strategy salvage

STRATEGY SALVAGE


Nothing new to report, move along, nothing to see here, don’t panic. “Only” three banks closed last Friday, such an obvious sign of green shoots that you are definitely an Enemy Of The State if you don’t immediately go down and buy an SUV, take out a third mortgage and buy 1,000% mark-up diamond jewelry from the mall for your trophy wife to mark the fifth anniversary of her successfully castrating you. No need to panic about a little oil in the Gulf, on the fifty-forth try to cap the well they are bound to succeed ( I wonder how the Obammy administration can blame the oil spill on the Bush team ). And, as usual, here at the Bison Compound Of Doom, yet more unending series of cloudy days. We had a half way clear day Sunday, which prompted a great scurrying about to get all chores done before Seattle weather returned. I went through the Hippie Bread Van and organized and threw away crap like a VCR I’ve used twice since moving. I didn’t create much extra room but it is all accessible and now the heavy objects are below rather than above. I was a bit disappointed to discover my coffee cans full of pinto beans only amounted to two hundred pounds. I guess I skipped a few months stockpiling sometime over the last two years and don’t remember. I had to chop up a couple of mice the poison didn’t kill ( and found the source of their food ) which I kind of felt bad about. I was flailing away with a rusty machete, pieces of headphone wire flying, chunks of wood raining like confetti, the poor little guys running around in panic, no, no, Mr. Bill, don’t kill us! I’ll make a mighty hunter come the collapse, surely. I even dug a bit on the Mighty Underground Lair after skipping a week due to rain. My latest theory, subject to change of whim, is that the volcano was much larger than reported and the atmosphere is full of crap and most of it is consolidating over northeastern Nevada forming abnormal amounts of rain.

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On the subject of my Bunker Of Bisonian Doom, I was going to dig down four feet and line the edges with three feet worth of pallets. Alas, pallets are pretty darn hard to find and now the new and improved plan is ten inches of pallets plus four feet of digging. It will be cramped and claustrophobic, but also snug and warm. I’ve got it all the way dug out except one two by two protrusion in one corner and then the hallway out. If it doesn’t rain much it will get done shortly. This soil is darn hard to dig. Pallets being hard to find, combined with a recent comment from a loyal minion prompt today’s article about salvaging now and in the future. I know, pretty lame, but it’s a holiday and I was on the clock an hour and a half and now I want to finish up and go home to the new blushing bride. Which reminds me- Sam, I got your check. Thank you very much, and I’ll be taking #4 out to a treat of a lifetime- a seafood buffet. The skinny dear can’t weigh much over a hundred pounds soaking wet and eats like a bird, but she can eat half her body weight in seafood the few times we get it. I’ve already given you credit, but of course it will be brownie points for me. Sucker.

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Pallets are hard to find, duh. Shipping is way down and a lot of companies are going with those blue returnables or plastic to save money. And a lot of scrap materials are no longer available as construction drops to, what, something like ten percent of its high years back. The main point here is that this time around, it won’t be like the Seventies Depression. We won’t have the abundance of previous decades to pilfer. How many cubic miles of scrap steel have been shipped over to China? How much once quality construction material has been replaced by cheap junk that can’t be reused? How many new zoning laws have been passed to thwart junk construction? I’m not saying it can’t be done. Obviously there are exceptions. But I do believe that it has to be considered more of a lucky lottery rather than a dependable strategy. Salvage is quite possible in the ruins of a civilization. But salvaging from an abundant supply as in the past isn’t possible. More and more, it will be picking from less choice and less choice quality. More people will be competing for less junk. I don’t advocate wasting money on new if you can help it, just cautioning that in poor economic times you can’t count of needed supplies just laying around. I know you have buddies on the DOT crew that give you downed trees for firewood, but if their gas consumption goes down in falling budgets, that source dries up. Perhaps you can still find scrap lumber for building. Until more and more people are unemployed and try to compete for that wood to sell. More and more people see the need to salvage steel and aluminum and copper, etc., and they get to it before you do.

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We are not living in abundance anymore. Get used to it.

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