IT PAYS TO SHOP AROUND

(Article #3 in a series of articles on the changes happening in the USA and the world and how to deal with them.)

I should have remembered that before I married my first wife. Also my second. Oh, and also the third. In hindsight, they probably should have, too. But this is about actual shopping at the grocery store for more long-term storage food, for when the stores all run out. This morning I went first to Dollar General and found one item on my list that was low priced, Vegetable Oil. 2 year Use-By date. I have plenty but more is always good if the price is cheap.

Then went to Family Dollar and found some store-brand cans of veggies, green beans, creamed corn and sweet peas, with long Use-By dates. 4 cans of each. Their food shelves were all half empty or more, worst I’ve ever seen it there.

Then off to Von’s for the stuff the discount stores didn’t have, where I bought a Mega-size jar of Ibuprofin, 2 boxes of 2.5 minute Cream of Wheat and 2 large boxes of Raisin Bran, again with long exp. dates. Now’s the time to get wheat products if you haven’t already. It’s not that there won’t be any, there will, but there will be a lot less than before and the price has already soared for bread, etc.

Lastly to Grocery Outlet where I didn’t find anything else that I haven’t already stocked well up on except something I normally never buy, which is sodas. I bought a case each of Root Beer and Dr. Pepper. They’ll keep forever in my Cold Room and be an occasional treat to brighten my day. PLUS I scored on Chicken Wings.

Previously I mentioned that chicken wings are now $8 a pound at Vons. When I returned home from that shopping shock, I checked the subject out on Google and sure enough, prices for the ever-popular wings have gone crazy. But there in front of me in the meat section at Grocery Outlet was a big pile of packs of wings, priced at $3.49 a pound. Figuring I’ll never see them that low again, I bought 10 packs, which came to about 17 pounds and they’re now safely tucked away in my freezer.

The point here about those wings is that even though I sneered at $3.49 a pound wings just a week ago as being way overpriced, I shouldn’t have. Things have changed, folks, and they’re going to keep on doing it. If you can find a relative bargain like that for any preferred food, get it now. I do love a plate of hot, spicy chicken wings.

About my Cold Room, it’s a small shed built to fit in the space available in the back yard and is 7 feet wide and 12 feet long, with heavy, thick insulation. Not-fiberglass, the insulation is a sort of wood fiber on a paper backing. R-13. Walls and ceiling. Door is wood core, steel exterior, purchased already framed up and seals tightly.

To keep it cool there’s a Frigidaire 5000 BTU A.C. which uses about 500 watts when going full power, plugged directly into a Willhi model wh1436 programmable electronic thermostat from Amazon, ($29) that’s plugged directly into a 120 VAC outlet and is set to turn the AC on at 68 degrees and off at 63 degrees. Even if the outside temperature hits 100, this room stays between 63 and 68 degrees.

That means that normal use-by dates are greatly extended because of the constant low temperature the food is kept at. The little AC unit was cheap, the thermostat was cheap and considering the $1000’s of dollars worth of food in there, the system is a bargain. PLUS, my 1.2 kilowatt photovoltaic array will easily power it all if the electricity fails from SoCal Edison. The hottest part of the day is when the sun shines the most so steady power is assured.

SUMMARY: Even if you only have room for another refrigerator, get a used one as big as you have room to put it and fill it with canned and boxed food. It doesn’t have to stay as cold as you’d want it for stuff like milk and eggs, set it to stay between 50 and 65 if you can. A large frig loaded only with “non-perishables” like canned goods, dried and condensed food, can keep a person going for up to a year. At the least, find the coolest dry place in your home to store flour, sugar, noodles, etc. Worst case scenario is that you’ll have to eat it all sooner or later.

MOVING DAY

Article #2 in a series of articles on the changes happening in the USA and the world and how to deal with them.

So you’ve decided to move out of your crime infested area to a safer, less overcrowded place. Good idea, except…. you won’t find any work there because that’s why it’s not crowded, there’s no work. But it will be crowded soon enough because millions of dirt poor people with nothing are pouring into America and they will find this mecca of yours, and survive with their government issued EBT cards. They’ll move into every single abandoned home and building, they’ll set up camp in back yards, they’ll break into locked garages and sleep on the floors and burn down lots of them with their cooking fires and probably the connecting house as well.

Think it won’t happen? Look around. Check out the homeless encampments in Los Angeles, tell me that doesn’t shake your shit, huh? And that’s just there.

What you need to keep from being a sheep is Community Organization, not moving. Only if there’s already so much criminal activity right where you live that staying there is suicide, should you try to relocate to a safer place. Safer places are disappearing right now, you need to make the place you have safer if you possibly can.

So start Community Organizing. Avoid the subject of Politics and focus on Group Safety, Group Awareness, Neighborhood Watch. Find out who has military experience, medical knowledge, is or was in law enforcement, any survivalist types, herbalists. People with skills. You will find some don’t want to be bothered while others are natural leaders and organizers. If you can get this ball rolling, others may take over and carry the ball. You’ll need a regular meeting place or at least a place where the leaders can be called together when needed, to create plans of action. It’s important that once your community is organized for survival, that you stay connected to each other frequently, form ties and friendships.

For a good example, during the Watts riots many years back, when the blacks were out looting and burning the stores, they made a very short run at the shops owned by the Vietnamese immigrants. Short because the Vietnamese were on their rooftops with rifles and shot the looters when they came to loot and burn. That was the end of that. Vietnamese are not sheep. Arm up.

The worst problem when organizing your community, whether it’s a tenement building or an entire neighborhood, is always the arrogant, know it all assholes who bully their way into being the Big Leader, and who actually don’t know squat about tactics, they just want to be in charge and give orders. This is why you should always elect your leaders by democratic vote and have a council of them with equal say. Majority rules. Odd numbered council, like the Supreme Court, so the vote can never be even except for abstentions. 9 is a good number. No President or Chairman, no Big Leader. Just a council that decides.

There you have it. Pretend you’re Vietnamese, you have to stick together because you’re strangers in a strange land but at least you speak the same language and have the same goal, to survive. And if you don’t think you’re in a strange land now, you need to pay much better attention.

AISLE WARS

This is the first in a series of articles on the changes happening in the USA and the world and how to deal with them.

In 2020 it was Toilet Paper. All the media assured everyone that toilet paper was in short supply during the Epidemic, so of course all the good sheep ran out and stripped the stores across our great land bare of toilet paper. Some of those hoards are probably still being wiped out. Yes, bad pun.

Today it’s baby food. Women are clearing the shelves of baby food and selling it on ebay and Amazon at huge markups, and this wouldn’t be happening if our media wasn’t telling us that there’s a shortage of baby food.

It reminds me of hydroxychloroquine, a proven effective treatment for Covid19 that our government assured us was fish tank cleaner and would kill us. Word got out that it was a cure and before it disappeared completely off the shelves, ebay and Amazon, the price had roared up to $600 an ounce as panicked sheep fought each other for it.

There was a time when American Citizenship was a huge deal, people worked hard and studied hard to become an American citizen, and were truly proud when they succeeded. You couldn’t get in if you had a disease, parasites, a criminal history or seemed mentally ill. Not anymore, now the gates are flung wide open and all the filth, diseases, bugs, criminal intent and mental problems come right on in, no problem, here’s a driver’s license, EBT card and a housing voucher.

So of course there’s going to be more diseases, more pandemics. The latest disease we never had before but do now is Monkey Pox, which makes pus blisters all over the body and came here on some Africans who just walked in from Mexico with the rest. No one gave them or any of the other millions a medical check before they entered the US.

Everyone, even the Left media like CNN, is saying that the Biden administration is deliberately destroying our economy. It appears to be true but I don’t want to get into conspiracy stuff. It is true that our economy is being destroyed whether it’s deliberate or not. I think at least part of the problem is massive incompetence, and it doesn’t matter if I’m right or not because how it affects us is the only issue we have any means to deal with, anyway.

So, HOARDING. Hoarding is when you spend your steadily devaluing money on buying lots of overpriced stuff that you’ve been feared into believing you won’t get anymore. Chicken wings, for instance. Yesterday I went shopping and thought to get some wings and they were $8 a pound, and I dropped the package like it was burning my hand. You should do the same because chicken wings are not worth more than the price of good steak. Did you know that they used to get thrown away, until places like Hooters made them popular? Don’t be a sheep.

What you should do, with your grocery money, is go to the discount stores like Winco and The Cannery (or similar wholesale-to-the-public) and first get your normal groceries, then buy extra as you can afford it of a variety of things you eat. Every can and bottle has an expiration date, make sure whatever it is is good for at least a year ahead.

If you don’t own firearms, you should, and a supply of ammo for them. The influx of desperate and starving foreigners into our country is increasing and I’d count on it getting a lot worse. All these people want what you have, I don’t care if it’s a dirty used mattress under a crowded overpass, someone will want to take that from you. No matter how impoverished you are right now, the people swarming in have nothing at all and your shit looks really good to them. Always keep that in mind.

Law enforcement isn’t too great anymore. The cops have been defunded and vilified, many have left for other careers, and a lot of crimes are just ignored. The prisons are packed, the courts are packed and budgets have been cut while crime rates are soaring because of so much unvetted immigration. Mexican cartels operate freely now, just for one. So if you carry a concealed weapon without a license for it, which is a felony in most states, and get caught with it, if you’re just an average citizen you may just get probation. There is that risk. Does the risk of some jail time or probation outweigh the risk of being robbed and shot dead? That’s up to you. Baa. If you live where open carry isn’t prohibited, even better.