On Crystal Balls And Monkeys

15 October 2016 - For publication on 18 October 2016

With mere days left in US Election 2016, we here at Far Side Global Headquarters (FSGHQ) are prepared to issue our predictions for the coming month and beyond.  Brace yourself...it ain't pretty unless you are a political atheist who enjoys watching people's illusions melt in the hands, not in their mouths.

Imagine the 2000 election on steroids.

First of all, Hillary will be taken out of the race in a very public and unequivocal way due to health problems.  This may occur around the final debate or soon after, so that it is quite visible and no one can deny it.

The Party Apparatchiks will quickly replace her with a new candidate.  We don't think it will be Kaine, but rather someone out of left field.  This will cause a rash of problems as the Dark Forces scramble to update all the infrastructure they've put in place to steal the election, including millions of voting machines and the networks that control them.

In part due to Hillary being taken out, and part to Trump already commanding a sizable number of folks, he will win the election on November 8th; however, it ain't over till the corpulent female yodels.  The mess with the voting machines and networks will expose the vast corruption behind the scenes.  The PTB will try to claim that the results are not valid, due to some kind of "interruption" of the voting process and the fact that it wasn't fair for the Democrats to run a campaign less than a week long.

On the other hand, the Trumpians and folks who believe the election is what it is will argue loud and long that "they paid their money and took their chances," and despite the obvious election rigging in favor of Hillary, a win is a win.

But that's not all!

Due to the Trump win, the Globalnuts will immediately start collapsing the economy like spoilt children who don't get their way.  Massive economic disruptions will start within days of the election and continue through the end of the year, at least.  They will also start riots around the country and promote "civil unrest" to show their displeasure with the American electorate.

All of this will cause an almost revolutionary call to dismantle the Federal Reserve and the banking system, but the fever will take on new highs when the election is declared invalid and/or some procedure is invoked to install Hillary in spite of the outcome.

At this point, New Hampshire, Texas, Alaska and Hawaii - and probably a few other states - will begin procedures to secede from the Union.  Texas, already having an independent power grid and large economy of its own with substantial gold and oil reserves, will call for independent-minded folks to move in and help out with the effort.

The media, beginning this week, will be in complete melt-down.  All their cafeful plots and plans will fly right out the window and things will only get worse from there.  During the ensuing chaos, they will try desperately to regain their positions as thought-leaders and gate-keepers, but the masses will simply tune them out.  They will be having complete conniption fits on-air as they try anything to get people's attention, but will find they squandered any respectability and influence in the past year.  For those who like to see pretentious, self-important grown-ups cry, this will be an absolute hay-day!

All power structure at the federal level will collapse.  The Obama administration and Congress will have no power, since the passing of the election will leave them marking time until new folks are sworn in in January.  In addition, the various agencies will polarize, seeing the chaos as an opportunity to express anger over the politicization of jobs they thought were honorable (e.g. - FBI, DOJ, NSA, etc.).  In short, the normal power structure will be unable to respond with either force or coercion, further eroding the image of fear they use to maintain power and control.

There will be a blatant attempt to seat the Democratic candidate as president in January, but this will only enhance the collapse, rather than quell the chaos.  Even die-hard Democrats will not support this person, because the corruption will be so obvious.

Meantime, the economic melt-down will continue apace, in part as punishment for electing Trump, and part because it was the plan all along once the elections had passed.  At some point, it becomes self-sustaining and no one will be able to stop the melt-down, kind of like a Fukashima reactor writ large.

Due to both its internal dynamics, and the extreme forces from outside, the Western banking system will shut down.  Having no weapons left to manipulate with, and having nearly the entire world hammering at it like Visigoths at the gates of Rome, banking corporations will start going toes-up in a domino effect up to and including the Federal Reserve, which will be blamed for most of the problems, economic or not.  Hordes of banksters and financial types will flee the country, while mobs of angry citizens surround their homes and offices demanding justice.

And that's about as far as we can see, since the damn monkey just ran through the hut and stole our crystal ball - cheeky bastard.

At any rate, probably not a bad idea to buckle up and get ready for the ride of a generation or two.  If you are the prepper type, forget it.  If you can't carry it without Atlas Van Lines, you'll just have to leave it.  Work on your brain instead, since no matter how much information you stuff in it, it never gets heavier, and you are highly unlikely to lose it unless you run into ISIS, but at that point, not much of anything will matter.  We prefer good back-packs with a camp shovel, a hammer, a saw, and one of each kind of screwdriver.  If you can't do something with those tools, then it ain't worth doing.  Don't forget your SpaceBlanket (tm) too.

From deep in the jungles of Borneo, this is your faithful correspondent bidding you good luck from the FSGHQ.

2013 - The Predilection Issue

Welcome once again to our world-famous Predilection Issue.  Now, most folks around this time make predictions, but really what they are doing is forecasting trends, not predicting.  So we figure the better term is 'predilection'.

That said, we're pretty much always right since we correctly define the terms.  Clear and precise thinking leads to clear and precise predictions of future events.  Keep in mind that predilections are only good for a year or so into the future, after that, you're on your own.

So, we dim the lights, light up a good cohiba and stare into the crystal decanter, which happens to be loaded with top-notch single-malt scotch this year, thus we have high confidence in this year's report.  Last year, it was only rot-gut Manado vodka, yet we were still right, so it can only get better with the right jet fuel.

Our first prediction is that the word LIBOR will become a household word, but not in the sense of the British bankster class.  Rather, it will be in the sense of folks calling in sick worldwide to protest the fact that governments everywhere are sucking up as much as 90% of folks' incomes.  Libor, meaning 'free', will come to define the practice of folks just saying, "F^ck it," and refusing to work for Da Man ever again.  Black market economies will spring up like weeds in grandma's garden.  In the US, the gummint will fight the black market by saying it is a racial slur and prosecuting people under the hate crimes laws.

Three-D printers will become all the rage as folks find out they can print guns with them.  That will last for about six months till some genius realizes that printing a gun and printing ammo are two very different problems.  A lot of folks will end up with nifty wall displays, since the plastic guns aren't even heavy enough to use as clubs.  In China, they'll come up with the brilliant idea of printing knives, which are far more effective.  In the US, it will become fashionable to be seen with at least one name-brand sub-machine gun.  In Milan, gun holsters will become all the rage.

In Paris, it will be too dark at night to care what anyone else is wearing, as the lights go out for austerity.  Tours will promote "Paris - the City of Dark" and start talking about how romantic it is that way.  All the famous art museums will close at sunset, since you can't see a damn thing after that.  The Paris Opera will only have matinee performances...after they install the skylights.  The Eifel Tower will be destroyed by a jet on landing approach to Charles DeGalle, since the pilots couldn't see the damn thing in the dark.  Impressionism will see a resurgence because, hey, Monet was blind too!

Marijuana will become (once again) a global rage.  Laws will be cancelled, enforcement will die off, and folks will return to mental and physical health as usage of the plant becomes 'norml' again.  Until some nut job gummint employee in the US remembers that his best drug experiences were in Arab-speaking countries, where 'qif' and 'hashish' are commonplace.  Then the gummint will launch a major attack on pot-smokers because they support Islamic terrorists by enjoying a little Mother Nature.  Doesn't matter that it was grown in Joe Six-Spleefs backyard in Eagle Pass, Colorado.  Hollywood, lacking any other good ideas, will do a remake of "Reefer Madness" and scare the hell out of everyone once again, only this time, instead of being used by musicians and black people, it will be Muslims and anyone who hollers at the top of their lungs before dawn.

In space news, Congo will join the 100-mile high club by launching a refrigerator, which will be bigger (of course) than North Korea's washing machine.  In response, North Korea will launch six rockets to the Moon, which will land on each and ever Apollo landing site and erase Neil's footprint.  The US will have caniption fits, but the world will point to the fact that they are signatories to the UN Space Treaty which prevents gummints from claiming territory on heavenly bodies.  The feminists will latch on to that argument and claim that all marriages to good-looking women are thus null and void.  But really they're only angry that no one would marry them because they're too ugly and pushy.  Meanwhile, NASA will continue to release photos of ancient ruins on Mars from its Curiosity rover and talk about how cool light and shadow is while no one pays any attention at all...because only crazy people think about that stuff.

In environmental news, Fukushima will reach criticality and form a massive pool of molten lava in east Japan. This could be easily ignored by the world, except that the oil from the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico will have circled the globe and ultimately be sparked off by the lava, creating a massive global ocean fire with a huge fountain of flame spewing off the coast of Louisiana.  Instead of getting folks to clean up their mess, it will become a romantic dining spot and set off a whole new tourist trade in Louisiana, since no one wants to go to the New New Orleans Post-Katrina.

On the tech front, the first android child will be born in 2013, which sets of a frenzy among the British aristocracy, as they fight over who gets to bugger the thing first.  Meantime Microsoft, in an Orwellian Politically Correct move, will ban certain words from the lexicon.  Anyone using a Microsoft product will not be able to type the words, "bomb", "gun", "government sucks", or "women are inferior to men".  Anyone trying to do so will find their license cancelled and they'll have to buy a bootleg copy on the Black Market, which is also a banned term.  Notablly, Bill Gates will die this coming year from hemorrhagic fever that he catches while giving vaccines to poor African children.  His last words will be recorded as, "I paid my yacht note, right?  Don't want to be like Steve Jobs."  Amazingly, the infant mortality rate in Africa will improve dramatically immediately afterward.

Which naturally brings us to the Big Pharma news.  One of the Biggies will announce that they have discovered the perfect panacaea: one pill that cures everything from hangovers to pregnancy.  The only problem is that the pill is too big to swallow, so no one can test it.  The company's stock will shoot to the Moon and then crash and burn.  It will be called the "Facebook" of the medical world.  Interestingly, the drug will become a major hit since someone in Bogota,Columbia discovers that if you smoke, toot and use the rest as a suppository, you will enjoy five days of perfect mental and physical health before you die.  It will become known as "horse", since it makes you as strong as a horse.  It will become the drug of choice among the Baby Boomer set, as they look for a graceful way to exit.

On the religious front, the Jedi sect will become the fastest growing religion in all of history.  Jedi temples will spring up everywhere and demand equal status with all the regular cults.  This lasts for a time until some guy in Hoboken, New Jersey, named Michael Valentine Smith, starts a new religion based on orgies and ritual cannibalism.  It will grow at twice the pace of the Jedis until someone realizes that the ultimate 'grok' will be when the last newborn eats the last old guy and the world comes to a crashing end.  However, for a time, 'born again' will take on a whole new meaning as cult members scream that phrase aloud while on the toilet.  The problems really begin when there is a major schism, as the 'water sisters' demand equal treatment with the 'water brothers'.

In entertainment, Britain's longest running and most watched soap opera, "The Royals," will have a major event when two of the key characters, Willie and Kate, breed.  A major plot will involve the doctor who delivers the Royal Brood.  See, there's twins in this go-round, and the second one is breach.  The doctor in charge of the delivery will be 'suicided' shortly after the blessed event because he will be heard to say of the breachie, "Looks just like Liz!"  This one event will set up a major theme for the next 30 or 40 years, as the audience tries to guess which twin will be the one to assume the throne.  Don't bother watching.  It will just dissolve into a rehash of "The Man in the Iron Mask."

And so that brings us to the final predilection for 2013, which is...drum roll here...NO APOCALYPSE!  That's right, there will be natural disasters and various other causes of death, and millions will die, as they would statistically anyway.  Some will drown, some will get old, some will run into the sharp end of knives, while others will fall into pits caused by oil drilling, and still others because the cure they needed was illegal or hidden.  Still others will get hit by lightning or bitten by rabid rabbits.  By mostly they'll be killed by mechanized pilotless machines in the sky.  But the world will keep spinning and no one's prophet or god will come riding to Earth on a cloud to mete out justice.  In other words, it will be just another year with its share of disasters.  Nothing unusual, considering Mount Vesuius buried two major cities 2,000 years ago, kiilling millions, and the world didn't end.  In fact, those cities are now tourist attractions.  One hundred and fifty yeats ago, Kerakatau blew up in the Java Sea between Sumatera and Java and changed weather worldwide for two years after.  And we're still here and still killing, screwing, cheating, fenagling, lying, back-stabbing, under-handing, stealing, coveting, destroying, and bullshitting each other.

If the world as we know it is going to end, then it can only mean that humans will start treating each other with respect and stop ripping each other off.  Simple as that.

In fact, an end to the world as we know it might actually be a good thing.  It might promote love and peace and harmony amongst the survivors.  It might prevent a lot of harm and pain and injustice.

Just something to think about.

And the Number 1 predilection for 2013?  Michael Jackson will still be dead, but unlike Elvis, Buddy Holly and Bob Marley, no one will imitate him.

Oh yeah, Big Bush will die in January and the world will be a better place.  'Shrub' ain't far behind him.  Babs will continue on for another couple of years, thankful that she can finally have a little peace and solitude.

In the immortal words of Linda Ellerby, "And so it goes..."

Through Bot-Colored Glasses

Euro Riots

It's that time once again.  Clif and the gang at HalfPastHuman have released the latest Shape of Things to Come (SOTTC) report, and depending on your perspective, it's either hopeful or harrowing.

If you are a tourist in life, then the report will likely keep you awake nights worrying about things to come.  If you are a traveler, then you will find the adventure promised in the 51 pages something to anticipate as the birth pangs of a new order in the world.

And when I say new order, I am NOT referencing the NWO.  In fact, the NWO, as anyone who has followed my rantings here knows, is really the Old World Order, dating back thousands of years.

The bots are outlining a truly new order of things, in which the reptilian guard of yesteryear have finally pushed the last button and have reaped the harvest of what they have sown.

Within the pages of the SOTTC report, we learn that anyone holding a title of royalty or whose job description contains the word "pope" will not be happy with events forcast for the next two years.  The image we should form in our minds is of a lump of clay being squeezed in an iron fist.  The tighter the grip, the more of the clay squirts through every least opening.

As I posited in my article Dog Days of August, the PTB are running scared.  They are losing control of their Monster, a la Frankenstein.  The only response they can formulate in their pea-sized, inbred brains is MORE control...more cameras, more police, more brainwashing.  They can't conceive of any other way.  They are a hammer whose only view of the world is a box of nails.

The problem they don't seem to be able to wrap their puny minds around is that when the crowd knows the trick, the magic doesn't work, and nothing you do will get it back.  I think it's safe to say that they had envisioned the internet as yet another channel of control, but it backfired.  Now it is the very medium of their own undoing, which is why they must shut it down.

Mount Merapi, Java, Indonesia

The bots, however, say something different.  The PTB will attack the net and they will shut it down, but it will only be temporary.  The truth has an amazing facility for leaking from any outlet it can find.  Though the number of people that have truly awoken are a small percentage, great changes have ridden the backs of small numbers.  The (first) American Revolution was spawned by no more than 3% of the population, but they had the most powerful weapon know to us mortals...Truth.

Where the bots turn foreboding, though, is in the Terra entity.  Clif calls the coming Terra changes part of Expando-Planet.  The theory goes something like this: in an electrically active Universe, our planet has a plasma core, and when charged particles from the Sun and Universe enter the core, they convert to additional mass, thus swelling the core and expanding the crust (where we live).  During times of particularly active solar and cosmic bombardment, the core expands rapidly, with the result that we crustal denizens are subject to volcanoes, earthquakes, rips, splits, sinkholes, and any number of other fun and interesting things.

Living in a country with the greatest number of volcanoes on Earth, and sitting on a shattered piece of the crust, as Indonesia does, doesn't engender great solace, in this regard.  Just recently, Mt. Tambora started rumbling for the first time in 200 years.  It is known as the volcano that caused the worst volcanic disaster in modern times, and caused the Year Without Summer in 1816.  Considering the bots also advise aware folks to invest in firewood and heating oil this coming (long) winter, one has to wonder if there's a connection.

Certainly, the number of 6+ earthquakes has been steadily rising over the past decade.  Having already experienced a 7.2 here in 2009, I can tell you I am in no particular hurry to reprise the experience.  But, it does make for a nice segue into Fukushima...

Inspired by the bot output, consider this scenario:

ANNOUNCER: "That's right!  Our cucumbers are guaranteed to give off 12 microsieverts or less of gamma particles!  And if you order now, we'll throw in this handy pocket Geiger counter, absolutely free!  But, that's not all!  The next 100 callers will receive a full bushel of unradiated raw wheat and enough barley seed to produce three month's supply of healthy sprouts for a family of four.  Remember, our produce is certified to glow one-third less than any other food products on the market today.  In fact, if you can find kidney beans with less Cesium-137 than ours, we'll happily refund your money.  Call now!  Operators are standing by!"

Can't happen?  Impossible?  Believe me, we good folks of the world haven't heard half the story out of Fukushima, and that's just one of a dozen reactors with problems that have made even the slightest mention in the MSM (mind shinking media).

In yet another prophetic post, my last two columns (Of Secrets and Lies, Bugging Out and Other Hobbies) eerily leaped off the pages of the SOTTC report.

One major theme is the coming exposure of the Zionists.  It seems much of what I wrote in Of Secrets and Lies will become common knowledge over the next year or so.  Once again (as in WWII), the Zionists will try to deflect the ire of good folks onto the Jews, who have been the whipping dogs of the Zionists for centuries.  Unfortunately, it seems they will be successful, at least for a time.  However, we are entering a time when the old tricks don't work anymore, and this is one of the most egregious of them all.

The rise of great numbers of transnationals was also covered in SOTTC.  It seems that combinations of a Nazi resurrection, unfriendly winters and economic woes will cause a never-before-seen diaspora of people seeking more comfortable climes (in every sense of that term).  It's interesting that a number of countries have been reforming their immigration laws of late, to make them friendlier to transnationals.  I'll cover that in more detail in a later article.

The most worrisome tale woven by the bots is the economic 'perfect storm' approaching.

As in all Depressions, we are sailing head-long into deflation.  Deflations favor those with NO debt and lots of disposable cash, as prices fall making money more valuable.  The problem is that the forecast is for the complete collapse of fiat currencies, starting with the dollar.  "Great," you say, "I've got my gold!"  Well, about that...FDR's Executive Order confiscating gold and silver has never been rescinded, and similar actions on the part  of other governments is quite conceivable.

In a nutshell, if you're in debt (which most folks are), you're screwed.  If you're in cash (which some folks are), you're screwed.  If you've got gold and silver tucked away, you're screwed.  So what's a man to do to protect his family?

Food, water, tools, firewood, guns/ammo...basically anything that's useful for flat-out survival will be the new currency.  A little farm land and the means to protect it would be useful, but it does have the draw-back of locking you into one spot.

The biggest problem people are facing is what Clif calls the normalcy bias.  In other words, being incapable of thinking outside the box.  Coming events will favor those who can conceive of novel solutions to novel situations.  Most folks will be running their generators (if they have one) to keep the plasma TeeVee going, when abnormal responses are what will ensure survival.  Making your way to a tropical rain forest while everyone else is huddling in the cities...a back-pack rigged for deep wilderness while everyone else is trying to haul around their C-rations...that sort of thing.

And why rain forests?  Well, you'd be in a year-round growing season, with wild food for the picking, and you're surrounded by people who are used to having nothing and living off the land.  Beats even the most rural patch of farmland in North America.  It's one reason I live in Indonesia now.

Fukushima, Japan

Up to this point, I've just touched on a few of the bigger issues raised by the bots.  We're on roughly page 25 or 51, and I haven't mentioned half of what's in the front of SOTTC.  Universe favors the prepared mind.  I spend free hours thinking of scenarios and coming up with solutions that few if anyone else has thought of.  The hardest thing to overcome is the 'normalcy bias'.  You have to be prepared to shed everything in an instant and go against the crowd, which is why I try to get folks thinking about touring and traveling in so many of my articles.  Travelers are almost always ready for just about anything the Universe throws our way.

Something like having a knife, pair of scissors and magnifying glass anywhere you go at all times.  Even if I'm completely caught off guard, I can always skin a cat and start a fire.

The Shape of Things to Come report is available at HalfPastHuman.com, for $10 (downloadable PDF file). It's worth ten bux if for no other reason, it gets you to think about "what if".  Once you start doing that, you're well on your way to being a traveler.

Twenty Eighty-Four

To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone — to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink — greetings!

-Winston Smith, Nineteen Eighty-Four

In some ways, my blog is like Winston's diary. I'm not sure if I'm writing to the world I knew as a child, or the to world my daughter will inherit.

Certainly, it's for the reader, a way of connecting with strangers across the globe, who hopefully find in my words a solidarity of thought or experience. It's a way to clarify my own thinking and test drive ideas: kick some philosophical tires, as it were.

Today, I wax introspective. Why? Well...one, it's Sunday, and my Sunday musings usually stray far afield. Two...my colleagues Clif High, over at HalfPasHuman, his faithful henchman Igor (EYE-gor) and George over at UrbanSurvival have jointly been predicting and speculating about some Earth-shaking event(s) that will commence at roughly 6pm Jakarta time and will reverberate through January, with particular attention on the date of January 7th.

What is it? Heck, I don't know. I'm not qualified to speculate on the nature of future events, but I have a pretty clear bead on the past. I do know, from about ten years' worth of experience that Clif's webbots have been spectacularly right about many things. From 9/11 to large-scale blackouts, from the Columbia shuttle explosion to Banda Aceh, from Katrina to Chinese wedding quakes, the bots have been eerily right again and again.

Whatever the event(s) turn out to be, the effects will appear in history books in the year 2084. Our progeny will read with the dispassion of those long separated from horrific events about whatever IT is that the bots have been harping on for better than two years now.

What can we do to prepare? Well, like any normal, red-blooded Texan, I armed myself, bought some farm land up in the mountains, loaded in water and food, seeds, gold and a generator. The salient point that I take away from all this, though, is it is NOT what you do to prepare, but how you react after the fact. As Douglas Adams might have said, DON"T PANIC!

We know from experience that fascists always use crisis to advance their control structures. That's a given. They will put up Judas goats who will make pseudo-logical and impassioned pleas to follow the Party line. They will point the panicked sheep to Onkel's waiting breast, where he will suckle us and nurture us through this difficult time -- for a price, of course: your immortal soul.

I hear so many folks talk big. "I'll never go down quiet," they boast. "I'll give up my gun when they pry my cold, dead fingers off the trigger," they growl. Fact is, most people don't know how they'll react under severe stress. When something so horrible presents itself to your eyes, most people shut down reason and start acting on pure instinct. I've seen it dozens of times. They talk big, but they don't look deep inside and find the trigger of their panic, and corral that sucker.

Furthermore, we have all been trained and conditioned by mass media to turn to "authorities." We can't trust ourselves to make good decisions, we must seek out the proverbial gurus at the tops of corporate/government mountains to give us sage advice and thoughtful direction.

Bullshit!

There is only one authority that I trust with my life and the lives of my family: me. My mother will tell you, when there was a crisis, I was the one you could count on not to panic. Even as a kid. Maybe I have my great-aunt Tish's genes. In 1910, during the Halley's comet panic, she was 12 years old. Her mother told her to get on her knees and plea to the God of Our Fathers to spare the Earth from the comet's deadly effects. Tish's answer? "If we're all going to die, why do we need to pray?" (She arrived in Texas in 1899 in a covered wagon...I loved that woman)

At the tender age of 13, I gashed my forearm down to the artery. Sure, I cried, but I calmly wrapped my arm while my dad nearly went into orbit, not to mention damn near killed all of us on the way to the hospital. A 18, I saw a Canadian man have a heart-attack in the Gare-de-Nord in Paris. His wife was, well...hysterical and there were about 50 gawkers all standing around watching him die. I doffed my pack and applied CPR and kept him alive until the ambulance arrived. Several years ago, the neighbor's kid broke both his radius and ulna, so that his forearm had a new elbow. I set the bones and slung the arm while his mother looked like a loose balloon. In Guatemala a while back, I was on a bus when a woman went into labor. Half the bus was stunned into statue-like indecision, while the other half were in complete panic. Since I had done a video on childbirth, I had a pretty good idea what to expect, and so delivered the baby somewhere near San Isidro. I wasn't prepared to go blind, but when it happened, I began to make a mental list of things I could still do, rather than focus on what I couldn't do. It all boils down to one thing:

DON'T PANIC!

Self-reliance and self-trust is a lost art. The media have been used for decades now to implant deep in our minds the profound distrust of our own abilities and to seek the all-knowing, all-seeing counsel of "experts" and "authorities." I mean, just watch the news. How many reporters do you see anymore that give you thoughtful analysis of their own. Most are incapable of such mental legerdomain. Instead, they act nervous, concerned and near-panicked, and immediately turn to some "authority" to give us an idea what is happening and what to do about it.

Us? HA! We're just little helpless babes that can't make an informed decision without the guidance of our "betters." You watch. IF this 'thing' happens today, what will be your first reaction. Pay close attention to your thoughts the second you hear about it. Do you panic and start trying to figure out which "authority" will give you the best instrustions? Will you run for the SuperDome and beg your maters for deliverance? Or will you take immediate steps to protect your own first. Will you gather you bug-out pag by the door, arm yourself and get into a defensive posture before turning to media for more information on the situation (not instruction, mind you...big difference).

The key to Life, the Universe and Everything is how you react. That is closely related to how you prepare, and preparation is 90% mental. Think about how the military, police and other "authorities" are trained. They are given repeated preparation to act and react in a particular fashion so that under stress, it becomes automatic. They don't have to think (which shows). You job is to prepare your mind so that in a stess situation, you react automatically, but the trick is, don't turn off your mind. Always think and always listen to your gut. Your gut will tell you the right thing, if you've been careful to filter out the subliminal training you've been getting lo these 60 years of TeeVee.

Remember that telegraph from the future, called "Nineteen Eighty-Four?" The US is at war with Russia. The US has always been at war with Russia. No, wait! The US is at war with China. The US has always been at war with China. Oceania, EurAsia, East Asia...we live in the tri-lateral world of Winston Smith. You are now, and have been trained for your whole life to love Big Brother. The question now is can you uninstall the buttons before 'whatever-it-is' happens today?

What if the bots are wrong? Good! Can't wait to think that. I don't seek out disaster, I just don't panic when it comes. Do I believe the bots? No. Not one bit. They are just like all other predictors: you make enough predictions, some are bound to be right. So what good are they? They are thought experiments. They present scenarios which I use to mull around possible reacts, so that if a situation presents itself, I'm not surprised or panicked, but simply begin to execute the plan.

So why have I prepared for 'whatever-it-is?' Simple, being armed is a natual state for a Texan. I'd feel naked without tools of defense. Farmland is useful for generating income, building a retirement palace and having a weekend escape from the big city. Extra food and water? Well, there's earthquakes, storms and volcanoes here, not to mention utilities in Indonesia are, well...unreliable. A bug-out bag? Ever since I started living on my own at the tender age of 17, I've had a bag of necessities within easy reach. Just plain prudent, and has come in handy on more than one occasion. I haven't done anything to prepare that I wouldn't do on a warm, sunny day in the Texas hill country. It's just a case of ant and grasshopper.

And so I send this out to the people of the past, or the people of the future. The message from this time is, "DON"T PANIC!"

In the end, you're either Ford Prefect or Winston Smint. I'll take Ford any day. Have towel, will travel.

Clif, George, Igor...no one has any idea what thing is coming at us tonight/tomorrow. I certainly don't. Reading the bot output, to me, is like reading Revelations in the Bible. Makes no sense but has some cool images. I'm watching the news to spot when the moment arrives, though according to Clif, the show-shine boy up the alley will be talking about it. I'm curious though...what is this thing that has been sitting like a dead elephant in the middle of the predictive output for better than two years, and is bigger than 9/11 in orders of magnitude? All Clif and George can come up with, besides a dozen scenarios, is that the world will change profoundly next week.

Well, shucks! That happened when my daughter was born.

Next?!