John – Page 15 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

It Came From . . . 1995

“Man, there’s not a year that goes by, not a year, that I don’t read about some escalator accident involving some bastard kid that could’ve easily been avoided had some parent, I don’t care which one, but some parent conditioned him to fear and respect the escalator.” – Mallrats

Is that Neandergibson? Joe Piscopo?

While the 1980s allowed for gonzo productions of very uneven quality to become classics (Better Off Dead, for instance) the 1990s box office was much more crowded and the studios began to spend even more on the films. I’d say that a random movie from 1995 was more professionally made than a random movie from any year in the 1980s, but had a lot less heart.

As to the continuation of the series, I’m not sure if we’ll do 1996 or end it here. I think I’m done with the 1970s, though I have another idea that amuses me that we’ll try in late August. As always, I’m also willing to consider lists of genre flicks, but pretty soon that ends up with movies no one ever saw.

As usual, sequels are excluded on the list. I don’t consider Mallrats a sequel. Thankfully, I make the rules. You may appeal. It will be denied.

As an aside, I don’t think you can overestimate the propaganda impact of films. Just like listening to music puts your brain into a state of suggestable hypnosis (which is why I like to listen to kick-ass music rather than sad stuff most days) so does film. Film takes the next dimension above music by adding visual stimulus, making the hypnosis even more effective. What I take in does impact me, so I consider that more and more as I grow older and as it’s thrown in our faces with the last decade’s worth of propaganda films. I understand now why some don’t like horror films for just that reason. I do like them, still, but I’ve become much more selective as to what I let in the transom.

Speaking of which . . . .

That poster gives me tentacles. I mean tingles. And it looks like Ralph Macchio.

In the Mouth of Madness – I love good Lovecraftian horror. Cosmic horror is at its best when it sketches a universe of limitless expanse where we’re just nubs sitting in the darkness while titanic forces beyond our understanding play out around us. It’s like whistling through the graveyard, if you will. When I first saw In the Mouth of Madness I hated it, because I didn’t get it. Now? My opinion is that it’s great cosmic horror, and shows off Sam Neill as he unwittingly brings about the end of the world. With popcorn. Like most of Carpenter’s work, it has a large following, but was box office poison. But he gets the last laugh in this one.

I have a particular set of skills. Murder and guitar solos.

Rob Roy – Scots fighting to be fiercely independent, while being swindled and taken advantage of by rape-y foreigners? If only they would do that in 2025. Tim Roth steals the show in a perfectly creepy performance with hair appropriate for Isaac Newton if he played guitar for Queen®. It did okay at the box office.

If you’ve seen the movie, this makes a little bit of sense.

Crimson Tide – Another submarine movie because, well, why not? In this one, though, Tony Scott (same guy who cooked a Goose in Top Gun) gets the most out of Denzel Washington and the late Gene Hackman. To be clear, Hackman was still alive during the movie. The two are officers on a nuclear missile submarine that have to decide if they’re going to shoot off nuclear missiles after losing communications with Starfleet®. Me? I would have launched the missiles because that’s one way to get in the history books.

Should this one be called “Bravefelt”?

Braveheart – Tons of historical inaccuracy? Check. Mel Gibson with more hair than an 80’s glam band? Check. Ludicrously long runtime of nearly three hours? Also check. In spite of these things, this was a huge hit. Swords. Women. Bravery. Sophie Marceau at her peak Marceau-ness. What’s not to love?

I still remember when he outran Kevin Spacey to maintain his virginity in the climax.

Apollo 13 – This movie follows the life of a young transgender long-distance runner (Tom Hanks) who needs an older mentor (Kevin Bacon) to buy him shoes because he grew up in a third-world country that couldn’t afford to have a Nike® store or electricity or food.

I need to post this on Rob’s X® feed.

Judge Dredd – Some comic book purists don’t like this version because in the comic books Dredd never takes off his helmet, but Stallone wanted to show off his hair. The (much darker) 2012 reboot Dredd features a Dredd™ that always covers his hedd. I didn’t care, really, since I found this movie both stupid and hilarious and one of Rob Schneider’s best roles. Huge flop. I wouldn’t recommend it, but yet I enjoyed it. Does that mean I hate myself? Anyway, the 2012 version is a much better movie.

Wait, what if every suspect was Rob Schneider? That would be wacky!

The Usual Suspects – Cost $6 million, made nearly $70 million. This one gets the most out of fairly talented cast in a crime mystery, and I will admit that the ending did surprise me when I watched it on a rental VHS tape from Blockbuster™, because I did not know that late fees could get that high. I still don’t know how the tape ended up behind the couch. Maybe it was Keyser Söze?

Wow, those guys are more swole than I recalled. The 90s rocked!

Mallrats – A $6 million dollar budget. $2 million in ticket sales. I think the budget skips all the advertisement for this thing – you couldn’t go anywhere young adults were in 1995 without seeing ads for this movie months before it came out. This movie is a very stupid comedy that brings us Jason Lee (My Name is Earl) as a guy on a quest to get his girlfriend back. I think. It’s funny in a juvenile way, but was also the product of its time. Watched it with my boys, they thought it was hilarious, but were also fascinated, like anthropologists studying a world that existed a thousand years ago.

I hope it’s as good as the sequel to Hamlet.

Leaving Las Vegas – Darkest movie on this list. Watched it once, not sure I have it in me to watch it again. The guy who wrote the semi-autographical novel it was based on killed himself when he found out it was going to be a movie. Guess he really, really, really, really didn’t like Nic Cage.

Heat – I was debating if I was going to do “It Came From . . . . 1995” at all, but the meme above (as found) convinced me that I should. Big hit that I somehow missed and watched a few years ago after Aesop mentioned it. No weapons were injured during the filming of this movie, but not for lack of ammo. Thank heavens Sig® hadn’t introduced the P320™ yet or else half of the ammo fired wouldn’t have needed an actor fanning the trigger. Related news: I hear Alec Baldwin is going to be Sig©’s spokesman.

Four Rooms or Fur Rooms?

Four Rooms – An anthology film that I saw in an arthouse theater (the only time I’ve ever been to one) with a buddy. I guess being in an arthouse theater is with another dude is the gayest thing I’ve ever done in my life, besides that one time I had a wine cooler. Regardless, I enjoyed it, since each one of the four films was essentially a joke tied together by Tim Roth’s best comedic performance. The first film is by far the weakest, but, I can’t call it awful because, boobs.

“Waiter, there’s a rubber chicken in my soup.”
“No there isn’t.”
“Yes, there is. What is it doing there.”
“The backstroke, I believe.”
Now for something completely different.

12 Monkeys – Is he crazy, or is it time travel? Why not both? Terry Gilliam was generally the weakest member of Monty Python®, but he’s done much better as a director. Regardless, this movie brings together Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt in roles very much against the stuff they normally did, with Pitt even getting nominated for an Oscar™.

Not included? Seven. Species. Strange Days. Sense and Sensibility. Really, any movie starting with ‘S’ from 1995. I kid. Things to do in Denver When You’re Dead also nearly made the list.

What did I miss?

No Podcast, Please Enjoy These Memes Instead

Mark is unavailable, and The Mrs. is feeling ill. So, back next week!

Wilder’s Fables: Killing The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg

“Oh, yeah, call the police. Tell them about the Spear of Destiny, the golden goose, the lost Ark. Enjoy your stay in the psych ward. I understand Thorazine® comes in vanilla now.” – The Librarian: Quest for the Spear

I bought one of my friend an elephant statue for his front room. He said, “Thanks.” I said, “Don’t mention it.”

In the OG version of The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg, (the OG version of which is pushing 2600 years old) a greedy farmer finds a goose that pops out golden eggs, but instead of chilling with the steady bling, yo, he decides to open up the bird for a quick jackpot despite the goose giving him a new golden egg each day. Shockingly, there is no gold mine inside. Just goose guts. And a lesson no one ever seems to pay attention to.

In 1945, the West stood astride the world like an economic Applebee’s® with endless appetizers, its factories humming and the treasury brimming with gold. Literal gold, and some of it was even ours – I’ll skip my usual grumbling about FDR’s confiscation for another post. Some of the gold wasn’t, it was gold from our allies that had been given to the United States for safekeeping. Because, panzers.

But America was a far greater treasure than all the gold in the country. America at that time was the goose of golden prosperity. The United States was responsible for half of the world’s GDP, its assembly lines spitting out cars, steel, washers, sinks, and dreams of a better future. Add in the allies? It was a clear three-quarters of the world GDP, with only the Soviet Union, still bulging from the war steroids it took for a decade, being close.

And there’s not a big market for a used T-34/76. “One owner, very nice. Ignore red stains, please. Last owner not so careful at Kursk.”

Capitalists have it easy. They never have to spell bourgeoisie. (meme as found)

Allies flocked to the Western orbit. Some were spooked by the hordes of Soviet tanks, others were nudged by CIA coups, and then nudged again until they got it right. Most, however, was because Uncle Sam’s deal of bikinis and bourbon was sweeter than a Moscow winter and a Siberian GULAG. It was an empire, but it was an empire of alliance.

Fast forward to today.

The Soviets are long gone, and the goose isn’t dead, but it’s close.

The economy has been slowly strangled by a combination of bad policies and worse ideas, and none are deadlier than mass immigration.

To be clear: the wealth of the West wealth was no accident – things that produce wealth aren’t illiterate laborers, pools of oil, or uncut trees. Nope. The wealth producer, the golden goose was culture, not what Vox Day so eloquently described as “magic dirt.” By killing the goose, our future is becoming bleaker, and the GloboLeft is cheering the downfall.

Bruce Lee was fast, but his older brother Su-den was even faster.

The golden age peaked post-World War II, and the United States had a 20-year head start on the rest of the world while Europe and Asia rebuilt from rubble.

By 1973, though, the United States began to falter economically.

This wasn’t entirely from external foes, but at least partially from our own hands.

Four factors gutted the goose:

dumping the gold standard,
feminizing the workforce,
enforcing affirmative action, and
opening borders to unrelenting immigration.

The first three wounded us; the last is the mortal blow, changing our people, our culture, and our wealth. Let’s discuss the carnage.

Dumping the Gold Standard (1971): Nixon’s pen stroke cut the dollar loose from gold, turning money into Monopoly® paper. Oh, wait, there’s a limit to how much Monopoly© cash they can print. The median home price in 1973 was $32,500. Today, it’s $412,300. Without gold’s anchor, our wealth’s a mirage, and the goose’s eggs are plastic.
Feminization of the Workforce: The 1970s pushed women into offices, doubling labor supply but halving family focus. Birth rates tanked—2.1 kids per woman in 1973, 1.6 in 2023. Empty cradles mean fewer Actual American workers, and less innovation from the best workforce on Earth. The GloboLeft calls it “empowerment” when a woman has to leave the home for fifty hours a week in order to afford to pay for another woman to ignore her child by becoming a cubical Karen. Go figure.

I have a new personal record in the 100-yard dash. I’m up to 47 yards. (meme as found)

Affirmative Action (Duke Power, 1971, for example): Forcing quotas over competence, the Supreme Court’s decision diluted merit. Companies hired to check boxes, not build bridges. A 2022 study found 30% of firms reported lower productivity post-DEI mandates. 30%. If diversity is our strength, I’m not sure who “our” refers to when we’re forced to play diversity bingo.
Mass Immigration: Here’s the killing blow. Since 1973, legal and illegal immigration flooded the West. There were 2.5 million border crossings in 2024 alone and those are the numbers that they’ll admit to, which we know are low. Now add in the Islamification of Europe, where France is nearly a Caliphate and the Germans keep going to work in order to pay for the illegals that flocked to them. Most don’t integrate. Imagine the farce: Mexican banners at California ICE protests where they tried to stop ICE from arresting underage illegals busy in the process of harvesting illegal (federally) marijuana. Can we be honest and just admit that immigration is not at all about joining the West, it’s about exploiting it.

Imagine, it only took 44 hours for the police to completely clear Martha’s Vineyard of illegals. (meme as found)

Immigration, though, is the dealbreaker because it changes the people. And everything is downstream of who the people are: culture, politics, and even PEZ®.

In 1973, a near-minimum-wage earner could buy a median home for $32,500, which was about five times the average annual wage. Today, that median home costs a stunning $412,300, ten times the average wage.

Why? Illegals depress wages. Back in 1973, a high school grad could pull a great job in construction. But even since 1990, construction wages have dropped 15% in real terms.

Illegals also drain services: illegal immigration costs taxpayers $150 billion annually (FAIR 2024), siphoning wealth like a cuckoo bird stealing the nest for its own young rather than for those that built it in the first place.

If it takes a village to raise a child, I guess it takes a vineyard to raise a cat? (meme as found)

The GloboLeft insists “diversity is our strength,” but Pew’s 2019 study shows diverse communities have less trust. Many immigrants—legal or not—don’t assimilate and have no desire to assimilate. Ever. Many (not all!) second and third-generation Mexicans in California wave foreign flags because they’re only here for the gold, not the goose and, in fact, despise the goose.

Meanwhile, families, the nucleus of Western civilization, struggle. Low wages and high costs mean fewer kids—Europe’s at 1.5 fertility, which means that, pretty soon, the Swedish Bikini Team™ will have mustaches and be wearing burkas. As we often repeat, the future is there for those who show up.

The West’s prosperity had nothing to do with luck. It was culture.

Discipline, merit, family, forged in Athens, Rome, and 1930s Detroit. The GloboLeft’s dogma remains one based in hate for the West: open borders, DEI, and reviling of every bit of the culture that creates wealth.

They’d rather pluck the goose than protect it, and be happy with the result.

But the goose isn’t dead yet.

Bleeding? Yes.

In a state that’s getting worse every day? Also yes.

Is it worse than most people think? Absolutely. It is a dire point we find ourselves at.

But one thing I’ve seen when I read about Western Civilization is this: every time it looks bleak, and it looks like the flame of what we stand for is in danger of getting extinguished, people become firm and take that stand. And we win because we’re fighting, at the core, not for an economic idea but for the Truth, the Beautiful, and the Good.

I think, in part, it’s because it’s not magic dirt. It’s in us, and this rallying from near defeat is what makes us who we are, what drives us to make civilizations, to make the golden goose, again and again.

You know, that even inspires me. Almost gives me goose bumps.

The Emperor’s Old Lies: Breaking The Programming With Bikini Pic

“How will the emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?” – Star Wars

I remember a few years ago when the school called me and said my son had been telling lies. “Tell him he’s pretty good, because all of my kids have graduated.”

The Emperor’s New Clothes is an 1837 very short fable written by Hans Christian Anderson, and I’ll give a quick reminder of what the story is about, since if you’re like me, third grade was a long time ago, even if I had to repeat it three times.

In a kingdom obsessed with dressing like a Kardashian on crack, Emperor Vain McFancypants struts around changing his outfit ever hour. Yet, he’s craving the ultimate outfit.

Enter two shady tailors who decide that there is money to be made here. They tell the emperor that they can make the ultimate outfit for him, something that would make Madonna blush. Not only that, but the clothes are so finely woven that they’d be invisible to dumb people.

They “weave” invisible fabric, and the emperor, too proud to admit he sees nothing, agrees that it looks great. His court, a bunch of yes-men terrified of looking as dumb as a host on The View, rave about the nonexistent outfit. The tailors mime stitching, cutting, and fitting, while the emperor is basically walking around in his royal skivvies.

Deciding that everyone deserves to see this new outfit, the Emperor decides to have a parade so people can see how cool his new threads are. Come parade day, he struts through town, buck-naked but confident, flexing for the crowd. Townsfolk, brainwashed by hype and not wanting to look stupid, cheer like it’s the return of Elvis.

How do the seven dwarves welcome Snow White? “Heigh Ho.”

But then, a kid, immune to nonsense, yells, “Why is the emperor walking around naked? It’s not a good look, dad.” The crowd gasps, realizing they’ve been simping for a streaker. The emperor, red-faced but committed, keeps posing, and pretending because he doesn’t see a way out.

Imagine attending a company training session filled with bobbleheads from HR. One of them opens up with “diversity is our strength.”

A lone man raises his hand and says, “Actually, studies show diverse communities have less trust.”

Silence.

Then gasps. Someone faints. The HR bobblehead sputters, “That’s not in the script!”

Welcome to the Emperor’s New Lies. Here, objective truth is banned, and the narrative is supported at all costs, since without believing that the weavers of the narrative are infallible, everyone will see that the GloboLeft is more naked than Charity over at stage three.

Boy, the GloboLeft has really lost the plot – it’s now more offensive to talk about getting into Sydney Sweeney’s genes than about getting into her jeans.

What is their great effort? The GloboLeft and GloboLeftElite have spent decades weaving lies about race, diversity, and culture and even denying that the Truth, Beauty, and Good exist. Thankfully, Truth, Beauty, and Good can’t be stopped no matter how many HR manuals they throw at it.

The GloboLeft’s playbook is straight from Hans Christian Andersen. They’ve ruled objective reality off-limits. The game is simple:

deny the truth,
deflect the evidence,
obscure the problem,
then 404 their brains when cornered and forced to confront that The Narrative is a lie.

Let’s talk about something simple and non-controversial: black-on-white violence.

FBI’s 2023 crime stats don’t lie: blacks, 13% of the U.S. population, commit 54% of murders. Black-on-white violent crime is 15 times higher than white-on-black, per DOJ’s 2019 data.

Step one: GloboLeft denies it. “Crime’s colorblind!” they scream, ignoring the numbers.
Step two: when you shove the stats in their face, they say, “Data doesn’t show a problem.”
Step three: when you pin them down, they wave hands— “It’s systemic racism! We need to solve the root cause!” Never mind we’ve spent $33 trillion since LBJ’s Great Society, with black poverty rates barely budging (12.3% in 1965, 11.6% in 2023).
Step four: they 404—mental shutdown, change the subject, ban the badthinker from the Internet because they think every pit bull is the same as a poodle.

Every pistol looks like it’s Austrian to me. My doctor said I have Glock-oma.

But, this isn’t just about race. It’s the GloboLeft script for every inconvenient truth:

“Diversity is our strength”: Pew’s 2019 study says diverse communities have lower social cohesion and trust. Homogeneous societies like Japan score higher on happiness. Yet the GloboLeft pushes open borders, forced classroom integration, and ensuring that everyone has the right to be near white people, ignoring the chaos.

“White people are racist”: A 2021 YouGov poll found Western countries (U.S., UK) are the least racist globally—Asians and Africans score higher on bias. But, the GloboLeft calls anyone who notices a bigot.

“Whites are the majority”: Whites are barely 8% of the global population, yet built modern science, literature, industry, programming and, yes, PEZ©. The GloboLeft ignores this, painting whites as oppressors.

I’m writing a book about Nordic cultures, but I don’t know if I’ll make it to the Finnish.

“Women have no disadvantage in sports”: Transgender men dominate women’s sports whenever they compete against real women. “Lia” Thomas won the NCAA swimming title in 2022, despite swimming that would be mediocre for a male. Biology is real, but the GloboLeft calls it transphobic.

“No biological intelligence differences exist”: Decades of IQ studies (e.g., Herrnstein & Murray, 1994) show consistent group differences, shaped by 70,000 years of differential adaptation in every climate on the planet. And, the GloboLeft would say that the only thing that was exactly the same across humans everywhere is the brain.

“Whites aren’t native to the U.S.”: A Muslim born in London to Pakistani parents claims “native British” status, but whites born in America aren’t? The GloboLeft says only brown people get homelands.

Where’s the capital of Zimbabwe? In a Swiss bank account.

“All cultures are equal”: If so, why do millions flee India, Mexico, and Nigeria for the West? Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Index ranks them 93, 126, 145 out of 180. I guess the West’s not perfect, but it’s also not Lagos.

The GloboLeft’s narrative isn’t about truth—it’s about control. They need you to buy the Emperor’s invisible clothes to keep power. Admitting black crime stats, diversity’s costs, or biological realities risks their house of cards. So they lie, deflect, and allow their brains to lock up, hoping you’ll shut up.

Why?

Because the West is built on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. From Athens’ logic to Edison’s bulb, we thrived by facing reality. The GloboLeft has a different dogma where there is no objective reality. This crumbles under scrutiny. They’ve spent $33 trillion on “root causes” since 1965, yet crime is up, trust is down, and borders are sieves. Their narrative is a scam, like selling a VCR in 2025 and calling it cutting-edge.

A 2024 Rasmussen poll found 68% of Americans reject “diversity is strength”: they now see the Emperor’s old lies for what they are. Gen Z’s waking up, especially the boys, sharing memes that cut through The Narrative. Every stat, every study, every viral post chips away at their narrative.

The West’s waking up, and it’s not asking permission. And it’s not pretending to see clothes that aren’t there.

The People’s Sick Day™: Commies . . . Not Working. Again.

“Uh, yeah, sure, no I’d be happy to, yeah you, uh, you just produce a corpse, and uh, I’ll release Sloane. I wanna see this dead grandmother first hand.” – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

If I take LSD before a vision exam, I always pass with flying colors.

In one of the more interesting moves, the remnants of the pot-addled hippies that were protesting in the 1960s have emerged from their Volkswagen™ camper vans and finally figured out that Jerry Garcia is as dead as Hubert Humphrey and the Equal Rights Amendment. They looked around, and decided that, heck, there wasn’t near enough communism going around, so they needed more.

Their cunning plan? A three-day sick day. When is it going to happen? Sometime. They don’t want to say when, because they don’t want The Man to know. The idea isn’t for them to show how little the world needs all the communists who have jobs in HR or making PowerPoints™ so they can pay someone to ignore their out-of-wedlock child (if they’re lucky) or cats (if they’re not).

Nope, that’s not it at all.

The idea is to point out who they are so that they’ll be easier to recognize in the future. As if the blue hair and nose rings, “gender dysphoria” or pronouns in their bios weren’t enough.

What do you call a polygamous hippie’s wives? One Mrs. Hippie, Two Mrs. Hippie, . . .

I digress.

Thankfully, on their Discord© server they have a list of their demands, and, a professional journalist waded through the GloboLeftist coping and seething and published them on MSNBC®(LINK). This is good, because the demands are so cringe that it’s hardly sporting to make fun of them. But I will, because I’m hardly sporting.

Why don’t I have PTSD? I’m the traumatic event.

I’ll list their demand (The People’s Sick Day™ Totally Stupid Demand, or PTSD), and my counter-demand (Wilder Talking Facts, or WTF):

PTSD: Calling for the impeachment, removal, and arrest of Donald John Trump and the Republican administration for knowingly manipulating the U.S. stock market, ignoring the U.S. Constitution, trafficking humans, and destroying our federal workforce. HE IS A CRIMINAL! LOCK HIM UP.

WTF: What happens in 2028 when Trump runs for his third term is no longer the face of the opposition? Who will drive them insane with hate? Regardless, my reasonable response is: No.

PTSD: Demanding HANDS OFF Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and veterans’ benefits

WTF: No. Most of SNAP should go. Most of Medicaid (not all) should go. Social Security should be phased out with the kids below 30 so that they don’t have an excuse to complain when the whole thing falls over. Also, eliminate Social Security on half of Americans based on birth year. Heads, eliminate odd years. Tails, eliminate even years. Just for giggles and it would be fun to watch the chaos.

Moses was also the first person to use CTRL-C as a shortcut.

PTSD: Demanding the removal of caps on Social Security

WTF: Do the checks really come with hats?

PTSD: Demanding NO MORE tax breaks for the rich — TAX THEM ALL!

WTF: Yes! Tax everyone! Tax everyone at the exact same rate for ALL income at 20%. Then everyone has skin in the game. And, make sure that people are taxed with on an Alternative Minimum Income: The minimum people are taxed is based on the federal minimum wage and if you can’t pay we deport you to Australia, for old times’ sake.

PTSD: Demanding an end to unlimited corporate profits and economic injustice

WTF: I demand an end to economic progress and creation of worldwide famine. See? I said exactly the same thing, but with way fewer words.

PTSD: Demanding an end to lobbyist and SUPER PAC funding

WTF: Nice try, since you own the media. No. My counter? I demand that CNN® be forced to feature nothing but things I’ve written. I mean, I guess I could stand for less exposure than I have now, but it’s a different audience – the CNN® crowd can’t read.

PTSD: Demanding the elimination of Citizens United

WTF: Man, panties are sure in a wad that they can’t stack the game, aren’t they?

PTSD: Demanding an increase in the federal minimum wage to $20 an hour, with adjustments for inflation as needed

WTF: Make it $100 an hour. No, $1,000 an hour. No, $10,000 an hour. See, you can joke, and I can, too. And there won’t be inflation, because only gold and silver will be money.

What’s the hardest part of making a vegan pizza? Catching the vegan.

PTSD: Demanding a cap on CEO pay at no more than 35% above the lowest worker’s salary

WTF: Welcome to not understanding what a contract worker is or what nested corporations are. Do they give you guys Crayons™ and a placemat to color on your Discord©?

PTSD: Demanding that wages for elected officials be capped at the median salary of their district

WTF: Sold. And no investments, either – they can only keep cash and they must rent, and this includes wages and investments for their extended family. AOC goes back to being a barista because it pays more.

PTSD: Demanding caps on rent, grocery, and insurance costs

WTF: Agreed. I demand unicorns as well, because they’d be good company as I lived on the street with no food or insurance.

PTSD: Demanding universal healthcare for all U.S. citizens and federal protection for sick time

WTF: I demand zero insurance for anyone and federal prosecution for anyone who starts an insurance company. I demand that anyone who takes a sick day from work without being near death be flogged if they don’t get away with it. Just kidding, like anyone will have a job if the PTSD proposals are enacted.

That dog looks like a brrrrito.

PTSD: Demanding term limits for all members of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court

WTF: Yes to Congress and no to SCOTUS. I would like treason charges for judges that violate the Constitution, and judges to be put in prison if someone they let out without bail injures anyone. And the robes should be form-fitting. For . . . reasons.

PTSD: Demanding reform of immigration policies

WTF: Agreed! Send them all home. All of them. Now.

PTSD: Demanding gun law reform — PROTECT OUR KIDS!

WTF: Agreed! Mail order machine guns and crew-served weapons, which are much more suited for children because they can work together to get that Ma Deuce warmed up. Besides, the hands of children are small and they generally have good eyesight, so field stripping an M60 should be a breeze.

PTSD: Demanding codified women’s rights to choose

WTF: You mean paper or plastic? It’s a stretch because I don’t trust the collective choices of women, but I’ll allow it.

PTSD: Demanding codified DEI and affirmative action

WTF: You mean penalties for having DEI and affirmative action? I’m in favor of that, and maybe you can talk me into making it a felony.

PTSD: Demanding the elimination of the Electoral College and a ban on gerrymandering

WTF: No.

PTSD: Demanding ranked-choice voting in all federal and state elections

WTF: No. Counter-demand: no voting until the family has been in the country for three generations, and one vote per family (mother/father, married). Otherwise, votes for military-aged males only.

PTSD: Demanding the taxation of mega-churches

WTF: And the taxation of micro-churches. And commie non-profits. And NPR® – those tote bags cause cancer.

My friend Gomez has a dismembered hand. I guess it’s okay, but it’s not my Thing.

PTSD: Demanding free post-secondary education

WTF: Only for students with an ACT of above 30 majoring in engineering, physics, or math who maintain a 3.5 GPA. And not fake engineering like “engineering tech” or fake astrophysics like “astronomy”. Real engineering. Real physics.

Okay, that about does it. Since I’ve solved all of those problems, I guess I’ll go back to work.

Take a sick day? I ain’t got time to bleed.

Listen Because It’s The Fun Way To Get The News: We Just Keep Getting Better Edition

Show starts at 5 minutes in.

Streams will show up at 9EDT (click the link below), that’s in just a little over half an hour! (and we typically pregame for five minutes, so it really starts up at 8:55PM)

Mrs The Mrs – YouTube

Funniest News On the ‘Net.

In this episode:

On This Day
Jackass of the Week
Conversation Street
Two Minutes of Guns in One Minute
ThinkRealFast
I Heard It On The X

Be Red Green pilled.

Caste Over Competence: Globalism Is Economic Suicide

“India’s a black hole.” – World War Z

How many Indians does it take to change a lightbulb? Sixteen. Fourteen to argue about whose responsibility it is, one to explain that lightbulbs are better in India and invented by Indians, and one to call the power plant to tell it to reboot because it must be a software issue. (all memes “as-found”)

Picture a world where kids in Bangladesh sew soccer balls for pennies (whatever a penny was), and some goatherder in Albania is working at a factory cranking out VCRs. VCRs, like it’s 1985 and I’m renting Back to the Future from Blockbuster®. I kid. Albania doesn’t even have electricity yet.

But that’s the flavor of globalism’s siren song that leads economies to doom: anything can be made anywhere, as long as the price is dirt cheap. I’ve heard the refrain, even in the comments here: “If you complain about competing against Albaniaks and Bangladeshites, well, you’re a commie that doesn’t believe in capitalism.”

If the goal of capitalism was to serve itself, well, then yes. It’s a battle of all against all, and whoever can outbreed the next country to lower the cost of (spins wheel) designer purses should make them.

I mean, it sounds great for your wallet, right?

Wrong. This is a strategy for hollowing out the West’s economy, stripping our skills, and handing our jobs to foreigners who don’t play by our rules at all, transforming our country into Albania on the Atlantic. Globalism is not just bad economics, it’s a betrayal of the West. And politicians love it.

But The Simpsons killed off Apu . . . maybe he wanted a raise?

Isn’t it strange that no matter how many times we vote “No, we don’t want any more aliens, illegal or not” that they nod their heads and bring them in? Is it any stranger that no matter how many times we vote, “No, we don’t want our factories shipped to places that don’t use vowels,” that our factories are shipped to places that haven’t yet invented vowels?

It’s a betrayal of the West

Let’s break it down. Globalism turns labor into a commodity, like trading baseball cards, except the cards are my job, my skills, and my family’s (and country’s) future. It’s a race to the lowest cost. Why pay an American $30 an hour when a kid in Swaziland (Swaziland still exists, right?) works for a handful or USAID® rice a day?

Why build a factory in Ohio when Ceylon’s got sweatshops begging for your blueprints? The GloboLeft (and, let’s be fair, the RINOs, too) cheer this as “progress,” but it’s a death spiral. Here’s how it plays out, step by step, until the West’s economy is a husk.

Thankfully all the Indians in Canada are very good with hand-held electronics. Tractor-trailers? Not so much.

The Stages of Economic Suicide

Design machines, build machines that make stuff, and make stuff: This is the golden age—think 1950s America. We designed cars, built the factories to make cars, and made cars. America flourished. Families thrived. Grandpa’s lunchpail as he went to work the railroad that shipped those cars meant something. Skills stayed home, and so did the wealth.
Design and make machines that make stuff: By the 80s, we’re still designing and building the machines, but the stuff’s starting to come from Japan and Taiwan as they focus on quality and crack the United States market. We’re losing the “make stuff” part, but hey, at least we’ve got Wall Street.
Design machines to sell to people who make stuff: Now we’re just selling blueprints. China’s got the factories to make iPhones® we’ve got the patents for the iPhones©. The know-how’s slipping—designing isn’t building. People don’t learn to weld by drawing a weld on paper.
Buy stuff made by other people from machines you designed: Welcome to the 2000s. Now we’re just selling blueprints. China’s got the factories to make iPhones® we’ve got the patents for the iPhones©. The know-how is now slipping—designing isn’t building. People don’t learn to weld by drawing a weld on paper. Our skills erode. No one in Ohio knows how to make a microchip anymore. The muscle memory of manufacturing? Gone. Microchips? They struggle with Pringles™.
Buy stuff made and designed by other people: The endgame. Now we become a country of consumers now, buying Chinese drones. All that’s left are knowledge jobs (coding, engineering), service jobs (baristas, Uber), and jobs that can’t be exported (plumbers, cops, construction). But wait—why not outsource the knowledge jobs too?

This is where globalism’s knife cuts deepest. The West’s economy is hollowed out, with a Starbucks® in the lobby of the Citibank™ that’s in a bigger Starbucks®. Oh, and Amazon warehouses.

Manufacturing’s gone, and with it, the skills that built manufacturing in the first place. And then? The GloboLeftElite says: “Hey, let’s import foreigners for the knowledge jobs too!” Enter the H-1B visa, and the West’s last stronghold starts to crumble. To be clear, the Donald and the Musk both love those H-1B visas, too.

Here’s the dirty truth: foreigners don’t like us. They don’t think like us. They don’t value the same things we do. In some cases the only thing we have in common is that we both consume oxygen.

Take India. Please.

I bet the driver felt enriched by the diversity.

India is the poster child for H-1B tech workers. Their culture rewards “cleverness”. So does ours, but the definition is very different. To an Indian, “cleverness” is: lying, cheating, and deception.

To be clear, these are all fair game under their religious and cultural framework. Don’t take my word for it: a 2019 report estimated 30% of tech resumes from India include fake degrees or inflated credentials. India ranks 93 out of 180 on Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Index. Nepotism and bribery are practically Olympic® sports for India, which is good because despite being a nation of 1.4 billion people, their only Olympic© was a bronze in Yahtzee™.

But hey, don’t take my word for it.

Then there’s the caste system. It’s not just history from some movie filled with short, weak brown people who can’t quite speak English and fight with women over the five-pound barbells. No. The caste system is alive, even in Silicon Valley. Indian managers on H-1B visas often hire their own: same caste, same village, same cousin. I think the CEO of Microsoft™ is the uncle of half the company.

Merit?

Nope, it’s about loyalty to the clan. A 2021 study found 90% of Indian-led tech firms in the U.S. had Indian-majority staff, despite only 20% of H-1B visas going to Indians. Nepotism is their game, and it locks Americans out of jobs in their own country.

I bet they think that’s what they call clever, but it’s escaped scrutiny because it is what the GloboLeft calls this “diversity”.

Globalism’s promise is cheap stuff, which sounds nice until you’re unemployed because an Indian manager hired his brother-in-law over you. The West’s economy was built on trust and competence, not the caste and the scam. Outsourcing knowledge jobs to cultures that don’t share our values is like handing your house keys to a guy who thinks picking locks is a personality trait.

Why let this happen? Because the GloboLeft and their Chamber of Commerce Republican buddies love it. Cheap labor means cheap goods means more profit this quarter and damn the country.

But it’s clear: we can’t build wealth by outsourcing our future to foreigners who don’t like us and think our rules are stupid and weak. To be clear: the elites don’t care—they’re too busy cashing checks to care and hoping that TEMU® will sell a quality yacht soon.

This isn’t just economics; it is the destiny of a people.

The West thrived because we valued competence. Again, economic systems aren’t the goal. The goal is the well being of the people in a country. I mean, even the Albanians could read this post and agree.

I mean, they’d read it if they had electricity.

The West’s Forgotten Victory: Why They Hate Vienna

“What’ll we drink to? Let’s drink to victory!” – LOTR, The Return of the King

Did the Ottoman Empire export sultan pepper?

One of the things I’ve learned about history is that they skip all of the really good parts. I recall my time as a leader in that well known paramilitary organization, Boy Scouting® (back when they were boys and they were doing scouting). On occasion the boys would mention some historical event, and I’d go into more detail: the Battle of Britain, the Revolutionary War, heck, even the Romans.

We’d talk through history. Then, when the subject was done, invariably one of the scouts would say, “Man, that’s interesting! Why don’t they teach that in school?”

Well, because you’re watching Frozen or Shrek instead so your teacher can sleep of a hangover and your textbooks prefer pronouns to Patton.

Who knew that campfire coffee mixed so well with history?

What do you get when you cross a polar bear and a seal? A polar bear.

The nice thing is that there are still subjects that I learn about. Namely, 9/11.

Oh, this isn’t the story of that 9/11. This is the story of September 11, 1683. And I believe that it’s a story that the muslim world has yet to get over.

It’s September 11, 1683.

Not a date I learned in school, but it should have been. In the history of the Western world, it isn’t even that far back. Isaac Newton was busy figuring out the delicate ballet of the spheres in the heavens, and Oliver Cromwell’s head was still busy rotting on a pike in London.

But this is in Vienna, the heart of the Holy Roman Empire

Vienna on this date is surrounded by 300,000 Ottoman Turks. Think illegal aliens but with scimitars and an even more unintelligible language without any Juan being able to understand it.

My great-grandfather was a wigmaker, so now I have an antique family hairloom.

Vienna is down to 15,000 defenders. They’re starving and outnumbered 20-to-1, so why not just give in? The Turks are promising they’ll be treated well. Thankfully, the Turks had tried this line with another city in Austria that actually did surrender. The Turks had laid siege to the town of Perchtoldsdorf (gesundheit), and promised all the inhabitants would be spared and that the city would not be sacked.

When they surrendered, the city was sacked and the vast majority of inhabitants were killed or enslaved. That’s good, because now the people at Vienna knew exactly what sort of devil they were dealing with.

What sort of devil was it? It was the Ottomans, led by Kara Mustafa, who are determined to own Europe, turning cathedrals into mosques, and making the West kneel to the Turks and to their god.

I’ve heard that the Council for American-Islamic Relations says there is no room for violent extremists within American mosques. They did announce they have a waiting list, however.

Sound familiar? It’s the kind of existential threat the GloboLeft pretends never existed, because “white culture” is always the bad guy in their revisionist fairy tales. In looking at European history, this was a Very Big Deal, and yet it’s glossed over or (in my case) never even mentioned in class. I think that it’s because the story didn’t end the way the anti-Western Civilization establishment that had taken control of education wanted it to end.

The defenders didn’t yield even a square inch (3.3 millicamels) of the city of Vienna. Instead they held the walls through two months of hell. Disease, cannon fire, Ottoman sappers blowing tunnels under the city. They went through summer, and now were hungry, and they were praying for a miracle.

Enter the relief force arriving on September 11^th. 47,000 Germans and Austrians with 20,000 or 30,000 Poles. Most famously, King John III Sobieski of Poland, leading the Poles, including the Winged Hussars. The Winged Hussars were an insane calvary force comprised of big, husky Poles on huge horses, wearing lion and tiger pelts over their armor with huge eagle wings and 19-foot-long lances, four pistols each, swords and war hammers.

To be clear, this is exactly what I would have drawn when I was six.

Before the attack, the Vizier of the Ottomans heard the thud of the Polish war drums. “I don’t like the sound of that.” The Poles responded, “Oh, he’s not our regular drummer.”

On September 12, Sobieski’s cavalry charges down Kahlenberg Hill, breaking the Ottoman lines like a velociraptor in a room full of puppies. By nightfall, the Turks had abandoned everything. Everything. The were trying to get back to Istanbul before it could be re-named Constantinople. are running, leaving 15,000 dead and the Ottoman Empire’s dreams in the dust with the single largest military defeat in their history to date.

Sobieski’s letter home after the battle is amazing, and recommended reading (LINK).

Vienna is saved.

Europe is saved.

The West lives to fight another day.

The Siege of Vienna wasn’t just a win: it was a philosophical line in the sand. Faith fueled those defenders. Faith in God, in their people, in the idea that the West was worth saving. It’s in the first lines in Sobieski’s letter to his wife:

How Praised be our Lord God forever for granting our nation such a victory and such glory as was never heard of in all times past!

Contrast that with despair, the kind the GloboLeft peddles today: “Western culture’s evil, dismantle it because it is worse than (whatever their pet culture is today).”

I heard that Mozart is in his grave, de-composing.

Vienna’s men didn’t negotiate with Kara Mustafa; they fought. More than that, they chose to fight there. They believed in something bigger than themselves: their family, their faith, and their civilization. That’s the code that built the West, from Athens to Rome to Vienna.

The GloboLeft hates this story. They want history rewritten. Sobieski’s a “colonizer,” the Hussars are “problematic.” They’d have you believe the Ottomans were just misunderstood diversity consultants.

Hollywood™ is no help in 2025, obviously: they churn out preachers of pronouns, not legends with lances. The 1683 defenders didn’t care about your feelings; they cared about survival. That’s the difference between faith and despair, valor and cowardice. They want us to forget Vienna because it proves the West’s worth fighting for. The Siege of Vienna shows what happens when men believe in something and act.

History rhymes, and because it does Vienna is a warning and I think there is no mistake in the choice of the date for the attack on the Twin Towers, they’re still stinging from the defeat. The defenders weren’t perfect. Some were drunks, some mercenaries, but they stood together. And the relief force had a clear vision of what they were fighting for. Back to John III’s letter:

There is a huge pile of captured flags and tents; in short, the enemy has departed with nothing whatever but his life. Let Christendom rejoice and thank the Lord our God that he has not permitted the heathen to hold us up to scorn and derision and to ask, “Where, now, is your God?”

So next September 11, remember what happened on September 12.

One Page At A Time

“Then I shall die as one of them!” – LOTR, The Two Towers

I never trust what a minotaur says. Half of it is always bull.

It’s cold outside. I can see that in how crisp and clear the air is. The big picture window in the cabin up on Wilder Mountain lets my young eyes see a mile, looking for the headlights on a dim winter morning.

The bus rounds the corner, and I head off. Burt, the driver, is rarely off on time by more than a minute or two. I’m the farthest kid out, and he starts rounding up the school kids with me.

“Hi Burt!”

“Morning, John.”

Since I’m in middle school, and I’m the first on, I tromp my winter boots all way to the back of the bus. That’s where the cool kids sit. I remember the first day I decided to sit back here. Since I was the first on, there was no one to stop me, so I decided to break the norm of the past few years and just sit there.

I was in sixth grade, and the high school freshman started to object when he got on. He didn’t finish the sentence. If he would have asked me to move, my answer would have been short.

“Make me.”

I didn’t have to. Even in sixth grade, I was bigger than him.

But I lived so far out that most of the time, I had the entire back of the bus to myself.

So instead of a long, boring bus ride, I decided I’d do something else. Like take a trip to Mordor. Or fight bugs with Johnny Rico. Or figure the best way to ambush a troop of Sardaukar. Or take a trip to Boulder after Captain Trips paid a visit.

One group of web developers likes finding bugs in their work: spiders.

The bus isn’t a ride, it’s a journey through the past that never was and the future that never will be. It was, metaphorically, my campfire, and these books were the ways that storytellers of my people could share the legends that shape humanity.

In part, these are the legends that shape me, just like our ancestors learned valor and cowardice from tales told under starlit skies in long-ago Sparta and Denmark and Scotland and Rome.

Stories aren’t just entertainment. They are the code that programmed humanity and fueled the creation of Western Civilization. Warriors heard of Achilles’ courage and the hubris of Icarus, learning to strive for glory and wear a parachute if they were going to fly too close to the Sun.

Is a monk with wings an air friar?

Kids grew up on fables of clever foxes and lazy hares, etching lessons of wit and work into their bones. These weren’t bedtime stories: they were survival guides and cultural norms, showcasing the best of what we could be and the worst that we should avoid at all costs. Both lessons are useful.

My bus ride was no different. Tolkien’s Christian valor, never naming Christ but screaming His Truths three different ways through Frodo, Aragorn, and Gandalf lit a fire in me. Heinlein’s musings on duty versus freedom made me question what I owed my community, and what it owed me. Those pages were my elders, whispering truths no teacher could match, even though they were sometimes quite contradictory.

Stories aren’t just ink on paper, they’re the software that nourishes our souls. Throughout history, they’ve been the mirror showing us who we are, who we could be, who we should avoid being, and what the journeys of the hero really meant.

The Greeks had Odysseus, outsmarting cyclopes to get home to his family valor in action, and the aforementioned Icarus, flying too high and crashing, a warning against arrogance. Norse kids heard of Thor’s hammer, inspiring strength, but also Loki’s betrayal, a caution against deceit. But you should ignore that, because I’ve heard from the news media that there is no white culture.

I would never download a copy of Homer’s Iliad. I hear it’s full of Trojans.

These archetypes stuck because they’re shades of the universal Truth: every boy wants to grow up to be the man who is a hero, not the coward who folds. My bus ride library was no campfire, but it did the same job. Tolkien taught me sacrifice, Frodo carrying the One Ring, knowing it’d break him, but doing it anyway. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers hit me with duty: you don’t get a vote unless you’re willing to bleed for it because sooner or later someone will.

Harsh? Sure. But it made me think, heroes sometimes falter, freedom isn’t free, and communities aren’t built by loners.

Even Dune’s Paul Atreides, wrestling with destiny and betrayal, showed me the weight of leadership. These weren’t just stories; they were blueprints for being a man, not a drone.

The GloboLeft hates this. They want stories that flatten everything into DEI dogma. No heroes, no villains, just victims and oppressors, any woman being equal in combat to the strongest man.

They’d rewrite Tolkien so Frodo’s a non-binary climate activist, and Heinlein’s troopers would be whining about microaggressions and wanting to use Zoom™ instead of a dropship. You can see it in the box office: their stories don’t inspire; they control exist as humiliation exercises. Look at modern Hollywood: every film is a lecture, not a legend. No wonder kids scroll InstaChat® instead of reading. They’re starved for tales that stir the soul, not the HR manual and they haven’t even been given the words to tell us this – the video game is as close as they come to the myths that make a culture.

Does Beowulf get two thumbs up? Not from Grendel.

Stories work because they show us the extremes, the valor to chase, the cowardice to shun. Take Beowulf: he faced Grendel head-on, no excuses. I read that one in high school, and loved it. I thought, “This is amazing. Our ancestors were heavy metal badasses two thousand years before electric guitars were a thing.”

Beowulf is the guy you want to be, not the prol cowering in the mead hall.

My bus ride heroes were no different. Tolkien’s Aragorn didn’t negotiate with orcs. He killed them.

Heinlein’s Johnnie Rico in Starship Troopers learned civic duty the hard way, bugs don’t care about your feelings, and when they kill your mother, well, they’ve sent a message that you simply must respond to.

Stand up, protect your own, don’t bend.

I guess they use Mordor oil.

From what I’ve seen, GenZ didn’t take too many bus rides with Tolkien, they’ve got TikGram™. Schools push “diversity” over duty, “equity” over excellence. The campfire’s gone, replaced by screens spewing shadows, not legends.

To be clear, the GloboLeft wants it that way. But stories still matter, and, I think, you can see Gen Z starting to rise, especially among the boys. And that’s important: they’re how we pass on the code.

Every tale’s a seed, planting valor and weeding out cowardice, because at some point every man needs to be able to say the two most important words a man can say:

“Make me.”

Too Much Of The News Is Sad. This Podcast Is Fun. Listen Because You Need Fun.

Start at around 5 minutes in.

Streams will show up at 9EDT (click the link below), that’s in just a little over an hour! (and we typically pregame for five minutes, so it really starts up at 8:55PM)

Mrs The Mrs – YouTube

Funniest News On the ‘Net.

In this episode:

On This Day
Jackass of the Week
Conversation Street
Two Minutes of Guns in One Minute
ThinkRealFast
I Heard It On The X