Clif High of halfpasthuman.com was giving an interview yesterday on an internet underground radio station about the latest web bot predictions. Chilling at best. I was involved in one of the most daunting tasks in our household...... retrieving and re casing all the DVD's and CD's we own. When I was done we only had about 15 DVD cases that were minus their innards. Fortunately Jimmy could account for all but one when he got home. The CD's? Now that's a different story, Between 2 cars, the studio,the computer room, the living room and Jimmy's shuttle/solarium ....... god knows where everything is. But I will NOT stop until every piece is accounted for and organised. Even if that means a pile for
'cant find the case" and a pile for 'Damn I really liked that CD... where is it?" I worked on this tedious but needful process for a good 6 hours before I rolled over on the floor and gave in to pure 'where is waldo ' exhaustion. But I digress....... I was listening to Clif throughout this entire process and in an attempt to distract myself enough from the tedium and frustratration of the chore to keep going I made lists in my head of all the things I have done that will save us from clif's coming TEOTWAWKI apocalypse.
Yes Clif, I was listening when you said either way the web bots are offline for a while whether you are right or wrong because the web bots are no longer a hidden observer. So I feel safe referencing the bots. I've been reading the bots since they first came on line waaaaay back. And I understood from the beginning that referencing them would create a feedback loop and compromise future runs..... At the very least, magnifying the linguistic values of any possible event or on the major downside creating totally fictional scenarios that build on themselves by virtue of participation like the classic children's game of sitting in a circle and whispering something to the first person and watching how it changes from the original speaker to the end announcer. That said I now feel at liberty to blog about it since you said you were done for a while.
Now , while I really hope we will get the equivalent version of 'webbots lite' due to the aforementioned feedback loop.... Clif has had a great record for accuracy.
I will be the first to admit that this latest prediction has made me a little nervous and my first response was OMG ... But then in true Frankie Fashion I resigned myself to the idea that everything was going to go to shit so I better have a plan.
I did the 'what do I have.... what do I need' list thing.
Fortunately I have been living with Jimmy's Zombie Apocalypse obsession for a very long time and have on several occasions turned it to my advantage. Like the time I convinced him we needed a high quality dutch oven to survive the zombie days. Or when I explained to him that chickens would be a great subsistence food source and alarm system.. You get the picture?
By indulging his favorite RPG on a real life scale, we are actually pretty prepared for a run of 'jesus this sucks!'
We have a three months supply of basic food stuffs: flour,sugar,salt , baking powder,yeast,cooking oil, canned milk and so forth.
We have a winters supply of canned goods.
We have a pretty decent winter garden of high vitamin brassicas and hardy greens
We got chickens and eggs,
We have jars and jars of herbs, spices and medicinals and sturdy resources for more
We have classic hand tools and my great grandmother's treadle machine
four cases of candles left over from my neo hippie commune days
Enough homemade wine and other assorted hooches to take the edge off for years (and to barter for the toilet paper we are going to need)
A seed bank
a winters supply of firewood
a garage full of odds and ends of needful things.
But the best resource we have is a library of books we have actively collected over the years on DIY ....
books on gardening, soapmaking, medicinals, animal husbandry,sewing, canning, cooking, carpentry, distilling (gonna come in handy when the water supply is tainted). Any classic home art you can think of and all from pre-electricity experts. When we were collecting all these ... plenty of folks laughed and made commentary of the availability of info on the internet (some folks are not going to adjust well to being flung into the dark ages if clif is right)
If Clif is wrong.... Whats all this for? Add a little electricity, a great partner to share all this with and you get a pretty high quality of life. So, thanks for the heads up clif but even if TEOTWAWKI never comes to pass in a lightening flash.... Jimmy and I are going to keep the Artisan Lifestyle alive.
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