We have arrived.
Rain
It’s Sunday. The rain makes working outside problematic, so I’m sitting with a receiver keeping track of what’s going on while trying to figure out what I’m gonna do with two boxes of ceramic tiles.
The little notebook you see I made myself six years ago, during COVID. Thick, low acid drawing paper with a construction paper cover. Made a few entries in it, and then put up on a shelf with other writing implements for 6 years. Saw it this morning, and put it back in circulation. So far the only thing written in it today so far are a few new VHF frequency loggings. I’m ok with that so far. The sticker on front is from The Wander Society, and I neither confirm nor deny membership in same.
I like to listen.
Communications monitoring is one of those activities that helps keep you in the know. Combine that with congress.gov, AP, NPR, and maybe some Canadian Clear Channel AM stations . You’ll have a good idea of what’s going on. Combine those with daily observations as you go about your business, and not only will you know how bad it is out there, but also how bad it isn’t.
Let’s put that into an old-school survivalist’s perspective. Back in 1990, long before many of you were into this sort of thing, I gave the country 6, maybe 7, years before collapsing. And let me tell you a lot of crap happened over those years to keep me on that timeline: Waco, Ruby Ridge, OKC, Rodney King, and WTC (the first time) to name a few. Then 1997 happened, and the country was still here. Not saying it was in totally great shape, but it was serviceable. Still is for the most part, albeit a little more shopworn. That brings me up to the next big event after my friend’s military show.
Election Day
We have a Mid-Term Election coming up next month. Here is what I think is going to happen. Solid Democrat and Republican states are probably going to stay with their respective parties. Swing states will probably go Democrat. MAGA will claim massive election fraud by leftwing insurgents or some similar nonsense. The Dems will have a majority in one or both houses of Congress, but not a supermajority. Expect a deadlock on any legislation that will matter after the new year. Trump may or may not make it for the remaining two years of his term. He’ll probably double down on his current stupidity if he stays in, and go so far as further alienate non-MAGA Republicans. In two years we’ll see a Democrat President and both houses of Congress, but it’ll take them long enough to unscrew everything that the normie American public will get pissed at them, and we’ll see one or both houses flip on the Midterm Election of 2030. Basically, an eternal return of same shit, different decade.
I could be wrong, however. Trump and friends might hit new levels of fucktarded in the next couple of weeks, giving the Democrats a super-majority in both houses. Impeachment will certainly come afterwards. Trump will probably resign before taking that hit, allowing President Vance to pardon him. Then becomes a repeat of Nixon/Ford, which means we get another Jimmy Carter for President in two years, followed by another Ronald Reagan. Most of you are too young to remember the 1980s, but it was an interesting, feral time.
Retro Have you played Atari today?
Commodore came out with a retro C64 not too long ago, and I was strongly considering getting one. I now find out today that Atari has done the same with the 800XL. I owned an 800XL in High School. It was my upgrade after a Commodore VIC-20. Paid a tad over $100 for one at Toys R’ Us in Yonkers, NY. Why did I change brands? Price and software availability. My only local BBS was an Atari system. The SYSOP ran it on a 130XE which I bought from him after he upgraded to a 520ST. He later switched to an MS-DOS system before moving out of state.
I keep my eyes open at the swap meets for another 130XE. Did quite a bit of hacking on that machine back in the day, using nothing but BASIC and a few snippets of 6502 Assembly. It got the job done. For now I think I’m gonna have to order one of those new retro 800XLs.
