THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY
by Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.
Through the travail of the ages,
Midst the pomp and toil of war,
Have I fought and strove and perished
Countless times upon this star.
In the form of many people
In all panoplies of time
Have I seen the luring vision
Of the Victory Maid, sublime.
I have battled for fresh mammoth,
I have warred for pastures new,
I have listed to the whispers
When the race trek instinct grew.
I have known the call to battle
In each changeless changing shape
From the high souled voice of conscience
To the beastly lust for rape.
I have sinned and I have suffered,
Played the hero and the knave;
Fought for belly, shame, or country,
And for each have found a grave.
I cannot name my battles
For the visions are not clear,
Yet, I see the twisted faces
And I feel the rending spear.
Perhaps I stabbed our Savior
In His sacred helpless side.
Yet, I've called His name in blessing
When after times I died.
In the dimness of the shadows
Where we hairy heathens warred,
I can taste in thought the lifeblood;
We used teeth before the sword.
While in later clearer vision
I can sense the coppery sweat,
Feel the pikes grow wet and slippery
When our Phalanx, Cyrus met.
Hear the rattle of the harness
Where the Persian darts bounced clear,
See their chariots wheel in panic
From the Hoplite's leveled spear.
See the goal grow monthly longer,
Reaching for the walls of Tyre.
Hear the crash of tons of granite,
Smell the quenchless eastern fire.
Still more clearly as a Roman,
Can I see the Legion close,
As our third rank moved in forward
And the short sword found our foes.
Once again I feel the anguish
Of that blistering treeless plain
When the Parthian showered death bolts,
And our discipline was in vain.
I remember all the suffering
Of those arrows in my neck.
Yet, I stabbed a grinning savage
As I died upon my back.
Once again I smell the heat sparks
When my Flemish plate gave way
And the lance ripped through my entrails
As on Crecy's field I lay.
In the windless, blinding stillness
Of the glittering tropic sea
I can see the bubbles rising
Where we set the captives free.
Midst the spume of half a tempest
I have heard the bulwarks go
When the crashing, point blank round shot
Sent destruction to our foe.
I have fought with gun and cutlass
On the red and slippery deck
With all Hell aflame within me
And a rope around my neck.
And still later as a General
Have I galloped with Murat
When we laughed at death and numbers
Trusting in the Emperor's Star.
Till at last our star faded,
And we shouted to our doom
Where the sunken road of Ohein
Closed us in it's quivering gloom.
So but now with Tanks a'clatter
Have I waddled on the foe
Belching death at twenty paces,
By the star shell's ghastly glow.
So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me.
And I see not in my blindness
What the objects were I wrought,
But as God rules o'er our bickerings
It was through His will I fought.
So forever in the future,
Shall I battle as of yore,
Dying to be born a fighter,
But to die again, once more.
Monday, February 22, 2010
TEOTWAWKI Something Else To Consider
FROM THE "Life After the Oil Crash Forum" by moabmic
MZB! Those three letters are enough to put a healthy dose of doom-enriched fear into any well prepped doomer right? It took me a while just to learn what those letters meant; when I did finally look them up in the acronym appendix of the doomer's bible I was silent. Mutant-Zombie-Bikers? What kind of fantasy freak group was I associating myself with? I just disliked the term because I couldn't get over the strange thoughts being conjured up in my head of a pack of deranged bikers on dirt bikes, old Harley's, quads, you name it with bleeding flesh and hollowed eyes all coming to attack us after a collapse. We would be all snug and happy in our doomsteads and BOLs but these MZBs would seek us out to destroy us. So yeah, I just couldn't deal with the term and didn't care for it much because it was too abstract and unrealistic.
As time went on and my doomerish view of the world became more and more into focus I kept revisiting the MZB concept. What if the zombie in them didn't refer to some ghoulish character but rather someone who had lost everything and gained the 100 yard stare? Someone who has lost all sense of purpose but still feels the need to move forward? What if the mutant part referred to the transformation some unprepared over-suburbanized schmuck goes through as they realize everything they had worked for, all their competing with the Jones', all their mass consuming waste was all for naught and now had nowhere to go, nothing to live off of, and no knowledge of how to begin to survive? What if the biker part didn’t represent the biker gangs of today but rather the same misguided victim of suburbia taking their hobby bike with the last bit of gas and hitting the road in search of food for their overweight, weak, and defenseless family to never return? What if a MZB is simply a former misguided suburbia rat who is now discovering what it means to live and is angry at himself, angry at the world, and especially angry at those who are living a more comfortable post-collapse existence because they were prepared?
As we move closer to the point where a total societal breakdown occurs one way or another it will become very apparent who is prepared and who isn’t. My head has been filled with fantasies that when the day comes when anarchy dominates over civilized life that those who weren’t prepared would be begging for help, doing anything they could to survive, but for the most part not resorting to violence. I stand corrected.
A casual dinner visit with some close friends was my point of awakening to how ugly everything will be. We were having beers and discussing how we keep getting warning article after warning article but nothing ever happens. Something commonly discussed here. We are tired of the warnings; we are tired of prepping for something that will never come; we are starting to not believe that there will be a collapse. At this point the brother of my friends comes in. He had been a former employee of mine during a construction project five years ago. During that there had been a conflict whereas he thought he was owed more for his efforts than we had paid him (bonus pay). Over the years it had seemed this rift had healed. He joined the conversation and then boldly stated, “if there is a day like you guys describe then I’ll just hit the road and take whatever the f*** I want. I’ll finally get to get back all that the rich f***s like you have taken from me! F*** you rich bastards! You guys have only gotten ahead because of the sweat from people like me! The day you describe when payback will finally be here!”
We just sat there stunned! I had never considered myself rich. I had started my business with maxing out one credit card, buying used salvage equip and rehabbing it, and sold off all my furniture to buy opening inventory. I worked over 80 hours a week for the first several years while working another full time job. For all of the risk, hard work, and sacrifice for 10 years we make a nice comfortable living; my friends I was visiting had worked equally hard towards becoming a professor. All this time my friends brother was partying, in and out of jail, playing, playing, playing but now as he has nothing and we are comfortable there is an incredible anger and rage within him! Behold the birth of a MZB!
I don’t know why but that moment brought together a flood of memories over the past few years of isolated events that I put no thought into. Working in the garden while a pickup truck of loud and obviously drunk guys driving by along the irrigation ditch road, as I looked up they flipped us off yelling obscenities; being threatened by employees that were being fired; being flipped off and cussed at by the low rider crowd (Bienvendos a Nuevo Mexico). All of a sudden what I thought were isolated incidents of angry individuals not to be taken seriously transformed into everything I thought that MZBs could never be.
The day is coming when the collapse does occur and that day will represent freedom by all those who have not prepared and those who have not been fortunate to make it. That day will represent the day that they can begin exchanging their anger for all the pieces we prepared ones have carefully put away safe and sound. There will be no begging for help by those angry hordes; we will be the ones begging for mercy as we give up all we worked so hard for and thoughtfully put away. These people who you see now at the bar at 5, those people you see wasting their few dollars on the bread and circus shows like Nascar races, football games, strip clubs, malls; those people that have invested more money into their vehicles than their vehicles are worth with stereos, chromed rims, oversized exhausts, etc.; it is these people that are the ones who we will be fearing. They have been undergoing a professional training in instant gratification and the day of collapse will be the moment when the supermall of mass instant gratification opens its doors: That supermall will the homes of the prepared.
Are you ready for that day? I know I’m not. I have plenty of supplies, firearms and ammo, water, fuel, you name it but I am not ready to defend it from masses of the angry hordes staking claims on all we have worked for. The day I saw the rage in my friends face I realized I wasn’t ready. I had considered needing to defend myself from some abstract threat as foreign and vague as the term MutantZombieBiker; I hadn’t considered needing to defend myself from what I bet is 85% of the mass population.
What happens when collapse comes and total anarchy let’s go and you are one out of 10 families who is prepared and able to be comfortable. My 6+months of food, water, fuel, ammo will be taken by force and I will only be hoping that my family isn’t brutalized. Take a piece of paper; make a grid of 3 dots by 3 dots. The dot in the center is you; the dots surrounding you are your unprepared neighbors who have always waved hello but who now realize you have what they need and are pissed off that you unfairly sacrificed your wages and effort to be prepared while they partied and played. You will not hold these people off at bay whether you are surrounded by 10 acres or are smack in the middle of suburbia. The only way you stand a chance is to begin converting those surrounding dots into equally prepared families who will stand strong with you. The problem is that each one of those families will have friends or families who will ultimately not have any preps and will come to claim their share and consequently part of your stores.
In the past year I have moved from NM to a smaller CO town. I was on the verge of making a decision on buying a property. One is 40 acres right on the edge of town but with a running water source and good farmable land. The other is 5 acres and a nice house with greenhouses shops, a creek, and several outbuildings where a doomer could survive so easily but is right in town. The third is 40 acres on the backside of a mountain overlooking town and has no running water, is completely undeveloped, 4wd access, and surrounded by eight other 40 acre parcels. One realization I had, is that those unprepared masses , are inherently lazy; they are unprepared because they refused to put in the extra effort to become prepared. It is the ant vs. grasshopper fable in the classic sense except the grasshopper will be armed and will outnumber the ant 1:10. By being on either of the first two locations I will be easily accessible by all but the absolute laziest ones. The running water on those two properties will also attract people. I have decided on the remote 40 acres (:30 4wd drive but only a :15 mt bike ride from town).
It will be a lot harder to make an ideal doomstead but there won’t be any running water for people to follow, it will take a lot of physical effort, my preps will be hidden and the surrounding 40 acres properties are owned by similar doomer folks. Let the MZBs come because the advantage will be belonged to me. It is impractical to live there full time with kids in school and businesses to run but as part of the plan we will live in a plain, old small, non-fancy, house in town; I realize that by living in a home equal to what I can afford I make myself and family a target. By living in the smallest home we can fit in and having zero preps visible we can let our friends and family wonder why we live so insanely modest. On weekends and days when we have time we stay at the retreat home which will be 100% off grid and will contain everything needed to be self sufficient for a minimum of 6 months.
There is an unfathomable amount of anger and bitterness in all of our communities. Other terms thrown out that evening in the conversation were that people who were prepped are “elitists”, “better than others”, “you can only prep if you are a rich f***”, “we [bro & his buddies] can’t wait to show who will be the new boss in town”, “a new sheriff will be in town”; you all get the drift. The Mutant Zombie Bikers are alive and well and I know I have grossly underestimated their threat. Have you?
I have a stepson that would probably fall into that MZB group if things really got bad. I had not considered the expontital increase of the thug and criminals group after TEOTWAWKI. Stoneknives
MZB! Those three letters are enough to put a healthy dose of doom-enriched fear into any well prepped doomer right? It took me a while just to learn what those letters meant; when I did finally look them up in the acronym appendix of the doomer's bible I was silent. Mutant-Zombie-Bikers? What kind of fantasy freak group was I associating myself with? I just disliked the term because I couldn't get over the strange thoughts being conjured up in my head of a pack of deranged bikers on dirt bikes, old Harley's, quads, you name it with bleeding flesh and hollowed eyes all coming to attack us after a collapse. We would be all snug and happy in our doomsteads and BOLs but these MZBs would seek us out to destroy us. So yeah, I just couldn't deal with the term and didn't care for it much because it was too abstract and unrealistic.
As time went on and my doomerish view of the world became more and more into focus I kept revisiting the MZB concept. What if the zombie in them didn't refer to some ghoulish character but rather someone who had lost everything and gained the 100 yard stare? Someone who has lost all sense of purpose but still feels the need to move forward? What if the mutant part referred to the transformation some unprepared over-suburbanized schmuck goes through as they realize everything they had worked for, all their competing with the Jones', all their mass consuming waste was all for naught and now had nowhere to go, nothing to live off of, and no knowledge of how to begin to survive? What if the biker part didn’t represent the biker gangs of today but rather the same misguided victim of suburbia taking their hobby bike with the last bit of gas and hitting the road in search of food for their overweight, weak, and defenseless family to never return? What if a MZB is simply a former misguided suburbia rat who is now discovering what it means to live and is angry at himself, angry at the world, and especially angry at those who are living a more comfortable post-collapse existence because they were prepared?
As we move closer to the point where a total societal breakdown occurs one way or another it will become very apparent who is prepared and who isn’t. My head has been filled with fantasies that when the day comes when anarchy dominates over civilized life that those who weren’t prepared would be begging for help, doing anything they could to survive, but for the most part not resorting to violence. I stand corrected.
A casual dinner visit with some close friends was my point of awakening to how ugly everything will be. We were having beers and discussing how we keep getting warning article after warning article but nothing ever happens. Something commonly discussed here. We are tired of the warnings; we are tired of prepping for something that will never come; we are starting to not believe that there will be a collapse. At this point the brother of my friends comes in. He had been a former employee of mine during a construction project five years ago. During that there had been a conflict whereas he thought he was owed more for his efforts than we had paid him (bonus pay). Over the years it had seemed this rift had healed. He joined the conversation and then boldly stated, “if there is a day like you guys describe then I’ll just hit the road and take whatever the f*** I want. I’ll finally get to get back all that the rich f***s like you have taken from me! F*** you rich bastards! You guys have only gotten ahead because of the sweat from people like me! The day you describe when payback will finally be here!”
We just sat there stunned! I had never considered myself rich. I had started my business with maxing out one credit card, buying used salvage equip and rehabbing it, and sold off all my furniture to buy opening inventory. I worked over 80 hours a week for the first several years while working another full time job. For all of the risk, hard work, and sacrifice for 10 years we make a nice comfortable living; my friends I was visiting had worked equally hard towards becoming a professor. All this time my friends brother was partying, in and out of jail, playing, playing, playing but now as he has nothing and we are comfortable there is an incredible anger and rage within him! Behold the birth of a MZB!
I don’t know why but that moment brought together a flood of memories over the past few years of isolated events that I put no thought into. Working in the garden while a pickup truck of loud and obviously drunk guys driving by along the irrigation ditch road, as I looked up they flipped us off yelling obscenities; being threatened by employees that were being fired; being flipped off and cussed at by the low rider crowd (Bienvendos a Nuevo Mexico). All of a sudden what I thought were isolated incidents of angry individuals not to be taken seriously transformed into everything I thought that MZBs could never be.
The day is coming when the collapse does occur and that day will represent freedom by all those who have not prepared and those who have not been fortunate to make it. That day will represent the day that they can begin exchanging their anger for all the pieces we prepared ones have carefully put away safe and sound. There will be no begging for help by those angry hordes; we will be the ones begging for mercy as we give up all we worked so hard for and thoughtfully put away. These people who you see now at the bar at 5, those people you see wasting their few dollars on the bread and circus shows like Nascar races, football games, strip clubs, malls; those people that have invested more money into their vehicles than their vehicles are worth with stereos, chromed rims, oversized exhausts, etc.; it is these people that are the ones who we will be fearing. They have been undergoing a professional training in instant gratification and the day of collapse will be the moment when the supermall of mass instant gratification opens its doors: That supermall will the homes of the prepared.
Are you ready for that day? I know I’m not. I have plenty of supplies, firearms and ammo, water, fuel, you name it but I am not ready to defend it from masses of the angry hordes staking claims on all we have worked for. The day I saw the rage in my friends face I realized I wasn’t ready. I had considered needing to defend myself from some abstract threat as foreign and vague as the term MutantZombieBiker; I hadn’t considered needing to defend myself from what I bet is 85% of the mass population.
What happens when collapse comes and total anarchy let’s go and you are one out of 10 families who is prepared and able to be comfortable. My 6+months of food, water, fuel, ammo will be taken by force and I will only be hoping that my family isn’t brutalized. Take a piece of paper; make a grid of 3 dots by 3 dots. The dot in the center is you; the dots surrounding you are your unprepared neighbors who have always waved hello but who now realize you have what they need and are pissed off that you unfairly sacrificed your wages and effort to be prepared while they partied and played. You will not hold these people off at bay whether you are surrounded by 10 acres or are smack in the middle of suburbia. The only way you stand a chance is to begin converting those surrounding dots into equally prepared families who will stand strong with you. The problem is that each one of those families will have friends or families who will ultimately not have any preps and will come to claim their share and consequently part of your stores.
In the past year I have moved from NM to a smaller CO town. I was on the verge of making a decision on buying a property. One is 40 acres right on the edge of town but with a running water source and good farmable land. The other is 5 acres and a nice house with greenhouses shops, a creek, and several outbuildings where a doomer could survive so easily but is right in town. The third is 40 acres on the backside of a mountain overlooking town and has no running water, is completely undeveloped, 4wd access, and surrounded by eight other 40 acre parcels. One realization I had, is that those unprepared masses , are inherently lazy; they are unprepared because they refused to put in the extra effort to become prepared. It is the ant vs. grasshopper fable in the classic sense except the grasshopper will be armed and will outnumber the ant 1:10. By being on either of the first two locations I will be easily accessible by all but the absolute laziest ones. The running water on those two properties will also attract people. I have decided on the remote 40 acres (:30 4wd drive but only a :15 mt bike ride from town).
It will be a lot harder to make an ideal doomstead but there won’t be any running water for people to follow, it will take a lot of physical effort, my preps will be hidden and the surrounding 40 acres properties are owned by similar doomer folks. Let the MZBs come because the advantage will be belonged to me. It is impractical to live there full time with kids in school and businesses to run but as part of the plan we will live in a plain, old small, non-fancy, house in town; I realize that by living in a home equal to what I can afford I make myself and family a target. By living in the smallest home we can fit in and having zero preps visible we can let our friends and family wonder why we live so insanely modest. On weekends and days when we have time we stay at the retreat home which will be 100% off grid and will contain everything needed to be self sufficient for a minimum of 6 months.
There is an unfathomable amount of anger and bitterness in all of our communities. Other terms thrown out that evening in the conversation were that people who were prepped are “elitists”, “better than others”, “you can only prep if you are a rich f***”, “we [bro & his buddies] can’t wait to show who will be the new boss in town”, “a new sheriff will be in town”; you all get the drift. The Mutant Zombie Bikers are alive and well and I know I have grossly underestimated their threat. Have you?
I have a stepson that would probably fall into that MZB group if things really got bad. I had not considered the expontital increase of the thug and criminals group after TEOTWAWKI. Stoneknives
Monday, February 1, 2010
Walking Piece of Human Excrement --- Lane Kiffin
I'm a VOL ( fan of the University of Tennessee) living down in Gay-Tor and Bull's Country and a friend ( a huge Gay-Tor fan ) passed this news piece on to me.
As the Derek Dooley era begins at the University of Tennessee, one Volunteer fan is offering up a lasting parting shot to Coach Lane Kiffin.
Knoxville attorney Drew McElroy has filed paperwork with the Knoxville City Council's Public Properties and Facilities Naming Committee to rename a waste water treatment plant the "Lane Kiffin Sewage Center."
"At first I was offended that he would sneak out in the middle of the night, like a one night stand," McElroy said.
But now, he's over it.
The University of Tennessee has a lot of tradition on campus naming buildings and streets after former greats. Neyland Stadium, Peyton Manning Pass, and Phillip Fulmer Way are examples.
McElroy said after driving down Neyland Drive and seeing all the history, it hit him. Renaming the Kuwahee Wastewater Treatment Plant would be the best way to let Kiffin know he understands why the coach left.
"It dawned on me--Lane Kiffin told us that he hoped the fans would understand. I thought 'Well, naming the wastewater plant for him would let him know, I think very clearly, we do understand,'" McElroy, an off-and-on season ticket holder said. "We want to memorialize his stay here, and I think this would be doing it appropriately."
McElroy says he wrote the $262 check for the application fee and mailed it to the City Council's Clerk last week.
"We don't have to rename the entire facility after him, just a part of it," he said.
McElroy conceded just a cesspool at the facility would be enough to satisfy him.
On the application, he says he wanted "to honor our recently departed head coach and raise awareness of the good work done by the Knoxville Utilities Board."
"I think it'd be very fitting. He's definitely garbage," UT Student Paul Mills said.
While McElroy admits it's funny to think about Kiffin's name associated with a place with a specialty in human waste, the attorney is serious about the plan and says he will follow through, showing up at whatever meetings he needs to attend.
Calls to the University of Southern California's Athletic Department requesting comment from the former Volunteer coach were not returned Tuesday.
"What he says about it? I could care less," McElroy said. "Knowing what we know now, I don't think anybody is angry he's gone."
Both the University of Tennessee and the Knoxville Utilities Board had no official comment on the proposed name change.
The Public Property naming committee only meets a few times each year. Members say they're not certain when they'll take up the renaming issue.
McElroy says he cannot wait, hopefully by next fall, to make the trip to Neyland Stadium and see Lane Kiffin's 7-6 season permanently remembered.
"I'll have a big grin on my face every time I drive down Neyland Drive," he said.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)