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Scratch Tape: Wilderness Without Flies
A Movie Review by Sam Aurelius Milam III During a determined bout of cleaning and sorting, I recently unearthed one of my old Beta VCRs. Delighted, I grabbed at random from my stack of old Beta videocassettes, most of which I've never watched due to the poor condition of my Beta VCRs. Amazingly, the VCR took the cassette. After only a couple of hours of tinkering, I managed to get the machine to work. After that, I sat down for a well-deserved movie break. The cassette was unlabeled and, since it had been recorded and given to me by my good friend SantaClara Bob, I didn't know what was on it. I admit to certain misgivings when I discovered the movie Mountain Family Robinson, an ancient Disney flick in the “wilderness family” genre. My misgivings were well-founded. The movie included most, if not all, of the obligatory Disney “wilderness family” gimmicks. There was the crusty but lovable old mountain man friend-of-the-family, Boomer, who was mauled for about two minutes by a berserk mountain lion and suffered only a small cut on his right hand. There was the obligatory bear chase, where the head of the family, predictably named Skip, gamboled half-heartedly through the woods, looking over his shoulder more than where he was going, while the bear ambled along, obligingly staying just out of reach of its prey. There was the obligatory storm, which nobody saw coming, and the resulting obligatory flash-flood that washed away the goat and all but a few of the chickens, which were heroically snatched from the jaws of death by Skip. There were the obligatory wilderness pets, including a mother black bear who didn't object in the least to people playing with her cubs. There was the obligatory government agent who wanted to throw them off of their land, who's helicopter conveniently crashed and burned within scant yards of their homestead, giving them the opportunity to wade into the roiling flames, drag him from the wreckage, extinguish the forest fire, carry him back into the cabin, bandage him, and call on the radio for help, thereby convincing him that he really didn't want to evict them after all. Overlaying all of those trite gimmicks and many more that I lack the space to mention was the fundamentally flawed situation. The Robinson family lived in splendid isolation, except for occasional visits by the government agent in his helicopter, a friend who had an airplane conveniently equipped with pontoons so that it could land on the obligatory mountain lake, bringing them things that they needed, visits from Boomer, and a radio who's battery never went dead, with which they could call out for whatever they wanted. The forest in which they lived appeared to be locked in perpetual springtime. At least, they had plenty of time for playing improvised baseball, frolicking with the various wilderness pets, who never clawed them, sailing on the lake on an ingeniously improvised sailing raft, taking picnics during one of which they were chased from their meal by the obligatory daytime skunk, becoming playfully annoyed when the wilderness pets pulled the laundry from the clothes line, picking wildflowers from the endless meadows, without ever giving a thought to what they were planning to eat, come winter. Indeed, they didn't have any herds of animals to slaughter and the goat was lost downstream. They didn't seem to ever hunt game. Rather, they appeared to be on a first-name-basis with all possible game animals. They didn't have fields of grain. The only visible efforts to produce food were the rescued chickens and a small vegetable garden that was destroyed in the storm, replanted, had time to grow another crop before winter, and was harvested only once. Meanwhile, they spent their seemingly endless summer, without any visible source of food, living active lives, filled with energy, hale, fit, healthy, and impossibly clean. The movie was too inane to keep. When it was done, I determined to erase it and use the tape as a blank. Sadly, my VCR shuddered, gasped, and refused to rewind the tape. So, there it sits. The best that I could do to assuage my annoyance with the thing was to label it “scratch tape” and put it back into the collection. Now, even that won't do. Since I wrote this article, I have to keep the stupid movie as documentation. There just isn't any justice. For PayPal payments, use frontiersman@tomc.org.uk.
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Letter to the Editor
Dear Sam .... Your article on the tetanus shot, I think two issues ago. While I understood the focus of your article (and the response from someone in the next issue), there was something else in your article that was only a passing point, but I was quite astonished at it. That is, you are so astute and aware of what is going on with the vicious and insane maniacs who presume themselves to be “government” and their corporate cronies as well. Yet you wanted to inject yourself with one of their potions, comparable in many ways to vaccines. I know you must be aware of how vaccines in most cases CAUSE the diseases, and caused essentially all of the epidemics they were pretending to cure or prevent. My understanding is that tetanus falls into this same category. It will cause many diseases, but it won't likely prevent one, especially for anyone already eating right/healthy. So, I was quite astonished at this hidden point buried in your article. I'd be curious as to your response to this. The VAC-LIB organization connected with the Idaho Observer newspaper in Spirit Lake, Idaho is probably the best source of info on all these injection things. Blessings to you, my friend. — an inmate
I'll answer you honestly. It didn't occur to me at the time that the tetanus shot might be harmful. I know that some people regard vaccinations as harmful. It might be that they're oversimplifying the situation. I don't have a firm opinion on the subject but I suspect that some vaccinations are harmful to some people but not to others, some vaccinations are beneficial to some people but not to others, and some vaccinations don't have any effect at all on some people but do on others. Generally, I'm skeptical of the results of “studies”, whichever side of the argument they claim to support. In that regard, you might like to read my article “Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics — Again” (February, 1997). I'd rather rely on my own experience. My experience is that I've had tetanus shots several times in my life and, so far as I'm aware, I've never suffered any ill effect from them. Of course, I might not have contracted tetanus anyway. There are two questions that are more fundamental than that regarding the possible harm that the recipient of a vaccination might experience. One is the idea of choice. People do many potentially harmful things. Why should vaccinations be an exception? Nevertheless, the opponents of vaccinations would prohibit them, thereby depriving people of choice. Prohibition is more dangerous than vaccinations. The other extreme is the plethora of vaccinations that are mandatory, mostly for children. Compulsory vaccination is more reprehensible than the risk of disease. Choice, not medication, is the issue here. The second fundamental question is whether or not we should be trying to artificially prevent or cure diseases at all. We're strong and resistant because people in the past either recovered or died. Our present handling of disease tends to remove that selective process. I suggest my article “Mercymongers” (January, 1995). I'm not necessarily saying that we should let sick people die. On the other hand, our descendants might curse the memory of us because of the legacy of congenital deficiency that we're creating for them. — editor
Lines to Make You Smile
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Acknowledgments My thanks to the following: Sir James the Bold, SantaClara Bob, Lady Jan the Voluptuous, Al, of San Jose, California, Eric, of Delano, California, and Joseph, of Northridge, California. — editor
— Activist
Dear Activist We don't have a basement under our house, so I hide my money somewhere else. Headlines for 2029
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