on warmer feet

Following the recent onset of winter, and after relinquishing a blanket to its rightful owner, I noticed that my feet were getting and staying cold during my daily writing sessions. Previously, I would rest them on a bunched-up comforter; it did a good job of shielding my lower extremities against the uninsulated flooring panels that drag heat down into the frigid earthen cellar below.

In an attempt to mitigate my current discomfort, I threw down a single, thin sheet of cardboard, which provided little relief. Since today is recycling day, however, last night I walked repeatedly past a bin overflowing with cardboard. I took from it various sheets, cut them to size and taped them together at the ends (to keep out debris and bugs), making a block of cardboard roughly one inch thick upon which my feet now rest.

Unlike before, my feet are now far less likely to shed body heat into the linoleum tiles beneath them as I sit in an unheated room within an uninsulated house smithing lies, putting words on paper. And all it took was a pair of scissors, a few feet of tape, and a pile of rubbish.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

on trashing Mother

Please, patriotic citizens of America, please take a moment, at some point during the day today, to consider just how much we litter in this land. For all of the bluster and fuss about everyone being patriotic and waving flags and hanging them from cars and homes and businesses, we show great disrespect, even outright hatred, for the motherland – she who is fair Columbia – by disposing of our trash in inappropriate places. Fast food cups fill meadows and ditches; plastic take-home containers tumble in breezes; and our parks and forests are strewn with waste large and small, tin cans and candy wrappers and all sorts of other items discarded carelessly and without a moment's humble consideration. To claim patriotism is a poor and hollow substitute for acting in such a way as to cause as little harm, and as little disruption, to the natural condition of the many wild areas with which we as a People are blessed. (It is a unbearably shameful that we stole these lands from the First People tribes who lived here first, and that we murdered them gleefully and treated them as if they were worth less than beasts, but that is beside the point of this article.)

Beyond the more visible forms of litter, the byproducts created by the explosion of gasoline inside a car's engine – particulate matters, soots, and noxious gases – are all forms of litter; therefore, it is important for everyone who is capable to ride a bicycle and to avoid driving as much as possible. The true patriot does everything in her power to minimize the harm her actions cause the motherland; just as she would not stuff handfuls of empty candy-bar wrappers into her biological mother's vagina, so she does not toss them heedlessly into her local rivers. Just as she would not douse her birth-mom with a gallon of spent engine-oil, so she avoids dumping any fluids other than water directly into the curb-side drainage pipe.

It would seem, perhaps, that this article covers things that people already know, that it would be unthinkable to imagine that there are individuals in this land who are such tremendous assholes that they would pour our their waste, discard their trash, and flick their cigarettes butts onto the first available natural surface, but it is true. We are a nation of individuals seduced by the notion of a false convenience, tricked by advertisers, pastors, and politicians into thinking that our daily actions do not amount to much, that things shall soon get better. America is great because of industrious, positive individual effort, but our negative, careless individual efforts are costing her dearly, and leaving her stained, tainted, and diseased. So, please, dear friends, please pack out anything you pack in, leave your surroundings better than they were when you found them, and nourish a love for Mother earth as vast as is the love you feel for yourself.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on surviving major catastrophe

  Today's rugged man-beast, that brave individual who wishes to survive the upcoming zombie apocalypse, he (or, for the lady-beast, of course, she) will be self-reliant, self-sufficient, and capable of extreme action in dire circumstances.

  Whether you at some point see yourself making the post-apocalyptic wasteland your bitch, or if you merely desire to prove to yourself and to your species how rabidly you cherish life, your first step is to distance yourself from the mindless and continuously occurring buying-shit-for-the-sake-of-buying-shit ritual of consumption-oriented capitalism. Then, learn how to feed yourself cheaply. Reuse items that are in reusable shape. Cancel your contracts to receive broadcast television, and discover the excitement of story-telling. Become disciplined in your use of electricity and water. Learn how to read a map, to hunt, to make fire, to build shelter, and to do any other thing that might keep you alive when the lights go off and the undead come to bang upon ​your doors.

  In order to consider yourself even remotely ready to perform all the tasks necessary to make it through the impending breakdown of civilization, read books often, discipline your mind by delving always into its innermost depths (where you shall face reward and punishment both), and soothe and settle your mental state until its baseline is a serene quietude. As with the mind so you shall discipline the body, by exercising every single day from now until the day of your death. In order to stay alive while the other people around you are losing their heads and dying in stupid and unnecessary ways, you must be ready at any moment to commence with survival. Tens of thousands of city-dwellers have already abandoned their shiny condos and comfortable couches to live the shiftless life of the tough-and-rumble nomad way out at that spot where twilight turns to fog; they are waiting for you to join them.

  Before I commence, there are two more items to add to the never-ending Checklist-Of-Things-To-Do-Before-The-Global-Meltdown (the COTTDBTGM of yore). First is a readiness to abandon the persons you love the most to save your own life. Second is the willingness and audacity to stand tall in the face of grave danger to protect the persons you love the most. The decision which of these to choose will, of course, be up to you.

  Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp