09:06 – Barbara and I have started watching The Killing on Netflix streaming. It’s about–surprise, surprise–the murder of a teenage girl. It seems that many of the series we watch involve the murders of teenage girls and young women, and I’m getting sick of it. Most of them are very well done, but I simply don’t like the subject matter. I know it happens, much too often, in real life, but watching fictional representations makes me cringe. To a lesser extent, the same is true of medical and legal dramas.
That’s why I’d just as soon watch series like Heartland over and over again. They have real writers who can spin interesting stories without using life-and-death issues as a crutch. I could happily re-watch stuff from our current Netflix queue and DVD library without ever adding anything new. Series like Heartland, Everwood, All Creatures Great and Small, Lark Rise to Candleford, and many others. I don’t even object to murder mysteries, as long as they’re cozies. What I can’t stand is this hard-boiled stuff.
I’m still cranking away on the prepping book. At the moment, I’m working on the Section I chapter on power, lighting, and communications. (Section I covers dealing with emergencies during the first month; section II up to one year; and section III with the long term.)
” I know it happens, much too often, in real life, but watching fictional representations makes me cringe. To a lesser extent, the same is true of medical and legal dramas.”
Ditto. I avoid all that stuff, along with the dumbass cop shows that have been on the tee-vee since Dragnet and Car 54, Where Are You?, etc.
And the local rag paper had a section yesterday on the outcome of a dozen domestic abuse cases in the local courts; what a miserable and rotten litany of guys ranging from late teens into their forties bashing women around, including pregnant women, in a couple of the cases because sex was not immediately forthcoming. Sentences ranged from probation/restraining orders through ten or more years.
A fine sunny day today at 13 degrees Farenheit. Off to Montreal in an hour or two, depending on when Princess deigns to arrive here. Report on border security to follow later.
I always thought the real solution to so-called domestic abuse was for the woman’s male relatives, friends, and neighbors to beat the shit out of the guy who hits her. And for the cops to look the other way.
That came close up here some years ago but there warn’t enough evidence for it to take place, and the relationship ended shortly thereafter anyway and that was it.
But there is also the danger, even in modern times, of this sorta thing expanding, and leading on to larger conflicts and feuds, and we’ve seen that in the nooz, too.
When I was on the cop jobs, we’d routinely take victims to secret safe houses to get them away from the perps and within days if not hours the vic would call the perp to come get her, and thus also reveal the location of the house. It was just a tad frustrating for us.
Had neighbors like that, a couple maybe 25 years old. Wife would hardly talk to anyone or come out of the house. The few times I saw her, she had funny make-up on, I suspected it was covering bruises. No proof, only suspicions, the woman won’t talk to you, what do you do?
Meanwhile, the guy took really excellent care of his car and his Rottweiler.
Yeah, strictly speaking most domestic abuse is actually consensual behavior. If a woman puts up with it, I don’t think any actual crime is occurring. But I do understand that for some abused women, maybe most, it’s voluntary only in the sense that they think it’s better than the alternatives.
But seeing a man strike a woman deeply offends my sense of propriety. If OFD is right and society collapses, I would take the John Wesley Hardin approach to abusers. He famously shot a man for snoring, although in reality the guy was in the next room, Hardin had yelled at him several times to keep it down, and when he eventually fired the shot it was through a wall and just happened to hit the guy and kill him. Still, back in the days when I put on my pistol when I put on my pants, there were several occasions when I was momentarily tempted just to shoot one of these SOBs who was being impolite to a woman in my presence.
“‘Longmire’ Lives, Fans Rejoice As Netflix Signs Season Four Return”
http://deadline.com/2014/11/netflix-picks-up-longmire-1201289364/
I’ve got to get Netflix now. My TV is pre apps and so is my blueray player. Maybe a new blueray player? Or one of the little dedicated video boxes?
I’d go with the Roku 3.
We had a great speaker who preached at our church and taught the bible class yesterday. He has nine very simple rules for a great marriage. His first rule was “be nice”. Mark Gungor is 60 and has been preaching for over 30 years in Wisconsin. He said that it amazes him away how nice people are at church and then go home and start yelling at each other.
All preachers council their members whether they want to or not. He talked about seeing the same kind of crazy over and over again.
Here is his book: “Be-Attitudes of Marriage: 9 Simple Steps to a Healthier and Happier Marriage”. I bought copies for my kids (who are not married but hope springs eternal).
http://www.amazon.com/Be-Attitudes-Marriage-Simple-Healthier-Happier/dp/1935519298/
One of his main points that he kept returning to is the current psychobabble that men need to get in touch with their feelings. He thinks that any man who operates using his feelings is a total disaster and I agree. It matters what you do, not what you think.
I remember the first time I heard that. A woman told me that “men need to get in touch with their feelings”. (Presumably including me.) I replied without thinking, “We don’t have any feelings to get in touch with.”
I always thought the real solution to so-called domestic abuse was for the woman’s male relatives, friends, and neighbors to beat the shit out of the guy who hits her.
The Mooslims beat the shit out of the woman. Watta religion!
I was on a jury last year, and helped convict a man of beating the crap out of his wife. One of the pieces of evidence was a picture of his handcuffed hands, with some of his wife’s hair still clinging to them. She was pressing charges to keep her kids safe.
The crucial pieces of evidence against him were the 911 calls. We heard most of the attack, the sheriff’s deputy arriving, and his surrender. It was an awful 4 days. Since this was his third felony, the judge threw the book at him. He’ll be in his 70s before he gets out. His priors were for auto theft and drug distribution.
“I’d go with the Roku 3.” Ditto. Works not only for Netflix, Hulu and all that stuff, but also a host of other channels available, plus ability to stream from a computer that has PlayOn installed as a server. I still have to watch “Longmire” Season 3.
“…seeing a man strike a woman deeply offends my sense of propriety. If OFD is right and society collapses, I would take the John Wesley Hardin approach to abusers.”
Ditto. Or an adult walloping a kid in public. That also pisses me off. I hope I’m wrong and the collapse may not happen for decades but I really don’t see how this country is sustainable anymore, not as huge and as populous as it is, with all comers invited to gorge at the endless buffet, plus approaching $20 trillion in debt, constant inflation and eventual Default. Not to mention a Grid infrastructure wide open to various kinds of sabotage, and ditto the food and water distribution systems. If and when we go down the tubes it will make the end of Rome look like a day at the beach.
“He’ll be in his 70s before he gets out. His priors were for auto theft and drug distribution.”
A violent piece of shit like this only takes up space and money in the prison industry system and should just be consigned to a hard labor chain gang in Antarctica until he drops dead. Or hell, let him escape down there; that’s what the Soviet gulag officials did in Siberia. The escapees either froze to death out on the muskeg/tundra or were turned in for money by the orc locals.
Back an hour ago from the Canada expedition; all went well, other than Princess being an hour late getting here, pah for the course, of course. Quebecois border cop had a buncha questions for us going up through the rural crossing 15 miles to our northwest. I came back through the Vampire State side and the Wilford Brimley border cop character just asked me why I’d left Vermont to go to Canada earlier and told me to have a good night. He was in my age bracket and probably saw the ‘Nam plates, though. Saw one state trooper as I crossed the bridge into Vermont and that was it for law enforcement, other than whatever sensors, cameras and drones above.
Fleeing zombie hordes trying to make their way through the landscape between Montreal and here would have a tough row to hoe, as I’ve mentioned before, even in summuh. Lotta wottuh hazards, to put it mildly, plus plowed and frozen fields, thickets of woods and brambles and thorns, plus fencing and wire all over the place (75 miles of it). We’ve established that the roads and interstate would be toast by then. I’d reckon on an 80% die-off rate in the big cities and suburbs if the whole enchilada falls apart someday.
“I’d reckon on an 80% die-off rate in the big cities and suburbs if the whole enchilada falls apart someday.”
I can deal with a shitload of variables, or at least I could back when I was in my 20’s, but the number of variables here swamps me now and I’m sure would have swamped me back then. It’s a chaotic system, literally, with the butterfly effect.
As I’ve said, I don’t really expect a complete collapse, just a gradual slide into dystopia. I already have one of those wizard gowns and a pointy hat, so I’ll just have to depend on others who value my wizardry to keep me fed, warm, and protected. Or I will, once I run out of food and ammo.
You guys made me sad the other day, talking about MG emplacements at each corner of the house. Here I am, with one lousy MG-42, six spare barrels, and less than 25,000 rounds of ball, only 10,000 of which is already belted. What am I supposed to do about the other three corners? And I have only two LAWs, both of which are well past the best-by dates.
Hey, all we can really do, in the end, is defend our little corners of the planet along with our families, friends and neighbors. If we go down fighting, it’s a great way to go, as opposed, say, to lying amidst tubes and chemicals in some dingy hospital crapping oneself and slowly choking to death in agony from multiple body ailments ’cause the docs and nurses are terrified of giving us too much pain medication. (we could get addicted!)
And now I’m sad, too; here’s a nice guy, with his wizard gown and pointy hat, sitting down there in the fetid tropics, armed only with one lousy MG42 and a couple of ancient LAWs. Can’t anything be done? Who will step up and man the other three corners?
I still have to watch “Longmire” Season 3.
I liked it but some may not. One of the episodes was about survivalists in a very negative manner.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Longmire_episodes#Season_3_.282014.29
I find the show to be very edgy and hits on a lot of liberal viewpoints. Survivalists, bad cops, abuse of Indians, etc, etc. But, I still like enough to watch.
Good News on the TV front:
1/6 Agent Carter on ABC
1/28 Suits season 4 on AMC
4/18 Orphan Black season 3 on BBC America (This series has good writing, and the lead actress – Tatiana Maslany – was wrongfully overlooked for an Emmy. CNN, EW, and a bunch of other media organizations concur.)
My mom likes Longmire. I’ve seen one episode when she was here and it was OK.
[snip] The Mooslims beat the shit out of the woman. Watta religion! [snip]
Around here, the wife beaters are exclusively Christian. Or at least they claim to be, the whole ‘Love One Another’ thing goes right over their head. I’ve heard several people involved in the “criminal justice” system opine that a woman who is beaten has three options: Take it, leave, or kill him. It’s possible that a severe beating will do the trick, but multiple rounds of .45 ACP to the torso would be my first choice. One of my high school buddies got arrested for brutally working over his brother in law, after said brother in law decided to slap around his wife. The judge sentenced him to the juvenile offenders diversion program, saying that he understood why it happened but couldn’t officially condone it.
I tried a couple of episodes of “Orphan Black,” but it warn’t my cup o’ tea, I guess.
“I find the show to be very edgy and hits on a lot of liberal viewpoints. Survivalists, bad cops, abuse of Indians, etc, etc. But, I still like enough to watch.”
If memory serves, the one or two episodes I saw that seemed to be about “survivalist” types had the characters as wack fundie religious nutters, a family of them led by the wack patriarch, whose brother had been killed by the sheriff. There are, in fact, characters and families out there in real life like that, so I didn’t have a problem with it; most prepper/survivalist types are no more threatening than Dr. Bob…oh wait…
And rest assured there are swarms now of bad cops out there. Rest assured. The days of Officer Friendly on the walking foot beat (OFD in days of yore, in some pretty gritty ‘hoods, too) are over. Now it’s Ramboid roid-head gym rats with shaved heads, wraparound mirror shades and only missing the brown shirts and jackboots.
As for abuse of Indians, they seemed to portray that as coming as often from their own people as it did/does from Evil White Man.
So I’ll have Season 3 tomorrow and will look forward, probably, to Season 4.
Watched “The Homesman” last night, with Tommy Lee Jones and Hilary Swank; the characters in the flick kinda blew her off as too plain or sumthin, but man, I wouldn’t have tossed her outta my buffalo robe back then or now. Seemed pretty accurate, dunno if it was shot on location but if so, Nebraska in the winter in the 19th-C must have been pretty miserable.
I may watch a Clint Eastwood flick tonight, not sure, maybe something newer again.
“Around here, the wife beaters are exclusively Christian.”
Hard to say around here; most young peeps nowadays in New England seem to be totally irreligious if not hostile to it. Including our kids.
And the hadjis mistreat and torment their women, including wives, sisters, daughters and cousins, for every conceivable fault or offense, up to and including murder. And they do it here in the West as well as back in their shit-hole sandstorm wastelands. What do we hear from the Feminist West??? Crickets.
New! Amazon rocket delivery:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHrngvEok9M
UPS has recently delivered Amazon stuff here on a Sunday. And all the Amazon stuff ordered almost up to the day before Xmas got to their destinations on time.
I’m still not happy with reported warehouse working conditions at those huge plants in the Midwest, though.
4 degrees here right now; the report is of winds hitting 10 MPH but that’s bullshit; it’s steady at 25 with gusts in excess of 50-60. Chill factuh well below zero out there, and a winter chill advisory has been issued for the whole region. Snow showers tomorrow and below zero chill factuh here the rest of the week.
Some years ago a guy at work came back from a week of jury duty bragging about how he and his fellows had put away a rapist for a good long time. He was so proud of himself that I courteously did not tell him that by that point I had killed four rapists. (Or rather, one almost-rapist about five seconds from being an actual rapist, and three actual rapists who’d had charges dismissed because of some police or prosecutor screw-up.)
That said, I do not automatically assume the man is in the wrong if there’s any kind of argument or even if he strikes her. In my experience, a lot more wives and girlfriends strike their male partners than the men hit the women. Actual strikes, with the intent to hurt, that is; I’m not talking about a swat on the arm as part of normal conversation.* It’s just that most women are pathetically inept at hurting anyone besides children.**
A common assertion is that men should never hit women, because men are generally bigger and stronger than women. That sounds reasonable … if you’re retarded. Men aren’t supposed to hit women because men can hurt and not be hurt back, which means men can bully women. But if men are never allowed to strike women, then women can (and do) hit men and not be hit in return, making the women the bullies. Somehow this is never viewed as a problem.
Women also bully men with their most common technique, emotional manipulation and abuse. Why are men forbidden the use of their natural weapon while women are allowed free use of theirs? Again, somehow this is never viewed as a problem.
* Though I do wonder why the casual smack on the arm is considered acceptable and not assault. Me being an ardent equal-rights feminist, I say that sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose.
** Take a look at child abuse and child murder statistics. Hint: fathers are not the main threat to their children.
Uh, would that second “roid” be steroid or hemorrhoid? Because, y’know, either would fit most of modern-day America’s “finest”.
Steroid. It’s bloody obvious they’ve been popping them; my next-younger brother was until recently a Masters-Level bench rest weight champion for New England and both of us knew plenty of weightlifters, boxers, and wrestlers (pro and amateur) so we know what it looks and sounds like.
As for hemorrhoids, I haven’t been that intimate with any of them and don’t plan to be.
On the women/men hitting/bullying thing I’ve seen all kinds over the years. There are women around here that you wouldn’t wanna get into a physical confrontation with, at least not without a baseball bat and a grenade or sumthin. And yes, the emotional abuse and manipulation on their part can be pretty gruesome.
But I think we can safely say that the preponderance of physical abuse comes from men against women, for various reasons, some of them touched upon here. We can probably also safely say that a lot of the physical battering by women against men goes unreported.
Well, yah, but I was leaving the door open for all sorts of jokes: they’re shit heads, they have their heads up their asses, etc. (And note that I didn’t say I left the back door open for jokes, because that would be, I dunno, tasteless or something.)
100%, to a first approximation. Probably over 98%, to a second approximation.
You math guys and your percentages and approximations and probabilities…yikes.
My “evidence” is largely anecdotal and historical. I imagine things are fah worse now, if only by virtue of the huge population increase over the past forty years.
Been outta that line of work since 1986, just as it was getting really ugly and unsupportable. Good riddance, too.
My LAN backup is still running on the new WD 4 TB external drive. I started it Friday evening and restarted it again this morning. I just realized that all the external backup drives were now USB3 drives so I swapped the USB2 cable to a USB3 cable to get better theoretical speed. Out of 15 PCs and a 2.2 TB total backup, I am currently at 1.8 TB. Sigh, why do total backups take so long? Still only having one device and one media is much better than the old days of 100 mag tapes on a pair of tape drives. Almost would fill up an entire six foot tall four foot wide tape rack.
Our source code file server has a 1 TB drive and only has 38 GB free. I suspect that it is the source of the very slow backup. I have a totally new Windows 7 x64 PC for it with a 4 TB WD Black internal drive. We will swap it when the world slows down just a little bit so we can do some maintenance around this place. Then the old PC will become the Windows XP x86 test PC.
We got our first order for 2015 today. Nice five year contract but with a one year out in case they do not like us. We charge a premium for that out feature but makes me feel like we are hamsters continuously running in the wheel. Still, I signed the contract eagerly.
Congrats, Mr. Lynn!
One of my little home IT projects this year will be to build a FreeNAS box and host our media on one of the four drives, probably all SSDs, and use one just for our financial and related backups.
Will also be getting a nice SSD for this Windows machine and cloning the current drive to it.
Got the official wind chill factuh just now here: 16 below zero. No one out roaming around right now, haha. Pussies.
Hey, I need a larger monitor for the house. I have a LG IPS LED 24EC53 which is a GREAT 24″ monitor. I bought it at Sams club two years ago for $250.
http://www.amazon.com/LG-24EC53V-P-Class-Monitor-diagonal/dp/B00CMDZ2WO/
I would like to have a 27″ or 30″. Is there a big brother for this monitor? Sam’s only carries Samsung monitors nowadays and I have given up on those. Here is what I found at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/LG-27-inch-IPS-Monitor-S27EA31V-B/dp/B00GXRQLVQ/
Hint: fathers are not the main threat to their children.
Amen. Over the holidays, there was a case here: a mother whose children had been taken away and put in a home, because she and her husband are both under arrest and being prosecuted. The kids, 5 and 2, were allowed to stay with the mom for the holidays. She killed them, rather than giving them up to the home again after the holidays.
Details of the case are still a bit vague, but one thing is pretty clear: centralized bureaucracies are not the best place to deal with family drama. Everyone becomes a number and a file. The bureaucrat interviewed on TV was flat-out incapable of communicating like a human being.
Decision making used to be handled by the local town, where there was a chance that the decision makers actually knew something the people involved. Now, it’s handled by this remote bureaucracy, which (a) somehow overlooked the fact that the grandparents were ready and eager to care for the children – no need for a foster home at all – and (b) also overlooked the locally known fact that the mom is bat-shit crazy.
We talked earlier about cable TV on the journal. I have cable because of the fems. Every TV show I watch is downloaded to my Mac Mini with a somewhat automated torrent system. I drop them into a converter program which adds meta data and shoots the episodes into iTunes. I use an Apple TV box for streaming. Time shifting is the best. I would have no problem with just a net connection. The fems would rage against the machine.
The fems would rage against the machine.
Why? My fems use our DirecTV DVRs extensively (more than I do). And my daughter uses Netflix also. I am wondering if I can scam onto her account so I can watch Longmire, especially since I pay for the account.
(Section I covers dealing with emergencies during the first month; section II up to one year; and section III with the long term.)
BTW, this sounds like a good level of organization for the book. One’s chance of going through a one month “emergency” is very high in a lifetime. Especially if you live in a hurricane prone area or some other type of extreme weather area.
A one year emergency is probably a life changing event: location (shelter), employment, and/or food availability crises may cause a large population die off. A long term event will definitely cause a large population die off.
The last serious countrywide long term emergency in the USA was WWII. The food and materials rationing caused many hardships but did not cause a large die off. However, there were a few because one of my great-grandfathers was killed on his farm while plowing a field. He was using two mules instead of a tractor since he could not get gasoline for the tractor.
Why does she not simply give you access to her Netflix account? You’re paying for everything else there, too, amirite?
Only one fem here now and she couldn’t care less about tee-vee, at least while she’s home; I happen to know she watches mindless rubbish at her various travel accomodations, though.
Here I mainly just watch NFL games and I’ll be getting the Sportsman Channel via Comcast for the gun shows, several of which I already have on the Roku. Other than that it’s Netflix once in a blue moon, DVDs, and streaming from the pooter upstairs. All this tee-vee viewing, incidentally, is vastly outnumbered by the reading we do and the radio listening. But we’re admittedly odd ducks.
Why? My fems use our DirecTV DVRs extensively (more than I do)
My fems want their TV NOW! No stinking wait for torrents. They don’t time delay TV. They want the Food Network, TCM, etc. NOWWWWWW!
Try canceling your Dish and go with net and torrents only. Mr. Lynn, your heart condition will be the least of your worries.
We use Netflix. I could probably torrent just about anything on it it. But it’s not like clicking on a show and it starts. I want my Netflix shows NOWWWWW!
One’s chance of going through a one month “emergency” is very high in a lifetime.
I’m 59 and haven’t gone through a one monther. (WI, NY, TX, NV, KS, AL each state for more than a year)
Can anyone else post if they’ve had a one monther?
No one-monther here yet but it could happen anytime, like this month. Temps with chill factuh well below zero all week; an ice storm or high winds could knock out the power and I felt pity for a lineman I saw today working up on a pole. Hope they make great money. If the juice stayed out for a month and the cold weather and snow and ice continued, we’d still be OK, I think. We have enough wood to keep warm and can cook off the stovetop, the woodstove out in the studio/shed and off our two grills, both charcoal. We have well wottuh, flashlights, batteries, oil lamps, matches, wicks, etc., plus two shortwave radios that can run on batteries. And we’d be stretching it on the food but it’s doable. We also keep both vehicles topped off and fire them up daily in this weather, even if not going anywhere.
We clearly need to beef up the food stocks and also get a manual well pump device installed; plus replace the remaining windows. More batteries and lamp oil would be good.
For home defense I’d like to replace both front and back doors with steel doors and steel frames along with deadbolts and window locks on the ground-floor windows. The dawg barks at any outside activity that concerns him, day or night. We come and go all hours and if I was one of the local denizens casing the place, one look at the man of the house would tend to deter further plans, I would think. (obviously anyone could take my ass out with a rifle from cover). (if they don’t mind freezing their own asses off in this friggin’ deep freeze.)
I realize there are and have been lotsa print commandos saying that an AR makes a nifty home defense firearm; sure, if you live out in the sticks and have clear fields of fire and no close neighbors. I could see it, maybe, in Mr. Lynn’s case. But my preference has always been for shotguns on this mission, followed by decent-caliber handguns. If they get past all this while you’re holed up in your own home before the heroic warrior cops get there to save you, then your goose is cooked anyway.
If someone was casing this house and was willing to risk life and limb to steal my computers, guns and history books, their best bet would be to snipe me outside and then bash their way in. Not much here is worth anyone’s life and limb, rest assured.
And the warrior cops are a mile up the road (sheriff’s department), three miles up the road (city and town police, State police) and all around (Border Patrol, Customs and Immigration, Feebies, and National Guard).
A long term event will definitely cause a large population die off.
Can I change the “definitely” to “probably”? Or “may”?
I’m 59 and haven’t gone through a one monther. (WI, NY, TX, NV, KS, AL each state for more than a year)
Nothing in your childhood? Chances are that you will live another 25+ years. According to OFD, we will have mass running, screaming and shouting in the next 10 to 20 years so your chances of experiencing a one monther are rising. I’m told that they are not near as much fun as they sound.
We went through a two week event in 2008 with Hurricane Ike. Was pretty bad for three days and then gradually returned to normal over the next week and a half. Could have easily stretched to several more weeks if Ike had had stronger winds. The biggest problem was getting gasoline without sitting in a line for an hour or two.
My family had a 18 monther back in the late 1960s but we never went hungry. We moved in with Mom’s parents and they were very kind, providing us food, shelter, and even transportation. The move back to The Great State of Texas was actually quite good for us in the long run.
Try canceling your Dish and go with net and torrents only. Mr. Lynn, your heart condition will be the least of your worries.
No freaking way! You are living on the edge as far as my fems are concerned. I am paying DirecTV about $110/month for access with two DVRs. Works well and keeps them happy.
We do not have any extra cost channels but the approximately five million channels that we get now on DirecTV are just fine. Even our local channels are there. In fact, if they could delete the NFL games then the fems would be even happier.
Probably the most common emergency is a financial one. A whole lot of people have gone through these over periods of months or even years, with either or both partners unemployed, watching their savings dwindle, wondering how they’re going to pay the mortgage, then eventually how they’re going to pay to heat their homes and put food on the table.
I suspect that most of the regulars here are pretty comfortably off, in the top quintile if not the top decile in terms of income and assets. It’s easy to forget that (by definition) most people aren’t that lucky. For them, a car repair or an illness that won’t allow them to work for even a few days can be a real financial emergency. There are a lot of people out there who have to decide every month which bills to pay and which they can delay paying.
“The biggest problem was getting gasoline without sitting in a line for an hour or two.”
There is that inconvenience and then there’s trying to get gas when the power is out and the pumps ain’t pumping anyway.
“In fact, if they could delete the NFL games then the fems would be even happier.”
Mrs. OFD watches NFL games with me sometimes. But she gets wicked excited and screams, too.
“…over periods of months or even years, with either or both partners unemployed, watching their savings dwindle, wondering how they’re going to pay the mortgage, then eventually how they’re going to pay to heat their homes and put food on the table.”
We’ve been on the edge with this scenario several times. Our four retirement accounts are long gone. Rent and mortgage have been late. Heating oil has run out and power disconnected, ditto phones. A few meals of rice, beans, pasta etc. Taxes late and very late and still being hammered for them.
But we know and have seen people in worse shape and those who were riding very high for a while, with several very nice homes, luxury vehicles, swimming pools, eating out at restaurants constantly, vacations overseas, kids to private schools, etc. When their stuff comes crashing down they are at wit’s end. Both Mrs. OFD and I have been through some pretty hard times and we keep plugging. Ditto my siblings down in MA, including two cancer survivors and loss of jobs and having to sell houses, etc.
And even if we won PowerBall or some other lottery and suddenly had tens of millions to blow, we’d take care of our families and then give most of it away anyway. Wife might buy a sporty convertible or sumthin and I’d probably get another truck and some more guns, and that’s about it.
Probably the most common emergency is a financial one.
I hadn’t thought of it that way. My first “real” job was as a Woolworth’s stock boy in HS. The only time I’ve been unemployed was during college. My Dad had passed away and I got SS $ which I used for tuition, dorm and a full meal plan. I saved enough during summer break jobs to pay for books, munchies, BEER, etc during school.
My wife started at age 10 working in warehouses in Laredo. She got a full ride at Hardin Simmons in Tejas (private Christian school). Army 20+ etc.
Now that I think about it and look at peeps around me, I’ve been fortunate. Lots of hard work in the right areas MAKE you fortunate IMO.
I like this prepper book also for its practical nature about tough economic circumstances:
http://www.amazon.com/Dirt-Cheap-Survival-Retreat-Mans-Solution/dp/1581607474/
“M.D. Creekmore’s motivation for finding a low-cost retreat was the need to live on a lot less money after he lost his job and got divorced. He started living in a travel trailer, parked on two acres he’d bought a few years back to use as a campsite and bug-out location, never dreaming he’d be living there full time. But he has called his trailer home for the past four years and says that “for the first time in my life, I’m actually content.” ”
On the financial side of things, we had a seven figure debt for quite a while in 2013. That can make one quite nervous. I have reduced that debt to the middle six figures now and am paying it off at several thousand per month. I would like to be debt free in ten years unless we move again.
I dispute the use of the word “lucky”. My wife and I are probably top quintile in income. Not sure about assets, but it doesn’t matter. Unless you count being born an American, luck played no part of where I’ve gotten. It was a lot of hard work, making smart use of my abilities, and not wasting what I manage to accumulate*. My wife didn’t even have the advantage of being born American.** We both clawed our way up from not always having enough food in our childhoods.
My sympathy for those poor, suffering babies who won’t get off their ass and claw their way up is extremely limited.
* Unless you count the disaster of my first marriage, or rather its aftermath.
** True, her father was a high-up Communist Party official, but that was a mixed blessing. He spent a lot of years on the run and the family hid out in the country and starved during those years.
I’ve had a few of those one-month financial squeezes/disasters.
My wife was… uhmm… distinctly unstable. Very bright when she’d apply herself, but schizophrenic, paranoid, and for a long time she hid her condition effectively. So, I remember one month vividly when we had the standard mortgage and credit cards due, quarterly telephone and electricity bills came due that month as well, then rates (local government land tax). That was all fine, I could handle that. Then the car broke down, $1,200 worth back around 1980 when that was REAL money. Okay, I’d have to tippie-toe around that for a while – pay minimums on the credit cards, use a costly four-monthly rates payment rather than simply paying it all when due, maybe if pushed be a few days late on the electricity and telephone until my next month’s salary came in. Then I found she’d close to emptied our bank account and spent it all.
There’ve been others. She went mad and left me (blessedly, in retrospect, although a pity there were a dozen years between the two events, and it knocked me around at the time. I was emotionally invested in keeping my marriage vows, sickness and health as long et cet era). Also a pity she’d brainwashed our children with her paranoid fantasies before she up and left with them – took a long while to undo the worst of that damage, even after her public suicide attempts. The kids never recovered altogether from what she put them through. Anyway, our divorce included an agreement- a lump-sum cash payment by me in lieu of alimony. Still, Social Services paid her a deserting wive’s pension or some such. I was working, went to withdraw some money after my salary went into my bank account, and there were only a few cents in my account. The Social Services had it on file that I didn’t owe alimony, but the part of them that was concerned with deadbeat dads noticed I wasn’t paying what I didn’t have to pay, got a court order to garnishee my salary AND, after the little I was allowed to keep had reached my bank, to empty my bank account, and then gave her all the money (less their rake-off for legal fees, although I’d never been given an opportunity to know about, let alone take part in, that legal process. It was a good thing I had beans, rice and lentils and canned sardines stored, and I’d pre-bought a monthly train ticket, because that was all I had for about two weeks until I sorted things out. Didn’t make me look good at work either, and it took a lot longer for them to cancel the garnishee order than it took them to get it in the first place. We were still fighting about getting the money they’d stolen back month’s later. They didn’t want to give it to me until they’d got it back from her, then they didn’t want to cough up what they’d swallowed as their rake-off.
That marriage breakup pretty-well shattered me financially, and my health has broken down since. I’ve managed to pull back again – I’ve got some savings, some superannuation investments, and I’ve got dry goods and tins of stuff socked away. However, I can’t relax about it. Then I find my younger son has problems I can’t help him with. His spine has been deteriorating and he needs a cervical fusion. He can handle the medical costs, but they can’t afford to do without his pay for the time it may take for him to recover. The only thing I can offer him is accommodation with me for that time, but her family is desperately ill, and she couldn’t come away with him, both from family and work viewpoints. He doesn’t want to leave her to cope alone for four months or so, even if they could afford to do without his pay for that long.
Preparation is a GOOD THING. You never know what’s around the corner. Two of the best possible preps are stocks of food (and the wherewithal to prepare it), and money. Money includes reducing debt, but sometimes you need cash more than you need to reduce debt. Most lesser preps, or preps for lesser problems, will at least help in greater disasters as well.
Jesus, Don, that is some hard stuff there. That ain’t a one-monther; that’s nearly a lifetime.
“You never know what’s around the corner.”
Words to live by. Damn.
Faced with that series of issues I might well have gone off the deep end and turned very violent and ugly some years ago. Sadly, I still wouldn’t rule that out if similar stuff happened to us now.
I sure hope things start looking up in a real big way for you and your family this year, man. Anything at all I can do just let me know.
@SteveF: The average person, born into a middle-class family, will turn out middle-class. The same person, born into a poor family is likely to remain poor. The basic skills one learns: getting out of bed in the morning, taking your obligations seriously, knowing how to organize your day, how to manage money – these are non-trivial skills. Kids of successful parents pick them up automatically. By the evidence, they are damned hard to learn as an adult.
If you were one of those who managed the transition, that’s incredibly admirable, seriously, no joke. Most people simply don’t have that kind of capability. I wish there were some easy solution here, but I don’t know what it would be…
We see this with the immigrants coming into the country. Just now there’s a push on by the leftists for us to accept 100,000 refugees from Syria, rather than to 500 or so we accepted last year (do remember that our population is only 7 million or so). What do they think 100,000 poor, uneducated people from an utterly different culture are going to do here? Their grandchildren might be halfway integrated, but the initial immigrants and their children would lack exactly the above-mentioned life skills – essential for any sort of success in a Western country. Hopelessly naive…
Brad, I agree with what you’re saying, but it goes further than that. At least in first-world cultures and to a lesser extent in second-world ones, poor skews stupid. Not nearly to the extent that it used to; there are many poor people now in the US and other first-world nations who are anything but stupid. They are the victims of events beyond their control. But it remains true that the average IQ in poor communities is a full SD or more lower than the mean, and in prisons it’s more like two SD below the mean. That is, the average IQ of prisoners is probably on the close order of 70, which makes the average prisoner a moron, literally.
“What do they think 100,000 poor, uneducated people from an utterly different culture are going to do here?”
Some years ago Pat Buchanan opined that (and I’m loosely paraphrasing here) it would be a lot easier for 100 immigrant Englishmen to assimilate on coming to Virginia or the Carolinas (I forget which) than for 100 Zulus. He was, of course, roundly castigated for that statement, rayciss, you know. Not much later Vermont took in a bunch of Somalis, mostly or exclusively in the Burlington area and this has been less than successful. At least two of them have in the intervening years been arrested for murders, and more for robberies and assaults and rapes. This barely makes the MSM nooz if at all; the libtards here must be protected from unpleasant facts and the red meat fascists can’t be informed because they’ll riot or sumthin, with all their guns. Somewhat more success with the Bosnian muslims who showed up, but still, not that great.
“Hopelessly naive…”
Or with malice aforethought. Cui bono?
ed. correction: I had a brain fart, due mainly to advancing senility and accompanying physical decrepitude extended to my fingers typing stuff on the keyboard: I somehow conflated Swahili with Somalis and just remembered that Pat used Zulus in his example. 100 Zulus would find it harder to assimilate than 100 Englishmen, and who could argue with that? Libtards, of course, either because they are not so blind as those who refuse to see, like the King’s new suit of clothes, or wildly out of control naivete, or as I have increasingly suspected, malice aforethought. Again, cui bono?
This (the 100,000 Syrian immigrants) is being driven mainly by the Green party. The same party that wants to close all nuclear power plants, but objects to building any hydroelectric dams, windmills, or any other kind of power generation. Electricity, it just comes out of the wall, didn’t you know?
Nope, no malice, just stupidity. No danger of it actually happening, anyway. Even if they managed to convince the government, which is unlikely, something like this would lead instantly to a referendum, and would voted down by the populace.
@RBT: You can’t talk about intelligence, it’s just not PC. True, of course, but not PC.
Still, there is an adaptation time for people from different cultures. I’ve seen it happen with the people from former Yugoslavia: They were arriving en masse just as I came to Switzerland. Lots of problems due to their “macho” culture: get drunk, pick fights, race your cars through towns in the middle of the night, abuse your girlfriend/wife…great stuff… Now the first-generation immigrants are middle-aged. Their kids were born and raised here, mostly picked up Swiss culture, and the problems are mostly gone. While the kids are generally in blue collar professions, they at least have professions, and their kids will be more mobile in the educational system.
The prerequisites for this working are (a) a limited number of immigrants, so that the local culture remains dominant (though it’s hard to prevent immigrants congregating in local pockets) and (b) immigrants who actually want to better their lives by integrating themselves into the culture.
“…something like this would lead instantly to a referendum, and would (be) voted down by the populace.”
A “referendum”? What’s that???
We don’t have those here. And I suspect that as in the case of those recalcitrant European countries who didn’t vote the way the EU thought they should, we’d be required to vote again and again until we got it right.
Apparently there is some kinda phony opposition building to Obola’s immigration amnesty caper but let’s face it; it’s a done deal. Our borders and coasts are an utter fucking joke now. Come one, come all, and jump on in to the Infinite Buffet, the Big PX. Murkan taxpayers, like the Infinite Buffet, evidently have infinite patience, and if they get antsy, why, a little crisis of some sort can be ginned up in a jiffy and they’ll BEG for ORDER so they can keep munching their Krispy Kremes and Doritos, watch movies made from cartoons they’d seen as kids, and slug down that fine Murkan lager. Meanwhile Heather is in her room upstairs sexting with old perverts pretending to be hipster filmmakers and Junior is cooking a pot of crystal down the street while listening to his Beats and wigging out.
“3 In 5 Americans Don’t Have Savings To Cover Unexpected Bills”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-07/3-5-americans-dont-have-savings-cover-unexpected-bills
“While various CNBC anchors may be willing to say that the US is “growing gangbusters” yet again confusing the liquidity-oozing equity markets with the economy, there are a couple hundred million Americans who would bet to differ (which incidentally may also explain why the Comcast channel no longer wishes to have its viewership calculated by Nielsen): the reason is that according to the latest Bankrate survey released today, more than three in five Americans don’t have money in their savings accounts to cover any unexpected bills such as a $500 car repair or a $1,000 emergency room visit. ”
I am surprised that it is not 4 in 5.
We see this with the immigrants coming into the country. Just now there’s a push on by the leftists for us to accept 100,000 refugees from Syria, rather than to 500 or so we accepted last year (do remember that our population is only 7 million or so).
Can your welfare systems support 100,000 more people on them for the next 30 to 40 years?
Where do they propose to house these 100,000 people? Tents in Switzerland could be cold, very cold.
I have no solutions here. The war in Syria (started by Obola) is a disaster.
http://www.amazon.com/Camp-Saints-Jean-Raspail/dp/1881780074/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420665036&sr=8-1&keywords=camp+of+the+saints