panic shopping

PANIC SHOPPING
As usual I am going to recycle ( all Birkenstock wearing, female armpit hair non-shaving, Volvo driving tree huggers should love me all to pieces for caring enough to save Gaia by recycling ) another stale idea that has been beat to a pulpy mess long after all heart functions and brain activity ceased. But since I’m rewriting it rather than reposting the same thing it is all right. I am allowed to do that under clause fifty three of the Bison Charter. But before I do that, I want to give all my minions a big sloppy kiss for your holiday season inspired generosity. My Amazon credit this month was twice as nice. Seventy bucks instead of the regular $30. Thank you very much for buying through my Amazon links and giving me the commission. I ordered quite a few books I normally wouldn’t spend my own money on ( not that they aren’t good enough, just that they aren’t the best for my limited resources ). A soap making book, a reprint of the 100 year old Boy Scout manual. How to survive 2012 ( not that I think it is sure to happen, just that it will be cool be see how you can survive the violent movement of the Earths crust ). A few obscure fiction books. And I even have an extra ten bucks left over for when I stumble on to another one I simply can’t live without. If I get enough books I’ll never have time to read stacked up against the walls I’ll increase my insulation.
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I think I’ve waffled both ways on the question of whether or not you should engage in any panic shopping as the collapse is perceived by the general public. Holy Friggin Crap, Batman! Some towelhead just suicide bombed a dirty bomb in DC ( don’t we wish ) and we might be next! To the Bat Cave. We’ll fire up the SUVmobile and go down to Safeway and buy TV dinners in a panic. Now, while we can all agree that it would be silly to go on down to, say, Wal-Mart, because even during the best of times the average shopper has the intellectual capacity of a rotting grapefruit and can’t do much more than stare vacantly into the far off distance of his Happy Place and perhaps drool a little, or push in violent frustration to his joystick as his electric cart ( look! More good news for the Granola Crowd, more electric vehicles! ) runs out of power and his three hundred plus pounds of oozing oily skin is stranded in aisle five of the women’s lingerie section, but in a crisis they would act far worse, and there might have been other juicy targets you may have wanted to hit. Say, the feed store or the library. It would be imprudent to shop at the grocery store, the gun shop or go anywhere near the National Guard armory ( all the good stuff is in Afghanistan but inevitably some Wal-Mart reject will still try to assault the building with fellow crackheads ), but perhaps at a wholesale food distribution warehouse or other place few have thought of?
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Well, I’ve changed my mind again and my latest and greatest subject to unlimited alterations idea is that any expedition outside the compound once the crap hits the fan is ill advised. Perhaps you couldn’t have helped noticing that over the years as the population has exploded civility and manners, compassion and decency has taken a huge wack over the head with an oak stick? In times of surplus everyone can afford to share and be generous and even if they could care less if you contracted leprosy and your junk fell off at least they gave the illusion of trying to help a brother out. But I think despite acting stupid enough to be unable to pour piss out of their Chinese made boot, most people at least have a basic, Reptilian Brain awareness that these are not times of plenty, that the surpluses are gone. They are too stupid to do anything concrete enough about it like move out of huge metro areas or stay out of debt, but they are aware enough to cheat and steal and fight for the remaining shrinking pieces of the pie. Remember, bastard coated bastards with bastard filling. If you need a real concrete example of how people are going to act once Barnyard Flu is helped along on its mutation by the PTB to go airborne, just think of Black Friday and cell phones. The only reason we didn’t see trampling deaths this year was because twice as many people were unemployed and unable to shop. And cell phone users are rude enough on land, but put them behind the wheel and they turn into dangerous drivers, more deadly than drunks or teenage drivers.
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People are, if it is even possible, more rude, self centered and deadly than before. Do not tempt fate and increase your odds of death by mingling with them in times of panic. No matter how tempting last minute shopping is. Be stockpiled adequately beforehand.
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