Progressing on up the tower, slowly but surely:

Working that high is starting to pucker my sack. I'm going to look into a fall harness before next weekend.

Later this afternoon I planted the second bed to peanuts:

After sunset I lay down in the grass between the beds and picked a bunch more seed pods to save for planting next fall. I quit when I could not see the pods clearly. It's much nicer doing that kind of work at dusk than at high noon.

Today was also a cooking day. Meatballs!

Labels: gardening, San Pedro homestead

On the topic of grains and whatnot for sustenance, I want to do a short update on some of Momcat's efforts.

Over the winter she chopped down a tree in this space to make room for a "chicken pasture". Now the first half has grown up lush, and the chickens browse for greens in here in the evenings.


A couple weeks ago she and a gardening friend harvested the wheat from this plot. The plot is about 8' by 12'.


What she pulled out of there is about a dozen shocks of wheat, which are here drying in preparation for a hand threshing party this coming week with a couple of gardening friends.

In preparation for this, she tested the threshing and winnowing method to make sure it was viable. In the process of threshing three of the shocks, she obtained a quart and a half of wheat. So the total harvest from that patch looks like it will be about 6 quarts of wheat.

Not bad for what was originally intended to just be a cover crop!

Here is a potato bed that, based on the yields we saw last year, should produce at least 100 pounds of potatoes. Elsewhere there are sweet potatoes growing that are expected to yield about the same amount.

If you are familiar with John Jeavons gardening methods and the One Circle philosophy, you would know that it is possible for one person to grow all the food they need for sustenance on 1000 square feet of garden space. That happens to be the size of Momcat's garden, and she is aiming to achieve this level of productivity in the space that she is cultivating.

Since the topic of seed saving came up, I brought some containers out into my garden space and started gathering some of the ripe pods. Clockwise from the top is vetch, daikon, and Austrian winter peas.

There are a lot more where these came from and more ripening every day. My goal is to have about a pint of clean seed of the daikon and peas, and about a half pint or more of the vetch in order to have enough to replant the beds next fall. I expect a substantial number of seeds that fell to the ground to resprout together with the summer cover crops. These will be permitted to grow up together, although the winter varieties will not thrive as well through the hot summer. The fava beans that I planted earlier this spring have all burned out of the beds already. They can't take the heat at all, it appears.

I planted one tilled bed to peanuts this afternoon:


Same bed planted and covered. I have not decided if the bed next to it will be another peanut bed or black-eyed peas.


This evening I planted the west half of this bed to two more experimental crops--Tohono O'odham dent corn and white tepary beans. The Baart wheat in the background is doing fantastically.

Labels: gardening, San Pedro homestead

In addition to working on my solar tower today, I mowed two of my winter cover crop beds down in preparation for planting summer cover crops.

At sunset I tilled these up in preparation for sowing tomorrow. I have black-eyed peas and peanuts going in this summer. ("Peanuts?!") Yes peanuts.

Why peanuts? Well for starters they do well in this climate. We've discovered that many of the foodstuffs of the deep south also seem to thrive here in our drier climate. Sweet potatoes, black-eyed peas, melons, and peanuts. But in a severe crisis, animal-based protein and fats may be hard to come by. The chicken eggs have a certain amount in the yolk, and when we do have a chicken to butcher, they have some fat available, but we need another source of oil for cooking and dietary needs. Peanuts provide a high quality protein as well as a source of oil. Momcat bought a peanut butter mill after she tried a different machine that she already had. This machine made a coarse peanut butter. It did not make it fine enough to get the oil to separate out. We will see how this new device works when it arrives.

Not that I need to produce peanuts for food yet. Peanuts are also a legume, which means they are capable of converting atmospheric nitrogen to soil nitrogen, thus building the soil fertility. And that is what my gardening efforts are mostly about so far. But this also gets me hands on experience with growing them and becoming familiar with their quirks.

It is also high time I get another couple experimental crops in the ground, and to that end I also tilled up the other half of the bed where the Baart wheat is growing.

A trio of black helicopters were circling south of my farm all afternoon. Here is one of the three:

They were cruising very slowly in an arc several miles wide, and centered a few miles away from me. I have no idea what they were up to.

At dusk, after I finished the tilling, I lay in a patch of freshly mown grass with one cat tucked under my arm and another sitting on my chest, watching the stars come out one by one. Thinking on hippy children scything hay fields, and the strange overlap between my preps and many other preppers efforts, and the things that hippies do for their own different reasons, it occurred to me that at least one of the common threads was that both efforts point back toward agrarian roots. It is not that I have common ground with hippies so much as both hippies and long term deep preppers have common ground with our peasant forebears. I am looking at the possibility of major disruptions that could shut down the food supply and distribution system (as well as virtually all other major industrial systems), and concluding that the only way to survive for more than a short duration (measured in months up to maybe a couple of years), is to begin the process of adopting the technologies and techniques that will permit me to generate my own food supply when my meager stores run out. Hippies want to live that way by choice. I plan to live that way as a matter of survival.

To that end I am adopting a number of "sustainable" technologies, such as solar and wind power--not because they are "sustainable" (whatever that is supposed to mean), but because they will work at low cost when grid sources of energy have vanished. I am adopting "organic" methods of food production and hand methods of food processing because they alone will be viable when other energy resources become precious or nonexistent.

Sometimes I wonder at preppers whose sole efforts are focused on creating a cache of food and supplies--enough to get by for only a few months or a couple of years. Have they thought beyond the end of that time period? How much better off will they be starving a few months later than the rest of the clueless masses? If they survive the chaos of the starving hordes around them, they can be guaranteed that no resources to speak of will be left to them after the masses die off. Then what?

Not to disparage that as a necessary first step. They are miles beyond 99% of the rest. But the thinking can't stop there. You have to learn how to feed yourself after that.

Then there are the "preppers" (and I use the term very loosely), whose preps involve several guns and a huge cache of ammunition, who are in the unenviable position of being much worse off than the preppers with a cache of food and supplies. This is not a plan so much as it is abject terror masked by false bravado. In their puny bravado they believe that with their gun they will be able to take what they need from those who stored up food and supplies. What they are not considering is that those who have cached food, have almost certainly also cached weapons and ammunition to safeguard that cache. Perhaps they will survive their first couple of raids on other people's stock, but even then they are in the same predicament as those who have prepped for the short term but have not considered the long term. After the first successful raid or two, all future efforts will become hugely more dangerous, as any remaining caches will have survived by virtue of being heavily defended. And once their modus operandi is discovered, they are subject to retaliatory raids by other members of the community they raided.

Good luck, sucker. Nasty, brutish and short is the life you have to look forward to.

In addition to these disadvantages, the slow slide scenario (which is what we are now seeing unfold) strongly disfavors the "Rambo Plan", because in a slow slide, law enforcement remains at least marginally effective, and defensive pacts are likely to quickly form amongst neighbor groups where law enforcement is weak.

Good luck, sucker. Nasty, brutish and short is the life you have to look forward to. Hang up a few guns and invest in a few garden implements. They will do you a lot more good in the long emergency.

Labels: gardening, personal responsibility, preparedness, San Pedro homestead

I've got wheat that will be ripe in a couple of weeks, so I was looking into various ways to cut and bundle the wheat shocks. I was going to put together a contraption using a battery powered hedge trimmer, a bicycle wheel or three and some miscellaneous parts to make a sweeper and catch basket. After contemplating the complexity and likely time commitment required to bring this contraption to fruition, I broke down and ordered a new scythe outfit from this place:
Scythe Supply - Scythe blades, snaths, equipment

I had purchased a used scythe on ebay a year ago, but the snath came damaged in the shipping. It is probably still quite serviceable once I get the blade sharp, but it is the curved style snath instead of the European straight snath, and I have heard good things about the ability to stand fully upright using the straight snath.

This outfit includes a peening jig and whetstone, so I will be able to sharpen both the new as well as the old scythe blade.

Check this out, from this site: Cooperative Scythe Network, a video of a 14 year old girl making short work of an overgrown field with a straight-snath scythe:

The audio is muted (some copyright snit on YouTube's part), and nevah mind the political message, it's a beautiful thing to watch, and be sure to watch it to the end--she does some amazing scary things with her scythe!

More: Training kittens how to peen and hone a scythe blade

One more video--same people, this time the whole family including preteens easily using a scythe to hay a field by hand: Scythe mowing

Labels: gardening, preparedness, San Pedro homestead

British Expert: Great Depression II Is Possible

As stock markets plummet around the world, experts are growing worried that Europe’s crisis could spread globally, causing grave economic damage.

“Great Depression II” may be on its way, says Andrew Roberts, head of European rate strategy at RBS, according to the Telegraph of London.

Now it's not just us doomsayers and preparedness enthusiasts saying it. Vox may be crowned as a major prophet yet.

Crisis in Europe raises 'double-dip' recession worries

A dark cloud has settled over the world's financial markets, as growing numbers of people are concluding the debt crisis in Europe could hammer global growth -- and even bring back recession barely a year after a patchy recovery took hold.

Government officials, whose job it is to boost confidence, downplay that risk, but many economists are warning that a much-feared "double-dip" recession could be starting in Europe.

Blah blah "double-dip" blah blah. You can only have a "double-dip" "recession" if you had a recovery in between. Listen up folks! There was and is NO RECOVERY! You have to understand that Gross Domestic Product numbers *include* government spending. When the government is dumping huge amounts of money into one "stimulus" package or another bailout package, this distorts the GDP figures. The effort is part of a deliberate subterfuge. If you can massage the numbers to make it *appear* as if growth is returning, then maybe business growth (actual REAL economic growth) may begin to pick up in response.

The problem is that the "stimulus" is concealing the fact that the corpse is dead. All this electric shock "stimulus" can make the corpse twitch and writhe, but once the electricity is shut off, it collapses back into the heap of lifeless flesh that it is.

Welcome to the New Great Depression--WELCOME TO REAL LIFE.

I had today off as I noted, but when I awoke, I lay in bed saying "Oh. Mgod. What hit me?"

Seems the stump digging yesterday did me a number.

By this afternoon I was able to pull myself together and do some maintenance on my Mitsubishi.

I took the dash apart to grease the speedometer, and while I was in there, I finally had the chance to install the new dash switches I bought on eBay a while ago. I bought the set to get the emergency flasher switch, which was broken on my vehicle. But I installed the rest as well, since I had them. Much to my surprise I discovered that my electric lock for the rear door started working. I took off the panel and greased up the lock and latch mechanism, and now I have both lock and unlock capacity from the dashboard. I am elated!

The emergency flashers now work as they should as well.

After reassembling the dashboard, I topped up the manual transmission and transfer case oil, and greased all the fittings on the undercarriage. There are way more grease fittings than I knew! I will bet that some of them rarely if ever have gotten greased over the years. I don't think the average oil change grease monkey bothers to consult the repair manual to find all of them.

Labels: San Pedro homestead

I just want to plug this site as well as leave a link for myself to find later. Momcat recently received an order from this site and was happy with the prices and the cheap shipping for large orders--$5 shipping for any order over $75! If you've ever ordered heavy stuff online you can appreciate how valuable that shipping deal is!

BulkFoods.com

They have various nuts, fruits, and sweets, but for the prepper it is the bulk grains and beans that warrant attention. This could be an easier and even cheaper way to get bulk supplies than to deal with my local coop, since I (or my dear esposa) don't need to make multiple trips and phone calls to the coop to get the stuff ordered and picked up.

Labels: food, preparedness, resources

Daisycat learned some things about how good of a grain millet is, so she did some research and took the initiative to try growing some. I wish I could say that would mean she would take care of everything from start to finish, but it is never that way. So we turned our attention today to clearing another undeveloped corner of the cat enclosure for new growing space.

Gene Logsdon has a section in his excellent book that discusses millet growing and some millet recipes.

Between what she researched, what I researched on the 'net, and Gene's book, we determined that what she bought is indeed a proso millet and is a type that is very good for eating and easy to thresh out. In fact, we learned that more people eat millet as their staple food than wheat. More people in China eat millet as their primary grain than rice! Can you believe it? Here in the US hardly anyone eats millet--it is mostly considered bird seed, which is too bad. The birds are getting an excellent, healthy grain that is easy to digest and high in amino acids, only lacking lysine (which is found in abundance in buckwheat).



Daisycat grubbed burro weed out of the area:


...while I removed a dead mesquite tree and dug around the stump to remove it:


By the time we quit in the heat of the day, the burro weed was all removed from the first section of that area:


...and I had dug about 18 inches deep all the way around the stump:


The area that will actually be planted is outside the area that had the burro weed growing on it. I am assuming that it may take a couple years without burro weed growing before the suppressive effects fade away. By removing this weed now, we can maybe use the rest of the area for garden space in a couple years. In the mean time cover crops can go in there, *if* they will grow at all.

Yesterday was up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down the ladder day, adding cross beams and diagonal supports to the solar thermal tower. It doesn't seem like I got that much done, but it is much slower work than assembly on the ground in the shade of my workshop...


I still have one more day to my weekend. I took a vacation day Monday, so there should be a bit more to come this week.

On the topic of grains, here is the latest view of my wheat field. The bottom grass blades have dried up, and the stalks are holding the ripening grain heads.


Contrast that with the Baart wheat. These plants are still lush green and just fully opened their grain heads this last week. I don't know how much of this difference is variety difference and how much is soil fertility and moisture difference. I say this because the dry end of the Baart wheat bed looks a little bit like the white wheat field, and the most fertile corner of the white wheat field looks a little bit like the Baart bed.


I still think the white wheat will prove to be the faster maturing variety, though total yield and quality will be the real measures.

I didn't get a picture and I should, but Momcat and a neighbor friend cut and shocked her wheat patch last week. Hers was planted last fall, so of course was far ahead of my plantings. The week after next she and two neighbor friends are going to thresh out the wheat by hand, grind it, and make waffles.

Labels: San Pedro homestead

AFP: Bankers jailed, sued as Iceland seeks culprits for crisis

Hang 'em high!

You are idiots.

Three years from now we will still be in the depths of the New Great Depression, the state will not have been forced to continue slashing to make revenues match income, and then this tax expires.

Then what, Einsteins?

You should have forced the state to live within its means today. Tomorrow it will just be that much more painful.

Easy win for Prop. 100

You have chosen to paddle your canoe faster toward the waterfall ahead, instead of pulling off toward the shore like any sensible body politic would.

Fools.

Labels: misanthropy, politics

Here is someone with way more cred than me, saying the same thing: LIQUIDATE!

Dow Theorist Richard Russell: Sell Everything, You Won't Recognize America By The End Of The Year

Labels: financial ponderings, watching the skies

...mixed with hot wing sauce. I'm having more just now.

Numm!

Just thought you'd want to know.

Labels: food

High Frequency Financial Terrorism, Wall Street Bankster's Maintain Death Grip on United States :: The Market Oracle :: Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting Free Website

1000 point stock market drop? This article points the finger at Goldman Sachs, with motive and opportunity.

Call it what it is--we are controlled by financial terrorists that make the Mafia look like children.

Labels: fascism on parade, financial ponderings

Still have money in a 401K or IRA? Don't expect it to be yours forever:
401(k) / IRA Nationalization *** Quietly Moves Forward | Gather.com

Take it out. Take the tax hit. Convert it to equipment, staples and (for any left over) silver and gold coin.

Labels: fascism on parade, financial ponderings, politics, The Failed Obama Presidency

1 There will be no special bilingual programs in the schools.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
2. All ballots will be in this nation's language.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
3. All government business will be conducted in our language.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
4. Non-residents will NOT have the right to vote no matter how long they are here.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
5. Non-citizens will NEVER be able to hold political office
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
6 Foreigners will not be a burden to the taxpayers. No welfare, no food stamps, no health care, or other government assistance programs. Any burden will be deported.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
7. Foreigners can invest in this country, but it must be an amount at least equal to 40,000 times the daily minimum wage.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
8. If foreigners come here and buy land... options will be restricted. Certain parcels including waterfront property are reserved for citizens naturally born into this country.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
9.. Foreigners may have no protests; no demonstrations, no waving of a foreign flag, no political organizing, no bad-mouthing our president or his policies. These will lead to deportation.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
10. If you do come to this country illegally, you will be actively hunted &, when caught, sent to jail until your deportation can be arranged. All assets will be taken from you.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Does this sound too draconian for America?

Guess what? The above laws are the current immigration laws of MEXICO! No, I do not think it is the slightest bit draconian to apply the same standards that Mexico uses, when Mexican citizens illegally cross OUR border.

Seems to me that La Raza (the racists) would be an illegal organization under those laws. Wanna protest and wave Mexican flags? Back to MeeHico with yer ass!

Labels: liberal stupidity, politics

I was working on my solar thermal tower Saturday when I turned around to see a rattlesnake slither past me, not five feet away. He slipped through the gate into the cat enclosure, then coiled up, faced me and buzzed. I high-tailed it into the house to grab the .410 shotgun before he disappeared somewhere I wouldn't find him.

He was still there when I got back, so I blew his snakey head off.

Last summer when I had a rattlesnake plague, some of you suggested I try cooking the snake instead of discarding it. I intended to do that sometime. So I gutted and skinned this one, and set him in a pot of lemon juice spiked water to simmer.


It smelled sort of like a simmering chicken...and sort of like something stinky. When it was tender, I pulled the meat off the bones. Max came around sniffing to say "hey, whatcha cookin'? That smells nummy!" I tried some. And couldn't. "Tastes like chicken" they say. Tastes like chicken--a "funky", vaguely nauseating chicken. I will need to be more hungry than I was, before I will be able to get that down. Max, on the other hand, thought it was great!

He ate the whole snake, and later at night he knocked the garbage over looking for more on the bones.

I got the second half of the tower raised, and got a start on fabricating the cross members and diagonal braces.


View from below:

The top is not yet connected together. I will be attaching the two halves from the bottom up. That way I will always be working above a stable and strong portion of the tower.

In order to raise the second half, I threw a rope with a pulley tied on over the top member of the first half, with another rope threaded through the pulley. The rope with the pulley tied on was fastened lower down on the first half. I fastened one end of the rope threaded through the pulley to the second half tower lying on the ground.


After running through the pulley, the other end of the rope went toward the opposite end of the house...


...across this steel roller laid at the far edge of the house...


...and then tied on to Li'l Kitty.


I backed Li'l Kitty up and away from the house, and the second half of the tower raised up at the opposite end of the house.

---------------------------

I did some *much more* tasty cooking this evening--breakfast burritos:

Two pounds of sage breakfast sausage, two dozen eggs, two dozen locally made flour tortillas, some cheddar cheese and some salsa, and I have an assembly line set up.

The flour tortillas have to be made in a local tortilla factory, thankyouverymuch--none of this Ortega or Mission brand crap that tastes wrong, is too thick, is made with the wrong fat, is loaded with preservatives so that they can travel through twelve states and last six months, please! I pity folks who like Mexican food but can't get fresh tortillas lovingly made the *right* way by Mexican Gorditas. My former Hispanic boss and tenant (how's that for a mixed relationship?) introduced me to the wonders of fresh made tortillas shortly after I moved here. We went to the Anita Street bakery and got a couple dozen hot off the grill, plus some sweet treats. Oh! I can never eat the major brand interstate imports again.

A-anyway, the flour tortillas get heated over open flame on the stove until they just start to puff up in places. This makes them as pliable as possible for successful tortilla rolling. Then on goes the scrambled eggs, sausage, cheese (I hope I do not offend anyone's sensibilities by using cheddar cheese in this manner), and finally salsa.

Rolled up...


...and wrapped up. Two dozen breakfasts in the freezer, ready to heat and eat:

Labels: San Pedro homestead

...stepped on his ego yesterday.

When his car wouldn't turn over, the battery checked out fine, and shorting the starter terminal to the positive cable did not budge the starter motor, he jumped to a conclusion about a faulty starter.

After buying a new starter and positive battery cable (for good measure), installing it, and going on his merry, smug way, the problem promptly reoccurred after the next stop.

bugger!

Turns out it was just a loose negative battery clamp.

bugger!

Oh well. A bit more time troubleshooting would have revealed this, but the auto parts store was closing shortly. Still the cost of a new starter was much less than the cost of a tow to the auto mechanic, let alone the transportation hassle and expense having a car in the shop would engender. Which the average non-genius would have been stuck with doing.

So I got off cheap anyway, and have a new starter whether I needed it or not.

Labels: geekery

Denninger has a clip here from Letterman with Brian Williams discussing the stock crash and the implications thereof:
Hmmmm.... A Crack In The Dam? - The Market Ticker �
Here is the takeaway quote:
"The world has no money, and the Emperor has no clothes."

The Emperor has no clothes, kids.

I am more convinced now that last week's crash was NOT a glitch, and not a hack or cyber-attack, but was in fact a panic-induced drop that was compounded by cascading stop-loss orders.

If you're depending upon your job or your benefits to survive, if you are hoping the dollars will keep flowing, and the stores will keep stocked with food and the electricity will keep flowing from the outlet and water from the tap...and you have no meaningful backup plans when the job disappears and the benefit check no longer gets mailed, and what few dollars you may have laid by can not find food to buy in the stores and the electricity goes out, and the water stops flowing from your tap and the toilet can't be flushed...then what?

You're facing a terrifying future.

There is nothing, and I mean absolutely dead NOTHING more important right now than to get a family preparedness plan kicking into high gear.

I am talking to family members here too. Perhaps especially, because I give maybe a bit more of a damn about you than the rest of the foolish masses. Sure you're tired when you come home. Sure you need "recreation" on your weekends to recharge your batteries. Sure your resources are limited. All of that matters if you've got your head buried up your ass about what is coming! None of that should matter a whit if you've got your eyes open and are willing to acknowledge the terror that lies ahead for you and your family!

Spending your weekend having "fun"? Shame on you! If you're close enough to me, it means someone else (me) is doing the work you should be helping with! Shame on you for being such a "USER" and presuming upon someone else for your well-being! Tired? You should be. You should be as dead dog tired as someone on a sandbag crew, building a levee as the floodwaters rise in the river. You should have a sense of urgency that overrides absolutely everything of any importance, save for continuing to earn money to buy supplies to lay up!

For those of you further out, and for non-family members, get on over to Survivalblog, search for information on getting started (here is a good place to start), read, and get started! We have only weeks left...

--------------------
Update: Here is something for the perpetual "I'm too poor to prep" whiners:
Saving in Hard Times For Harder Times

Labels: financial ponderings, misanthropy, personal responsibility, preparedness, watching the skies

On a strictly local note, this right here is an example of where more cuts can be made to the state budget to avoid a tax increase:
Ethnic studies meeting scheduled between Horne and TUSD canceled

Ethnic studies, gender studies, art history, sociology, communications, and similar fluff curricula should be axed, at all levels of education, but particularly from higher education. Consolidate them if you must into one "Department of Useless Crap", and grant BUC (Bachelor of Useless Crap) degrees, MUC degrees and PhUC degrees. Likewise pare every cent from programs and curricula at the K-12 and community college level that does not directly relate to literacy and employment-related training.

We have a freakin' budget crisis, and it is not going to be getting better anytime soon, certainly not within the three years that this tax increase is slated to sunset. It is best to make the budget fit this year's declining revenues, because next year, and the year after that and for every year for at least ten years (maybe more) revenues will continue their slide downward as Phase II of the New Great Depression continues to take it's toll, and there is only so much a beleaguered citizenry can pay when their own personal finances are spiraling into the shitter.

Labels: politics

Police say 1 dead, 4 hurt after robbery attempt in Arizona leads to shootout

That would be one robber dead, the other three robbers injured including one critically, and the owner with a non-life-threatening injury to his forearm. This story indicates that they were gang members, and that the store owner and an employee opened fire on the gangbangers during their attempted armed robbery.

Well done, sirs!

I love living in Arizona, and I love a happy ending. Because it is nearly certain that the store owner will face no criminal charges for his meritorious service to society.

Labels: armed citizen, personal responsibility

8 Theories For Why The Stock Market Plunged Almost 1000 Points In A Matter Of Minutes On May 6th

...most of which spell extreme unease in the markets. The "fat finger" excuse has already been discounted.

I have no trouble believing a hack or cyberterrorism could be behind it.

----------------------
Update: Want to hear an audio clip of a trade announcer on the floor of the exchange as the meltdown proceeded? This is insane! Abject panic in his voice:
Stock Market Crash Pit Audio As Market Goes Into Meltdown 2010

Gerald Celente has more to say.

Meanwhile the financial press is soothingly humming Strawberry Fields:

Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry Fields forever.

Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out.
It doesn't matter much to me.

---------------------------
Update again: In case you are wondering who may have benefited from this event, as a way of determining what may have been behind it, Denninger nails it at the end of this article. The only entities who were able to buy at the bottom of the plunge--the ONLY entities to profit from the plunge, would happen to be...

..are you ready for it?

JP Morgan.

And maybe Morgan Stanley.

Everyone has been focused on Goldman Sachs, but JPM has been getting way too much of a pass in this whole fiasco.

Torches and pitchforks, folks!

Labels: financial ponderings, watching the skies

Gotta make a move to a town that's right for me
Town to keep me movin' keep me groovin' with it's NRG!



Well you talk about it talk about it talk about it talk about IT!
Talk about talk about talk about mo-OO-vin'!

----------------------
Update: searching for a version that does not cut off at the end, I came across this kid doing a bass cover of the song: Funkytown, and it passed my mind that I should take up the bass. Why? Well it's not that hard to learn, and you have as much access to "you know what" as any other member of the band. Middle aged? Overweight? No problemo! You're the freakin' BASS player! Mix in a little game, and you are GOLDEN!

I may need to grow my beard out a bit more...

Labels: art appreciation, women

I finished assembling, priming and painting the second half of the solar thermal tower.

It is tucked in here because I needed the workshop space to bring in my Mitsubishi for an oil change. Likely next weekend I will pull it out again and raise it next to the first half of the tower.

Mitzi was several thousand miles overdue for an oil change. I put a lot of miles on quickly living out here. This is a tight fit for this vehicle, but even so it is very nice to have a hard clean indoor surface to work on.

This is the Baart wheat, just beginning to unfurl the heads of grain.


The white wheat has been fully unfurled now for over a week.


This is more for documentation than anything. Notice the bed on the right has lush growth at the end just like the bed on the left. And yet no grain stalks. I am puzzling over this and wondering just what seed Momcat gave me. I sowed what she had left over in these first two beds, then used some white wheat that I had purchased from the co-op for the rest. I am beginning to wonder if Momcat's seed is even wheat, or if so, how different it is from the rest...

Labels: San Pedro homestead

"Ask your doctor if it's right for you." (NSFW...but LOL!)

Labels: felicity and jocularity, women

I want to hold you til I die,
Til we both break down and cry.
I want to hold you until the fear in me subsides.

Labels: heart

Y'all?!

Another "no".

Another bailing buyer. This time spooked by unknown termite concerns.

Frack!

I should have just agreed to pay for the termite treatment. The quote for treatment was reasonable, but the termite guy got to rambling on about possible hidden damage and yakkata yakkata--nothing that should be at all surprising in an old house, and nothing that can't be halted by a professional treatment--but the buyer got antsy and cancelled.

Some days I just wish for the foreclosure date to arrive...

Also looking to the skies, saying, "when, Lord?
Send those chariots o' fire around!"

Labels: house for sale, spiritual

Sliding Toward the Cliff Edge - John Derbyshire - The Corner on National Review Online

I doubt anyone's enjoying the sound of ice cracking beneath our feet, but some of us are less surprised than others. We fans of Peter Schiff, Marc Faber, and Vox Day are just sitting at our desks nodding glumly and saying: Yep. Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

Not that anyone is listening.

'Course my view is that we lost our grip on the cliff edge a while ago. Free-fall feels just fine for a while...

Say your prayers--the bottom is coming up awfully fast.

Labels: financial ponderings, misanthropy, preparedness, skittles, watching the skies

U.S. stocks end sharply off after jaw-dropping day Market Snapshot - MarketWatch

I think we have maybe two months before all this frantic scrambling for solutions finally gives way in an avalanche.

Labels: financial ponderings, watching the skies

Here is a lovely line to use next time you're talking to a lefty and the topic of illegal immigration comes up:

Lefty: What do you think about Arizona’s illegal immigration law?

You: It doesn’t go far enough. If we’re going to reduce our carbon footprint we need to execute as many of the illegals we catch as possible.

Whiplash!

(courtesy of JB in the comments at Roissy's place.)

Labels: felicity and jocularity, liberal stupidity

We knew this was the case, but it is interesting that Dr. Ron Paul was able to extract the admission.

Fed Money Printing Of $1.3 trillion Inflation & Gold To Rise | Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog

As a point of comparison, the hotly contested healthcare bill is projected to cost $1 trillion over ten years. I guess that it is supposed to be chump change that an unelected panel of private bankers can whip up a similar amount of money out of thin air to bail out their fellow bankstas for their stupidity.

Pitchforks and torches, people!

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men ... [W]e have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world—no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men."
Thomas Woodrow Wilson

-------------------------------

Jim's Quote of the Day: - SurvivalBlog.com

'When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.' - Frederic Bastiat, The Law.

Labels: fascism on parade, financial ponderings

Steven G. Brant: The Death of Goldman Sachs

To be honest, I think much is being made of little when it comes to Goldman-Sachs role as a market maker. If client X wants to buy security A, and no ready seller of security A exists, it is the market maker who sells security A to client X. By the very nature of that transaction, the market maker is betting against security A.

However, where the real trouble is brewing is where the "market maker" specifically tailors a security for sale to client X such that the market maker enhances their own opportunity to profit on their side of the transaction at the expense of the client, particularly when they withhold crucial information from the client.

Yup, that's a convenient tree from which to hang a sleazy operator.

Labels: financial ponderings

Some good advice from a "suburban survivalist":
Gardening Lessons Learned, by Chet in Michigan - SurvivalBlog.com

Do not think that by buying one of those "garden in a can" dealios, you're all set to grow your own food when TSHTF. I laugh at your presumption! You will fail. And then starve. It is nowhere near as easy as you think. And not as hard as you think, once you know what you're doing.

You would never think to learn how to ride a bicycle on the day of a cycle road race, would you? Much better to fail now when you have the chance to learn what it takes to succeed. Today your survival does not depend on the color of your thumb. There is no shortcut, no amount of book learning or internet reading that can take the place of getting into the dirt and learning firsthand now, while your failures can be lessons rather than fatal experiences.

If you don't think you have time, energy, space, resources, (insert lame excuse), then dig up a single 4-foot by 4-foot patch, and learn what it takes to make that tiny postage stamp productive. Even apartment dwellers can muster that space on their patio with containers, or ask a friend with a yard if you can use a small square of land in the back, or find one of the many community gardens that exist in most cities and rent one of the squares of land they offer.

Go! Do!

---------------------------
Update: On a closely related note, Momcat and I have been regularly eating leafy green vegetables in copious quantity from her spring garden. Most weekends when I am there, at least one meal is a "BLT salad", consisting of a wide variety of greens including romaine lettuce, spinach, collards, broccoli, parsley, with boiled egg and bacon crumbles, topped with dressing. A big bowl of this salad is tasty, satisfying, and very filling. Not to mention tremendously healthy.

My point is that other sources of carbs, protein and fats are only minimally required when a significant portion of your daily intake can be vegetables that you can grow yourself in a garden. I had not previously realized this. It gives me an additional sense of security knowing that the total amount of "higher order" foods required for sustenance is less than I thought.

Labels: gardening, preparedness

We have another good offer. This time it is all cash, so no farting around with ridiculous underwriting requirements. The buyer wants termite treatments, but we're working on an amendment that reduces the price commensurate with a termite treatment at her expense after the fact.

Prayers appreciated. One way or another we'll get through this.

Labels: house for sale

Not that it would serve TPTB, but every young man needs to be spirited off to somewhere away from the influence of women and taught the truth.

The earlier the better.

How do women see good guys? (14,512) [relationships.blog-city.com]

It would save a lot on resentment when the truth hits later...

more...

Labels: misanthropy, women

This story is enough to bring a tear to my eye:
The Man Who Created Paradise – by Gene Logsdon

This *ought* to be possible on a nationwide scale. That it is not, now, is a symptom of the disease of our present culture and economy.

Last week I thought I was fighting off a flu virus. I am sure now that it is seasonal allergies. I never used to have seasonal allergies until starting about 3-4 years ago. This week was pretty bad. I've been dealing with asthma all week, and this weekend it switched from asthma to sinus headaches. Thankfully I'm not dealing with both at the same time. So I didn't get all that terribly much done. It seemed as if I was either preparing for Daisycat to show up (cleaning), keeping her entertained while she was here, or napping because my sinuses made me groggy.

I got bit by a gardening bug and weeded the wheat patch Friday. I thought I'd just pull a few of these here weeds at the end of the row...and then kept going.


The wheat itself is starting to head out in certain parts of the patch:


I did make some limited progress on the solar thermal tower. I assembled the second half pieces I made last week into their full 32-foot length, and began attaching the cross-pieces.


When Daisycat showed up, I helped her haul (ha! I did all the hauling) the straw bales she brought out to the archery range and set up a wider backstop to catch errant arrows.

The wind today was pretty fierce and it kept blowing the arrows off-course, so she packed up and went home early. Right now (5:30PM) it is *ridiculous* out there. 50 MPH gusts according to the weather site, and I believe it.

In the garden: The Austrian Peas are in full bloom in the fall cover crop beds.


The fig tree that got blasted to the ground by the early and hard frost we had last fall is coming back from the roots.

This fall, if I have any early warning, I will cover this whole tree with reemay. I don't want to risk losing the whole thing again like this.

In the kitchen: This kitchen was *clean* just before Daisycat got here! Now it's a wreck again...

But I have stacks and stacks of bowls of Desert Cat's Famous Chili in the freezer now as acceptable compensation.

The dishes can wait until next week. (Ah, the LUXURY of living the life of a virtual bachelor, that I can say that! On the other hand, a Good Wife would do the cooking *and* the cleaning for me.)

Labels: San Pedro homestead