Hugelesquely Inspired

First of all, let me just say that Blogger sucks with uploading pictures.  When I uploaded them Blogger rearranged them all.  I don't know html coding so I can't go in to fix it that way.  That forced me to attempt moving pictures around in the "compose" option.  You can move a picture up one at a time, and it's tedious.  But then half way through the process it stopped allowing me to move pictures...so they are out of order.  Which sucks because I was attempting to show the steps I went through in constructing this last hugelesque bed...I say "esque" cause I'm not sure it qualifies as a hugelkulture bed.  The first four pics were meant to be the last four.

Pepper diggin' in one of my unfinished hugel beds

Carolina Blue

For the ladies...me movin' some mulch around.

Bo Beppa (what I call pepper) diggin' still...you can see a chicken feather.  It got there because I harvested the chicken bedding to add as a layer of fertilizer

This is a load of hay that I acquired via  a local business called "Cowboy Connection."  I buy hay from them every once in a while to place in the coop.  Every couple of months they sweep out the hay room and I pic up the hay for free.  I use it for building soil or as bedding.  Also use it for humanure (although right now the humanure operation is on hold for various reasons).  This load was used for constructing the latest hugel bed. 

This is the southwest bed.  You can see a couple forks of hay at the bottom of this pic.  That is actually a hole that I dug last year to collect water.  This bed had peppers that had been overrun by basil.  I pulled the basil before this pic obviously, and it can be seen laying in the center of this bed.

This is about a week worth of scraps from the kitchen (the black is coffee grounds)

Here you can see the contents of that compost bucket dumped on top of hay at the North end of the bed.

I then covered the compost with more hay

Here I added some wood that I acquired at the county landfill while also acquiring free mulch.  When I get mulch I always walk around and grab whatever logs and sticks escaped the mulch machine.  I bring the wood home for hugel bed construction and for fire wood.

Here you can see more compost spread on top of the hay.  This compost came from a compost pile that is pictured further down. 

This is the South end of the South West bed.  I worked in two sections because I had that hole to fill on the other end.  I left one basil plant in the ground, you can see it on the top right of this picture.

To the right you can barely make out the compost because I dumped all of the mulch to the right.  The compost bin was made from rabbit fencing.  I just make a 3 foot diameter circle with the rabbit fencing and it works great.  This is spring and summer compost.  That five gallon bucket was dumped into that bin and then covered with hay or mulch about 15 times.  It composts down to nothing.  All spring and summer and I ended up with one wheel barrow worth of compost. 

Here I made another tribann with landfill wood.  I've also already spread the above compost across the entire bed.

I stood on the roof of my truck to get this pic

see

There are three beds here that make up the invoking and south facing end of the tribann.  They are hard to see due to changes over the year in plant growth.  It's hard to tell also because I have spread mulch around. 

Here you can see three beds a bit better, although the tribann is loosing it distinctness because of the North West bed (the bed shown at the bottom of this pic).  I made what I'm calling a "keyhole hugel bed".  You can see to the right, that there is a small area not covered with as much mulch.  That is the entrance into the key hold hugel bed.  Lot's of microclimates are going to exist in that bed.  You can also see the gypsy house (two car garage) and the chicken coop just to the left of it.

I finished up by adding a foot of mulch on top of the mess. 

The SUN's Youth Rebellion

On my way to deliver the letter with the magic EIN number on it, I looked at my truck radio display and it read 3:33. My wife, whom was at home, looked at a digital clock at that same moment. The radio station 93.3, that I was listening to had decided to play Metallica's "Sad But True" for the journey. I pulled into the post office and watched that letter go down the post office box memory hole as the last chord from that song rang out. That song from my youth, when I was angry about life. It was cleansing.

 

Days before my 32nd birthday I placed my resignation letter on my supervisor's desk. This was more than just a resignation from the career I had worked for 6 years as a street medic for Piedmont EMS in the Upstate of South Carolina. This was my Resignation from the Matrix, which was picked up by Michael Ruppert and published on collapsenet as a free feature article for several months. It wasn't particularly well written, because I wrote it one night half drunk as a journal entry, and then emailed it to Ruppert. Apparently he read it and liked it. I worked a one month notice because that's what my supervisor asked of me. Her point was that I was going on vacation for two weeks on the next day, and so would I actually "work" a two week notice. Just days before resigning from my career I signed up to take part in a Permaculture class in Asheville NC called "Permaculture In Action." It was a 10 day, hands on, gathering of like minded people spread over five weekends from May to August. We learned permaculture methods while implementing design from paper to the land. We didn't create the designs, the instructors did. This was to be my new career. Permaculture. I resigned from the Matrix so that I could take permaculture seriously and devote all of my free time to it.

Starting in 2007, after reading James Howard Kunstler's, The Long Emergency, and gettin' edumacated to the concept of Peak Oil, I learned that infinite growth on a finite planet results in a particularly sordid predicament, and what was I going to do about it? Our civilization is completely dependent on a shrinking non-renewable resource. Look around you and notice all of the objects in your view. It's a safe bet that every single one of those objects has been in a trailer on the interstate at some point on it's likely over 2000 mile journey to you. It's also another good bet that some part of all of those objects has been on a large container ship from China as well. The power you are using to participate with your computer, the cup of Joe you're enjoying, and the food that keeps you alive, all have fossil fuel energy in common (even nuclear power is not possible without fossil fuel energy...at least as it's currently practiced). We have built our modern day global civilization on a limited resource! There are a LOT of ramifications from this one easily understood fact that's placed on us by the mandates of our physical reality.

Nearly five years after reading Kunstler's eye opening book, I was in front of my supervisor turning in my resignation. Five years of rabidly searching for the answer to the question "what am I going to do about our infinite growth paradigm on a finite planet?" I had become a father, and now the ante was raised by several orders of magnitude. In a label, permaculture was what I found to be the answer. Permaculture actually addresses a future where there is no longer any affordable fossil energy. It realizes the precarious nature our free energy inheritance is leaving us in. Staying alive as a material being requires energy via food. All 8 billion of us stay alive right now because we still have the cheap energy to run the large tractors and combine harvesters, and to manufacture and use the petroleum based pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, and natural gas based fertilizers. Our agricultural land has become a moonscape of dead dirt that does nothing other than act as a chemical sponge. Nothing can live in the dirt except for the genetically modified organisms that we've created to withstand the chemical onslaught. The bulk of the calories that keep us alive, the wheat in our pasta and bread, the rice in our bowl, the soy bean baby formula in our dairy allergic newborns, and the hundreds of corn derived ingredients in the nutrition free high fructose petroleum sugar, and the animal meat that you eat are all possible because of our massive monocroped agriculture which requires petroleum energy to exist. Permaculture recognizes that this is not a sustainable arrangement.

Even the "organic" agriculture in this country is really just the same old "green revolution" shit dressed up in a delusional "we're gonna save the Earth" drag. They spray chemicals just like their Monsanto dependent counterparts. Granted, it's better than conventional agriculture, but it's still not enough. It's not "sustainable." Monoculture agriculture, devoid of the cheap energy, collapses under the weight of it's own gargantuan flesh. Permaculture provides the answers to this mess we're in. I'm always weary of saying such a thing. That this or that provides ALL of the answers, but it's true in this case...this is a too good to be true actually being true. Mark Shepard, the architect of "New Forest Farm" and author of Restoration Agriculture, provides proof to my claim. Perennial forest agriculture is a sustainable practice that is capable of withstanding a changing climate. It can provide us with the calories and nutrition that we need to live. The bulk of the calories in this system come from perennial tree nuts and animal products like milk, eggs, and meat. Petroleum inputs of any kind are not necessary (although they sure do help getting the system up and matured). My point is, Permaculture provides the solutions we need for the post-petroleum world that we're standing on the brink of. I know of no other entity which can make this claim.

Given that you understand the predicament we are in as a global civilization, and given that you want to do something about it rather than nothing, what are you going to do? Permaculture can save us, but it can't save us if we don't practice it and implement it on our landscapes. I have two children now, Ayden Zen whom is 3 and Harper Tribann whom is 5 months. They are collectively the most beautiful thing I have ever done (aside from the Goddess I did to create them). Next to my family the most beauty I have ever created I have done in my backyard using permaculture principles. I have no doubt in my mind that given enough time I'll be able to use this 1.6 acre lot (and hopefully the six acres that surround the Fox Den that are currently owned by in-laws) to keep my family thriving, alive and healthy, and to create a surplus to share with the surrounding community. I'll be doing this using permaculture principles and strategies. Permaculture may not provide my family and I with the money we need to buy the things we buy in this current perpetual growth paradigm, but it will provide us with the food, medicine, raw natural materials, shelter, energy, and community that we need to live a life that is more than worthwhile, but exciting and full of meaning. With any luck it will keep my tribe out of any kind of government line.

I have concluded that there is no better way to spend my time than permaculture. I can practice it every day in the company of my family while creating beauty and regeneration. I believe that is possible. It's already happening. My plan has been a two pronged plan. Practice permaculture and go to school for a nursing license in order to ensure my family will have access to the digibits that are required of us. The problem with this plan is that it lands me in another wealth care career that I will not be able to stomach. I burned out after six years on the meat wagon. But I didn't burn out because of the death, disease, and destruction that comes with knowing the Reaper intimately. I loved that part of the job. I revealed in getting to know what the Grim Reaper actually looks like, and I even got in a few fights with him.  

A quick anecdote from my real past:

 I managed to kick the Grim Reapers ass out of the back of my meat wagon once.  He made himself my business when someones grandma dropped dead while shopping at Walmart. She walked out of the hospital a couple of months later on her own two legs (well, she was wheeled out cause it was hospital policy, but she was able to walk). One time in six years I actually got a "save." I burned out due to the bureaucratically generated bull shit that came from the Bull Shit Black Hole that feeds our wealth care system. We went from being taught that our job began and ended with "patient care" to being told that we were responsible for the happiness of our "customers." That is how our rotten health care system looks at you now. You are no longer a patient to heal, but a customer to keep happy. That's because the lawyers, medical insurance, and big international pharmaceutical companies dictate the nature of our wealth care. It's ALL about making money. End of Subject.

I'm not plugging back into the Matrix. I'm going all rogue Permaculture on the Matrix's ass. And at any rate I destroyed the ports on my physical body that allow me to plug back in, anarchy happened to my Matrix equipment. I'm a permanent inhabitant of what Jason Heppenstall calls Realandia. The place you come to inhabit when you take the red pill. People are too afraid to do anything meaningful about our meaningless perpetual growth paradigm. I'm no longer afraid. I was recently told that I've "got some balls" to do what I'm doing. Giving the Matrix the finger and all. I responded to that claim, "well, they stuck my ass in a solitary cell, and fed me nothing but bread and water, due to my protest about killing thousands of people via bombs from the jets launched off of the US Navy carrier I was splitting atoms on...so I guess I know what I'm up against." Maybe I do have some balls, but I don't frame it that way. I see it as that I am doing what I am supposed to be doing. It is my responsibility to help in this transition that our species is going through. I have the tools and the mindset. I have the training. In truth, I have been bred for this my entire life. I have been searching for something worth my time ever since I can remember. Even EMS failed me, and I was able to find myself in a moral dilemma with being the help?!?! That speaks volumes to me.

This is not my resignation to the Matrix. I turned that in already. This is my "fuck you" to the Matrix. I'm not afraid of you. What I am afraid of is what you're ensuring will happen if I, and many people like me, don't do...something. If we don't resist your stupid dictates than we will get what your incompetence has planned for us all. We will get a climate that won't support human life, we'll get more and more super bugs resistant to our drugs and chemicals, we'll get nuclear contaminated radioactive material blanketing the globe (this has already happened...did you know that 14,000 deaths in America are attributed to the fall out from Fukishima Daiichi), we'll get a completely collapsed fishery as our ocean loses the ability to buffer the carbon levels due to acidification thanks to our dependence on petrochemicals, well get more and more neutered and dysfunctional governments, well get less and less nutrition in our food, and we'll get sicker and sicker as Big Pharma crams more and more frankenchemical fukitol derivatives down our collective throats. The Matrix has no answers for a world on the backside of perpetual growth.

I will not be acquiring a mursing license from the Ministry of Health. From this point forward I will be practicing permaculture principles. I'm now an agent for a non-profit corporation called the SUN Foundation (sustaining universal needs). The foundation is headquartered here, at my current residence in the Palookaville sector of Whoville. I have a gaggle of geniuses on my side over at the Doomstead Diner. Essentially the Diner has become a think tank. We talk about Realandia and what we're going to do and are doing about it. The SUN Foundation is the result of more than a year of this think tank activity. It has fermented into the SUN and I am one of it's agents. I believe that the SUN Foundation is a magnate that is attracting the most brilliant thinkers and doers available. 

We have members in Australia (which is good due to it being in the southern hemisphere, away from the potentially 15,000 times more nuclear radiation than the atom bombs dropped on Japan, ending the second world war, that is damn near fated to happen with one of the next earth quakes, or tsunamis, that are happening at increasing frequencies around Japan), England, and all over the U.S. Our ideas and tactics will go viral and we will make the Matrix obsolete. We're attempting to use the Matrix against itself by playing the game by their stupid rules. If you're interested in learning more about the SUN Foundation (we're still working on the website because we just got incorporated) you can go here and read till your hearts content. We're gonna fix this mess one tree at a time. One durable and inexpensive shelter at a time. One Foxstead at a time.

But my Fox Den is still alive and thriving, and it's beginning to multiply and grow. Like Gremlins, the more bull shit they get on us, the more we will become. The Fox Den is metamorphosing into a Foxstead which will in turn replicate into many Foxsteads. Or I'll fuckin' die trying. They're gonna have to pry my cold dead fingers off of this Fox Den. I've got a Vixen and Kits to keep healthy and happy, and I've got a community to build that can withstand the post-petroleum future they are guaranteed to inherit. What are you gonna do about that? Dear reader!

Ayden's Inaugural Camp

 There are a lot of pictures I should have included in this photoblog.  It's been a while since I've posted one of these.  So these pics are from one memory card from one day of taking pictures from one day in the life of the McCarty clan.  I've been busy outside, dancing with nature lately while fathering my children, and so too busy to write much.  But I trust these pictures say all that needs to be said.  So I'll let them say it (although I do add words as captions...mostly because I can't help myself...I have a guilty love affair with words). 

Ayden picked this flower from the hugel bed, presented it to his mother, and then she saw a heart in it...see the heart?

Hugel bed two still being concocted.  All mulch and wood comes from the county dump by the truck load.  As in, I go to the dump and fork each load into my truck. 

Several days into the moult

Chicken chillin' I suppose

Harper Tribann McCarty

Bo Beppa and me inspecting the Tribann Aji Amerillo plant

This North West facing bed, that completes the Tribann my garden is arranged in, upgraded for fall with a fresh load of mulch

This Habanero plant has two Habaneros on it...it was ripped out of the ground in late spring and transplanted into the NW bed, I reckon that bitch is gonna be hot...and I've learnt that peppers like to be smacked around.

Tribann's foreskin is buried beneath this plant...Aji Amerillo turning orange and picking up strong citrus overtones in the ripening process

A 19th century coal burning stove in the North bed

my attempt to keep the chickens off the bed long enough for some winter rye and hairy vetch to sprout...so far so good

The new south east to north earth hugel bed land bridge

this blueberry plant was transplanted here, in the South East Hugel bed in late spring...it's managed to survive the hugel bed succession which is amazing

 Cayenne almost dried on the plant

Aji Amerillo just about dried on the plant

gourd

"PooPoo Maters" that volunteered themselves in last years humanure pile growing next to polk salate berries (which are poisonous).  I find the juxtaposition of perfect sun warmed tomatoes growing next to a plant which is poisonous to humans to be deeply satisfying on many levels.   

compost alley overrun by nature...I listened, adapted, and moved my compost operation elsewhere

My message to the future...television was here

Floating Zen Head (his name is Gaelic and literally translated into "little fire" from my understanding of the moniker at least

See Ayden Zen?

Zen's first camp in the back garden

I love how the light is competing in this picture.  Nature appears to be winning

And a "good night" from Ayden Zen from his tent, at the end of the universe.  His first tent...I bought it when I was 16 years old and backpacked in it all over the United States until Wendy and I got married and purchased a new backpacking tent.  Now it's Ayden's tent.  Proof that if you buy quality gear and take care of it, it will last for generations. 

Occupy Monsanto

When RE, head admin and creator of the Doomstead Diner, asked me to write an article about the evils of Monsanto I was a bit confused by the request at first. "Aren't we just preachin' to the choir" I wanted to know. What am I going to write about that most people don't already know? Most of what I know is from documentary films such as Food Inc., a Michael Pollan book or two (as well as many other books), the occasional internet article, as well as the annual report generated straight from Hell. Haven't heard of that report? It's called the Earth Rape Newspeak Players Ball Report and it's discussed at the annual Newspeak Players Ball. This is the real purpose of the Bilderberger meeting every year. It's where the awards are handed out by Satan himself. Monsanto has won four out of the last 10 awards with Satan praising their use of the word sustainability. He took the time to point out (at last years Earth Rape) how wonderfully crafted and full of diverse and pure Newspeak Monsanto's "AboutUs" section of their website is:

 

At the heart of Monsanto is a very clear and principled code of conduct – one we expect all employees, contractors and management to live by every day. We operate under a genuine value system—our pledge—that demonstrates integrity, respect, ethical behavior, perspective and honesty as a foundation for everything we do.

A key part of fulfilling the promise of our value system is by engaging our communities in a significant and positive manner. Not only do we work hard to support the family farmer in a variety of ways, but we also:

• provide extensive educational programs – particularly in science and agriculture – for students around the world

• fund numerous research grants for graduate students

• work in partnership with government bodies, non-profit agencies and advocacy groups to make agriculture more sustainable"

While I'm at it, here's a video from Monsanto's website that might make you throw up a few times.

This type of write up makes me very angry. Newspeak makes me angry in general. But this is particularly pernicious Newspeak. Monsanto making agriculture more sustainable? Is that why 16,196 Indian farmers killed themselves in 2008, with over 15,000 suicides a year from 2002 to 2008 according to Wiki. These deaths are mainly due to Monsanto's BT cotton, but more to the point it's due to Monsanto's "sustainable" agriculture methods. Now, I study and practice permaculture methods, which are actually sustainable agriculture methods. Monsanto practices chemical mediated, genetically modified, monoculture. Sustainability with plants depends mostly on diversity. That's why in nature you don't see monocultures. You see thousands of different species of plants growing in a true melting pot of diversity.

Monsanto's agriculture is the opposite of sustainable. They move into a country and get the farmers (whom practice sustainable agriculture passed on through generations) to plant their GM seeds which will not grow without Monsanto's application of poisonous chemicals. So now the farmer is beholden to Monsanto to get their crops to grow. To add insult to injury the seeds are what are known as "terminator seeds" because subsequent generations of the plant are sterile and will not produce the next years crop. So the farmer must buy more seeds from Monsanto. By this time Monsanto has complete control of the farmer (and their land) since the farmer cannot afford to continue the charade without a hefty loan from the bank, which they will never be able to repay since they will never see a profit. No worries, cause Monsanto doesn't give two shits about the farmers and their human needs. They've got huge machines that run by satellite programming to do the job of the farmer. This is the real reason why there has been an epidemic of Indian farmers committing suicide over the last ten years. So I guess if farmers killing themselves, genetically modified terminator seeds, and numerous application of deadly poisons is sustainable than Monsanto has nailed it. So this is the "variety of ways" that Monsanto "supports the family farmer"? By making them debt slaves whom find it practical to hang themselves?

There are many evils associated with what Monsanto is doing, but to my estimation, the most evil thing they have attempted to do is to patent life itself. Percy Schmeiser, of Saskatchewan Canada, can tell you all about that. His story is pretty well known, but in 1998 Monsanto sued him for growing their patented GM canola seed. Now, he didn't grow their seeds, their seeds contaminated his 50 years of work cultivating an heirloom canola variety. That happened because nature has this amazing capacity to pollinate with pollinators. His fields got contaminated with Monsanto's bull shit and then Monsanto sued Schmeiser for growing their crop without permission (luckily they did not succeed). I guess maybe next Monsanto will try to take the birds and the Bees to court for cross pollinating their patented genetic modifications?  What's with the birds and bees anyways? Don't they know there is law to follow?  Damn nature and it's anarchic form of resilient life.

As far as genetically modifying natures design goes, this is what Monsanto has to say about that completely risk free practice: 

 There is no need to test the safety of DNA introduced into GM crops. DNA (and resulting RNA) is present in almost all foods. DNA is non-toxic and the presence of DNA, in and of itself, presents no hazard. 

 Indeed, no need to test the effects of splicing non-plant DNA into plants such as the "fish tomato" with it's winter flounder anitfreeze transgene spliced into it for better frost protection. Granted, this fish tomato was not brought to us by Monsanto, but their logic applies here, and they were the first company to apply genetic modification to food crops. There is no need to test whether or not this is a safe practice because "DNA is present in almost all foods" and DNA is "non-toxic." Right, so sign me up for a "fish tomato" sandwich with round up ready corn on the cob. While I'm at it, why not some genetically modified soy formula for my 3 month old with a BT Cotton onesie. Might as well get him ready for his diet of mostly poisonous food so that he can get a head start on being sick for the rest of his life. But hey, at least he won't be hungry while he's dying from cancer.

The last thing we need is more chemicals on planet Earth. Monsanto is in the business of making humanity even more dependent on chemicals. A quick google search for "pollution in the womb" uncovered this gem:

 

Umbilical cord blood from 10 babies was tested for 413 industrial chemicals and pollutants. The tests found an average of 200 of these chemicals in each newborn, and a total of 287 chemicals in the group. The umbilical cord blood of the 10 babies harboured pesticides, consumer product ingredients, and wastes from burning coal, gasoline and garbage. Some of the chemicals found in the cord blood are banned or severely restricted in the US.

Among the chemicals found were:
- eight perfluorochemicals used as stain and oil repellants in fast food packaging, clothes and textiles, including the Teflon chemical PFOA. PFOA was recently characterized as a likely human carcinogen.
- 21 organochloride pesticides.
- dozens of widely used brominated flame retardants (PBDEs) and their toxic by products, used in TVs, computers, foam and many other products. They are also found in some foods.

Of the 287 chemicals detected in the study, 180 are known to cause cancer in humans or animals, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 208 cause birth defects or abnormal development in animal tests.

I wonder how many of those organochloride pesticides are brought to us by Monsanto and their ilk? So we're going to Occupy Monsanto on September 17th. Everywhere. Not sure what my part will be short of writing this article. But maybe I'll put a sign up on the busy roadside in front of my house that says something like "Monsanto pollutes our wombs." Or "Monsanto causes cancer." Anything to bring attention to the evil that is being perpetuated in the name of profit by this ridiculous company and the food production philosophy they labor to cultivate. We don't need genetically modified foods in moncultures. It is not a sustainable practice. It is quite the opposite in fact. It causes more virulent and pesticide resistant pests for our food crops. It causes slaves to be made from simple farmers whom then kill themselves out of desperation. It causes humanity to ultimately be at the mercy of those who would seek to control all of our food for no other reason than profit via patents on plant DNA.

The question you have to ask yourself is do you want your food to be cheap, nutritionally deficient, and destructive to sustainable cultures throughout the world? Or do you want your food to be nutritious and produced using natural methods that mimic natures design while facilitating healthy human societies? We can do that as a species if we decide to. There is a lot stopping us from accomplishing the later goal, and Monsanto is behind a good bit of that reasoning. There is no reason why we can't produce all of the food we need as a species in a way that is regenerative, healthy, and supportive of all life systems involved in the ecology of food production. It's not a mystery. We know how to do it, and it does not require the use of man made chemicals that pollute the wombs of our unborn children, cause cancer, and convince simple farmers that killing themselves is a better option than remaining Monsanto slaves. We have the solutions. We can fix this mess. But we won't if you don't pull your head out of the sand and start paying attention to the evil's being perpetuated by corporations whom care about nothing but profit. And at the expense of the health of our planet and all of the species on it. We don't own the Earth, but we do share it with billions of other life forms, a healthy majority of which we are actively exterminating with the practices of our civilizations Big Agriculture headed up by the likes of Monsanto.

Zeitgeist Culture

I don't know how this looks, but I know how it sounds. Get some...of the love...blasting from the consciousness we all know is siphoning Earth love, Gaia, Ganja... it's a culture to which I belong fuck BAU, and fuck inauthenticity

Meet Rebelution

This is my home, my message, my lineage, and the perfect expression of where our species is

American Chicken Shit Corn Smut

Corn Smut...now there is a nuanced and serendipitously generated piece of American reality. The above picture came from a newfangled hybrid corn that happens to be purple, and sold at Lowes, that I grew a foot away from the roost that holds fifteen chicken asses...that's in my permaculture trailer park haven...next to the trailer park hugelmeadow that I hockity pockity wocked into existence...to hear my wife tell it. So the corn smut, that our government apparently spent "time and money trying to eradicate," that the Mexican culture has embraced due to edibility, dubbed huitlacoche,which means something along the lines of "sleeping Raven's excrement" (by my reading of wiki's entry on the topic). How perfect is that for a symbol to attach to the idea that America is a terminal, end stage, cancerous growth on homo sapien culture? The melting pot of culture brewed into a homogenous retardation of all that is good about our species. Corn smut...it's a corn tumor that enters the ovary of the plant and becomes the seed kernel itself, it's a fungus that sends out conjugation tubes to form hypha which parasitize the corn flesh. The corn kernel becomes corn smut.

I know that this corn smut is ripe with symbolism about what has happened to our culture. Our anti-culture as I like to call it. Interestingly enough, today I read about the Roma (gypsy) culture while reading Orlov's latest on the five stages of collapse. They live on the margins of any society, parasitizing the Gadjo (non-gypsy) culture, and they represent the best human cultural adaptation to the future we are rapidly approaching. According to Dmitry Orlov, they stand the best chance of surviving the collapsed end of this cancerous, Golden Rule smut ramification of, industrially consumptive, fossil fuel powered, cultural retardation. That is to say that the gypsy way will most probably survive the end of industrial civilization.

There is much about Roma culture that I find to be extremely fascinating. They are petty thieves who persist on tricking polite society into unwittingly supplying them with what they need to thrive. I guess they are similar to corn smut. They are also similar to the mythical trickster fox whom just takes what he needs from you via his trickery and then disappears. They hide in plain sight by hiding who they are, and they are generally considered a nuisance to those whom control the digibit levers. Sometimes it's easier to simply deal with them by banishment, and some governments have done so. I want to join the Roma culture, but seeing as how the only way to do so is to marry in, and I'm already married, there will be no gypsy made of me. However, my wife's avatar is "Gypsy Mama," (over at the Doomstead Diner) and she is so gypsy like that I'm convinced she is in fact unknowingly gypsy by family lineage.

Let me give you an example of what I mean by employing my favorite medium of literary conveyance called anecdote. Today my wife rounded up a bunch of consumer shit that we've managed to come into possession of. We've come to possess all of this, mostly plastic, Chinese made, stupid shit via the usual American avenues of mindless consumption. That mindless consumption happens without our participation, and ends up being given to us due to socially mandated empty rituals like baby showers, Christmas, birthdays, and whatever other reason us Americans have to go practice consumer therapy in the box store refrigerator habitats that house humans too fat to walk. They ride motorized consumer scooters while shopping for their fat inducing coma ridden soma high petroleum corn sugared treats. So now that I'm done explaining the nature of the stupid plastic shit that my wife rounded up today, let me proceed with the promise of anecdote in the next paragraph.

Today my wife returned consumer items to retail stores for store credit. Things like the safety knobs we've had on our gas oven that keep our toddler from burning the house down. She tried to return a dumb ass talking potty (that my son pinched a loaf in a time or two...and maybe pissed in a few hundred times...we didn't like the song the toilet sang was why we returned it...in perfect Gadjoesqueness)  but the new brainwashed employee refused refund, siting sanitation, (which I can't argue with...but Wendy figures she'll take it back again next time and hopefully the next proletariat dumb ass will acquiesce). I mean, let's forget about the damage that said talking toilet could have potentially done to my son had I not removed the batteries within days of the toilet being brought to defecating digital madness. There it is again...defecation...sleeping Raven excrement...tied to American anti-culture. What type of culture thinks that talking toilets that congratulate your water head toddler on his stinkin' MacDonald's fried shit is a good idea? Ethical even? WTF? We need plastic potties manufactured on the backs of starving third world children? And my wife and I are supposed to feel badly about returning this stupid plastic shit for organic baby formula to feed our exceptional newborn?

See, I do feel badly about it when I'm with my wife as she runs these legal scams (there are many corporate store policies that include no question asked, no receipt, returns). The reasons I feel badly about the returns are due to unconscious scripts that the anti-culture I've been brought up in have programmed into me. Logically I get why I should not feel guilty about it, but I still do. I especially hate the looks and sounds that are directed at you from the consumer zombies who are stuck in line behind you. My wife on the other hand just feeds her baby while in line, and says things to those behind her like "sometimes you just gotta feed your baby while you return shit." She's unaffected by the social program that says she's being a dishonest citizen of this FSoA (failed states of America). Today, she brought that senseless planned obsolescence back to the corporate monster that's destroyed anything resembling a descent American culture, and she bought about three months of formula with it (don't worry, she's breast feeding, but Tribann requires a LOT of calories to grow his physical form, and if he doesn't get them than stress erupts all over the place via forms like torturous eczema on my wife's hands).

This is one of the ways we use to generate money, or the digibit credits to acquire what our family needs. We subsist on the margins of society, in a gray area, living comfortably by taking advantage of the stupid and mindless cultural taboos embraced by our consumer cult of progress anti-culture. Government grants for college, medicaid for healthcare (except for me that is...Uncle Sam will excise a chunk of my vas deferens so I can't procreate any longer...but if I got a toothache, or a broke arm, I can go fuck myself), and a life paid for by the shadow of American waste. I'm a professional student these days. Learning how to work for the Ministry of Health. Well...learning is probably the wrong word...more like learning how to take tests (which Orlov points out in his latest book). I can take a test like a motherfucker...and on short notice.

Our just in time bull shit is about to be out of time. The writing is all over the god damned wall. Just look around outside. Look at the people you know who are a pussy hair away from economic non-person status, bankruptcy, and Limarita fueled, fermented, piss smelling destitution. I've got kids trying to thrive in this shit! Filled with hundreds of cancer causing chemicals en utero, usurping our women's ovaries to become tumor like growth on the maize that supplies the feedstock for something like 70% of our human bodies on the molecular level...according to a stat I read in one of Michael Pollan's books. We are the corn people. Warning, Big Lebowski Turrets dead ahead.

"I've got some corn, I've got some corn so big I can't even sit down...but you know me...I can't complain."

"Fuckin' A, I've got some corn smut man."

Indeed dude, I've got some corn smut. It grew on a newfangled, probably genetically modified, Ruby Queen corn stalk just next to 15 shittin' chicken asses in my back yard. Apparently corn smut has similar characteristics to ergot, which is associated with LSD. I don't know...I love and cherish Mexican food and Mexican culture. Mexicans eat corn smut, or huitlacoche, and they do that because it's edible, and the world doesn't care about our guts. It's practical, common sense even, and I get it. 

So now that I'm done pitching my two cents into the TEOTWAWKI blogosphere I'm off to eat some huitlacoche...here's to it's LSD like qualities. And here's to a new breed of post-petroleum people's who will most probably be gypsy like, and may be found hiding in a mythical place called the Foxstead...one day. Or maybe I'll take my wife and sons and join my uncles in SoCal, where I was hatched; who have plans to retire from the American hologram and take part in the growing sea gypsy movement. Apparently the apple don't fall far from the genetic tree. I've got a sail boat going uncle, and I may buy a sail boat with my Ministry of Health money, and join him. Polar bears are floating on chunks of ice in the arctic, and sea level is rising. What better way to adapt than a gypsy sea culture subsisting on gorilla grown food? If I end up buying a sail boat...Ima name it the Gypsy Corn Smut.  I think the future is going to be something resembling Waterworld...only it's fruition is maybe 50 to 100 years from now.