John – Page 95 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Hans Gruber, a Hooters Waitress, Patton, and Health

“And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer. Benefits of a classical education.” – Hans Gruber in Die Hard

Alexander the Great loved chewing bubblegum and conquering Persians. And he’s all out of Persians. And bubblegum wasn’t invented until 2,251 years after he died. Poor Alexander.

One thing that I think holds people back isn’t that they plan, it’s that they don’t plan big enough. I’ve been fortunate enough in my life that I’ve made most of my goals come true. That may sound like a good thing, but is it?

Of course it is. It’s really cool to be able to be successful at achieving your goals, because losing sucks, and if you have great goals you end up with Cash and Prizes®.

But what would happen one day if I looked around and said . . . “I’ve done it. I’ve accomplished everything I’ve set out to do.” What purpose is left to drive me? And if I did reach all of my dreams, what’s left to work for?

An example of exactly this happening is Buzz Aldrin. At the age of 39, Buzz walked on the Moon. The frikking Moon. It’s so difficult and expensive to do, we can’t do it today. Yet Buzz was the second guy to walk on the Moon. As a goal it’s awesome. But like the miniature schnauzer that catches a Humvee®, what do you do once you’ve won? Buzz didn’t have a clue, but he didn’t have a problem asking Jack Daniels™ for assistance.

Another example is General George S. Patton. Patton had been a highly competent general in World War II – daring, audacious, and cromulent. Yet, he found himself in a position where the war that he knew how to fight was gone – it was over. In his diary he wrote: “Yet another war has come to an end, and with it my usefulness to the world.”

Little known fact: French tanks in World War II had rear view mirrors. Those were so they could observe the front line.

But Patton and Aldrin aren’t alone with this conundrum of having their success be the source of their discontent – you see this behavior again and again. It’s a common story in Hollywood: nobody to somebody to discovered cocaine to dead. Or, if the actor has a heart made of titanium, they become beloved actor Robert Downey, Jr. The most interesting part of that is the cocaine, especially to Robert Downey, Jr. Although you might think cocaine comes from Colombia, it really comes from the boredom of having everything you want.

It’s curious that one of the things that keeps us healthy and not developing a liver the size of Johnny Depp is the struggle to achieve a goal. In the absence of meaningful goals, bad things happen to people. They drink too much. They vote for the Left. They get depressed – why get out of bed when there’s nothing to work for?

Goals are important – and there are two ways that you can lose them:

Believe that they are impossible and give up, or
Achieve them all and run out of goals.

Essentially these are the opposite problems – one is believing you’ve got to play a football game against the 1985 Chicago Bears® using 11 toddlers. The other is being on the 1985 Chicago Bears© and playing 11 toddlers.

I know it’s a soccer ball in the trophy. It’s not like the Cowboys® would recognize a real football.

Both are no-win outcomes. Toddlers cannot run a receiving pattern at all. And they cannot hold a block long enough for their toddler-quarterback to get a decent pass off. And if you’re the 1985 Chicago Bears™, what’s the best thing that could happen? You beat a bunch of toddlers. I mean, it’s fun and all, but it’s hardly a greater achievement than defeating the Dallas Cowboys© or a school for ten-year-old girls that lisp.

A goal is required for good mental health. The very best goals require that you work at your limits, pushing yourself to become better. They’re goals that you believe you can achieve. And they’re goals where you can see a path to make them become real. And the best part of the goal is at the end, after you’ve achieved it, if you plan ahead you’ve got another goal waiting.

One of the waitresses at Hooters® lost a leg in a car accident last week. She now has a job at IHOP™.

As I mentioned in Wednesday’s post (Playing The Game, And Goals For Life) I had goals, just not work-related goals. I’ve been working to create some, and I’m not there yet. That’s okay. The goals have to be meaningful. And I’m not working without a net – I have sufficient goals out in front of me that even if I couldn’t work out a work goal, I have plenty of others. Is having a cup of fresh, hot coffee a good goal? Dangit. Back to the drawing board.

So, what about these great men who had everything when they accomplished the goals of a lifetime?

Patton’s uncharacteristic self-pity in the quote from his diary was the result of his achievement – the war was won, and he contributed to the Allied victory on the Western Front. He had fame. Only 11 men had ever had a higher rank in the military. From what I read about Patton, I’m willing to bet that he would have been able to channel himself into a post-war United States without too much difficulty.

Would he have been a politician? Hard to say. It’s unlikely that he would have the desire to speak pretty little lies just to get elected. But you can bet one thing – if he hadn’t died, Patton would have done his level best to shake up the United States. I wouldn’t bet against him.

And what about Buzz Aldrin? Buzz crawled into a bottle and managed to skip most of the 1970’s. Admittedly, that wasn’t a bad decade to skip since not having a memory of the Bee Gees® is something some people would pay for. At some point I believe that he managed to come to a truce with the Moon. He decided to instead focus on making money for himself and to be a spokesman for his cause: “Get your ass to Mars®.” Is being a celebrity spokesmodel as exciting as going to the frikking Moon? Certainly not. But you might as well be comfortable if you flew to the frikking Moon.

Buzz Aldrin sadly got divorced in the 1970’s. Apparently his wife needed space, too.

But Hans Gruber got it wrong. Plutarch actually wrote:

Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite number of worlds; and his friends asking him if any accident had befallen him, he returns this answer: “Do you not think it a matter worthy of lamentation that when there is such a vast multitude of them, we have not yet conquered one?”

In this case, Alexander is saying the exact opposite of the Hans Gruber quote – that he had a goal to conquer an entire world, but wept because his dream wasn’t yet complete. The moral of the story?

Maybe if Hans knew his Plutarch better he might have not fallen off the Nakatomi Plaza Tower.

Playing The Game, And Goals For Life

“You guys. You lollygag the ball around the infield. You lollygag your way down to first. You lollygag in and out of the dugout. You know what that makes you? Larry?” – Bull Durham

These are some pretty rough office politics.

One big question about careers: should you play the game?

Way back when I was in college, I had a part time job. My boss was out of town, but asked me to send out mail that was 100% fraudulent. He was attempting to get confidential business information from a competitor by pretending to be someone else.

Thankfully, I knew that this was more than just a bad idea – it was illegal. Really illegal. Like spending vacation time in the federal pen illegal. I told him no, it was illegal. He told me to do it anyway. I didn’t do it. I even took it to his boss. All his boss said was, “Well, he shouldn’t have used our address.”

The next day I took this problem to a professor in one of my business classes. I asked him what I should do. “Well, John, you’ve already quit, so I don’t see much more you need to do.”

“But,” I replied, “I haven’t quit.”

He smiled and shook his head. “No, John. You quit.”

When I thought about it, he was right, I had quit. I just hadn’t realized it. But it was the right thing to do. Besides, anyone who will knowingly ask you to commit a crime is more than willing to turn you in to the cops to save themselves.

So, no, don’t play that game.

Pa Wilder didn’t know magic tricks. He said accounting tricks were enough.

What if the game is simply immoral or unethical?

In one case, ethics cost me a job. I was at an interview and the interviewer asked me if I would do this rather specific unethical act. “No, that’s unethical.” Oops. Their actual business model was based on gaining a competitive advantage by behaving unethically. I haven’t lost a minute of sleep over not getting that job.

I also had a boss who asked me to do something unethical. I said, simply, “That’s unethical.” I believe my boss didn’t know it was unethical and he looked disappointed – not in me, but that his idea was unethical. “Are you sure it’s unethical?”

Your mileage may vary – but I’ve decided I’m not going to play that game, either.

What if it’s just stupid or silly?

Well, then if you need the work, you play the game, cheerfully. I know that, especially when I was young, I felt that doing stupid things at work was . . . stupid. I made the decision early on – swallow my pride (along with the jelly donuts in the break room) and go along to get along. Selling out? Not really. There is always a political element to work. Heck, get six people or three women together and there will be politics.

But if you have a family to pay for and don’t have the means to do it, don’t let your ego talk you out of a job. Do you need to cower and whimper? Certainly not. If that’s the behavior that’s rewarded at the company, find another job. It’s never going to get better because your boss isn’t an accident. Your boss was promoted because he or she exhibits the behavior that the company wants.

Which brings me back to the promised subject of today’s post: goals.

I’m thinking “writing dank memes” wasn’t what he was looking for.

My boss asked me a question, one that I wasn’t really ready for:

“Where do you see yourself in five years?”

As much as I could be surprised, I was. I had no real answer. Thankfully, this wasn’t my first corporate conversation, so I played the game and gave my answer. When I described my answers to The Mrs., she laughed. “You just gave the Bull Durham answers.”

The Mrs. loves that movie, and it appears to be a part of our marriage contract that whenever we’re flipping through channels and Bull Durham is on, she gets to watch it. Anyway, the relevant scene is:

Crash: “You got something to write with? Good. It’s time to work on your interviews.”
Nuke: “My interviews? What do I got to do?”
Crash: “You’re gonna have to learn your clichés. You’re going to have to study them. You’re going to have to know them. They’re your friends. Write this down. We’ve got to play them one day at a time.”
Nuke: “Got to play – that’s pretty boring, you know?”
Crash: “Of course it’s boring. That’s the point. Write it down.”
Nuke: “One day at a time.”
Crash: “I’m just happy to be here. Hope I can help the ball club. I know. Write it down. I just want to give it my best shot, and the good Lord willing, things will work out.”
Nuke: “Good Lord willing -”
Crash: “Things will work out.”

What’s funny is that I had already spent a chunk of time working on my goals that very week. I looked at several aspects of my life – relationships, this blog, taking over a small island in the Pacific and making them worship me as their fire god, and brushing my teeth every morning. I have space for work goals, but those are still blank two weeks after the conversation with my boss. That alone is probably the focus of a future post, but not in the next week or two.

I ask my kids what they want to be when they grow up – maybe they have some ideas I could steal.

But goals are crucially important. It’s not like Jeff Bezos woke up one morning and said to himself, “Whoa, where did all of this money come from?” No, he had goals. One of them involved getting jacked, another involved him becoming the world’s richest man, and the last one involved perfecting his version of the Roomba®, which was really just two miniature poodles hot-glued to a dinner plate.

I guess Jeff got divorced because his wife was past her Prime®.

Jeff Bezos has goals and I do too, although none of mine involve having the National Enquirer® post pictures of my, um, crotch cuckoo on the front page. I don’t know how Jeff does it, but when I write down my goals, I use a fairly simple formula:

What – Write down in as much detail (as you need) to describe the goal. Mine vary from achieving a very specific number of regular readers for this blog to setting higher standards for myself in some other areas of life, like learning to braid my armpit hair. The goal should be significant enough to warrant the effort. For me, launching an interplanetary mission might be really hard. But it’s a no-brainer for Elon Musk, who I believe keeps most of his weed on Mars.

Why – Why am I doing this? Superficial goals will lead to superficial effort. If you don’t look at the “why” and feel that it’s really important to you, the goal itself is trivial or you haven’t gotten to the real why. If you can’t come up with a good why you should achieve the goal – kill the goal like Nancy Pelosi kills a half-empty fifth of vodka.

When – A deadline is a spur for action. External deadlines on things like doing the taxes are powerful, but self-imposed deadlines work, too. In my case, I’ve set a deadline for writing these posts three times a week. If I didn’t? They wouldn’t get done and I would spend all my time practicing my armpit hair braiding.

How – Goals just don’t achieve themselves. Here I often will get very specific. Number of minutes working out, number of pushups, that sort of thing. I realize that when working towards a goal, especially an audacious one, no one has all of the details worked out on the first day. That’s fine – your plan can and will change as you take action. Just make sure that “eat less than 1500 calories a day” doesn’t morph into “don’t eat the seventh eighth jelly donut.”

The closer that you can link your goal to your actual physical survival, the less that you need any of the above. Very few drowning men write mission statements and then create a list of action items. It’s simply not necessary. Similarly, I didn’t write down that I’m going to write three times a week – it’s a given. I did write down some concrete steps on how I was going to get better, but The Mrs. felt that the “kidnap better writers than me and chain them in the basement” step was a bit extreme. She thought rope would probably work.

The uncut version of this movie is just called “Face”

In last Wednesday’s post I mentioned to not dwell on negative outcomes. I stand by that, especially when peak performance is required. But negative outcomes are very helpful when it comes to staying motivated to working a plan, week after week, sacrificing to get better when I could be torturing my captive writers and eating jelly donuts instead. For some goals I use those negative outcomes as an incentive, of sorts, and it seems to work.

Especially at first, don’t have more than half a dozen goals. For me, it’s important that I write them down on paper. Something about sitting and writing them makes them more real. And it also makes the final step, checking progress, easier. I suggest you do that weekly.

So, get to it – play the game and get your goals done. There’s no time to lollygag, because what does that make you?

A lollygagger.

Erasing the West: Step by Step

Groucho: Now, Columbus sailed from Spain to India, looking for a shortcut. Chico: Oh, you mean strawberry shortcut? – Monkey Business

Columbus sailed his ships, the Niñteñdo, the Piña Colada, and the Santa Fe to the new world and then bravely tried to repel the landing Pilgrims. Or so I seem to remember.

Christopher Columbus was one of the first that they came for. Columbus was easy pickings, really.

Columbus lived and died five hundred years ago, nearly as long as it seems the Democrats have been trying to get Trump out of office. Columbus was an Italian before Italy was a nation, so getting support for Columbus isn’t all that easy. Besides, Columbus was an Italian working for the Spanish, which I imagine involved enough hand gestures to make eye protection necessary as far away as France.

But Columbus was the first hero that they came for because he represented something that the Left hates: Western Civilization.

In reading through several columns on why Columbus is bad, none of them focused on things that Columbus did, with the exception that he was too harsh to Spanish colonists, and some of the worst allegations were probably written by his mortal enemy, Agent Smith. No, most of the things that the writers blame on Columbus were based on events that were a result of the clash between Western Culture and the culture that previously existed in the Americas.

None of the articles noted that the people living in the Americas at the time were far more barbaric than anything brought to them by Europe – the Aztecs and Mayans and other tribes enslaved, murdered, and exploited each other on a scale that almost puts Sesame Street® to shame. The only real crime Columbus was guilty of was showing Europe how to get to a continent that was so technologically backward and immunologically compromised that it could be captured by half a dozen guys with swords and horses. It was like a flock of kittens in a room full of metal-bladed box fans, except the kittens had a better chance.

I want to resurrect the Aztec religion and start sacrificing vegans. That’s not a typo.

The war against Columbus isn’t about Columbus – it’s about a hatred for Western Civilization as a whole. The war is a desire to erase culture. Each time it occurs, it follows a similar path:

Choose someone who is a cultural hero, preferably a primary face of the development of Western Culture. The person should be, ideally, revered. I mean, not as revered as me, but revered.
Pick the worst things that they ever did, even if their life was otherwise a paragon of virtue. Note that it’s okay if what they did was socially acceptable back in the time and place it was done – the worst thing they ever did should be the only thing used to characterize the person. Jefferson founded a University, wrote the Declaration of Independence, and was President? You know he got caught double parking his buggy once?
Never let up. Even if it comes out that (like in the case of Columbus) nearly every bad thing said about the guy was written by his mortal enemy, ignore it. Keep vilifying him, and blame him for every single consequence of everything he ever did, even if it happened after he died. It’s like blaming George Washington for Mount St. Helens because it erupted in the state of Washington.

One particular consequence of Columbus making his journey is that the United States exists. Yeah, he never made it to any part of what makes up the United States today, but he showed the Europeans who finally got around to colonizing what eventually became the United States the way to get here. Western Culture came, and expressed itself in a unique way: American Culture.

If George Washington were alive today, he would probably spend most of his time scratching at his coffin lid.

In the case of the United States today, one common claim by Leftists is that there is “no American Culture.” I’m certain that fish don’t know that they’re swimming in water, either. But that is certainly a lie. American Culture doesn’t seem like it exists because it is all around us in the United States, and happens to be one of our biggest exports while also being our biggest draw.

Overall, American Culture has been responsible for creating more technology and prosperity than most cultures that have ever existed. Has it done stupid things, things with negative consequences for millions of people around the world like set loose Adam Sandler or Bruce Springsteen? Certainly. But on balance, the world has been made much, much better by Western Civilization and the United States.

But the Left cannot abide by nations like the United States or, especially, Western Civilization. Both of these stand in the way of the Left – they are structures that impede the ability of the Left to control every aspect of your life, to create a logic and history that only agrees with what the Left says. It’s because they exist, they want to destroy them. Very directly they want to destroy your culture. They hold your values as obstructions. They want to disintegrate your family so your loyalty belongs to the Left. And they want to see you dead so that your ideas will die with you.

Stalin: There is no “I” in team, but there is “U” in gulag.

All of that starts with values and culture. To attack that, not only do they attack the culture of today though the infiltration of Leftist ideas (How To Spot Propaganda In 2020, Featuring Stonks) but also through the vilification of the past. What has been attacked?

Statues – of Columbus, of Civil War leaders, of Lewis and Clark. They will not be done until every traditional American Hero is gone.
The National Anthem – Bouncy© (that’s her name, right?) and Jay C™ were at the Superbowl® on Sunday. They sat during the National Anthem to protest the unfair nation that provided Jay C© with his meager billion dollar fortune. Heck, you can’t even raise a private navy with that pittance.
Borders – Chants of “No Border, No Wall, No USA at All” are fairly subtle. I just wish I could figure out what they meant.

There are steps in the cultural erosion that we’ve seen so far, and the biggest attack has been against the Idyllic Decade, the 1950’s. The 1950’s were the last decade before everything went wrong.

Followed by the Jell-O® salad course, naturally.

It’s been attempted by the media, by movies, to re-write the 1950’s, just as the attempt to tear down Columbus started. Why attack the 1950’s? Because it was the high point in the life of the American family. Things were good:

Postwar prosperity led to nearly universal employment.
The wages of a single man were enough to support a family and raise children.
Less than three percent of children were born to single mothers.
Violent crime was less than half of today’s crime rate.
The salary gap between a high school graduate and a college graduate has tripled since 1965.
Boy Scout participation is half of 1950’s – and that was before the BSA folded to political correctness and saw a free-fall in membership.
Kiwanis membership is half of 1950’s numbers.
Church attendance in the 1950’s was nearly 90%. Now? Less than 40%.

Thank heavens Netflix® subscription numbers are up, since today 41% of children are born to unmarried mothers. Or there might be a correlation here . . . .

But what can you expect when reality is inverted in just the same way that the legacy of Columbus, skilled navigator, was inverted?

Family is now seen as bad. Rather than being a supporting structure that helps a child learn right from wrong via loving parental support and instruction television and movies would have you believe that family is a stifling, controlling, patriarchy that just doesn’t want you to be the individual snowflake you were meant to be. I mean, that’s what you’d think if you got your information by watching television or movies.

The best part? No limit on cats!

And churches? They’re evil. They’ve gone from places where you meet and discuss and learn about God to places where you learn nothing but intolerance from sweaty red-faced pastors and priests who don’t really believe in God. Oh, and these intolerant pastors and priests are all secretly sexually twisted, since anyone who believes in God and values must be, deep down, a deviant.

They pick the best features of the Leftists to showcase. They pick the best features of the civilizations that Leftists created, and then claim that it really work next time, while sweeping the bodies under the rug. They then pick the worst of their opponents and often stereotype them using their own worst tendencies. They want you to feel guilt for the things your ancestors did, when living by the standards of the day, while feeling no guilt themselves for the direct pain caused by their actions and ideas in the world today.

But, despite hardship, Columbus had a dream. He sailed west.

Statue or not – he was a hero.

Health Goals, Girls in Togas (and a Bikini)

â€œTrying is the first step toward failure.â€ â€“ The Simpsons

I want to get my face on a coin â€“ that way I achieve my goal to help make change in the world.

One thing that Iâ€™ve decided to focus on even more in 2020 is my health.Â Even if I followed all of Dr. Sinclairâ€™s advice (Living Forever, The Uncomfortable Way), Iâ€™m still getting older although my immortality is working out so far.Â In some respects I think that we might be in for some very interesting times in the next few years, so being in better shape than I am now would probably be a good idea.Â Besides, as Pugsley gets older, taller, and stronger if I donâ€™t do something heâ€™ll wake up one morning and say, â€œIâ€™m going to break you, little man.â€

One way to do that is to keep my life under constant review.Â This isnâ€™t new, at all.Â The Romans may be dead, but I contend that Roman philosophy dating from the first century A.D. is valid today.Â Heck, current American civilization looks a lot like Roman life around that time.Â In reading Senecaâ€™s Letters, I saw a conversation where he described checking into a hotel, looking down from the room at the fitness gym next door.Â A little later he described that the Romans had regulations on boat speeds in particular areas.Â It was like California, but only 30% of the population in Rome were slaves.

Romans on diets were happy when their togas went from L to XL.Â

In particular, one of my favorite philosophers of the first century was Seneca.Â Seneca was a stoic, but had managed to make a considerable fortune open a chain of all-night toga laundromats.Â It was there that the togas were washed with water from the sea tides.Â Occasionally, a batch of this water would get too stiff from the added starch used to flatten the togas so they werenâ€™t wrinkled.Â Thatâ€™s where the Roman expression, â€œbeware the tides of starchâ€ comes from.

Okay, but what Seneca really said was:

â€œI will keep constant watch over myself and will put each day up for review.Â For this is what makes us evil, that none of us looks back upon our own lives.Â We reflect only upon what we are about to do.Â Yet, our plans for the future descend from the past.â€

â€“ Seneca

Before I read that particular passage, I had bought a little MoleskineÂ® notebook for just that purpose.Â When I said, little, I mean it.Â Itâ€™s really small â€“ just a little larger than a 3×5 notecard.Â Itâ€™s small enough I can fit it in my wallet.Â I bought it for a very specific purpose:Â to reflect on progress towards my goals, specifically my health related goals for 2020.

Her parents even named her Annette.

Each day I write down several things:Â how much and what I ate â€“ if I ate anything (The Last Weight Loss Advice Youâ€™ll Ever Need, Plus a Girl in a Bikini Drinking Water), how much I exercised, what weights I lifted and how many repetitions, my morning and evening weight, and whether or not I felt that aliens had put pods near my house that would turn into an exact duplicate of me if I dared fall asleep.Â Those are a few of the things that go into the book, though not all of the things I put down.Â It doesnâ€™t take particularly long to write it down â€“ just two or three minutes.

I find, for me, the process of writing this data down makes it more real somehow.Â And it makes me jump on the scale on days Iâ€™d rather not (like after Thanksgiving) so I can get the data.Â And collecting that data and writing it down is important.Â It makes me face the cold, hard objective truth and holds me accountable in an equally objective manner.

So, I record what Iâ€™ve done, and how Iâ€™ve lived as it relates to my goals.Â When Iâ€™m fasting, I write about that progress.Â I also record how much Iâ€™ve slept, because even though I know that sleep is no substitute for caffeine, I also know that Iâ€™m probably not sleeping enough â€“ though I would say that the passengers in my car seem to get unreasonably angry when I try to take a short nap.Â â€œAre you trying to kill us?â€ they ask.

Worrywarts.Â The road is practically straight.

Sometimes I wake up grumpy â€“ other mornings I let her sleep in.

Writing those experiences and activities down also help me celebrate victories â€“ and holds me accountable for lapses.Â It also sets up a feedback loop.Â Nothing makes the next lunchtime session on the treadmill more focused than seeing that I gained weight the last week.Â But present me certainly doesnâ€™t want to make life worse for future me by setting future me up for a failure.Â Writing things down changes outcomes. Â I certainly donâ€™t want to write down failures.Â I mean, one time someone told me I tended to blame others for my failures.Â He was right.Â I guess I get that from my mother.

But in reviewing the past, and in reviewing my failures, I donâ€™t, and wonâ€™t use past failures as a club.Â I donâ€™t allow them to poison my future.Â Instead, I use failure as a lever.Â Since I caused the failure in the first place, more than likely I can solve it.Â Unless it involves communism.Â Then youâ€™re on your own â€“ you should have seen the red flags.

Iâ€™m hoping Kim declares war on his real enemy:Â TwinkiesÂ®.

I also use this time to reflect on the things I did to take me towards my goals, and the things I did that take me away from them.Â It sounds overly simplistic, but most people would be far healthier if they just made several small changes each day about what they eat, how much they work out, how much sleep they get, and what is the appropriate amount to pay for a hooker in Tijuana*.Â $3.50 is probably a little low.

Weakness is powerful, so having to write down every time I make an error is one way make me more powerful.Â It also strengthens the cause and effect relationship between my action and the outcome.Â This further makes me accountable.Â Dangit.

In a sense, this is (sort of) a sequel or companion piece to Wednesday (Focus is a Key to Life and Look a Squirrel!), and ties to focus.Â You can have a plan, but if you donâ€™t collect data and donâ€™t analyze it regularly, youâ€™ll never focus on it â€“ itâ€™ll be like an objective your boss gives you and then never mentions again â€“ it simply will never get done.

If you write about it, you will focus on it.
If you measure it, you will manage it.
If your ego is against it, youâ€™ll never measure it.

â€œIâ€™m a failure â€“ I canâ€™t even fake the death of a stripper.â€Â

I heard an interview with Penn Gillette, the Penn part of the illusionist duo Penn and Teller.Â He was talking about his recent weight loss.Â He mentioned what he thought his starting weight was, but then added, â€œI really donâ€™t know how much I weighed at my heaviest, no one does.â€Â What he was stating is that his ego wouldnâ€™t let him step on the scale at that higher weight â€“ he simply didnâ€™t want to know that answer.Â It wasnâ€™t until heâ€™d started losing weight that his ego allowed him to start measuring.

And start managing.Â And start tracking.

And start winning.

*I have never been to Tijuana, but I saw a Cheech and Chong movie once where the plot involved them making a van out of marijuana in Tijuana, so I feel I have some expertise.

Focus is a Key to Life and Look a Squirrel!

“Maybe we’re at war with Norway?” – The Thing

The Norwegians have the best parties – Fjord Fiestas, you could call them.

You’ve been there.

There’s a state where you experience full awareness. But it’s full awareness of a very specific kind. There is no past. There is no future. There is only now – the immediate now. You cease to be aware of anything but what you are doing.

You have become a verb. You are lost in the moment. You are the moment.

This state transcends time. Minutes, hours can pass. It seems like an instant.

This state has a name. It’s not tequila.

It’s focus. But tequila is a close second.

When I was in athletics in high school, coaches would tell me to “focus.” That was it. I think they told me that because they knew focus was important, and or maybe because that was what they were told when they were in high school. But they could see the impact that focus had on an athlete in a game, or a wrestler in a match. The difference between a focused player and one that isn’t focused is . . . sorry, what was I saying?

Anyway.

Well, the string certainly looks alive when it’s on a bikini.

What advice did we get with the command to focus? Well, in my case, none. I was expected to figure it out. I drilled takedowns in wrestling hundreds of times. Tackling drills for football? Again, at least hundreds of repetitions. Sprints? I think I did thousands of those, or at least it felt like thousands after practice was over.

How much time did they my coaches spend on teaching us focus and mental preparation?

Umm, I just told you. They told us to be focused. That’s it.

And I’m not complaining, some of the coaches were outstanding by any definition, and in one case objectively the best coach in the history of the state where I grew up in his sport. I don’t know, maybe they all thought that focus was second nature to some people. And maybe it is. But not to me. I get distracted by something as small as a bikini. Heck, if I had a dollar for every time I got distracted, I wish I had a beer.

Gradually, I figured it out, or at least figured it out as best as I could. Fast forward to this weekend: I caught myself telling Pugsley to focus before a wrestling match. I had a moment of epiphany. What does focus even mean to a kid whose entire life has been distorted by the distraction of technology? How do you even describe it? Maybe, perhaps, I could help him figure it out after his batteries died.

How many Aztecs does it take to change a lightbulb? None. The Aztec Empire dissolved hundreds of years before the lightbulb was invented. For some reason my kids don’t like my lightbulb jokes.

It’s true that in our lives, physical preparation in athletics or training for work often takes precedence for the mental preparation for what we do. The physical preparation is easy to see. It’s easy to objectively measure. How many pushups can you do in one minute? At work, the training for the job can be measured in certificates and completed coursework and compiled grades. And don’t ask candidates to prove how many pushups they can do in one minute no matter how amusing you think that might be. Have them do something like wax your car instead.

But mental preparation is tougher. You can’t directly see it. But yet it’s crucial to performance in nearly everything we do.

In athletics, the mind must be ready for the task at hand. If you’re wrestling, you’re going to war. You’re preparing to try to spend the next six minutes making the other guy regret he ever stepped on the mat with you. A bad place to be is to focus on what can go wrong before a match. A better place is to focus on the moment – to understand that no matter what happens, there is a way.

If I focus on what happens if I lose, I will wrestle not to lose. If I live life focused on what could go wrong, I will live life not to lose. My entire life would be spent in damage control, defending against failures that may not even exist.

Whoa! This is most excellent and triumphant!

The solution is focus. I wasn’t born with it. But focus can be taught. There’s even John Wilder’s Patented Focus List®, presented below with only limited commercial interruption thanks to a generous sponsorship by the MacArthur Foundation™ (hint, hint, I’m still waiting for my #GeniusGrant).

Know what you want. This is basic, but yet there are hundreds of people walking around who don’t know what they want out of life. In sports, it’s easier – people want to win. Some more than ever. But we’ll talk more about that next Wednesday.
Believe that it’s possible. I had a boss that was exceptional at this. He often had more belief in me than I had in myself. But if you don’t believe that what you’re doing can be done, you’ll find ways to make sure that you’re right. Plus believing it’s not possible is one way of making an excuse for failure before you start. Heck, most things are impossible, right up until someone does them. But enough about me losing my virginity.
Know every second counts. Clocks are unrelenting. 0:00 is coming. Every second that passes without you taking action is a second that can never come back.
Give everything, right from the start. Closely tied to using every second, is using every bit of you for every second. It’s your force multiplied by your time that is your momentum.

See, it’s so simple a fifth grader could derive it.

Prepare relentlessly. That means working through every detail you can, and as close to the real thing as possible. I guarantee your opponent is. Well, one of them is. When his iPhone® battery is dead.
Focus on winning, not losing. Reasons eloquently established above.

Too soon?

Lock out distractions. Everyday life tends to intrude in your brain. Push it back. Like an ex-wife it will be there after you’re done.
Avoid feeding your ego. Your ego, that part of you that holds all of your self-importance? The ego that thinks that people remember silly mistakes you made? It will fight with everything it has to be protected – it will sabotage you to prevent you doing your best. Sure, in rare circumstances people will remember your silly mistake (putting hydrogen in that dirigible, for instance), but that’s not the norm.
Have confidence in yourself.
Have faith. I’ve been lucky time and time again. I know the old saying that “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity” – but that was the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca who said that. And where is Seneca, hmm?
Remember why you’re here – not a specific way to win, but to win.
Focus on now, not the next game. Nor the next match. Nor the ride home.
Use your tension to build focus. Being nervous is okay, and can, if used properly help your preparation.

Use music. There is nothing that so impacts emotion and sets mood than music. Good rock music helps a workout. Appropriately aggressive music helps focus – Come Out And Play by the Offspring, or Electric Worry by Clutch or even Shoot to Thrill by AC/DC come to mind. Please feel free to suggest your favorite music that psyches you up below. I promise not to make too much fun of your choice, unless you pick something like Madonna or Justin Bieber. Yes, that includes that odious little man, Phil Collins. He knows what he did.

Have a routine, once you get it right. Play the same songs every time. Play them in the same order. Spend the same amount of time warming up each time.
Be ready physically. We’ve spent all this time getting your mind ready. It would be a shame if your body weren’t ready, too.
Have a strategy. Execute it. Having a strategy is important. Having the courage to execute it is important, too. Will it have to be sufficiently broad to account for surprises? But why do you have to bring broads into it?
Don’t deviate from the strategy too soon. There may be a time to give up on your plan, but it’s not immediately. Unless it is. This is more of an art – there is absolutely a time when Plan A will fail, and you’re stuck with Plan B. Or Plan C.

Okay, I never said it was a short list.

One other piece of advice: Be as outcome independent as you can be. The poem If by Rudyard Kipling makes this point well (The Chinese Farmer, Kipling, Marcus Aurelius, and You). Winning everything you try, every time you do it is impossible for everyone. But after the victory or the loss, you will remain. Yes, losing sucks. But the outcome of any specific event in your life is much less important than the input that got you there, which is (more or less) something Seneca also said.

I swear, I got lost for 20 minutes looking at Bill and Ted related information while writing this post. The Internet is the devil.

Yes, you read that right. You can’t control every outcome. But you can control your attitude. You can control your effort. You can control a large part of your preparations. You can control the virtue of your actions. If you do all that and still lose?

Winning is still better than losing. Winning is always better than losing. Losing sucks, and you should never really be proud of it – it will become a habit. But look for the lessons you can pick up for next time.

More next Wednesday when we look at how this impacts the rest of your life.

(And don’t forget to leave your psyche up to be aggressive music suggestions in the comments.)

How To Spot Propaganda In 2020, Featuring Stonks

“PBS, the propaganda wing of Bill and Melinda Gates.” – The Office

Okay, and what does anyone do with two new “tote bags” every year? How many objects do you need to tote?

I used to listen to National Public Radio® (NPR™) on the way to work. Sure, I like music, but the local radio stations are simply horrible. NPR© had a good mix of news and information. Of course it was left-leaning: it’s in the name – “Public” radio – and at least 55% comes from reliably liberal sources like universities, foundations, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting™, and Fedgov. But it was left-leaning in the “Kinda Feminist Grandma Who Just Didn’t Want To Be Called Sweetie At Work” way, and not in the “All Who Oppose Us Will Be Re-Educated or Shot for Comrade Sanders” way.

Listening to them wasn’t new for me – I’d done so during the latter part of the years when W was president, and during many of the Obama years. There was a detectable liberal bias, which was understandable given that they have trouble with the capitalist system. Why, one time when I was tending bar, an anthropologist, a philosopher, and a journalist walked in. I said, “Hey, Brad. Still no job?”

Arizona State University and Texas A&M recently did a study about bias in journalism and found that 4.4% of financial journalists described themselves as “somewhat or very” conservative. The totals for those that identified as “somewhat or very” liberal? 58.5%. If you wondered why the journalists were crying on election night back in November of 2016, this is it.

Journalists are lefties, and they’re surrounded by other lefties, and probably don’t even know anyone who would claim to be on the Right. And those in the study were only financial journalists, who one would expect to be somewhat more “conservative” than journalists as a whole since they could probably do basic addition.

I guess I was fine listening to NPR© because I felt I was good at filtering out the bias that I heard. A lot of news is just facts, and listening to NPR™ was good because I liked to get a second version of the news – and sometimes the stories that NPR® brought up were utterly different than I’d see on my regular run around the web. It was nice having the variety.

The decision to stop listening to NPR© was gradual, but I certainly remember the first big day that led me down this path – it was August 2, 2016 when then-candidate Trump was giving a speech at a rally. A woman had a baby at the rally, and the baby cried. Trump said, “Don’t worry about it, you know? It’s young and beautiful and healthy, and that’s what we want.”

Not too much later on in that same rally, the baby cried again. If you watch the video, it’s hilarious – Trump says, “Actually, I was only kidding, you can get the baby out of here.” You can clearly hear in his voice he’s kidding. In reality, anyone who wasn’t looking for something, anything to smear Trump would have heard the joke. You can watch the video – NPR© did put it up (LINK). But when the story was read on air? “Trump Hates Babies And Wants To Deport All Of Them, Probably to Mars.”

But, Unlikely Voice of Reason, Washington Post® (LINK) came to the rescue with this quote: She [the mother – J.W.] said that she decided to leave the auditorium on her own because “it’s the considerate thing to do for others around, trying to listen or for those presenting,” adding that “it was blatantly obvious he was joking.”

Who would write and report a story like that? A deranged person. A person looking for something, anything to hang on Trump. It was pure propaganda, but a clumsy sort of propaganda that only someone who had it in for Trump would report.

Rumor has it that if Bernie Sanders sees his shadow on Groundhog Day, he’ll avoid the Clintons for six more weeks.

That was the first strike – and several more went by, and I found that I simply could no longer stand listening to the distortions popping out of NPR™. I doubt that NPR© is better now, but even if they were, why would I bother? I have a better cell phone now and listen to podcasts on the drive to work.

In a one-dimensional world, I’d still have the choice of NPR® or the local rock DJ telling really stupid stories about their fart collection or I could spend the drive time listening to a CD. But we now have access to a vast array of news, so if you go poking and prodding, you can debunk the propaganda if you smell it. And, boy, there’s plenty left. It’s gone beyond distortions to become propaganda.

That’s Biddle in the middle with the fiddle near the griddle while his puppy has a piddle.

The power in propaganda is in creating a common worldview. It’s herding. If everyone believes the same thing, then why argue about facts? And that’s also the danger of propaganda. One of the early propaganda theorists (besides, of course, Edward Bernays) was William Biddle, member of the Minbari Hair Club for Men© pictured above. Biddle’s ideas on how to make propaganda work include:

Rely on emotions, never argue. Almost all decisions, no matter how rational we think we are, are based on emotion. Every single actual transformative change in our lives is built on emotion. The Mrs. recently emailed me pictures of our first date, but I couldn’t open them. I guess I have trouble with emotional attachments.
Cast propaganda into the pattern of “we” versus an “enemy”. This is derived, at least in part, from emotions. Everyone has a fear of the other, of those that aren’t like them. If the Left didn’t have an enemy, it would have to manufacture one to make propaganda work. And if I am president, we will arm all our troops with acid to destroy the enemy base.
Direct suggestion through using repetition in slogans or phrases. Simple phrases, repeated often, replace the truth. “I like Ike.” You may or may not like Eisenhower, but it’s easy to say, easy to remember, and easy to repeat. If Biddle were lecturing in 2020, I’m sure he’d understand the power of memes in driving public viewpoint. But if Biddle were speaking to you in 2020, you’d probably be horrified because a corpse dead for 47 years makes a terrible lecturer and often stutters.

Morgan Freeman: Today Chester learned that chanting “U-S-A” at the illegal alien march was a mistake.

Reach groups as well as individuals. Getting individuals to agree is easy, but why convert people retail when you get more going wholesale? Thankfully, I can dress differently so I can look like everyone else.
Indirectly appealing to emotion through cloaking propaganda as entertainment or news media coverage. I had a friend – I know, crazy, right? – who would never directly try to convince upper management of anything. He’d leave clues – breadcrumbs – so that upper management would come to the right conclusion, his conclusion, without him stating his conclusion directly. But there certainly isn’t a reason that Thor™ is going to be replaced by a woman, is there?
Biddle emphasized the importance of the propagandist being hidden when conveying their messages. If the Left thought that Trump wanted them to eat vegetables, half the vegans in the United States would go on a full-carnivore diet and begin stalking cows. If you’re trying to do propaganda, don’t mix the message with the messenger.

And after PETA armed the Cows, this happened.

What Biddle missed was herding. As opinions change, people must be herded to follow the new opinion – outliers must be ruthlessly outcast. The pleasant part for propagandists is that people will tend to self police. You’ve probably heard that crabs stuck in a bucket trying to get out will pull any crab that gets out back into the bucket with them. I have no idea if crabs do that, because my relationship with crabs involves steam, fancy vice grips, and a cup filled with liquid butter.

Kim Jong Un loves Stephen King books – he’s a fearless reader.

Stephen King only wishes that he was stuck with crabs. Wait, that came out wrong. Anyway, Mr. King made the epic error of arguing that with his votes for the Oscars®, that diversity didn’t matter, only quality. In any universe where rational people discuss things, that’s an entirely reasonable statement. But in Hollywood©? Not a chance (LINK). If Twitter™ could burn people at the stake, it would be very warm in Mr. King’s house tonight.

And if they only reported it on NPR®? I’d never hear it. Unless it was during pledge drive. Why is it always pledge drive?

Living Forever, The Uncomfortable Way

“Cannibalism is one thing, but increasing longevity by eating human flesh….” – The X-Files

I’m not going to tell an AARP® joke: they’re all pretty old.

David Sinclair isn’t a medical doctor, but he’s got a laboratory at Harvard© Medical School. That’s the real Harvard®, not the Haarvard™ School of Witchcraft and Legal Studies I started a few years ago. It was accredited by Madame Kim’s Korean Restaurant (located under the Vance’s Bowl-a-Rama in Scranton, Pennsylvania. One of my students turned me into a newt.

But I got better. (R.I.P. Terry Jones)

Anyway, Sinclair actually teaches at the real Harvard© and not my scam internet school beloved privately held institution of learning. Dr. Sinclair is not a medical doctor, but is instead a PhD, which is troubling to me now – there was no real reason he should have checked me for breast cancer. And do most of those checks really take an hour? But as I watched a video of him chatting about the future, it struck me: he looks just like Christian Slater.

He may look a lot like Christian Slater, but the good Doctor Sinclair looks sheltered. I mean, who doesn’t have a three day cocaine, heroin, and tequila binge resulting in assault on a police officer and three months in the slammer? Oh, only Christian?

Anyway, Dr. Sinclair is mainly interested in longevity. When I say mainly, he’s done research on longevity since the 1990’s. Currently, he feels he has the reason that we age: as we get older, our cells forget what it is that they should be doing.

What, a cell can forget? How does that work?

DNA is a long strand in a cell. How long? If you stretched out a DNA strand, it would be (by most calculations I’ve seen on the Internet) over six feet long. Obviously, just like Tom Cruise, your cells aren’t six feet long. Therefore, the DNA has to be wound up to fit inside a cell.

Remember, sharing DNA with those you share DNA with can have consequences. Just ask the governor of Virginia!

In a really neat trick, it’s not the just the DNA that determines what a cell does, it’s the way that the DNA is wound up in little knots to fit in the cell. Since every cell has the same DNA, it’s not the DNA that determines what a cell does: it’s how the DNA is coiled in a cell that defines what that cell does. That available information on the coiled up bits of DNA is what makes a cell a nerve cell. Or a skin cell. Or, for you lucky people, a hair follicle.

Wait, that’s not true. I have hair. It’s just in my ears. What gives?

The answer is simple. The skin cells had the DNA originally coiled up to be skin cells. But after a while, the winding became . . . not as good in a few of them, so skin cells decided that they wanted to start a hobby: making hair. So places that didn’t have hair in my 20’s, now have hair. Just not where I wanted it – sure I feel the wind blowing through my hair still, but now it’s my back hair.

Fun Fact: Lloyd’s of London® will not insure the Kardashian family against Velcro©.

Sinclair thinks that part of the key to having humans live to be 170 or longer is in resetting that mechanism so the DNA coils up correctly in the cell. He suggests the reset might be possible, but it involves viruses, PEZ®, and painters scaffolding. I kid. Except for the viruses. Dr. Sinclair has several theories on how this reset can be done, and, yes, one of them includes a virus. Some of them involve drugs or supplements. I’m not planning on selling supplements here (though I hear that can be lucrative if you’re in talk radio) but you can look up his advice on supplements. Remember, he’s not a doctor, at least not the medical kind.

But he does have some advice that’s certainly (mostly) free to pursue, and probably harmless:

Be cold. Apparently The Mrs. is right that the air conditioning should be set at 54°F in the summer, since being cold appears to activate mechanisms that reduce inflammation. We also keep Stately Wilder Manor cold in winter. Sometimes when your author is writing in winter I actually rub two verbs together to keep warm.
Be hot. Not like supermodel hot, but actually physically warm. If you’re both, you probably get bonus points. Saunas have been documented to lower blood pressure and much lower death rates. I don’t have a sauna, but I have a hot tub (I keep it warm by burning $100 bills) and I’m in it 4 or 5 times a week. I can’t keep it at 175°F like the Finnish people do, but I imagine that 104°F is close enough.
Work out. This isn’t news, since this has been done to get people healthy since at least the time of the Roman Empire. But it appears that higher intensity workouts, stressing the body increases the body’s aging defenses. Sinclair suggests high intensity interval training.
Fast. This actually saves you money, since you’re not spending money on food when you do it. I wrote a bit about fasting here (The Last Weight Loss Advice You’ll Ever Need, Plus a Girl in a Bikini Drinking Water) and think it’s something that I think would benefit most people. Fasting appears to lower blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, and lower inflammation. The downside? You’re fasting.
Don’t eat so much protein. This is the tough one. Sinclair noted that too much protein causes lower levels of NAD – heh hehe heh heh, he said “NAD” – and NAD is a nucleotide called “nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide” that decreases as you age. NAD is one of Sinclair’s main keys to aging. But I like steak. I’m not sure that I want to live to 170 without steak. Plus, if I’m not supposed to eat carbs, and now not supposed to eat protein, what’s left? Sticks of butter covered in grass clippings?

Not only do you have to set your cake on fire, you can’t eat it.

Again, those are (mostly) free to do, and in some cases put money back in your pocket.

Observationally, the things on the list are things that suck. We want to be at comfortable temperatures, sitting on the couch with chocolate and steak smeared faces. We want to live in malls, comfortable and cocooned against all discomfort. But longer life appears to be triggered by being uncomfortable. Since you’re not happy when you’re uncomfortable, that means time goes more slowly. So not only do you live longer, it also feels like you’re living longer. You might live to 170, but it feels like 1,700 years.

But what about the other things that kill you besides growing old?

In the past week, it looks like (fingers crossed) there’s a breakthrough against cancer. Despite cancer being utterly curable in mice for, oh, decades, this particular cure uses the body’s own immune system to eat the cancer cells. I’m betting this has about 1 chance in 10 of working, but that’s better news than any cancer news in recent memory. Ruth Bader Ginsburg seems to not need this, though.

Remember, the Supreme Court is just regular court with sour cream and tomato.

If we cure cancer and aging, we’re home free, right?

Well, there are still things like dementia, liver failure, kidney failure, diabetes, and heart disease. Certainly following Dr. Sinclair’s suggestions will help with some of these, but it’s not likely it will help with all of them. I’m not trying to be pessimistic here, but solving all of the body’s problems isn’t as easy as jumping in the hot tub with a supermodel or avoiding steak.

For a long life to be worth it, it should be one where I don’t live from year 70 to year 140 as a rambling, dementia cursed old man. And Dr. Sinclair’s dad, who is now 80, has been following Sinclair’s advice and is still quite active.

Or was it Dr. Sinclair’s advice after all? It could have been Christian Slater. And always remember my motto:

Shoot now, ask Christian Slater.

Here’s a video of Dr. Sinclair, if you want to check either my facts or the Christian Slater resemblance.

The Funniest Post You’ll Ever Read About Alternative Investments

“Well that’s fantastic. A really smart decision, young man. We can put that check in a money market mutual fund, then we’ll re-invest the earnings into foreign currency accounts with compounding interest aaaand it’s gone.” – South Park

I’ll have you know there are at least three things that you can use an empty potato chip bag for.

I was reading Bison Prepper (LINK) (and you should, too) last week when Lord Bison mentioned that stocking up on things that you used regularly as consumables was a survival strategy. It is. Beyond that, it’s also an investment strategy.

In the world of investment, when you buy a stock thinking the price is going to go up, it’s called “going long.” If you were to buy Apple® stock thinking that the world hadn’t had enough iPhones®, iPads©, or iCrap™, you would be “going long.” For this strategy to pay off, when you finally decided to sell Apple©, it would have to be worth more than when you bought it. Buy low, sell high.

Duh.

But I started this post by writing about consumables. What’s the deal? Those aren’t investments, right?

I recalled reading another article a few years ago about a financial writer showing up on the Tonight Show™ with Johnny Carson, so I looked for the interview and found it – a whopping 200 people had watched it, even though it had a glimpse of Susan Sarandon while she was still cute and before her eyes popped out of her head like they were trying to escape. The writer that Johnny was interviewing was Andrew Tobias. Johnny said in passing: “I like how you said that if you had $1000, you should invest in tuna.”

I was really shocked when he said, “Sit on it.”

Tobias responded: “If you want to make 40% tax free on $1000 you can . . . if you buy tuna fish . . . and shaving cream on sale, and get a case discount.” The audience didn’t laugh – they were living in pretty uncertain times and the advice was serious.

Andrew Tobias posted this clip on YouTube®, and was really irritated with himself – since his jacket was buttoned it looked like he was forming a human air scoop as he sat down with Johnny.

Back when this clip was filmed was in the late 1970’s, and the economy was in trouble. The interest rate was high – a mortgage (if you had great credit) would charge you really high rates, between 10% and 14% . . . compared to a tiny 4% or so today. Inflation for nearly everything you could buy was running around 10%.

The entire key to making this odd investment strategy work is that you have to buy things that you’ll actually use. Sure, Wal-Mart® sells five-gallon troughs of flaming pickles soaked in Cheeze® Ballz™, but will you actually eat that?

It was even worse when she flipped off people we passed.

What’s a list of things that most people buy that this would work for?

Tuna (and long shelf life canned food) – especially good if you need to keep your mercury intake up.
Shaving cream and razors – buy extra if your wife is a Kardashian or you’ll look like you’re married to a Chia Pet™.
Various condiments – mustard keeps forever, and can be used to slow Kardashian hair regrowth.
Laundry soap – I have to keep this on the list, my hands are Tide®.
Paper goods – I’ll make a toilet paper joke, since I’m on a roll.
Wheat, rice, and other grains (properly stored)
Honey – They’ve found 5000 year old honey that is still edible, so it probably gets the nod as the most stable food ever. Plus it’s really handy to have local honey if you’re in Russia – I hear it’s made there by cagey bees.
Ammunition – Don’t be like JFK and have this be the last thing on your mind.

Now, you should be smart about this – if your family won’t eat cans of clams, buying them when they’re super cheap won’t really help you because then you have cans of clams that no one will eat, until there’s a food drive, and then you give them the clams. If this sounds oddly specific, well, we don’t have canned clams anymore. Likewise, if you decide to grow a beard, six cases of shaving cream suddenly become worthless until you decide to shave again.

The Mrs. didn’t buy the line, “But she looked so lonely, like she could use a good home.”

And don’t be nutty. If you live in a tiny house, putting several thousand cubic feet of tuna and wheat might not be the greatest idea. Unless you like sleeping on cans of tuna. There’s a limit. When Tobias gave that advice, he suggested that it could be used for $1000 worth of stuff. Today that translates into about $4,500 worth of stuff, if the inflation calculator is to be trusted. That’s certainly a lot, and would translate into 20 or so tons of wheat, but you’d probably have to stack hide some of it under the bed.

One dangerous point: if you buy something, like, say, wine and get a 10% case discount, it doesn’t really help your cause if you drink the wine twice as fast. Or if when you see a Ding-Dong®, you immediately rip open the silvery plastic sleeve and try to suck out the “cream” filling until you are sitting in the corner in a sugar coma. So you might want to reconsider stocking up on things where your self-control will turn a savings into a disaster for your liver or waistline.

9 out of 10 doctors recommend water over alcoholic beverages for health reasons. The other doctor is from Flint, Michigan.

In the 1970’s, you could do this strategy with nearly anything since prices were going up on everything, as long as you didn’t have to borrow the money – interest rates on credit cards were 18%. As opposed to the 18% today. Hmmm.

Regardless, if you have high-interest debt, get rid of it. The sooner the better. The future is uncertain, so getting rid of debt is a certain way to be in better financial shape.

In the last decade, inflation is most prominent in two things that you can’t collect like tuna: health care and college tuition. Oh, sure, you could pre-injure yourself, but who has the time? Likewise, you could avoid steep college tuition hikes by sending your three year old to college, but that would make congress unhappy. They hate competition that’s smarter than them.

The best information that I can find is that 401k plans returned an average of 7% for the last five years. Better than a jab in the eye with a sharpened terrier, and probably still a smart thing to do. I have one. The beauty of mine is that my company kicks in an instant match – and whatever match I get is an immediate return – if the company matches dollar for dollar, it’s an immediate 100% return. If it “only” matches $0.50 on the dollar, it’s still an immediate 50% return. I’ll pay taxes on it after you begin to pull it out, assuming that it hasn’t been confiscated by Bernie Sanders to fund his “waterslides for the poor” initiative.

But the 401k immediate return is hard to say no to.

For me? I’ll take belt sanders over Bernie Sanders any day.

But I can easily make 30% to 40% return tax free on toilet paper, if i buy it on sale, and in bulk. And I’ll never pay taxes on that return. It’s just free money – again, assuming I don’t have any debt.

If I have a mortgage of $100,000 at 4%, and I pay it off, I’ll make a $4,000 return before taxes. Not bad, but after taxes, it’s really as low as $2,000 depending on the rest of my income. But if I get a sweet deal on non-dairy gluten-free vanilla creamer, I get all of the money I save.

There is one other advantage of putting some of your money into stuff that you’d use – you’re making yourself more resilient. If the dollar (the United States one, not one of the phony dollars they use in places like Zimbabwe or Philadelphia) were to weaken, you have investments in things other than dollars. I heard a story of a German boy who got a gold coin as a tip while working at a hotel. After the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic, that same German boy was able to buy the same hotel for that same gold coin. Of course then it became a target for B-17 bombers, but who’s keeping score?

Oh, yeah. Everybody. Except the French – they’re waiting for their record to improve.

A French border guard was questioning a German. “Occupation?” “No,” replied the German. “Just visiting.”

The idea that I’m trying to convince you of is that you should think of your average daily purchases as if they were investments – because they are. It’s not only stocks, bonds, precious metals and a 401k that are investments – what you buy on a day to day basis and how much you pay for it can also be an investment.

The other thing that many people overlook when they think of investments is their time. How are you spending yours? You can, like me, spend your time in a PEZ®-addled haze, watching Bojack Horseman™ on an endless Netflix© loop, or you can spend it productively, making yourself better. That’s tax free, too.

Remember, investment means more than stocks and bonds. It’s the things you buy, the way you spend your time, and avoiding B-17 bombers by not buying German hotels.

Virginia: How We Got Here, In Four Levels

“I’m branching out from self-loathing and self-destruction.” – House, M.D.

How does Leo avoid getting his girlfriend pregnant? Conception.

As I sit writing on the eve of the potentially fateful protest in Richmond, a reasonable question to ask is “How did we get here?” Like Inception©, there are several levels of answer to that question, each deeper than the last. Ah, Inception™. Leonardo DiCaprio really had a dream job in that one.

The highest level answer is, “because an election was lost.”

And this is true. A single election has completed the transformation of Virginia’s government from one where there was representation on both sides to one that is under sole control of the Left.

It wasn’t a surprise to the Left. On day one, the Left was ready to take advantage of their new power. A slate of model gun control legislation topped their agenda. Everything from banning semi-automatic weapons to requiring universal background checks to red flag laws was on the table. Already several bills are moving through the legislature. As of this writing, it appears the semi-automatic ban has been removed, but that won’t last long.

Making guns illegal will stop all gun crime – that’s how we finally stopped everyone from doing drugs . . .

In addition to the anti-gun agenda, the Left is proposing a series of laws aimed at making sure that this is the final change of government that Virginia will ever see – I read about a bill that would move the governor’s vote from popular vote to a majority of the congressional districts. As the districts will be gerrymandered, that assures a Leftist governor for ever and ever. Also included was a provision to give Virginia’s electoral votes for president to the winner of the national popular vote. So, no popular vote for governor, and the people don’t get to vote for president at all.

Ain’t the Leftist version of freedom grand?

The second level is because the demographics of Virginia changed.

I know that lots of people have arguments that “ENTER IDENTITY GROUP HERE” have more in common with the Right than the Left. That might be true. But the only group that reliably votes for the Right are people who might name their kids “Brandon” or “Logan” or “Sarah” or “Amanda.” These people reliably want to vote for the traditions that created the United States, whereas many first, second, and even third generation citizens want to replicate the culture and country they left – including replacing the national currency with tortillas, which, the more I think of it isn’t that bad of an idea.

A new study just came out that showed that people who want to commit murder just might ignore gun-free zone laws.

You might not like that it’s true. You might have a fancy explanation why it shouldn’t be true. But nevertheless, it’s true. Immigration, urbanization, and being close to the Leftist center of power, Washington, D.C., has turned Virginia Left.

A third level is because it was planned.

The election of Donald Trump was, perhaps, the single most traumatic thing to have happened to Leftists since, oh, the election of George W. Bush in 2004. Which was nearly as traumatic as George W. Bush winning in 2000. To think: if only we had elected Gore president, polar bears would have not gone extinct.

What, polar bears are doing great? Shhhhhh.

Not all of the systems on the Titanic have failed. The swimming pool is still full.

But the cumulative result of this trauma is a push towards deeper Leftism, plus a push to get all of the state legislatures they can for the Left before the next census (LINK). Why? To gerrymander all of the congressional seats they can. Also on the agenda for a repeat of what went on in Virginia? Texas and West Virginia.

Perhaps the deepest and most basic level is because Leftists hate themselves, and herd with other Leftists.

Certainly not all Leftists are exactly this. I know a few people that are committed and are on the Left and are that way for the understandable, rational reasons. People, who, for instance, think our health care system is crazy and think the solution is more government. I think our health care system is crazy, and think that the solution is less government. I can understand their motives. They can understand mine. We have good conversations; fun arguments that don’t result in a desire to set up a duel with sabers at dawn. Dawn is much too early for a duel. If I’m going to die, I at least want a nap first.

But there are Leftists that hate themselves, and I think this is most of them. You’ve seen them – people who expend amazing amounts of emotion on behalf of other people, like the white liberals who got upset about Speedy Gonzalez and had him pulled from Cartoon Network®, despite his popularity in Mexico: “He was like a superhero to us….”

Leftists don’t feel bad just for others. Any comment you can make about a Leftist (or someone they feel protective over) is interpreted in the worst possible way. It’s as if every time someone used the term “guy” or “buddy” and men got amazingly upset. Even worse, if people got amazingly upset because we were called “guy” and decided that they would step in and protect us poor men and stop badthinkers from calling us “guy” and get anyone who said that hateword fired from work.

Secretly, the Leftists believe that the identity groups that they protect are inferior. Why else would they need to protect them and think up new terms for perfectly good descriptive words like “handicapped” or “secretary”? It’s not like if we called handicapped people something else they could, oh, walk again?

I think I saw this flag burning on video, and one of the Lefties managed to burn himself when molten drops of plastic from the American flag they were burning fell on his wrist. He said it was the same burning feeling he got when he thought about getting a job.

How bad is it? This level of moral relativism and “there is no truth” required by modern Leftism actually makes the assertion that all cultures are equivalent. Certainly not – especially in outcome. If you were to compare the culture of Japan to the culture of North Korea, you can certainly determine that the cultures are different, and that the Japanese culture is superior in nearly every way a culture can be measured.

The Left has made the nonsensical claim that women are physically equivalent to men, which I’ve seen from the Left to justify men competing in (and beating) women in high school track events. Deep down, they create this ferocious level of defense because they know that a man who says he’s a woman isn’t, but yet have to justify the insane idea that they are.

I blame the dames and broads.

If only I had time to put Greta Thunberg’s face on this meme . . . .

And the Left hates everything good, and pure. It hates the family. It hates the way the wind would blow through my long locks of shiny hair, I mean, if I had hair. And, even though the United States has done plenty wrong in its existence, it’s a shining beacon of hope that people risk their lives to get to. Leftists hate the heritage of America. They hate Western Civilization. They hate tradition. They hate rationality. As I discussed last week, the Left idolizes the profane, and treats it as if it were sacred (Why The Left Can’t Handle Reality).

Individualism and individual achievement is their kryptonite®. Why? They are afraid that they are inferior, afraid that they cannot compete. Bernie has to solve these problems, because our typical Leftist doesn’t think they can help themselves because he is a loser. He also thinks that the Identity Groups are inferior, and could never compete. Leftist philosophy is built on envy of those who are strong, and greed to take what they have made.

And Leftists are sure that they will be found wanting if judgement is ever made. Why? Because they feel they are inferior and are of no real value to society. Thus reason, science, grades, objective tests (like I.Q. and SAT tests), and norms of behavior are to be avoided in schools. If a child acts out in school? It’s not because of lousy parents. It’s not because the child has a mental or genetic defect that makes self-control impossible. No. It’s society’s fault.

So, now you know where participation trophies come from.

Thankfully, all of the millions of dollars we’ve spent on trying to solve the problems of “society” have led to the best educated and behaved children on Earth. No? Hmmm. Must be society’s fault.

Leftists, however, will do anything to protect their group. When someone on the Right commits a foul against Political Correctness, even decades in the past, they are disowned. Yet there is no behavior that any Leftist feels that they should be held accountable for – which brings us back to Virginia.

The current governor of Virginia has allegedly committed offenses against racial political correctness to the point that, if he were on the Right, he would be shot into the Sun and his family sent to exile in northern Canada where an old liberal would be sent ‘round to kick them every week.

Why would this be so?

I said that Leftists are herd animals. All humans seek the company of other humans – it’s normal, and belonging is the most basic need outside of food, water and oxygen. But Leftists seek safety in the herd. Again, the concept of individuality is hateful to them, so the collectivist action mimics that of the herd. The result is they’d never sacrifice a member until he was nearly dead – the biggest fear of the Left is that they’d be judged objectively.

The result of this is that the Left is dangerous due to this self-loathing. They’re like people who feel themselves to be inferior always have been – vengeful, spiteful, and hungry for power so that they can finally be someone.

So, that’s how we got here.

The Best News of 2019? No Excuses.

“No. That’s not fair. ‘Cause I’m a victim, too. Was a victim first, before him.” – Fargo (TV)

Columbus learned quickly that even discovering a new continent wasn’t enough to hide from the student loan debt collectors.

In a previous post Global Obesity, Axel Rose, and at Least One Orphan Joke I talked about how the world and Axl Rose were both getting fatter, and pointed out some of the reasons for it. In the comments, Ricky correctly noted that perhaps I’d skipped the biggest reason people were getting fatter: they had to control what was going down their throat.

Of course he was right. If you’re overweight (and I include myself in that), it’s because PEBCAP. PEBCAP means, of course, that the Problem Exists Between Chair And Plate. And one rule I learned at my own expense is that there is no number of cookies that I can eat that will make me not want to have more cookies.

Did Pavlov think about feeding his dogs every time he heard a bell?

Because although cookies are filled with enough sugar and carbohydrates to be banned by the United Nations as a poison illegal for use in modern warfare, they are tasty, tasty poison.

The intent of that post was to highlight some of the causes that were contributing to the global rise of obesity, plus make fun of Axl Rose. In no way was it supposed to provide an excuse to give up and say, “Okay, that’s it. I’m just going to live with being 500 pounds. There’s absolutely nothing to be done about it.” And if I choke to death on gummy bears, I hope that in my obituary it just reads, “John Wilder killed by bears.”

What do you call bears without ears? B.

It probably will surprise exactly zero regular readers when I say that in life, there are no excuses that are valid other than:

“I’m only five years old.”
“I’ve just been hit by an asteroid.”

And even if you are five years old, quit making excuses. That mill isn’t going to run itself.

The good news is that she just made foreman.

When it comes to nearly every circumstance you will ever face, your life will be better if you remember these four little words:

There are no excuses.

There are two corollary statements to that:

No one is coming to save you.
No one wants to hear you whine.*

Misery and blaming the world for your problems isn’t what anyone wants to hear.* That’s not to say that people won’t help you. They will help you. And that’s not to say that people won’t listen to your problems. They will listen. But what people won’t put up with is you having the same problem for years at a time and you taking no action to fix it. People won’t put up with you constantly blaming everything else but you for your problems.

If you don’t like drama, don’t be executive producer of every episode.

Embedded in this is some great news. Perhaps the best news that anyone will ever get:

You get to control your own life. You get to make your choices. You get to feel whatever you choose to feel. You get to try your best. And when you fail (not if, when) you get to try again.

And, you get to take credit it for it, and own it all.

*Except your ex. They love hearing your pain.