The Living Will Envy the Dead

And on that note, I am going to go make my first martini of the night and find a nice bottle of red to go with dinner.

I am brushing up on my hobo graffiti or whatever the hell you call that shit when they carved caveman art type markings on posts outside of homes where they’d feed you or give you shelter or money or all of the above. I’ve already started taking my two-ply toilet paper and separating the layers so I’ve got two (!) rolls of toilet paper.

What we haven’t addressed in our predictions of the Cannibalistic Anarchy is the current poisoning of one of the cheapest sources of protein available: peanut butter. What most are shrugging off as just a bunch of lazy Georgians with hygienic issues (you know I don’t mean you, rptrcub, right?) is really an effort of The Man trying to keep us down.

I’m afraid to ask what face carpaccio is.

There is a pattern here. War criminals in the White House conveniently get an economic crisis just as they leave office, diverting attention from what would be, in any sane society, inevitable prosecutions, or at least torches and pitchforks in the streets.

@lynnlightfoot: I think face carpaccio is what’s left over from the patient of that recent pioneering transplant surgery. Assuming they preserved the “before” in a dose of fine olive oil and plenty of lemon juice. But in the context of Cannibal Anarchy, it’s whatever scraps of unseasoned flesh you manage to bite off the face of your adversary before s/he does it to you.

@Pedonator: I imagine the coming Cannibalistic Anarchy to be much like Shaun of the Dead. I might have to shoot my mother.

@JNOV: Carry a baseball bat (or was it a cricket wicket?) with you at all times.

I have floated many strategies by which the cannibal anarchy phase can be weathered by a communal group of smart people who have weapons for self-defense, a location that would be an unlikely target for the cannibal gangs, and a strategy for self-sufficiency so we don’t have to go hunting people.

There’s the sailboat strategy, the joining with some group that is living on a subsistence level already and adopting their ways, the amish commune on Vancouver Island, or PEI, I just can’t see Canadians going cannibal anrchistic, eh?

I am not in favor of eating the flesh of the face raw, as carpaccio, which would be thin slices of face, marinated in lemon and olive oil, I am in favor of doing a tete de veau like dish with faces. But as I have mentioned, when eating people, it is highly advisable to avoid the nervous system, this is where the prions of Cruetzfeld-jacob disease dwell (the disease, almost identical to mad cow, discovered among cannibal tribes in New Guinea). When eating people, its best to stick to the large muscles.

Someone needs to get the whole earth catalogue, just to be ready, we will need to know how to make soap from lard and wood ashes, how to make gunpowder from charcoal, sulfer, and saltpetre, which I understand can be refined from urine.

@Pedonator: My favorite part was when they were chucking records Frisbee-style at the zombies, and they were arguing over which records to keep. English DJs! Like that HAWT Ronson fellow.

@Pedonator: You don’t have to reload a blade. K-Mart has a nice machete.

Look. If you really wanna get prepared to The Coming Cannibalistic Anarchy, you need to start watching shows like Man vs. Wild and Survivorman. Remember those Nike commercials where everyone was saying, “I am Tiger Woods”? Well, fuck Tiger Woods. I am Bear Grylls.

And Jr wants me to add that he is looking forward to a Fallout 3-type apocalyptic wasteland. Some people’s kids!

@Promnight: When eating people, its best to stick to the large muscles.

Wisdom, thy name is Promnight.

@redmanlaw: K-Mart is my one-stop-shop for weapons of mass destruction!

@JNOV:
Oh I dunno. When it happens – the ones who are looking forward to it, are the ones you want in your camp. Right next to you.

@Hose Manikin: Good point! Now if we can find him a real weapon that can be operated like an XBox 360 controller, we’ve got it made.

@Pedonator: @Promnight: I think we have our next tweet.

@JNOV: Um, just get him trained on an old-school Atari joystick, he’ll be fine.

@Hose Manikin: Will gold be worth anything? That question actually troubles me. In a complete breakdown of society, would even gold be worth anything? I think in those circumstances, food, fuel, and ammunition will be the real currency, gold would be useless.

Now, you can stockpile fuel, and weapons and ammo, but you are gonna have a finite supply, and someone is gonna have more left after you run out. And they are gonna kill you.

The one resource thats not finite is food, self sufficiency will be worth more than firepower or fuel. Or Gold.

Now, a strategy based on establishing food self-sufficiency, in some remote area, where you can escape predation by the cannibal bands until they have killed each other off, thats the only realistic strategy.

@Pedonator: Haha!

@Promnight: During my most recent visit to the psych ward, I read an article about gold in National Geographic (this was New Year’s week, so it was probably January’s issue — I went to the rich people hospital this time after learning my lesson stuck in the po people’s hospital last August. They had no books or magazines, and the psyh ward is a very boring place.)

ANYWAY – India buys the most gold. Like a megadisproportionate amount of gold, so all we gotta do is hope India makes it through this SNAFU in good shape, and we’ll have a gold market. Interesting tidbit — if you added up all the gold that has ever been mined and melted it down, it would only fill two Olympic-sized swimming pools.

@Promnight: Problem is, it’s only a matter of time until the Cannibal Remnants seek out the last rare tracts of arable land and find you. Think they’re not gonna go crawling through the woods? In search of food? Think again.

But all said, yours is the sanest strategy for surviving as long as possible.

@Pedonator: What was that zombie movie where the non-zombie people escaped on a boat and landed on an island only to find that island inhabited by zombies? I thought it was 28 Days Later, but my kid thinks it was the Dawn of the Dead remake. I think he might be right, but I need confirmation before I give him his props.

Well, whatever movie it is, The Cannibalistic Remnants are like the zombies on the island. I’m telling you guys, Hollywood is your friend in times like these. Same with the Discovery Channel and PBS. Take notes.

@Pedonator: I know that wasn’t 28 Days Later. Could you be thinking of Mad Monster Party?

@Pedonator: No, not Mad Monster Party; we haven’t seen that. Whatever movie it was, is was the most awesome and most fucked up ending. They spent the whole movie trying to escape the zombies, they overcame a gazillion obstacles just to get to the boat to get to a safe place and then, BAM! The zombies come out to meet the boat right after they moor it.

@Promnight: Guaranteed, gold will still have value. Humans have a weird obsession with it, and if nothing else, it will become a form of currency. Just because we go cannibal anarchy doesn’t mean we all forget who we were back in the Previous Times.

@Promnight:
Interesting question. Realistically – functionally – it is a pretty useless metal. No good for weapons or armor. It is a pretty good conductor for electrical contacts, but that’s about it.

It is really just a pretty metal useful only for decoration.

Yet ancient cultures all over the globe valued it. The Mayans, Incans, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Africans, Chinese – anywhere it was found it was valued.

I think it must be because women like it and if you have a lot of it you can get laid anytime you want. Hence its intrinsic value.

It depends on how bad it gets; I am discussing the hypothetical “cannibal anrchy” stage. When human flesh becomes valued as food, you know food will be the ultimate thing of value. You could be sitting on a pile of gold, noone will give you their food for it, they can’t eat it. But if you are sitting on a pile of food, you could get all the gold you want.

TJ/ My kid just informed me that I was born the same year as Rick Astley. Then he sang “Never Gonna Give You Up.” No, he didn’t try to Rick Roll me. He just burst into song and dance. Why does my child hate me so?

@Promnight:
It also depends on whether the “cannibal anarchy” is global or geographically regional. If, for example, the Chinese decide to disconnect their currency from the dollar, let the Yuan strengthen to support their own consumers, while we are simultaneously printing dollars as fast as we can to pay for the Iraq occupation, Afganistan occupation, wall street bailout, auto bailout, homeowner bailout, porno bailout, stimulus package, California bailout, tarp I, tarp II, tarp III, etc. And if the Chinese still like to show off with a little decorative gold, then it will still have value here.

After all, with a few gold coins you might be able to bribe your way into a life of pampered indentured servitude in Beijing.

My kid has just taken dibs on the thigh meat.

@JNOV: Your kid rocks, and tell him I said so.

@Pedonator: Thanks! I told him, he laughed self-consciously and in his Elvis voice said, “Tell him I said thank you. Thankyouverymuch.”

@JNOV: At the risk of being creepy, how does JNOV Jr. look in bedazzled white leather, holding a mike like he wants to kiss it frenchly?

@JNOV: Here ya go. http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/01/anti-ied-drones.html#more

You guys are all talk and no action. I told you all at our last refugee camp that I had found the perfect 200 acre abandoned farm with river front, timber, cleared fields, and even old apple orchards, north of the Canada City. If I can find out if it can be had (no obvious reason it can’t) would you all be up for a field trip?

@WonkRefugee: We can send Manchu to take photos of it.

As before noted, I have no interest in surviving any collapse of civilization. It will be a matter of finding the most comfortable exit. I doubt the pros and cons of the downstage turn will be much discussed once the local liquor store has been stormed and its shell set on fire and I really only enjoy growing useless things.

The future of entertainment would revert to its past: bearded loonies reciting hours of rhymed stories about heroes and gods. And since I can barely remember yesterday I doubt that will work.

So I”m all for the easy way out.

@JNOV: Junior sounds like a lot of fun and you sound like a a great mom.

@Benedick: Words of wisdom. I’m no farmer and I am about the exact opposite of a great warrior. A big handful of sleeping pills will be the only tool I’ll need for the Apocalypse.

A friend is a psychic and she’s told me about some of my past lives and how painfully they ended. I think drifting off to sleep sounds a whole lot better than another spear through the belly.

@JNOV: Honey I know you didn’t mean me, of course. Actually, the worker drones, who live in one of the most economically depressed parts of the state — very rural with only agriculture as the industry — probably kept their mouths shut because they valued their paychecks, or else, they’d be eating peanut shells. It’s the managers’ who I blame. That, as well as Ga. Ag. and the FDA for not regulamating like they should. Of course, though, our GOP dumbasses in the state and nationally believed that the invisnible hand of the free market would take care of getting unhealthy products out of the market — after killing a few people first.

Srsly, peanut farmers in Georgia — remember, Jimmy Carter is from down there, btw. — are scared shitless that there will be an entire PB panic and a collapse of their industry.

Refugees will flee northward to Atlanta, where we already have above-the-national-average unemployment, and if they can get beyond our I-285 moat, they’ll compete for shrinking bread crumbs.

Also, though I should be grateful to have a job, the prospect of a furlough as a state employee is scary, depending on how they might do it. One day a month? I will survive. Two? sure. A day or two every week? I might as well as be on the dole.

@Dave H: “I think I’ll have that cup of tea now.” From “On the Beach”.

@redmanlaw: Precisely. Fighting for survival is for the young. I’ve played my part in the evolution of the human race so I’m eminently expendable. There’s no point in kidding myself, in the grand scheme of things my character’s role is over.

Lucky Aussies in “On the Beach” had no serious decisions left to make. They were doomed no matter what they did so fighting for survival wasn’t an option. The only question that remained was how to make that final exit. I always thought the American submariner taking his boat out to sink it in deep water was the most bizarre decision any character in the book made. Apparently he was afraid to leave such a dangerous weapon and its technological secrets where the surviving cockroaches might find it.

@Dave H: In the movie, the crew voted to go back to US America to either go home and die or to see if the radiation has cleared from the atmosphere (although it would be all over the ground and water). Also in the film, one guy jumped ship in Leftytown to check on his family. The sub checked in on him the following day. Although he didn’t actually see his family, everyone in San Francisco was dead so he figured they were too. He decided to go fishing and pull something out of a pharmacy when it was time to go. That would be my plan for when the asteroid is coming or whatever.

Watched that movie on TCM while reloading last week. Off to the range now to test drive the ammo. I’m gonna take out a couple of “zombie” targets today.

@Benedick: You and me both darling. I say we have a final banquet of our favorite things, then wash down our fatal dosages (which I have stockpiled) with bottles of the best French champagne we can lay hands on. Fellow stinquers can use our remains to stave off starvation. Apres nous, l’anarchy cannibale!

@redmanlaw: When I read the book I noticed the significant (gloriously patriotic) change in Rock Hudson’s character’s final decision. In the book his crew was already decimated by radiation poisoning and there was no possibility of a final long voyage to oblivion. Why he didn’t abandon the sub to spend the last few days with Ava Gardner’s character puzzles me.

@Mistress Cynica: I figure something will consume whatever’s left of me. Whether it’s Stinquers/cannibals or zombies or dogs or buzzards or worms won’t matter a bit to me. But I refuse to drink champagne, a beverage I have never liked, at my personal Last Supper. For my last drink let me quaff one last deliciously cold A&W root beer – a frosted mug would be a nice touch – and I’ll be happy, lacking all pretensions of class and good taste to the very end.

@Dave H: Because he was gay, darling.
I chose champagne because it actually is my favorite thing to drink. I will be hopelessly pretentious and elitist to the end, because that’s who I am.

@Mistress Cynica:
i’m hitting the liquor store (cyn, dom or perrier joulet?)
then i’ll hit the pharmacy. i’m coming back as a dolphin anyway, so i’m looking forward to going out with the best buzz of my life.
and i can stop worrying that i’ll end up at the seaquarium.

btw, ratbastard’s fave show is survivor man. he’s all in, and getting ready. too bad he doesn’t know i’ll eat his face first.

@Dave H: What’s long and hard and full of seamen?

Gregory Peck played the main sailor guy in the movie.

@baked: Veuve Cliquot La Grande Dame.

@Pedonator: I just asked Jr. your question which caused facepalm. Jr said to tell you he doesn’t look very good in bedazzled white leather, holding a mike like he wants to kiss it frenchly. He claims he knows this from personal experience, but I call bullshit on that because the only part of his childhood that I remember having to do with clothing was his phase where he wanted to be naked all the time. As soon as we came home, off went the clothes.

@redmanlaw: Okay. I am about to click on your link. If you have played me and Rick Rolled my gullible ass, there will be consequences.

@redmanlaw: Oh, hey! I just skimmed it, but yeah, those things are cool as shit. And they’re using joysticks during surgeries these days, so maybe all the time he’s wasted and money I’ve spent on those friggin systems and games will pay off. But to be fair, I have to admit that I’m a gamer, too. I just don’t play as often as I used to, and a good game will cause manic behavior where I don’t sleep and play non-stop. I get it when he’s hooked on a game for the first week. Eventually he becomes normal again.

@Benedick: You are so sweet, and thank you for saying that. Jr is a lot of fun. Sadly, he suffers from bipolar and panic like his mom. We’re working on it, and we’re getting better, but we are very sensitive to each other’s mood. If he’s depressed, I will probably become depressed, and my recent foray into Crazy Town has affected him. We’re just trying to get him back in college or employed, because right now he’s feeling better and acting what my father calls Fat, Dumb and Happy. I understand how hard it is for him to get out there and be active in school or work when he’s been down for so long and inactive, but I’m doing him a disservice if I just let him laze about. When I’m depressed, I don’t have the energy to give him the firm push he needs, but I’m feeling better, and I’m getting on his case about getting shit done (like doing the dishes or finding a job, etc.). I had to threaten him with internet blackout to get him to do the dishes, and what he doesn’t know is that I’m about to pack up the XBoxes and Game Cubes and Segas and Playstations and iPods and his computer keyboard and put all that shit in a storage locker. I’m going to tell him before I do it — I’m going to give him ample warning and sufficient time to get his shit together before it all goes bye-bye. But if he doesn’t have a job within a month, that stuff is going to be held hostage, and he’s going to have to hit certain milestones to get each thing back. In my mind I’m already devising a ransom chart. Doing the dishes one day under threat of internet blackout does not a permanent change in behavior make.

@rptrcub: I agree with you completely, and I don’t blame the workers at all. When we have a rash of tainted spinach or tomatoes or whatever, I know it’s not the workers’ fault they don’t have proper toilet facilities or sanitation out there where they’re breaking their backs under horrible conditions so I can buy my strawberries for $2 a pint. Caesar Chavez all the way!

@redmanlaw: See now, I immediately thought of Neil Young, and remain woefully ignorant of both the book and the movie.

I have a 20 y.o. steel machete from El Salvador and a 33 oz. Slugger signed by Denis Martinez that will remain by my side until I’m more useful as food for others.

My son dropped a double-double today in youth basketball, surprising all of us particularly with an out-of-nowhere display of aggression under the boards. Keep in mind this is 8 y.o.ball, so it wasn’t pretty. We agreed he’s allowed to continue wearing the Spiderman socks he had on today to future games.

@nabisco: Go ‘bisco Jr.! But will he allow the socks to be washed?

@Mistress Cynica: You and me both. My favorite. I’m also a sucker for pink champagne when it’s good. And something delicious to eat. Good barbiturates and a plastic bag to tie it all together, as per Hemlock Society recommendations.

@SanFranLefty: The boy is just glad that I’ll relax my “always wear white socks for Sport” rule. But I could give you chapter and verse on Sport and Superstition.

@Benedick: I adore rosé champagnes–the delicate hint of strawberry. Piper Heidsieck has a really nice one.

Fuck that shit, apocalypse is my chance to live my life in the way I have thought since I was young was what I am most suited for. I want to live and fight and have the adventure of trying. At least, if it happened, everything you do would be meaningful. No angst about “what is the purpose of this ratrace,” the purpose will be very real, survival, and there will be, I think, satisfaction beyond what we find now in each day survived.

I loved On The Beach, the old club members bemoaning that they will never have time to drink all the old ports in the cellar, that scene stuck with me.

Oh, and , by the way, I went to the AC BoatShow today, and I was expecting a meager show, empty booths, poor attendance, signs of an economy in freefall, but no. Packed, happening, big exhibits, fantastic displays, people going on about life, it was the most hopeful thing I have seen in a while.

I was pricing toilets and batteries. I found a house battery system that would only cost 3 grand, and vacuum flush toilet system that would only cost 2 grand. Boating, its so fun.

@Mistress Cynica:
bt of corse. i forgot we were looting the liquor store!

I spent part of today sharpening tools.
Especially my machetes. I have 3 of them: A nice short little guy that is ~18″ long, perfect for close in work trimming back the succulent vines when they grow over my back fence, another one that’s ~24″ that’s useful for chopping off legs at the knee cutting back some of the taller bushes along the East side of the property, and one that’s a meter long, that is for full-on death-dealing. It’s razor-sharp, perfectly balanced, and I know how to wield it like a Berserker, if necessary.

@Promnight: I realize it’s way too late to post this comment, BUT I’m so old that I still have my copy of the original Whole Earth Catalogue (if of course I can manage to unearth it), as well as its second incarnation (an actual cover, better paper stock inside). Now that I write this, I realize it’s probably worth money, so maybe I better start looking.

@nabisco: If he starts playing soccer, you’re really going to have to relax that rule. Most uniforms don’t involve white socks.

The Repubs are blathering on the Senate floor now about the bailout bill. I have a really easy solution for this: don’t give their states any bailout money.