Not just doing.

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Well, I am, sort of, getting to things.  A snail has a pace that I seem to be emulating.  It is faster than that of a corpse, mind you.  I just realized, I actually started breaking out of the morass several days ago, more soft than physical.  I started reading, and playing sudoku again.  I started reading The SHTF Stockpile, by one of the bloggers in my link list, actually.  I decided to start out with a topic I knew, and author I have some pseudo personal knowledge of, and... baby steps.

In some ways, to some people, his work is shocking.  To people who have never heard of prepping, or thought of society failing, he doesn't give them much room to negotiate.  He offers them the door, right away, if the truth is too heavy for them to handle.  He writes as if what I suspect will happen... will happen.  And, it will.  How heavy, hard, fast, and deep?  No one knows that.  No one.  The best admit it, the rest are looking for a credit card number.  We all have our suspicions.  And we all know that location is as important as other things... your location and local connections when and where it hits.  I approve.

I kept trying to look for attempts by the author to take things easy.  I kept looking for shortcuts, false easements, or simplifications.  He simply doesn't offer those.  He does avoid the panic button, though.  It, even I agree, isn't useful.  Yes, I hit it from time to time.  But not for you, for me, because I feel it so strongly.  I know my position more than most can.  I really am tactically minded, and crippled.  After a wolf chews it's leg off to escape the trap, he then realizes... it didn't just get all that much better.  So it goes.

Good book.  If you have kindle, it's a song and dance.  Cheap, that is, and easy to get.  Usually I don't recommend such.  In some cases, it is quite good.  There is theory, if that isn't the core of the book.  Practical notions on a number of topics.  Tools to trade, food to community, water to transport, given the variety of potential causes for a massive downturn in standards of living.  I don't know all, but at 61% into the book, I can easily recommend it.  It's a solid little book for starters who are past their fears and for beginners and middling preppers, at least.  The lists and ideas, but just as important, the hope and the understanding that hope will carry you beyond anything else you could collect.  It's about life after easy life has ended.

Anyway.  After I finish this book, I will move on to Irrational Atheist.  I have been drooling to bite into that.  I do appreciate the author, and many of his ideas.  We have differences, but... those are more minor, detail oriented, and slightly political... whatever that last means these days.  While protestant, of some nature, there are things all Christians can, to a degree, agree upon.  He has a pretty good head on his shoulders and doesn't have any guilt about being "white", Christian, Western, or logical, and it shines through in other of his material I have read.  Now, mind you, I am going to be looking for, targeting, holes in his material as much as support for my own notions.  Not because I feel one way, or the other, about the topic or the author, save that this is what men do to enhance themselves and each other.  Yes, I will debate any notions I see as weak or wrong, maybe suggesting what I do like... or not.  Women and minorities don't seem to understand that judgment is vital.  It's a good, necessary, required thing.  If you fail, try harder.  If you can't, you are in the wrong program.  Life is hard, some things require correctness.  Anyway, that is my next.  Perhaps, if I even get there, and keep going, an entertainment read now that I have a few sources for non-queer material, and then back to an attempt at the heavies of theological theory.  Bleh.  But, actually, I do enjoy it all... as long as I am not offended by lies from start to stop.

Later.