It was to be expected, I suppose.  Trump just got even more insane this last week.  I mean, he’s totally nuts and he’s under a lot of pressure and his usual defense mechanisms (lying, distracting and making crap up) are now fully engaged in almost everything he does.  So, he’s got nothing more to work with.  We can SEE him even more clearly now.  He’s getting stretched tighter and tighter and getting crazier every day.

I confess that suggesting injecting Lysol and drinking bleach achieved a whole new level of crazy but, honestly?  How much more madness needs witnessing before they call for the straight-jackets?  How much crazier does he have to get?

So, I am encouraged.  Why?  Because incrementally even the right-wing lunatics are seeing the scribbling on the wall.  Even Fox has lessened their support.  His ‘base’ is becoming less.  According to some sources, and as determined by mid-term and congressional election results, his base has fallen officially by at least 5%.  Given that he scraped into office by the skin of his teeth when he won, losing five percent almost guarantees a loss in November.

But it is NOT the official 5% that makes me feel better….it is the estimated 10 – 15% that are quietly re-thinking their allegiance and loyalty to such an incompetent POTUS.  This guy is now acting crazier and crazier every day during his televised Covid-19 speeches.  Even Bubba has to see Trump’s ‘distancing’ mentally on stage from his normal gang of stooges.  The guy paces behind when someone else is speaking and looks like he isn’t listening one bit.  Even Bubba has to be wondering if drinking bleach and injecting Lysol is really such a good idea when the top doctor follows Trump and immediately contradicts him on that same stage.  Even Bubba (inside that thick, uneducated skull) has to be rethinking…..

The point: we may want to re-start our own inner-Bubba and review our acceptance of our own great leaders.  You can always count on some deeply bigoted Conservative to jam both feet in their mouth with racist crap.  Canada’s Lynn Beyak will give any Bubba a race for a swastika tattoo.  As will Derek Sloan an MP from Ontario.  But they are NOT real leaders.  We have no REAL leaders.  We really should get some, don’t you think?  NOW is the time to make changes.  NOW is the time to demand changes!

As the US moves to Ex-lax Trump in November, 2020, shouldn’t we be at least reviewing OUR choices for Canadian Grand Poobah?  Our next election is in 2023.  That is a bit far off but it would be good if we could use the time to do what Justin promised from day one – electoral reform.  The system we have is simply NOT working.  It didn’t work for the poor, dumb US Bubbas and it doesn’t work for Albertan or Ontarian Bubbas either.  And it sure as hell doesn’t work for me.

Covid-19 exposed us to more than just a virus.  It exposed the incompetence, elitism, ignorance and waste of resources our respective governments wallow in every day.  We need to change that.  If we employed just one electoral reform every election, we might have a chance at rescuing a system that has gone so far off track…..so far off track that the President of the United States is the official Clown Prince of the World and our own grossly inept Prime Minister looks good in comparison.

When we first began living off the grid, we were somewhat amusing for ‘watchers’ in a slap-stick, city-guy kinda way.  It seemed that most of my blog reports were based on (my) injuries and projects not working out.  (And I did not even write a blog for the first six or seven years!  That was because I was either too tired or too wrecked ) . Sal and I were pretty hapless and, at times, pathetic in our efforts.  We were classic ‘newbies’ trying to learn the OTG ropes.

Of course, time heals all wounds and gives scars and lessons as rewards.  We learned.  We got better.  We are NOT GOOD, but we are better.  But, as we learned more, we also got older.  As we implemented better systems, we NEEDED those systems more.  And, as the major financial hemorrhaging waned as the empire got established, the empire also started to show some wear and tear and the revenue stream – such as it was – trailed off.  In other words, it was two steps forward, fall down, get up, fall two steps backwards.  Get more First Aid supplies.  For the most part, we are keeping up with the changes but, at this stage, we are not getting ahead.

Actually, that state of being was to be expected.  We started late.  I was 56.  Sal was younger.  And we had a LOT to learn, not the least of which was how to build crap.  I have not mastered crap-building yet but most of it won’t fall down – at least not for 15 more years.  We tried to build to the 30 year rule and we have been here 15 years…ergo, we have 15 theoretically ‘engineered’ years left. We’ll see.  I do NOT have 15 years more of ‘healing wounds’ left, that’s for sure.

This weird, push-pull influence of doing and failing, learning skills but losing the energy to employ them, gelling as a work-team but seeking more time with individual hobbies, becoming more anti-social while doing more for community and living every day in the moment but also writing about it for posterity…it is the natural dichotomy of life, I suppose.  But that dichotomy shows up MORE and more out here.  I see the two steps forward, two steps back-thing alla time.  There is definitely less physical trauma but, of course, that has been more than made up for by the magic of aging.  I used to groan as I lifted a log.  Now I groan as I get out of the chair.  There is a poetic element to it all…..there may even be some more falling down in our future.  

“So, why tell us?”

Because I see it in others, too.  ON-gridders thinking of getting off-grid.  They wish to trade one life for another.  And they will (if they leap) be pleased with their decision.  They will learn a new lifestyle.  New skills.  And they will begin to ‘fit in’.  But, as they do, they will also age and the world will continue to race on in the ‘other’ direction.  They will be left out.  The city will become more like the hive it is, OTG will become more ‘hill-billy’ than it currently is.  The division will become a chasm.  Rural folk and OTG will become the new marginalized and we will be THANKFUL for that.

It is a weird observation….

As you all know, I have a friend who is a smidge ‘out there’.  He not only believes in conspiracy theories, he probably KNOWS most of them.  AND he definitely follows some of the alt-right conspiracy theory sites.  Kev is a guy who suspects any kind of power while employing a vivid imagination in the so-doing.  I sometimes tease Kev and say, “Kev’s a nut!”

For the record, Kev is NOT a raving lunatic.  Probably NOT even a nut.  He is definitely an eccentric and his interests are inclined to paranoia but he, himself, is sociable, pleasant, sane, skilled in his profession and basically a good guy.  One of the heroes in our third book, Accidental Fugitives, was created from the best parts of Kev’s personality.  Unselfishly helpful – totally supportive of the old couple fugitives, Kev helps them escape the authorities.  Hard NOT to like the guy.

So, when he sends me another ‘whacked out theory’, I tend to at least glance at it.  And I did again, today.  Kev sent me a site that claims Bill Gates is planning on ‘chipping’ the world’s population using a Quantum tattoo.  Furthermore, Bill patented the invention and the number of the patent is the sign of the beast, 666.  “Part of the planned New World Order, Dave.  Check it out!”

So, I did.  And, guess what?  Microsoft DOES have a tracking monitor-thingy that records your heart beat, pulse, blood pressure and other vital signs.  Potential for much more.  Sorta like a smart watch but smarter.  The number of the patent is very close to WO2020060606.  The whackos point to the 3 x 6’s as being ‘666’.  I am guessing that the patent starting with WO means something else in the patent office but it does eerily stand for ‘World Order’.

So, then I checked out Quantum tattoos being developed by MIT in concert with (gasp) Microsoft.  Also true.  Seems the tattoos may replace vaccinations.  I hate to admit it, but I didn’t read it all.  Reason: reading patents and their descriptions will never reveal ‘all part of the plan for the New World Order’.  The patents will be couched in terms like ‘medical advancement in hygiene’ and that sort of thing.

Now, before I go on, please know that I do NOT believe for one second the official story behind 911.  On that topic, I sit in Kev’s camp.  That was a plot, a well-executed plan that used young Saudis as the scapegoats (mind you, they were likely thinking they could fly aluminum foil into steel reinforced concrete buildings and make them fall down in their own footprint while knocking a third building down without actually hitting it if they got real lucky).   Who or what or why the real ‘bad guys’ did it, I have no idea.  But aluminum jetliners do NOT knock down steel buildings like the WTTs.  Of that, I am certain.

So, back to Kev………….he’s a nut!  But, but, but…………Microsoft is, indeed, potentially ‘near’ a technology that maybe, could, perhaps (if there was no oversight) track people from cradle to grave.  To be fair to Kev, governments have tried to and mostly succeeded in doing just that ever since the social security number was invented in the US in 1935 and emulated by Canada in 1964.  What started out as a benign way to manage people’s pensions has evolved in to a virtual ‘identity number’ that all citizens are now obliged to have.

Someone will be (if they haven’t already) making the argument: “Why not just chip all babies at birth?  And then, why not just chip everyone who comes into the country?”  And, depending on how sophisticated the chip is, the government will know even more about you and your life than the credit card companies do now.

It IS a brave new world.  Kev thinks it’s a plot to control the world.  It’s all a techie plot (by Bill?) to control the Brave New World Order?  And that, dear readers, is the plot line of Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel, Brave New World, published in 1932 and maybe inspired by the issuance of social security numbers in the US.  The story isn’t new.  But the technology is.

It’s a stretch but…………………..well, in this case, Kev may be right!

Alberta crude can’t sell. It’s currently being priced in negative territory, meaning that they (theoretically) pay you to take it on the date it is due to be shipped. They DON’T pay, actually. It (the barrel of oil) was already sold on the ‘futures market’. But you can imagine what negative pricing is going to mean to the oil futures market…..it will cease…for awhile, anyway.

Investors in commodity futures will (theoretically) take the hit. They’ll lose a bundle….for awhile, anyway. But – not to worry – governments rescue THAT kind of industry and, indeed, Trudeau announced some stimulus (free money) that is not enough to do anything but still portends to a tendency to ‘bail out the oil sector’ yet again.

That’s nice……for them, anyway. And, of course, I will do my part by paying several times what Americans pay for gasoline. I am also already paying a great deal more than Ontarians pay. Don’t ask me why. It’s the least I can do.

Covid didn’t do all of this. Saudi Arabia and Russia had gotten into an oil snit already and the prices were going down just as the virus began to wreak havoc. Havoc resulted in everyone staying home, gas not selling normally, planes not flying and supplies piling/filling up storage. Indeed, even the ferries are not running much. Man, oh man! As the price dropped during the snit, the ‘players’ bought oil futures contracts and then watched in dismay as the demand dried up and storage facilities filled up. The ‘players’ are now bidding to lease huge floating tankers to store great volumes of oil at sea.

What could possibly go wrong with that?

Well (#1) just about everything, actually. The oil industry, despite Tesla, was still a viable investment (to those who care not a whit for the planet) and, to be fair, still necessary as the lubricant for the world’s economy. But Covid changed that. In a matter of months, the bottom fell out of their business model. A whole lot of ‘oil guys’ will go out of business even WITH gifts and loans from government. Only the giants will remain. Power in ‘energy’ will consolidate in fewer companies. Think they’ll drop the price to get the consumer back? Or crank it up like monopolies do (and they have done for decades)?

Speaking of wells (#2) the US predicts that the American Southwest will (and already is) in the early throes of a megadrought (started in the year 2000 they say). They also say it could last 100 years (based on geological analysis of previous droughts). From New Mexico to Oregon will become dust-bowl dry. Water is going to be a HUGE commodity in the not-too-distant future. Alberta may never pump oil again.

Hmmm…….Alberta may pump water, tho.

Of course, BC SHOULD pump them some water and likely will but the infrastructure isn’t there. So, we’ll need BIG PLAYERS to finance (own) that resource development. Hmmmm……..the REALLY BIG OIL GUYS will have the money and will want to diversify. Look for BP or SHELL or CHEVRON to ‘buy’ Ocean Falls or something and water tankers plying the inside passage to pipeline heads in Washington State.

What could possibly go wrong with that?

In the meantime, we will pay more for everything from avocados to car parts, from guns to bullets, from anything to everything. We will pay and pay and pay. Ad nauseam. Frankly, I do not mind ‘sharing’ some of our water with our ‘Merican friends (IF they act like friends). But it won’t come to that. The OLD NAFTA had a clause that said that, if a US company invests in something Canadian that requires water, they have first and forever rights to that water. I doubt that Chrystia Freeland managed to fix that stupid deal with the new, bullied trade deal.

‘Well’ (#3) is the money-pipeline from government. They are opening the spigot. Again. They will ‘save’ free enterprise corporations. They will ‘save’ industries. They will ‘save’ the players. With our money. But the little guy will be bled even drier. That is hard to even contemplate. Half of the Canadian population cannot absorb a $500 surprise ‘hit’ to their wallet. There is very little resilience left in the Canadian consumer. They are piled high with debt, loaded deeper with outrageous mortgages and losing their jobs or being down-sized out of the stacked-against-them game of clowns. And now they are sitting at home with a mask on their face. Canadians are patsies with bull-eyes painted on their foreheads and we are led by a spoiled brat who specializes in drama.

The future is going to be different from what was the past and even more different from what was envisioned, planned for and expected. A lot has changed in the last few weeks. But some things don’t change. The wealth and power will still reside with the few, the government will still bleed the serfs to satisfy the elite and the hoi polloi will continue to follow the lead goat.

It’s embarrassing.

I am just ranting again and so any reader should take this with a grain of salt, a dash of lemon and a good scotch. I really KNOW nothing about epidemics except that I do not like ’em. But, here’s the point: In all of January, Wuhan counted under 100 infected people. They eventually revised that number as things were revealed but, even with mis-counting, lying, bad bureaucracy and bad testing, the number of cases acknowledged was nowhere near 1,000. Not then, anyway. Today, there are almost 2.5 million cases in the world and over 160,000 dead. And it is still spreading. Turkey just passed Iran in cases. Canada, which was doing very well just jumped from around 1000 deaths to 1500 in just a couple of days. Other countries that were doing well have slipped and are now suffering again.

By the way, my ignorance of Covid-19 has, so far, been well-matched by our so-called experts. They have missed a great deal. I do NOT hate or blame them but, face it, they do NOT have all the answers yet. It feels like they do not have even half of them.

And Trump is urging a return to work, an easing of containment restrictions, a ‘let’s get great again economic remobilization plan’. In effect, Trump is encouraging indirect genocide. The man is trying to kill his own people!

And worse, Bubba and the Deplorables are protesting for that very same re-opening. They want us all to get close and personal again. Sell MAGA hats. Maybe swap some spit…..shake hands….don’t wash ’em….and basically play pathogen roulette. The president is insane, orange and simple. His followers are literally the new-zombies of the apocalypse. This ‘movement’ is a horror show of internationally criminal proportions.

And other countries are contemplating the same madness!

“Well, you see……we can’t seem to beat it. And it costs us too much to try. So, if you can’t beat it, you may as well join it. We’ll just factor more deaths into our economic statistics. No biggy. We lose millions every year but we still make money. Oooohh, gots to get us some more money!”

If 1000 people can start a worldwide epidemic in 60 to 90 days, exactly what kind of idiot would ignore the 2.5M active cases spread now-strategically all around the world? If 1000 people can do that kind of damage, what can 2.5M do?

I know, I know……‘we are close to a vaccine, we understand the disease so much better, we now have masks’ and other band-aid nonsense is more and more commonplace. That does NOT make it right. In fact, as my mother used to say, “50M people CAN be wrong!” And 50 million is just about the number of Deplorables. They are wrong.

Seriously. This virus is far from ‘done’ and any talk of re-opening anything is premature. Any moves actually undertaken will constitute negligence in the extreme and any leader (gag) who even hints of it, should be criminally prosecuted.

I once thought about it seriously but I would not buy land in Mexico.  They have a different system down there and, generally speaking, gringos are vulnerable to every surprise scam you can think of.  Their ‘justice’ system doesn’t exist.  Corruption rules.  Mexican investments should be considered expendable.  The government does not even run the country anymore.  They cannot make Mexico even mediocre again.

And that used to be the entire mess of it.  Crooks, bad construction, charges and fees that never end and Napoleonic Law as your only back-up.  Yours would be a loss waiting to happen.  Throw in the cartels and growing daily corruption and Mexico has lost all it’s credibility for the ex-pats community and most of the potential for it’s citizens.  That’s why so many try to leave.

Costa Rica saw all that coming some time ago and promised better.  And they delivered.  Costa Rica is more and more popular and their economy, as viewed through their real estate market, was healthy last time I looked.  But healthy means RISING PRICES and the whole idea of being an ex-pat is finding a cheaper (and warmer) place to live.  Costa Rica started to get out of reach.

………and so Panama came on the radar.  And Panama delivered the promise, too.  Ex-pats in Panama were pleased.  Things are good there.  And, of course, good means RISING PRICES but it is still ‘reasonable’.  Panama is almost doable.  I think.  Maybe.

But you know me…..going further feels better.

It is fun to watch small economies change and morph and bring with that change all their different cultural and social influences.  But, sadly, once you let loose the pigs of capitalism, the greed of corruption, the so-called market forces (often driven by ex-pats themselves) the differences become less and less, and the new place starts to look like the old places.

But here is the point of the blog: it seems that the MOTHER of all things capitalistic is beginning to lose her international appeal, too.  We’ve all seen it.  First went the ideals.  Then went the basic ethics.  Then came the deep corruption.  The US is losing ground not only on Covid-19, but everywhere BECAUSE they are now too corrupt, inept and they have ‘lost their moral way’.  Politics, health, defense, banking, civilized discourse, justice, equality, purpose, morality…..all failing.

You can see it if you look.  You can see the rot.  And, for a Canuck, one of the first inklings that there is something rotten in the sun is the view from our snowbirds.  They are staying away in droves.  The Sunbelt was NOT full of snow-birders this winter and you can be sure they will stay away next winter as well.   But, it is not just in the nano-example of ‘the second home market’ we see rot, it is in so many things ‘Merican as well.  Hell, I don’t even look at American-made cars anymore.  And so much of made-in-America is not as good as the label once promised, much of that ‘made-in-USA’ is a lie, anyway.  They assemble Chinese-made parts and claim it is made in America.

Of course, if looking for clues and subtleties is not your thing, you only have to see who they voted in as their ‘leader’.  What kind of social cancer is it that produces tumours like Trump?

Put succinctly, ‘they really do have to make America great again’.  But I do not think the recipe-to-follow is the one they have been using for so long.  “Let’s rig everything, cheat everyone and appoint a celebrity, preferably rich, to make our decisions.”  That recipe just made things much worse.  ‘Mericans have to get that ugly, corrupt, capitalistic beast tamed before greatness can have a hope.  And tamed means ‘equality’, ethics, morality, order, rule-of-law and a drained swamp.  ‘Mericans really need to purge their system.  They are starting to look like Mexico.