FOR LEEANNA

The walking dead don't stand a chance!







Or do they?

the Ol'Buzzard

OLD MEN PACKING HEAT

 

If you are a fat old man packing a gun, you don't look any younger and you don't look macho; you look like a fat old fool with a gun.  

And when the zombies come that gun isn't going to make any difference - they are going to eat you first, because you are fat and old and can't outrun them. 

the Ol'Buzzard

A DYSTOPIC IMAGE OF THE FUTURE

Our town has sidewalks and tree lined streets.  A couple of days ago I was driving through town and saw a man and his wife walking toward the college and behind them were two small boys that looked about eight and ten years old.   Both of these boys had a cellphone out and were totally absorbed in whatever was on their individual phones.   This left me wondering what these boys will be like as grownups. If they are so enmeshed with technology at their age, what sort of social change will technology have brought about fifty or seventy-five years from now?  

Now I know I am out of touch – I am supposed to be out of touch: I am old and of a different generation. 

Historically, when old men yell at clouds it is because they have seen it all before; except with a different cast of characters.  

But, this time it is different.   I am still a repository of cultural change; but change has never happened at this speed before.  

I lived through a time when AM radio and newspapers were the standard for communication; where passenger aircraft flew at 125 miles per hour; where telephones had a real person answer instead of a dial tone.   I have lived through and witnessed changes, but these changes came along at a comfortable rate.  

There has been more technological and cultural change in the last sixteen years that there was in the prior sixty years of my life.  

Those two boys should have been pushing and shoving and grabassing instead of walking like two zombies controlled by an electronic media.   What will their generation be like after a youth void of human interaction and after a childhood void of imagination and wonder?   I am sure they will fit into their future; but I can’t help but wonder what kind of alien future they will exist in.

 Change has come at a remarkable speed.   Technology has replaced personage and redefined human interaction. 

If you are a young person, fasten your seatbelt - because the world of tomorrow is going to look nothing like the world of today. 

the Ol'Buzzard

WHEN IT’S WINTER UP IN MAINE…

Well, the noreaster (blizzard) has finally arrived in western Maine.    It was supposed to hit last night about midnight, but is must have stopped in Boston for some Baked Beans because the first light windblown snow started about an hour ago at seven a.m.

The news media is hyping this storm as a “monster storm,” but they are predicting less than two feet here in Maine.   Granted that is a considerable amount of snow in one storm, but for Christ sake this is Maine; and if you can’t handle a couple of feet of snow you need to move away.

Actually, here in the western mountains, it is not the snow we worry about; but as the snow accumulates the snow zombies roam down from Canada.   These are the creatures we scare the children with when they don’t behave: ‘The Canadian snow zombies will get you when you go sledding if you don’t eat your brussels sprouts.’

The danger from snow zombies is you can’t see them.   You are zipping down the ski trail on your cross country skis, or snowshoeing through the woodlot behind your house and the damn things rise out of the snow as you pass by, and are on you before you realize. 

Unlike the zombies in all the phony, unrealistic movies, the Canadian snow zombies often carry weapons.  They will either beat you to a bloody pulp with a carrion bone or slice you up with a sword before feasting on your body. 

   We won’t even mention what they will do to you if they catch you with your pants down taking a dump in the woods.   It is scary.

Realistically, you can’t kill a zombie.   They are already dead.  So, the idea that you can shoot them with a pistol or kill them with a cross bow is ludicrous.   The only thing the snow zombie is afraid of is a snow blower, and I gassed mine up yesterday.   

I don’t ski any more but I do occasionally snow shoe: but not this storm.   Because of the depth of the fresh accumulation forecast I think I will stay in the house until the threat of snow zombies has passed.   I will, however, have to go out back and clear and fill the bird feeders; so if I suddenly stop blogging you will know the worst has happened.

the Ol’Buzzard 

      

  

THE REAL THREAT – AND IT AIN'T ZOMBIES

My post on Survivalist started me thinking about the real dangers this nation faces.

We have the mightiest military on earth (because our national budget allocates more money for military ‘defense’ then the next ten militarized nations combined.)   No foreign country or no terrorist group is ever going to have boots on the ground in the United States. 

We are, however, vulnerable to limited target attacks by fanatical fundamentalist similar to what we experienced on 9-11.   Populated areas in a major city, government buildings in D.C. and even sports venues similar to the Boston Marathon could be targeted and result in mass casualties; but this would not put the Nation at risk.  

There are two scenarios that are real and dangerous, and these seem to be ignored by our government representatives and the press:

First is the possibility of one or more nuclear weapons exploding inside the continental United States.   

This would not be an attack from a foreign nation, but from mismanagement of our own nuclear weapons program.

The men who guard our intercontinental ballistic fleet have the most boring job in the world.  It is like being dressed for a party but never invited.   Every day they lock themselves in a bunker with antiquated electronic equipment and wait for the word to launch warheads sitting atop missiles, some of which are fifty years old.    

Their computers are so old and outdated that launch commands and system checks are downloaded from floppy disk.  What could possibly go wrong?

The second, but no less a threat, would be a terrorist attack on our aged and outdated electrical grid.   This would bring our Nation to a halt.   A nationwide blackout would be disastrous.   

Think of life without electricity: no lights, no heat or air conditioning, food spoiling, stores closed, banks closed - no electronic financial activities, no air travel, no trains, no subways; no TV or radio and no cell phone communication – internet – facebook – twitter…(hell, everyone under thirty would probably commit suicide.)  

 

All us old people – my generation – would probably get along just fine during this second scenario, but everyone else would be traumatized.

So, what can we do to prepare?   My plan for survival is to take over and defend the local liquor store.   

Red wine and whiskey are fine unrefrigerated and I could get use to warm beer.

the Ol’Buzzard

    

SNAFU

SITUATION NORMAL ALL FUCKED UP

When you read the blogs across the internet probably seventy percent of them are doom and gloom.   They expound about things going wrong in their state, their town or the world – and they are right.  Humanity is fucked up.  But there is nothing new. 

The human social condition is like war: there have always been wars and there will always be wars; the weapons change; the venue changes; the participants change but the results is always the same: people die.

The point I am making is: I am 70+ years old and I have seen it all before.  There has never been a time in my lifetime when everything was not fucked up.  My first memories are of the Second World War – then the McCarthy era, Southern states rights and segregation, the Korean War, the Cuban crisis, the Presidents assassination, Vietnam War, integration struggles, race wars, Nixon, Clinton’s blowjob, Russia, the Cold war, Bush years, Iraq…  Then each state, city and town had its own issues: corrupt police forces, corrupt politicians, religious intolerance, murder – rape - riots – carnage – shit, fire and molasses. 

It is amazing that we have the internet and we can express our frustrations and incredulousness with the state of our individual worlds; but nothing has changed and nothing will ever change.   The players will be different, the venues will be different, the crisis of the moment will be different; but the world will remain fucked up – that is the natural order for the human race.  

Most individuals are basically decent people; but as soon as we pack – we heard up – we take power over others we become corrupt.  That’s who we are. 

It is hard to find something positive to blog about – perhaps cats.  

But in the meantime my blog will join the majority seventy percent and continue to express wonder at the insanity the human race brings to bear against itself. 

There is a ZEN story about a man on a journey that builds a boat to cross the river then drags the boat with him for the next hundred miles. 

 

It is good to be cognitive – it is good to be aware – and it is fine to be troubled; but let us remember we all have eighty-six troubles and let’s not drag the boat once we have crossed the river.

Have a good day

the Ol’Buzzard