King Snake Burial

In this video I bury both King snakes in the tater garden.  The first king snake is going to have pumpkins growing above it.  I plan on sewing those pumpkin seeds today.  Not sure when you are supposed to sew pumpkin seeds, but it sounds like a good idea.  I have a rosemary plant that ended being situated between my hugel bed and jungle garden.  My garden is still morphing due to this being just the second season I've been here.  When I moved here in February of 2012 the back yard was just Dandelions, bermuda grass, wild onions, and a few other local weeds.  Just flat ground that was scalped with a riding lawn mover for 20 years.  Part of my garden was beneath a large shed that had a boat, tractor, and various other 20th century country equipment parked on top of it.  That rosemary plant got transplanted into the tater patch above the second king snake.

Zombie Snake in a Box video Blog

This is the video I made just after discovering the second snake from the Zombie Snake in a Box blog. He's alive and in the box. 




In this video I release the shovel and put the snake in a trash can. In this video my dog Pepper makes an appearance and the snake goes on the move without a head...I also give a brief tour of the "Gypsy House". Finally, in this video I remove the frozen snake from the freezer that I killed the day before and then add the new one to the bag.

Zombie Snake'n a Box

One of the main questions that came up in the discussion about Zombies, over at the Doomstead Diner, is whether killing them is advisable or not. The main concern is that the title "Zombie" is a demonizing title that places blame for the American Hologram in the wrong place. Rather than blaming the rich, sociopathic, Corporatocracy Masters that have the good fortune of being on top of the pyramid, we are blaming the "Zombies" who are too worthless to live. Apparently the Libertarians have co-opted the word to describe retired government workers with pensions. Cause, you know, the retired government workers with pensions are the main reason why we can't get the budget balanced? Never mind the hundreds of billions a year just keeping the military machine kickin' ass and takin' brown people's gas, or the billions in government subsidized CEO bonuses, or the trillions of printed dollars given to the same sociopathic assholes running the too big to fail banks, it's the government pensioners that are the Zombies suckin' the balance out of the budget. Fuck politics...and that concludes my response to the libertarians and their co-opting of the word "Zombie." I've gone to great lengths to outline, describe, and define what I consider Zombies to be, and I will not be doing so again. I want to talk about the possibility of killing zombies in a post-collapse scenario to protect and defend your post-petroleum tribe's resources.

Naturally the discussion about killing zombies ended up in the realm of religion. "Man does not live by bread alone," inevitably came up. True, man doesn't live by bread alone, but he can't live without it either. He will die without the bread, and the zombies want his bread, so what's man to do? Especially a man with children and a wife to keep alive. Recently I've had cause to reflect on the action of killing due to participating in some killin' myself. Basically, best I can tell, life requires death. This is true all the way to the level of virus (which aren't technically considered living organisms). In order for the virus to replicate cells must die. Seems the only life forms that don't directly require death are plants and autotrophs. The rest of us need shit to die in order for us to live. To illustrate my point, I'm going to use an anecdote from my recent life.

I have 3 Rhode Island Red hens, 11 Deleware Hens, and a Rhode Island Red rooster named Archimedes all living in a chicken shack that I've created via Scavenge Engineering named "Eggmahal." It's been dubbed Eggmahal cause that's where my hens poop out the nutritious back yard chicken eggs that I feed to my family and sell. I sell the eggs for 3 dollars a dozen in an attempt to cover my costs for keeping said chickens. This allows me to have a steady supply of better quality chicken eggs then I can buy, as well as fertilizer and stored meat to feed my family (no better way to store meat than on the hoof...or in this case, on chicken feet). Keeping chickens requires you be willing to kill to keep them. If you aren't willing to kill the occasional chicken, or chicken egg, predator, than you might as well not bother keeping them. I'm the only thing that's going to kill any of my chickens or take any of their eggs.

So a couple of days ago I went into my coop to do the daily routine of feeding and watering the chickens as well as collecting the eggs. I walked over to the nesting boxes to collect the eggs and there was Mr. King snake with an egg half way in his mouth. He had found him a wonderful all you can eat king snake buffet equipped with a comfy new home to live in. He couldn't ask for a better set up. All he had to do was lay in the nice cozy nest box with a bed of hay, and whenever he got hungry he'd just reach on over to one of the other boxes and snatch an egg. Hell, he didn't even have to move more than a foot. He had quite literally found himself a snake paradise. Not on my watch Jack. My identifying him set off a chain reaction of immediate snake dispatching. I went straight into the Gypsy House, got my Earth Scalpel (a flat tipped short shovel) and a trashcan. I went back into the coop and jabbed the shovel into the snakes neck trapping him in the nest box. I then began, with my upper body, pushing as hard as I could. My shovel has not been sharpened so I simply broke his neck. This made him a bit more docile, and I was able to get him into the trashcan where I then took him out of the coop, dumped him out on the grass, and finished the job with my machete (which is one I found backpacking a few years back and never got around to sharpening...sooo it was a little messy).

Now, I don't want to kill anything. I really don't. I derive no pleasure from killing, but I also eat meat. Do you eat meat? Cause if you do then you kill every time you eat it. It's not violent for you, you just go to the store and get your sterilized meat that comes from the grocery store refrigerator. Or you go to a restaurant where all you have to do is shovel said dead meat into your meat hole. Eating meat, in the reality outside of the Matrix, requires you to violently kill, gut, skin, quarter, and butcher whatever meat you want to cook. We have lost touch with this reality.

Unfortunately the very next day, I went into Eggmahal to take care of the chickens, and there was King Snake number two...he was an upgraded version of Mr King Snake #1. I noticed that the nest box just to the right of the one the other snake was in, had a new snake in it. He was twice as large as the first as well. I went and got the Earth Scalpel and attempted the same method I used the day before. However his neck was much larger in diameter and so all it did was piss him off. He tried to make his escape by going to the coop floor to rather hurriedly slither off. I jabbed with my shovel and separated his head from his body like Disney's Hercules did to the Hydra of Lerna. It took him about 30 minutes to figure this out for himself. I apologized to him while he was laying there watching his headless body slither around oblivious to it's new headless status. I thought about having the common courtesy to at least remove his head from the situation...so he at least didn't have to watch...but failed to do so.

Now I didn't want to kill either of those snakes. In fact, after slaying the first snake, I went into the Gypsy House and announced to all of the snakes in ear shot that they could eat all of the rodents they wanted to, but that if they touched my chickens, chicken eggs, children, or family, that they would end up like captain headless over there watching his headless body aimlessly coil around. It's nothing personal I said, just...you can't have my damn eggs. I'm not starving. I don't have to have those chickens or those eggs to feed my family right now. I may, in the near future, require them to feed my family, but right now just in time truckin' is truckin' along just fine (well it's not fine, actually it's anything but fine...but it doesn't know that...and neither do the zombies). So I didn't have to kill either of those snakes (nor the two I killed last year) for my survival. I killed those snakes because their presence makes a mockery of my chicken keeping. The bottom line is that I'm not keeping chickens to feed the local fauna. I'm keeping chickens to feed my family nutritious food, and to provide them with some food security. You see, when JIT truckin' stops truckin' just in time...I'll have a source of food to keep my family fed.

Only there is a problem with keeping those chickens to keep my family fed in that post-collpase world I see potentially around any corner anytime now. That problem is that I'm not the only one who wants to eat those eggs and chicken asses. In a post collapse world there will be zombies who will want to eat my chicken asses. I'm not doing the work of keeping those chickens to feed zombies. Yet if I were not willing to use force to keep zombies from eating my chicken asses, then they WILL eat my chicken asses, and then what was the point in having said chicken asses to begin with? I don't want to kill anybody, or anything, but I want to ensure my family is fed more than I don't want to kill. My killing the snakes isn't exactly a product of that, since I admit I don't need those chickens right now, but it's still something I must do to make my chicken keeping efforts not pointless.

Now, killing snakes in times of relative peace just on account of my chicken egg count is something entirely different from killing a zombie (or zombies rather) in a post collapse world. I'm not comparing the value of the life of that snake to that of a hypothetical zombie. What I'm saying is that I didn't want to kill either of those snakes. When I identified that there was a "snake in the box"... it ruined my day instantly because I knew that my day now required me to kill something violently (I mean...how else does one kill anything really?) and with extreme prejudice. The matter is further complicated by the type of snake. King snakes are a great snake to have around because they eat other snakes (hence the "king" in the title). They are thought to be immune to the venom of poisonous snakes. Also, which annoys me in this case, they are of no threat to humans. This is a good snake to have around if you're going to have snakes around. I feel bad for killing both of them. But they can't have my eggs. There is no way I know of to get them to understand that they can live if they just leave my eggs alone. So they must die. I'm not going to want to kill any zombies either, but I am going to want to feed my family

Man doesn't live on bread alone. I believe that. I really do. There is more to life than this life. There is consciousness beyond my brains. I believe that as well. However I'm a father, and that's in this life. I can't make sure my children are fed if I'm dead, and I won't watch my children starve in this life either. I'll do whatever I need to do to make sure they are well fed. There are grave dangers in labeling the majority of people zombies. They become infected and less then human. It becomes alright ethically to kill something that is already dead. This is damaging to the human psyche. It's really the same process that goes on in the mind of a soldier who's convinced himself that these people are somehow less then people. Or as the Nazi's labeled the Jews, "Lebensunwertes Leben" or "life not worthy of life." When is it ever justifiable to kill people? I would answer that by saying it is justifiable to kill a person whom is trying to kill you, or yours for that matter. So it's justifiable to kill in order to stay alive. We do that every time we eat meat. Granted we aren't killing humans.

In just about every case of a society collapsing there has been cannibalism documented. We are at a point in the history of our species where we are talking about near term human extinction due to run away anthropomorphic global temperature rise. It seems WW111 is lookin' to start up over in Syria, and we have nuclear power plants that are spoogin' radioactivity into the acidifying ocean environment faster than you can say "death by cancer." Our world is in a terrible way just now. Everything we take for granted as normal in relation to our quality of life is built on a network of non-renewable resources that are becoming scarcer by the second. Every day there are less species on our planet than there is today, and that as well can be placed at the feet of humanity. The fact that zombies are real is a sad and depressing fact. But it is a fact. Like those snakes attempting to take up residence at Eggmahal, and therefore forcing me to kill them. I can imagine zombies doing the same in the near future as a reality I will live to see. I can guarantee my sons will see it...if I don't. Those zombies will force me to kill them if my son's starvin' belly is on the line. It will be their decision. I will do everything I can to not kill them. I will give warnings and wait till the last minute. But in the end, when it comes to my children being fed or me killing a zombie...I'm sorry to say the zombie will have to go. Just like those snakes.

The best we can do is attempt to curtail that eventuality by fostering community. Get the zombies involved and try to wake them up. But that's a waste of time. They can't be made to have the Epiphany Now. I've tried. The only zombies that wake up are those that decide they want to wake up. The hard cold bitch of a fact is that our world is FUBAR and getting worse by the day. Life requires death and nature doesn't select organisms whom readily die. The fact of the matter is that we are headed into times that could easily feature such things as cannabalism...just like the last complex societies that collapsed and began eating one another. I'd rather be a zombie slayin' professional than a person eater. Guess what zombies are good at? They're good at turning you into a cannibal cause they ate all of your chicken asses and taters. So maybe I'm an ass hole for talking about such things. Maybe I'm delusional and our society is not doomed to the reality of zombies. What I know is that I'm a survivor. Before I'm eating other people I'm gonna be the meanest, toughest, most calloused, bad ass professional zombie dispatching agent you've ever met. Cause fuck eatin' another human. That's not my idea of a world I wanna be in...or that I want for my sons. Here's to the hope that renewable energy will curtail World War Z. But so far...and this is the most important fact, it seems just now that Zombie Whispering is working just fine. Zombies aren't really that dangerous until the shit hits the fan. 

Here's a video I made after killing the second snake.  Warning...the video features a snake that has been decapitated...although you can't see any blood and it looks like it hasn't been aside from the shovel that's separating the head from the body.  

 

Petroleum Corn Sugared Zombies

Once again due to discussion over at the Doomstead Diner I've been asked to define what I consider a zombie to be. The issue is that the goal of the Diner is to "save as many as you can," and from what are we saving all of these people in need of saving? Well, if you don't know the answer to that question than I'm sorry to inform you that you are most likely a zombie. Now, don't go gettin' all pissed off at me cause you fit the description of a zombie. It's alright to be a zombie. At least you won't have to worry about not being able to find like minded folk to hang around with (which is a problem for us non-zombies). I'll now begin breaking down the requirements for membership in zombiehood. First I'll start with what Wikipedia has to say about zombies:

The idea of zombies is present in some South African cultures. In some communities it is believed that a dead person can be turned into a zombie by a small child. It is said that the spell can be broken by a powerful enough sangoma.

It is also believed in some areas of South Africa that witches can turn a person into a zombie by killing and possessing the victim's body in order to force it into slave labor. After rail lines were built to transport migrant workers, stories emerged about "witch trains". These trains appeared ordinary, but were staffed by zombie workers controlled by a witch. The trains would abduct a person boarding at night, and the person would then either be turned into a zombie worker, or beaten and thrown from the train a distance away from the original location.

This idea that a witch can turn somebody into a zombie by killing them and possessing their soul in order to shanghai them into slave labor is mostly what I mean when I call somebody a zombie. Only it's not a witch, it's the agents responsible for the Matrix's hologram that are controlling the zombies. This is mostly done via the thaumaturgy that's perpetuated by television, Hollywood, marketing, and the corporate directive dictating profit beyond all else. This all leaves the zombie blindly following business as usual (BAU) with no consciousness whatsoever about the consequences of BAU.

A zombie has no idea that petroleum is a limited resource on which we have built our civilization. They have no idea that you can't have infinite growth on a finite planet. They don't care about 400 ppm carbon in the atmosphere, and they likely don't care that America's number one goal is to bomb your ass and take your gas. They don't care that there is no precedent for GMO's (genetically modified organisms), that our oceans are acidifying, that our food causes cancer, that allopathic medicine causes cancer, that we are loosing our topsoil at an alarming rate, that our government has been coopted by multinational corporations concerned about nothing but profit whom have decimated the constitution and bill of rights, that we have no freedoms, that we live in a surveillance Big Brother state where they can indefinitely detain you and torture you for no reason other than you fit a profile, or that we are running out of the very energy that is needed to keep all 7 billion of us on planet Earth alive. I can go on and on, but you get the picture (or you don't...in which case you are a....zombie).

A zombie is incapable of seeing all of the above for what it is. The usual zombie response to any of the above information is that it's all a libearl conspiracy (or "conservative" one depending on which side of the puppet show you're on), or scientists know what they are doing and will figure out how to fix all of the problems, or you're just a kooky nut job for bringing any of that up. A zombie lives their life from day to day having no idea that anything is wrong with our society. They have no idea how close we are to what has been dubbed our "near term extinction" or NTE. This is the idea that we have so destroyed our biosphere that the damage is rapidly becoming irreversible, and that we will soon enter a period where the biosphere will no longer support human life due to exponentially increasing problems due to CO2 concentration (that 400 ppm figure), as well as a host of other environmental problems due mainly to our industrial chemical making proclivities...and lets not forget the nasty habit we have of splitting atoms to insure a continuous stream of free flowing electrons into the magical holes in our sheet rocked walls for the purposes of single use appliances like electric can openers and hair dryers. The problem with this being the nuclear waste that we collectively ignore. It's not that bad...just bury it or leave it in tanks indefinitely while the scientists come up with the solution. In a couple of hundreds of thousands of years it will no longer be radioactive anyways.

Okay, so you are a zombie if you see no problem with our particle boarded, car dependent, GMOed monocropped, processed chemical food, military/corporate industrial complex, Matrix controlled, NSA electronic communication data collecting, cancer causing for profit allopathic medicine perpetuated, biosphere destroying, petroleum fueled holographic suburban Orwellian New World Bravely carcinomic arrangement commonly called BAU. If you think BAU is just fuckin' dandy then you are a zombie, and I am not going to waste anymore time with you. I've tried wasting my time with zombies. I tried for years after taking the red pill that opened my eyes to the truth about the American Hologram. I tried telling everybody I knew about how poisonous our food is, and how we're destroying our biosphere to keep a civilization dependent on the limited resources that are fossil fuels alive. My efforts were rewarded with more ostracizing and sideways looks than I care to ruminate on. You see, liberating yourself from the Matrix/hologram complex makes you an Outkast. You become an Outkast because you wake up and realize that you've been subsisting by catabolizing your environment in an unsustainable fashion...that same environment that creates a sufficient amount of oxygen and fresh water to keep your zombie ass alive.

It should be clear now what makes a person a zombie. So why does any of that matter (I mean aside from the fact that anthropomorphic NTE is something a hefty percentage of non-zombies are finding it worth while to discuss just now)? It matters because at the Diner we are attempting to save as many people as we can from all of the NTE causing agents. Zombies are people to...so maybe we should change it to "save as many non-zombies as we can." If it were up to me it would be something like that. At the Diner, we are trying to come up with a model of human socioeconomic strategies and tactics to weather the bottleneck that has been created by all of the zombies blindness and their unquenchable desire for more petroleum sugared brains. We're trying to "bioneer" a way forward that pays attention to all of the problems our species has created. This is no easy task. We've dubbed this entity SUN for "sustaining universal needs," and hopefully the first SUN project will be creating a viable foxstead for us to hole up in while civilization finishes glutting itself to death on petroleum sugar and the sweat of third world brown child labor for iphones and Bananas.

The zombie issue has become an issue due to my distaste for the way zombies smell. It's not that I don't care about zombies because I do. I know they are people to (if we agree to be extremely loose with the definition for "people"). They all have the same Buddha nature as I, and they will all bleed if cut and suffer in the same way. They all have feelings, favorite songs, and laugh and cry just like I do. But they also like watching football and grilling concentrated animal feeding operation pellets over gas while eating genetically modified fried corn chips sprayed with chemical flavorings. I understand all of that, and that's fine...hell I eat CAFO food...but I'm just not happy about that fact and see a problem with it. Zombies mostly don't like to read and prefer to have their world views issued to them by thaumaturic idiot panel MSM news. They DON'T SEE A PROBLEM with our society other than that gasoline is costing a bit too much these days...and so is the food...and medicine...and well just about everything else now that I think about it. And this is the main difference between a Zombie and an aspiring post-petroleum human; a zombie does not do anything about any of these problems because they aren't aware of them. But wait...what am I thinking for? Oh well, my favorite football team is on...holy shit did you see that sack...he got nailed like a motherfucker...that shit was crazy wasn't it. Pass the corn beer and chips...wait...what was I just talking about?

Nothing, you weren't talking about anything, you should get back to your beer and chips. Nothing to worry about, nothing to see here, go back to sleep America...your government is here to protect and provide for you. They will grow all of the food, keep all of the steady evolving microorganisms at bay with petrochemicals, and bomb all of the brown people for gas on your behalf. You just eat your chips and drink your beer and the scientists will figure out all of the problems. You can be a zombie, but don't come runnin' to the foxstead when diesel is 6 dpg at the pump and our just in time trucking insanity stops being viable. You didn't do shit to deal with the realities outside of the flatlands projected by the hologram. You didn't care to concern yourself with the dire reality we're inheriting for the ride down the back side of Hubbert's curve. I consider zombies nothing more than nature selecting the next quantum leap in the human genome. As in zombies will mostly be deselected for that leap. This is not a value judgement. This is just facts facilitated by the red pill.

Go back to sleep Zombie America...there's a zombie apocalypse coming to a theater near you any day now. With any luck I will be surrounded by nature and in the company of a post-petroleum human tribe when that apocalypse kicks off. Thanks to you that probably won't be the case. I'll probably still be here, slaving away with the zombies, trying to figure out how the hell to build a lifeboat out of the refuse from this plastic fabrication of a boat we call civilization. If I manage to cobble together said boat...you ain't gonna be welcome on it. It's not like belief in Jesus Christ...where you can be a shit bag your entire life and then repent just before your last breath gaining you access to heaven. No, I've seen you take your last breath, and I won't be mourning you. However, there still is time for you to wake up and stop eating brains. So do that...wake up now, while you still can, and be welcome amongst my tribe. Or...perish with the zombie horde. Either way I'm not going to lose any sleep over you...and you're not welcome at the foxstead as a zombie. It's nothing personal...just I've got a family to support.

You see, I'm holding you responsible for your beliefs. If you are an adult than you are responsible for what you believe and don't believe. You are responsible for knowing the truth about things. Nobody forced me to open my eyes up and develop a distaste for brains. I decided that I wanted to know what the truth was because it was time to grow up and take responsibility for myself. I've done that. Zombies don't do that. Zombies get on fukitol and watch football drunk and satiated on all manner of petroleum corn sugar, and zombies will watch the zombie apocalypse on the idiot panel during the halftime marketing break. Not me, hopefully I'll be outside in nature trying to facilitate the growth of food that's not dependent on petroleum to gain the calories I'll need to keep me and mine alive once the JIT truckin' inanity comes to an end. Zombies will most likely be shot on sight and burned in large piles. Such are the concerns us evolving post-petroleum humans have here at the precipice of near term human extinction. 

BTW...I have no idea why Blogger decided the text color needed to change in this entry...every time I use the quote option that happens.  ??? 

Photojournal 5

HT says what up

Red potatoes with floundering corn in the center and on the periphery

I didn't add anything to that soil.  My Permaculture chickens shit and scratched for a year...beautiful ain't it

cucumbers

crook neck squash

I promise there's a line of black eyed peas in that grass

three hills of watermelon

GM with baby

The Hugel Bed

hard to tell, but that's a Gourd plant and it's dropping vertically down about a three foot drop off the back of the hugel bed.  Cool thing about that gourd is that it's a volunteer that somehow managed to make it into the hugel bed.  I grew that same gourd plant in that same place last year...only it was under the hugel bed because the hugel bed didn't exist yet.

Borage gettin' ready to bloom in Hugel

Lavender

Jungle Gardening

Cayenne Pepper on top of Hugel

Mexican Parsley...my favorite

Dent corn, zucchini and black bean guild

corn, zuc, maters, beans, cilantro, gourds

My Zen pepper Garden the "Zen Pepper Patch"...if it ain't a pepper or basil it get's meticulously yanked out...BTW the basil is there on account of the Diner's Agelbert...thanks Agelbert...I sowed the basil seeds two days after you posted the article about peppers and basil

a mater growin' in the pepper patch

Hard to tell, but that's down hill

Habanero

Thai Pepper

Zen after being reprimanded for trying to invade Dad's Pepper Patch

Zen  before above reprimand...he's understandably confused seeing as how dad calls it his "Zen Pepper Patch"

Sitting on top of the Hugel bed on a spot that's my little mini trailer park meadow

LD's Resume of Doom

Thanks to the Diner's newest member, Redreamer, for this beautiful fox picture...it's my understanding she captured it with her camera

I've been tasked by a fellow Diner over at the Doomstead Diner forum to come up with a Doom Resume. The idea is to write up a convincing synopsis of why your sorry ass is worth using resources to integrate you into a community post-collpse. Say for whatever reason you are dislocated from your current abode...be it a pointless waste of space that will blow away as soon as chaos happens, or a life boat intentionally designed to weather bad societal shit..like the Just In Time (JIT) trucking that our suburban America requires for things like...food...shutting down. Imagine, and this is my favorite doom scenario due to it's complex richness, that the tractor trailers that keep our current civilization going stop pulling 80,000 pound loads down the interstate system of these failed states of America (FSoA), for even just a couple of weeks due to say 7 dpg diesel. "Experts," whatever the hell that means, say that we have a three day supply of food in the box stores across America...the Walmarts, and Ralphs, and BiLos, and Buy N Larges that house all of the Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation turds of prepackaged, sterilized, devoid of all nutrition, toxin rich, plastic, bad imitations of eddibility, "food." All those shelves will be empty of anything vaguely edible within 24 hours of the official kick off of Zombie panic. Thus has writing a Doom Resume become a worth while endeavor for all of us Post-Petroleum humans to write, and spread into the doomosphere. This is my Resume of Doom.

My worth, in terms of skill sets, started at round 14 years old for me. That's the year I dove head first into the world of Army JROTC. My fourth year I was XO of the battalion, which made me 2nd in command...that means my senior year every cadet except one, the battalion Commander (who has been flying Black Hawks for the last ten years or so) had to salute me. I was best Recon three years in a row and Recon Commander my fourth year. Now, all of this means that I learned, as well as taught, useful skills like orienteering, mountaineering, marksmanship, knot tying, repelling, map reading, and general wilderness survival. But most importantly I learned how to lead men and women, and do it well.

My next set of skills, that were acquired during those same years, had as much a spiritual dimension as practical physical one. I trained in Nihon Goshin Aikido for four years. This is a Japanese style martial art that was created for sword fighting...in the days of the Samuri. Steven Seagal is trained in Hombu Aikido, which is only different because their circles are much wider, whereas Nihon Goshin is tighter and closer to the body. This is a system of self defense that revolves around pressure points, joint locks, and throws, and puts a heavy emphasis on learning human anatomy so that you can know what nerve you are activating...or what tendon, ligament, or bone you might intentionally break pending the offender decides it for himself. I rose to Ni Kyu, or "student instructor," which is a purple belt. I had all 50 techniques in the art when I quit due to moving cross country. When I quit I was working on weapons training...things like how to take a gun or knife away from somebody who is trying to shoot/stab you. Now, at 33, I can still do a running ninja roll over a chain link fence...granted those days are numbered I'm sure. However, I learned this skill set by burning into my muscle memory while my muscles were still developing during early teenage years.

At 18 I began seriously questioning Christianity and religion in general. I became an atheist and basically started over for myself. I arrived at home in Buddhism. Then I moved on to other things like Druidry. Point is I have a spiritual background that is based on empirical experience and not solely on shit other people have written or said. Examples of this experience are a full blow out of body experience, Astral Travel, and years of lucid dreaming. However I remain humble in knowing that there are others more spiritually advanced than I whom I can learn from. To me, humility and equanimity are two of the most important spiritual endeavors where other people, and how you treat them, are concerned. I think this makes me well balanced where morals and ethics are concerned. It also makes me flexible and tolerant of others spiritual views.

Next I suppose would be the USN where every recruit is trained in the art of fighting fire. I was broken down as an individual and reborn into a collective identity in boot camp despite my best efforts to not allow this process to happen. After boot camp I trained at Naval Nuclear Power Training Command to be a nuclear engineer of the mechanic persuasion. After NNPTC came Prototype in Saratoga Springs NY. Then I was stationed in Bremerton Washington and shortly deployed to the Persian Gulf where I was when 9/11 happened. First bombs dropped came off of my boat...the U.S.S. Carl Vinson CVN-70. First chance I got, upon returning to the continental U.S., I went UA (unauthorized absence) as well as "missing ship's movement" as the ship left from San Diego to Bremerton without me. I learned a lot in the Navy...too much to cover in this synopsis...you can start with 115 days at sea without seeing land...all while working 7 days a week. Four hours of sleep was a luxury...use your imagination.

After the Navy I went to a bartending academy in Seattle Washington and began a career as a professional drunk. I also had a short period of time spinning records in the Seattle rave scene. During this period I moved back to Upstate SC and have remained here ever since...that was 2002. I supported myself by waiting tables and tending bar for about 4 years. During the last year I ran a mom and pop hole in the wall bar for ruffians and all manner of Southern drunk rednecks. I was a general manager as well as head short order cook, bartender, and ass kicker (although due to my training, I never had to put any drunk dirt necks in the hospital). I was able to persuade drunk rednecks, hillbillies, dirt necks, and the occasional out of place gang banger, without violence, to do what I said....the confidence that Aikido gave me assisted in that skill). But when I'm applying point pressure to your mastoid sinus you tend to do what I say to stop the excruciating pain...nevermind if I grab your hyoid bone.

I put an end to the alcohol/drug abuse, nomadic, anglo saxon, reckless, living for the now, ready to burn up in a blaze of spontaneous combustion glory, lifestyle at the behest of my now wife, then girlfriend GM (gypsy mama of Diner fame)...and began the skills of learning how to be domesticated in the Matrix. This prompted my next skill set, which I began before I gave up that reckless lifestyle, the skills involved in being a medic. For 2 years I worked in convalescent transport "granny snatchin" at the most unholy, lotion and doodoo scented, depressing cesspools of human misery known as nursing homes, before I got into EMS. For six years I worked for a county EMS agency as an EMT-intermediate dealing with all manner of human tragedy, gore, insanity, dead newborns, dismembered and dead loved ones, and body decompositions. I was a professional in dealing with the shit you can't deal with. Why else do people call 911...at least the responsible ones...which granted are in short number these days. I learned a lot about not only the human spirit, mind, and body in this profession...I also learned how to spot knuckleheaded Zombies due to their scent alone. If you are a Zombie I can smell you...thank you EMS.

During the years of EMS I became Peak Oil aware after reading The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler in 2007. I had about 3 years of solitary dealings with this information before my wife started finally taking notice around 2011. I've been PO aware for six years now. At about year three, I finally made it through all of the states of grief and decided it would be a good idea to procreate. I have two children now. Ayden Zen who will be three in less than a month, and Harper Tribann who is two weeks old today. Thus I have learned (or rather am learning) how to be a good and responsible parent. The goal being to facilitate children who will grow into adults with the ability to thrive in The Long Descent, or Long Emergency, or whatever you want to label the clusterfuck we are currently experiencing the opening acts to.

While I was working as a medic my Southern-as-they-come Paramedic partner taught me how to deer hunt. This resulted in me killing two deer in my second full season of hunting. My first season I didn't kill shit because my hillbilly partner decided I had to deer hunt for the first time with his bird gun (a 12 gauge with a fuckin' bead on the end of it...all season...good luck to me). There I was, in a little ass oak tree bout 8 inches around in a ladder stand 12 feet off the ground, swaying in the wind, with two 100 pound does 100 yards out in plain site. I was standing...did I mention I was literally swaying in the wind, and I was applying pressure to the trigger gettin' ready to lob lead at a deer for the first time. This was arguably an irresponsible shot, which aside from the swaying, had me wondering. Just before the gun went off they caught my scent and run oft. The second season I euthanized Bambi twice and consequently field dressed (under the direction of my partner), threw the deer in the bed of my truck and then skinned, quartered, and butchered both deer on my own at home. You should have seen me in the woods behind my house, buck hangin' from his hind legs and me trying to de-glove the whole body. I used a reciprocating saw to remove the head. This is the reality of eating meat...I know it intimately.

I began gardening organically right out of the gates in 2007. It was the first skill I decided to learn after reading about Peak Oil and the global clusterfuck that is the Trifecta of doom (climate change, global economic breakdown, and Peak Oil). I'm in my sixth year of gardening now, however that would be the second year of Permaculture. In 2012, right after resigning from my lucrative position as an EMT in the state of SC (29,000 dollars was what I grossed my last full year which was 2011), I began permaculture training in Asheville NC. I trained in a new program called "Permaculture in Action" which resulted in a certificate of completion. I helped install permaculture design on something like seven different properties during five two day weekends. I learned a lot about permaculture and have been applying the principles to everything I do outside with plants ever since. I've been successfully keeping chickens for the last year and am considering moving from just eggs to a meat operation as well. I have been able to cover my meager costs of keeping the birds by selling the eggs for 3 dollars a dozen.

Now I'm a full time student training to be a Registered Nurse for a well paid position at the Ministry of Health. I have many other skills I've developed over the years like fermentation. I can ferment a good drinkable alcoholic cider that will get you drunk, and I have just about perfected the art of mead making with nothing but good local honey, champagne yeast, and a bucket. I can make all kinds of krauts and make the best fermented hotsauce you've ever ate (just ask JoeP if you don't believe me). I know how to can and grow food on the cheap using mostly scavenged materials. In fact, I'm familiar with most homesteading activities now due to practice in my own life. I even have a humanure operation that's got the biggest volunteer tomato plant you've ever seen growing out of it (last years humanure pile).

So there you have it...my skills, or worth as a potential vagabond post-petroleum human. If you fill in-between the lines, and connect the dots, and see in all dimensions and what-not...then I think I make a pretty valuable asset to your community. Pending the Foxstead doesn't get off the ground before TSHTF, and I get dislocated, and end up at your doomstead...now you can know my skills. My wife Gypsy Mama has a bunch of her own skills that have been won during a life of high tragedy. She recently turned into a Goddess before my eyes while giving birth to our second son Harper Tribann. She did that naturally. As in no epidural, or pain killing compounds of any kind. Just her and our beautiful second son. We are leading the charge out of the Matrix and it's destructive hologram of control. We have skills that will assure we survive anything short of a Near Term Human Extinction Event. Personally, I believe we will survive even that...like a prehistoric endospore that is still viable.

I didn't list all of my skills all official resume like because I'm not official like. There are a multitude of things I didn't list like knife sharpening, hole digging, joke making, fishin', and all manner of professional Jack Leggin'. But where survival is concerned...I and mine will survive. My hope is to bioneer what has been dubbed the Foxstead here in upstate SC with my vagabond crew of Diners. That is if the bottom doesn't drop out of this global bitch, or a super tornado doesn't come through and make the above a dissertation in doomer pointlessness. So what are your skills? We're accepting applications for the first Foxstead. Consider the task of writing your Doomer Resume your application for admittance. We're planning on saving as many as we can...non-Zombies at least. 

An iconic picture taken in Turkey days ago...coming to a Theater of Doom near you any day now (thanks JoeP)