[Gasification] Raving old lunatic -- replies one time --

[Peter Singfield]

At 10:08 AM 11/8/2006 -0500, Michael Redler wrote:
>"They're coming to take me away, ha-haaa!!
>They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-haaa
>To the funny farm. Where life is beautiful all the time and I'll be
>happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats and they're
>coming to take me away, ha-haaa!!!!!"
>
>- Dr. Demento (1975)
>
>:-)
>
>Mike
>

New version Mike -- to the same tune --

I'm running away to Belize -- ho-ho -- he-hee -- ha-haaa!!

I am taking that plane today!! ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-haaa

To Mr. Peter's funny farm. Where life is fun all the time and I'll be happy
to see the young men in their clean white clothes and I'm taking that plane
today!!

Ha-haa -- he-hee -- ho-hoo!!

-- Snakeman (2006)

**************************************

Also -- I have sent out a few versions of this old story today -- totally
off topic -- but then again -- maybe totally in topic??

On topic -- four Chinese gasifiers arrived last week -- incredibly well
build devices - -and especially for the price.

i see no problems adapting them to gasify any fuel -- but plan to go the
charcoal route.

When I get time to play with it -- which is not right now -- right now is
putting up for the long winter coming -- "then" I will play with my new toys.

Ya dudes -- so much we could have done -- and so little got done -- eh??

All I have to comment is:

Hope your big deals go through and you make the millions that you figure is
all you need to have.


Peter/Belize

(Hanging in very well at his happy farm)

**************************************************


            Written about 1978 by Peter Singfield.


               When living in South Stukely Quebec



       THIS IS THE STORY OF THE MICE AND THE BAG OF GRAIN.


                  The parable of relevence !!!


Once upon a time, in a very small village of South Stukely in the 
province of Quebec, Canada: in fact -- in the eastern townships 
-- up against Vermont.

It was a time of confusion. Hard work, honest labor, was losing 
to speculation and greed. There was a man with family, a wife and 
five children -- as times were hard this family was getting by on 
a social assistance program commonly known as welfare. In order 
to survive at this base level with a measure of creature comfort 
the man of the household undertook to make his his family grow 
its own meat and vegetables. Basically a back to the land drive 
left over from the " Hippy " culture he once embraced.

Well the vegetable garden was hacked out of virgin crushed stone 
on some land the man had acquired. This was basically worthless 
land left over from a failed stone crushing / quarry operation. 
The garden soil was a mix of " Slacks Mushrooms "  waste compost; 
" Brome Lake Duck" --  aged duck manure -- two year old duck 
manure; and crushed marble chips. It grew great carrots, beats, 
turnip and cabbage but lousy ruhbarb.

The man planned to raise chickens here too, but first decided to 
learn the trade in his back yard in the village. Here in a small 
shed out in back of the apartment he raised 15 chickens. Chicken 
raising is serious and it is not the purpose here to cover this 
territory in great depth. Suffice to say that after much work 
roughly fifteen chickens were brought to slaughter. Thinking 
back, what magnificent beasts they were. They averaged 12 lbs 
each and all were exquisitely delicious.

Now the well versed chicken farmer knows that you should starve 
your chickens for a couple of days before you butcher them. This 
means that after that last bag of grain is gone, one waits a 
couple of days and then off with their heads. ( I must note here 
that an Indian showed me the bast way to slaughter a chicken -- 
tie the chicken up side down, cut the the artery at the back of 
its throat and then drive the knife through the cleft at the top 
of its mouth into its brain. Not chopping off its head!)

In many ways this was not an objectionable time in the family`s 
life as it allowed them to work together in order to share later; 
and brought a spiritual closeness as well as a respect for the 
simple things of life that are so important to creature comfort. 
It also taught the kinder what is involved in canned carrots or 
chicken on the table. Simple lessons which are so now seldom 
experienced by the modern urban dweller.

The garden was of the general purpose vegetable variety. Every 
spring was hard work planting and every fall meant many tedious 
hours of food preparation and storage. Inbetween was hard work 
weeding. Fall also meant the slaughtering of the chickens. The 
chicken slaughter was performed by the entire family with no 
exceptions and strict disciplinary action was required to get the 
family to cooperate in this brutal and hard ritual of food 
preparation -- the details of which most people of modern North 
America would not even be able to conceive of in their most 
tormented dreams.

Well getting back to the chickens in that shed behind the house. 
In due time the grim reaper came to take them away to the large 
home made freezer in the garage. Only the farmer, me, didn't know 
about the starving routine. Before the greedy buggers ran out of 
grain it was off with there heads at my convenience, which was 
the first weekend after the great cost of feeding these grain 
burners became apparent to my thin wallet. And Daddy firmly 
believed that slaughtering and butchering a chicken was of prime 
importance to the continuing education of the kinder. Actually 
since I knew next to nothing about the whole procedure I thought 
it would be great if we all learned together. A little moral 
support goes a long way when your hands are buried in warm 
chicken intestines.

Well the chicken harvest preceded on schedule. That first year it 
took two days to butcher 15 chickens. In later years it would 
take one hour. After the slaughter the chicken hut reverted to 
its original function -- winter storage of the bicycles and baby 
carriage. Indeed, there was only one fly in the ointment, and a 
very minor one at that, there was an almost full bag of grain 
left sitting in the shed. Well, no problem , I thought, we will 
feed it to next years chickens. Little did I realize the 
consequences of that bag of grain.

It was one of those fine January's, with one of those great 
winter thaws. It was so nice the kids wanted to drive their 
bikes. No problem, we just opened the back shed and took some 
out. Imagine our surprise when we opened that shed door and saw a 
zillion mice scramble every where but out.

Slowly the reason for these hoards became apparent. The bag of 
grain; off course. Upon inspection these truths became evident. 
One corner of the bag had been cleverly gnawed though and the 
grain ran out to cover a few square inches of floor space. This 
made a great mice feeder. As they consumed the grain it was 
continuously replaced by more grain pouring through the hole in 
the sack.

The mice where common field mice. A few had obviously found their 
way into our makeshift barn before the big freeze looking for a 
comfortable den to spend the winter. Of course, not only did 
these pioneering mice find comfort but food as well. Little did I 
realize in the late fall that the bag of grain would be manna to 
all our local field mice population.

Now that I thought I understood what was happening in the back 
shed I began to demonstrate the higher intelligence of the human 
adult to my assorted kinder and explain to their wide eyed 
curiosity what was happening in their bicycle storage area. I 
quickly explained that there was nothing to be scared of; the 
mice had come in from the fields looking for food to scavenge and 
had found the left over chicken feed. As word got out among the 
mice, every mouse from ten miles around had come to our shed to 
live. They were probably much more scared of us then us of them. 
So don`t worry, lets get the bikes and leave them be.

As winter was traditionally the time of relaxation and 
contemplation preferably while smoking ones favorite herb; grown 
with loving labor the summer before; the story cooked for a few 
days in my slightly befuddled brain: prodded regularly by the 
continuous little inquiries from my kinder who were all still a 
buzz with the mice in their bike shed event; before finally being 
released to my dedicated and impatient audience, the family.

The Canadian winter when spent in a small two bedroom apartment 
with no living room, two adults and five children, is always in 
need of entertainment. Stories are traditional entertainment. The 
mice in the shed became this type of story. As the winter passed 
there was never a week that didn`t go by but what the kinder and 
I snuck out back to the shed and peeked at those zillion field 
mice. After each peek another chapter would be added to the 
story. Here then is the story of the field mice in the shed with 
the bag of grain that might as well be the story of North America 
in the 20 th century.

***************************************

We kept peeking in on those mice, about twice a week. Of course, 
that bag of grain was manna from heaven for them. Oh how them 
mice musta feasted and partied over that bag of grain. But you 
know what -- even though that bag of grain was so big compared to 
them itty bitty mice, it started getting smaller. But there was 
ever more mice coming from all over as the word of the bag of 
grain got out into the mouse world of South Stukely Village.

By february there was a virtual plague of field mice in our shed. 
But the bag of grain was only a shadow of its former grander. 
Sure enough, a few weeks later there was no grain left. Of course 
the next peek revealed to us a shed full of dead field mice 
surrounding an empty grain bag.

Now many the night since then have my kinder and I sat around 
while I smoked some of my favorite herb and tried to imagine what 
would have went through them mices heads; as if they had brains; 
when that bag of grain ran out and they began; whole families and 
indiscriminately; to slowly and painfully die of starvation. Were 
there mice wise men, or elders, that warned them, that told them 
that depending on a free handout is morally degrading and 
practically foolish. Did they have a panic of the masses as cold 
realization of their fate stuck them. How would humans have acted 
under the same circumstances. After all  --- the best laid plans 
of mice and men ---- Here is how I feel us North American humans 
would have handled this situation.



END of First Edition ---




             THE GREAT MICE SOCIETY OF SOUTH STUKELY


One can easily Imagine the discovery of that bag of grain in the 
old chicken shed. Fall was here and the field mice were in a 
virtual frenzy of preparation for the coming long hard winter. 
Digging out their burrows ever larger as they busily gathered 
food that they grubbed for from the hard earth. Their life was 
not easy.

But so had it been for an eternity beyond counting. There was a 
content satisfaction to these mice lives. They earned their way. 
They knew that they got by from the sweat of their labor. Mice 
worked so that their families could live to carry on the mice 
race into the future ecological plan of the world.

It is easy to Imagine that there could be young mice revolting 
against this strict dogma of hard work embraced by their elders. 
It would be these "new-wave" mice, who would explore ever farther 
from the home lands, until eventually one would discover the 
virtual cornucopia of food supplies stored in the chicken shed. 
This mouse would quickly spread the word among his peers, the 
other  young rebels. They return to their tribe and rave about 
the infinite quantities of food discovered and how every one 
should come to this place. At first public opinion would be 
firmly set against these "young fools" but sure enough some adult 
who might remember the rebellious feelings of his youth 
eventually goes and sees this massive storage of manna. His voice 
lends credibility to the reports and soon a committee of mice 
elders goes to see for themselves. These simple hard working mice 
are faced with this incredible wealth that is just waiting for 
them. All arguments are suspended as the whole tribe moves in to 
take advantage of the grain bag. After all winter is coming.

The elders are at first dead set against moving to the shed. It 
is one thing to scavenge food to carry to your den, quite another 
to move to the food pile. We are not supposed to live this way 
they say. This is an unnatural deal. Of course religion becomes 
involved. God does not want us there. This is Satans work. If we 
go there we will be punished. The basic premise here is do not 
trust something new and different. In all the eternal history of 
mice, grubbing out a living from ones rightful niche in nature, 
there has never been manna from heaven. Now these arguments all 
make perfectly good sense. But what is good sense compared to a 
humungous bag of grain and the "easy" life?

At first no thought is given to ownership. After all life is hard 
and bounteousness is to be shared freely by all members of the 
tribe. The young rebels bask in the glory of their discovery and 
that is reward enough for them. But wealth does funny things to 
charitable thoughts. Before everyone was happy just to survive. 
Now that survival was well looked after there was lots of free 
time to think.

Some smart young rebel is approached by one of the wiser church  
elders. Their religion had been a simple primitive "thanking the 
Gods" for our life type. But it did have structure. A deal is 
struck where the church gains control of the grain bag. Now the 
church elders are suddenly all for moving into the chicken shed. 
Only a few elders are still set against this move because they do 
feel it is unnatural and could be deadly wrong for their tribe. 
The tribe moves permanently to the shed except for these few 
extremists who stay behind with there families to live the hard 
life in the field grubbing for their living. They are the first 
refused by the church to have access to the grain bag.

Great wealth falls upon the people of the grain bag. Their church 
becomes the most powerful church of the entire mice land of 
Stukely. Great is the love of God for his chosen people of the 
grain bag. The priests bask in this glory. Distribution of the 
manna becomes politically motivated. The truer followers of the 
church receiving greater amounts of manna. The early dissidents 
receiving none. Soon some mice find they have to work as slaves 
just to be fed. Where once there were only one class of mouse now 
they have distinct classes of mice in a society which rewards its 
population according to its class position. The classes were 
established according to favoritism among the rulers, not 
according to capabilities. The race of mice entered the feudal 
age. Eventually even though there is a truly massive amount of 
food mice are starving due to unequal distribution of goods. The 
population starts to increase rapidly but through distribution 
policies is forced to starve itself back to a more manageable 
size.

Part of the starving population disagrees with this method and 
proceeds to mount revolution. There are many unsuccessful 
attempts to bring down the ruling hierarchy. As time passes the 
rulers becomes complacent of their grip on power. One day a 
revolution succeeds. The church is thrown out. Religion is still 
a force but no longer a ruling force. The new government 
distributes food with no restraints. The population grows 
rapidly. The chicken shed soon becomes heavily over populated.

The new government with it leaders born of poverty and repression 
slowly become inured to their high ideals as the process of 
governing slowly burns out there ability to be objective to the 
plight of their fellow mouse. It appears that unbridled power for 
to long a period corrupts the ruling mice. Again favoritism in 
distribution of goods surfaces and soon the population goes down 
and mice are starving even though the grain bag is full. This 
system leads to revolts and eventually the despot rulers are 
replaced by a democratic system of government. Now the mice 
society has the vote. Every so often an election is held and if 
the ruling party is found lacking it is replaced by another group 
the people choose. Any ruling party knows its survival is 
directly tied to the appeasement of the masses. There is now 
absolutely no control on distribution of goods. The chicken shed 
prospers beyond even the wildest dreams of its people. The mice 
population booms.

There are however a few mice who are shouting warnings. The first 
group is the descendants of the mice who stayed in the wilderness 
following the old religion. In this now "enlightened" age they 
aree allowed into the chicken hut to trade, visit and see the 
great mouse kingdom. Some preach doom but most eventually secum 
to the easily available wealth and become new members of this 
great mice kingdom.

The second group is made up of the first generation of offspring 
into this very wealthy society. They are very spoiled but 
discontent. They wish to change the system just to ease their 
boredom. They search for a method of change and embrace the 
tenants of the religion of ones coming in from the wilderness. 
These become the back to the land movement. They are doomed to 
fail since they are very soft and though they can mentally 
visualize the trek back to the land and primitive life styles. In 
reality they have never worked a day in their lives and would 
kill their best friend for his food if they missed three meals in 
a row. They do make a contribution. They discover a method of 
isolating a powerful drug from spoiled grain and start a drug 
culture.

The third group is made up of intelligentsia. These mice have 
more or less figured out what is going down. They have measured 
the grain bag and thus know the rate at which it is shrinking. 
Using simple scientific methods they have worked out how much 
longer the bag will last at the present rate of population 
increase. The results are so frightening that many of these 
intellects cannot handle it. Some go immediately to the people 
shouting their discoveries and expecting everyone to say " Oh 
thank you so much for warning us and now we can save ourselves, 
thanks to you ". The people react with open aggression towards 
these messengers; for disturbing the sweet flow of their lives 
with horror stories of coming doom -- unless they return to the 
cold frozen wastelands; and call these intellects mad scientists. 
These scientists soon become bitter and stop tying to warn the 
people, thinking "I hope you all die in pain from starvation 
because you were too stupid to listen to my warnings and fall to 
your knees before me in appreciation." (At this point some of 
these mice move to Belize) This in effect took these people out 
of circulation and in a short while everyone forgot they even 
ever existed never mind what they were trying to say.

The second group of these intellects were slower to act. They saw 
what happened to the first group. So instead of raising a general 
panic they bring forth the information in a more accepted 
scientific manner. Many papers are published on the daily rate of 
decrease in size of the grain bag; the increase of the mice 
population; the progressing of the winter. The government 
supplies these scientists with large sums of manna to allow them 
to proceed in their investigations. Finer tools are designed to 
measure far more accurately then ever before the important 
events. Now all the facts are available to the people. But the 
government makes these results secret. They do not want a panic. 
They realize that if this got out they would lose the next 
election. As like any other government faced with this kind of 
scenario; they sit on it. They make arrangements to build special 
bunkers under the chicken hut floor to store grain for emergency 
use. The general public is not told of this. The government 
regards its personal survival of utmost priority. When the bag 
runs dry the government must eat so that it will have the 
strength to govern responsibly. The government scientists 
cooperate fully because they are all assured places in the 
bunker. The mice kingdom government is now into bunker mentality.

The last group of intelligent mice are quietly returning to the 
wilderness to suffer in great deprivation while always 
remembering the manna back in the chicken shed. This group is so 
small that nobody in the chicken shed even knows they are gone. 
They have moved to Central America to live with their cousins -- 
the stay on the land people -- the Mennonites. Eventually a movie 
is made of one such family unit and everyone back in the chicken 
shed has a good laugh over their foolishness. (this refers to the 
movie "Mosquito Coast") Of course everyone back at the chicken 
shed doesn`t realize that the grain bag is running dry.

Meanwhile the mice population is growing with wild abandon. The 
grain bag is visibly decreasing at a daily rate. Now most of the 
adult mice population sleeps ill at ease because their 
subconscious minds question their probable destination. Like a 
little conscience saying " are you sure it can`t happen here " 
over and over again. This leads to massive social unrest (Due to 
"sleep-disturbance" probably). Family divorce rates go way up. 
The entire mice population becomes despondent. Serious tension 
related diseases increase in number. Mice are dying from heart 
disease; cancers; multiple cirrhosis and countless other stress 
related diseases. Now it doesn`t look good. Mice are crying for 
escape. Sure enough escape is near.

The religious mice pray to their God. They are so good; so 
righteous. They praise the lord so loud. All while they eat of 
his manna. But God is in the house smoking herb and spending the 
winter studying the foolish mice. Their prayers go unanswered and 
a new bag of grain is not forthcoming.

The young mice are not well enough educated to understand what is 
going down. But they sense something is wrong. For a while now 
some of the grain has been going bad. Ergot poisoning. Some of 
the elder mice found that a potent drug could be made from this 
poisoned grain. This drug was a great antidepressant. In no time 
all the young and most of the non religious adults became 
addicted. It was exactly what was required for the population to 
go on right to the end. After continued use the mouse brain was 
left with no more ability to question its immediate future than a 
cucumber.

Complacency became universal in the chicken shed. The religious 
mice were not worried at all. God would look after them. All they 
had to do was keep the faith. The drug culture mice had achieved 
coveted cucumber status. They didn`t know what was happening and 
could care less. There was a frustrated minority who were still 
trying to save the day but the pressures were so great that they 
succumbed to dangerous diseases caused by the stress in their 
lives worrying about it all.

Well sure enough the day came when there was no more grain left 
in the bag in the corner of the chicken shed. The druggy crowd no 
longer even had ergot. Oh pandemonium and chaos ruled supreme. 
The druggy crowd went violent first. Under the extreme anguish of 
drug withdrawal the druggies charged the government offices where 
they reeked extreme havoc until the government forces managed to 
dispatch them. From then on the government declared a state of 
emergency and set about destroying all the druggies threatening 
the system. Off course the government was totally drug dependent 
by this time. How else could they have functioned during the 
extremely tense times leading to this; the armageddon; except 
under the influence of drugs. But the government had its own 
stores of food and drugs hidden in bunkers under the chicken hut 
floor.

The religious mice were absolutely no problem. Their leaders had 
long ago made bargains with the government assuring that the 
leaders all had their personal spots in the bunkers. They just 
kept preaching to their followers to have faith. Sure enough they 
all starved to death and went to meet their makers peacefully.

That left a relative handful of the mice to survive snuggled up 
with their hoards of grain in the bunkers. Here they partied it 
up with the females of their species as the long winter slowly 
wound its way to an end. Yep, what a drunken orgy it was. Finally 
the spring came and food was once again plentiful as the handful 
of survivors groggily came out of their bunkers under the chicken 
shed floor and spread out through the fields of South Stukely.

And so ended the great era of the chicken shed mouse empire. One 
can only speculate on what became of the depraved survivors who 
waddled out into the fields to live there with their cousins. 
Most probably they partied it up all summer long; sex, drugs, and 
rock and roll; and found another shed with a bag of grain to see 
them through the next empire.

The moral - Where the best laid plans of mice and men often go 
astray- survival of the fittest is always assured - and the 
stupid die first.


 You know - This all happened in 1978. 10 years later I went back 
to check out the chicken shed. My wife and children are moving 
from this residence. Myself, I live in Montreal. We have been 
divorced for 4 years now. Casualties of our own grainbag culture. 
Do you know what I found in that chicken shed -

 Nothing - Absolutely nothing - no monuments to the great society 
of mice that once lived there; no statues to the heroes; not even 
any mice bones on the chicken shed floor. Where Robert Burns said 
" The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray" -

I say The reward of stupidity is extinction.


                  The Mice and The bag of grain

Their was once a kingdom of mice that lived in a country far far 
away called Stukely. The kingdom of mice was poor but lived as 
all kingdoms of mice before thru hard work and dedication to the 
survival of their race. Thus they existed in the fields of 
Stukely. ( Oh ! Did I mention that they were field mice? )

 As in every year before the signs of winter were apparent and 
the mice were beginning their yearly ordeal of padding their dens 
with materials to stay warm and fed through the hard Stukely 
winter months. The elder mice went about there work uncomplaining 
since they had seen winter. The younger did as told but 
complained bitterly of this extra hard spurt of labor. They felt 
there should be more time sunning as the sun was getting weaker. 
They felt that their seniors were stupid to follow this routine 
year after year. The wisdom of " winter " had not as yet been 
granted to these young.

Among the young; which as is normal among mice or men, 
outnumbered the elders; was one intelligent, belligerent and 
arrogant mouse called Charley. Now Charley really thought his 
mother was crazy to be working so hard, even in total frenzy, 
preparing for this winter thing. Charley was newly wed with his 
young bride soon to be expecting. Charley`s young bride, Carol, 
felt nervous with the idea of ignoring the elders advice, 
especially in her condition. But Charley would hear nothing of 
her protests and just went out with his friends who all felt as 
he that this winter paranoia was just an old wives tale, to drink 
and be merry in this the last days of the fading glory of summer. 
One day Charley and his friends found the chicken shed with its 
big bag of grain.

Charley overdosed from sex; drugs; and rock and roll and died.


And so it goes -- survival of the fit, fitter, and eventuallly -- 
the fittist!!!


Peter Singfield -- 1978 -- South Stukely Quebec