The Shape of Dumpsters to Come By Uncle Len, the Dumpster Diving Champ

     Many centuries ago, I grew up on a pig farm in Queensland. My old man, who was a bigger drunk than even I would be, decided that it would make sense to feed the pigs on food scraps from supermarkets, stores and even fish shops, to have more money for booze.  So, after school, in my school uniform, we would go and collect the waste, tipping the scraps onto the tray of an old FC Holden (remember them?) ute. Kids would viciously humiliate me, identifying me as filth and scrap. My father enjoyed this, sitting in the car, having yet another beer, in anticipation of the big drinking session with his mates after about 5.30 pm, once the 6 o’clock swill ended in the 1960s.

     To save money so that the maximum amount of alcohol could be consumed, we ate what scraps we could salvage from the ute. I did grow food when I got older, and searched for wild bush food and shot the odd bunny, so eventually this humiliation was phased out, especially after I refused to help any more, after I stuck up for my mother in conversation against him while we were at a farmer’s supply centre, and he struck me in the head with a large padlock, leading me unconscious to die on the railway track. When I regained consciousness, I ran into the centre, where he was having a beer with some guys, and hit him in the nose with all my might, then ran. That was my first night on the streets, the start of lifetime of homelessness.  Life is wonderful, isn’t it?

     Forgive me for mentioning my PTSD suffering. I know, I should be a good boy and suffer in silence. But, it all just came  rushing back in another mental attack when I read: http://collapse.news/2017-07-08-frugal-woman-manages-to-quit-job-and-travel-the-world-by-eating-trash-from-the-dumpster.html; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-4664286/Thrifty-woman-saves-30-000-eating-TRASH.html,  about a woman who ate from dumpsters for just eight months, and saved enough money to travel to South America: http://dumpsterdogblog.com/how-to-dumpster-dog/. Do I even want to go across the road, let alone, South America, wherever that is?  Why, there is even a popular song by sweet U.S. songbird Kelly Clarkson called, “Because of You,” with sample lyrics:
“Because of you
I never stray too far from the sidewalk
Because of you
I learned to play on the safe side so I don’t get hurt
Because of you
I try my hardest just to forget everything
Because of you
I don’t know how to let anyone else in
Because of you
I’m ashamed of my life
Because it’s empty
Because of you
I am afraid”
Now, that’s my kind of song, full of existential pain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra-Om7UMSJc, singing for those of us, who cannot.

     Now, one does not have to go that far, or to have the brutal life of Uncle Len, becoming an emotional cripple, to learn lessons here. Hard times are coming, and saving money and cutting the fat, is a short-term measure. Sure, I know you educated guys and gals at the clever people’s sites, are on about charging the economic system, social credit and all that, and I love it too, but I don’t understand much of it, having not much of a brain left.

     But, poor and pitiful folk like Uncle Len have to keep body and soul together before you can save us. Have you saved us yet?  I look around at the cockroaches eating the remains of the chicken carcass from last night, that some stray cat pulled out of the bin and took into my shed, where I live, to feast. Apparently not. So, the lowly man such as myself, must live by scrounging, and the above articles and site have many useful tips for people who are not so far down the track of degeneration as myself, to apply. See also the wonders of minimalism:
https://www.ted.com/talks/graham_hill_weekday_vegetarian;
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/high-price-materialism;
http://dumpsterdogblog.com/learning-from-dolly-parton/;
http://www.theminimalists.com/minimalism/.

     Within the conventional financial system, there will be, at least in the short term, which is my fleeting  life, an “inevitable degrowth”: https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/109555/inevitability-degrowth, as global debt has now reached a record high of US $ 217 Trillion, which is 327 percent of GDP: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-29/global-debt-hits-new-record-high-217-trillion-327-gdp. This is unsustainable, and a great crash, the greatest that we have known, is coming: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-08/inevitability-degrowth. It is like the ache in one’s joints that we feel when the cold winter winds decide to blow through our being.

     There may well come a day, when Uncle Len, the true everyman, is everywhere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everyman_(play), and as in the words of the song cited above, we will be afraid.