There Is No Monopoly On Stupid; Part I

In about a thousand words I’m going to explain how I, the Curmudgeon, failed to be Adaptive and had a stupid thought.  Really.  I mean it!

It all starts in 1958.

In 1958 Ford Motor Company put all its weight behind a new product that was supposed to be the most awesome car ever.  It was sold to the public as being slightly more awesome than having sex while mainlining pure cosmic energy during your flight to Valhalla on a Pegasus.  After months of teasers the curtain was pulled back to reveal the Edsel.

You know you want it!

The public, to their credit, took one look at this, the most market hyped vehicle of the era, and took a dump on it.  Ford struggled along trying to salvage their mess through 1958, 1959, and 1960.  Then they took it behind the barn and shot it.  They lost “the equivalent of $2,756,449,772 in 2013 dollars“.  Ouch!

Lest you think I’m maligning Ford I’ll remind you that when the financial world shit itself in 2008 Ford came out smelling like roses while GM and Chrysler became government squeak toys.   Even so, the word “Edsel” remained synonymous with “market failure” for decades.

Finally, after 27 years of Edsel jokes, the Coca-Cola Company decided to go nuclear in what was known as “the cola wars”.  (Just for the record, I remember 1985 and the “cola wars” really were a remarkably weird phenomenon.)  Their secret weapon of mass destruction was New Coke.  They’d done the impossible!  They came up with something that unified the nation, a white hot loathing of all marketing executives and a desire to bury New Coke at Love Canal.  (For the younger generation I’m not going to explain the reference.  Check the link.)

Lest you think I’m maligning Coke I’d like to point out that the company reversed course in less than three months.  Well done.  Then they came back swinging until Pepsi was spitting blood.  Huzzah!  Like Ford, Coke outlasted its mistake and thrived.

There is a point, and I’m getting to it.  But first I’d like to take a side trip to toss out a Curmudgeonly Gem of insight.  Here goes:

“The free market is the greatest, most successful way for an economy to give us everything we want and make us all filthy rich while doing it.  However, it’s not a flawless Utopian beam of truth.  New Coke was not made by Stalin and Red Chinese slave labor didn’t crank out the infamous “toilet seat” Edsel grill.  For-profit companies earnestly striving to dominate and crush their opponents sometimes faceplant horribly.  Galt’s Gulch might have an Edsel in the parking lot.”

Ouch?  Are the Ayn Rand people at my door?  I hope not because they’re definitely armed and have no sense of humor.

Tomorrow I’ll get to the point.  Unless I don’t.

Word For The Day: Ingalls

Ingalls – (Noun) A unit of measure by which all winter blizzards can be compared.

In the 1930′s Laura Ingalls Wilder published several books commonly known as the “Little House” series.  The most famous of them, Little House On The Prairie, is #6 on book club for men and if you haven’t read it (or preferably the whole series) you’ve done yourself a disservice.  The whole point of America’s westward expansion in the 1800′s was to produce the experiences later outlined in Little House On The Prairie.

You may think you’re too darned intelligent and mature to read a children’s book but you’re not fooling anyone.  You’ve already read Harry Potter and the Hunger Games so get off your damn high horse about “kid’s fiction”.  Read it.  Now!  I’m saying this for your own good.  Once you’ve read Little House On The Prairie you will never bitch about your fat luxurious modern lifestyle again.  Also, forget about the derivative TV show which aired from 1974-1983.  The TV show is to the book as dogshit is to pie.

During the many adventures of the Ingalls family, mother nature periodically tries to kill them.  Throughout the series, humble yet heroic father figure “Pa” Ingalls must venture outdoors in weather so bad that an American in 2013 wouldn’t consider it safe to don a Gore Tex jacket to go start the Subaru.  In particular “The Long Winter” will have you giving your furnace a bear hug and promising to never ever venture into South Dakota after August. ”Pa” valiantly braves the elements and invariably survives (sorry for the spoiler but you had 78 years to read it before today) but each time he heads off into the teeth you know his world is one of risk and sacrifice.  You modern coddled wuss!

In honor of “Pa” I propose the “Ingalls” as the best unit of measure  for quantifying real winter weather.  This is also my formal rejection of that flaky crap where people start quoting wind chill factors and stripping Wal-Mart shelves bare when three flakes of snow fall in New Jersey.

A full Ingalls is when the weather simultaneously meets three criteria:

1. It must be cold.  I’m talking about the kind of cold where every inch of your body that is not covered in wool is sure to fall off.  Going outdoors without a hat is an unthinkable mistake you’d only make once.  Here’s a hint; -10 Fahrenheit is enough to make your car hard to crank but it isn’t cold enough for a full Ingalls.
2. It must be violent, particularly with blowing snow approaching a white out.  Here’s a hint; if you’re in a blizzard and hold up your hand in front of your face and can’t see it, that’s an Ingalls.
3. It must be long lasting.  I’ve been in many gale force winds and massive snow accumulations that burn out in an hour.  A full Ingalls requires that you must have time to ponder your situation, mutter a hymn or two, and make peace with your maker all before the storm is halfway to it’s crescendo.

Examples of Ingalls used in a sentence:

• “I always thought it was goofy to tie a rope between the house and barn lest I die in a white out, but yesterday was a 0.8 Ingalls storm.  I barely made it.”
• “Last night’s storm was rough.  There’s a tree across the driveway and a hen froze solid right to the barn door.  It was at least a 7th of an Ingalls.”
• “We’re having a 0.6 Ingalls storm.  The ice fishermen gave up because it was too cold.  My dog is missing and the mail hasn’t come since last Tuesday.”
• “The weather predicted Armageddon but it was only a 0.1 Ingalls.  My relatives from Virginia all fled in terror and the SUV won’t start but it wasn’t that bad.”
• “New York City was hit by a 0.005 Ingalls snow flurry last week.  It was said to be caused by George Bush, high capacity magazines, and global warming.  Roughly 40% of the population immediately died of hypothermia.  Survivors demanded a cash settlement from FEMA.  The New York Times devoted the entire front page to an article about a unemployed one legged black lesbian poet who’s cat died.  Their opinion page stressed the urgent need for Federally funded cat death counselors.  Countless fatalities were traced to trendsetters who hunkered down by the thousands at Starbucks.  Apparently their overcrowded state upset the balance of nature and they collectively overdosed on irony.  This had no effect on the economy.”

Tax Day: Shake It Off And Come Back Swinging

When I (electronically) sent off my taxes I wrote an angry post and scheduled it for April 15th.  My tax bill was the fuse that touched off generic bitching about hamsters on wheels, Obamaphones, and the debt that ate the world (about $16,799,234,058,456.38).  I coupled it with various other political complaints and rolled it all into a black cloud of grumpiness.

Then I took a step back and decided to go with another angle.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Even though it’s tax day, today is a good day.  Why?  Because the creeping monolith hasn’t yet kicked my ass.  It probably hasn’t kicked yours either.  We’re still here with all of the flag waving, gun clinging, obstreperous, inconvenient, self-actualized, American glory that makes “our betters” cringe.  The nation that cured Polio and invented the monster truck isn’t yet a Socialist playpen.  So smile dammit!

It’s a good day when you’re not scrabbling around in the dirt without a clue about anything except the core belief that someone else put you there.  It’s a good day when you’re not limping around ruined Detroit waiting for your favorite party to vote you a better life.  It’s a good day when you largely succeed or fail based on your own performance and you know it.  It’s a good day when you don’t wallow in helplessness.  It’s a good day when you’re not blaming your problems on “the man”, the rich, Big Oil, GM crops, Israel, lawyers, or any of the many target demographics purported to be the faceless “other” holding you back.

When it seems DC would have us all broke and dependent, rejoice that you’re still standing tall.  Rejoice that you know who Atlas was and why Ayn Rand suggested he shrug.  Rejoice that you’ve got a better sense of humor than Mrs. Rand.

Sure I cut a tax check.  Sure it hurt.  Sure it’s going to get flushed by some airhead in a suit who blows it on stupid shit I don’t like and don’t want.  It’ll be spent on fluffery that doesn’t comport with “the shortest constitution of any country in the world“.  Simply accept that your hard earned dollars will be pissed away on unimaginably moronic crap by people who aren’t smart enough to grow a tomato or build a garage.

Let it go.  Make jokes about it.  Laugh about subsidized sex change operations for illegal immigrants, diversity counseling for illiterate teachers, warrant-less wiretaps by drug sniffing drones, dickheads from the DMV running a hospital, medicinal toke ups in a land where tobacco is banned, or gun free Chicago racking up a homicide a day.  Chuckle at big gulp bans served on a platter of subsidized solar panels.  Yuck it up while ignoring elected yoyos who can’t change a flat tire lecturing to the masses about why an assault rifle’s magazine makes it deadlier than the decrepit wood stocked 30-06 that you use annually to blow a hole through the heart of a deer who never sees it coming.

It could be worse.  Stalin isn’t kicking down my door.  Castro isn’t running the nearest hospital (yet!).  Save some special applause for the fact that public school hasn’t yet made us all morons.  Every year some portion of the yearly crop of educational cannon fodder leaves college with degrees in engineering and gets filthy rich while making my life better.

They got to the smokers but left my coffee alone.  My truck still has horsepower. My motorcycle can still blow away a Smart Car.  My dog isn’t on a leash.  I can paint my house any damn color I want.  They haven’t outlawed, beer, bacon, or boobs.  Go America!

The real world still holds sway.  My chickens lay eggs every morning.  The trees in my forest will eventually heat my house.  There’s a doe hanging around in the melting snow and I’m pretty sure she’s going to wind up in the freezer.  The IRS is working on it but they haven’t taxed venison and eggs cooked over split oak.  Let the coasts sink because a country boy can survive.

Think to yourself “I’m still standing bitches!”  Then howl at the moon like the last free citizen in a land of subjects.  Don’t worry about the neighbors.  If you’ve been living properly they’re either used to it or you don’t have neighbors at all.

The good news is that I’m so damn rich that I pay taxes.  The good news that the recession (which has been called “green shoots” for half a decade) hasn’t skinned me alive.  It could change at any time.  Maybe 2013 will do me in.  We are all mortal.  The fact that I emerged from 2012 live and solvent is reason enough to smile.

The good news is that I not only feel superior to clueless OWS trustifairans who have 99% Kool-aid in their veins but I am superior.  The good news is that I’m typing this in the same coffee shop that they think is the scorched earth monothiestic land of non-diversity that is their home planet.  I’m right here, leering at my Linux laptop in a sea of Macs, and they have no idea.  I’m just plain outrageously smug in the knowledge that I pay my own way like a man should.  Hah!  Tax checks draw a little blood but my soul is intact.

I don’t have an Obamaphone in my pocket.  I fix shit that’s broke.  I pull my weight.  I grow food.  I’m a net benefit to the whole damn world.

Hippies bitch about Big Oil until the snow flies and then they sheepishly pay tribute or freeze.  I don’t.  My wood pile is still a motherload of BTUs.  I can define a British Thermal Unit and aggregate them with a chainsaw.  I can deconstruct Kafka too.  Suck it pansies.  If you’re an ant in a room full of grasshoppers go ahead and be the best damn ant there ever was.  It’s better than the other way around.

I’m not alone.  I’ve seen 9 year old children who’ve been warehoused in public schools their whole life turn Monopoly into a contact sport.  Humanity is not inherently weak and social engineering won’t change our  DNA.  Even on tax day it’s not all Armageddon and zombies.  Smile and stand tall.  While you’re standing up for yourself keep your eye open; you never know when you’ll get a chance to kick them in the balls.  When you get it, take it.  You’re an American.  It is our patriotic duty to hate taxes, loathe politicians, and fight mean.  Hopefully a few generations of castrated whiners is just a speed bump and even if it isn’t my tax check isn’t the supine compliance they imagine.

Won’t Somebody Please Sink A Truck?

I’ve said before that the surest sign of spring is when some procrastinating ice fisherman sinks a truck.  Well the ice conditions this year were superb.  You could have built a battleship on it.  Then, when things got warm-ish, everyone got their ice shacks on dry land with uncharacteristic efficiency.

No trucks were sunk!

Since then Mother nature has been a stone cold bitch.  I was out in the blustery snow this morning; swearing at my ATV’s winch cable (jammed again).  It was attached to my disabled ATV.  It had stalled when I crashed the snowplow into a block of slushy ice/snow mix I’ll call hell-crete and it wasn’t going anywhere until I shoveled enough to put a tire or two on the ground.  Here’s a hint: an ATV’s unstoppable force is actually quite stoppable.  When you jam it into theoretically compliant snow which is actually denser than a politician’s skull you learn that.  I careened off the seat like a Muppet flung from a catapult.

Did I mention my wood pile?  It’s totally adequate.  It’s also iced up like Greenland fell on it.   I clear the path to my “chosen” wood pile and let the others get covered.  In APRIL… freakin’ damned where’s my tulips April… my chosen one ran out.  I can unearth the others but I have to hurry because NOAA reports that the four horsemen of the Apocalypse are coming on a cold front by midnight.

If there’s any balance in the world it’s going to be an awesome autumn because early 2013 is not riding out winter… it’s surmounting a siege.

Totally True Facts

1. A blogger without Internet access is a truck driver equipped with a mule.
2. I drove to a yuppie coffee shop (i.e. enemy territory) specifically for WiFi only to discover that their WiFi was down and the coffee I make in my kitchen is better than the sputum of Satan which they somehow manage to foist on their customers.  (In all fairness the bar is set pretty high.  I don’t cook much of anything but I make rockin’ coffee.)  When I asked the drone at the counter if their WiFi was malfunctioning she fixed me with a stare akin to when I explain physics to a Labrador Retriever.  Further when I said, “I don’t mind the ‘net is down because I came here specifically to enjoy this putrid $4 coffee” she did not recognize it as sarcasm.  (I can only assume putrid is a word she had never heard?  Actually I’d feel better if I knew she was stoned.  If you’re stupid while stoned there’s always the possibility you’ll brighten up after a good night’s sleep.)
3. I’m convinced the reason for #2 is that hipster ironic glasses that people wear to express their individualism by pretending they’re Elvis Costello cause brain cancer.
4. It has been snowing two out of the last two days.  Which is 100% more than it should be snowing.
5. I have no idea when this will be posted.  Luckily it’s a blog and not a nuclear reactor.  I can ignore it for a while.  Carry on without me!

Did I Really Do That?

Part 1:

Curmudgeon Compound has gone from “deliberately removed from the daily hurly burly” to “totally off line”.  I theorize a squirrel ate a switch in a transformer somewhere in the middle of nowhere.  I can only hope the little bastard is fried to a crisp because I’ve been kaput for days.

The phone company is hard at work and they’re doing their bureaucratic best to turn it into an opera.  I’m told a crack team of high end specialists will have it fixed in a week or so… unless they don’t.

I’m not too worried.  I’ve been ignoring politics mostly and there’s no shortage of beer to drink and stuff to do.  Life is fine on a homestead without the Internet until I use up my pre-downloaded Kindle backlog .  I do miss Netflix though.  Suddenly Blockbusters has gone from a laughably out of date idea to entirely logical.  Though I don’t even know if Blockbusters exists.  I can’t be a common market niche and I’ll go back to laughing at them as soon as my broadband is back.

The whole moment is steeped in irony.  I called “the big high tech company for reports on their snail crawl”.  I did this using a decrepit $9 “disposable” cell phone which is running like a flawless product of the industrial revolution.  Charitably I can pretend my landline company is giving me a free EMP attack drill.

Part 2:

I got a call to my top secret cell phone.  The one with a number so unlisted that only my dog and a few others have it.  It was my single reader who knows the number.

Curmudgeon, “Curmudgeon’s phone, if nobody is bleeding it’s not an emergency and I’m going to hang up on you.”

Friendly Reader, “Did you just post Shatner on acid?”

Quoth the Curmudgeon, “I didn’t post shit.  It’s the 1880′s here.”

Friendly Reader, “A big floating pair of lips?  Mutilating Freddy Mercury?  Bohemian Rhapsody?”

Something clicked.   “Oh yeah.  I was halfway though a bottle of wine a few weeks back.  It was so funky I couldn’t even tell if it was ironic or stone cold serious.  It amused me.  So I posted it on ‘autopilot’.  It won’t go live for weeks.  I’ll probably pull it first.”

Friendly Reader, “You ‘autopiloted it’ a couple weeks ago.”

Curmudgeon, “Yeah I guess.”

Friendly Reader, “And now it’s a couple weeks later…”

Curmudgeon, “Yeah but I’ll probably pull it.  I’m sober now and…  uh oh…”

Friendly Reader, “You did!  It’s there.  In all it’s Shatneriffic glory.”

Curmudgeon, desperately trying to remember through the haze of wine and time, “Umm…”

Friendly Reader, “Just for this I’m going to drive to your house and kick your woodpile over.”

Curmudgeon, “Er…  It was funny!  Wasn’t there a freedom song too.  That was awesome!”

Friendly Reader, “Yes, I liked Hard and Phirm but that does not excuse releasing the Shatner.  You were wasted.  That’s the only explanation.”

Curmudgeon, “Let’s stick with that.”

Friendly Reader, “So log on and pull it dummy.”

Curmudgeon, “Well there’s no internet here.  A squirrel probably ate…”

Friendly Reader, “You’re a blogger without the internet?”

Curmudgeon, “Ironic no?”

Friendly Reader, “Drive your ass to wifi somewhere and make it right.”

Curmudgeon, “What if I just explain my internet is down?  After all I kinda’ like it when Shatner gets weird.”

Friendly Reader, sighing, “OK fine.  The internet has seen worse.  But when your hit count goes negative I want you to know it was self inflicted.”

Curmudgeon, “Well some of it is the squirrel…”

Friendly Reader, “Your line could be down for a million reasons.  There is no squirrel!”

Curmudgeon, “There is no spoon.  Suddenly I feel like watching the matrix.”

Friendly Reader, “So do it.”

Curmudgeon, “Netflix is down.  I wonder if Blockbusters is still in business.”

Friendly Reader, “You’re hopeless.”

Curmudgeon, “It’s been said before.”

The Internet Knows No Bounds

There is weird.  Then there is Internet weird.  Finally a Rubicon has been crossed and there is Shatner weird.  (Safe for work.  No comment beyond that.)

Hat tip to Ace of Spades HQ.