How many canned goods will last us ten years, and can Pru become a survivalist?

I am considering a run on Costco today…making it a buying spree of non-perishable items, since I have been having some really bad dreams lately.  When I say “bad dreams,” for me, that doesn’t mean gore and blood, it means financial and cultural disaster.  I dreamed that my mother and I went, in a great panic, to get the boys out of some building with lots of other kids (a school in the evening?).  We had to get them to a car that was parked really far away, because we couldn’t risk parking closer…and it turned out that we had just parked the jogging stroller…not a car…  Finn was walking around the empty streets (which is a real spook-out for me, both the emptiness and his wandering down the middle of them), and we were then forced with the task of locating a safe place.  Apparently, nobody could afford their homes, so they had just packed up and left.  Everyone was carrying around what little they had of value, like a pack of homeless wanderers, which I guess they were.  We could hear someone singing softly in the house behind us, but were too afraid to go in, not knowing what we might find there.

I guess, this is the third or fourth dream in a really disturbing series that is spurred by both Finn’s innate need to be his own little man, and the financial/cultural disaster at hand.  Then I get to thinking, is it really a disaster?  To this point, the only thing that has relieved my worries has been the knowledge that I am not going to be homeless and starving alone.  I have started to think about what the ramifications of this crisis might be, and we may actually see a whole lot of good come out of the pain of it.  I will spare you from my independent investigatory speculations, but I am wondering if this might demand a much needed level of humility from us, thereby changing the way we live?

On the note of becoming homeless and starving, I have thought seriously about this, and have come to the coclusion that I don’t think I could become a survivalist.  I don’t think that I could actually live like Bear Grylls pretends to every now and again, but for the next ten-thirty years.  I can’t convince myself to even consider drinking my own urine, nor can I consider eating bugs (The Ungulatehas a very nice bug-eating story which I hope he will divulge via blog someday soon [please, Vic?]), though I am certain my children would find it appealing, and the General?  Well, he’ll eat anything.  I don’t think I could live without soap and water on a twice/thrice daily basis…and I really wouldn’t like my children as well if they were filthy.  I already hold a loathsome space in my depths for humanity as a whole, and it would just lower us to such depths that it would be impossible to designate a value.

Another thing is that I really like, need, my own space.  I don’t think I could share my home with fifty other squatters.  I was thinking that if all of our friends and family had to live in the same space, I know for certain that death-matches would result, so the idea of continuing to live in some form of commune is just impossible.  Although entertaining, it undermines the purpose of communal living, and that’s just no good.  Then, I considered living in the wilds.  Would it be desert or mountain?  I guess it would have to be a place with access to both.  But how many people might be fighting for space?  We will still fight over access to water.  Would it cause tribes to form?  Would we go back to tribal warring, and slowly rebuild our country; tribes coming together and conquering other tribes, a few at a time?  How much worse would the fighting be amongst modern, techologically advanced tribes? 

In the far recesses of my mind, I keep wondering if America would end up splitting into separate countries?  Would our maps change?  What might it take for that to happen?  How far does government/finance have to crumble before there is no longer a governing body, but chaos and possibility in its place?

No, I mean, I really wonder about these things.  If everything has been fabricated, if all of the posturing has built on itself, maybe nobody knows what is really going on, and the finances and government bloviating are really their own living beast now, totally unconnected to the people who think they are in control.  Can that happen?  Like the idea of a computer/robot becoming something we would call “alive?” and in control of its own actions?

See, I just opened up a tin can of “crazy!”

Pru De La Smarme

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They’re not making it up, they’re making it gooood.

So, all of my years of fretting over numbers, and math in general seem to have been wasted.  I could have been thinking of them in literary terms the whole time!  I could have made, well, billions!  or even Trillions!  Maybe even Gazillions,or I could just completely make up an amount, like, “plethescadarotritillions!”  It’s just all fake.  All of it.  I could have gone into finances and just rephrased questions that were shot at me, spitting them back and confusing everyone, because they thought I had an understanding of numbers and how the whole system worked.  Wall street’s just so quaint!  We just couldn’t change things.  I mean, “naked short selling!”  How precious!  The terms are just wonderfully ludicrous, and the things they stand for are mind-numbingly insane. 

I was raised with the understanding that paper money is absolutely worthless, but I had no idea that people could not only sell shorts on the stock market, but then sell shorts naked.  See, it’s all total fabrication by the billionaires who rule you (yes, I consider myself and many of my associates outside the bounds of rulability).  Paper money hasn’t had any form of monetary substance behind it for ages, and the ensuing “values” attributed to exchanges fit that word about as well as the politicians who latch onto it with the same vehemence as addicts claiming sobriety.

Honestly, the most surprising piece of the puzzle is that anyone is really surprised.  We are a nation of debtors because we feed the system and keep the billionairesout of debt even in their times of “bankruptcy.”  How many homes does one person need?  What do you do with all of that cash?  After a while, nobody really cares that your shoes are made from the backside of the last Tasmanian tiger, or that you drink coffee filtered through the bowels of an animal, or that you drive something that has ensured that the people at the top stay there, so that you can become their indentured servants.

If I am going to be the proud new owner, as you are, of not just several billions of dollars worth of imaginary/fabricated nothings of questionable value, shouldn’t we all see some extra money if the stocks make money?   It’s an investment, right?  Oh, no, wait…the nation’s hard-earned money, being spent on the troubles of the hugely wealthy, to ensure that the poor masses can afford to get loans to go into extra debt to purchase things (which they cannot afford, like gas) sold by the hugely wealthy guys, so they can maintain their 6 extra homes….  Wait, if this is a government-run market now, why not just make a leap that would actually help the public and take over health-care at the same time?  Surely if they are willing to spend a number so large it cannot possibly exist, on helping their friends in the market, they can spend a little of that cash, possibly the profits they will make, on a government health-care program like the one our leaders already enjoy (again, compliments of us, the congenial and apparently quite gullible/expendable taxpayer)?

I know, politics are not my strong point, but numbers never were before either.  Now, I understand that they can be manipulated just like words!  I’ll just move the decimal point around on my checking account, so it looks like the zeros are in better places!  And adding zeros isn’t really adding anything, right?  So, maybe I will just throw some more of them up in there.

Pru

Yay! Here’s some more crap

I have been running on empty.  I don’t know for how long, and looking back through the last few months of my writing and posts, it is clear that my mind is chaotic, psychotic, and I might be turning into the black widow of words.  Not that I think my words are violent, poisonous, or at all dangerous (well, not to anyone other than myself), but that they resemble what I consider a “black widow spider’s attitude.”  Dexter once remarked upon the webs/nests of the black widows as displaying a “fuck you” kind of attitude.  A “whothehellcares,” “laisais faire” kinda mindset.  It’s the mishmash of crap just thrown together as quickly and messily as possible for the next quick catch.  No symmetry, not even deconstructed beauty, just all out hash.  Is hash the right word?  Likely not…as, hash might be referent to something much more useful and productive.  Take that last “sentence” for example.  It isn’t a sentence.  Grammatically, it is pythogenic.  Much like what is usually fomenting inside the shell that is my head.

 

A combination of laziness, bad attitude, and flat out inability; it’s the feeling when you have hit the glass wall, and you finally see the world from the fish’s point of view.  That sudden realization that at the moment, until something really drastic happens, you are doing the best you are going to do, and you aren’t going to go anywhere else, unless it is toward your own demise.  But just that thought sends your heart into fits and flurries, and your breathing becomes strained as your lungs begin to swell shut with irritation. 

 

It is terrifying, just contemplating that feeling and giving it a name, if this is effectively what I have done…if I have done it effectively.  That’s the problem though.  I have developed a profound dislike for the impediment that grammar brings to ideas, or syntax makes bogs of images, hence my black widow mindset/writing. 

 

My pettiness is my mode of coping with other things that may be too large for my mind to handle…I am simple, really…low-maintenance.  If I didn’t have it, I might just shut down completely.  The schadenfreude makes me feel human, alive—and I know I am not a lone ranger in that valley.  Also, I have been struck by what is for me a new reality.  That being: far more people that I know/knew seem to know one another.  That is sheer terror to my mind.  And all this time, I thought that I was going about my skulking and hiding rather well…  It appears I have sorely underestimated the view from above, which exposes me as a child who hides her eyes and thinks she has become invisible to the whole of the world.

 

I don’t like suddenly feeling like a coward, nor do I like the idea that I am an opportunist…but for a barely-functional human, if a black-word-widow attitude is what keeps me going, I will just continue to throw my webs together and take what opportunity hands me, cowardice, bad grammar and all.  You can push your reality against the glass of my tank, or through the little slit in the door to my padded cell, all you like; it won’t do you any good.  For now, I prefer to write my own.

 

My helmet will boast stickers of dinosaurs and aliens, and eventually I will use it to attempt a break through the glass.

Pru

“Gravity is a harsh mistress”-The Tick

Liam discovered this the hard way…on Grandma’s wooden-swing-of-evil.  How the kid got a vertical gash from a horizontal plank of wood is something my brain cannot seem to come to grips with…it just loops over and over, trying to figure out the physics and what he might have been doing at the time. 

It was supposed to be my afternoon to study in a quiet house.  Well, myhouse was quiet.  Grandma was not so lucky.  I understand that Finn was the more freaked out by all of the blood.  Poor little guys.  It’s difficult finding out how truly hard things are after the first 12 months of life have been mostly cushioned and padded.  It seems to me that we are being disingenuous as parents to create such a mollified and soft beginning for these creatures.  Don’t get me wrong.  I am not suggesting that we stick rocks or tacks under their sheets…not really sure what I am championing for, so I guess I will just let that one dangle out there.

Mostly concerned with Liam being a klutz and bumping his head, it failed to occur to me that I might also have to stop a very determined Finn from being interested in pulling off the tape and glue…  A thing which Liam was fully willing to let him do, as though it might actually be Finn’s job.

On another note, in just a few months I am going to wreak the most pleasant revenge that has ever been afforded to me in my entire life!  You see, this neighbor, the friend who told me that I would “never regain my pre-pregnancy body,” is going to give birth in January?  Who knows, really, as she has been rather odd about dates, and telling me unusual lies that any woman who has gone through the process of pregnancy would know were lies.  It is odd to tell someone that you are only a month along, when in fact you are going to have your second ultrasound soon, or you are going to find out the sex of the baby.  It makes me question whether she is pregnant, or if she is creating an elaborate story and will soon be stealing an infant. 

Either way, it matters not.  You see, yesterday, she called during nap-time.  She was fully aware that it was nap-time, as twenty minutes prior, I had responded to a message she had left.  I discussed that I was having a really difficult time getting Finn to start his nap, and that it sounded as though he was finally quieting down.  Aware of this, she called twenty minutes later (Finn had only been asleep for about 10 minutes), to tell me something that she is aware I already knew, and prefaced it with: “I probably just woke them up, but I just wanted to tell you…”  Wow.  I didn’t think any woman could be that thick.  She is obviously unaware of the upper-hand I have gained here…for when the beast in her belly finally emerges, she will be in far worse need of “nap-time” than I am at this point!  I plan on calling her often, especially after I discover the child’s napping patterns! 

I am fully aware of the pettiness this shows…but I have to have to have projects at home too.  She seems to require constant competition, and I have something of a mild competitive streak (I have to say that I think even after having twins, I look better than she ever did).  Also, she just really needs to be shaken up and taught some valuable lessons about how her “reality” and other people’s “reality” are not one and the same.  She’s only having one, though the way she complains/speaks about it, you would think she was giving birth to an army, or something so earth-shakingly profound as a new messiah/Antichrist.

Don’t mess with an exhausted mother, especially before your own chicks are hatched…

Pru

Urly Lernign?

A ”DJ” who is god to his plastic toys and their diorama, and a questionable cycloptic thing–one might say, disturbingly ”pickle-evocative”–character.  Did the creators think the bumps make the cyclo-dill look any less like an adult-oriented object?  Check it out.  I kid you not, it is diabolical:  Yo Gabba Gabba.   

I didn’t intend for the boys to watch that.  I didn’t intend for my home to be sullied with the bad rays, but it was dinner, Blues Clues was over, and there they were…  I don’t know much about early childhood development.  I don’t pretend to understand the theory behind the children’s programing (other than it is definitely programing), but I cannot believe that a group of educated, well-meaning people could come up with some of these shows.  The character shapes are the least of my issues with the above show.  My bigger issues come with the notion that everyone must be overly medicated/happy all the time. 

When I was a child, it was the idea that any dissention from the group was a bad thing.  All of the cartoons said so.  Go along with the group, or bad things will happen to you.  Now, it’s hyper-optimists who decide that they need to “fix” the “unhappy” character.   I can’t imagine living in that world. 

When I was in middle school, a group of very popular girls got together and created a fund for an “unfortunate.”  It wasn’t a fund to feed her family (I don’t know many impoverished folks living in Eureka/Los Alamos.  No, the fund was to “fix” her, because obviously everyone wants to be stylish, they just can’t afford to and/or don’t have taste.  Their sights set upon their prey, they planned, they seized their moment, and they pounced. For a brief spot of time, I think the poor girl thought she had gained friendship from the “it” girls, and her spirits seemed lifted.  However, as the gang set-to, and she discovered what it was all about, all manner of terror, teeth, wasted makeup, flying glitter, ripping threads, tears, and mentally debilitating moments ensued.  Girls are horrifically cruel (particularly when we seem to be “playing nice”). 

I am at a loss to understand a world wherein a “maverick” is seen as somebody who simply declares that’s what they are, a place where a notion of “perfection” is not only strived for, but faked when we fail.  That, my friends, is a world totally devoid of art.

Bringin’ the Helmet, and leavin’ the leathers,

Pru

If only I had a photo!!!

The larger of my small men emerged from the bathtub on Friday night looking disturbingly like Nick Nolte’s mug shot.  Not sure what to make of it, though I sense trouble.  Another haircut is definitely in his future!  This weekend, he decided to give up his modified “Pee Wee Shuffle” in favor of a modified “Triplets of Belleville” dance.  Finn is more interested in dissecting the remote…

On another note, my intended nemesis showed for class last Thursday!  Complete with a motorcycle helmet…which means yet another addition to the things about her which vex me.  Yet another unknown…does she have a motorcycle, or is it a scooter, or is it just a bike and she just likes the allure of the helmet?  How does her spindly little neck support the weighty helmet?  How does her hair stay so straight if she actually wears it?   Maybe she just carries it around for appearances, the thought of which has just irritated me further.  She has some nerve to wear the same nail polish as Pru.  Shifty, I tell you, shifty.

 

Pru

I’m enjoying my bad mood, how about you?

I have tried to shake it.  I have been unsuccessful.  So, I will do the only thing that makes sense, which is simply to enjoy it.  I really thought that I wanted to have the bad mood substituted with a “good mood,” but really, I am just not very nice.  I rather get along with my bad mood…we’re pretty close since we’ve been together for so long now.  I’d say it’s almost as close to me as my mental illness(es).  I realized that people are laughing at the diminutive and pugnaciousness of me.  That’s just fine with me right now.  I am considering writing something in my psychotic frame of mind again…which usually turns out rather badly…but, it is catharsis?  No.  Not really.  It just spreads the wealth of my cheer and psychoses.

My new project was going to be a new nemesis, but said nemesis declined to show for class on Thursday…so, that pretty much adds to my frustration, though I think I have chosen three new ones–based primarily on their lack of attention to the detail of the text, and their baseless and presumptive interpretations.  Three might be a bit difficult to manage though. 

Additionally, how can one be so anal and analytical and so completely disorganized at the same time?  Not just randomly disorganized, or occasionally disorganized, no, I mean COMPLETELY disorganized.  Not even I have attained thatdegree of disorganization.  Emails are flying with failed attempts at Pdfs or half of the right pdfs, or duplicate pdfs…Oh, my mind aches just trying to recall the disaster of that disorganization.  I don’t understand.  Is it supposed to be a measure of extreme genius?  Is it for show?  My inbox is really quite upset at the moment, and very confused.  It’s like looking at the vast scribbles in my sunroom (Harold has clearly multiplied and added several new colors of crayon out there) and trying to read them as text!  Nothing makes sense!  I suppose it is just me though.  I don’t deal well when other people are more scattered than I.

As it goes, I figure that the bad mood and the rage are on their way to building something spectacular and awesome.  Just wait, ye scurvy verlets and hamiltonians.

Pru