consuming hope

CONSUMING HOPE


Some people spend the time between the last of winter when Mother Nature, who I have repeatedly stipulated is a syphilitic whore, perhaps not quite satisfied that all of us have emerged into another season without the loss of more digits to frostbite, gives us one last big storm to remember her by and the time when we finally dry out and the mold doesn’t freeze and small biting insects start trying to burrow into our skin, dreaming of how they are going to plant their garden. Me, I don’t think buying a big water tank for my truck and hauling water into a garden or spending at least three grand on drilling a well, and another thousand in a generator or more panels is that great of an idea. So I use the last of the winter to dream about constructing the first of my solar projects. And speaking of winter, it snows today and tonight we are setting the clocks ahead already? Was it Bush Junior, the retarded flamer, that thought this was a great idea? Anyway, I plan on building a few cookers and a water heater, perhaps a dryer. I don’t think it will cost but twenty or thirty bucks each, and that is with new glass and insulation. But my big project is going to be my Hobbit Hovel. A covered pit, basically ( I plan on propane disappearing next winter, but I’ll be pleasantly surprised when/if it doesn’t ). So I’m at Home Depot looking at the poly sheet prices. I figure, okay, I’ve always avoided these kinds of places so let me turn a new leaf and wander around and browse rather than get out as quick as possible. I found a good deal on LED flashlights which of course I had to buy. Not that I’ll ever have enough. And I noticed the prices on their five gallon buckets.

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Now, pardon the crap out of me if I’m not telling you anything new here. Like I said, I hardly ever go into Gum And Glue Mortgage Monstrosity Patch Kit Stores. Where the truly hopeless spend all of MasterCard’s money trying to recover from an underwater home equity. But, not to rub too much salt into your wound even though I told you years before the bubble burst that mortgages were a very bad idea, this is about the low cost of Home Depot five gallon buckets. Less than half the cost of the Wal-Mart paint buckets with lid. Over seven bucks at Wal-Mart and three and a third at Home Depot. Three for ten bucks. So instead of spending $20 per hundred pounds of grain for storage you only need to spend $10. If you are putting 400 pounds of wheat by, you have just saved yourself enough to buy almost half a sardine can of Russian ammo for your bolt gun. Now, you are asking about toxic plastic. As I wrote about as one of my first articles in this blog, I contacted the maker of the buckets from the Wal-Mart paint section and was assured it was food grade. Rawles assures us there is still a minor amount of off gassing of toxins. I don’t disagree with him, I just think that the odds of starving are greater than the odds of cancer. If you are poor, and this is all you can afford, I would still go with the paint buckets. The Home Depot brand is another maker, but it does have the proper symbol on the bottom. I myself am a bit leery of putting food into an orange bucket. Even if it is supposed to be food grade. But logically I can’t say it is any worse than a white bucket. If you want a bit more protection, how about just lining the bucket with a trash bag? That might not be any less toxic, but being white rather than orange does reassure me anyway. One last thought on toxic plastic. Are you sure that the Gamma Lids aren’t the same plastic? They come in bright colors and have the exact same symbol that the Home Depot buckets do. Your call, it’s your health.

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Later on in the day, tooling around with my new LED’s and three buckets, then after buying a can of beef for a great price at Family Dollar and the new issue of Backwoodsman ( not to mention the $1 thermal underwear I told you about already ), I got to thinking that while I am a super frugal shopping stud, I am still a bit of a moron when it comes to being a consumer. I get a thrill out of finding these great post-Apocalypse bargains, but from the consumer economies point of view, am I really any different than a gaggle of clucking women swarming Payless Shoes as they open the first day of the Buy One Get One sale? I don’t think so. I’m just as guilty as they are, spending my last dollar on bargains. Not that I care about supporting my evil banker masters or the corporations that chain five year olds to Nike assembly lines or put the same toxins from orange five gallon buckets into the water supply or bribe governments to conduct three A.M. raids on chemo patients smoking weed so they can choke down enough food to survive. I don’t care if I support them because they are throwing me a bone and it is all I can do to survive. Yet, if I didn’t have to consume, I wouldn’t need their deals. I wouldn’t need to support them. But what is the alternative?

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I can’t keep a mate now, crapping in a bucket in a forty five degree trailer. And you want me to move to a cave and trap squirrels and shoot at revenuers with a black powder shotgun? Actually, a cave would be warmer, my diet improved as well as my aim. But it isn’t very realistic, is it? Dropping out of the consumer economy. Is that why I can’t make myself feel guilty, or is that just justification? All very fine and dandy to gaze at our navel here. Contemplate the meaning of life on Walden’s Pond ( I can guarantee you Thoreau wouldn’t have been so defiant if there were Ninja SWAT Teams back then, ready for that pre-dawn raid to punish dissent ) some other time. The cards we are dwelt are what we are playing. Saying that, however, also recognize that we are programmed to shop. It is a survival need in today’s economy as well as a pleasure program. No one is allowed to be independent. Even the bums living under the railroad bridge can’t get any aid without an ID card. And they are forever on the run or at least watching over their shoulder for persecution. Come Oil Down/Shopping Mall Down, you will go through withdrawals. You must be aware of this and safeguard against harmful substitutions. Such as poor bargains at the new BarterTowns. If the wife tries trading food for a new dress or shoes, I would think about selling her. If not into slavery because she is fat, than find the nearest band of cannibals. And of course guys are just as bad, buying three hundred dollars in power tools because they might need one some day to save five dollars on a home built project.

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We are all idiots lining up at the cash register. Just accept it. But when the time comes, you must change your behavior. In the meantime, it would be silly to not take advantage of the death dance of our economy and pick up great tools to help you survive the collapse.

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