The Industrial Powers Push Back

You've probably heard the news, the industrial powers are pushing back against the residential industrial movement. We're now either in a serious jam or on the verge of a huge breakthrough. This thing, like a teeter totter, a door, or a toaster, could go both ways.

I myself am on pins and needles as I shift uncomfortably in my chair and chart our next move. It's really something to have this much responsibility, so many lives depending on me, and so much potential neighborhood cleanup if we don't prevail. I've mentioned just a few of the neighbors, the ones nearest me -- the Bisoms, the Butlers, and the Spooners, but there are countless other ones across town, the state, and country. It'd be a mess to go back to normal.

We're putting down roots and raising up industries right and left, that's the thing. Right now there's so much run off, so many billows of smoke, and the miscellaneous clanking of hammers randomly hitting metal, I don't know how we'd turn the thing around. But that's the issue.

Of course at first the major industrial powers didn't think anything would come of it, so they winked and grinned, slapping one another's backs. The first signs of actual construction brought forth little more than a demeaning snicker from them. When we started sharing copies of conveyor belt designs and schematics, they thought we were being cute. The first few smokestacks that went up, they were laying odds on whether they'd topple today or tomorrow.

But then ... guess what! ... residential manufacturers started putting out actual tires, disposable diapers, paint cans and paint, and about any item you can think of -- the Spooners are still working on their first vat -- and suddenly the snickers turned to sneers. "The quality won't be any good," they sneered. But as we speak, the rubber's still hitting the road, the paint's still sticking to the wall, and the diapers when used by twins are easily doing double duty. As for the vat, preliminary tests show the seams are pulling away less frequently.

Some of the neighborhood electrical generating plants have crossed an important threshold, their grids up and functioning at three times the reliability of Iraqi plants. They're learning new things everyday, like where to stand when they flip switches. On site electrocutions are way down.

So what are the major industrial powers doing? They're appealing to the state, of course. And they're trying every legal trick in the book, with a lot of well-dressed attorneys in their sway, to shut us down. Zoning, zoning, zoning, that's their mantra.

My own sense is this residential movement is too big to stop. Like I said the other day, we've tasted it and we now know our power. If they try to jail us, we'll start our own residential jails and jail them. If they come at us with their lawyers (too much) we'll raise up our own residential lawyers. And if the state doesn't back down, we'll form our own residential states. I'm finding the clear answer to every situation is this: Whatever they've got, we can form our own residential version of it!