Sometimes there are advantages to being an incredibly lazy writer. You tend to start a lot of things and then lose interest and forget about them, relegating them to an unpublished life in the nearest Draft folder. This becomes an advantage when one can't find much negative inspiration in one's current situation that's worth writing about.


  That's where I'm at, professionally speaking. The new club I work at is so far improved over any other I've worked at, that it doesn't nourish my inner hate-monculous like all the others used to. And as you know, dedicated reader, my writing depends on rage and the drunken coping binges I use to calm myself down after particularly irritating shifts.


  I have iterated many times that writing about a nearly atrocity free environment would be boring. Who wants to hear about how totally awesome it is to be a Strip Club Floor Guy in a well run club that doesn't put up with standard stripper bullshit? It's in the adversity of the occupation where the real humor comes from, the drive to vent through blog in an effort not to go shit-fuck crazy and do something I'll end up regretting.*1


  So while I was staring at a blank page forever, trying to come up with something interesting to write about, I got bored and started looking through my unfinished drafts. While sifting through the garbage, I came upon this draft and decided to go with it because it clearly demonstrates my frustration with certain prevailing cultural attitudes and I get to swear a lot.


  As you can see there isn't much of an intro to it, I just sort of start by hating on parents who are too involved with social media, which ends up being the prevailing theme, rather than attention desperate parents that I know and still love despite their overposting of their progeny:

  I should have the freedom to think that you have butt ugly children and to be sick and fucking tired of seeing pictures of their creepy faces as well as the freedom to say it if I'm willing to deal with the consequences. Courtesy of course dictates that I keep those kind of thoughts to myself and for the most part, I'm reasonably successful.


  For me it all goes back to the whole 'Do unto others...' thing. I wouldn't care for people trashing me or my family on social fucking media, so I try not to do it to others. But let's not forget that we're talking about social fucking media here and that if you don't like what people are writing about you, you have the simple option of not reading it anymore and blocking them. This all leads to one of my current dislikes, namely the pervading culture of attempting to offend no one ever because everyone is a beautiful winner and nothing is anyone's fault.


  Sooooooo fucking tired of it.


  Listen, it's a noble concept. And the world would undoubtedly be a better place to live if everyone on the planet decided simultaneously to try to be a better person and not hurt anybody's feelings.


  But it's utter horseshit. And since everyone seems bent nowadays on changing the world to fit this utopian daydream rather than raising their offspring to be resilient, self confident humans who ignore the flung feces of the swarming velveeta monkeys, we're in da cack, fookers.


  Being offended by something is the new national pass time.  We've become a nation of squabbling pussies who are so concerned with Facebook trolling and which set of junk goes in which bathroom that we don't even notice that we're marching squarely toward a totalitarian future where the middle class is more elusive than sasquatch.


  I hate to break it to you but at least 50% of our population are idiots or assholes or both and that's a conservative estimate. Really conservative. It is much easier to raise a dickhead-resistant child than it is to de-dickify a society.


  You can't protect your offspring from reality forever. Eventually they're going to discover it on their own and they'll be much better prepared to handle it if they've been shown some adversity in life. Don't sugarcoat everything. There are always going to be winners and losers and this is a fact of life. It is impossible to construct a world where no one has to lose or be denigrated in any way by their fellow humans. If everyone gets a trophy then trophies no longer mean anything and we might just as well get rid of them entirely. Get rid of all forms of competition because we certainly don't want anyone to be a loser.


  We're an idiot nation, taken as a whole. Social media and it's prevalence in our lives has just made the situation worse, it's so much easier now than any time in human history to lie to millions of people and there is a captive audience of eager fuckwits ready to wholeheartedly gobble up whatever bullshit you can squeeze out.


  In real life not everyone gets a trophy and skinned knees are all part of growing up. A child who grows into an adult having never skinned a knee or two is a child whose parents did them no favors, good intentions notwithstanding.


  Yet today we seem to be raising the most self entitled, whiny and weak generation in America's history. Everything is so goddamn offensive. You can't sneeze in the basement of your own home without it being offensive to someone, somewhere. I'm offended, she's offended, he's offended, we're all offended.


   Everyone's offended. By something. Anything.


  We're accelerating towards a society where even hurting someone's feelings is considered an assault. A world where Thought Crimes and a lack of sensitivity can get you into a lot of trouble. Dangerous waters, my friends....


  And this sucks. People need to grow the fuck up, turn off the goddamn social media and stop crying about every little thing that upsets them. It's called being an adult and everyone should try it out for a change.


  I'm trying to recall a time where I was offended by something. What does offended even mean? Is it the same as being insulted? I don't think it is. Being insulted by someone is personal one to one invective  whereas being offended by something is a generalized feeling of anger towards an idea, movement or philosophy. I've been insulted a million times in my career, it kinda comes with the territory. Do I go all badger-fuck on the people running their mouths? No. If I did I'd be in jail or dead by now


  It simply doesn't make any sense to let yourself be offended by something. Who the hell has the time or energy to care so much about what another group of people choose to do with their lives, their genitals or say on a website from the safety of their keyboards? Our nation has become like a giant playground where everyone seems bent on squabbling over the monkey bars and whose turn it is on the swings.


  It's getting ridiculous, people. If we keep begetting generations of humans with only a nebulous grasp on the concept of not winning everything, then we may as well welcome our robot overlords, hostile alien invaders or a weaponized super virus because we fucked it all up and need to hit the reset button. Every entitled, delusional child reared by well meaning but misguided parents is one more dopey, unrealistic brat who may one day get elected to the legislature and pen viciously stupid laws. Like banning the word "fuck" because it might offend someone. Or outlawing heavy metal because someone said 'Satan'.



  If you think of our society as an ocean liner, then this militant ideology of a bland and inoffensive culture is like the iceberg lurking just ahead, waiting patiently to rip us open  beneath the waterline so that we sink so slowly, we don't even notice until we're looking up at all the fish wondering how the fuck we got here.


  Every generation gets weaker as far as fortitude and gumption goes. A few thousand years back, one might be happy just to club something small and scaly to death for supper and find a rock to hide under while it rained.


  A few hundred years ago you might consider yourself pretty fortunate to have three out of ten children survive to puberty and to live to a ripe old age of 35 before your appalling diet or some random disease killed you.


  A couple of generations ago it was a modest house, an affordable car and meat with your dinner a couple of times a week.


  Today though, it's a whole different story. You deserve sweet ass stuff because somehow, among over seven billion teeming bipeds, you are unique and special as a human being and therefore entitled to be happy. All those people in the commercials are good looking and happy because they have better stuff than you. You can be better looking and happier by acquiring these things for yourself.


  Deus Vault. God wills it.


  Capitalism. Materialism. Avarice. Too much is never enough and what's enough is always too much.*2



  To me, the model of our economy is a brilliant example or what's wrong with America today.


  Say you have a company that makes $100 million dollars in a year. Capitalism tells us that the very same company should make $110 million dollars the next year, and $125 million the next after that and so on and so forth or that it isn't growing. Businesses are expected to thrive. They consolidate, aggregate, accumulate and ideally, dominate. If you're not growing, expanding and increasing your market share, then somehow you're stagnated and going nowhere. As if not growing is somehow a flaw.


  This is an ideological failure in an otherwise sound business principle, i.e. let the best product win. At some point there has to be 'an enough'.


  Like why can't a company simply state "We made 100 million dollars this year and are perfectly content to stay at this level. We have no need to expand. Our profits are high, our employees are happy and our bottom line is rock solid. Fuck expanding."



  This is the inherent problem with Capitalism, nothing is ever enough. Your share holders expect more and more. Your investors NEED another beach house or Lamborghini. Nothing can be done, as a company, to feed the ravenous money-hunger of those who've bought into your promise of strong returns.


  

"WHY THE FUCK AREN'T YOU MAKING MORE PROFITS?"


  It's a financial disease, our system. And while there are many examples of failed financial systems available to us, once Big Money becomes entrenched in an economy, they will never let go. This applies to all businesses across the board. This is why out health care system is the most expensive in the world, where it should be very affordable.


  Once millionaires are being pumped out by any industry, there will never be a financial minimum that will be acceptable as 'successful' by the trade at large.


  This is the Capitalism Trap.


  No profits will EVER be enough.















 *1   Paragraphs 1 through 4 are just bullshit spawned by the threat of my work finding out about this publication. They never happened. I stayed at the same miserable location and just OJ'ed everything.

Deny, deny, deny.                         





*2 That's some classic ass shit for you, sophisticated reader. Classic quote for the Ages. Literary God-Dick.

Meet The Regulars, Pt 2. Or, Owners: Not Always Cunty.

  Any place that serves hooch will develop regulars over time. Like calluses, moles or back hair they just sort of eventually end up always there, part of the scenery as it were. Our club is no different. We have many regulars who frequent the environs anywhere from once a week to every single fucking night. And these critters come in a conveniently small number of subspecies, which I will detail somewhere below.


  Regulars are a never ending source of frustration and wonder to those who work the club. I feel like the majority of regulars are all but invisible to almost all the club staff. We see them so often that unless they're a big spender or lavish tipper, they become what amounts to sentient furniture ambling about the club. Just parts in a moving background, as bland and ubiquitous as a black disc of old gum on a sidewalk.
                                                     

  I forget sometimes, having been relentlessly fried on the griddle of Hospitality for the past 20 years, that humans generally speaking, are social animals. I know this because I used to be one, I remember it distinctly. Feeling a nonspecific sense of goodwill towards fellow man and a subliminal hint of comfort from grazing with the herd.


  I'm glad those instincts have been burned out of me. For the most part, I'm perfectly content on my own.


  I sometimes think to myself "What went wrong in his life where he has to hang out at strip clubs on most nights?" And then, to be fair, I think to myself "What went wrong in my life where I never hang out at strip clubs on any nights?"

  Anyway my point is that most if not all of the varieties of Regulars are lonely fuckers. They crave human contact and seek it out in lame, seedy places. Their "friends" are the other restless, troubled souls that drift from club to club, making the meaningless rounds, shaking the hands, spending no money.



  I don't get this behavior at all. I blame this on the several streaks of sociopathy that stain my psyche, the foremost being I don't enjoy being around people I don't know and have no real desire to meet new people. I put up with having to be around unfamiliar bipeds because that's what functional humans do and I am able to mimic a functional human with roughly a 70% accuracy at least.


  I blame the service industry as the chief culprit in making hateful and skittish. I used to enjoy meeting new folks and doing new things. I was fairly outgoing when I was younger, before I became a Hospitality Slave for life. I made friends easily, developed relationships that have lasted decades and was reasonably comfortable in a wide ranges of social situations.


  After twenty years in the security aspect of the Service Industry however, I very rarely see any of my old friends, I haven't made a new friend in ten years, I prefer not to leave my apartment if I don't have to, I immediately think the worst of everyone and I don't like being around any sort of crowd.


  As you can imagine, this severely limits any sort of social life that most would refer to as 'normal'. My occupation is the polar opposite from 90% of the people I know: I work when they're off, most of them work weekdays and are off on weekends, I'm asleep when they're at their jobs. Of the 52 Saturdays a year, the day most people go out and do stuff, I will have maybe 4 or 5 them off. And I have to request ALL of those.


  Saturday nights are pretty much an 'all hands on deck' scenario. Herdin strippers and rustlin drunks while my friends do fun shit and have parties.


  Fucking Service Industry.....



  So the above describes most of the Lesser Orders of Regular, usually nice guys, but dull, broke and sadness inducing.


 

  The Higher Orders? Well those twats have readily available money and aren't shy about spending it. Sometimes they are a pain in the ass to deal with but come with appropriate levels of tipportunity. High risk, high reward. They can be as petty and shifty as an East St Louis meth whore. Vindictive when displeased.


  Such as this one Regular I'll call Salvatore. Ole Sal is an industry lifer and owns a piece of a couple of different successful bars. He's always a gentleman, dresses very dapper, and is an absolute fiend for slutty stripper pussy.


  So he was in the other day and I was glad to see him. If a dancer catches his fancy, he'll do a VIP room with her and if he gets 15 minutes or a half hour, he tips you $50. Hundred bucks if he does an hour. Like clockwork.


  Until I fucked up, that is.


  I saw a guy on camera getting all handsy with a girl on a couch dance so I went back to tell him to take it down a notch. It was Salvatore. I didn't recognize him from the camera view and when I realized my mistake, it was too late. He gave me a look and I babbled some bullshit about my Manager watching the feeds and ran like hell.


  Damn.


  When the song ended, Sal and the dancer went for a champagne room, which I had to set up. He did an hour with the girl and tipped me $25. My actions bore repercussions it seemed. Since I was working solo at the time and didn't have to split that money with anyone else, I cost myself $75, just like that.







VARIETIES of Regular (Lower Order)


Moper

Restless Randy

Social Moth

Friend Guy

The Mentor

Buffet Guy- get everything you can for the smallest money output possible

Baiter

Drug Dealer, Amateur

Local Stud



Regular (Higher Order)


Fetishist

Rich Drunk

Club Owner

Grey-Ponytailed Monied Swinger

Drug Dealer, Professional

  Rich Drunk is the critter you want to land in your trap-line and if you can't manage one of them then Fetishist is he next best thing provided they drive a German sports sedan. These are both very weak willed creatures when it comes to the fairer sex and will tip extravagantly when their creepy desires can be met by reasonably good looking meth whores. You know, like those with no obvious and weeping facial sores and whatnot.

  They're not hard to find, but making them comprehend the Floor Guy/Meth Whore dynamic is not always easy. Meth makes one paranoid, I can attest to this because I used to dabble in meth. After five days without sleep, one is able to hallucinate things with absolute clarity which will absolutely NOT be as much fun as it sounds. I'd suggest that any meth binge should have a 72 hour limit if one is to easily hang onto objective rationality.


  Because at day Four, it all goes out the window and you can't reasonably be considered sane anymore.


  I mention this because at varying points in my career, coke, meth, ecstasy or heroin have been the drug of choice among the dancers and denizens of the clubs I've worked at. Their popularity seems to ebb and flow depending on the times. 


  When I started in the industry, circa 1999, coke was still king. Everything moved on a film of cocaine and to illustrate the point I'll tell you my first Owner story.


  My first strip club job ever was as a chef at a high end strip club. I wasn't a brilliant, highly educated and accredited chef, but merely a competent cook that had trained under two accomplished chefs and worked previously in a variety of kitchens. From fast food to four stars.


  That being said this kitchen was easy and the people I cooked for were astonishingly easy to please, leading me to the conclusion that the former "chef" was a giant weeping genital wart, rather than something capable of crafting delicious food.


   Indeed, management revealed to me that this obese cheese-stain had been stealing so much steak and seafood from their food distributor that unless they paid $13,000 up front then the distributor would no longer supply us with food.


  So we did what any sane strip club management club would do and switched distributor, and I was given a clean slate with which to order food. I was also given the freedom to make up my own specials on a daily basis and was allowed to order in special ingredients to make those specials happen.


  In short I was given the free rein and resources to make special dishes that most 'chefs' in the industry are rarely given the opportunity to do, especially with as little formal training as I'd had and with no questions asked as long as it produced a profit. 


  In retrospect it was the single best culinary job I'd ever had, and in true industry fashion I lost it because I didn't sell drugs. The other "chef" James supplied weed and other shit to a bunch of people and my days per week got cut to one. He couldn't cook most things for shit, but he had cheap, good bud.


  I was fucked.

 
  But I digress, one day the Owner came into the kitchen and asked me for a strainer. Not understanding what his intentions were I went and got him a colander. "No, no, no!" He says. "I need a mesh strainer. You know, something like a screen door kinda thing."

  So I got him a small 'screen' strainer and he proceeded to pull a bag with 3 giant lumps of cocaine out of his pocket and began to grate them onto one of my stainless steel prep tables. Soon there was a pile of blow that looked like something out of the movie Scarface and he feverishly started to load it into about a dozen glass vials using a piece of parchment paper as a funnel.

  It looked like he'd done this before.

  When he was done there was still a considerable amount of ya-yo on said table and he instructed me to clean it up.

  YES SIR! I scraped that shit into 5 lines the length of my middle finger and made them disappear over the course of the next 90 minutes. The kitchen had probably never been cleaner.


  

                                         Time to clean those fryers.


  That was my introduction to a strip club owner and I was pretty pleased with it. Things would take a downturn as I met new club owners over my two decade career, but they weren't always selfish cunts, just usually.


  So that's that as they say. Signature abrupt ending is still a thing.

  I will say that due to changes they've made to this site since I last published anything, they've improved the photo editing feature to the point I could only make it work once before becoming pissed off because it used to work just fine.


  So I apologize about the lack of pics and footnotes, both treasured 'Herder trademarks, but bear with me. It's been a while. I didn't expect to finish this draft, but I was looking through the ole slush pile and there it was. More than half done.

  I couldn't resist.


Miss you guys,
-The StripperHerder

  



  
















   

Apocalypse Herder Vol V. Or Tales Becoming Increasingly Dark As Civilization Continues To Consume Itself. WARNING: Possible Moral Compass Shift Ahead.

  The power's been out forever. Water has been a thing of the past for over a month now. For the most part the frenzied murder-circus in the streets that was commonplace for a week or so, has more or less just become murdering at a kinda medium pace. Like when it's convenient and it is clear the victim has something of value to take.


  Increasingly though 'something of value' denotes having skin or being comprised mostly of meat, which we're all guilty of. Both of these things are useful to folk who've decided that humans are just other animals, and they're way easier to kill than deer. Especially when you live in an urban center that is teeming with people, but noticeably lacking in livestock, wild game or fucking locally grown vegetables.


  And while we're on the subject of fucking vegetables, let us not understate their importance in a human being's diet. I read a book about Lewis and Clark's expedition to the Pacific and let me tell you, humans cannot survive on red meat alone. These guys were able to shoot idiotic amounts of deer, elk, bear, birds of every description, small critters of every stripe. For weeks at a time they were able to consume up to twelve pounds of deer or elk meat a day and yet they were still on the verge of starvation and suffering from extreme malnutrition because the meat was too lean to provide the fat needed and they had very little in the way of carbohydrates or vitamins. Most of the life saving components of their diet were provided by the tribes of Native Americans they encountered along the way.


  So although it sounds like the solution to all your problems, grilling up some homo sapiens, is a temporary fix. It does, admittedly, offer you ample opportunities to perfect a meat marinade for that ultimate street-food skewer or kebab. But even the greatest tasting strip of human buttstrap won't save you if you can't find cabbage, potatoes, carrots or fucking rhubarb to consume it with.


  That being said, there's nothing lean about your average American in 2020 Trumpmerica. We have an obesity rate of roughly 40% percent, which if you ask me, is definitely a clear indicator of a society in decline.


  I firmly believe that if Lewis and Clark's expedition had to subsist almost solely on the average and easily stalked 2020 Murrikan, that they would've been fine due to the incredibly high fat content of our meat. Not to mention all the second harvest Wendy's they could've scooped from our still warm innards.


  So to segue seamlessly into this next bit, I'm going to say that just as with that historic expedition, I am too facing adversity with gunpowder and sheer fuck-you'ed-ness.


  Just like Lewis And Clark: the brass balled, tougher-than-you-will-ever-think-about-being motherfuckers.

 
  Don't let their names fool you, they're were badasses. Read their damn story.



  Ahem.



   Like I alluded to in the Title of this installment, things haven't really been going well. Two weeks after the water went away the world lost it's mind and everything went mule-dick crazy, all societal norms went out the window. Turns out some really thirsty people decided they will absolutely cut your throat for a bottle of Dasani and that sentiment spread wildly among other dehydrated folk. Despite our societal lethargy, turns out a lot of humans can still adapt quickly to paradigm shifts that involve their survival. Chief among them is the killing of other people to obtain resources necessary to their continued existence.


  Duh. 


 
  If you were harboring any illusions that this wouldn't be the case, I'm pleased to announce that you were wrong. Humans, especially those accustomed to an easy lifestyle, will revert to angry, homicidal-chimp mode much quicker than a human acquainted with deprivation.


  So, you know, shoot anyone on sight wearing nice clothing. They're savages, trust me.


  
  Ergo, things have gotten a bit uglier than most of the population saw coming. The preppers of course are mostly fine, having made their out to the secret bunkers where they eat rehydrated food and comment on the fall of civilization and presumably fuck a lot.


  Myself on the other hand, one who prepped just enough to ride out the initial chaos and culling of the Amurrikan population am finally running dry on supplies and getting hungry.


 And although there are no accurate numbers to be had, I'd be willing to bet at least 6 cans of ravioli that out of a population of 330 million, after a month without any of the trappings of civilization, that a third of us are already gone.


  And I'm proud to say that I haven't eaten a single one of them so far!





  But having said that, here are some of the atrocities I've perpetrated since shit went down. In the spirit of full disclosure.


 

  -I beat a dwarf to death with a mace a friend made me over a package of rancid pancetta which I attempted to use in a carbonara. The problem is the dog milk I'd harvested for the sauce had gone sour and I'd long since eaten the dog who'd provided it thus negating the chance of getting more milk. I felt with his physical limitations the dwarf should've been carrying a firearm, but I am glad he wasn't because:

A) I didn't get shot, and

B) I didn't have to expend a round killing the wee fuck. It was like clubbing to death a wounded porcupine. It wasn't fast in the first place....


   -I shot a guy from my window who was yelling about Jesus at what I felt to be an inappropriately early hour in the morning. When things first went fucky, I used to yell at these Jesus Freaks to shut up, give them the opportunity to move somewhere where I couldn't hear them and where their brains could potentially remain in their skull. Now I just shoot them without any warning.


     I'm trying to sleep for fuck's sake.*1


   -I ran over a kid on a skateboard because I could. Seriously it's the end of the world and just by being outdoors at the same time as me makes you a rival. And now that murder is an outdated notion gassed forth by the corpse of society, well, sometimes it's best to preemptively off someone in case they may be a future competitor for dwindling resources.


   Especially if they're a minor and they make themselves super easy to kill. Sometimes you just can't help it.




  -I improvised weapons with insanely cute kittens as the delivery vector. God help me.


  -I, without remorse or prejudice, rained fiery death down upon the chaos on the street below me via Molotov Cocktails. People really should've chosen a different area to slaughter one another at than underneath my window.


  That cost me a fair portion of my gas reserves as well as many empty vodka bottles. Although the greasy fire beneath my window may have been considered festive under the right circumstances, I found it too much like a pig roast to truly enjoy it. Made me think about harvesting some crackling or asymmetrical boiled leather armor bits.



  But I'm not going to apologize for it and despite my protests otherwise, I can totally foresee myself eating the fuck out of other humans rather than starve or kill myself.



  I am prepared in the spice department as well as other areas.




 Yours in protein acquisition,

-Apocalypse Herder














*1 Honestly I just shoot them all anymore no matter what time of day it is and whether I'm trying to sleep or not. All that clamoring just brings more two legged predators around and frankly I can't be having all that. I'd rather spend 2 or 3 rounds painting a sidewalk with insane person brains than spend 20 or 30 rounds defending my habitat from a bunch of opportunistic potential cannibals.


I refer to this as Fuckem's Razor. It's an Apocalypse Thing.

Stalking The Ruins In Search Of Appropriately Soft Cloth: How The Shit-Ticket Wars Devastated My Neighborhood. Or, The Cannibal Gangs Are Really Starting To Get Frisky.

  Even after all the chaos, killing and pointless atrocities, I still can't believe it was the lack of toilet paper that sparked the madness which utterly destroyed my neighborhood. Not the lack of meat or readily available protein. Not the memory of bread. Not the absence of Coca Cola.


  In the end it was the inability to adapt to wiping our cooters and/or assholes with something other than plush, quilted toilet paper that sent the populace over the edge.


  Turns out the average American can deal without having burgers or kielbasa and sauerkraut for much longer than they can deal with the trauma of wiping their excretory bits with something other than what they were accustomed to.


  The killing started within 36 hours of the total loss of bathroom tissue. People who used to barbecue together and have block parties now savagely murdered their neighbors and friends for those sweet, sweet shit tickets.


  Gleeful butchery as long simmering disagreements over hedges, property lines and jealousy over lighting arrangements boiled over into all out intra-street warfare, with the underlying triumph being the seizure of your slaughtered neighbor's stash of quality ass-wipe fodder along with whatever of their other possessions took your fancy.


 
  Luckily for me, I adapted to the post-toilet paper world readily as I had a handy supply of t-shirts which no longer fit as well as dozens of socks with holes in the heels or toes that I had never gotten around to throwing out.


  When I ran out of those, I adapted again, utilizing old porn mags and vintage Hit Parader magazines to wipe my butt. The came the curtains and small squares of bath towels. Then stray dogs when I could catch them.


  I used whatever I had to to get by. I grew immune to remorse. Corpse hair works in a pinch, better than oak leaves by far.....


  Some folks failed to evolve, they couldn't swallow the shame and just stopped wiping altogether. They became pitiable creatures, plagued with any number of anal related hygiene problems. Generally very irritable and likely to attack with little or no provocation. As time went on, I found it best to just shoot someone who was walking funny as they were usually insane from their backdoor torments.



  I survived the turmoil be the simple expedient of having food, not really being concerned about what touched my sphincter in a cleansing aspect, and shooting every single cunt who tried to use the walls outside my door as cover as they tried to breach my reinforced door.


  I may not be able to see them, but even trained people are predictable in the available cover they choose. The only problem with their available choices are that my .45's don't recognize single walls of lathe and plaster as substantial obstacles and I have had great success just shooting these desperate fuckwits through my walls.


  The strength of your access points is critical to your survival in these marauding times. Your defense is only going to be as good as you controlling access to your space. And if you're faced with motivated and equipped enough antagonists, your best isn't gonna do unless you live in a completely self sufficient, impregnable vault.

 
  Good luck with that.





  Speaking of home defense, the Cannibal Road Gangs around here are starting to really come out of the denial closet and just flat out admit they're going to eat you if they can catch or shoot you. While I appreciate their transparency, having to constantly fight them off is taking a toll on my ammo supply. Sure, they collect their dead for pot roast so I don't have to smell them and that's nice. But it's not like they're doing it for me.


  I'm not opposed to the idea of cannibalism per se, in fact I have stockpiled many dry rubs and marinades in preparation for the day I must feast on long pig or die. That being said, context is everything and while having to eat a fallen comrade for survival is an unpleasant prospect, actively hunting down other people for food and enjoying the act seems a bit excessive to me and I hope at some point another option becomes available other than suicide.


  In all honesty, this new world which we find ourselves in: post toilet paper, post law enforcement, post morality, post easily obtainable food, post vodka, does have it's own pleasures. I can't lie to you and say that I didn't enjoy killing all those feral scumbags that tried to kick down my door and take all my stuff after filling me full of lead.


  I did.


  I was defending my cat. I love her but to a hungry stranger I can easily see how delicious she looks. I can't be having any of that. If anyone's going to eat her, it's going to be me. And I'll cry while I do it.



  But that's the world we live in nowadays. Full of tears and greatly lacking in air conditioning.



The Former Herder of Strippers,
The StripperHerder

Quarantine Diaries. Or, There Is Considerably Less Mad Max Style Vehicle Combat Going On Than I Was Led To Believe Would Occur.

  Quarantine Diary, Day 79



  Everyone has an idealized vision of themselves. A version of them that they know they could be if they just had the drive and commitment to hone every facet of their being into this perfect self. A tiny, TINY portion of the human race actually accomplishes this, becoming their ultimate self. An even smaller portion pulls this off without planting the seeds of their own future destruction.


  I myself, for instance, have an idealized notion of myself as some kind of road-wise Mad Maxian nomad survivor/warrior who lives by his wits, his .45's and his motherfucking reliable-ass Toyota 4x4. Dealing out justice with his well maintained firearms and high level marksmanship. Escaping road gangs by clever improvised pursuit countermeasures, sheer driving guts and vehicle capability; harvesting precious gasoline whenever possible.


  My Apocalypse cat, Fuji, by my side. Stalking the ruins. Eking out an existence by sheer grit and and a plethora of useful skills. Our senses and instincts making us stronger than the sum of our parts.


  The reality is that when society breaks down and ravenous, desperate people begin going door to door and taking by force whatever they can take. When killing becomes something that happens without consequence except those you make in your own mind. When the only thing that stands between you and any single fucking thing you own is your ability to defend it.


  That's where the mental avatar of myself as a freebooting, vehicular-centric warrior/survivor goes in the shitter.


  While I'd LIKE to be a Road Warrior, forever prowling the wasted landscape in search of gas, ammo and spare parts in my fearsome armored and sweet looking 'Yota, I have none of the requisite skills required to survive even to the point where some Road Warrior kinda shit becomes plausible. I can barely change my oil, much less diagnose and fix a serious problem. I get frustrated easily and and tend to take it out on stuff that's pissing me off, causing more damage than what I was trying to fix.


  In reality, I see myself more as an 'Dying Towards the End of the Second Wave' kinda guy. You know, someone who has survived the massive first wave die out of the human race by the simple expedient of having enough water and grub to last more than a month. And who was prepared and successful in defending their stuff against those who'd run out and were willing to take what they needed from anyone they could.


  About four to six weeks after supply chains have completely broken down, power grids and cell service is out and water service is a thing of the past, there will a humongous 'First Wave' die-off on Earth, primarily in dense population centers. I don't have the numbers and to be fair, they're all just estimates and model projections anyway. No one can accurately calculate the death toll because a break down of systems combined with a population of these numbers HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE.


  No one can predict the chaos that will ensue.


  It will be like God kicking over the universe's biggest anthill. Shit'll get crazy fast.


  What I will say is after this First Wave, things are going to get WAY MORE fucked up. While I have the wherewithal to potentially survive the First Wave, I will undoubtedly succumb to the Second Wave. This is where people with the initial supplies and resources to get by until now begin running out of stuff and having to make critical decisions.


  Choices such as:


-Do I simply start killing people for their shit?

-How many canned goods are a human life worth?

-Am I hungry enough to eat a dog?

-Am I hungry enough to eat another human?

-Am I hungry enough to eat another human without some decent marinade or dry rub options?

-Is life without electricity, vodka, hamburgers and online porn even worth going through the trouble?

-How can I take out as many people who have wronged me as I can before circumstances kill me or force me to kill myself?


  These will become very important options to some folks before their inevitable demise.



  While I'm willing to stand amidst the chaos and defend every last can of Hormel Tamales that I have stashed despite how they taste, once my shit is gone and I begin to starve, I can't rightly say what I'll do. Never been there before, starvation that is. Been hungry, but hungry and starving aren't as close of neighbors as you'd think.


  Would I just straight up eat another human? Perhaps a tender feral baby if I could manage to trap one of the clever little devils?


  I'm hoping I never get hungry enough to find out. but, truth be told, I do keep a secret supply of soy sauce on hand for marinade in case I ever have to eat people cutlets.


  And remember folks, if you're going to start using humanity as a food source, for fuck's sake use the whole animal. Don't be a wasteful cunt.


  Render the fat for lamp oil and waterproofing. Harvest the skin; it makes great leather and scares other people silly. Bones have too many uses to list. The point is, as with the Native Americans and bison, people aren't just meat so don't treat them that way. Have some fucking respect, ya fuckin cannibal.




  So thinking long term, in the unlikely event I live that long. I've been considering possible business opportunities in a Post-Everything America. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, things don't look great. But in the end, I came up with the following ideas:


Uncle Herdy's Sharp Sticks™: I know, it doesn't sound great right now but branding is everything and as worldwide ammunition supplies dry out and mass production ceases, a sharp stick starts looking more and more attractive. It was the weapon of choice of tens of thousands of years because it's a proven two step system: A) Stab pointy end into enemy. B) Repeat as necessary. Or even, for advanced users. C) Throw the fucking thing.


  Even idiots can use one.


  I feel like if the end of civilization advances to a certain point, people might start looking more kindly on an expertly made Sharp Stick. Hell, if we regress far enough they may even become a sort of status symbol:, like


  "Hey. is that an original Uncle Herdy ya got there?"


  "Sure is. I had to kill SO MANY people to get it, but it was totally worth it! Bludgeons like a dream, bro!"



  Another equally promising idea I had was Darwin Jerky™.*1 In other words human jerky marketed to people who don't want to believe they're eating human flesh and are completely prepared to buy into the narrative of me somehow still having a cattle ranch somewhere with cows on it or some such nonsense. Nobody without a small army has cows anymore. Certainly not in enough numbers to make a commercially available jerky.


  But with enough smoke flavoring, red dye and milled texturing, I'm confident folks will love it and any doubts they have will be rapidly alleviated by their hunger pangs going away and that adorable flavor I've concocted out of various shit laying around. And maybe some heroin I found.


  Whatever. A small business man will need an edge in Post-Everything America. If I can get people to eat my brand of human meat sprinkled in heroin while masquerading as a pork or beef product, I'm gonna do it.



  We'll have to see how far society breaks down before I begin implementing my business plan. I'm probably gonna label it "Organic" just in case a few hippies survive the imminent madness. Broadest commercial appeal and whatnot.





Everything's gonna be just fine, you just wait and see.

-Uncle QuaranHerder











DARWIN jerky

Don't Arsk What's IN It

























*1 DARWIN is my abbreviation for "Don't Ask 'Really, What's IN it'?"


  

A Blogger Adapts To A Post-Strip Club World, Or, Quarantine Diary Of A Guy Who Used To Herd Strippers.

Quarantine Diaries, Chapter 62

  
  In the wake of the Meat Riots and the ensuing chaos that resulted, I had ceased to forage for the time being and lived off canned goods while the remaining populace enthusiastically slew one another outside my windows. Once the quiet crept back again I poked my head out to see what there was to see, scavenge what there was to scavenge.

  Who knew bacon, or the lack thereof, would be the straw that broke the camel's back?

  Turns out eight days was exactly how long America was willing to wait for more bacon before they lost their shit and began the true demolition of our society. Toilet paper was one thing, I guess, but allow the bacon supply chain to break down and everyone starts gunning down their neighbors all willy nilly.

  Fuck with bacon at your peril is the lesson future generations should take away from this.

  Every day brings new challenges and wonders. Today for instance I saw two babies fighting a raccoon by a dumpster over half a pack of Now And Later's that was crawling with ants. I chose not to involve myself but I was quietly rooting for the raccoon because those babies looked savage and gross. I didn't like babies much before they were feral and competing with rodents for sustenance and I certainly don't like them now when they're competing with rats to be the dominant nuisance species.

 
  The Meat Riots, while horrific and barbaric, did make the streets quieter. Mostly that's because of the rise of the Cannibal Cults, but you take the good with the bad in this quirky post-civilization world we live in.

  

  In related news, my neighbor has recently gone full cannibal and while I try not to judge, I can't help thinking "I really hope he's getting enough fiber..." I'm trying not to be a diet-shamer here, I mean it's the end of civilization, eat whatever you can get your hands on, ya know? If you've decided long pig is the answer and you're comfortable with it, who am I to judge? Just the other day I saw a stray beagle and thought to myself, 'I still have half a bottle of Korean barbeque marinade that probably isn't totally rancid yet, I should shoot that fucking dog and somehow eat it or something.'

  

  Problem is I don't know how to skin an animal and harvest its meat, nor would I want to if I thought it might’ve been called 'Bandit' or 'Loki' or at one point wore a bandanna or sunglasses in a humorous family photo.

  

  But clearly my neighbor, who looked like Paul Rudd before the Apocalypase, has figured out a way to trap the feral Girl Scouts that briefly ruled our streets and were a threat to every living creature that dared to dart from building to building in the shadows. Hoping against hope not to hear the distinct hunting calls of "Dosi!" and the return calls of "Doe!" closing in from all directions.

  I learned early on that if you're out foraging and you see a pristine box of Thin Mints, run motherfucker. Run. They're already all around you and they move fast, coordinate better than Green Berets and haven't developed the higher concepts of mercy or compassion in their small, animal brains yet.

  

  Somehow "Larry" has figured out how to snare the clever little  things since they've all but disappeared and Larry is the only human I currently know who's putting on weight and frequently has the smell of fajitas emanating from his door.

  

  I'm just putting two and two together, doesn't mean I'm right or that he's wrong.

  

  Wouldn't want to seem like I'm shaming anyone for doing what they had to do. God forbid.

  

  So my latest drama is with the Church of Steve The Savior, one of the foremost new Cannibal Cults that I mentioned earlier. You see, three days ago, I shot two of them dead through my door as they tried to leave a pamphlet that I clearly indicated I didn't want. I felt I was being more than clear by shooting them through my door and to be fair I did have to listen to one of them slowly choke to death on his own blood for like five minutes which was really annoying.

  

  Then, not ten minutes later as I was surveying the damage done to my door by me refusing their literature, two more of them entered my building without permission, openly ignoring the clearly posted NO SOLICITATION sign, and there went the rest of my magazine. Like fucking ammo grows on trees nowadays, sunshine.

  Silver lining though, their obviously ambushed corpses have dissuaded all the meek predators from coming anywhere near my door, although the smell is, admittedly, less than ideal.

  It's all about tradeoffs in today's new reality. In order to combat the stench of the rotting Cannibal Cultists outside my door, I ambushed a landscaping truck and stole a bag of quicklime, which I sprinkle daily on the corpse warning-heap outside my door.

  It helps a bit but I fear Summer's gonna be a bitch. I'm trying to decide if I even want to live in a post-air conditioning world or not, although in the end I suspect that it's all just a matter of when I run out of vodka and who might blow my brains out as I attempt to steal their supply of coping juice.

  That's where I'd put my money on how it all eventually goes down. I'd give it 2 to 1 odds of being headshot while attempting to flee with pilfered booze.

 

  Other notable contenders in my death pool include:

-Masturbates to death: 3 to 1 odds. I certainly realize the hazard it poses, but am willing to Face The Dragon every single day until it rots me from inside and one day, during climax, my entire midsection explodes and I expire before the last of my ejaculate and half digested pork n beans can drip off the ceiling.

-Eaten by neighbor, Larry: 5 to 1 odds. I'm probably too gamey unless he gets really desperate...

-Instantly commit suicide the moment the vodka runs out. Don't even try to steal any. Just paint a wall with my thinky-bits: 6 to 1 odds but trending upward.

-Run down while foraging by ravening bands of former Uber and DoorDash drivers who have donned bondage gear and now engage in an interleague sport based on mowing down pedestrians with rat rod Kia's and Corolla's with meat plows welded onto them: 12 to 1 odds. If it isn't a Prius or Tesla, you can hear it coming. Then you simply wait for the right moment and implement PLAN ONE.*1. If it's an all electric gang, the odds go up to 16 to 1.

-Taken down while foraging by unionized packs of stray survivor dogs who’ve fallen back on their  lupine heritage in order to survive a world where they are both predators and a possible burrito filling.: 20 to 1 odds. Not only do I have a special understanding of canine language, I can just shoot them.

-Killed by a post apocalyptic Road Gang’s Sub Boss while trying to protect my canned ravioli and Dinty Moore supply. Not even the Big Boss, but his mohawk’ed and chaps-wearing sodomite commando. Again, not judging. If I’m OK with cannibalism, butt sex, whether consensual or not seems sorta ‘not really my problem either’: 25 to 1 odds. I'm expecting this and have reserved several rounds of .45 Colt, which regardless of sexual preference will still put enormous holes in you, even if you have a mohawk or are wearing leather pants.

-Nuked:100 to 1 odds. It's not unrealistic to think that some top ten global powers have considered unleashing their nuclear arsenals. In layman's terms this means there will never be a better eighteen minute window in which to savage your genitals with no lasting consequences.

  

  I'll keep you posted on the outcome of my death pool as long as I'm able. But....you know. Probably won't be available to post a dying message with the pool winning method, so be conservative with your wagers.





  One of the members of my community is running a "food truck". And by that I mean he built a fire under a dumpster full of rainwater and boiled a few corpses in it with some lemon rinds and half a cup of salt. If I could leave a Yelp review it would read something like this.


  "I wasn't expecting much when the dumpster rolled out in front of my building, It didn't smell appetizing at first and when the vendor punctured the slime layer that had formed over the surface of the "stew", things didn't get much better.


  However, appearances aside, the stew was actually pretty awful. It tasted like how I always imagined soapy bath water that had been used to render down the fat of old people's cadavers would taste. That being said, this IS a review so therefore in the spirit of fairness I will say it was very meaty, the portions were exceedingly generous and served in a limited edition tactical helmet, which I thought was a nice touch.


  Was it worth one can of baby shrimp and one can of french cut green beans? Yes, but only because the 'while supplies last' tactical helmet soup bowl promotion, which frankly was genius. Would I eat from this dumpster again? No. Not unless a new wave of National Guard are deployed here and the helmet-bowl promo comes back."

  2 STARS





  Yours til next time,
-The StripperHerder Who Herds No More And Kills Religious Freaks and Would Be Ravioli Thieves

 

 

 

*1 PLAN ONE: Pump rounds through it until it stops moving.

 

Welcome To A Whole New World: Post-Titty If You're A Glass Half-Empty Kinda Reader. Gasoline Powered V-8 Madness And Vehicular Carnage If You're An Optimist Like Me.

  Here's the deal, despite the title I make no promises or binding agreements about the actual or theoretical content of the following post be it in regards to titties or any other subject matter mentioned in the title or forthwith.


  That's actual lawyer talk, I looked it up on a website so it's 100% true and legitimate.


  What I will state, in a Glass-Half-Empty sorta way, is that I wish things would go all Mad Max, preferably minus all the bondage and fetish gear if possible. If not, whatever. It's the end of civilization and there's no dress code like there would be in a civilized place. So wear what you want as long as there's some built-in weaponry with which you can kill people for their gasoline.


  Because that seems to be the point at first.


  Although arguments could be made that in this iteration, toilet paper will be the resource that ultimately breaks our society, I choose to put my faith in vodka and ammunition as my source of future wealth (both of which are Armageddon-Proof) And while I believe that this may be gospel, I'm preparing to wipe my ass with smooth rocks or ruined socks, while not having to resort to pistol-whipping a resource plunderer because I chose a clean ass over lethal self defense rounds.


  Water will somehow become important later, don't worry about it as long as those V-8's are being fed and mohawk'ed road bushwhackers are being bested and shot fulla buckshot, arrows and cleverly launched tire irons.


  Remember your "Pretending It's NOT the End of Society" Road Agent Training:



1) It is perfectly okay to waste 3 gallons of high test fuel by firing up your Blower to outrun Wasteland Twats for ten miles so you can harvest thirteen ounces of crappy 82 octane fuel leaking from a wreck by catching it in a filthy, dust streaked salad bowl. It makes perfect sense.


2) Weapons are everything, so load as many of them onto your person as you can effectively move under the weight of. Don't deny yourself any weapon system based on your probable ability to lug it around. Fuck it. If you can cram it into your V-8 Interceptor and effectively use it, it's worth the fuel cost.


  Remember, this is the shattered remains of civilization. It is Post cellphone, Post social media and Post instant communication. Ergo, if no one's around to record something happening otherwise, then as a Remnant Road Authority of whatever questionable gubbamint is left, whatever you say happened becomes fact by the simple expedient of everyone else involved was either slagged in a high speed motorway accident or failed to cut through a limb before a perfectly explainable vehicle explosion took place.


  They're all polygamist methheads anyway.



3) Methhead Road Cunts will always veer off when faced with an insane, sunglasses and glove wearing broken spirited cop whose family is dead by other, unaffiliated Methhead Road Cunts, most of whom rode motorcycles.


  Which is idiotic in a vast-open-space scenario with range weapons.


  But you can't stop them from doing it. Until you shoot them, that is.


  Which is super easy. They're just....really easy to hit and take down.



4) Don't trust children. Listen, the Apocalypse happened and we've moved on a bit. But there's tons of orphans of this circumstance who've gone feral and plenty more who will eventually join one wild pack or another as a matter of survival. This is one of two eventualities when parentless children are left unfed for prolonged periods of time. They either perish or join cult-like bands of other idiot kid survivor groups, each with it's own religion based on nonsense.


  Trust me when I say their social support network is MUCH deeper than yours and and when all hope is lost, my money is on them to come out on top.




5) When you run out of resources because what passed for government has finally collapsed, it's 100% OK to take whatever gasoline, tires, blower parts, air filters, teeth or any other resource you can scavenge from any other vehicle on the road that may happen to look bodged together or has anyone with goggles in it. Goggles are illegal. So are any other vehicles without a valid safety sticker.


  The manual says DO NOT run them off the road. PURSUE them until they crash and assist them if given a chance. 


  Assist them doing what is open to interpretation based on the wording. It's taken as a given the the good folks of a post-nuclear-exchange law enforcement jurisdiction would never go all Road Pirate and wreck cars for fun and profit. It's unthinkable.





   Fuck. That's all I have to say for now. What can I say, I'm out of practice.



  Still got the shitty, abrupt ending down pat though.


  Some things you can't unlearn.



 Your Future Twerk Rancher,
-Unky Herdy!