“Mister, nobody but a fool would go into the rocks after a wounded Apache.” Con Conagher
Enjoying the pandemic much? That’s a fair question because so far, from my little combat outpost where I sit and dream of a former life — when I thought I was Con Conagher — we seem to be collectively overdoing the doom. Don’t get me wrong, I take this virus very seriously, as I would any potentially fatal illness, but there is a noticeable absence of optimism in the air. It reminds me of the gloomy little trader’s post where Conagher tried to trade some rifles for beans and coffee — it’s just a little too dark, a little too cold, and a little too unfriendly.
I drove into town this morning – we are good on supplies but I wanted to drop some eggs and meat off to a friend of ours who isn’t, and also to patrol the aisles of our local market – Rays. The market was in much better shape than I had anticipated though the plebians had utterly ransacked the bread aisle. All that remained was a package of hot dog buns, a loaf of some bizarre looking seven-grain bread, and a pile of gluten free something or other. Six feet away there was bread flour stacked both high and deep which should tell you everything you need to know about what Americans have become.
Also, the puffy jacketed stewards of our environment – and there is a small army of angry little Greta’s marching around the rimrock of central Oregon — had not spared the shit-paper aisle. It’s notable that the concerns formerly afforded us in our luxury seem, many of them, to have disappeared. Two weeks ago the government of Oregon was still actively trying to destroy the timber industry – and therefore all future shipments of shit paper — with a cap and trade bill. Fortunately the tonsured hypocrites in Salem were prevented from selling indulgences — but they’ll be back on that crusade when this nightmare finally ends.
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