08:35 – Barbara is off on a day trip with her friend Marcy, Frances and Al. Colin and I are on our own until this evening. Barbara reminded me to walk Colin about 17:00 and then keep the lights off to avoid invasion by little looters. No doubt Colin will get plenty of barking in this evening.
I’m doing laundry, but otherwise devoting the day to work on the prepping book.
10:45 – Reading Ross’s Unintended Consequences last night, I realized something. He had a kid back in the 50’s buying .22LR ammunition. A box of 50 sold for $0.78, which is about the same as I paid as a teenager in the 60’s. Bricks of 500 cost a bit less per round, call it $0.015/round. I remember walking to the gun store downtown and paying $6 or $7 for a brick. That was about 50 years ago, although even as recently as a decade ago WalMart sold bricks for $11 or $12, and often $8 or $9 on sale. But there’s no reason that .22LR ammo should be immune to inflation. When I was paying $6/brick in the mid-60’s, one could buy a decent new car for $2,500 or $3,000. That would be ten times as much today, about $0.15/round, but a brick of .22LR doesn’t cost $60 or $70. As a matter of fact, a month ago I bought a bucket of 1,400 rounds for $80, or about $0.057/round. I doubt we’ll ever see .22LR at a lower price/round.
Once we get relocated and make sure our finances are straight, I think I’ll buy a bunch more buckets. Kept dry, the stuff lasts forever. I’ve fired thousands of rounds of .22LR that was 30 years old or more, and had no problems with it. (It does degrade quickly if you don’t keep it sealed against moisture, but those buckets provide an excellent moisture seal.) It’s easy to sell any time, and it retains/increases its value versus the dollar. In my opinion, it’s a much better value store than precious metals. Not nearly as volatile, and there’s no danger of buying in at a high. Just eyeballing it, it seems to me that .22LR is now selling for not much over actual cost of brass, powder, and lead. There’s no room for the price to fall.
I’ve already put on my grumpy old man costume and have been practicing my “you kids get off my lawn” voice. Oh wait, that’s my normal Saturday 😉
Weather forecast for today has high winds and rain, should cut down on the little beggers/buggers.
Yesterday we had high winds all day 30 to 40 mph with gusts to 60. Some microbursts a lot higher (my anemometer fails to 0 when the wind gets above 80). I heard one microburst (sounds like a cannon) and then saw my flag and pole being ripped from the side of my house and a couple of our fence boards went flying by.
I got some loot for the kids and none came… 🙁
“.22LR”?
Isn’t that the stuff that was more or less unobtainable a year ago?
Yep. It was pretty common to see gun stores either out of stock completely or limiting each customer to one to three 50-round boxes.
So, supply and demand caught up with .22LR. For a commodity like that you expect that the price will fall to just above the cost of production. The market has relatively little barrier to entry, no trade secrets, and little product differentiation.
Little barrier to entry? I was under the impression that rimfire ammo was made in dedicated factories that cost hundreds of millions.
They seem pretty low-tech to me. Why would the factories be so expensive?
I would doubt that a production line for just the .22 LR costs hundreds of millions. A few hundred thousand to a million or two, but all it would do is make that exact ammo. If the factory cost hundreds of millions, the ammo would cost a lot more to pay off the depreciation and finance costs alone. A hundred million plant would need to produce a billion rounds per year that net a penny each just to break even on the capital costs alone, not to mention the other costs. (A 10% return on capital is assumed. Anything lower would be uneconomical in the long run.)
Here is a plant for sale for $500k. http://www.bizbuysell.com/Business-Opportunity/Small-Arms-Ammunition-and-Component-Manufacturing-Facility-and-Equipment/1129643/
Well, .22LR is manufactured by the tens of billions, and there are a very limited number of factories that produce it. There must be, what?, 100 million .22 firearms out there. Granted, some of them aren’t fired from one year to the next, but a lot of them probably burn a thousand rounds a year, and some ten times that many.
Here’s a pretty good article that gives the cost of a dedicated .22 ammo factory as $250 million.
http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/02/ok-really-whats-going-on-with-22-rimfire/
You can’t make this up. The EPA is uber weaponized these days. What are they going to do with all that shit? I was walking the wiener dog this morning. There probably was a drone watching us in case he dumped and didn’t pick it up. Swoop in, guns blazing.
The headline of an op-ed by economist Stephen Moore in Investor’s Business Daily sums it up well: “Why Does the EPA Need Guns, Ammo, and Armor to Protect the Environment?”
And not just a few weapons. Open the Books found that the agency has spent millions of dollars over the last decade on guns, ammo, body armor, camouflage equipment, unmanned aircraft, amphibious assault ships, radar and night-vision gear, and other military-style weaponry and surveillance activities.
“We were shocked ourselves to find these kinds of pervasive expenditures at an agency that is supposed to be involved in clean air and clean water,” said Open the Books founder Adam Andrzejewski. “Some of these weapons are for full-scale military operations.”
Welcome to a fundamentally changed america. one with a domestic army to rival the US Army. All going according to plan.
See, those cunning politicians lie non-stop, so no one believes them when they openly tell the truth. It’s all there, in the open, and some in the alternative media will highlight it when it comes up. ‘Course you never know til later which were the lies and which the honest truth.
nick
btw, you can ask the same questions about the Dept of ED, or Trans, or a myriad of others.
Everyone is getting swatted up, armored up, bunkered up.
nick
“Everyone is getting swatted up, armored up, bunkered up.”
Along with state and big-city “LE” organizations; and so are millions of citizens.
If there is a second civil war, it’s gonna make the first one look like a nice Sunday afternoon at the beach. Hell, we could hit that 80% mass die-off figure in no time!
Just read this interesting article, which has echoes of prepper cooking.
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-30/friday-food-post-the-economics-behind-grandma-s-tuna-casseroles
Just killed another rat under my refrigerator with my cane. That is number five in two years. I had heard some funny noises last night and put the poison box by the fridge. Plus the wife mentioned that the cat was sitting in front of the fridge again and staring at it.
The rat was disoriented and ventured out while I was grabbing some supper. I may start buying these in quantity.
http://www.amazon.com/Motomco-Tomcat-Disposable-Station-4-Ounce/dp/B004XWULZU/ref=sr_1_5
I wish I could figure out how the little monsters are coming in. This is getting old.
If there is a second civil war, it’s gonna make the first one look like a nice Sunday afternoon at the beach. Hell, we could hit that 80% mass die-off figure in no time!
Only if you use nukes or biologicals. Humans are incredibly resistant to most things such as famine. Just ask Sherman as he burned his way through the South.
“I wish I could figure out how the little monsters are coming in.”
They can get in via the tiniest holes, you wouldn’t believe how tiny. Your cat needs to do more than just stare at the fridge all night; does he/she EVER execute any of these trespassers? Our three cats are relentless and RUTHLESS in ridding the domicile of rodents, amphibians and birds. It kinda sucks, though, picking up whatever they’ve left behind for us. Which is my job, exclusively.
“Humans are incredibly resistant to most things such as famine.”
True, but the amount of firepower in the possession of the Almighty State and many millions of citizens is friggin’ awesome, never before in human history. It could end up being one very long Fourth of July night here, in terms of flash and noise alone.
“Just ask Sherman as he burned his way through the South.”
I’d rather not, as he is probably in a place now I’d just as soon not end up in. And not only for what he did in the South but also later out West against the Native Americans. He and Grant and Sheridan were out-and-out war criminals and reported to the chief war criminal.
No little urchins have come to the house yet and it’s nearly 7 PM here now and dahk. I know there are kidz in the ‘hood but they probably get chauffeured elsewhere to a denser ‘hood and more peeps handing stuff out. Any who’ve seen me out and about in the yard may just be giving this place a wide berth. And I’m not even in costume.
Your cat needs to do more than just stare at the fridge all night; does he/she EVER execute any of these trespassers? Our three cats are relentless and RUTHLESS in ridding the domicile of rodents, amphibians and birds. It kinda sucks, though, picking up whatever they’ve left behind for us. Which is my job, exclusively.
Nope, this cat is a looker and a player. We used to have a ruthless mouser but she died at 17 years of age.
I need to look under the fridge. I am worried that the rat may have stripped the wiring again.
Fair number here. We live in a swank neighborhood and kids are carpooled in from elsewhere for the good pickin’s. (Until recently, a couple of old guys gave out full-size Snickers bars to all callers, for instance.) I wouldn’t have bothered, but my daughter really wanted to hand out candy, as contrasted with going out trick or treating herself (with me escorting, of course). I don’t know if that’s because she’s too lazy to walk a mile or two in the course of mooching or because I told her she could watch videos on YouTube while she waited for the next batch.
(Or because we already have so much friggin junk food for her in the house. I was annoyed that I had to hunt to find a jar of peanut butter in the one cupboard so I started pulling out boxes of poptarts and found there were 12 boxes in 10 flavors. In other cupboards there were a box of microwave popcorn, a bag of popcorn kernels, a box of hot cocoa packets, a box of snack-size cheezits, a box of snack-size Chex Mix, various kinds of candy, about six flavors of breakfast bars, and probably more that I’m not thinking of. And the worst part: I can blame no one but myself. I do almost all of the grocery shopping here (often with Short Stuff and sometimes with the other girl we often take care of). Allow me to point out, though, that the junk food tends to accumulate because we don’t let either girl have too much of it.)
By the way, the other girl’s 8th birthday was a few days ago. Her father dropped her off that evening and disappeared after minimal pleasantries. We were surprised to learn the significance of the date, but scrounged up a couple of presents (a Barbie and an art kit) and an ad hoc substitute for a birthday cake (a couple of brownies on a plate, with candles stuck around the rim). And she was very happy because her parents hadn’t done anything except wish her happy birthday in the morning. And she told us it was the first birthday party she’d ever had. I had my wife deal with the father when he came to get the kid a couple hours later (past 9 on a school night) as I was quite cross with him and his wife and likely would have bitten his head off. (Probably not literally, but no guarantees. I was angry at him, and I hardly ever get angry.)
Sorry for venting. Thanks for reading.
Earlier in the week there was some talk about the NRA. This is a link to a regular newsletter that they email to let us know what the scum politicians are doing to take our guns away:
https://www.nraila.org/email/grassroots-alerts/2015/vol-22-no-43-10302015/
We had a slow start but it’s picking up.
We don’t get the literal busses that we got in our other neighborhood. We are clearly getting folks from outside our little section though. We’re also seeing some of the neighbors, which is nice. No hurricane this year, so less contact with the folks on the street, especially the ones busy with little kids.
The weather was bad all day and finally dried out late. I think that’s delaying the hordes.
Since I go big and do a lot of decorating, I’m fine with kids coming by. People always compliment me, they are almost unfailingly polite, and the kids are amazed. They usually take pictures in front of some of the stuff.
My six year old is enjoying giving out candy at the moment.
Nice evening, light breeze, very comfortable.
nick
we’re offering candy or a toy this year, and it’s running about 2 to 1 candy. We also give out glo stick bracelets, so we can tell how many we got by the bracelets.
@stevef
Some kids really need an adult like you in their lives. It makes a difference.
nick
btw, we always have a couple of gifts in the closet for those pop up birthday invites, saves a lot of time, covers a lot of asses.
“… as I was quite cross with him and his wife…”
What a couple of dicks. An eight-year-old girl and that’s how they deal with her birthday?
“Sorry for venting. Thanks for reading.”
Hey, even the calmest, sanest, and most rational of us here, like me, for instance, sometimes vent about chit. Don’t get mad; get even.
“… let us know what the scum politicians are doing to take our guns away…”
As much as they can, like over in Maine now, where Bloombug’s minions and millions are trying to destroy what gun rights exist there; they backed off Arizona for now. Sons of bitches just won’t stop; I hereby declare Open Season ad infinitum on these commie operators. Every time I see or hear that bastard’s name I have a vision of a big fat dum-dum….never mind.
“Nice evening, light breeze, very comfortable.”
Haha, yeah, same here; light breeze off the lake and dropping into the low fotties, with rain squalls expected later. Like living on an ocean hahbuh.
“Some kids really need an adult like you in their lives. It makes a difference.”
+100
Plus, if he gets angry enough, he’ll friggin’ kill the dad for them. Or the mom. Or both.
“…btw, we always have a couple of gifts in the closet for those pop up birthday invites…”
We don’t have kidz at home anymore but what a swell ideer! Apparently any number of children out there who get neglected, which is the opposite extreme of the “helicopter parents” who smother them with stuff.
OFD wrote:
“It kinda sucks, though, picking up whatever they’ve left behind for us. Which is my job, exclusively.”
Don’t be so hard on them Dave, they probably figure you might want a snack… 🙂
True, that, and might as well give ’em a try as they may prove really tasty after TSHTF and Burger King ain’t around no’ mo.’
Ditto. Play-doh, dolls, transformers, art kits. Emphasis on creative stuff, even if it’s just bead jewelry kits. Not much costs over $5 — I’ll give my wife credit for luck or tenacity in getting things on sale or Craigslist or yard sales. Not many books, because tastes vary so widely and also because few Chinese parents encourage young children to enjoy books, a carry-over of the retarded Chinese writing system.
And how pathetic is that? I am not a good role model by modern societal standards. You’re right, though, that a number of parents are worse. Sometimes a lot worse. Pathetic.
If I kill them, it’ll be in cold blood because I decided their kid or the world was better off without them. (Ref “not a good role model” comment, above.)
So I’m out of glow sticks which means about 100 kids. I usually start shutting down at 9 because we rarely get kids after then. Teens yes, kids no. Late start due to weather, I might sit out a while longer. Still getting good groups.
Our second Halloween here, no visitors, and don’t expect any.
We live in an area that is highly-aged. Most everyone around here turns out the lights and goes to sleep at 7pm.
A lot of the streets around here are court-type. Since it is a retirement area, the signs don’t say “Dead End”, but “No Outlet”.
The HOA is worried about the long-term health effects of weed killer. Not sure why that is. Everyone around here is too old to need to worry about long-term effects of anything.
Ba-dump. Thanks. I’ll be here all week. Try the veal, and don’t forget to tip your waiter.
Well, one last couple of groups and I am done. Got the valuable or fragile items inside, lights out.
I’m figuring a few more than 100. Heavily hispanic, as the surrounding areas are. SUVs with a family group, no buses. 5-7 kids at a time. All polite, many complementary. Some neighbors, complementing the displays.
Alot of candy left over. Lots of kids took the toy option. I spent way less on toys than candy. Oh well, the toys will not spoil, and school usually has a fun fair or something that needs little toys too.
Between the fair at school and walking the block, the kids were tired out. And they ate a ton of candy 🙂
Me too for that matter, and I’ll be getting the stink eye for a month as some people in the house work their way thru the leftovers.
Quick shower, read a bit, and off to bed for me…
nick
“…because few Chinese parents encourage young children to enjoy books, a carry-over of the retarded Chinese writing system.”
Evidently very few Murkan parents do that, either, a carry-over of their own lack of interest in reading when tee-vee and the net are on all the time. My wife and I are fading anomalies, and apres us, oblivion. Rather than a deluge. We are off whatever charts, anyway; both of us learned to read at ages 3-4 and I was doing book reports at the local small-town library’s summer reading program at 5-6. I read fast, but she reads ten times faster; I have the edge on her in quantity of books read over the decades, though, countless. None of my siblings read much, if at all, and our own kids certainly don’t, even though they all saw us with “our damn noses in a book” ALL the time, so as role models that was an apparent failure. Then we have the rotten publik skool systems, where the reading for the past couple of decades has almost always been of nothing before, say, 1965, and is completely shot through with PC topics concerning race, gender and class and what a horrid and terrible country this is.
“…in cold blood…”
The late Truman Capote’s best book and a really good movie was made of it, too.
“I usually start shutting down at 9 because we rarely get kids after then. Teens yes, kids no.”
Yeah, we don’t get that here but I remember when we lived down in Megalopolis it was kinda strange to open the door for trick-or-treaters and see a couple of six footer males standing there. I didn’t give a shit and figured they were that pathetic and desperate so simply handed out the same stuff to them w/no comments. If they’d been thinking about robbing us or something, they woulda got a big ol’ surprise.
“We live in an area that is highly-aged. Most everyone around here turns out the lights and goes to sleep at 7pm.”
Ditto in the village here; there are kids but none came to the door tonight. Bummed me out, man. All alone for three weeks, no wife, no gf, no bf, just the dawg and three catz. You’re right about locking up and going to bed at 7, evidently; our neighbor’s lights are out around then and last week I got back here at 05:00 after dropping wife at the airport and the guy across the street was standing in his doorway having a ciggie, fellow ‘Nam vet. Still dark out and he’s up; I’ve seen the wife up around then, too.
I, of course, being an old-time night shift drone, am usually up till at least 10:30 and often after midnight, and don’t get up till mid-morning. Retired, you see. Life of fucking Reilly.
Watching Season Four of “The Wire,” to remind me how great we have it here when we could be making big bucks and living Down There. It was either that or the 40th Anniversary Edition of “The Exorcist,” and on All Hallows Eve I don’t feel like tempting fate. A decent mom would not have let her kid play with the Ouija board and talk to some entity calling itself “Captain Howdy.”
Last year I started to watch some other docudrama about the dark side, based on a real series of events, and the ceiling light above me came crashing down and smashed off the top of the computer monitor. A foot from my head. I said fuck this and quit watching it and put on a comedy instead. This house is nearly 200 years old and a previous resident who was born here has said there was “paranormal activity,” plus the cats are sometimes staring at the stairs and seem to be watching as someone comes down them but there’s NO ONE THERE!
Back to “The Wire.”
I bought 250 fun size candy bars. The wife started giving out 2 at a time. We are now out so we had well over 100 kids visit us. One kid asked for a drink so she gave him a water bottle. It was a very pleasant night as we watched “Hocus Pocus” during the visits.
The cat wants to go out real bad but he is bright white and stands out. No night patrol tonight!
Food for thought:
http://christianmerc.blogspot.com/2015/10/a-functional-resistance.html
Five years, ten, fifteen? I can hump a 35-lb ruck and a pistol with ammo two-three miles on fairly level ground now but then? I dunno. How about twice that weight plus rifle and ammo plus a radio? In crappy weather. With guys we gotta hunt or who are hunting us?
I figure I’m doing good if I can hang on long enough to defend the house and immediate ‘hood, dunno about much beyond that as the years keep flashing by…
It is now All Saints Day. Pax vobiscum.
Gee, I spoke too soon about pax and all that:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/10/tyler-durden/empire-strikes-back-2/
Blowback is a bitch. But our beloved leaders keep screwing around with various parties at home and abroad and funny chit starts happening that they didn’t plan for. Who was it said that no plan survives initial contact with the enemy? Trouble here is, who exactly IS the enemy? Russians? ISIS (that we have dirty hands about building up?) The Saudis? The Chicoms? Our own government? Or part of it? WTF?
Apparently, cats don’t want to kill us…
Yeah right. If we were shrunk to 2″ tall we’d be on the menu in a flash.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-01/your-cat-is-a-miniature-lion-but-it-is-not-trying-to-kill-you/6903064
I think we need to get our little looter to exercise a bit more. She made the short walk over to her grandparents house fine, but on the way back spent most of her time on daddy’s shoulders saying I want to go home. The inlaws only live 3 or 4 blocks away.
[snip] One kid asked for a drink so she gave him a water bottle. [snip]
Ever since I was in college, my usual Samhein treats have been bottles of water &/or cans of Coca Cola. It lets the little munchkins have something to wash down all that candy, it’s different, and mom & dad don’t have to worry about the usual contamination hype. Plus I get to consume the leftovers w/o guilt. Last night I had exactly one group; I guess the bogus weather forecast kept some kiddies indoor.
Constant 30 mph winds (gusting to 45) and light rain kept the ToTers down to 20, we usually get 100. My wife and I put on old flannel PJs and fright wigs. When the doorbell rang we waited a bit then answered the door with our best sleepy eyed impersonation. All the kids suddenly got very apologetic thinking that they had awakened the ol’ farts. We gave each of them 2 big handfuls of candy.
Our cats did there part by sitting in the front window most of the night. The star was our big black cat with glowing gold eyes.
Are those buckets of .22 you’re buying Remington-brand? If so, rest assured, at least the *bucket* will work.
My favourite bulk-packed .22 by far is the Lapua brand (SSK manufacture) sold in 500-round tin cans with a pull-ring metal seal and a plastic reusable lid. Storable indefinitely, and I’ve yet to find a .22 firearm in which it doesn’t give at least acceptable accuracy and reliability. Recommended.