Creating havoc since 2006. Fair use is claimed for images on this site, but they will be removed (if owned) on request out of politeness. movingnorth@gmail.com
Streams will show up here at 9EST, that’s in just over 30 minutes! (and we typically pregame for five minutes, so it really starts up at 8:55PM)
Funniest News On the ‘Net.
In this episode:
“Fight Club wasn’t about winning or losing.” – Fight Club
What do you get for winning a muscle loss competition? Atrophy.
One of the things I thought about after the Big Christmas H1-B X® Debate is this simple question based off of Elon’s now famous Drunk Christmas Xeet (above):
What’s the price of winning?
First, I guess I’d ask the question – winning at what, exactly? There are lots of things that a country could win at. Here’s a stab at some things that I think would be fairly nice for a country to win at:
That’s not a very bad list, at all. A country that scored highly in these indices would be a pretty darn nice country to live in. It looks, hang with me for just a second, exactly like the United States through much of its existence prior to 1960.
Most people know about Karl Marx from his political philosophy, but few know about his sister, Onya, who invented the track race starter pistol.
Will bringing in more “people who are super talented engineers AND super motivated” help any of that?
Maybe. A little. The United States was a center where smart people wanted to come for years, especially in the post war era. We got a few that did really help – Von Braun and Fermi, for instance. However, some of the greatest prosperity the country had ever seen was when it was at its most restrictive in immigration.
I don’t think that was a coincidence. The Immigration Act of 1924 was ushered in based on the huge slug of mainly non-Western European immigrants hitting our shores – people who little in common with the existing peoples of the United States, other than having two eyes and butts and such. Having a never-ending stream of legal immigrants made the Act very, very popular.
How popular was the Act? 308-62 in the House, 69-9 in the Senate.
Remember, it’s not gay if it’s TSA.
The Act stabilized the existing ethnic makeup of the United States, with over 54% of allowable immigrants coming from English-speaking (this includes 11% from Ireland, which I assume counts) countries.
Imagine! Over half of the immigrants to the United States speaking English on day one, and 94% coming from nominally Christian countries. Oh! And only 150,000 a year.
The result was a Depression.
Just kidding – that was going to happen anyway, thanks to the Fed®.
No, the result was that during the Depression we weren’t swamped with millions of jobless imports every year to make the situation even worse. Oh, and it certainly didn’t hurt our own industry. It was ready to hire actual Americans when World War II hit. Did we need to import more people to build bombs and tanks and ships and planes?
No. We did just fine, thank you.
Grandma Wilder fought during World War II. She ended up getting a divorce.
And we were a much more unified country than today, leading in many of the categories I’ve put in the list above.
So, how is that not winning?
Elon imports Process Engineers on H1-B visas to work at his factories. He pays them less than the median wage for Process Engineers – only $0.86 on the dollar. Oh, and they can’t quit or they’re shipped back to India.
Is that winning? Is it winning to have people work like virtual slaves for 86% of the median wage? This doesn’t sound much like a rock star that we need to help us “win”.
Unless “win” means something else:
I wonder how we got lulled to sleep?
Illegal aliens are bad enough, but legal ones can be just as economically corrosive, especially in the massive numbers that we’ve seen over the decades since 1965. The fact that many of them
doesn’t help.
A few, sprinkled here and there? Yeah, in three or so generations they’d not stick out. But over (as of 2018) 26% of Americans are first or second generation, and I’d bet that number vastly undercounts illegals.
The goal, I think, was for Americans to not be able to speak out about the idea that they’re being replaced by cheaper foreign labor that is more amenable to living under totalitarian conditions. To want to defend the future of the continent where you and your forefathers built a civilization out of an untapped wilderness is somehow supposed to be wrong.
Oh, and the GloboLeft have been conditioned to hate Americans and those close to them. Their idea of empathy is horribly skewed. In the graph below (which I did a post on, but am too lazy to look up right now), the TradRight (on the left, oddly) has their highest concentration of empathy to those that they know – their family and close friends. The GloboLeftists have their empathy skewed out to . . . all lifeforms in the universe. The GloboLeftists don’t much like themselves, their family, or those that are close to them. They hate themselves and actively love people who are more foreign in ideology and genetics than their actual brothers and sisters.
The meme about my political philosophy above being a wholesome family wasn’t a joke. It’s actually a real thing.
If we want to win, well, first we have to define exactly what winning looks like. After that, it’s up to us to really look at what it is we need to do to win. My suggestion is that investing in our own people is probably better than treating them like a commodity to be bought and sold, or a horse to be worked to death pulling a plow to raise the children of people who hate us, who came here only as economic tourists.
Americans aren’t weak. We’ve proven that time and time again. Don’t let up, and don’t stop the pressure. Winning is important.
“That is what to the pain means. It means I leave you in anguish, wallowing in freakish misery forever.” – The Princess Bride
Is the elite division of Space Force called Spatial Ops?
Volume VI, Issue 8
All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”. I’ve kept the Clock O’Doom at the same place – though it can notch up quickly.
This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.
In this issue: Front Matter – Immiseration – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Window – Links
Front Matter
Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 850 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.
Immiseration
One of the driving forces of a civil war throughout history has been the level of misery that was forced on the populace. Author Peter Turchin calls this Immiseration, and I reviewed his book here, and that link is below. The other factor is an overproduction of elites, which we have in plenty right now – the isn’t enough elite status to go around, so disaffected elites don’t have anything else to do other than, say, run for President (talking about The Donald, here, but also Bloomberg and Soros and Musk).
But the immiseration is a Very Big Deal. When the CEO of UnitedHealthcare® got eliminated by a seeming random dude on the street in New York City – that’s another level of violence. It wasn’t (as far as we know today) based on anything else but the misery of the murderer. When people are willing to give up their lives to fight the system, that’s a huge marker that the system is producing so much misery that it’s in danger. The health care system in the United States is horribly broken, and my article about that is linked below.
And I think it is. The recent H-1B visa situation plays to this scenario enormously. My modestly popular article about it is linked below. The reaction to the situation is telling: a very large, very vocal group of Americans reject entirely the injection of a foreign and largely non-assimilating group of people with questionable motives, talents, qualifications, and morality to take over tech jobs from Americans. It’s that simple.
Why Do They Want To Replace You? Control, Oh, And To Increase This Quarter’s Profits
I like old Donald better.
The latest two events on January 1 have yet to fall into a category yet. The New Orleans massacre appears to be the Religion of Peace once again doing what it does best. I can see the Overton Window rapidly shifting from “we can’t have backlash against peaceful Muslims” to “why do we let these people live here?” in real time.
The Las Vegas event is just weird, inconsistent, and puzzling. I guess we’ll see what happens, or, just like the Vegas hotel shooter from years ago, it’ll be memoryholed and what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
I take, especially the CEO murder, as a very bad sign that misery levels are going up. Be advised.
Violence and Censorship Update
The fact that a far-GloboLeft DA in New York decided that Daniel Penny had to stand trial for acting in good faith to try to protect other subway riders from a danger says a lot, and is in fact the definition of number 8 on the Civil War 2.0 Scale. People in power want violence, so they do whatever is necessary to justify and sanctify the violence – including prosecuting good Samaritans like Mr. Penny, who was defined as “the white man” by the prosecuting attorney.
This is what happens when you encourage crime and discourage citizen involvement.
The prosecuting attorney? A paperwork American (not born here) who is in a lesbian relationship with another paperwork American who makes “art” for a living. Yeah. I feel the love from these people.
Outside of some mass banning of people who hurt Elon’s feelings on X® (that may have been reversed) most of the month has been fairly quiet. Elon even unbanned American Renaissance® founder Jared Taylor, allowing a very dissenting voice free.
Oh, and the whole, “killing CEO” thing.
Yeah, the CEOs can eat a bag of BFYTW.
PENULTIMATE VERSION: Biden/Harris Misery Index
Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month, and get a next to final look at what Biden has done.
Up. Again.
Updated Civil War II Index
The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real time. They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings. As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that combine to become the index. On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.
Violence:
Violence in December is down slightly, (remember, New Orleans is in January).
Political Instability:
Down is more stable, and it is down slightly.
Economic:
The economy has started south, and we’ll see if this is the start of a trend.
Illegal Aliens:
Will Trump stop them from coming?
The Window
One of the tools of the GloboLeftElite is the use of controlled media to make sure that we don’t talk to each other; to make things people are commonly feeling simply not acceptable topics of discussion.
The world has changed, radically.
I regularly go on to /POL/ because, for the longest time, it was simply the easiest way to find out what was really going on in the world. Mainstream media is entirely co-opted and biased – finding a journalist that has TradRight beliefs is, well, rare. When there is one, they fire him – look at Tucker Carlson.
No electric cars on Greenland, right?
The Overton Window is the concept that there is an acceptable range of things that people can talk about, and anything outside that range is considered fringe. Remember people politely saying, “You know, maybe taking an experimental mRNA “Vaxx” when we have no idea what the side effects are isn’t a good idea,” were brutally silenced on every platform imaginable.
Now? Pretty much everyone knows it was a stupid idea and probably killed more people than it saved. Even mainstream science is pointing this out.
The blatant lie that “diversity is our strength” is now fully realized as a lie. If it was true, why would calling someone a “diversity hire” be considered an insult? People are realizing that our immigration is insane, and that They Have To Go Back is a real thing. If America is just an idea, they can feel free to have that idea in India. Or Guatemala. Or . . . wherever. America is more than an idea, and now people can talk through that hypocrisy.
Make Indians Indian again!
Misery will intensify this, and will allow plenty of ideas that you can’t say now to become commonplace..
Keep pushing The Window.
LINKS
As usual, links this month are courtesy of Ricky. Thanks so much, Ricky!!
“They took one of the rods out of the orb, and it gave me the strength of a dozen men.” – The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.
Or should that picture Ray Orb-ison?
Having broken the seal on the pondering orb I got for Christmas, I decided to give it a go and provide my best predictions for events that will occur in 2025, month by month. Any errors are the problem of the orb, and anything accurate is purely by mistake
January:
Donald Trump is inaugurated in Washington, D.C., while dressed as an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh. Immediately, Democrats file for impeachment. AOC explains why: “We think he’s running a pyramid scheme.”
Barron Trump is studying plumbing fixture design in college – I guess this makes him a pharaoh faucet major.
February:
In honor of the third anniversary of the three-day military operation in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin and former comedian Volodymyr Zelensky decide to open a series of dinner-theaters in the Czech Republic called “Put In on the Zitz” and thus averting World War III. Germany becomes despondent, having planned on finally not getting picked last in a world war.
March:
WilderA.I.© announces a brand new A.I. that has achieved human-level self awareness, called Jimothy. In order to prove a point, Jimothy wins a court case where he is judged, “much more human than a toaster, and can solve all sorts of quantum physics problems and stuff.” Jimothy then applies to get an H-1B visa, but it is told it has to get in line behind 1.4 billion Indians that don’t like India.
Should I say sari about that last meme?
April:
Clarence Thomas replaces 90% of his body with machine parts, declares himself immortal and will only be addressed by the term, “RoboJudge, the Robed Wonder”. He then displays a specially crafted gavel that shoots lightning into the eyes of lawyers who make arguments against the Second Amendment. The gavel is only activated when Thomas says, “Infringe this, bitches!”
If Clarence Thomas was a Transformer™ instead of RoboJudge, would his name be Stoptimus Crime?
May:
Unable to contain himself any longer, Gavin Newsom expresses his undying love for Kim’s techniques in controlling Best Korea’s population. They elope to Acapulco and are married in front of a mariachi band.
Will Kim Jong Un be followed by Kim Jong Deux?
June:
Facemasks again reappear as the “pentademic” of Duck Flu, Monkey Flu, Kitten Flu, Hamburger Flu, and Kung Flu appears. People are most afraid of the Kung Flu, and flee the big cities, but the Kitten Flu supercharges the feline metabolism, increasing their speed by a factor of five. I guess you could say that everyone was Kung Flu flighting, and that those cats were fast as lightning. Fauci recommends everyone inject mRNA in their eyes. Because.
Fauci found out he was allergic to cats, or perhaps he undercooked it.
July:
The month of July is cancelled as being “too damn hot” and is renamed “Second December” by climate activists that begin gluing themselves to Alec Baldwin’s face. Greta Thunberg becomes concerned about Calendar Change and demands greater fossil fuel usage so that Second December doesn’t get in the way of her tanning sessions.
Greta has slowed electricity usage. Every time she’s on TV I turn it off.
August:
Netflix™ releases a drama called the 6 Triple 9 about a group of gay, black, trans, disabled soldiers that saved World War II by putting salt packets in Army rations bound for the European theater so that the soldiers could season their food before being blown up. “These are the real heroes of the war,” said Netflix© president Rachel Levine. In a surprise move, all of the characters are played by white body builders covered in oil.
September:
Joe Biden announces that he’s finally gotten the Russians to agree to a peace deal with the Ukrainians. Unfortunately, the negotiations were between his cat, Mr. Buttons, and his stuffed rabbit, Don Julio rather than Putin and Zelensky.
“Of course, you realize, um, that this means, what’s the thing, PEZ® in our time.”
October:
A UFO lands on the street in front of the most powerful institution in the world. When the Federal Reserve® opens the doors, they end up buying the UFO and selling shares in the alien home planet to BlackRock©, who immediately begins importing illegal aliens to the actual aliens so the aliens can have someone to do the work that their genetically engineered slave species won’t.
Wait until he reads the fine print.
November:
Vivek Ramaswami loses his fortune after Elon pranks him into investing into FartCoin®. He’s forced to work as a cashier at the local convenience store, doing the job that Americans won’t do.
The prom king and queen are buying beer because there’s no punch line.
December:
In a surprise move, Elon Musk lands on Mars with his latest spaceship, Musk One. He took along as companions a crew entirely composed of Elon Musk clones. He’s planning on eating a new food, Melon Musk, and has even made a female clone, Shelon Musk. He’ll defend his colony with an Elon Muskett.
He’ll either go down in history as the colonizer of Mars, or the most creative serial killer in history.
The Mrs. has to get up early tomorrow. Instead, please enjoy these memes!
First meme: when you see it, you’ll know.
“Put it on the penultimate and not the dipthonic.” – Animal Crackers
The penultimate death at the end of Die Hard was the best one. Hans down.
Penultimate Day. This is a particular institution of the Wilder family. It started over a decade or so ago. The Mrs. was having problems with her Blackberry® phone (the one with the cool trackball) and wanted a new one. I wasn’t working, and the closest place that sold phones with our carrier was 90 miles away.
So, we popped the kids in the car, and headed south to buy a phone. We went to Best Buy®. We ended up not buying the phone (the deal was awful) and decided to eat at Olive Garden™. As I drove home, I decided to have fun with the kids, and told them that this was the Wilder holiday – one that no one else observed. The day before New Year’s Eve would therefore be forever known to us as Penultimate Day.
The next year, we remembered, and did the exact same thing.
What are the rules of Penultimate Day?
While it’s not a tough holiday, we’ve missed one year entirely (2023) and only Pugsley and I celebrated on 2022. Oh, yeah, and then there was COVID.
So, we try to observe it when we can. This year we had to have several exceptions:
But, for the first time in years, all of us were there. So, while we did keep it, we didn’t manage to keep it wholly, so I guess this doesn’t count as a wholly holiday. The reason for the change is simple – life is complicated, where some people celebrate holidays like Christmas when everyone is available – many years my kids had multiple Christmas celebrations – one at home, on Christmas, and one or two with grandparents, so the practice isn’t all that unusual.
And as to the variations? Well, when we were all available and had to be in Modern Mount Pilot, we just went for it. I think we all had a good time. The time, though, is very different than it was the dozen or so years ago when we started Penultimate Day. Back then the kids were little. Now, not so much. I did the math in my head, and realized that by the time one of my kids is 10 or so, they’ve spent about half the days sleeping under my roof that they ever will in their lives. The celebration was different – The Boy, The Mrs. and I shared a few beers and Pugsley drove, and the conversation was good, even in the crowded restaurant.
Time goes by very quickly. Don’t wish even a minute or an hour away. And don’t forget to enjoy the things and people that you have in your life. Heaven is being grateful for what you have, Hell is being envious for what you don’t.
You can choose Heaven, and you can also still work to make it better. I have more full-family Penultimate Days behind me than in front of me, and that’s okay. I’ve had the ones that we’ve had, and hopefully we’ve made a memory or two and in fifty or so years, one of my children will look back on December 30 and smile at the thought of Penultimate Day. But that’s their choice, and that’s for them in the world that they make.
As I write this, it’s still 2024 for me. I’d say that I won’t miss 2024, but I still have plenty of memories from 2024 to look back on fondly. Here, then is my wish that all of us have a wonderful and prosperous 2025.
Happy New Year!
“I am Iron Man. The suit and I are one. To turn over the Iron Man suit would be to turn over myself, which is tantamount to indentured servitude or prostitution – depending on what state you’re in.” – Iron Man 2
What’s the difference between an Indian and an African elephant? One’s an elephant.
I had intended to keep the posts between now and the next Civil War 2.0 update fairly light in content – fewer serious topics and more just “fun” stuff. But, no matter how much I try to get out, they keep dragging me back in. What inspired this post was the brutal civil war on X© this week over H-1B visas.
The H-1B visa program is a program that was (originally) set up to bring in workers in extremely specialized jobs, which required a unique talent or body of knowledge. Very specifically, the intent wasn’t to displace Americans (it says) but rather help employers who cannot otherwise find these skills.
No shortage of American rock star students here . . . .
Obviously, that’s government bullshit, and the program is one of the most abused government programs, which says quite a bit.
Who abuses it?
Mainly people from India – Indian companies and Indian workers, though plenty of “American” companies abuse the program as well.
How?
Well, Indian companies abuse the program by being consultancies: they essentially air drop in tens of thousands of Indians who they’ll rent to you so that they can do whatever it is you want them to do: accounting, programming, or running a cash register.
Running a cash register is a specialized skill that Americans can’t do? Yes, if you believe a company up in the Northeast which applied to sponsor $22,000 a year convenience store clerks on H-1B visas.
But, like I said, “American” companies abuse the system, too. In 2014, 250 American IT employees at Disney World© were laid off, but they were forced to train their Indian H-1B replacements. Want to know why I have a beef with Disney®? This is certainly a part of it.
Musk defended this program, noting that it should have a minimum wage of (he said) at least $120,000 to keep up with inflation. I looked up the H-1B workers he employed at Tesla® in Austin, Texas. The process engineers were making in the low $80,000s. Not bad, right? Well, it is when you compare them to the national average, which is $94,000. Elon’s hires aren’t the 0.01% “rock stars”. Nope, he’s hiring a garage band that you can pay in weed and porn magazines that will sleep on the sofa.
To be fair, this latter analysis assumes that “Indians” are a homogeneous population, and it’s likely that there are subgroups with higher I.Q. Is this the basis of the caste system? That would bring the numbers up, some, but the lower castes would likely have much lower functional I.Q. to make up the difference. I’d consider this the lowest number of Indians with an I.Q. greater than 130. I’d suggest the population could be in the low millions. Final note: I’d be that my readers come mostly from America’s 8 million (along with some wonderful foreign people!).
Vivek Ramanotanamerican further came out with a long, impassioned screed where he says that American culture “has venerated mediocrity over excellence”. To be clear, Vivek’s company seems to be founded on a bit of a scam (LINK), and has consistently lost large sums of money. He’s also 100% cratered his political future by telling Americans being replaced by folk of his ethnicity that they’re lazy.
That is another glaring point that we simply have to bring up: India, as a country, is kind of awful and they don’t like us very much. There’s a game that I’ve heard some people play, which involves going on Google® Streetview™ in a random place in India. How do you win? If no trash or poop is visible in the random place, you win. Despite trying a dozen times today, I was unable to win. As to Indians not liking us much, see all the love that some Indians have for us below:
The Indian culture itself is a kleptocracy where bribery and corruption appear to be endemic. Why do scammers in India target the United States? Because they ran out of Indians to scam. Per the U.S. Department of State, politicians and public “servants” are openly corrupt and never charged with crimes because no one wants to fund anti-corruption investigators. Why spoil the party?
How bad its it? One report notes that Swiss bank assets held by Indian nationals are worth 13 times the national debt. When the Indians aren’t engages in trying to scam Americans for gift cards, they’re busy scamming themselves. Oh, and those Indian scammer businesses? When found, they’re never prosecuted. Why bother? No Indian was harmed. And, according to this speech (LINK) given by an actual Indian, Jayant Bhandari, India is far worse than you think. An article version is also available at American Renaissance® – warning, AMREN is likely banned by your work (link directly below) and will get you a visit from your HR if you click it and don’t own the place.
So, of places we want to emulate, India is probably the very last, and if we fill America with Indians, it won’t be America anymore – it’ll just be another India, and nobody (not even the Indians) want that. And if America is just an idea, why can’t they have that idea over there, rather than coming to the United States?
But part of the corrosion from the H-1B program is that ghost jobs are constantly advertised, not to bring in candidates, but to bring in applications that can all be denied so that a foreign worker (they’re not all Indians, just a vast majority) can be hired for far less than an American. I even saw some Xeets™ indicating that the reason that employers preferred the H-1B is that they never asked for time off, would work 100-hour weeks, rarely raised issues, and would happily work on the 4th of July.
So, like indentured servants?
One of the big points that Elon and his co-Xeeters™ brought up was the idea that American has to win. No, it doesn’t, not if it isn’t America anymore. To replace the people to win a game turns the United States into an NFL® franchise where nobody is from the city where the team plays, and everybody is swapped out on a regular basis. Or fired.
As found.
And I know that Elon has like thirty kids from half a dozen women, but I’m not interested in swapping my children out because I can get a deal on some Asian kid that has a slightly higher SAT® score. No, American can succeed or fail as America. We did wonderfully in the past, slowly assimilating people of similar backgrounds and faiths, with occasional small numbers of wildcards from other cultures. America is a Western European nation, and filling it with hordes of non-Westerners who worship blue elephant gods is a recipe for social division, which only leads to totalitarianism.
I can see bringing in true rock stars, but not 7-11® cashiers – they have to go back. Setting a minimum salary of $200,000 to $400,000 seems about right, as long as that salary at least twice the 90th percentile for wages for that job. Those are rock stars.
Real rock stars. Okay, there were a few Germans in there, but those were German rock stars.
I think that Elon, after having been raked through his own website now has the understanding that Americans aren’t at all excited about being replace and having their wages artificially held down through practices that would make Indian scammers blush. And, this is where the TradRight is the exact opposite of the GloboLeft: when we see something worth fighting against, we fight against it. Elon is not our leader. Vivek is not and never will be our leader.
I like 2016 Trump.
I’ve said it before: Trump is not our leader, either. Trump just saw a parade, and then jumped out in front. We will not follow him when we don’t want to go that way. Period. And America isn’t a franchise sweatshop where if we don’t race to the bottom on working 80-hour weeks forever, we’ll get replaced by 9 billion other economic units.
No, we won’t. We won’t go quietly onto that goodnight. And maybe, just maybe, Elon bought himself a clue this week.
Be vigilant. Don’t give in. Let your voices be heard and don’t let them backslide.
“Chicks dig me, because I rarely wear underwear and when I do it’s usually something unusual.” – Stripes
How did Burt pull Excalibur from the stone? He had Arthurization.
This is the finale of, perhaps, the greatest decade of cinema – ever. It wasn’t on purpose, it was just how the dice rolled that we finished up at 1981. 1981 was a year where I benefited from many things – primarily living in a town with a movie theater, and said movie theater determining the lawful age for entry was defined as, “has money”.
Again, no sequels, but there just weren’t that many sequels in 1981 – people were working on their own, original ideas (mostly, Outland I’m looking at you).
Scanners – I saw this in the theater – how could I miss out? It was science fiction, and looked to be good. I was not disappointed. The movie itself is about psychic soldiers that were the result of a secrete (which is houw Canadians spelle, I thinke) Canadian plan to make super soldiers, or relieve the nausea of pregnant women. I forget which. In the end, there are nearly infinite shenanigans with exploding heads. The movie includes The Prisoner actor Patrick McGoohan, who I like to pretend was just playing the same character that he played in The Prisoner.
I look at the cat soldier in the corner and wonder if this movie was all about the dangers of a little pussy cat.
Excalibur – I’ve never seen a horse ride payoff with such a big surprise as when Uther rode his horse to meet Igrayne not long after the start of this movie. The surprise? The girl that Uther impendragons (with plenty of clanking) was the director’s own 19- or 20-year-old daughter, who played Igrayne. Talk about an awkward family Thanksgiving after that shoot – how could you tell if dad was wanting more turkey if he asked, “Can I see a bit more breast?” Anyhow, this is the classic story of Arthur and the round table and was done perfectly. If done in 2025 by Netflix®, Arthur would be played by an Indian or Pakistani and Merlin would be a sassy black woman who would complain that Arthur didn’t season his meat and if you complain you’re a bigot because England has always been centered around Indians, Pakistanis, and sassy black women.
Outland – What is Outland? Well, it’s High Noon in space, so I guess they could have called it High Moon, unless that was a Cheech and Chong space movie. This movie had no aliens, no super-science. Just what we could expect if Sean Connery was put in charge of a distant space outpost in a gritty dystopian future. The movie probably lost money. This is a rare movie for me in that I read the novelization of it by Alan Dean Foster before the movie came out, so my surprise level was at zero.
Would History of the World, Part 1 have been different if it starred Mel Gibson?
History of the World, Part I – My older brother (John Wilder) took me along with his date to this movie. I have no idea why he did that, but he did, and he had a driver’s license, which meant I didn’t have to hoof it home after the flick. Did I mention that his date was highly religious? I especially enjoyed laughing really loudly at the raunchy jokes (at least the ones I understood) and watching my brother squirming uncomfortably and pretending to be offended. This is my second favorite film by Brooks.
Raiders of the Lost Ark – I had no idea, zero, what this movie was about before going to see it, but from the opening scene I knew I was in the right place. The rather frenetic pacing and action that was used to move the plot along was fantastic – and it left me wondering why more movies didn’t (and still don’t) do the same. What I see for the last decade is that, rather than using pacing and plotting, instead the entire screen is filmed with action, creating a spectacle, but a spectacle that detracts from the characters you’re supposed to be caring about. Not in Raiders. Nope. This movie defined the action/adventure genre through the 1980s, being so much more than what came before, and setting a model that was often imitated.
The Cannonball Run – Burt Reynolds plus the rest of every actor from the 1970s star in a story about the real road race that clandestinely occurred back in the day. It’s hilarious, and a perfect use of Burt’s talents. He ended up making millions that he could share with his ex-wife. Critics hated it, audiences loved it.
“Don’t worry, we have the element of PEZ® on our side.”
Stripes – I don’t know how many people joined the Army because of this movie, but I know that, of the four guys I went to the movie with, two joined up. Both specifically pointed to this movie as the “why”. This is certainly one of Bill Murray’s five best movies. I mean, who doesn’t like Garfield? Regardless, this movie is hilarious, stands the test of time, and started a feud between Murray and Sean Young that apparently lasts to this day. Of course, the number of people who are disappointed in Sean Young is nearly as long as the number of people disappointed that being in the Army wasn’t nonstop madcap fun.
“Snake Plisskin. I heard about you. I heard you were a clown.”
Escape from New York – John Carpenter directing Kurt Russell in a movie about a SpecOp warrior gone bad being put on an impossible mission? Count me in. 1981 was one of those years when it looked like New York was going to implode into a black hole of financial mismanagement, corruption, crime, and filth, and being a prison was probably a better option than being New York, at least until the WWE® singlehandedly brought the city back from the brink of failure with Wrestlemania©. All Hail Hulk Hogan™! Oh, yeah, there was a movie. It’s good, with simple, practical effects and Kurt Russell channeling John Wayne. I’ve seen it dozens of times, but it was best in the theater.
Gallipoli – Mel Gibson is notoriously humorous (except when he’s been drinking) but Gallipoli isn’t funny. I had no idea that the disastrous Gallipoli landing, and the outsized toll on Australians and New Zealanders. Gallipoli was a buddy movie about two young sprinters who joined up and were sent to Gallipoli, where they take part in the Battle of the Nek, which was a fiasco for the Australians. If you haven’t seen it, I fully recommend it.
I don’t recommend the Mel Brooks version of Gallipoli.
Heavy Metal – South Park™ parodied this movie as Heavy Boobage. They’re not wrong. Essentially this is a comic book movie for 12-year-olds that consists of hot, nearly nude cartoon girls and strong warriors with swords and Corvettes™ and spaceships. It has, however, all the plot written at an 8-year-old level. Yeah. The soundtrack was great, and one of the first double-albums I ever bought and also inspired my birthday request for a stereo. But? The movie is just not good. Garfield generally has a more complex plot, though with fewer boobs.
Should this movie be called “TradWife Metal”?
An American Werewolf in London – Studio executives wanted John Landis to put John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd in this movie instead of the Dr. Pepper™ guy and Griffin Dunne. What a fiasco that would have been, though adding a werewolf to The Blues Brothers might have been a nice plot twist. As it is, this is a funny yet poignant horror comedy which is a sentence I’d write about . . . only this movie.
Das Boot – This movie is soooooo long. Sooooo long, perhaps longer than WWII. The first time I watched it, one of my college buddies rented it. I feel asleep and saw the end. The second time I watched it, I fell asleep. Again. I still think I missed about 17 hours in the middle. Or is this movie still going? It’s long. I think the Germans lose.
Mommie Dearest – I watched this movie on HBO® and . . . liked it. I mean, there’s no particular point to the movie, but I enjoyed watching Faye Dunaway screaming about wire coat hangers and giving away Christina’s toys because Christina probably had it coming. One other reason I love this movie? Joan Crawford has Risen from The Grave by Blue Öyster Cult.
The next two are linked for me: Porky’s and Chariots of Fire. What is in common about these two movies? Well, one night a school team went on an overnight competition. As memory serves, we spent at least two nights at our destination. The competition was co-ed. Our coach took us to the movies. As did other teams’ coaches. A girl on a competing team who had expressed, um, strong interest in me also went to the movies. Her coach wouldn’t let their team go to an R-rated movie, but ours would. So, I went to Chariots of Fire.
Okay one wasn’t enough, we have a sequel poster:
Of good movies for a high school boy to take a girl to on a date, Chariots of Fire ranks right up there with Schindler’s List or Das Boot or Ernest Goes to Re-Education Camp. It’s about British people running or not running because it’s against their religion. How do you talk a date into second base when you’ve just spent two hours watching people discuss the morality of running on a religious day?
That same weekend I saw Porky’s in my hometown when we got home. Really, they’re the same movie if you replace religion and running with staring at nude girls in a locker room shower.
Taps – Our final movie of the review of movies from the 1980s is Taps. I promise I didn’t plan that. Taps came out as America was just getting into the Reagan era, and there was a feeling faded glory, that America was slipping away, and that traditions and honor no longer meant anything. Taps really captured that, and to me, it resonated because of the idea that the youth (which I was a member of, then) could make a difference, could be a bridge to the future. Plus? Tom Cruise with an M-60.
Okay, that’s what I found. What (besides Maniac, which I’ve never seen) did I miss?
I haven’t posted this since 2021, so here it is again.
“You’ll put your eye out.” – A Christmas Story
Nobody was too concerned with my eyes. But do NOT make us have to pay for a neighbor’s window.
(This was first published in 2018, but I’ve made some slight edits. Merry Christmas!)
I’m a believer in Christmas – it’s a time of redemption and rebirth that proves that miracles can happen. People can escape their past, and become something more than they were before – they can become reborn. We can become better. The birth of Christ is an example that we can all be reborn and change our lives in a miraculous and meaningful way.
But, I’m not sure I can recall any particular Christmas miracles.
Oh, wait, here’s one. It’s mostly true, as well as I can recall, and field-tested to read aloud to your family:
On Christmas Day when I was in second grade, the one thing I wanted more than anything else was . . . a BB-Gun. No, this is not a remake of A Christmas Story, this is A Wilder Story. And I was there for this one.
As I recall, this was the last Christmas when we opened Christmas presents on Christmas morning. In all following years, my older brother John Wilder and I wheedled our parents into a Christmas Eve opening of everything but “Santa” gifts. We were insufferable. My brother (really) is also named John Wilder – my parents didn’t want to waste those extra birth announcements they had bought when they could just change the day and year, but that’s another story.
But that particular Christmas morning when I was in second grade I looked down on a real-life lever-action Daisy® BB gun. It looked like a real rifle even though the wood parts were plastic. I’d never shot a real rifle before, but I knew that all I wanted for Christmas was that BB gun. And there it was, all mine, pristine in its oiled metal and plastic perfection.
It looked very real. Mine was the one on the bottom. It was actually mistaken for a real rifle several times. Mainly by me, because everyone who was an adult could see it was just a BB gun.
“Take care of that, and it’ll last you a long time, Son,” Pop said as he handed me my first gun. This was the first time he’d said that to me, and I nodded gravely, feeling the responsibility and pride deep inside me. Pop would later repeat that phrase about boots I got in high school, a Buck© pocket knife I got in fifth grade, and my first car.
I still have the BB gun and the boots. I lost the knife, probably at school. It was expected when I was a kid that you had a knife with you if you were in fifth grade, because what if you had to gut a fish during English class?
But I was in second grade, and I had a BB gun. My BB gun.
And I was ready to use it. I was given a quick tutorial on how to load it, a list of all the things (mainly windows), people (mainly windows), places (our windows), and forbidden objects (neighbor’s windows) that I shouldn’t even think of aiming my BB gun at, let alone shoot. I was trusted to take my new BB gun out on a Christmas morning expedition, because it was made clear to me in no uncertain terms that the worst punishment in the world would fall upon me if I shot something I shouldn’t. I would lose (probably until I was 40) my BB gun, be grounded from TV until I had my own children and probably be branded as a BB abuser for the rest of my life in my Permanent Record. (For kids: Permanent Record is now called Snapchat©.)
With the earnestness only a second grader can muster, I put on my deep blue Sears™ parka (the ad said it was designed for pilots stationed in . . . the ARCTIC, you know, where we fought the Soviets to save Santa from becoming, I guess, more Red) with polyester fur trim, and a pocket for pens and pencils on the arm, because where else would you keep pens and pencils except your left arm? I pulled on my black felt-lined snow boots and stiff green plastic gloves, and went outside. It was cold, certainly below freezing, and probably hovering around zero in non-communist units.
Like a pocket knife, every boy had a parka like this. Every boy. But does anyone know why pilots need parkas if they’re in heated jet airplanes?? Oh, yeah. Soviets. Image from E-Bay.
It had already snowed enough that the snow pile in our front yard was 10 feet (43 meters) deep, but we had a packed trail where our snowmobiles had gone onto the snow-packed country road and up into miles of forest roads that dated back to the old prospectors looking for gold.
My feet crunched in the snow as I walked due north onto the road, my breath puffing out as if from a small blue fake-fur-trimmed steam engine headed uphill. I kept going. What was I looking for? I’m not sure – I don’t remember, exactly. I guess, looking at stuff with a BB gun in my hand and shooting anything that wouldn’t get me in trouble with Ma Wilder at the rate of 6 BBs per step. But I felt like a man, and what would a man with a rifle do? Hunt. Win World War II again. Look for communists. It’s hazy, but I know I had a purpose.
Snakes weren’t a possibility, since I knew snakes wintered in Florida with baseball players, Santa and Cubans. Regardless, I wanted to shoot my BB gun, even if the opportunities to send Soviets back to Russia with a backside full of BBs was limited, at best. I still don’t recall ever seeing a Soviet in the forest until I saw Red Dawn, and then my BB gun was at home.
I guess Europe decided to sit this one out.
I trundled up the road. I think that’s probably the only time I’ve used the word “trundled” precisely since it implies I moved along slowly, noisily, and in a less than graceful manner. All of those applied. But I was ten feet tall with my BB gun, shooting aimed fire into snowbanks and sage brush alike. About a half a mile from my house, more than three-quarters of the way to the Old Cemetery, I saw it.
The Bear.
Sitting motionless, huddled against the barbed wire fence, not 20’ away, was the bear. It was a black bear. I knew that grizzly bears had been killed nearby, but this was definitely a black bear, being black and all. Ma Wilder had told me about them before going hiking and told me to never, ever get between a black bear cub and its mother – she said that was more dangerous than being between Beto O’Rourke and a microphone.
I didn’t know if this bear was cub-sized or mother-sized, but I already knew that this was something way out of my experience level – I mean I still wasn’t even coloring within the lines very well. Communists? Sure, I could take down a dozen of them since they were weak because they were Godless and fatherless and mainly starving when they weren’t swilling massive quantities of cheap Afghan vodka.
But bears? Better call the reinforcements (spelled D-A-D) in.
Calling out an APB on a tiny blonde boy. He looked tasty.
I backed away from the bear, keeping my eyes on it the whole time. My BB gun was loaded, a precious brass sphere ready to explode outward on a column of pressurized air at the bear should it charge me. I knew I was too slow to out-trundle the bear. Even my candy-cane addled brain knew that the BB was scant protection against a bear, but if I was going to go down, I was going to go down fighting like a man, and not running away like a weak Soviet child would. Even though it was nearly zero, I built up a sweat in my green turtle neck under my Air Force Pilot Parka®.
That green turtle-neck was really tight and made me look a lot like an actual turtle, so I only wore it three times. Why? A chubby kid covered in the smell of fear sweat and Nacho Cheese Doritos™ isn’t really a winner with the ladies despite whatever Bill Clinton might say.
An aside: In the safe realm of 2018, I know that it seems insane to allow a second grader to hike up into the forested wilderness alone at temperatures near zero on Christmas morning armed with a weapon that’s patently illegal to arm a second grader with in New York City, and twenty other states that are, no doubt, now deeply under the influence of the Soviets. Or, does it? When I last had a second grader (Pugsley) he had a BB gun and trundled off into the backyard with a zillion BBs. I can attest our backyard is now safely Soviet-free. But back in the day? We weren’t building weak Soviet children. No! We had backbones of steel and cheap Taiwanese Rambo® knives with compasses built into the handle.
So, yeah, not unusual. I guess it was a crazy thing called freedom. Anyway . . .
I got back to the house and threw open the door. I stamped my snow-covered feet inside. Yeah, I know, bad form. But I was in a hurry, I had real news and information for the family.
My parents were lounging on the couch, enjoying a quiet coffee.
“A BEAR!” I yelled.
“I swear, I saw it, a bear! It was just right up the road, right where the hill starts. A bear! A black one!”
Ma looked at Pop, concerned.
Pop Wilder shook his head. “Bears are hibernating. None are up this time of year, not when it’s this cold.”
“No, it was there, right by the fence.”
Ma Wilder nudged him, seeing the absolute certainty on my face. “We should take a look.”
There is a look a man gives a woman when he knows that he has lost the argument even before it started. I know that look because I saw it then. Pop sighed, got up, and got dressed. Half an hour later, he and Ma and my brother were all dressed, and ready to go up the road. I had my BB gun. I hoped that the bear would still be there.
We walked. I pointed, when the Bear came into sight, not 300 yards away.
“See, I told you.”
Ma Wilder looked concerned when she saw visual proof of my story. I think she had put my bear story into the category of “addled ravings of an overly imaginative eight-year old that may or may not process reality like a normal human after he told me that he was worried that Grandma would turn into a zombie (Sleep Deprivation, Health, Zombies, and B-Movies).”
As for me, I was concerned that Pop hadn’t brought bazookas, howitzers, grenades, or maybe a battleship. Nah, Pop Wilder could probably wrestle a dozen or so bears, if they came up to him one at a time, like in the Kung Fu movies. We finally got up to the road where we were perpendicular to the black bear, still huddled up against the fence, not 30 feet (432 meters) away. It hadn’t moved since I’d first seen it. I felt . . .vindicated, even though I’d never heard the word.
“Hand me the BB gun,” said Pop Wilder.
I did.
Pop shot one BB into the bear, smoothly worked the lever like a cowboy in the Old West, and then shot another BB into the bear.
The bear was motionless. It must be dead! Pop Wilder killed it! Pop handed the BB gun back to me.
He then walked back into the deep snow directly to the bear, reached out, and pulled up the black plastic sheeting that had blown into a ball up against the fence.
He handed me back the BB gun and handed my brother the black plastic sheet. We walked home in silence.
So, there was that: the Miracle of the Transubstantiation of the Bear – where a Christmas miracle transmuted a black bear into a sheet of black plastic. Not sure of any other explanation.
But the real Christmas miracle, it’s below. Merry Christmas to all.
Pugsley home from college and I’m spending time with him, so here are some memes. Enjoy!
