Degringolade

 
Koloman Moser
Landscape in Semmering

Gloomy here in the PNW.  It is normal for this time of year.  You would think that I would be used to it by now, but when it first starts I always struggle a wee bit.

I am trying to minimize my exposure to the news.  I haven't been that successful, but I will keep trying.  The reason that I am doing this is that it is my considered opinion (pulled directly from an orifice unmentioned) that things are getting ready to make a pretty big change in the not-too-distant future and I have no clue concerning the where/when/what/how of the approaching change.

I am an old man swimming in a sea that, like all seas, does not care or take into account what I think should happen.  If I were younger, I would try to swim to the edge and I am not particularly interested in giving up and sinking.  I think that what I am trying for is neutral buoyancy.  This is made difficult because it appears that the tides are changing.

My course is pretty simple right now.  Stay neutral, keep a non-judgmental eye on the mess going on around me here in 'Murca and endeavor to stay out of direct fire.  I doubt if I will be unaffected by the coming changes, but they aren't in my control (in any fashion).

So this morning I decided to be a little prepperish. But as I think about it, my laziness will provide a good test of the time/results continuum.

Over the years, I have been lulled into the idea that cooking is an "Art" that deserves as much attention as a painting by Van Gogh or a sculpture by Rodin. I am beginning to question that idea.

The old public TV with their Julia Child, Jacques Pepin and the Frugal Gourmet started the trend. They basically sold the nonsensical idea that the act of eating was somewhat sacred and anything less than a dinner that could trace its recipes to some shithole in Europe was the only thing worth eating.

Not only that, they began passing off the idea that only by spending a lot of money for marginally better feedstock was a sign of enlightenment rather than an ongoing search for status among the "enlightened few"

Even worse, when folks out there in the unwashed masses started realizing that the elite cooking from the Eurotrash nations was only marginally better than what one could get at a McDonalds, they branched out into commodifying ethnic "cuisine" and tried to assign the stupid amount of labor and excessive prices for ingredients to cuisines that really had no relation to the food.

I live in the real world where cooking is a daily task. It isn't particularly noble and a little time must be spent on it, but food as a luxury and the fancy stores that overcharge for ingredients and the overpriced restaurants that clip the aspirational are real and are probably gonna be discarded soon. Things are regressing around us, most people are starting to notice. I think that the days when somehow feeding oneself in an ostentatious manner and ascribing the act to one's virtue is coming to an end.

I have been pondering the "half-a-book" that I have in the can and that blew up in my face a couple years back.

I like the overall premise of the Weird of Hali books and for some reason unbeknownst to me, Greers prose style is easy for me to just read and immerse. Your results may vary.

But I am coming to the conclusion that the weak point in the books is the idea that the "radiance" is "all evil all the time" and the foot soldiers and staff aren't really human anymore. I know that you need a foil in this kind of book, and by just casting them as evil that needs to be destroyed is sorta simplistic and to, me at least, makes for a minor mark against the books as a work (still solid overall).

So, I am looking at the span of the books again and considering the idea that maybe the Radiance is like most human endeavors and has internal divisions and good people doing things that they feel are in the best interests of everyone. Good people doing bad things for what they feel are good reasons is not unknown on this particular planet. Gotta think about it some more. I'll get back to you.

Timeframes are tricky things.

I suppose that it is akin to sampling rates in quality control and the parallel decisions about what passes and fails when you test something.

For some reason (I attribute this to poor attention spans) we seen to think that problems play out in the time between our daily browsing of what is eupemistically referred to as "news". I call this phenomenon the "Friends" conundrum. We expect real world problems to be solved in a time period that we can get our feeble little minds around. I think that this is becoming a serious problem at personal and societal levels.

We have been trying to control the rest of the world for around 75 years now. We competed with the Soviet Union pretty successfully until it became Russia again and for the past twenty years it has grown past our control and now we don't know quite what to do. All of the "solutions" come with serious blowback to someone and no one in their right mind wants to take the inevitable hit. Same thing goes with Iran, we have been messing around with them since before I was born.

Look, I've said it before and I'll say it again. Inter-state relations are always about trade routes and resources. The folks we have been messing with since Archangel and Murmansk and the deposition of Mosaddegh have now become independent and we are trying to put them back in the place that we control the trade routes and resources. They aren't giving up their part of the control. What I find funny is the folks here who pretend, or even worse believe, that the civilizations we are clashing with (Thanks Sam Huntington) are the good guys. Don't kid yourself, they are every bit as corrupt and amoral as we are.

I have been very unimpressed by the whole thing.

I mean really, weren't we supposed to be fighting off the zombie hordes by now? This mundane existence seems to be a lot less exciting than the scenarios presented by the doom and gloomers that populate large sections of the internet.

One of the bits of common wisdom that my parents tried to teach me (without quite managing to fully follow their own advice) was the wisdom of living within your means. I have went through periods of following and ignoring this advice. Now that I am retired and on a fixed income, I follow the advice a lot more closely. A virtue out of necessity I suppose, but a virtue nonetheless.

I saw that JMG was tardy in putting up his "Frugal First Friday" post this A.M. I am impressed that he even keeps trying. When he first started it, folks were giving advice hither and yon. Good advice mostly. But over time folks seemed to get the impression that they might just have to take less and that didn't fly and the conversation dangled and the advice started becoming more about how to game the system and keep what you have and pay less.

Here in "Murca", the idea of taking less is anathema. The idea of just remaining constant is almost as reviled. It will take quite a bit more pain for folks to begin seriously addressing the idea that the future might just hold less than the present and especially an idealized past. So after I post this and finish my pot of tea, I will write again about how the ravings of the preppers, once shorn of the guns and zombie nonsense might be a valid means of navigating a frugal future.