereby they both jump in and race to the ER. The ER would do the "real" medical care and treatment.

Entertainment (movies, TV programming, etc) has rendered our profession very poorly and people have this image still ingrained in their polluted brains. This is not EMS. We have come a long way baby. Today, EMT's can arrive at an emergency scene wielding a arsenal of intensive care medicine that amounts to nothing less than a small portable ER. We can intubate pt's and subsequently secure their airways, we can initiated IV's (D5W, NS, LR), administer drugs (paralytics, narcotics, thrombolytics, etc), defibrillate, 12 lead EKG's, immobilization's, oxygen, trachea cut downs, chest decompression's, and much more! Does that sound like a skill set for a driver?

(This is what we do!)

and

this is not EMS!

GOT IT?!!

Dreaming of Fall vegetables

2009-08-27T14:23:00.000-07:00

While the stock market surged on like some manic psychopathic Summer festival I went out and communed with god, that old nature spirit that brought forth living green, that root of life. The tree's spoke to me, the sky in all its firmament reigned over me, and the mighty sun glorified the heavens up above - I saw that it was good. The smells of life were all around, the odor of death fleeing before it, and the early rain magically supplemented the morning vibrations. I saw too that this was good.

I pulled forth my tablets of life, a small platte of cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and lettuce to be planted.
The little plants were excited to spring forth from their plastic trays eager to bear fruit and dance the Fall away in magical sun worshipping seances. I needed them and they needed me. We were all in this together - me, the plants, the rain, the sun, the Earth, the sky, the air, and the whole cosmos. I could smell the wet earth as it spread between my fingers, and I took great pleasure in getting dirty. Remnants of a long dead dissolved life invited the small plants like some kind premordial womb, it was all too magical. I patted the dirt down like a mother/or father tucks in their small children. I saw too that this was good.

The dogs, my friends, came to behold all that was pleasing in my eyes and they too approved. The ritual complete as I brought up the waters of the Earth from a deep hidden chamber made of limestone, seen only by god. All of it magical if you think about.

Death-life, they need each other too. "Be not afraid."

Patriots of the Oligarchs

2009-08-26T15:38:00.000-07:00

It is time to rise from your seats and wave a flag in celebration of your servility! Embrace your reptilian overlords and their ceaseless attempts to keep you in the muck, sucking on jackboot heels and living a life of techno-obsessed illusion! Words to heed by, my brethren:
- Occupational disinformation is what behooves you to bag the honesty you were taught as a child and lie your ass off in order to win over an employer. Cognitive dissonance is next to godliness.
- The status quo expects you to choke down hours and hours of mind-numbing television programs so you can become fat, stupid, complacent, and docile enough to accept whatever horseshit lies your owners toss in your face. What? The Federal Reserve and IRS are trustworthy organizations that monetarily assist me? Sounds dandy! Let's watch Housewives of New Jersey while chugging on some super sweet HFCS diet drink and sticking my fork into some genetically hormone enhanced food unit. No worries. We are free to do what they tell us to do.
- Consume, consume, consume, CONSUME! That is your sole purpose in life. To breed, buy plastic shit you'll toss away within six months, and keep this blessed corporate mechanism churning 24/7. There are no teachers, welders, mechanics, doctors, lawyers and musicians. There are only consumers! Remember: the service economy relies on you to perpetuate the "jobless recovery". More tangible objects = contentment and economic security.
- Leave Peak Oil to the conspiracy nuts and demented loners. All America has to do is drill, baby, drill in the Alaskan wild to have a near infinite amount of oil that will last us for a month or so. Or we can invade some sand negro territory and usurp their oil fields until they churn up nothing but sand. Either way, our car-centric infrastructure will last the United States well into the 22nd century. Public transportation is for those commie-nazis over the pond!
- Health care ran by insurance companies or by the government? Either way, it certainly is a win-win situation! The choices are: not being able to afford insurance due to their terminally increasing rates and the potential denial of coverage from the insurer OR a government health organization which will be ran on monopoly fiat funds which don't exist in this dimension. The choices, the choices...
- 11 trillion dollars worth of debt is just a boo-boo on the knee. We'll pay that back in no time, though you may have to learn Chinese in order for you to read the new bills...
- Be connected to electronics every second of every minute of every day. Iphone, blackberry, pager, cellphone, television, laptop, Ipod. Never leave home without all of them or you may be exposed to the ills of the natural world. The glow and hum of a monitor is benign compared to that cancer-causing sun god.
If it isn't reported on the mainstream media, then it isn't true.
- Obama is the Kenyan anti-Christ bred from the loins of Cerberus himself. If he stares directly into your eyes, you will turn to stone instantly! Tread lightly in his presence.
- Lastly (for now), vote. The two-party oligar...ahem, democracy has been the long-standing symbol of our freedom. Though if somebody tries to coerce you into believing that this democracy has been tainted by special interest groups, lobbyists, corporate influence/donations, and is fraudulent due to purposefully alienating third-parties...report them to Homeland Security immediately. They may be Russian spies attempting to infiltrate our wholesome way of life.

God speed, brethren.

By Jobbry D

This says it all!

Priorities all wrong

2009-08-26T13:32:00.000-07:00

New Orleans is undeserved when it comes to healthcare. The whole region is in a piss poor state really. I came across an alarming statistic, among many, at nola.com in a healthcare forum:

20% of Louisiana residents don't have healthcare, that's 1 in 5 or a little over a million people.

There is ONE psychiatric facility serving the New Orleans area - ONE!!! It's full by the way. If someone is experiencing a crisis they sit in area ER for several days until a psych bed can be found, usually it's way out of town like Shrieveport, Baton Rouge, or Lake Charles. I know because they need an ambulance to transport these people. Greatest country in the world?

There is very few out patient clinics, urgicare's, etc in New Orleans and most of the poor are forced to wait until a healthcare crisis occurs and then they show up in their local ER. This costs medicaid 8000 to 10000, and that's if they have medicaid, if not oh well, then they get a huge medical bill in the mail. Greatest country in the world? Crime to be poor?

New Orleans has a perfectly good low income serving hospital - Charity, but it's left abandoned and boarded up since Katrina as the city does everything it can to milk FEMA for millions more than is needed to re-open it. The city claims that Charity is 50% or more damaged.....BULLSHIT! A few broken windows and the basement got flooded, so don't lie to me Mr. Mayor.

This was a huge hospital before hurricane Katrina, and now it sits unused while the poor get off the bus and cripple towards Tulane ER to wait 24 hrs or more. Just so the city can scam millions more than is needed to fix it. Disgusting!

The WHO (World Health Organization) ranks healthcare in countries around the world. You know who comes in towards the last? Yep, the US. The first is France, Canada, UK, and on down the line. Canadians, many I know personally, love their healthcare (nothings perfect anywhere). Other than taxes they don't pay a dime when they need medical care. Waits for specialists has improved dramatically, it's still better then our system where only the wealthy or lucky few to have good employers get to have the care they deserve. The whole damn argument has become politicized in this country when we should be learning from neighboring countries on how to care for each other, and by the way, Obama's plan sucks! Single payer is the way to go. Most French and Canadian citizens look down on America's healthcare system with disdain. Hmmm, I wonder why.

Meanwhile, New Orleans seems to have plenty of money to spiff up Canal st, decorate the superdome, and get the street cars rolling, I mean after all, got to keep the tourists rolling in here and frolicking in creole Disney land.

My average work day

2009-08-25T19:10:00.001-07:00

One of the places I work is CARE ambulance, a small private service that handles critical care transport for Tulane, Touro, and Kindred among several facilities in and about metro New Orleans. I've been working there for a while now since offshore safety work and civil service have made cut-backs brought on by the recession. Pictured above is my ambulance, unit 901, a module dually quipped for ALS critical care transport (EKG's, intubation, IV's, drugs, ventilators, oxygen, and pediatric isolates).

This is my partner, JP, who as always is relieving the daily stress by asking somebody to kiss is ass. This is me giving him the "What the hell" look.

EMT's and paramedics are a strange sort of creature - full of melancholy, trauma junkies, good humor, and bipolar depressive souls. Our day started out like any other day for an average private paramedic (non-emergent inter facility transfers) - a short drive to the quick stop for coffee and a cinnabun (well, protein bar for me). Chit chatting with the manager there, an Arab of course, about foreign politics and Sunni - Shiite fussiness while observing the chaos that is New Orleans toll gate for the crescent city connection. It is known as the CCC to the locals...or the bottle neck into the city. It wasn't long before Shannon, our dispatcher, gave us our first call coming out of Kindred ICU (long term care facility for ventilator dependent pts) going to Touro hospital for a cardiac echo. This made it our turn to creep our way through Toll booth traffic.

I thought to myself, like so many times before, why on earth Orleans parish citizens put up with this. The damn bridge has long since been paid for by collecting tolls, now it amounts to nothing more than extorting a dollar from every worker drone that is forced to pass through the heavily policed road portals. More policed in fact than the inner city streets where we see at least one murder a day. How's that sit with you? Meanwhile citizens have to put up with potholes that go unfixed for years up and down every street, today being no exception, as we stumbled right into a poor citizen who drove his car through one and tore the front end out having it disappear down the hole. It happened as we turned on the road leading to Kindred.

I'm serious! They have at least 50 police cars lined up next to these tolls ready to pounce on anyone not paying, or hopefully doing something else illegal, so the city can extort some more money. Freedom is an illusion. OK.....that's my daily toll booth rant. If anyone wants me to rant again let me know. The pickup at Kindred was for a lady in her sixties suffering quadraparesis (total limb weakness), respiratory failure secondary to an unknown neuromusclar etiology. She had a trache that needed frequent suctioning, i.e. copious airway secretions, and constant cardiac monitoring. Poor lady was hooked up to PICC central lines, foley, and a rectal bag. Ahhh, the kind of retirement that everyone dreams of....right? She couldn't talk, barely move, and just managed to bat an eye and shed a tear. Morbid prognosis and a healthcare system that would do everything technologically possible to keep her breathing, no matter what, despite the fact her body amounted to a non-animated Zucchini. But hey, doctors, nurses, Kindred healthcare, and ambulance services get to feed off her Medicare and Medicaid. Just doesn't feel right....despite the food it puts on the table for me.

Took an old lady home to die later on, way down in Avondale, a military ship yard and rail depot town which sits next to the Huey P. Long bridge. She too didn't have much to say, except to stare at the few sunny afternoons she had left. Was she reviewing memories of a better time, or simply lost in incognito, a death delirium. I wonder about these things.

After many calls like this I had a huge stack of paperwork, a card deck high, and all of them had to be imputed into a computer and scanned before leaving the station. This weekend coming up, I will repeat this healthcare delirium and depressionary tale all over again, but scripted in its own sort of way, a tale of misery.

Ramadan propoganda

2009-08-25T03:39:00.000-07:00

http://

Allah be merciful. Meanwhile, as our president speaks, a muslim afghani family will be wiped out by collateral damage after a errant missile attack or a friendly grenade tossed from a passing US humvee.
http://
and
http://

All the while al queda plots their next attack from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, their real headquarters, while we spend 100 billion dollars a year securing oil contracts in Iraq and NG/CIA opium contracts in Afghanistan.

Fascist propoganda....all of it.

Signs of Doom

2009-08-24T18:33:00.000-07:00

I must've been doom sensitive today.

I just wanted everyone to know....it's official, we're in deep shit. Has anyone ever heard of Cantarell? It's this huge oil field off Mexico's coast run by Pemex that we get 20% of our imported oil from. http://seekingalpha.com/article/157824-mexico-s-declining-oil-production-clarion-call-for-cantarell

Our little sojourn into a recession since 2008's October collapse has netted us cheap oil at a cost - little to no investment in secondary unconventional oil deposits (deep sea, shale, artic, etc). This is the production gap I've been preaching for the last six months over at http://lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ forums (I AM MEGADOOM). Since demand plummeted with fewer people taking vacations, less people driving to work as a consequence of layoffs, and less industrial production we've seen the price of oil as low as $30....mid $70's today (dollar index has fallen - oil is traded in US dollars). Oil price this low doesn't allow for secondary oil production or exploration, and most people have no idea that it typically takes 10 years for a new well to come on line after the drilling process is initiated. Needless to say without enough "cheap" oil, truck companies go bust, no trucks or fewer of them means food shortages, major declines in industrial production, more layoffs....it's a self feeding economic depressionary cycle. The last 100 years our world population has exploded from 1 billion to 6 billion as a consequence of cheap oil. Oil has made all that possible. Most people have no idea that oil is used in everything either directly or indirectly (transport), and without it we starve - literally.

So, like I said, get ready. The dieoff will happen inside of 4 years....billions will die.

Secondary to all this, I was transporting a old lady to a nursing home on the Westbank of New Orleans this afternoon, and I witnessed a fight between two young girls in the front lawn of their town house neighborhood. The neighborhood is well known as a low income, predominantly black community and the scene exploded in hair pulling, biting, arm twisting, and wild punches. Parents ran out into the frey and attempted to break it up while a huge crowd of kids from the other homes paraded around the brawl.

Needless to say, frustrations are high, so imagine when the grocery stores don't have food on the shelves. Cage fighting will seem tame.

A Ghost rally

2009-08-24T04:33:00.000-07:00

I'm sure if you've been playing the market, watching cnbc, listening to bloomberg, or the local news cast as they interview so called market experts you've heard the dow has soared since March. It has indeed....but it's not based off economic fundamentals of earnings, profits, and the consumer economy.

It's a march of madness, a symphony of hoo, ha, ha-Goldman Sach's as director, and a bank orgy. All of it paid with TARP money. We see from the graph the dow has surged off it's March lows but notice the volume? Very little volume compared to the winter months when everyone was racing to get out. So why do I say this rally is not a sign of a recovery? I draw attention to the fact that the dow has been rising in sync with a falling dollar. This only serves to devalue the dow shares, in other words, the same stock share in March may have gone up in price, but not in dollar denominated monetary value. So what rally? What recovery? All I see is debt.

So what are these painted goons talking about signs of a recovery on cnbc, CNN, and Fox? Signs of a recovery? Like these.....

(This is from March 09, but the so called home buying rallying is still 30k short of the 500k line) Recent increases in home sales (anemic by 2005 comparisons) are basically a consequence of a 8,000 dollar federal bribe and the surge in foreclosures, which by the way, have hit record highs. There are real estate investors betting that a recovery is right around the corner, and actively selecting distressed, foreclosed on, and short sale homes. This makes up the bulk of the seen increases. These real estate want to be moguls are in for a big shock as the recovery is a ghost.

Basically, there is very little right now to be encouraged about as a fundamental investor.

"Missing Ole New Orleans"

2009-08-23T15:20:00.000-07:00

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Whispers of Doom

2009-08-23T14:17:00.000-07:00

I stopped at a flea market in Mississippi this afternoon, a 10 acre plot of land used for the last two decades to sell nick-knacks, knives, t-shirts, left-over garage sale items, tools, and pretty much anything some old fogey decided to dig out of the closet and sell. Earlier I had passed up the Gulfport outlet mall and the parking lot seemed to be 50% less than usual on a Sunday afternoon. The flea market seemed a little more crowded, and that felt ironic to me. Vendor wise, a good 30% of the tables were available and left unused. Taking in some sunshine and the unseasonably fine temperatures I browsed one table after another, admiring mantle pieces, antiques, resin dragons, crystal glassware, baseball caps, junk Chinese swords, jewelry, and a hoard of useless baubles. I didn't see many people with purchases, and the vendors looked bored or despondent, but the few that were actively buying were Latino women trying to clothe their six kids, or the local red-neck trying to buy up the camo fatigues. Deer season, after all, is just a few months away.

Personally, I was looking for useful survivalist tools like military ware, knives, ammo packs, etc. There were a good many vendors for these items too. While weighing the price of a battle pack and digging through the stack of utility suspender belts I overheard the vendor talking to one of the locals about the shortage of ammo. "Yeah, it's getting really bad. Everyone getting ready for Armageddon and martial law." The guy was trying to buy up all the guns, ammo, MRE's he could find. They discussed local layoff's, feeling overwhelmed with debt, and of course politics. While listening to the doom talk I found a canteen for $4, a military pack, and a razor sharp skinning knife for $5 bucks.

When it was my turn to purchase said items I asked him if more people had come in buying military items/hardware/clothes in the last few months. He said his business had triple from this time last year. I guess he didn't need a cash for canteen program to get sales stimulated. (Here's what I bought, all for $15 bucks!)

A cool day in August?

2009-08-23T07:07:00.000-07:00

It's the middle of August and we just had a cold front swing through, and amazingly the morning has a uncharacteristic chill, the air crisp and clean, and the butterflies hurrying to finish Summer. While at my laptop this morning I spotted a flock of vultures perched in the broken tree's, still left over from Katrina, eyeing something dead in the road. Easily twenty turkey buzzards bickered over a carcass that was run-over last night.

Thank goodness for buzzards or we'd be smelling rotting flesh for a long time. I can remember after Katrina there were no birds, no frogs, no insects....nothing, and the smell of rotting meat lingered for weeks. I think in the years since the buzzard population has exploded here, and I think they hang out mostly at my house since I have two tall cell phone towers that are behind my property. I can remember peering out of my FEMA trailer window back in 2006 and seeing 100 buzzards perched up on a dead pine tree behind us.

Thankfully, it's better four years later as the birds, the insects (although the species have changed), the frogs (more toads than frogs), and all the other creeping crawlies have repopulated. The forest around my home are broken, denuded, and their canopies empty revealing a open blue sky. It will take a century to restore what existed before that storm, and only if we are not hit again, and this seems unlikely to me since the climate seems to be in turmoil. It's just my observation. Today's weather is another demonstration....cool in August? Record highs in June? Topsy turvie weather indeed!

A brief story of my life

2009-08-22T20:36:00.000-07:00

Southern boy by birth, born in the big easy on the ninth day of the ninth month in the year 1971. My parents were pastel portrait artists and painters as well as drunks and lascivious merry-makers. So much so that I was neglected and abused until the timely and compassionate adoption by a true mom - Melvina Gilson. Jackson Square was my home of youth, for my teens it was a small rural river town(Pearlington, MS) where I attended St. Stanislaus high school and graduated in 1989. Served my time with the 129th medical battalion (Army National Guard) located in Mobile, AL where I was attending the University of S. Alabama. I was a Combat Medic, and proud to say so. I continued my pre-med studies at USA with a major emphasis in Biochemistry. During these collegiate years I worked full time as a paramedic in S. MS. I commuted long distances and worked long hours while taking very rigorous academics (Organic Chemistry, Histology, Physics). During these conflicted years my mother's health deteriorated leading up to her death in November, 1999. Deeply hurt, alone, and void of a traditional family I turned inward and sought refuge in my own depression. My studies hurt, my love life shot, my dreams crushed with every poor grade I earned. I graduated in 2000 from USA with a BS degree. A degree that was now of little use since my gpa was only a 2.4, hardly what is needed today to be a competitive applicant for medical school. I moved back to my mothers home in Pearlington where I worked for Acadian Ambulance 911 in Louisiana. Several years later I met my first wife and married in the Spring of 2003. My marriage was very rocky from the start as I entered into a communion with insanity. My wife turned out to have severe Bipolar disorder, social anxiety, and happened to love wine. Too bad she didn't tell me she was taking 200mg of Zoloft. Six months into our marriage she embezzled 20,000 from Hancock bank where she worked as a representative. Our relationship was crushed and torn sundered by the emotional aftermath of her arrest. I recovered very quickly seeking new love in earnest. I met my true love 6 months after my divorce and married again in the winter of 2004. Our relationship would be sorely tested in the frightful and harrowing year - 2005. I was involved in a roll-over high speed crash, amazingly no injuries except for a very sore head and neck. A collision with a 400lb wild boar at 75mph in a Toyota Matrix, and then the creme della creme was the destruction of our Pearlington home by hurricane Katrina. It was a bad year, a game changer, a moment of life that is never forgotten. We are still recovering........

This is but a brief window into my life.