Category: Bad Smells

A Day Trip To Another America

“The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.” – Star Wars®, A New Hope

Well, at least they’re admitting it . . . (None of the memes today are originals – they are “as-found” on the Internet)

Pugsley is an athlete, and that causes us to have to go to places to see him engage in his sport (elk milking) across the state, and sometimes across state lines.  These are, for the most part, the only trips of any significance that we have taken in the last two years.  Pugsley, sadly, is old enough that I can’t skip the trip with him on his sports jaunts since he no longer buys my excuse.

What’s my excuse?  I’m adopted.  So, I tell him, “I can’t go because my parents won’t sign the permission slip.”  He doesn’t even giggle at that.  He’s got a cold heart.

Here in Modern Mayberry, masks have essentially disappeared from all public life.  The only place that might still require them is the local hospital, and thankfully I have no idea if they do or not.  We ate brunch today and, although many of the patrons at the restaurant were older folks, there wasn’t a single mask to be seen.  These are country folk.  They’re more afraid of bad weather for the crops than they are of a virus, and they feel that they can control the virus about as much as they can control the weather.

Everywhere our family has been across the state, it looks and feels like the same.   It looks a lot like the elk-milking competitions I went to when The Boy (Pugsley’s older brother) was in high school.  This was back before the Great Plague Of Overblown Impact hit us.  There are no masks, and people just behave like . . . well, nothing ever happened.

Late 2021 looks exactly like 2019 in my daily life.  We even shake hands when we meet people and we don’t act like we’ve just dipped our hands in some sort of biohazard, or have touched AOC’s teeth.  But I repeat myself.

The elk milking competition went well.  There were hundreds of people all inside for a day.  I coughed once, I think (nacho went down the wrong hole, and no, I’m not going to make that a joke about my nacho hole) and no one bothered to even look.  Here in Midwestia, we’re over it.  We’re not afraid.

We don’t care anymore.

Or, at least I thought.

The Boy has been off at college.  As finals were over, and Pugsley’s elk milking competition was near his college, The Boy came on to cheer his brother on.  Those elk milking siphons sure make a guy’s wrists tired.  After the competition was over, we decided to go and grab some food.  As we have exactly six restaurants in our usual rotation in Modern Mayberry, eating somewhere new is a treat.

The Boy asked his friends about good restaurants near where we were.

They were all in . . . Blue City.  Every Red State has a Blue City, where nose rings and “meat is murder” t-shirts outsell gasoline and beef jerky.  The friends came up with three names.  Two were burger joints, and the third was a Japanese place.

I’ll admit I was interested in eating Japanese.  At first, I had some pretty big resistance, until I explained it wasn’t Japanese people that we were going to eat, but Japanese food.  Then everyone agreed.  I guess it’s a matter of taste?

Huh, that’s a specific list . . .

We got to Blue City.  Pugsley, fresh off of his second-place elk milking victory, was driving.

The first thing I noted was this:  in Modern Mayberry, if I want to go to a place, I can park near it.  In Blue City, in order to get to the Not At All Cannibal Where You Eat Japanese People Restaurant, we had to park over a quarter-mile away.

Honestly, the walk didn’t hurt me.  Nor did feeding the parking meter $1.50 to park to not eat Japanese people.  Nor did walking through the faceless, anonymous crowd.  But it wasn’t a pleasant walk.  It felt like walking in a street from some sort of dystopian movie, like Bladerunner®, filled with people who hordes of people I didn’t know or and who didn’t care about me on crowded streets.  It was like being in my house in the morning before anyone had any coffee.

Thankfully I didn’t have to fashion a cloak out of an abandoned tarp.  Or did I?

I came to a store that I wanted to go into.  I was about to open the door when I noticed the laminated sign on the clear glass door:  “No entrance without masks.  If you wish to purchase our products but don’t want to wear a mask, feel free to visit us on the Internet.”  The Mrs. quite succinctly mentioned where she thought they could stick their Internet, but I wondered if it would be uncomfortable for them to have so much CNN® up in that dark, moist place.  We left them in peace, and I hope they have a lot of dark, moist success.

We kept walking to the Restaurant That Definitely Doesn’t Serve Asian People As Food Because Of That Health Inspection, the foot traffic was continuous.  Many people were masked, though not all.  Finally, we got to our destination.  On the door was another sign, just like the first store, though they didn’t offer to ship cooked people over the Internet.

This immediately caught the ire of The Mrs., and since she’s at least a bit Irish, you don’t want to get the ire of an Irish lass too Irish.  Or something.  Let’s just say that she can have a bit of a temper that makes Belfast in 1972 look like a Care Bears® movie.  I looked inside the restaurant, though, and there were plenty of people not wearing masks.

They were mostly all eating, but they weren’t wearing masks.  Apparently, the virus doesn’t travel when you’re sitting and eating, only when you’re standing and ignoring the duct-tape crosses on the floor in the line.  When we first entered the restaurant, there was another person not eating and not wearing a mask.  Since he could get away with it, I figured we could, too.  As he was a people of color, I would have a jolly fun time making a YouTube® show if they kicked us out, and not him.

They ignored that we were unmasked heretics and were pleasant and served us.

Hey, that’s Internet me!

The restaurant really didn’t serve Japanese food, just ramen.  It was expensive ramen, since ramen with steak in it cost $14.50 a bowl.  They took our order, and we waited at our table.

We got the oddly shaped (14 inches wide and eight-foot long) table near the front.  The chairs were weirdly high and the restaurant smelled of . . . farts.  Really.  The ramen, though, was excellent.  Mine was filled with steak and mushrooms and was unexpectedly (and subtly) spicy.

I generally get the chair so I can see the entrance – The Mrs. is used to it.  We had gotten to the restaurant right before the rush – patrons that came in right after us were told that they could get a text when a table was available.  In Modern Mayberry, you can walk into the best restaurant in town and (generally) have no more than a zero-minute wait.  And a quarter block is a long walk to it.

But it wasn’t that which bothered me the most.

What I noticed were the patrons coming into the restaurant.  They all wore masks, even the young children.  I understand that there is both a logical and a scientific case to be made that masks do help stop disease spread.  And nearly every person in the restaurant was at zero risk of serious complications from the ‘Rona.  The children were at zero risk.  Heck, I was nearly the oldest guy in there.

As everyone in the Wilder fam has had the ‘Rona, my fear level was zero.

Oh, money can’t buy love, but it can buy fear.

But what I saw wasn’t so much fear or even altruism in wearing the masks.  What I saw was subjugation in its nearly universal compliance.  Would I have put on a mask to eat a Japanese person bowl of ramen?  No.  I wouldn’t put on a mask to eat a nice steak bathed in PEZ® with Johnny Depp as he drank Amber Heard’s tears.

After dinner, I was struck by the differences in attitude between Blue City and Modern Mayberry.  I felt fear in Blue City that I never feel around here.  It’s not that the ‘Rona is done here – there are still 50 or so cases a week in the county.  But I get the sense that residents here are just done caring about it.

Of the people who have died in our county, I know exactly zero of them.  Zero.  And I know a lot of people around here.  As mentioned before, I’ve had some variation of COVID, as have The Mrs., Pugsley and The Boy.  From the data I’ve seen, that makes us functionally immune in a way better than (insert jab booster number here) can never achieve.  The virus itself will hopefully have zero additional physical impact on the Family Wilder.

Oh, wait.  They’re not done yet?

But what impact will baseless fear have on our lives?  Right now there is a threat that if we:

  • don’t take an mRNA shot that doesn’t work,
  • we won’t be able to work because we might be able to transmit a disease that we can’t get,
  • but that those who get the mRNA jab can get.
  • And those who get “jab” can also transmit.

Fear is the source of most Evil things that have plagued (intended) mankind.  At this point, the biggest shortage we have is a shortage of courage.  Stand strong.  I won’t suggest that you do or don’t do anything, but for me, the mRNA shot and its infinite number of iterations is a step too far.

What If The Mess . . . Is All Planned?

“There is a pestilence upon this land, nothing is sacred. Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress in this period in history.” – Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Think you’ve had a great morning?  Every day Joe wakes up and someone gets to explain to him that he’s the president.

Peter Grant over at Bayou Renaissance Man (LINK – if you’re not going there regularly, you’re missing out!) mentioned a quote from Monday’s post (The Winds Of War?):

The idea is simple – warfare encompasses absolutely every facet of the life of the enemy.  Destabilize the government.  Force their economy into chaos.  Starve them.  Own their communications systems.  In other words, it’s just like a Biden presidency.

When I write these posts, there are generally multiple edits.  First, I do a draft.  Then I go through and edit that.  Then I go through and use hammer, tongs, spackle and a welder to fill the post with jokes.  The last bit I do is to go to work in the meme forge and sweat and pound and make (mostly) new and original memes.

If your only tool is a meme, every problem looks like a grumpy cat.

In this case, I wrote the Biden line in the first edit.  I was trying to be a bit cheeky, but it just fit so well.  When Mr. Grant noticed that line . . . I thought about it even more.

What happens when your government is making war on you?

Seriously – if a foreign government would try to:

  • destabilize our currency (not money, currency) through massively printing it,
  • produce and disseminate propaganda to further polarize the citizens,
  • import millions of people with no ties to the country and no understanding of its governmental systems,
  • work through an admitted conspiracy encompassing virtually all media(traditional and social as well as search engines), corporations, state and to make sure the vote produced the “correct” winner,
  • make yet more Marvel movies,
  • effectively purge from the military all senior officers who don’t follow the correct ideology, and
  • create a culture of dependency on government programs,

we would say that was an act of war, or a copy of the secret Disney® business plan.

Sure, Donald Duck can walk around Disneyland© without pants and he’s beloved.  I do it, and I’m “banned for life.”

From an economic standpoint, one goal appears to be:  destroy the middle class and destroy small independent business owners.

Why?

Large businesses can be easily converged into following the Narrative with little actual damage in most cases.  Need examples?

  • Gillette® attacks traditional masculinity. It’s still in business.  It doesn’t want my business, and doesn’t care.  It’s doing fine financially.
  • Coke™ reportedly provided access to training that told employees to “be less white” and its stock is up about 20% since that came out, despite my personal boycott.

That’s two.  There are countless others.  If you look at the major companies that financially support the radical Marxist organization Black Lives Matter©, they are overflowing with cash.  They are free to take whatever political positions they want, as long as those positions are Leftist.  Just ask Ben & Jerry’s®, which is a Leftist political organization masquerading as an ice cream company.  I guess communists have finally fed someone.

I met a French guy – what a coward.  He kept asking for “mercy” . . .

Big Businesses love Big Government.  They love the huge shield that regulations bring – the more regulations, the fewer competitors they face.  And, if you’re lucky like me, OSHA names a new safety regulation after you.

Big Businesses also don’t care what consumers think, because most consumers are mad for a week or a month and then forget.  Me?  I haven’t bought Levi® jeans since 2002 or so when they went full anti-Second Amendment.  I guess I’m stubborn.  Must be in my jeans.

Big Business also doesn’t really care about inflation.  So what if a dollar is worth less?  Their job isn’t to sit on piles of cash, their job is to create cash flowing through the business, while keeping some of the cash for themselves.  Because the cash is flowing through, it doesn’t matter much if that cash is becoming less valuable every day, they’ll just make more cash and use it immediately to buy more raw materials.

Hunter wanted to be the Secretary of Energy until he found out it wasn’t pipes and lines.

Destabilization of the economy through inflation, though, is good if you want to create more government power.  Another way to create more power is to make sure people are polarized.  That means that they can’t come together to demand freedom.

Increasing poverty is a good one, too.  Having people become poor makes them slaves to the government, and afraid to speak up at injustice.  Microsoft® may choose to support Black Lives Matter™, but individuals can be fired for criticizing it on their own time even when not connecting that criticism to their employer.

Is it government suppression of speech?  No, why would they bother when private businesses will do it for them.  The effect, though, is the same.

At least he’s not French Vanilla Ice.

Is it too far to call it warfare against the Right?  It’s more than that – it’s a war against every aspect of American culture and the basis of what made that great – Western Civilization.  The statues are coming down not because the Left hates slavery or “colonialism”, the statues are coming down because they want to erase the history of America so that they can rewrite it to fit.

Looking into what that means to wealth for individuals, let’s extrapolate what we know:

The United States government for over 100 years had gold and silver as money for a very special reason – gold and silver meant stability for the money of a country.  You either have gold or you don’t.  You can’t print more.  Could you manipulate it?  Sure, but it was certainly harder than running a printing press.

When FDR (press S to spit) took from American citizens the right to own gold, he was effectively robbing them.  He bought gold from them at $20.67.  A year later, he revalued the dollar to $35 dollars to the ounce of gold.  It now took $1.69 to buy what a dollar did before Roosevelt’s heist.

“For example, the free circulation of gold coins is unnecessary, leads to hoarding, and tends to a possible weakening of national financial structures in times of emergency,” was what that philandering monster said to excuse the theft.  Me?  After I read that, I was glad he was in a wheelchair.

Fun fact:  he never ran for office.

But the pattern is there:  if the Left wants something you have, they will take it.  Will they confiscate gold in the future?  I don’t know.  I tend to think not, unless it’s just for spite.  In this case, they’ll inflate the currency, and lend freely to Big Businesses and Big Banks so that they can acquire houses and land and every asset with cheap, borrowed dollars.  Why steal the gold when they can make people so impoverished that they sell it?

After the elite have bought all the stuff they want?

Inflate again if they missed something.  Will they lose control and end up in hyperinflation?

Probably not, unless they want to.  But realize that almost every person reading this doesn’t have a seat at the table, and the game is certainly rigged.  We knew that.

But what happens when a government declares economic war against its own people?

Rittenhouse Has Caused More Tears Than Old Yeller

“Ladies and gentleman, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookie from the planet Kashyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about that. That does not make sense.” – South Park

I guess Kyle did have a salt rifle.

The reaction from the Left on the Rittenhouse verdict has been different than I expected – I expected a few riots, sure.  Riots are the standard when dealing with Leftists.  They want the world to burn, so why not start with a Starbucks®?  Or, heck, almost any huge corporate entity.  They seem to love it when Leftists burn down their buildings – they immediately respond by vowing to rebuild and then donating to the very groups that . . .

. . . just burned down their store.

But Kyle Rittenhouse bothered them, deeply.

Don’t recognize his two IMDB® credits.  Probably wouldn’t be a good dinner guest.

I watched, while not the whole trial, a huge chunk of it.  Just after the Prosecution was done, the Defense could have said, “The Defense rests,” and still won.

It was that clear-cut.  I don’t know why it took the jury so long, perhaps they were just waiting around to see if they could get those Panera® sandwiches the judge promised them if they were still deliberating on Friday.

The Left, who has never seen a criminal atrocity so bad that they don’t want the criminal to go free, was fixated on this case.  The media was on board, mainly.  Large numbers of people thought had no real idea of the facts of the case, and some even thought that Rittenhouse had killed multiple black people for no reason other than that they were protesting.

So, what did they have to say?  (Some language not safe for all audiences, and all memes today are as-found on the Internet.)

Umair Haque is a grifter, and a fairly successful grifter.  Does he bring up valid issues?  Certainly, from time to time.  And, if his solution is commies leaving the United States?  I will personally help buy tickets if they promise to never come back.

Ayanna apparently has a keyboard that doesn’t allow her to type a capital “W”.  Also?  She takes her love of Jean-Luc Picard a bit too far.

Does “Prince Jellyfish” describe his arm?

Possibly fake.  But funny.

Take a breath and come up for some Umair, Umair. 

If you had any doubts about who we are dealing with . . .

You can find plenty of salt for yourself on Twitter® or Reddit©.  Might as well bid goodbye to the trial with some memes:

That explains everything!  Why would a Wookiee, an 8-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor with a bunch of 2-foot-tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: “What does this have to do with this case?” Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me, I’m a lawyer defending a major record company, and I’m talkin’ about Chewbacca. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you’re in that jury room deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation… does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.

Okay, the real testimony was even worse than the South Park® quote above.

Why can’t Gaige point to Kyle?

Oh, yeah, that.  The ol’ Spicey Bicep.

A moment of silence, please.

Huh, yeah, I wonder what would happen if they let clinically insane socialists out on the street?

And the only people that Kyle shot ended up being felons?  What are the odds??

The prosecutor will probably never end up living this one down . . .

And, for of course people could see the next round of trouble coming:

The Mrs. really laughed at this one.

And then The Bee® stings.

Who knows what the future will bring?

Reminder that it might be time for Leftists to change their password . . .

Demoralization? No. Remoralization.

“Hold them back! Do not give in to fear! Stand to your posts! Fight!” – LOTR, Return of the King

Chuck Norris threw a boomerang.  It’s afraid to come back.

It’s Friday.  Thankfully.

On Monday and Wednesday, we have heavy topics.  On Friday?  It used to be health focused.  But then after a year or so I had most of my health topics (things I wanted to say) completed.  Sure, more will show up over time, but most of health is either really, really simple or so blisteringly complex that it’s not solvable.

That’s why on Friday (in most recent posts) I have had the ability to focus on:  remoralization.

Life has a known beginning.  It has a known ending.  For religious folks there is a promise of a lot more.

Demoralization is simple:  the idea is to make you feel that you’ve lost.  Put into context, demoralization is fear.  The idea is to make you afraid.  And what does fear do?  Fear sells products.  Fear sells politicians.  Fear sells.  Heck, even suicide bombers have a fear:  dying alone.

When I look at a scene like this, I expect that a coyote and a roadrunner were involved.

Fear is also the basis of almost every negative action.  The proof of this is left to the reader, as many of my textbooks in college said.  My proof is this:  whenever I’ve acted in a manner that was in some way against my values, I can look back and see those actions were based in fear.

Sure, I’d like to place myself in the category of fearless, but I’m human.  Or at least I can pass for human in dim light, according to The Mrs.  But as I looked back and realized that nearly every action I had ever taken that I regretted was due to fear, I decided to get rid of fear.  Thankfully overcoming my fear of escalators was a one-step program.

Does just deciding to not be afraid anymore work?

Well, mostly.  Fear is (amazingly) just another choice.  I discovered I don’t have to feel fear at all.  The decision was simple – I stopped focusing on outcomes.  If I worked every minute at my best, and worked according to my values, well, if it turned out wrong?  It turned out wrong.  Heck, I’m even slowly getting over my fear of speedbumps.

What do you call a chicken crossing the road with no legs?  A speedbump.

I discovered something weird.  People hate it when you’re not afraid.  People want you to focus on fear, especially bosses.  I had one conversation where my boss said, “John, do you realize that (my great, great, great grandboss) would be upset about that?”

My response was simple, “Well, I’d love to tell them my story.  Have them call me.”

His response was, “Whoa!  Why did you bring them (great, great, great grandboss) into it?”

Me:  “I didn’t.  You did.”

Strangely, that implied threat . . . disappeared.  And was never used again.

As I said, people hate that.  Especially bosses.

My boss asked me to make fewer mistakes at work.  That means I get to come in later!

Another example was when I was working at a company that was experiencing significant financial difficulty.  My boss came up to me, and said, “John, do you know what kind of difficulty this company is facing?  How can you walk around so happy all the time?”

Weirdly, I have never understood how being unhappy and worrying about impending doom has helped, well, anyone.  I explained that to my boss.  I told him I would try to appear less happy around the office.  And, while I make a lot of jokes in my posts, this isn’t one.  This really happened.

I really had a boss upset with me for having too good of an attitude.  Go figure.

Being happy is a weird superpower.

It makes people uncomfortable.  A salesman makes a joke that, “Hey, I bet you’re overworked and underpaid,” and when I respond, “No, the work is fairly interesting and I’m satisfied with my compensation,” the look I get is priceless.

I love my couch, it makes me feel regal.  I am “Sofa King” happy!

I also look at most of my choices like I look at a menu.  It’s a choice of something good or something better.  “Do I want the ribeye or do I want the . . . of course I want the ribeye.”  Seriously, if there’s steak on the menu, all of the other pages are wasted.

To be honest, this superpower wasn’t because I was born on a far-distant planet named Krypton® that orbited a red star.  Even though that’s true (I told you I was adopted but wasn’t too specific for, well, reasons) the reason I came to this Truth was the way that I think nearly everyone comes to Truth:  the long, dark night of the soul.

As I have found it, this is the Truth.  There is no aspect of character that comes without scars.  This may be personal, but in my life I recall a very simple pattern:

  • Something awful happens. It may or may not be related to my actions.  Often it is not.
  • There is a decision for me to make. It is a moral decision.
  • I think about it. Often (if time allows) I consult people I trust – people of moral character.
  • I take action.

The important bullet point is the last one.  And when I decided to do whatever was right, regardless of the consequences?

Freedom ensued.  When I stopped focusing on the outcome, and started focusing on what is good, True, and beautiful?  I stopped caring about the outcome.  When I became the embodiment of those things?

I ceased being myself.  I was working for a higher purpose.  The phrase, “let the chips fall where they may” comes to mind.   Oddly, the more I act in accordance with my principles, the better the (average) outcome is.  Not that I care.

I’m disappointed.  I went into the restaurant restroom and waited for hours.  Despite the sign, no employees came to wash my hands.

This is freedom, acting upon principles, regardless of outcome.  The secret is a simple one:  each of us is capable of doing this.  It’s a choice.

Freedom isn’t a document.  Freedom isn’t what someone gives us.  Freedom is what we take.  Freedom is a choice.  And the most good and True freedom is acting upon moral principles.

And then?  Not caring what happens.

There is a word for that.  Courage.

So, there’s a choice, and it’s a choice we face every day.  Courage or fear.

When you give in to fear, you have that stain for life.  Courage?  It outlives us all.

The better news?  We all have the seeds of courage inside of us.

The very best news?

We can all let those seeds grow.

Dinner? Who Would You Choose?

“Shiver me timbers Philip. At this rate I’ll never get to my Kraft dinner.” – South Park

I defeated my school’s chess champion in two moves.  Guess football and wrestling came in handy.

Last week Remus, the late proprietor of the Woodpile Report came up in the comments.  Mike in Canada (one of Canadians that the triumphant armies of the right, good, and true will spare when we kick off Operation Leafblower:  The Cleansing Of The North, which is scheduled right after we finish Operation American Commie And Collaborationist CEO Helicopter Drop) made this comment:

“If you could have dinner with anyone, whom would it be?  Remus. I would have given a great deal to have met him and had a conversation.  I miss him very much. . . Tuesday mornings just aren’t the same now.”

That hit a nerve with me, for several reasons.  The first time any of my posts received any notice of any kind was on his site.  I’ll admit, I asked him to read it via email.  And he did read it, and posted it on one of his weekly musings.  Then, we emailed each other back and forth several times.

I still have his website bookmarked.  I can’t really bring myself to delete it, because I read it weekly for years even before I was featured on it.

I miss him very much, too.

Remus was very special to many readers and writers, primarily because it was obvious:  he was a reluctant warrior.  Like many of the posters here, and many of the blogs I frequent, he wanted no part of this.  He wanted peace, but circumstances kept dragging him back in.

In my case, I wanted to post funny stories and make fun of the events of the day while mixing in whatever wisdom I could scrape from the ages.  Oh, and add in some bikinis.  Why?

Because they’re bikinis.

Duh.

I watched a two-part series about the bikini.  It was very revealing.

But Mike’s question remained:  who would I want to have dinner with.  Remus is a wonderful answer, but I excluded him and other commenters/fellow bloggers from my list.  Also, I excluded dead family members, and religious figures and, of course, Deity.

Why?  Well, I’m the one writing this post.  My youngest experience (this really happened) with Jesus was when I was coloring a picture of him in Sunday School.  I colored him purple.  The nice Sunday School teacher said, “Johnny, Jesus wasn’t purple.”

My rejoinder?  “Well, he’s God, so if he wants to be purple, he can be purple.”

The Sunday School teacher sighed.  So, yeah, I haven’t changed.  Besides, I’m sure Jesus could drink me under the table if He chose to, purple or not, so it’s not fair including Him on the list.

That being said, I have several categories.  The first is, who, in history, would I like to have dinner with?

George S. Patton, Jr.

Since the age of five, I’ve been fascinated with Patton.  How fascinated?  So much so that my high school history teacher ordered a documentary film on him for our US History class, just for me.  When the lights went down and the projector started and his baby picture showed up even before the title showed – I yelled, “Patton!”

Yup, this was the picture.

My history teacher smiled.

Sure, Patton wasn’t fighting the best the Germans could throw at him.  Sure, he had intelligence information from Enigma knowing what the Germans would do (sometimes before they knew) but he was hip-deep in the intrigue and politics that created the postwar world.

He didn’t know all the dirt but he knew a lot of it.  Plus, the man knew a good cigar and a bad commie from a thousand miles away.  Dewey couldn’t defeat Truman in 1948, but I bet George S. Patton could have rolled over him like a Sherman tank.

Imagine the world with Stalin staring down Patton at the start of the Cold War.  Commies in the State Department?  They’d be hanging from lamp poles, and Patton would have led the columns of tanks entering Red Square when Stalin had used his one and only atomic bomb.

Stalin’s grave?  It’s a communist plot.

This wouldn’t be any silly single-course dinner.  This would be a full-on dinner that would last for hours and end with cigars and brandy on a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean on a cool autumn night.

Besides, who would pick better food or cigars for a dinner than Patton?

Who would I skip?

Einstein.  He looks like he smells like cheese, and not in a good way.  Also he seems like he’d be sort of like that guy who mumbled to himself in the back of the class and rocked back and forth.

Honorable Mention:

Isaac Newton.  Isaac Newton did more in any three years of his life than 99.999% of humanity will ever do in a full lifetime.  Me?  I want to understand what he learned about things other than physics, which are largely lost to history.  Downside?  I’d need to record it all because I’d want to hear it again and again.  Other downside?  How can you compete with that hair?

Okay, both Brian May and Isaac Newton have doctorates.  Only one of them had groupies.

Who would I like to get into a (no weapons) fight with?

Alexander the Great.  I’m pretty sure that 18 year old me could dust the floor with 18-year-old Alexander the Great.  Check that.  I’m certain I could take him.  But if I lost?

“Yeah, I remember the time that Alexander the Great just barely beat me.”

For me, it’s a no-lose situation.  For him?  My first thought was it would be pretty embarrassing.  But, after thinking about it, if Alexander lost a fight to someone who came from 2400 years in the future just to kick his butt?  Also a cool story.

Seriously, Alexander would be toast, though.

Who would I skip?

18-year-old Chuck Norris.  I don’t have a death wish.

Honorable Mention:

18-year-old Genghis Khan.  I hear he was tough, but it might be worth it.  While a challenge, since 8% of the men living in the former Mongol Empire are his descendent I’d get to say, “Who is your daddy now?” to millions of dudes.  Me?  I’ll turn Genghis Khan into Genghis Khannot.

Genghis was tough as a child.  I remember when he took his first steppe.

Discarded: 

Karl Marx.  It would be like hitting a fat, slow and stupid bug, and give me zero satisfaction.  And it wouldn’t stop communism, even if I gave him a swirlie and an atomic wedgie.  Someone would come along and write the “something for nothing” manifesto.

Have a (few) beer(s) with:

Ben Franklin.

I think Ben knew all the dirt on all the founding fathers.  If not, I think he would have an excellent collection of ye olde fart jokes.  Failing all of that?  Rumor has it he was quite funny when toasted.  Plus, he was rich enough to buy really good wine.

Who would I skip?

Any Kennedy.  Never drink with a Kennedy.  Any Kennedy.  And never, ever, drive with a Kennedy.

But if Teddy was driving, he would have drowned.

Honorable Mention:

Andrew Jackson.  Skinny as a rattlesnake and twice as mean.  He’d probably take you to strange bars that weren’t on the map because they were in someone’s basement or on their back 40 that you’d have to shoot your way out of.  Since Andrew Jackson was invulnerable to weapons like Wolverine®, just stand behind him.

Who would I like to be on a long airline flight with?

This one was hard.  When I used to be on long flights, I pulled out my book as a shield to not talk to the person next to me.  Who would I want to be stuck next to for four to six hours as I jetted across the country.  There’s only one answer:

Elvis.

Okay, just kidding, since he would probably eat my in-flight meal.  He’d want my hunk-a hunk-a airplane nuts.  The tough part of this answer is that you’re going to be trapped with this person for hours.  So, if they’re a jerk?  Yeah.  Hours of that.  So, I think I’d choose Mark Twain.  Worst case is that he’d tell you stories.  Best case?

He’d tell you stories.  Some of them might even be true.  And it would be fun to fight alongside Twain after some Stewardess told him he couldn’t light up an epic stogie in flight.

Who would I like to choose but I’m afraid he’s a jerk and I’d end up hating a legend?

Steve Martin.  I love Steve Martin’s work, and think he has a lot of genius and wisdom behind it.  That being said, being famous for, oh, nearly fifty years just might have jaded him to people.  Maybe.  And I’d hate to think that a national treasure like Steve was a, well, jerk.  Plus I bet Twain could take out a stewardess with a single punch.

Honorable Mention:

Quentin Tarantino.  I know he’s a jerk, but I think I’d love to argue with him for six straight hours when he couldn’t escape.  That sounds sort of fun.  And if he was a real idiot?  I bet I could make him smell my unwashed clothes from the trip.

Who under no circumstances would I want to be on an airline flight with?

Gilbert Gottfried or William Shatner.  Gottfried for obvious reasons, and Shatner because every time he’s on a flight something is on the wing trying to rip the engines out.

Don’t worry – William Shatner would never run a criminal enterprise.

All of that being said?  I think Mike is right.  I think Remus would have been a wonderful dinner companion.

Who are your choices, and (for more fun) what categories did I miss?  One category I drew a blank on was “who would I like to work for” and then I thought of Jesus again.

He would know when I was goofing off.

Dangit.  He already does.

The Mechanics of Control

“Under control? It doesn’t look like it’s under control.” – Chernobyl

Personalities?  Looks like this guy has about 20.  Sadly, all of them smell like him.

[J.W. note – this is the post I had ready to go last Monday.  So, I get to go to bed early tonight!]

When I’m on the treadmill, I find that reading a book helps to move things along and make the time go faster, even though I’m stuck in the same place.  I’m currently reading a very long, and (so far) very entertaining book, and one of the passages caught my eye:

“. . . They had to keep working smoothly, and the same way.  Everything interlocked.  If one unit messed – [my edit, JW] up, then every other unit would suffer.  That couldn’t be allowed.  Which was a paradox, because you couldn’t keep the jackboot stamping down forever.  However benign a dictatorship, some generation down the line will rebel. So somebody, centuries ago, had worked out how to keep the lid screwed down tight.  An old enough idea, never quite managed in practice.  Until now.  A government department that quietly and secretly takes control of society’s lowest strata.  Criminals and radical insurgents actually working for the people whose existence they threaten.”

– Peter F. Hamilton, The Naked God

This book was written in the 1990s and is the capstone to a trilogy. This is the first trilogy I’ve read since I finished the fifth book of the Learning to Count Trilogy.

In Hamilton’s book, the Earth is ruled by a shadowy cabal who creates a cult for the lowest rungs of society and uses the cult to distract those dregs from ever being a real threat.  Likewise, the cult is used as an excuse to create threats.  Strangely enough, I think we’re living in that society, today.

Punch anyone drinking Sierra Mist™.  That’s the first rule of Sprite© club.

The idea that Trump was anything more than an interloper that was barely tolerated should have been apparent to most people nearly immediately.  As soon as it became apparent that the FBI was intent on getting him about two weeks after the inauguration, the writing was on the wall.  The fact that no real justice will ever be visited on the agents that conspired together to vilify Trump and “subvert democracy” should tell you enough.

The agencies are not on your side.  Like every other institution in Washington, D.C., the agencies are on the side of themselves and the Left.  Even evil Chuckie Schumer inadvertently told the truth when he told Trump that the intelligence agencies have “six ways from Sunday to get back at you.”

Why?

Preservation and increase of power is one – the Left will do anything for power, and the intelligence agencies are now entirely Leftist.  The attack on Waco had nothing to do with public safety or firearms laws – it was a flashy attack in force at the time of Congressional hearings so that the ATF could get a bigger budget.  They didn’t want to help America.  They just wanted to prove they needed more cash.

How better to prove that?  Knock over some cult-y type guys in Waco and show how tough you are.  That will play well.  It worked.  The Branch Davidians are (mostly) gone, yet the ATF is bigger than ever.

And this strategy normally does work.  The FBI comes up with the idea for, sets up, funds, and provides all the equipment for, say, a plot to kidnap a governor.  Then they get the headline of stopping a dangerous group, all while admitting that the dangerous group wouldn’t have existed without them in the first place.

What does the ATF call dozens of lives ruined for no benefit to society?  A good start.

But I really don’t think the .GOV agencies are afraid of the Right.  If so, they’d be busy trying to take control of the movement.  So far, I see little evidence of that, I mean, besides the alien entity that appears to be Sean Hannity’s hair.

I do, however, see evidence that the Left (which, in 2021, is synonymous with .GOV) is very concerned with managing the violence on the streets of BLM® and Antifa™.  Why?

First, they provide convenient groups to stir up trouble and headlines whenever inconvenient things are happening.  The Ferguson, Missouri riots in 2014 occurred in August.  These riots were big news for weeks.  What else was in the news then?  The Congressional committee about Benghazi.  Coincidence?

Maybe.

Distracting from shedding light on a governmental embarrassment?

Certainly.

I have definitive proof of Hillary Clinton’s involvement in the Bengh

The same pattern was repeated during 2020 with the outbreak of violence across the country.  Was it organic?  Certainly not.  I recall seeing photos of pallets of bricks dropped off at likely riot locations.  Beyond that, at least some of the rioters were highly trained and very tactically aware.  They were also aided and abetted by District Attorneys that would not charge Leftists for criminal behavior.

Those District Attorneys?  They were voted in on huge rafts of Leftist money, including from Senator Palpatine George Soros.

The goal, in this case, was creating division.  Most of the time, when the country is faced with a crisis, it pulls people together.  I’m sure the polls said something like, “Trump is winning.”  The crowds certainly showed that to be the case, since Biden was just as exciting to the crowds as “split pea soup day” was at the cafeteria when I was in elementary school.

The result?  The powers that be made a video of an overdosed junkie dying while a cop used a restraint technique he was trained to use go viral.

And it did.  It didn’t have to be George Floyd, he was just available and they had good video.  Don’t think that the media doesn’t create stories – it does.  It also suppresses inconvenient ones.

What’s the difference between George Soros and a vampire?  Stumped?  Me, too.  I can’t think of any difference, either.

Second, the groups provide another distraction – a distraction for the group itself.  Let them shut down a chunk of Portland or Seattle.  Let them burn their own neighborhood in Minneapolis.  The idea, I believe, is to keep the group in a state of perpetual rage, most of the time not quite boiling.  Just a simmering rage.

Throw in perpetual articles about “Reparations” and build envy.  Stir with some cilantro and entitlement along with a dash of Social Justice.

This makes the group easy to control.  With Antifa®, their religion is Leftism.   Keeping them under control is easy.  Just give them the candidate they can get behind (Bernie Sanders, for instance), and then don’t let that candidate win.  It keeps them involved, but angry.

True, hardcore, Antifa™ want nothing more or less than the destruction of the United States.  That’s why we get stupid articles about, “When I See the American Flag I Think of Hate.”  It’s food for keeping the hard Left engaged and enraged.

Is it all by design?

It happens too frequently, and too conveniently for anything but coordination.

How better to contain the rebellious than to let them rebel a little, and contain it?

If I had a nickel for every time I got cursed out by a puppet, I’d have two nickels.  Weird that it happened twice, but at least I learned that the best way to fight a puppet is to disarm it.

The alphabet agencies are, in 2021, firmly on the side of the Left.  Likewise, everything points to them being in control of groups that oppose them on the bottom rungs of the social strata, like BLM® and Antifa©.

Me?  I’ll be back on the treadmill.  I have a feeling being in good shape might be important soon.

The Wilder Manifesto, Complete With Otis

“Okay, whose job was it to feed the butterflies?” – The Venture Brothers

What do you call a unicorn’s dad?  Popcorn?

I remember reading a story as a child – I’d give the source if I could remember, but too many years have passed since I read it.  I’m at the age where I’m having trouble remembering names – mine for starters.  But some stories stick with you, especially when you can relate to them like I relate to batteries.  I mean, like batteries I’m not included in anything, either.

In this particular case, a young Japanese girl sat in a classroom.  Her desk was near a class project.  Inside a terrarium, a caterpillar had spun its cocoon and was slowly turning into a butterfly.  Each day, the young girl would watch this metamorphosis.  Finally, the butterfly was finally ready to emerge from the cocoon.

It struggled.  The little girl watched, sympathetic to the beautiful butterfly that was trying to free itself.  She could hardly wait – little kids are like that.  Every minute the butterfly tried to escape, she was torn.  It worked so hard!  Finally, she couldn’t help herself, and helped to tear open the cocoon for the butterfly.

The butterfly fell to the bottom of the terrarium.  It walked along the bottom of the terrarium, pitifully.  Soon enough, the butterfly died.  The little girl saw this happen.

That butterfly knows what it did.

The teacher pulled the little girl, who was now crying, aside.  “Did you help the butterfly get out of the cocoon?”

“Yes,” the little girl replied.  “It was struggling so!  I couldn’t stand watching it fight so hard!”

“You have to understand,” the teacher responded, “Only by struggling to escape the cocoon does the butterfly build enough strength in its wings to fly.”

Then he straightened up.  “You KILLED IT!  You’re so stupid!” screamed the teacher and then sent the little girl to the Japanese PEZ® mines.  Okay, in the story I read, the teacher didn’t scream that at the child, but I like my ending better.  In my defense, The Mrs. says I’m a high-functioning sociopath.

Butterfly and PEZ© mines aside, a repeated, tragic, repeated lesson of humanity is this:  misplaced compassion destroys.

I apologize.  John Gruden made me make this meme.

Misplaced Compassion

The median world household income is sort of a guess.  In 2013, Gallup® estimated it was about $10,000, and I haven’t seen a more recent number.  So, if everyone made the global average income, per capita, we’d each make about $2,900.  Per year.

The average family in the world is really, really poor.  But, hey, give a poor man a fish and he eats for a day.  Give a poor man a poisoned fish?  He eats for the rest of his life.

If you needed an explanation of why people are attempting to come to the United States, even the poor people here generally make more than $2,900 per year.  Welfare benefits for illegals (in the scale of their home countries) is big bucks, plus they get free schools.  The magnet driving the illegals is the wage imbalance (if they want to work, and many do) plus social programs (whether they want to work or not).

Being poor in the first world is better than being above average income in most countries.

Huh.  They called that a traitor when I was a kid.

This is not sustainable, because there’s a problem.  People rampage across borders in endless waves, yet capital flows freely.  Even as people flood the border, and I’ve heard estimates of 3,000,000 this year, industry flows away.

Capital flows freely, it flows without respect to any sort of morality.  Add in zero tariffs?  It’s a race to the bottom.  The economy hollows out even as millions come to partake in it.  Heck, if it gets bad enough, Google® might have to lay off some congressmen.

Just kidding.  Google™ would have to lay off all the congressmen.

The lure is simple.  Short term, we all get to buy lower-cost stuff.  Long term, however, it results in a shell of an economy.  Supposedly, one of George H.W. Bush’s economic advisors said, “It doesn’t make any difference whether a country makes computer chips or potato chips.”

That’s true.  Unless you live in what we call the real world.  Check the wages of people who work at either place.  Get back to me and tell me it doesn’t matter.  That’s the sort of short-term thinking that leads to long-term poverty and the eventual destruction of a nation.

What do you call a sad Italian parasite?  A hopeless Roman tick.

Venezuela Effect

The other problem with the social safety net is that the money and effort spent in creating and maintaining it is money and effort that isn’t spent advancing the economy.  Even if we had infinite amounts of money (spoiler alert:  we don’t) we have only so much effort.

Socialist giveaways lower motivation and destroy economic productivity.  I even made the argument with a Leftist friend that we should delay the implementation of socialism so we end up with better technology.  He agreed.  But, let’s be fair – in a pure capitalist economy, it’s man exploits man.  In a socialist economy, it’s the reverse.

What we are morphing into is a government of the takers and the oligarchy versus those that produce, perhaps the worst possible combination of crony capitalism and socialism combined.

One model of this is Venezuela.  The government replaced the leaders of the oil company, PdVSA©, with loyal commies.  A company that previously was one of the leading economic winners in the country (heck, the continent) was transformed over a decade into a basketcase that had to import fuel.

Yes, Venezuela is sitting on one of the largest deposits of oil in the world, yet they degraded their economy so they couldn’t make fuel.  It’s like Hollywood having to import movies, or Washington, D.C. having to import corruption, or a Biden having to outsource sexual depravity.

Biden met with his cabinet today.  And argued with his desk.

Welcome to our future under Brandon, er Biden.  Being a tick is a great business model until there are so many of them that they kill the host.  But I guess that the reason for that is real socialism has never been tried?  From a tick’s point of view, I guess they just need more dogs.

Also, the social safety net isn’t based on any moral concept, either at the source of the money (which is not freely given, but taken) to the recipient, whose only requirement is to fit a category and be breathing.  Forced charity isn’t charity.  Unworthy recipients are little more than thieves.

I mean, not that I have an opinion.

Potterville

In It’s a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart’s character is shown a world where he didn’t exist.  The same thing happened to me, but it was just called “Tuesday”.  In Jimmy Stewart’s case, it was Potterville – a town where everything that wasn’t illegal was fair game for capitalists to exploit.

And exploit it the Potterville that was the United States, they have.  The “money” monopoly was made possible by the end of the Cold War.  With enough nukes, pretty much everyone is going to take your cash.  So, the idea was to print money and get stuff.  As long as that worked, the party could go on forever.

When I win a journalistic prize for this blog, I’m going stick my finger out to Joe Biden and say, “Pulitzer.”

This was built on the idea that there was a check on political financial abuse.  Bill Clinton was famously quoted as saying, “You mean to tell me that the success of the program and my re-election hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of f*****g bond traders?”  In the 1990s, there was a check on the excesses of the Left.

In 2021, apparently, those f*****g bond traders have no real place to invest or are “all in” on Weimerica, so the printing presses go brrr.  Why make (spins wheel) tires when you can make them with nearly no labor costs and no safety or environmental regulations right where they grow the rubber trees?

And if a plucky guitar company (Gibson®) wants to make guitars in the United States and they don’t agree with you politically?  Why not go after them for a non-crime for “importing wood” from countries that wanted to sell them the wood?

Sounds like Potterville to me.

Another Way

Our choice isn’t only between Potterville and Venezuela, or the strange blend of the two that we are becoming.

First, we have to have a nation.  Nations matter.  The second thing we have to have is morality and virtue.  As John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

And he was right.

The choice is the “Lived Experiences” of the Leftist mob creating a new Venezuela combined with Global Capitalism creating a Potterville, or the other way:  Mayberry – morals based capitalism, a self-moderating system.

  • The failure of Potterville is that something being legal doesn’t mean it’s moral.
  • The failure of Venezuela is that universal socialism is jut theft from everyone.
  • Combining the two leads to Purdue Pharma® selling poison while the government pays for it.

Rebirth is possible only with morality, not a reversion.  1992 will always turn into 2022 unless the morality changes.

And he likes his martini shaken.  Or stirred.  Or unmixed.  Or still in the bottle.  He’s not picky.

Politics is downstream from culture.  Culture is downstream from values and morality.  What values do we share?  What morals do we share?

Who do we serve?

In the end, misguided compassion will destroy more than the economy.  It will destroy us all, as will capitalism without morality.

There is another way.

I believe in America.  We will find our way.  It will not be what came before.  Like a butterfly, we will struggle.

Let us hope that struggle builds our strength.

Gresham’s Law, Bad Money, And Trillion Dollar Coins

“The money in your account. It didn’t do too well, it’s gone.” – South Park

You can always tell if a coin is fresh:  it smells like the mint.

As I’ve mentioned before, Pa Wilder was a banker.  There are certain advantages to being a banker, and back in the late 1970s, he took advantage of one of them.  It’s nice that being a banker has some advantages, because so many of them are loaners.

What Pa did was go through the change that came into the bank drawers.  Pa would then take a quarter and replace it with another quarter.  Okay, that just makes him sound crazy.  Isn’t one 25₵ piece just like another?

Well, no, not in the 1970s.

In this case, Pa was taking a 90% silver quarter and replacing it with a 0% silver quarter.  Prior to 1965, dimes, quarters, half-dollars, and dollar coins had been made from 90% silver.  Eventually after details, blah, blah, (this isn’t a coin collecting blog) the value of silver in the coins went to zero.  It’s virtually certain that all of the coins you receive as change in 2021 are of the 0% silver variety.

Why?  Well, people like Pa.

Pa had the coin flow for an entire small farm bank, so he could pick and choose.  He replaced 90% silver quarters with 0% silver quarters.  On the balance sheet, there was no change, so he wasn’t stealing from the bank.  The bank had a quarter, and then after Pa swapped it out, the bank still had a quarter.

It wasn’t the same quarter, mind you, but the cost to the bank was zero.  If you’re looking for a perfect heist, this is it.

Pa walked away with hundreds of dollars in 90% silver quarters, all just by leafing through someone else’s drawers.

I saw a werewolf at work.  Or maybe it was a hairy guy.  Regardless, the silver bullets worked.

We’ve had some discussions where I’ve referred to our current money system (fiatbux?) as money.  More than one person in the comments has said, “No, that’s not money.”

Well, it is.  I can take a $100 bill and go and buy some beer and cigars and PEZ®.  I could also do that with a gun, but the fact that everyone will go along with the deal means that the dollar really is money.

But it isn’t good money.  I’d gladly swap out that $100 fiatbux for $100 in 1965 silver quarters.  The $100 in 1965 silver quarters (checks Internet) could be bought on the open market for $2100 or so.  That shows that the silver coins are 21 times better money than our current fiatbux.

This little story is an example of Gresham’s Law.  Sir Thomas Gresham is an old, dead English dude who made massive amounts of money back when the style of the day was to wear fluffy black pancakes on your head while hoping that Queen Elizabeth didn’t have a bad day and order your execution because (spins wheel) “she was not amused and really wanted pudding for dessert.”

Okay, it’s really Sir Thomas Gresham on the left, and George R.R. Martin on the right.  Notice I didn’t say write, because I don’t think George remembers how to do that.

Stated simply, Gresham’s Law is:  “Bad money drives out good.”  In my example, the bad money was the 0% silver quarters, the good money was the 90% silver quarters.

Why would I take bad money when I could get good money?

You wouldn’t.  No one does.

During the Zimbabwe hyperinflation, people would take United States dollars as payment, but they’d give you never-ending stacks of Zimbabwe cash as change.  The bad money (Zimbabwebux) was driving out the good.  The dollar, though not “good money” was still better than the wrapping paper that the Zimbabweans scrawled zeros across like an eight-year-old with a pen.

The brain is the most important organ in the body.  According to the brain.

Why is that important?  Because in 2021, the government of the United States has fully embraced the Zimbabwean concept of “we’ll just print more money.”  The reasoning is simple:  if a football game can’t run out of points, well, why could a government run out of money?  We can just print more.

That’s the sign that the Left half of the bell curve has finally taken the reins of power.  The short-bus pity graduates have decided that the phrase “we don’t have enough money” will cease to be an impediment to their wishes.

This year we’ll spend more money than ever in the history of our country.  It’s bad.  How bad?  In order to avoid a debt default because the Democrats are insisting that they have Republican assistance since they don’t want to go solo.  The Republicans are resisting spending money because that’s what they pretend to do whenever a Republican isn’t president.

I went to an Irish mechanic the other day.  He couldn’t fix my engine, but he could blow up my tires.

The current idea of the Washington set is to make a coin that says “one trillion dollars” on it and deposit it with the treasury.  I’m not making this up.  This is their actual plan.

This is the plan of people who are not serious.  They’re looking for pretend loopholes to evade the law.  The bright side is that they are at least pretending that the law exists.  Regardless, the goal is to take a chunk of metal, write $1,000,000,000,000 on the side, and keep the spending party going.

Woo!  More sangria!

The one thing that is sacrosanct in the world of 2021 is this:  thou shalt keep thy government debt whole and multiply it.

Strangely, this is exactly (really, exactly) the same thinking that the leader of Zimbabwe had:  “Dude, we have more paper, so we can totally print more money.”  We laughed when Zimbabwe printed trillion-dollar notes.  People in the government of the United States are ready and willing to create a trillion-dollar coin.

At least this one is (according to the news) platinum.

If this keeps up, JCPenny® will have to change its name to JCTrillion©.  And the smell?  It’s nearly certain the coin didn’t poop its pants.

The excuse to pull the silver out of money was that “it is costing too much money” to make the coins.  A quarter (last article I read) now costs over 12₵ to make – but that article was nearly a decade old.  Given inflation, I’d bet that it costs nearly 20₵ to make 25₵, and probably costs at least 3₵ to make a penny.

Looks like over time, the value of bad money begins to match what it cost to make.  Beware:  it only costs about 14₵ to make a $100 note.  That trillion-dollar coin?  It will probably cost $1000 or so to make.

Wonder what Pa Wilder would have done if he would have stumbled across a trillion-dollar coin in the bank’s drawers?

Probably, he would have thought it was a fake.

Which, of course, it is.  I guess the government is going through our drawers, driving out good money with bad.

Now Is When We Need Heroes. And Secondhand Lions.

“Well, a man’s body may grow old, but inside, his spirit can still be as young and restless as ever. And him? In his day he had more spirit than twenty men.” – Secondhand Lions

In England, they don’t have a kidney bank. But they do have a Liverpool.

What is life?

It’s the sum of your experiences. One experience I sadly missed until this week was the movie Secondhand Lions.

It came out in 2003, and I’d missed it until this week. Amazon® seemed to think I needed to see it, and with a movie starring Robert Duvall and Michael Frigging Caine? Well, how could I turn that down?

It’s about a boy named Walter. Walter is a boy who was dropped off by his mother with his crazy uncles who believe that life is an adventure and don’t take crap from, well, anyone.

This particular movie hit home.

I’ll explain, and this will clear up at least some of the mystery regarding my origin story. (Hint: in the end I make a mechanical suit to escape from the clutches of terrorists and found a multinational empire based on funny stories written from the Right.)

It’s funny because he’s a liar.

Despite what you might believe, I didn’t spring fully grown from the loins of some Olympian goddess who had nice, um, bazoongas and was married to Zeus. No, my origin was much more The World According to Garp.

My biological mother decided she really, really liked a guy when she was in college. Why did she like him? Because she thought he had an amazing way with words and was the smartest guy she’d ever met. What was a 23-year-old divorcee to do?

Lure an 18-year old into bed.

Can you get a woman in a “family way” the first time out? Well, I’m certainly not the product of virginity, but I am the product of virginity cunningly snared from a poor 18-year-old boy by a 23-year-old woman who wanted to have his baby.

Yup. Me.

But I can say that I was born a virgin.

You can see that her decision-making was both amazing (I exist) and utterly flawed. I am the result of a genetic experiment conducted by a woman who just decided to have a kid. No plan. Just wanted a kid.

Me.

Surprisingly, that’s not a long-term plan that has success written on it. In that time and era, her parents sent her away to have a child far away to avoid the family shame of an unwed mother. So, I was born.

Ta-da!

About four years later, however, the world decided that perhaps a woman of such skill and foresight might not be able to raise a child with the cunning and sophistication of your author. The court decided I should be tossed out for adoption.

A nice family was set to adopt me. They were worth (at that time) millions. They wanted a wonderful blonde baby boy, and I was the one. The papers were set. I was going to be the heir to thousands of acres of prime land.

Then Ma and Pa Wilder stepped in. They were my biological mother’s parents (sort of – that’s an even longer story that involves a world war, horses, and a Mormon polygamy cult in Mexico, and I’m not exaggerating or making up any of those things, either). I’d throw in aliens, but I have no proof of that.

I am exceedingly improbable.

So Ma and Pa Wilder got a lawyer and stopped the adoption to those millionaire folks. I’m good with that. They later found an inferior version to adopt. Why inferior?

I have to admit I slept with my third cousin. My friend told me to stop counting them.

Well, that’s an even longer story, but here is the Cliff Notes® version: I was a senior on the varsity wrestling in high school, and one week the coach sent me to wrestle with the JV against a school for a duel. Why? There was a state champion at my weight, even though his school had only AA while mine had AAA. I beat him, soundly.

Yup. It was the guy who got adopted by the childless millionaires instead of me.

No, his name wasn’t John.

But my adoptive brother (who was my uncle) was also named John. And, so it’s true. My brother’s name is . . . John Wilder. And, he’s older, so he owned it first. But he went by his middle name, so, it all worked out.

Sharks never eat clownfish. They taste funny.

To me, though, Secondhand Lions was a wonderful story to view my own life. The power of myth is important. Also from the movie:

Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good. That honor, courage and virtue mean everything. That power and money, money and power mean nothing. That good always triumphs over evil. And I want you to remember this: that love, true love never dies. Remember that boy, remember that. Doesn’t matter if it is true or not, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing. Got that?

If there were words a man should believe outside of religion, here they are.

And it doesn’t matter if these things are true. Because they are worth believing. We live not for today, but to have the spirit of lions, to conduct amazing adventures out of improbable lives.

We need to fight battles against overwhelming odds. We need to save the lives of others, countlessly. We should avoid the tame, and embrace the outrageous.

We should be big damn heroes.

We should share our adventures and inspire others to follow us.

Why else is life worth living?

I’ve shared a lot this post that I never had before. I owe so many for who and what I am. I want to help create a world where this adventure never ceases. Where men live and create. Where fortunes are won and lost, where the individuality of man is celebrated, and where improbable men can exist.

Thor never gets drunk, but he sometimes gets hammered.

I’m improbable because my life was helped by those that took me in when they had no reason to. They taught me that honor, virtue and courage mean everything, and that money and power mean nothing. They taught me that heroes exist. That’s who I am. They taught me that these things never die. Again, from the movie:

I’m Hub McCann, I fought in two world wars and countless smaller ones on three continents. I led thousands of men into battle with everything from horses and swords to artillery and tanks. I’ve seen the headwaters of the Nile, and tribes of natives no white man had ever seen before. I’ve won and lost a dozen fortunes, killed many men, and loved only one woman, with a passion a flea like you could never begin to understand.

We need heroes. We need to be heroes.

We need to believe things that are worth believing.

Why?

The world needs it. The world needs us.

The world needs you.

Let us go forth now, and create the world where heroes exist. Let us create a world worthy of such heroes.

It won’t do it by itself.

I do believe this world will exist, because of people just like you and me.

No matter how old you are, or where you are, the adventure is just beginning.

Go on. It’s never too late.

Ever.

The Jab: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

“And he wasn’t alone. He had close to a thousand followers when he died. They conducted rituals up on the roof, bizarre rituals intended to bring about the end of the world. And now it looks like it may actually happen.” – Ghostbusters

I guess that makes my wife Mrs. Doubtpfizer.

Disclaimer: Humor writer, not a doctor. But I’m a humor writer that likes to look at the worst-case scenarios because someone has to know that “I’m sorry” and “I apologize” don’t always mean the same thing, especially at a funeral.

One of the more disturbing things about the trajectory of the panic-response-panic model that we’ve seen in the last year about the ‘Rona has been the nearly complete abandonment of the idea of impartial science. Oh, sure, we knew that scientists could be bought, and in most cases, they’re cheaper than congressmen. Scientists can be bought for a shrimp cocktail. To buy a congressman, you have to spring for the bacon-wrapped shrimp.

When you look at the data from only eight months ago, the University of Pennsylvania, actual scientists that were presumably not under the influence of shrimp came to this conclusion (LINK):

Pay attention to the phrase, “No large trials of any (emphasis added) mRNA vaccine have been completed yet.”

Any.

This is a first attempt at ever using this technology, and the decision was made that, “Hey, sounds good, let’s do it. What could go wrong?”

This sounds suspiciously like the reasoning I used with my first marriage, so, on its face, this is the same logic used by amorous 20-year-olds. I wonder: were they playing beer pong when they made the decision?

So, what could go wrong?

I’ll start with the least scary and move to the scariest ones. To be fair, the least scary are the impacts that are the most likely, and in some cases, they are certainly happy. Data, however, is murky. Congress voted to keep the report on the origin of the virus classified, so I’m not holding my breath that any information counter to the official narrative will be seeing daylight anytime soon.

Heart Attacks In Healthy Young People – As far as I can tell, this is 100% confirmed. How often is it happening? Difficult to say. This is, however, often enough that I think it is clear that with the death rate from COVID for young, healthy people is lower than the risk that they have of driving to school.

How low?

If you have been documented to have COVID, the death rate is in the range of 1 out of 100,000. Since it’s my theory that between one-half and two-thirds of ‘Rona infections in kids aren’t ever officially reported, that rate is probably closer to (conservatively) 1 out of 300,000. Translation: rub some dirt on it, you’re fine.

How frequent are the heart attacks induced by the jab? Don’t know. And with data and reporting being what they are today, we might not know for a decade, if ever.

That’s okay. No pharmaceutical company has any liability, so you don’t have to worry about the CEO losing his bonus.

I hear that Mountain Dew® is coming out with a new flavor for heart attack victims: Code Blue®.

You know it’s going to be a grim list when Widespread Sterility is the second-best case scenario. This one is still speculative, and there’s evidence for it. I’m stunned, really, that pregnant women were encouraged to get the “jab”, because when The Mrs. was preggers I was pretty sure the doctor wasn’t convinced that eating one Cheeto® a month was safe for pregnant women.

But here we are. I haven’t heard of a lack of babies being born, though I’ve heard of more than one post-jab miscarriage. Again I ask the question: why would young, healthy people be taking this, especially after (again, anecdotal) evidence that the spike protein seems to concentrate in the reproductive bits?

Breakthrough and Jabbed Becoming Superspreading Virus Factories is happening right now. This one is, of course, the most ironic. It does (again, at least anecdotally) appear that the death rate due to the ‘Rona is somewhat lower if the person is jabbed. But if it doesn’t stop a person from getting or spreading ‘Rona, all it does is act as a treatment against future cases? Again, the only trial data we’ll ever get from Pfizer™ stated that 14 people with the control died, and 15 people with the Pfizer© science juice died.

Because that’s how you know it’s working.

But apparently I need to get jabbed so the jabbed won’t get the ‘Rona from me even though they can get ‘Rona and are much better at spreading it because they show fewer symptoms? This ranks higher because, more superspreaders? More mutations.

Clotting/COVID Spike Protein Runaway is a scenario that has been seen, well, at least the clotting part. There’s a reason they called the Johnson & Johnson™ jab the #clotshot. According to one panel of doctors (it was on YouTube®, so take it with however many grains of salt you’d like), the spike protein is the problem. Originally it was the solution, because that’s what the mRNA shot did: make a person’s cells produce the spike protein so that the immune system could recognize it.

This doctor’s theory was the protein wanders down through the bloodstream where it damages the blood vessel walls in the capillaries, the smallest section. This causes clotting, and I don’t think it is disputed that this caused several deaths and several amputations because of the clots as directly caused by the jab.

This doctor went further, however. He maintained this clotting would spread since there seems to be ample continual production of the spike protein. His prognosis? Everyone who had the spike protein-inducing shot would die of heart failure in two or three years due to cumulative damage. Everyone who took the shot.

I rate this one as pretty bad – civilization-ending, in fact if there are billions of corpses to deal with in two years. But I also rank this as pretty unlikely.

I hope.

As bad as all of that is, there are three more horror stories waiting. Lucky you!

I don’t think COVID was made in China – we’ve had it 18 months and it’s still working.

The next is Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE). The short version is that in this situation (which really happens, though rarely) the candidate vaccine appears to create antibodies that would protect against the disease. Good news!

But not really. In this case, the antibodies actually make it easier for the virus to get into the cell. So, if when you get the virus you were inoculated against in the first place, it will kill you. Yup. In this case, the virus actually makes the disease deadlier. I’m hoping that this wave of the ‘Rona run isn’t ADE showing up.

I don’t think that it is, or I think we would have seen a very significant death wave among the jabbed, one so big it would be difficult to hide.

Marek’s Disease is the next case. A “leaky” vaccine was created for chickens to vaccinate them against Marek’s Disease, which totally sounds like it was named after a Star Trek® character. The chickens could catch the disease, and the vaccine was just good enough to keep them from dying from it.

Good news, right? Well, no. Because the vaccine allowed them to be super-spreaders. The virus kept mutating until it was absolutely fatal to chickens. Now, most chickens have it, and spread it. Unless a baby chick (that’s around other chickens) is vaccinated, it will die. Chickens as we know them are dependent upon having this vaccine.

If the “jabs” we have against COVID are similar, we might see exactly what we’re seeing now: people who were jabbed having the virus and incubating it and spreading it and making it more and more dangerous. Under the worst-case scenario, the virus would mutate into a universally lethal form, and we’d all have to take some future version of the jab.

Or die. As a species.

That would be a big oops. Again, unlikely, but it does meet the patterns we’ve been seeing. But the worst case is the next one.

To get to the other . . . oh, wait . . .

The Spike is a Prion prions are misfolded proteins. A perfect example of this is mad cow disease: a misfolded protein makes it into the brain and causes a chain reaction with other brain proteins. Eventually, when a person catches mad cow disease, a human brain becomes spongier than Joe Biden’s.

The scary part about prions is, even though they aren’t alive, they can spread and replicate in the body like they are alive. So, in this case, the spike protein would eventually cause some horrible jab-zombie end to mankind.

Thankfully, the prion theory looks to be the silliest and least likely scenario. But all of these scenarios, however, are showing up because the information is so very, very bad. I included the clip from the University of Pennsylvania study because it is honest. It shows what we know, and what we don’t know. There isn’t the lingering smell of corruption and shrimp anywhere in the document.

I got kicked out of the zoo for feeding the ducks . . . to the crocodiles. Those crocodiles sure will miss me.

With any luck we won’t see horrible health consequences from the jab. The biggest casualties right now appear to be any lingering trust we had in Big Science, our economy, the concept of private property, any restraint on government edicts whatsoever, and the illusion that we had freedom to begin with.

But, remember – to buy a congressman you need bacon-wrapped shrimp. I mean, they can be bought, but they don’t want you to think they’re cheap.