You need to watch this — I love gems like “houses will go up 10% in value”, “the worst is over”, “stocks will be heckuva lot higher next year”.

Pretty amazing.

I’ll start by saying — you can trust me on this one — I was born and bred in the USSR.  Being an Air Force brat, I’ve traveled the former USSR like it’s nobody’s business, and have been to almost every former Republic, hanging around Ukraine the most.

You know all these bailouts you hear about on TV — banks, financial services firms, insurance firms, and now car makes, public transit, smaller countries (like … hm … UKRAINE) … what’s next?  Probably, entitlement programs, cities, schools, etc.

What they are doing is worse than communist.  Proof?

The government (We The People) is giving those organizations money/loans, and in return we all are supposedly receiving stakes in those organizations.  Oh, where to start — this is called nationalization, and it happens all the time in countries like Cuba, Chile, Czech Republic … but those countires don’t claim to believe in “free market” oh so deeply.  So hypocritical of us.

Secondly, at least in Ukraine they had the decency to nationalize former USSR assets, and give you a physical certificate for your chunk of whatever they were nationalizing at the time (industry, farming, etc).  You actually got a piece of paper with your name on it, and it was worth quite a bit at the time.  We called them “vouchers”.

And here in the States, entire industries are being nationalized, and we get jack shit for it because we “believe in free market”.  Ugh … so mad.

And then entire industries, like car makers in Detroit, are lining up and requesting taxpayer money — you know what, fuck it, I’m done.

What’s up.

I was looping though the radio stations in my car via my favorite button ever — the “Scan” button, and inevitably stopped at GCN Station at 90.1 here in good ole Austin, Texas.  “GCN” stands for “Genesis Communication Network”.  It hosts a pretty insane cadre of “experts” who seem to believe a variety of so-called “conspiracy” theories ranging from the complete and constant monitoring of EVERYONE to getting ready for Jesus’ Second Coming.

I’m not into Jesus, but I am into privacy, so I gave them a listen.  After about 10 minutes, the show spiraled uncontrollably into the abyss of supposed police states, RFID conspiracies, and Big Brother-like plots.

That got me thinking — what would a person with the right type of access learn about me?  Looks like quite a bit.  If you flash your Homeland Security badge and cite some obscure deed falling under the Patriot Act, you’ll probably get access to the following:

• My bank records.  Because I bank at the same place, it will be a one-stop-shop of everything you need to know about my financial situation and purchasing habits.  After all, I like the convenience of debit, which means 95% of everything I buy leaves a trail.
• My shopping patterns — you could get this from several shopping club cards I carry for discount purposes.
• My internet search habits.  If you subpoena Google, you’ll have a very complete track of not just what I am doing, but what I am thinking about.  THINKING, for Christ’s sakes.  This is the exact idea behind Google’s recent flu maps.
• My viewing preferences.  Your cable company knows what you are watching — I’ve confirmed this.  One time, my DVR broke, so I called in and they were able to manipulate it from their central office, and they told me what I was watching (Comedy Central, of course).
• Most of my Internet habits.  To get this one, all they’d have to do is subpoena my cable provider, and voila — all places where my IP pointed, in neat little log files.
• My phone calls — between the exact time, date, and length of ALL my phone calls, some VoIP providers actually record the calls — after all, the cost per terabyte of hard drive space is dropping lower by the week.
• My travels — between the credit card records such as gasoline purchases and reservations at airline companies, you’d know exactly when I traveled and would be able to deduce why.  Don’t forget about toll tags in your car.
• Email conversations.  This one is easy and is directly tied to your email account provider — while Google and Yahoo! may push a little bit, Comcast and TimeWarner would quickly fall in line and divulge everything.
• Social networking sites.  Everyone’s got at least a Facebook/MySpace account — this one is self-explanatory if you just think about crap people post, sometimes with up-to-the-minute precision.
• Compliance records — driver’s license renewals, registration stickers, tax records, etc.

You can also get into some other stuff that tracks your behavior, like OnStar tracking, street cameras, Google Streetview.

The bottom line — we all leave more of a trail than a car with a busted oil pan.  I am not too bothered by it, fuck it, we live in a modern society.  But there are people that are … oh yes, they are.

In case you didn’t know … I love books and movies about zombies.  I watch old zombie movies, new zombie movies, play an occasional zombie video game, listen to Rob Zombie … :)

So it’s no surprise I’ve read the Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead by Max Brooks.  This book, and the SAS Survival Guide are two of my most favorite books (the MOST favorite book of all time still being 12 Chairs by Ilf and Petrov … although if you don’t read Russian, don’t even bother).

Max Brooks’ Zombie book has an amazing variety of methods of protecting yourself from the attacks of the living dead, as well as ways to kill them quickly and efficiently.  However, the true awesomeness is on the back cover of the book — and since I could not find it on the Internet, I am publishing the entire list:

TOP 10 LESSONS FOR SURVIVING A ZOMBIE ATTACK

1. Organize before they rise!
2. They feel no fear, why should you?
3. Use your head, cut off theirs.
4. Blades don’t need reloading.
5. Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair.
6. Get up the staircase, then destroy it.
7. Get out of the car, get onto the bike.
8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert!
9. No place is safe, only safer.
10. The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on.

I suppose another reason this appeals to me is because I grew up in the Eastern Europe in the 80′s … so you can pretty much replace the word “zombie” with the word “communism” and instantly relate to why I like all this.

The lessons of this list don’t have to apply in a post-apocalyptical world of Fallout 3 … they apply here and now.

1. Be prepared.
2. Don’t be easily intimidated.
3. Think before you act.
4. Keep things simple.
5. Protect yourself, your family, and your assets.
6. Seek the high ground, but physically and morally.
7. Stay mobile.
8. Pay attention to your surroundings.
9. Nothing lasts forever.
10. History repeats itself.

This is the real reason I love all this zombie shit — it reminds me to be focused, alert, and prepared.  Don’t believe my being prepared?

Here’s some pics — one day back in May I realized we didn’t have a pantry.  Well, we had one, but it was stocked with a few canned goods and mostly perishables.  I then decided to utilize the space under the stairs to jam pack it full of survival food that would last the two us at least a year.

How to be Poor Survival - Zombie Shelter

Here’s some soup — I know the most economical use of space would be to store canned chicken and dry pasta and then make your own soup, but that’s being almost “too ready” — at least with canned soup you lose a little space, but gain a lot in convenience.

How to be Poor Survival - Zombie Shelter Soup

This would not be long-term survival without SPAM — high fat, high calorie meat with a shelf life of 3 years, easy:

How to be Poor Survival - Zombie Shelter Spam

I picked up a bunch of rice and other grains (wheat, buckwheat).  They don’t go bad, and you can survive on them forever.

How to be Poor Survival - Zombie Shelter Grain

I put together a box of medical supplies — antibiotic ointment, gauze, alcohol, wet naps, etc.  Yes, tampons too.  Oh, I also picked up a sweet hand-cranked radio/flashlight.

How to be Poor Survival - Zombie Shelter Medkit

There you have it.  I don’t have to worry about zombies, but if anything like a hurricane, a flood, or job loss happens, we should be good for awhile.

I’ve been pretty prolific lately, if I don’t say so myself :) One of my current projects is removing as much of my kitchen wall as possible.  This takes me back to my construction days … oh, the simpler times, when my tools were a skilsaw, a FatMax ruler, a carpenter’s square, a hammer and a nail pouch, a sawzall, and a sandwich for lunch.  As opposed to now — a laptop, a messenger-style bag, a CAT5 cable, and a generic Starbucks Americano … ew.

It’s a rewarding experience for me to be creating something useful and meaningful from base components.  Even in my current job, my team actually creates software products or processes that benefit all, very much like building a structure.  I never understood people who spend their careers creating nothing, or just moving things around — like the brokers who made a killing infinitely repackaging mortgage derivatives.

Before:

After:

It’s going to be pretty awesome when I finish — we’ll extend the bar, hide all little overhangs, put up recessed lights, and install a Red Bull + Vodka fountain.

The approach was pretty common sense — I suspected the wall was non-load-bearing, but I needed to be absolutely sure.  I invited a friend who runs a stuctural engineering business … we had some beers, busted out the skilsaw set to the depth of 5/8 in, and a sawzall with my trusty demolition blade, and went to town.  Turned out, all the studs that needed to come out were cosmetic.  I guess, the builders were going for that 50′s windowed look, when Grandmother would bake an apple pie and set it on the window sill to cool, and then smack anyone who’d try to steal a bite prematurely … or whatever.

I like the bar idea much better — fuck the apple pie on the window sill — I’ll take my mixed vodka drinks.  By the way, I had a guy come in and estimate what it would cost to do it professionally.  Looks like I am going to save about $1,300.