But Let Us Fly

Britain is ‘staring at financial ruin while pledging billions to foreign wars’.

But it’s not just them. In the same video Alex tells us about the curtailing of social services in Germany while its government dumps more and more cash into the Ukraine laundering project.

France already raised their retirement age despite massive protests.

The situation on the ground in dear sweet America is hardly worth mentioning to anyone with their eyes open.

How can the trajectory of the great enlightened western garden of the civilized be changed?

The only thing I’m sure of is that it isn’t by voting for this one or that one. It isn’t through more fake democracy, nor even tepid socialism. Not through flagwaving or troop-honoring while the supply of bombs flows unchecked from the us, to the poorest of the them.

To hell and be damned with all the usual platitudes and stopgaps and lukewarm citizenry and the clucking about luck, and shitholes, and god help us Honor.

I have a little zen desk set up so I can write you, apart and aside from any antisocial media platform.

I have a kitchen counter that I struggle to keep in pure working order.

Out beyond these tiny outposts all is uncontrollable darkness for any practical purpose.

When Siversk falls too this will change for the worse.

And I will keep fighting to find some other way

until comes the end.

(I’d really like to live inside you, baby)

A single image, giving me hope.

I’ll write it. Maybe I’ll tell it here too; let us blow the cruft out first.

***

The weather fever tried really hard to break of a holy Sunday night. Right up to the edge of it, things were dependably five degrees hotter than they had predicted and then it felt ten degrees worse than that.

The brink of disaster murmuring.

But it did rain finally and for real.

I drove out in it, supposedly to get another bag of obscene berries, but really just to get the rust and dust off the windshield.

Inside, it stays 60 threatening to be lower all winter and 80 threatening to be higher all summer, and so I consider how to bridge the ten degrees in either direction. Cheaply. In some more or less ancestrally appropriate way.

Moving to Argenta. The techs to heat and cool just the sleepy space.

All of that. Yap yap.

***

Driving around with the radio on, I heard a very well-informed source say that at a certain point a few years ago, in urban Minnesota, 37 percent of the homeless were veterans.

I die a little inside whenever one of us pays lip service to their service, and of course when one of us goes off on how lazy and mentally ill ‘they’ all are.

I don’t like your fashion business mister
And I don’t like these drugs that keep you thin
I don’t like what happened to my sister
First we take Manhattan …

***

You knew the Mickey Dolenz, drummer, from the fake music group on the TV.

Here he is as a liony tyke, long before you knew.

And here, as an old old man, last surviving Monkee, long after you stopped caring.

I get what you’re trying to do with it, Billy, and it’s not a bad thing, but I do doubt that it is a truly useful thing, even so.

So no, I won’t watch the Tom Morello one. Instead i’ll rage against the creeping meatball my own way.

And watch Trinki purposefully, alternatively.

***

Coming to the end I see now why peddling the image at you would be counterProdoos.

You’ll have to trust me

or you won’t

In the end it’s not going to matter either way, which isn’t the same Necessarily as preaching that Nothing Ever will.

US on the Brink of Disaster

In the circles I choose to run in, variations on this title are very popular, for clickbait reasons.

I took the bait this time, and listened, not super-intently, but …

I don’t think Ambassador Freeman used the word ‘disaster’ once.

Nor ‘brink’.

The truth I am feeling especially acutely today (for sharply unexpected reasons) is that the brink is behind us now, and that although that may be known, it is nowhere yet Felt.

You are forgiven for not feeling it, and … and thanks anyway.

For your service, so worthy as it is of an honorflight, and also of course a Winnebago–hell, a herd of Winnebagos, we’re giving ’em away; how about a McCulloch chainsaw? A Las Vegas wedding, a Mexican divorce, a solid gold Kama Sutra coffee pot, and/or of course a baby’s arm

holding an apple.

… It has almost nothing to do with making this a better place …

If it did I wouldn’t be tardy right now, and/as I usually am, on the returned call front on the road rise score.

It just plugged a Cassandra hole, and not a single other person in the whole wide world concurred; not one. Therefore

iCould be wrong.

That is now the canonical formulation of the sentiment, and I get myself dizzy ennit, just watching him spin.

The written word is a lie, but what happens when you read it out loud? Anything? Significant?

Not enough data and no one right way to fold laundry.

Yes, we told you it would be a standard 99-degree late-August day. But it is 102 already, and feels like Yuma at 111.

I could deal with that once in a while, but the context is that the monsoons were supposed to start over two months ago and never showed.

The forecast for a week or so out is that they will, for a day or two, just as the season is traditionally winding down–Yeah we’ll see.

I should have, and eventually will, invest in an AC unit capable of cooling down a car-sized space for eight hours of unsweaty sleep without burning too much power. The flipside, which is called a chinese diesel heater, is already in stock here at the ranch.

***

Look, more rebranding! Oh yes, it’s a Peg game alright.

Worth watching just for the throwaway crackwhore joke, among other hot Metzger-the-exJW takes.

***

The Israeli state is on life support and thus preparing for the next round of desperate killer moves.

I would only ask that we all remember that the genocide would be stopped dead in its tracks, if only the constant infusions of our tax dollars were to stop. We are to blame.

Meanwhile, a quick update on how and why the Hendertucky Judeo-Pedo was let go, to never answer for his own little child soul murders.

***

The morality of the world that’s done so well by you is irredeemably broken and going about your business ignoring it is not living your best life.

The Invention of History | The Sumerian Saga: Part 1

“For 99 percent of human history, we were ghosts”.

But then what rough beast slouched toward Bethlehem to be born?

A boy with a name. A boy named Sue. An affectionate diminutive, for Sumeria. The time is 7500 years before Now.

And yes, there were scattered fumblings at proto-cities earlier than that, and starting at 7500 YBP exactly is thus only a rhetorical device. (Get all Egyptian for instance if you like, over there on your blog. I promise to read it.)

But an advantageous device, since Sumeria was also one of the first places where Writing, and thus civilized History began, only 5000 years ago at most.

The tiniest scrap of human time and in a way the only scrap of time ever, floating for this brief moment we call now, on a vast sea of ghostly timelessness.

The narrator will explain to you, should you have ears to hear, why you, a mere 3000 generations later, still love the aesthetics of adobe wrought from an otherwise impoverished landscape.

More importantly, why your grandpa traded in the noble role of nomadic savage for that of ruled and enslaved domestic cityzen, for nothing but a mess of barley pottage and the lie of an Education and a ‘better life for his kids’.

His grandfather once spilled his own religion in paint, in caves, but he had to settle for attending someone else’s temple, and paying his tithe to his masters upon every dutiful visit.

I’m sure that daddy called that loving-you, and that you had every reason to believe that’s what it was.

But nevertheless, he was a deeply foolish man, and he sold your ass to some king, in the name of that love. Forget that fact at your soul’s peril.

Human animals, “organized to achieve a single goal”, as ‘workers’, instead of free peoples.

But who organized them, and said what the goal would be?

Forget to ask, and become your grandfather, all over again in bitter cyclic civilized pain.

As you can see, I’m only 14 minutes in.

But that’s enough, to notice how everyone is working so hard, except for those privileged few who are only Overseers.

The lie you were raised with said that the point of living was to become one of Them.

Do you still believe it, even now?

The only shit worse and more evil than branding is Rebranding

In that better world of dreamy tomorrow, no products, whether meat or carrots or news or opinions

will have Names.

In the here and now, every such name you can completely expunge from your life forever is another step closer to real and indelible enlightenment and happiness.

Quiet Revolution Now.

When it starts, the unholy names of Google and Apple and Facebook and MSNOW! will be first up against the wall, and so deserving of it.

Subaru, Starlink, Anaprim, hold on, we’ll get around to you, if we’re really on god’s side after all.

The best of us and the rest of us were up at the newly expanded Rim of the grand canyon. They were doing it wrong, the expansion I mean.

But they did have one good little coffee place plus bookstore, and on a shelf prominently displayed was a big picture book about a magical place where they were doing it right.

It was called the Arenas Valley and that’s a place in the real world, even though its nowhere near as magical in real life as it was in the dream.

So I drove us there of course, and what I found was a revelation.

The book had told how Arenas had become a net alternative-energy supplier.

The revelation was about what that abundance had in turn produced.

Crumbling hotels restored to past glory, but as indoor farmer’s markets.

Mostly inhabited by artisans instead of farmers.

There were philosophers too.

From Cynics to Socialists.

A world that should be instead of the one we have, even if only a fool would say that.

For the laborious fourth there are concrete/reified/practicality plans in place.

For the fourth a month after that I am thinking about an adjustment to the nature of the Spill on its tenth anniversary, and a visit to the silver town to pay the PO and/or land-tax bills there.

For the fourth/eighth of November, a non-concrete plan, and a massage. It would be very cool to have an early prototype of the motel replacement kit in place: who knows?

Between now and all of that there are twoThree weeks, and one job, I tell myself

Go play your hand you big-talkin’ man, make a big fool of yourself

and it’s not about the dental hygiene though that will get done too. Doubtless.

We got married in a fever hotter than a pepper sprout
We’ve been talkin’’bout Jackson Ever since the fire when-out

***

Netanyahu Deputy ARRESTED In Vegas Child Predator Sting

Right there in our Henderson. Huh.

And of course, given his position, he was immediately released back to Israel.

Completing a nearly perfect arc of evil irony.

***

My real vitriol though is reserved today for my self.

It’s real and I am working through it as best I know how.

The Cro-Mag video guy is talking right now about “sustained organized meat acquisition” in the Solutrean period.

I’m doing the same thing.

It’s just that 20 thousand years on, the process is abstracted and unbelievably and annoyingly overcomplicated.

Knowing that helps me hate myself less, even if the self-excusing is a bit of a hack.

of happiness, of peace–sleepcore

Cro-Magnon Humanity(50,000–10,000 YBP [and maybe still])

There isn’t any need to rewild our selves, per se–we haven’t changed essentially in a few thousand years.

But living a less domesticated life, that is another story.

Coffee and cigarettes are post-ag phenomena and as such don’t deserve a status as foundational to who you are or I am, as strange and counterintuitive as that seems.

I’m enjoying this guy’s stubbornly long and discursive narratives, and

I feel better about myself when I watch them, instead of bloviation about football and the like.

NASCAR and the Dam of Legitimacy

The tldr is that racing under the France family is about as real as wrestling.

See: kayfabe

I don’t know about you, but for me most of alleged reality is turning out the same.

Ah, for the olden perfect days … Darrell Waltrip: Cheatin’ Stories & Complicated Friendship with Dale Earnhardt

Ted Kaczynski’s Warnings About Big Tech, Centers of Power & More

You should read it on your phone just to amplify the postmodernist irony.

Thanks for paying attention to the important shit alongside the fluff, Glenn.

shift

After the sleeping and the waking and the coffee and the mulling and the walking are in the bag

the two poles of my daily existence are this computer and the counter in the kitchen.

shift

Every Citizen is built on an assembly line in our Page, AZ factory, providing exceptional quality and efficiency.

They don’t mean citizen, yet. It’s the model name for a modular home.

While we precision-build your homes in our factory, you prepare your development site and obtain all necessary permits.

Seems right; standard stuff.

ZenniHome models are built to be shipped. They are the same dimensions as a standard shipping container allowing them to move by semi-truck, train, or boat with no special permits.

So it’s a variation on the same thing Boxabl was attempting, before delays mounted and costs exploded.

Our 640 square foot Citizen model has two bedrooms and has been expertly designed for 3-4 people to live comfortably. Our transforming furniture and walls enable flexible usage of space. As a result, our Citizen model functions the same as a 1,500 square foot home.

The claim seems ambitious, but even if their math is only half right, that’s still very intriguing.

Each home arrives as two modules equipped with all finishes completed to perfection. Once on site, the two halves are quickly and securely joined and finishing work can be completed.

This is actually the most promising thing. It’s a doublewide, for zoning purposes? But half the size of the smallest doublewide ‘manufactured/mobile home’.

But what about … Pricing?

Seems like a closely held secret, but one worth hammering away at for a while.

ifWhen the goodbye look is literal i’ll get it but give it you won’t have to guess

Yes I was up a little too early, but it was wellrested and I shouldn’t be deep tired until the time rolls around again perfect right.

Yes it was only two miles and maybe technically less, but it got done and in the cool.

The shower works even when the rest doesn’t, so I will use it and wipe my self down proper.

The meditation happened even if it turned out to be all about towing, and

those pushing forward list things will get done or not and

okay

a line of women all in white

Russian Breakthrough Threatens Encirclement of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad! – 12/Aug/2025

I haven’t posted anything about the situation on the ground in Ukraine for a while because there hasn’t been much to report.

That’s changing fast.

This time the link goes to the story as told from the point of view of a young Ukrainian woman. Her production values are relatively low but her credibility is unmatched.

When you hear about Trump pushing hard for negotiations lately: this is why. The Russians are now poised to sweep the table and meet all of their stated war objectives.

… and spend even more time, to understand where your nourishment comes from ….

More than 50% of calories consumed by the average American isn’t food in any normal sense.

It’s classified as “ultraprocessed” shit of some kind instead. Like ‘lunch meat’.

The percentage of broken manufactured calories is even higher for children up to 18.

Of the less than half that even is food, a whole lot of it is awful, stuffed with hormones and antibiotics and sprayed with pesticides and whatever ‘Apeel’ is.

What to do about it?

Whatever you can.

There’s a quote usually attributed to Elvis Costello that goes:

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

Yes.

Talking about football is the same.

All these piles of expertise and conjecture, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Mostly it’s the same with politics too.

Meanwhile I roasted three batches and one of them was for me.

I was certainly all about making fun of Clippy, back in the day.

Who knew, that he could turn into an icon for Living Right? It’s a testament to how far we’ve come in the wrong direction, in so short a time.

Change your profile picture to clippy. I’m serious

On the one hand I’m completely down with Mr. Louis Rossman’s argument.

On the other, I think changing your/my profile pic someplace online is quite a misguided approach, compared to just leaving their horrible platforms altogether and thus living better.

So please stop using fucking Facebook, or if you can’t do that, yet, at least stop using it while you’re in bed–same for the unholy phone itself. And the Twitter and the Netflix and the evermore evil Adobe besides.

Louis rips Adobe to shreds over their garbage response

There are ways.

Don’t do it because I said so, or to signal virtue. Do it because you care about yourself more and more.

***

Over here, my single point of addiction remains YT, and they’re doing their level best to drive me away with this latest round of restrictions (now with AI!), and with being so hungry for my ID all of a sudden.

Secretly, I hope they succeed in disfellowshipping me.

In the meantime, treat yourself to a higher quality of tempests in teapots if you like.

Glenn Responds to Questions About Nick Fuentes v. Tucker/Candace

Well ..

I am “up at four” but the “wellrested” part will have to wait for a better day.

I made it to a bikeride with no scrap of the brutal solar heat in it: actually I was too early because there wasn’t enough dawnlight.

While I was piloting in the semi-darkness I thought about how shaky my truth is.

How will I fix it?

I will come up for Air.

The WeatherService is calling it Very Hot and they ain’t lyin’ partial relief is a week away per the earliest dubious predictions

The Big Four of Zer0

–Buddh* Meditation Thich Naht

–Consciousness from a Physics Perspective; ‘analytic idealism’ Kastrup Faggin Essentia

–Anarchi* HunterGathering Minimalis* Nomadics; beyond Civ and without Phones, Against-Renting and maybe even Owning/Property (green/primal/paleo/rewild/shamanMushrooms/whatever)
(35000 YBP as just better than The Birth of Civilisation )
(and the way this connects to ‘ancestrallyAppropriate’ eating via Diabetes and Dominance Hierarchy and ReWilde-ing)

Ted and QuitSystem Chico ‘cuz it’s ruint, doctors and mechanics alike
“Suspicions Of Anti-Institutional Activity”

–FourFour: belletrist (as opposed to litterateur/auteur) even though i am not sure exactly why

***

**minor crystalline images**, like

–This is zero, 1 is Sanctuary, whether here or there, and 2-3 in current config are mundanities, money, data
–competencies, especially the historically underdeveloped ones like builder/’developer’
–hérétique (to grasp upon a heresy is literally a taking/choosing enabled by oneself)
–tears in rain
–šrdnn sardinian, sherden
–躺平
–raggaðr “shaggy, bristly, rough” man
(who is thus utterly alone and rarely has [enough] Community or Tribe)
–F/LOSS and especially GNU–pluma snippets manager
–a Cyberpunk aesthetic … Bladerunner, both of them, as a nominal ‘favorite movie’
—so many ‘favorite songs’
–Ash* and the fraught evolution of Wonder Woman
–WebsDomia and Platforms
and things in between like the synthesis of the word and image “Anaprim”

***

dumpster diving

eddington movie
maybe someday: It’s still on this list to represent some broader politicsHistoryCultureCinema thing that actually is peripherally important in some opaque way: ‘The Vietnam War Explained’ and The REAL Cause of the Revolutionary War and AtunShei generally and paulHutchinson and all Due Dissidence

(Ephemeral Rift) The Illusion of Freedom & Independence – Plus: the Dark Truth of America’s Founding | ASMR (the perfect title although the first 15 minutes are not ASMR, or good at all, and even though he thinks anywho is a word)

Blank City | Full Movie | John Waters, Steve Buscemi, Jim Jarmusch, Lydia Lunch, Debbie Harry

BINAURAL Beats and asmr and the blanket app for when it’s at its most brutal

A short sleep punctuated by unusually vivid dreams about some bodies that I used to know, way back, like ’84.

I woke with sudden realizations about some of them, which seemed profound and might be.

Certain of the revelations are not fit for print, which is a lie because (to the chagrin of many) there is nothing actually unacceptable for this print.

That’s just my way of saying I have my reasons for not sharing and potentially offending.

However. There was a feeling in part of the dream that led me conclude that a former mentor and lover of mine was an expert not only in English Lit, but in modus vivendi.

Which coincidentally is my passion and my job now, too.

***

If you’re a woman, pretty much the highest level of spiritual authority you can attain within the Witnesses of Jehovah is to marry well and become a Circuit Overseer’s Wife.

Informally known as, and this is true: a COW.

One time very early on I got a crush on a CO’s daughter. But my affections were not reciprocated: “Never did like mama’s homemade dress; papa’s bankbook wasn’t big enough“.

Well Miss Jackie, it has been quite some few decades, but it’s never too late to tell you to go fuck yourself.

I’ve said a lot of nice things about the Tucker in the last few years, and I’ll stand by them. It’s only fair that I acknowledge it though, when he reverts back into being the duplicitous poor little rich boy dweeb of old.

I don’t plan to elevate Nick Fuentes, who pointed it out, to the status of new (working class) hero of rightness.

If you meet the Buddha on the road, you’re supposed to cap him.

Now kill that image and keep practicing. Reality is an impermanent illusion. If you believe that you have a correct image of what it means to be Enlightened, then you need to kill that image and continue down the road.

“The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.”
(So if you think you see the real Tao, kill it and move on).

That feels mo-better.

“These were unequal societies to be sure, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that the people living under capitalism were objectively more free, more prosperous, and enjoyed a higher quality of life than people under feudalism. This was a HUGE leap forward … one of the most profoundly progressive events in human history … Liberal capitalism was a triumph–for Europeans.

For the indigenous people they conquered, the West Africans they enslaved, and the ecosystems they exploited
it was literally The Worst Thing That Has EVER Happened.”
The Real Cause of the Revolutionary War

The Revolt that can be effected is not the eternal revolt.

I don’t even need to give up beating the rugs in my quixotic, doomed seeking of the Light.

But rather just acknowledge that each time I find it and no matter how radiant it may be for five minutes, it too is just another artifact of the dashboard of consciousness

and as such

also

Wrong.

What is wrong
with being weird
What is wrong
with living in your basement
with all these cats
just off the ugly interstate
in the land of no trees
?

May the road rise with you. I could be wrong, but I’m shaking my head no even as I say it, because yeah, I am Spartacus, I am the raped Gaea, I am Rotten Johnny, dressed The Fool and spittin’ it like I see it.

I know what happens.

I read the book.

I believe I just got the goodbye-look.

(Won’t you pour me a cuban breeze, Gretchen?)

***

There is no Deep State.

Those agencies are full of hardworking patriotic Americans Just Like You!

***

I am only as good as my sources.

The Twitters are paranormally nuts and the foolish bloviating is setting all Time records.

***

Ce que j’ai fait, ce soir-là. Ce qu’elle a dit, ce soir-là. Réalisant mon espoir; Je me lance vers la gloire okay

Sixty pretty far back in the rearview
It can’t be much farther now.

Sometimes it seems like
given that, plans are beside the point
But I make them anyway because I don’t know
What else to make.

CBS Exposes Manipulation Of Epstein Cell Tape

Sure you can go on muttering about conspiracy nuts. But they’re willfully lying to you plain and simple just the same. I wonder why?

***

This is the same road on the Arizona Strip (Mojave County 5) where the schoolhouse I’ve posted before abides. Both times I owe Matt of Offroad Recovery fame for learning about it.

The road is essentially a big loop from near St. George to near Colorado City. I want to see it all.

The Hualapai road down into the Canyon is due south of this and across said Canyon. Very likely to be a different trip.

The video from today about the northern loop is also a meaningful cautionary tale about the dangers of purchasing a cheap and cheaply-made camper trailer. I am ever more inclined to spend more up front on something of more robust quality (assuming it exists) in an attempt to circumvent those dangers.

***

This post was supposed to be a much more comprehensive look at such Big Plans.

But you’ll have to stay tuned for that.

A self-styled millennial recounts being charged $41,000 for a hospital stay of less than 24 hours to treat high blood pressure—without surgery, scans, or serious intervention—calling the bill “extortion” despite already paying $4,400 out-of-pocket with insurance.

“MountainView Hospital is a 400+ bed state-of-the-art, full-service medical facility located in the heart of Northwest Las Vegas.”

The health insurance system is brutally unfair. But: I will be, and point out that as far as I can tell, ‘this is not a bill’, and reflects raw charges that haven’t been processed through his insurer yet.

But what if you don’t *have* an insurer?

Well then you’re instantly fucked.

***

Things would be so much simpler if it was just the broken system of health “care”.

But it’s all of the System.

The Reality of Being a Mechanic in 2025

***

The only way to navigate the failing System is to take several steps closer to DIY.

So I’m counting carbs, washing my serious enamel pan more than once a day as I cook all my own food, and taking my self-monitored blood pressure seriously.

As for the vehicles, I will never have the genius to make my own MorrVairTere, but I can drop twenty bucks on the manual and possibly figure out how to change my own fuel level sensor.

Maybe. I think so.

And keeping my finger on the pulse of smarter people in many arenas, like with yesterday’s Food and Drug post.

And dreaming my own stories.

“Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while, a great wind carries me across the sky.”

Diabetes and Dominance Hierarchy

Large-scale agriculture and grain-based diets arose at the same time as harsh social hierarchies.

Our analyst here doubts that this is a complete coincidence.

And I agree.

He might be a little less clear than I am, so far, about the difference between being a carb-burner and a fat-burner. But that’s okay. I think he’ll get there in time.

And overall, his formulation is a more well-cited and comprehensive than mine has been.

So I value his insights, and I hope you do too. I won’t claim they’re good for you.

Not out loud anyway.

Eating in an ancestrally appropriate manner, and walking a lot every day … these things won’t save you from being forced to exist in the broken System and thus turning into a head case anyway.

But they are things that can be done, to slowly and painfully begin working toward liberation from the omnipresent evil.

“Suspicions Of Anti-Institutional Activity”

That’s the Orwellian made-up charge they used to arrest the lawyer in the Netherlands who is suing Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, the head of Pfizer, and the rest of the billionaire class.

I only hope that before I board the crazy train to hell, I am incontrovertibly guilty of the same thing.

***

In one sense trash days are very streamlined now. In another, I’ve consciously made them more complex, into a scan of the grounds not just for trash, but sweeping and laundry and little tweaks like moving the patio table ten feet for strategic line of sight reasons

and adding clarity to certain lists of intentions and projects that arguably matter.

people have changed and we all feelit just
Dimly (‘dominant species’ my god the ironic shit you’re sad-for)

***

Today I rearranged the driveway again (there is nothing in the secure half now but the patio table and “parts”), and then Icame in out of the heat and found this.

ALiner HardSided PopUp Trailers

Sample Prices For Same, 17-40K (7′ interior height but cheaper than Alto Safari Condo)

Ol’ Bob interviewing a guy who owns one (the smallest, 1200 pounds, which the Subaru could do)

And that would be the A team or motel-replacement.

B-team: The pickup with shell will be a 4WD/stealth rig, or, with trailer (even the existing one), a home-replacement.

This suggests a priority list of

–paint and emplace the pickup shell

–sell the van (even at a discounted price if necessary, that’s a $5000 nest egg)

–get the Subaru tow-capable (even with brake-controller?)

—acquire a little ALiner as the last new necessary nomadic piece

–possibly simultaneously with the above, sell this house and put one up down in Dreamtown

–begin seriously renovating the pickup mechanically; or: replace it with something like an 4WD F-250/350 or Tundra with a shell-like/four-seasons style pop-up in the longbed

–rehab and refit the existing 99 trailer, possibly with the dual intent of using it for selling retail things at farmers markets etc.

But underneath, it’s the same new edgework reality.

Buffalo Bluish
‘My channel is pretty much anti-Influence‘.

Jefferson Reddish
‘Halfass Ghosttowns … I don’t discuss politics on my channel‘.

I love this thumbnail from the Bluish guy because the text is active and hopeful while the subtext suggests that some form of giving up and Quitting was the only option viably and morally left for muddling through.

I think that’s a situational truth many of us have been struggling to come to grips with.

There is a kind of liberation in it. There is also a bleakness, and a despair, and a lot of fear humming in the background.

In this new reality those of us who somehow never made it to the caves and castles of Europe are each stray cats of the mean streets, even if some of us have lucked into a semi-secure fenced enclosure to keep the dogs at bay,

most days.

The Unabomber Tried To Warn You

Who really and truly is your tribe?

(Assuming you [still] have one at all.)

It isn’t the secular humanists, or the transhumanists, or the mere dehumanists. Nor the Stoics or Zionists or Dems or Murcans or recovering addicts.

Those aren’t tribes.

Only interchangeable identity groups to be swapped out on a whim.

So I ask you again.

And yet, some lies are more consequential than others. (potential trigger warnings apply)

long version

Candace Conti’s version

***

For what it’s worth, all the ex-JW stuff I watch is no more important to my life and philosophy than all the things the Witnesses themselves believe.

Rather, it’s headphone filler for me, not really too different from watching ex-Scientologists, or videos about the Mafia, or plane crash investigations, or sports dudes talking about the upcoming football season.

It might well be that I should wean myself off all these distracting addictions.

Pray for me.

***

The Crossroads of the Ozzy Story and the One About Mass Starvation in Gaza

***

Gen Z is Just Copying Corporate Tactics to Never Work Again

Capitalism sucks because it is exactly socialism, but for corporations.

***

You’ve Been Living by 1950s Propaganda Without Even Knowing It

The things you never realized about lawns, cake mix, race, and the body mass index.

Chill_Dude_Light_Mode

It used to be
That there was next to nothing in this town.

But then
I quit every job and boss
And I started eating better
and better

So, now, there is nothing in this town.
Except my own home fortress and barb wire yard
Plus a few places to spend my steps walking
And I like it that way.

The Change In Perceptions Re: Trump (M. Blumenthal)

***

Old Hickory Deluxe Playhouse

The closet thing to a full 399 square foot (max ‘tiny house’) is a 14 x 28 shell at 392.

The base price for it, with ‘playhouse’ additions, is $15000.

Of course that’s nowhere near the real price, because it doesn’t include blueprints and code enforcement modifications, or transporting of the built house, or leveling the land / pouring a slab, or connecting utilities, or insulating it or drywalling it or furnishing it.

Does that all run it up to $30K? 40K? To early to say, but budgeting 50K seems prudent.

The land is already paid for, and in fact that is true of two lots.

And 50K is roughly a mere third of the equity in the SandRock house whenever it may sell.

Leaving plenty free for a motel-room-replacement trailer, and even a perfect Alto Safari Condo alt-road-home, and a rebuild of the truck engine that would haul the latter.

The trailer(s) being especially necessary as a place to sleep in between leaving this present house and moving into the one pictured above.

Full-hookup trailer space in downtown Silver is $400 a month, maybe $500 by now in these inflationary days.

It all seems reasonably and affordably logical to me.

Text me and tell me where I’m wrong about that.

***

I will say: there is some logic, to just throwing up a doublewide for $20-30K more. It would be simpler, and it might be worth quite a bit more at resale, if reselling is what happens, because we’re talking triple the square footage and the ability to just say: this is a three-bedroom, one and a half or two bath.

Maybe that still happens, on one or the other of the lots.

Yes, it’s true that Hillary is, and was, a psycho.

And yes, it’s true that Obama was a criminal for many reasons, including masterminding the hoax that was ‘Russiagate’. That prosecution is legitimate and warranted.

But as your outrage builds about these things, please don’t forget that they’re finally coming out now precisely because they want you to forget about Epstein and trafficked girl babies, and the many powerful red and blue people who sampled of his evil candy.

Unearthed: NEW Photos, Videos Linking TRUMP AND EPSTEIN

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Right now I’m leaning real hard into the idea of a Hiker or a Vistabule or a TAG or a Road Toad Abode, not only because these are the cheapest, but because they are the lightest, and the smallest.

Smallest is a good thing because it means the least space to cool and heat for comfortable deep sleeping in any conditions.

And sleeping is all I have to care about, in the short term.

Moving just the mattress to a trailer frees up the entirety of the tow vehicle’s cargo space for other nice things like a portable fridge and stove and sink, which I already own.

This first and tiny trailer isn’t trying to be a home.

What it permanently replaces, I’m realizing, is instead: a motel room.

One which has no amenities, but also costs nothing, or next to nothing.

Roughly speaking that means it pays for itself in fifty travel nights, or 2-3 months worth at the outside.

If you could pay seven or nine thousand one time for life, and never again have to worry about booking a room no matter where the road took you: wouldn’t you do it?

I am militantly against renting.

This is the simplest solution, and very attainable.

***

Plus, if motel room replacement isn’t quite enough, and a real roadworthy home becomes necessary, then there are (admittedly less affordable) things to do about that too.

Someday. Perhaps.

I’ll sleep on that.

***

Somebody mentioned the concept of a ‘Springsteen Democrat’ today, and I like it.

It means a millionaire that markets themselves as a good friend of the workin’ man.

I can see where the phrase could come in handy, especially in conversations with

Management.

Please remember that when you are against workers organizing themselves and having rights and options, you are on the same side as Jeff Bezos and that witless tool that runs Starbucks.

Which might lead to complications.

Like cognitive dissonance, and possibly even tremulous myocardium.

I want a sleeping place that pulls behind the most dependable car and is comfortable in all the ways regardless of geography or climate, hot or cold, parked at a suburban curbside or way out in the sticks.

Once I have that, I could start to think seriously at last about moving house for real and true.

It’s what matters now, and next.

Yes I’m pretty sure.

Per NPR this afternoon:

The top story was that a seriously mediocre pop singer, more renowned for his Antics than his Music, started his dirt nap at age 76.

Four or five headlines down, 21 children have starved to death in Gaza in the past three days.

You want me to speak up against your funding cuts, dear public radio?

First, do better and Be Real.

Yours truly,

V.

Yes I understand that it would be good if I could get there early.

And stay longer too, of course, as per usual.

Please just be happy enough that thanks to my own herculean efforts, I can now afford to come at all, and realize that even so, it involves counting pennies and planning carefully and a fair amount of stress in an otherwise mostly stress-free routine.

It’s like going to Fraaance for me, sorta. Maybe worse, dollars to donuts.

***

Since I’m coming, which is to say going, my commitment here at the Spill may suffer a bit.

But maybe a pile of clips can come of it too, on the other side.

Fingers crossed.

***

It seems I’m going to need to get on medication for hypertension, because all the weight loss and exercise hasn’t brought the number down to normal. I tested it myself at home.

Fortunately the drug of choice has been generic since 1920, so it shouldn’t cost much.

Getting hold of some has been the primary effort today.

Now it’s time to pack.

Potential Perfection, except that it’s about the same price as paying off my mortgage.

Alto R1723 by Safari Condo – FULL TOUR

A Scamp Lite 13′ is far less pretty but costs 1/3 of this one.

The Epic Wonder Woman Deep Dive: The Golden Age

The Epic Wonder Woman Deep Dive II: Robert Kanigher and the 60s

Good news on the Vistabule DayTripper is the key numbers. 1000 pounds and 15K brand new.

Bad news is that it’s pretty tiny on the inside.

There are others. I think one day there will be one in the drive, and on the drive.

***

Better still …

The Road Toad Abode.

470 pounds and $9413 new.

She burns
with satin rage.

What feels good, and maybe best, is giving it all up to the Femme.

Who She is though, well
it’s been a journey to ascertain.

Route 66 – Season 1 (1960-1961)
My pick: Route 66 S1E11 A Fury Slinging Flame (December 30, 1960)

Route 66 – Season 2 (1961-1962)
My pick: Route 66 S1E16 Fly Away Home: Part 1 (February 10, 1961)

Partly because Michael Rennie is the thinking man’s Humphrey Bogart.

But even more for the two songs sung by by Dorothy Malone.

In spite of the fact that I am no particular fan of musicals.

Confirmed: Air India 171’s Failure Explained

As reported yesterday. But …

The aviation community and media in India are fiercely rejecting this narrative and trying to blame Boeing software or hardware for the tragedy, rather than a psychological malfunction on the part of one of their own.

My own perspective is that it doesn’t matter either way.

That instead, either way, the fault is on the inherent stresses within ‘our’ modern way of life, including but not limited to the profit motive.

That either way, finger-pointing and being right and knowing what the Truth and the Lie are is all just dancing with the deck chairs on Titanic.

I am strongly inclined to distance myself from both the fact-finding, and the guesswork and theories about motivations and fault.

And to stop going to airports, renting cars, booking motels, and driving on interstates, and put my energies into simpler alternative strategies for traveling, and for ways of living right here at home.

Air India 171 Update: Fuel Cutoff Switches in ‘Cutoff’ Position

The strong early implication being that cutting off fuel to both engines was a deliberate act on the part of one of the pilots. A suicide resulting in multiple homicides of both passengers and many people on the ground.

It wouldn’t be the first time in these last few sad years.

The world grows ever more complicated and stressful.

Success and failure are ever harder to define.

Then the profit motive is laid over the top of it all and this results directly in still more fatalities and suffering.

Simplifying your existence and mine too is increasingly becoming a matter of life and death.

“Civilization” is not your friend.

Israel and Epstein, Democracy and Blackmail

Do you need to have any other questions answered before you’re ready to revolt?

Coming in on a sharp tangent, I believe you’re not ready because you still think of this place as the home of truth, JUSTICE, and some long-dead American way.

We still ache for God or Superman to save us, from the corrupt child rapists and arms dealers and spies who rule us.

I don’t think he’s coming my dears.

I hope I’m wrong and I fear I’m not.

I woke with a vision of a tiny house built around a courtyard.

Apparently I’m not the first.

Hey, MAGA.

I really can’t wait to hear your spin for this one.

FBI Deleted FULL MINUTE From Epstein Jail Cell Video

Especially given the fact that this is only a month old:

***

In happier news …

The Sapient Cosmos: Where Physics, Psychedelics and Shamanism Meet

Yes. Neither nihilism nor dogmatism.

Please don’t feel bad about clicking nothing. I haven’t even seen them all-all the way through even my-self.

Jarmusch, Reichardt, and Me

Jim Jarmusch: I Love To Take The Subway By Myself (2007)

Dead Man Analysis – Why is William Blake in Purgatory?

Dead Man (1995) – Jim Jarmusch Q&A

102. Kelly Reichardt: Meek’s Cutoff

Todd Haynes’s Closet Picks

In a Lonely Place (1950) Original Trailer [HD]

Blank City | Full Movie | John Waters, Steve Buscemi, Jim Jarmusch, Lydia Lunch, Debbie Harry

***

Ah, faithful and discreet esclavo

This Generation Shall Not Examine Us (JW art of changing meanings, history & moving goalposts)

INTERVIEW WITH A FORMER ANOINTED ELDER

***

I confirmed today that the SW Word Fest is moved from October to March. So until the next solstice, that leaves the Birthdays trip in ten days, the one to Hatch at the end of August, and whatever that 60th/Thanksgiving turns into.

Also, by the time you read this I am supposed to have completed the next phase in pretend health care, for the sole purpose of keeping the mortar and pestle spice flowing.

Today proper is another trash day and I am really, really ready for it. Ahead of the curve even perhaps.

The Shop-Vac is my co-pilot.

FBI, DOJ Say NO EPSTEIN LIST, No New Charges, No New Info

Wait, what?

STAFF CUTS at Weather Service Caused ALERT FAILURES for Texas Floods

Includes some stunning footage of a dry creekbed turning into a raging cascade in 20 minutes.

Elon Announces OFFICIAL LAUNCH of New ‘America Party’

The billionaire responsible for gutting the meteorologist’s corps decides to adopt the truth of the Uniparty in order to try wresting control away, for himself and his class, meaning: Nothing changes, except turning the duopoly into an unholy trinity.

America.

America.
God shed his grace on thee,
Till nobler men keep once again
Thy whiter jubilee!

late 13c., stacioun, “a place one normally occupies”

from Old French stacion, estacion “site, location; station of the Cross; stop”

from Latin stationem “a standing (firm), a post, job, position; a watch, guard, sentinel; anchorage, port”

related to stare “to stand,” from PIE root *sta- “to stand, make or be firm”

The first powered station wagons were custom-built Model T, a car with enough space in the rear to bring several people and their luggage from the train station to their country estate and back again. While we started calling them station wagons, the British referred to them, and still do, as an estate car.

***

Abandon your estate and move into the train station, obviating the need for a wagon.

Abandon your station and move into your wagon, obviating the need for estates or stations.

I’m not telling you, or myself, what to do.

I’m suggesting alternative solutions to the problem.

***

The Forester is said to feel like more of a minivan and less of an SUV.

The old RME feels like more of a wagon than either. Historically I would not think of that as a Cool thing.

Yet in practice it seems to be so, anyway.

***

It’s no problem for me to move away from the idea of an estate, or even a Home.

However, I don’t think settling for only camps quite works for me either.

Sanctuary is still the thing, and having it anywhere is still the ideal.

It might well be that all stations are created equal, and still be true that some are more equal than others.

The Art Of Thinking Clearly
by Rolf Dobelli
“describes in short chapters 99 of the most common thinking errors – ranging from cognitive biases to envy and social distortions”

As recommended by Ben Kopilow
(trigger warning for apostasy)

After that, everything is permissible in the pursuit of your own integrity and Independence, from the Empire, from those who would rule you.

Kate Bornstein on What It Takes to Survive

I bought her books and went to see her speak in the winter after the towers came down. That was my turning point in the hell that was Atlanta.

I thought very highly of her then, and I was glad to see that I still can now.

***

I did some etymology on the word ‘integrity’, hoping that ‘grit’ meant something on its own. But not so much.

It’s just from “integer”, which is a wholeness, as in a whole number

as opposed to a fraction.

To have integrity is to live Untouched:

in- meaning “not”
+
tangere “to touch”

Why do we have separate words for Integrity and Intangible when they mean the same thing?

Answering that question is left as an exercise, for you, dear reader, on this specific holiday.

For somebody’s sins

But

not mine.

10 Famous Former Jehovah’s Witnesses (and what they’ve said about it since leaving)

I think that regardless of what is True, I’ll stick with the gospel according to Patti. Thank you anyway.

When you tell me that you worry about me, I get a nice warm glow.

But also, it makes me want to say: don’t do that.

If you want to do something for me, please make this world a better place by de-emphasizing every worry in your life, no matter what it is. (So few of them really matter.)

I will do the same for you, for myself.

Then comes the revolution, from within your heart and mine.

Namaste.

“The inevitable march of progress has hit a snag“, says The Man, who then goes on to out himself from the closet as the literal queer billionaire Antichrist.

***

How To Fight Microplastics Infecting Our Bodies & Brains

I’m sorry Ms. Bright, I agree with you about most of it, but buying and consuming your kimchi pills is not “How To Fight”. In fact, buying and consuming anything at all is a large part of the vicious problem infesting our lives.

“How to Fight” is–all at once–far simpler, far more complicated, and all but impossible.

Thanks for your service. Moving on.

***

This is a list of the Wachowski films.

For the most part, outside of the Matrix, they are things I am familiar with but have never actually seen.

It would be nice to change that, I guess.

But, priorities.

***

Filmmaker II: Kelly Reichardt

I mentioned her the other day as having been the auteur behind Night Moves, and that remains the only film of hers I’ve actually seen. So far.

I’m not going anywhere.

Unless and until I have somewhere to go that is, by some deeply personal and subjective metric, “better”.

So, selling this raggedy little house is quite low on the priority list.

And thus, so is fixing it up, in order to sell it, or fixing it for any other reason.

I’m quite okay, with how things are.

If they never changed at all, I guess I could live with that and be just fine.

My ears are wide open to proposals for alternatives.

My soul is open to listening and choosing among them.

So far I am still way before any choosing.

So far, I am still before even hearing anything, besides the sound of the wind and the song of the birds.

Matrix Resurrections (2021) (the fourth one) Was Bad On Purpose

Yes, I think that’s right.

In fact, I believe there’s a significant relationship between the lofty ideals about getting educated, and Civilization itself, including but not limited to civilized notions like plantation slavery, and our so much more refined wage slavery.

In my last gasping years of being a professor, the thing that hurt worst was that the academic bobbleheads were solely preaching to their student customers about how a degree was the ticket to a good job.

And that was all.

You have to play the game our way if you don’t want to end up a career french-fry salesman, see kid?

Or, as one white boy President put it, generations ago:

“Schoolhouses are a lot cheaper than revolutions.”

They knew. They know. They’ve always known.

You don’t need no stinking master’s degree to be happy.

I’m here to testify that it might just get in the way.

If you get the time and the money, or if you don’t, what will you do, to actually make this horrible world a better place?

Undercover Agent Against International Trafficking

The lives of children (and all of us outside the elite) are cheap to the point of worthless.

92% of victims are groomed by someone related to them.

The United States is far and away the biggest country on the demand side of this equation, just like with all the drugs.

What do you suppose is really wrong with us and our way of life, way down deep?

***

I think the answer manifests itself in all kinds of twisted ways.

Consider for a moment how weird things have to be in this moment for a notorious hack and liar like Joy Reid to begin spitting pure facts on CNN.

***

I’ve been waiting quite patiently for things to begin to move and transform.

Into the silence of that waiting comes a thought that maybe the road to transformation runs through Colombia.

Or just Fort Collins.

***

And, at the very end of a very long interview, we finally get to the part about the relationship between ‘education’ and slavery.

Why yes. I do buy that much.

With virtually no reservations.

Sometimes, the best and the brightest and most well-intentioned of us are fuckin’ idiots.

For today, here’s looking at you, Jimmy Dore, and Joe Rogan too.

In this video, JD is promoting a story that claims to reveal new evidence that climate change generally, and warming in particular, is no big deal and fake news.

A story, by the way, which was published in the Bezos-owned Washington Post–I wonder what he might have to gain, hmm?, from pushing this narrative.

Here’s what got left out.

As you can see in their chart, it used to be a whole lot hotter. In dinosaur times.

But that’s more or less irrelevant to the human condition, because …

… the entire genus Homo is less than 3 million years old.

So for the entire history of humanity, things have, on average, been cooling dramatically.

Until this civilization fiasco reared its ugly head, and the red line begins to spike upwards again with equal drama.

For our purposes as humans who would like a habitable planet for our kind, this is not the good news you paint it as.

We as proudly civilized sapients are, still, a disaster for ourselves and all the rest of the mammals.

Not just because things really are getting hotter from our emissions, but for a couple thousand other reasons besides, including the plastic that lives in your brain, and mine, and in the brains of our beloved puppies and kitties and polar bears.

Society beyond the tribal level sucks and is continuing to suck ever harder.

One way or another, I remain perfectly convinced that the most likely thing is that it will suck itself to death.

Maybe the nukes will start falling. Maybe the machines we built will take over. Maybe we cook ourselves to death. I don’t know and no one knows.

But this “new evidence” is no cause for optimism about any of those scenarios.

I don’t think your grandchildren will be flying around in space like they promised on the Star Treks, and it’s even less likely that the egalitarian moneyless meritocracy shows like this promise will ever be a thing.

Bladerunner.

Neuromancer.

Maybe at best, the world of Fallout.

Each of these is far more likely an outcome than the ever-advancing march of progress and blue Joy.

Night Moves (2013) (Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning)

I watched it while I was sorting out my gear from the RME for the third time, down at the Mellow Moon. It’s really good.

There is an objectionable subtext about the hopelessness, even the immorality, of hardcore activism.

But it’s rare enough that such a topic is dealt with honestly, even if I am not completely comfortable with the lessons the director draws from her tale.

So good job, Kelly.

https://www.patreon.com/vairtere/shop

Business is booming and soon we may even be at the break-even point!

That would be nice.

And.

Thank you.

If I had to pick one place, Argenta del Sur, the Silver, is still that place.

For many reasons.

But let’s talk about average January nighttime lows versus average July highs.

In Silver, the average January night low is 27 degrees.

The average daily high in July is 86.

It’s a little too cold in winter and a little too warm in summer, but those numbers are as close as you can get, in this tierra, to perfection in a single place, year round.

The only way to do better is to migrate seasonally.

In Del Norte, Colorado, it only tops out at 80 for an average for a hot summer day: gorgeous, plus there is even cooler high ground all around. But winter there is tough, with an average January night low of just 7. Countering that is expensive too, regardless of what you’re using for fuel.

On the flipside, Tucson is nice and warm in January, with an average low of 41. But in summer the average is 100 degrees, and when the average is exceeded, it’s effing miserable, even with (again expensive) AC.

So when you ask me to consider other places, I say: sure, I can do that.

But ‘other places’ would, best I can tell, have to mean multiple other places.

And that of course doubles or triples the cost, unless …

We were to markedly scale back expectations regarding what a proper and comfortable home should or could look like.

Which I am also more than willing to talk about.

So let’s.

***

Factoids.

The numbers here in SandRock are 22 and 94, a little more extreme and worse than SC on both ends. Even so, I can’t really say that I need the AC, except to take the worst edges off 10 days per summer. And winters are just going to involve some discomfort, unless you really want to maintain a place in Hawaii or Cabo, or stay inside and cook yourself for three months a year. I’ve froze my ass off in Vegas, even.

The reasons to abandon Holbrook in favor of Silver (and/or Del Norte) are much more cultural than climatological.

Also, as far as Texas is concerned, I am not convinced that the tradeoffs are worth it by these kind of metrics, even in the nicest and warmest parts of the Hill Country. Putting up with large populations of people aside, Tucson just makes more sense. And, y’know … there’s always Ajo. Don’t laugh. Forty-five degrees on an average January night is better than even Tucson or Quartzsite, and I really kind of like the people and the vibe.

The sun is starting to sink slowly and the cool night is making wickedly hot promises.

The trash is at the curb but the job was done quickly and poorly. The dreams are a tiny bit more refined, but they have no more substance than they did yesterday.

All of the homecats inside and out are stuffed full of the finest wet food there is, while my own meal still lies ahead, in the darkness. Soon.

Mostly, I just slept deep, and more than once.

Which I will allow myself, with no shame, on a Tuesday in June with 60+ years under my belt.

My life is perfect as it is, already and right here now.

A low price for a cute place in a gorgeous riverside setting.

But you have to join up and become a Mason, to buy it.

Not a dealbreaker I guess …

I love you, and thank you, but I don’t really want a new or newish car.

I would much rather invest in these two new old ones, or something very like them.

I am about $9K into each of them, and neither of them has ever been wrecked, or developed any rust, or exhibited any other problem that is fundamentally structural.

To the extent I can perceive, they got good bones.

With a shiny new one, you just don’t know; can’t know.

You want me to be in something safe and reliable. I want the same thing.

I think making what I have mechanically pristine, and being financially and practically agile enough to rebuild an engine or transmission as necessary, is a much more sure and sensible path to that goal.

I honestly believe that.

It will probably be cheaper too, but that’s beside the point.

So is the retro-cool factor, ultimately, but damn, they are cool, in a way no Hybrid Wilderness Forester ever could be.

‘They don’t know what the fuck they’re doing’

It’s not that I care any less now, about the politics or war or the war machine.

I’m just caring more, about other things.

I never did yet tell you about the incident with the check engine light, or how it turned out not to matter at all, except for the glitch of fear it caused in me.

I haven’t even edited the big pile of trip video.

I think that as I sink down into being home again I will probably be talking about what’s next.

It starts with a ball joint for the pickup and getting the RME looked at by a second expert closer to home.

Then, a hitch.

And how the road may someday loop back to Argenta del Norte.

The fun stuff.

It happened officially and precisely just 22 minutes ago local.

We celebrated with a bottle of Willamette wine and hours of talk.

There is nothing more to report at this time.

It’s all good.

Possibly last post for a few days; I’m going, for real this time, after this’un:

The Moar:

How To Replace Subaru Leaking Headgaskets SOHC EJ25 (No worries my doves. It’s not leaking, yet, even a little, and it’s only $2500 for a pro to do it right if it starts.)

How to Check for a Bad Head Gasket on Toyota and Lexus Engines (Exactly the same as on Subarus, but with other kinds of wisdom toward the end)

How to change a Subaru Head Gasket without removing the engine

Subaru Cheat Codes Ep 2: How To Dress And Install A New Longblock (bare ej25)

How to Remove a Subaru Engine Checklist and Demonstration Explanation

The Easiest Car Brand To Own, Maintain, & Repair?! | Subaru, Of Course! Here’s Why!

***

Outback Wilderness No Build Camper

Building A Minimalist Camper in My Subaru Outback

Subaru Impreza Camper Build

5 Essential Items For Your 2023 Outback Car Camper

NO BUILD SUV TOUR | 2015 Subaru Outback | Living in my SUV

The $60 DIY Awning I built for my Subaru Forester

***

Campgrounds vs Dispersed camping in Colorado: The best overland campsites

***

RME, Mr. Auto

RME, Autotrader

RME, cars101

2002, cars101

2002, cars dot com

Car Camper Conversion Under 100 Dollars | Subaru Outback Tour

Theirs is only two years newer than the one I’m (probably) getting in the next three days, and I feel like they have no more money than I do, maybe less.

Much more on this topic dumping soon.

“The Apex of Subaru Engineering”, Kenyan edition

Or you know, just confirmation bias.

By the way, the top half of the ’02 Outback is a color quite officially called Savanna Green, which is also a girl name.

I am thinking of the lower half as a Rocky Gray.

The boy part.

Perhaps “offbeat older brother’ is being generous, or even: Too Nice.

Anyway, the only thing stopping me from buying it for sure right now is that $1200 rack and pinion job.

And the only reason I’m hesitating is: the dealer claims it was done.

While the mechanic says: ripped rubber, leaking fluid …

… both things cannot be true.

I will attempt to negotiate a further discount on the basis of that white or black lie, and wait, to have that repair made right at my own expense after I get back.

With Rocky. Or Savanna.

In the driveway.

With the mattress.

When this is over I will tell you a long story about why I think this (RME) is better
(than a nice new Crosstrek)

Well. It’s not over yet.

It’s only … 93 percent done or thereabouts.

Here anyway is a start on the story, if not Most of what I know about it so far.

One, I can’t stretch out full length to sleep in an unmodified Crosstrek, so we’d be talking about a new base Forester or Outback.

Two, and this is the main thing, Mr. Subaru says (and others say it too) that 2000-2004 was the pinnacle and apex of Subaru engineering. Before that, they were a scrappy little auto company who were still perfecting their tech. And, after that, they started slowly sliding toward being just another corporation and profit machine.

This was epitomized by their 2010 decision to move to CVT(ransmissions) and to begin phasing out stick shifts.

The slide deepened in 2011 and 2012 when I was buying the Pearl. Their engines started to secretly burn oil, and more oil faster as they aged. And Subaru knew, and said nothing.

Worse still, the car itself didn’t say anything either. Even the simple low oil light didn’t come on until the engine was already cooked dry and destroyed from the inside out.

That happened to me at about 130K–the first time.

Like a maroon, I slapped another engine, flawed in the very same way, into it, with six grand of mostly family charity money.

It failed for the second time last month.

Subaru is coasting on its outdoorsy, dogloving, queer-friendly image on the one hand, and its legitimately superior Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive (arguably the only AWD worthy of the name) on the other.

The new ones, even the lovely hybrids and the proud bearers of Wilderness trim badges …

I honestly believe they will turn out to suck, and mainly due to end-stage capitalism.

Just like a Boeing.

So I’m honestly supporting wife’s intention to go with a Kia when the time comes for her to buy her forever car.

Pending further review of the evolution, and in the case that the new and superior Chinese automakers continue to be cock-blocked in the US.

And as for me, I’m headed back to the golden age. The ’02 RME is not flawless by any stretch.

But a manual transmission is far cheaper to fix than a CVT.

An old EJ 251 engine predates the oil burner issues, and their documented head gasket issues at least give ample warning long before the point of catastrophic failure.

If I go through with the purchase, I’ll be spending $6300 to acquire, $2200 on a timing belt and spark plugs and wires and a number of other do-it-now issues, probably twelve hundred more sooner rather than later on the rack and pinion, and, someday, whatever a head gasket costs (too much, but the independent inspector/mechanic says it looks quite solid for now).

And, in three years, a 2002 will be eligible for its own historic copper plate.

Thus enhancing its already substantial retro cred.

***

Further notes

sUbArUs aReN’t ReLiAbLe OvEr 100K MiLeS

Avoid This Engine Like the Plague

2002 Subaru Outback – That Weird Time GM Owned Part Of Subaru!

Buying A Used Subaru Outback Or Legacy?! Here’s The Good And Bad Over The Last 20 Years!

Should You Buy a Used Subaru Outback?

How To Check for Head Gasket Leaks

Donnie’s Subaru Outback Is A Camp Ready Adventure Wagon!

Again. The bastards.

Children and generals alike are dead.

First reports coming out at midnight here on Friday the 13th.

I don’t know what to tell you.

I was Liony then.

To the people who loved me, fed me, wiped my ass, that was my name.

To the people who tolerated me or disliked me, I was Liony.

I am Liony still. He is here with me, as I write these words.

***

These days, I wipe my own ass, just like a growed-up man oughta.

I feed myself, and I’m getting pretty good at it.

When I walk into the grocery store and type my fake phone number into their database for fifty cents off on a pack of sausage, my fake name comes up as Rocky.

Rocky Anderson.

When the checker looks down at the receipt, and reads my name they say:

Thank you, Mister Anderson

Recently one clerk, far brighter than the average, said to me

Every time I say that I think of the Matrix.

And I saith unto her, well that tells me flat out that you, Ma’am, are no NPC, in spite of your dead end job in this nowhere little town. You’re a fair bit brighter than the average bulb. Good on you, and please never let the bastards grind you down.

Because that’s exactly why I chose the name Anderson.

I did not say to her why I chose the name Rocky.

***

Rocky is also the name now of the latest stray, who went to the vet today, probably for the first time in his life.

I paid half. Almost half.

In a few days’ time it will be the name of my latest car.

“Rocky” is not nearly as good a nickname for me as Liony was.

But anyway, it’s not a nickname at all in any usual sense. No one calls me that, or has, not even once or ever in my life.

But Rocky the cat is here with me, and soon Rocky the car will be too.

I’m not doing a very good job of explaining.

***

Rocky had a face all pushed out of shape like tenderized meat. In that movie. He was not bright.

I too have been all pushed out of shape, by life, and maybe I’m as ugly as that Rocky —

don’t really know don’t really care any more

Sometimes I’m damn fuckin’ dumb, profoundly concussed maybe.

***

Liony is here with me now.

Even if I look and speak and act more like a Rocky, at my advanced age. Even if in some metaphorical sense Rocky, Rocky Rockford and all the Rockies, are here with me now.

Yo

Adrian

Here’s Why Despair Is So Commonplace Today

The despair you feel, sometimes or all the time, is not about yourself or your trauma or what is broken in you.

It is the quasi-intentional by-product of the toxic culture you have been steeped in since birth, and the literally toxic environment you grew in (There is a teaspoon of plastic inside your brain, right now, as you read these words.)

***

Problems.

Like “smoking”. Like loneliness, and the destruction of community and connection.

Like this one (and a million more on top):

Problems to Look Out for When Buying a Used Subaru (Forester) – All Generations

Going back “15 thousand years”.

More or less.

The first real trash day in three weeks, and a remarkably productive one.

I’m sorry to have been incommunicado through it. I am working very hard. In many different ways.

The plan, still, remains intact–on Thursday night or Friday morning we will leave here together and drive back up to the metro of urban richness and suburban doom, via ABQ and little Trinidad at the Raton Pass, as fast as safety allows.

And that on Friday, and Saturday, all energies will be concentrated upon the RME that currently lives at Mr. Auto; on getting it from there to Rocky Mountain Auto for inspection, and, pending a successful inspection … how to pay for it with as little damage to my financial well-being and credit score as possible.

That by Saturday night I will know what the right thing to do is, one way or the other, in the context of this … conscious week … on this rock in space that all we monkeys are flying upon, in what passes for community, in these dark and sober days.

Spaceship of the Planet of the Apes, yeah? Yeah. Let us pray.

Palestinian Woman Confronts Gabor Mate’ Over Surviving Genocide

Jesus MFin’ Christ all I can say is don’t watch unless you are ready to weep for this world and what we’ve made of it.

Evil is real.

There are saints and they are just as real.

Let each of us resolve to live in such grace, whenever we can, however we can, as best we can.

This ENTIRE Subaru Engine IS SCRAP! So Much Damage In A FORESTER? EJ253 RIP

Caution: this autopsy is not for the faint of heart or those given to queasiness.

Subaru: Boxer Engines. Lineatronic CVTs.

From my fanboi perspective, these technologies are not, strictly speaking, “unreliable”.

What they are is manufactured by a smaller auto company with relatively razor-thin margins.

There’s a lack of … tolerance, here. There is very little margin for error.

This circumstance is directly reflected in the internal physical operations of the major drivetrain components themselves.

The slim margins are cast into the very metal.

Most of the time it all works out fine.

But the older things get, and the less perfect the adherence to the maintenance schedule, and without going over and above it by doing things like checking the oil every 1000 miles instead of just letting them check it whenever the filter gets changed …

The narrower the tolerances become. And …

When as a result, things do go wrong, the failures ramp up and start to cascade quickly.

Within minutes. Sometimes within seconds.

That’s the real real truth of it as best as I can make it out, and say it.

***

Subarus are, in a very specific sense of the word, Fragile Inside.

And, in a different specific sense, very tough on the outside.

No one and I mean no one else has the true miracle that is Symmetrical AWD.

Like I said 15 years ago when I chose a Subaru to be the first (and possibly the last) New Car of my life, what I care about most is my car’s ability to stick to the pavement no matter what, no matter whether that pavement is covered in blowing and drifting snow, hydroplane rain, or glare ice.

By that metric, it was, and is, the little japanese emperor, the pint-sized king.

10/10, would and will buy again.

Now to figure out …

Just how to make it happen, in the dollars and cents sense.

***

Contrary Opinion: Subaru Sucks (and it might be Toyota’s fault)

So yeah. Buy a very old one, with a manual transmission and as few miles as possible.

Like the Rocky Mountain Edition, right? Dammit.

(“I was under the impression that Subaru had sorted out the problems with their CVTs by the ’14 or ’16 or ’19 model” yeah me too but apparently not.

Ultimately the problem here isn’t CVTs or Subaru or Toyota or anything obvious like that.
Ultimately the problem is this world, and civilization, and the profit motive, and the necessity of hiring expensive lawyers to have any hope of anything resembling fairness, much less justice. Shit like that.

Mayhap the generation of my nephews or niece will be allowed to import or drive some nice sweet capable Chinese EV that can tow a camper without breaking the bank.)

Two blown engines and I am more of a Subaru fanboi than ever. (Weird. Weird.)

So is this guy, and he knows two or three times what I do, or likely ever will.

From watching him and others, I’m getting more knowledgeable over time anyway.

What I end up buying, whether it’s an old one to get the manual transmission, or a new one to get the sweet new hybrid engine (and/or Wilderness badging and perqs), that’ll be a product of my learning and evolving as time goes by.

That old 2002 RME probably hasn’t sold yet, and if there was a way to lay hands on it for $7500 and do the timing belt and water pump for another $3K all at once, it might be close to the perfect solution, but …

There isn’t a way.

Maybe the van will sell tomorrow and there suddenly will be.

About such things, none of us knows anything.

***

Invaluable Resources Dump

cars101
old-car warranties
what is x-mode
Special finance, Subaru Certified Pre-Owned used vehicles 2025-2020 model years
leasing
lease to buy

Anthony Fauci continues to prove himself as the absolute front-running candidate yet for the actual Antichrist. That is one evil bastard.

Shame on you and me both for not realizing it sooner, especially if we saw (I did) Dallas Buyer’s Club when it came out in 2013.

He was demonic way back in the eighties, when the film is set, decades before the repeated lies about Covid.

May we all pay better kinds of attention, going forward.

Up at Wolf Creek Pass, way up on the Great Divide, there was another story (look there goes another one, just like the other one), with a woman stranger.

But that one will have to wait.

I’m back now. It’s over, except for the part about getting my truck out of hock from the airport. It’s over except for a couple of van tires that don’t exist yet; maybe another five hour wait so that someone else can collect another five hundred dollars. Small stuff. Chicken feed.

The cats were all still alive.

The, uh, abyss is $758 deeper, four hundred on the one card and three on t’other, gasoline and epic bars, but it could have been worse. It’s not $7500.

All said and done I got forty dollars and two packs to get me through til payday.

And that’s with the water bill paid, too.

It’ll do.

Still sometimes you know

I wish I was a bluebird

Today we made 400 miles or so and did a lot of good.

Tonight we are bedded down in Durango.

So many interesting and wondrous things happened. I can’t tell you about most of them, because they were not exclusively my story, and I’m still trying to work out where my story ends and the stories of those I love begin, and the morality of that shit.

I can tell you this one. It was for sure exclusively mine.

I was in Pagosa. Inside the Natural Grocers. Alone.

I had just taken a picture of the things that were in my shopping basket. I was on the last aisle, just before heading up to the checkout.

Down the aisle came a woman.

This woman thought that her husband was walking right behind her, and she growled something low that she thought were for his ears alone.

He didn’t hear her.

But I did.

She said:

I am in control of this radio.

You will submit to me!

What could it mean? I didn’t know and still don’t. Some private joke I guess.

For once in my goddamn life, I was quick enough to say the perfect thing on the spur of the moment.

I looked up and I said to her, Well now, Ma’am.

That is quite an offer.

And then her husband caught up from behind her, and he said:

What’s so funny honey?

I smiled and stepped away before she could compose a coherent answer. Stepped away quick, but not too quick. Just ambling. Grinning.

I wish I could be that appropriately inappropriate every moment of my life until I die.

That will never happen.

But a boy can dream.

And right now I think I will.

For real and literal.

And I am.

But I had to share this because of a Perfect quotation at about the 12 minutes mark. From the movie Syriana, starring George Clooney, 2005. Paraphrasing:

“Corruption, and wars everywhere all the time, are what keep us safe and warm.”

It’s bad enough that this is so exactly true.

It’s made ten times worse IF you let them turn you into a zombie that wants to bomb Putin or “Hamas” or the Houthis or Iran or China with shiny new Raytheon ordinance paid for with your own tax dollars.

Fuck the corruption. Fuck their Liberty Machine, even if it does give you a sense of false security.

Bring the boys home. Keep them home. House them and give them real, free health care, and their mommas and babies and babymamas too.

Or, you know, wave that flag and indulge your bloodlust, whatever. I am not the boss of you.

Why I Chose a Subaru: Winter Car Camping

My video production skills will never be this good, mainly because I don’t care about them being so.

Everything else though?

Some day.

His latest video is really good too.

We’re moving on. Lessons from Living in 580 Sq ft

Germany THREATENS Israel Over Gaza Genocide

You get to decide, who my title for this post is actually referring to.

The plans are in constant evolution just like always of course.
–Folk Song

That said, right now, the tiny house will be 10 x 10, 100 square feet.

Really that’s uselessly small for my purposes, except for a couple things.

1) At that modest size I could drag it up the driveway and out my gate with ease. Perhaps to sell it (you’ll recall that this property my house sits on is commercially zoned, and Anaprim’s remit could be expanded to the selling of … sheds, or emergency housing for people with none).

2) The main point really is doing it for practice.

In case down the road I wanted to scale up to a 20 x 20 four hundred square footer.

On a lot in, say, Silver City.

This month and next, it’s a pure wild hair of a pipe dream, and most of the pipe dreams I have never go anywhere at all.

But I think this one has some promise.

Let’s square away the rest of these god damn cars first and see how that promise looks in August.

When we all go to the Chile Festival in Hatch.

Until five minutes ago I didn’t know this was even possible.

Thus begins, officially, the month of small twisted miracles.

If you zoom in real close you can see the old radio antenna, just barely bending.

Let me tell you, that made one hell of an unholy racket hitting the roofline.

***

Edit: And look. To the right.

There’s a hundred feet of clear paved driveway there.

For now.

I think I might build a tiny house on it.

Watch me.

(the other)
I helped her out of a jam, I guess
But I used a little too much force.
We drove that car as far as we could; abandoned it out West …
The only thing I knew how to do was to keep on keepin’ on

like a bird

that flew

***

(the others)
Some are mathematicians
Some are carpenters’ wives
Don’t know how
it all got started

I don’t know what they do

with their lives

***

(one left)
But me, I’m still on the road
Headin’ for another joint
We always did feel the same
We just saw it

from a different point

of view

Sometimes I really wish I could shut my brain off and go to sleep.

This is in Fort Collins.

Theoretically, though not sanely, I could … afford it. At least my card limits could.

If it’s still there on Tuesday I guess I have to go look at it.

First thing is that luscious pickup truck.

There’s a lot of things I love about it, and top of the list is real 4WD, plus eight long feet of bed.

The downside, the main way that it is limiting me right now, is … 10 mpg. Related, through money, is the fact that if something goes wrong with the 300K+ engine or some other major component, I don’t have any easy way to fund a fast fix.

Right now she’s in maintenance mode for those reasons, a daily driver that I don’t dare to push too hard or too far. As I have time and scraps of cash, I will have the suspension looked at and upgraded. And I will rehab and install the shell I found that covers that eight-foot bed so precisely, so potentially beautifully.

Same goes for the exactly matching trailer (also a 1999, also white). One day, they will make the perfect mobile and modular home for shorter trips, oh Lord, up into the holy Gila, or over in the the vicinity of Blue, Arizona. Down to the fictional south Laramie, which is Deming.

But there needs to be one to drive less expensively, as far as the real Laramie up north too.

That’s where the Pearl replacement I am owed some day factors in.

(And to your point, Grace, once that replacement happens, trading this house in, for one on the land in Silver, starts to become more realistic.)

***

The plans are in constant evolution just like always of course.

But I am 99% sure that it will be another Subaru.

I was sure that it would be a Crosstrek too, and I’d still prefer that, but there may be a tiny problem with that idea.

Which is that it may be on the edge of impossible to sleep comfortably in it … maybe.

I need to measure one for real. The picture shows how the last best hope would work.

To be clear, I don’t even want to sleep right in the car. But I do very much want that to be an option, for emergencies or for extreme minimalist adventures.

Thus: Rather than the Crosstrek, I am at least considering a Forester or an Outback, both of which would add something like 20 cubic feet of cargo capacity, including those crucial few inches of cargo length.

***

A late update that makes a lot of the link-dumping I was going to do here irrelevant.

2026 Subaru Outback, with Hybrid Power and SUV Looks, Is Worth Waiting For

35 mpg for as little as $30,430 base price, per the article.

Which would be damn close to the perfect vehicle for me.

And if that wasn’t enough …

In the last few days, Subaru made another announcement, to the effect that this slick new Outback Hybrid thing will become available, later into 2026, with something called the Wilderness trim.

Which for my purposes means: A hybrid vehicle that is also capable of towing 3500 pounds.

As opposed to the standard 1500.

Do I care? I’m not sure I dare to care yet, because that kind of beyond-perfect also pushes the price past 40K.

And … I’m currently focused on minimalist trailers that weigh closer to a thousand pounds, easily yankable with the very modestly priced brand new Outback Hybrid version …

Making the ten/twelve/fifteen thousand more dollars seem at least extravagant, and maybe even, hate to say it, superfluous.

***

I really need to quit this shit now.

And do some work that matters to contexts much sooner than next March.

As in, like three or four days from now.

Out.

Okay look.

Yes I’ve been prolific, and I would say the quality of the produce has been high, and I’m genuinely proud of all that.

But I’m giving myself permission to take a week or ten days off if necessary, and it might be.

The next five days are going to have to be hardcore trip prep, including paying all the June bills at one grinding go.

Then there’s at least 2.5 days pounding the road itself hard.

And on the other side of that there’s even more doing that will explode into being of necessity due to certain nuances of my softheadedness.

I should be in recoup by Sunday the 8th or something like that.

Expect one more massive messy dump of a post as I get these hundreds of browser tabs closed properly.

At then a long moment of stillness.

For the Pearl.

Among other things semiprecious.

That one cliche’, about ‘surrounded by alligators while trying to drain the swamp’.

First of all, you shouldn’t be frivolously destroying wetlands that way. La Cienega is not only a blessing. It’s the habitat and the ecosystem those gators depend on.

What you blithely think of as swampdraining is, from their perspective, both ecocide and genocide.

No wonder they’re pissed.

But that’s not really why the cliche was on my mind.

There are ghost gators around me in this moment, sure, but less fear than one might think.

In such moments, I remind myself that this is the place I drain into–spill into, and how and why that is important.

It’s both a kind of secular salvation

and The Objective.

New RV puts family in the ER

When I sent the other link out to the fam yesterday, I talked about the connections between things like simplicity, anti-sedentism, and

“well let’s just say et cetera”

This is part of what I meant by that phrase.

Our ultramodern way of living makes us sick, in so many large and small ways that it can be hard to see, and overwhelming at the same time.

Specifically, no matter who “they” are, or what they’re selling, they’re motivated by profit and greed, and never by what’s best for you, not even a little bit, and no matter what they say.

That is a major contributor to the rot at the core of everything this society and culture and modus vivendi are about.

It makes no difference if you’re buying team red or team blue, GM or Subaru, Boeing or Airbus, Google or Apple. It doesn’t matter if you shop at Piggly Wiggly or Whole Foods.

It’s a game and it’s rigged.

It’s a big club and you and I ain’t in it, just like George Carlin preached to us.

You can shut your eyes tight and la la la.

You can open them to the utter Despair of the real situation, and feel it deeply, and hurt, just like this counselor woman is doing toward the end of the video.

Those are the real choices, and no amount of diligence and seeking out a “reputable dealer”, or even putting your faith in a label that says Organic or Grass-Fed can fundamentally change it.

That bitterly and brutally hard work of change is your mission and mine alone.

Should we choose to accept it.

***

Another example regarding the bad news.

Dealership Tactics During RV Inspection! Why My Client Walked Away

And then, from virtually the same source, a slim ray of hope.

What I found During This RV Inspection was Odd!

And some acumen besides.

So I went ahead and made the world a tiny bit better of a place.

With “coffee”.