Apologies for the extended absence

We are back after a long sabbatical, and with heartfelt apologies to all three readers of this Substack. Extended personal issues as well as a ruminant mutiny at the Palo Verde Alpaca Ranch and Solar Generating Plant have put a crimp in our collective literary output, but this admission also comes with some good news.

After writing many posts about medical science, the abject idiocy of the CDC, and the universally disastrous COVID-19 response, we here at the ranch set down to build a comprehensive picture of the entire pandemic event. It quickly became clear that showing what really happened requires background knowledge in many unrelated areas, and presenting the results of our research in a piecemeal fashion would simply not suffice. The picture must be seen as a whole, and this requires knowing the end of the story before publishing the beginning.

The end product of a couple of thousand hours of research is a book. Titled The Business Plan, this weighty tome will be equally disappointing to both COVID-19 alarmists and conspiracy theorists. However it is, to the best we are able to ascertain, correct. Here is the current draft of the rear cover blurb (under 200 characters, as recommended by people who actually write books for a living):

I have printed many copies of the manuscript, and the handful of them not already consumed by hungry alpacas will shortly be mailed to a few publishing houses as well as some People Who Might be Acquainted With Someone Who Knows a Guy Who Can Get Things Done. The alpacas are optimistic, but they are also idiots. I am a realist, so there is a Plan B.

Upon receipt of the inevitable rejection letters, or far more likely an extended period of dead silence, we will look into firing up the ranch’s antique printing press and making our own darn books. The chickens managed to get the solar array working again so I’m sure they can handle some printing rollers and cutting shears without lopping off too many of their own heads. Most of them are scheduled to become McNuggets anyway so the net additional risk is zero.

This may come in conjunction with the incredibly obvious Plan C, which is to publish the entire thing as individual chapters here on Substack. I really do prefer printed books (and believe people read and learn more effectively from them) but most of the publishing industry has become a frustrating combination of corrupt and useless at the same time. Still, there is a one percent chance someone with a working prefrontal cortex will receive a copy of the manuscript and actually read it, in which case I will be able to at least claim to be a published author when picking up chicks at the local feed store. You are welcome to spend some time pondering exactly what that last sentence might mean.

Should I be forced to go with Plan C and publish online, I may also put out a feed trough or humbly request some kind of paid subscription to access the pornographic bits. Nothing says “high quality work” like a price tag, although I would forego the luxury goods industry practice of wealth signaling through outrageous prices on mundane items. The folks at Balenciaga have that on lock down, and there’s no way to improve on a business model of successfully selling cheap, slave-labor sneakers for $950.

In the meantime our world has moved to the next ridiculous, manufactured crisis. I suppose the obligatory One Presidential Term Waiting Period has passed so the nut monkeys running the country are transitioning us to another distraction in the form of an unnecessary, illegal, and immoral war. The selection of “war” from the menu of useful crises was inevitable given it’s the only one more profitable than a pandemic. As the humorist P. J. O’Rourke once wrote, the great mystery of government is not how it works but how to make it stop.

On a final note, we have also made some furniture during our rehabilitation period. This little nightstand has a steamed beech base with an African padauk top. Padauk is much harder than American hickory, tricky to glue, and cutting/sanding produces a fine orange powder that stains everything. UV exposure eventually turns the surface brown so it can’t be left in direct sunlight - this piece actually has an expensive, UV blocking finish (Epifanes spar varnish) intended for boats. The wood is a nightmare to work with, but the color is truly remarkable.

We have been debating re-branding the business as the Palo Verde Alpaca Ranch and Handmade Furniture Mill, but this thing was so much work the price would rival those aforementioned Balenciaga shoes. The greatest challenge for potential customers however would be finding us; the chickens were in charge of filing the business paperwork and nothing they do is legible.

Here’s a useful button to the index of articles on this mostly-ignored little Substack. Not all of them include commentary about alpacas.

Link to Index

I wanted to label the button “press here to go to the index or possibly explode your computer” but the nerds at Substack put a character limit on the button text.