Bad Smells – Page 17 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Status, Money, and Bad Car Jokes

“Dude, where’s my car?” – Dude, Where’s My Car?

I wonder if her Tiffany is twisted, too?

I recall reading a story about several wives at a kid’s soccer game in Dallas. They were comparing cars – each of them had a new Mercedes® or similar luxury car. One of the wives, exasperated, mentioned their really wealthy friend, Martha, who drove around in an older car. “I wish I was as rich as Martha. Then I wouldn’t have to drive a new car.”

It’s always fascinated me that there are people who feel that they have to spend money for appearances. The Mrs. can vouch for that – it’s because of her vocal insistence that I spend money for deodorant, which I guess is like a Mercedes™, except Old Spice© is cheaper and costs much less to insure.

I know, I know, having to spend money to impress people is not a club I want to be in, but I find it interesting nevertheless. After all, I’m in an even more exclusive club: guys who want to be able to buy a pickup with a stick shift, a vinyl bench seat and rubber flooring instead of carpet. As nearly as I can tell from the domestic pickup truck market, this particular club has one member. Me.

The world seems to have gone into a mode that is based in luxury. A few years ago, I visited a friend, Dave. Dave had a new pickup truck. As we drove around on a fairly warm day, I noticed that my butt was getting . . . cold. That’s not something that normally happens to my butt by itself. It turns out his pickup truck didn’t have just have heated seats, it had climate controlled seats that also got cold.

I’m sure it has seats that cook you at 350°F or freeze you to -40°F.

I was amused – I didn’t even know that such a thing existed. I hadn’t had my butt chilled for my pleasure before, except for that one time in Amsterdam. Dave, however, didn’t buy the pickup because he was showing off or because he wanted specifically to chill my butt – he bought it because he wanted it. And he probably paid cash.

Just kidding. Dave probably wrote a check.

I wasn’t jealous of Dave’s truck. It wasn’t something that I’d ever buy for myself. My current daily driver is older than Pugsley, and has nearly 180,000 miles (3,500 kilograms) on it, and only 36,000 miles (45°C) on the latest oil change. I’m wanting to keep it until it’s driven at least one light-second, which is 186,000 miles (63 meters). Fingers crossed. But I’m pretty sure I won’t get my car to the Moon – that’s 226,000 miles (5 liters), and I’m nearly certain my fuel pump will die again before then, plus Allstate® won’t insure translunar travel, I mean, at least not with full coverage.

I’m sorry. I Apollo-gize. And, yes, I know that Neil never had a sweet ride like this one.

I’m not against spending money, but I think you should spend money like Fuzzy Pink Niven (Hugo® winning author Larry Niven’s wife) spends calories:

Potato chips, candy, whipped cream, or a hot fudge sundae may involve you, your dietician, your wardrobe, and other factors. But FP’s Law implies: Don’t eat soggy potato chips, or cheap candy, or fake whipped cream, or an inferior hot fudge sundae.

I think that advice on calories applies to many areas of life. I have a budget of money. There are things I have to buy, and have to spend it on – The Mrs. gets rather cranky if I don’t feed her. Beyond those necessities, with any left over, I have a choice as to what I spend it on, and when I spend it. Where Dave chooses to spend his on a really cool pickup truck, and a collection of pinball machines, my choices are different.

But those choices are mine, just like Dave’s choices are his.

My ideal truck, complete with DIY garage!

Money represents potential. It is the potential to create, the potential to build, the potential to serve. In many ways, it represents the potential for future choices.

Time represents the potential for future choices as well. We choose how to spend our money as if it is limited, but we choose to spend our time as if it’s unlimited? Money comes and goes, but my budget of time is my life, measured in minutes and seconds. Spending my time is nothing less than spending my life. Just like a pickup seat determines how warm or cold our butts are, how we spend our time (and who we spend our time with) determines who we are.

Is it just me or does this picture of Beto O’Rourke look just a bit off?

Knowing this, go and make your choices today.

Because my butt is warm. (That’s supposed to be motivational.)

I predict: these are the funniest predictions for 2020 you will read in 2020.

“Predictions are hard. Especially about the future.” – Yogi Berra

Okay, some people do pretty good predictions.

Once upon a time I tried to do real predictions. The big downside of real predictions is being wrong sometimes. I’d much rather be wrong all of the time, like last year (Silly Predictions for 2019. Bonus? Golden Bikini Force.), so here are my stunningly incorrect predictions for 2020:

January

The Senate takes over the impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump. Because of poor ticket sales, the trial is cancelled, but people who had reserved tickets were given a 20% off voucher for the Nirvana® reunion tour. I’d love to bum a ride with you guys – I’d call shotgun, but Kurt beat me to it.
Joe Biden suspends his presidential campaign for Black History Month© so small black children across the nation can have the opportunity to pet his wet leg hair. When informed that Black History Month is in February, Biden suggests to the reporter that they bare knuckle box, because he’s “tired of your stupid malarkey, 23 skidoo, Tippecanoe and Tyler too! Cockroaches!” Biden calms down later after getting some tapioca pudding and watching Price is Right®.
Hillary Clinton asks the question, “Do you want to play a game?”

Chelsea calls Chardonnay “Mommy’s Monica Juice.”

February

Ruth Bader Ginsburg sees her shadow on Supreme Court day, assuring us of six more weeks of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Tom Brady’s body reconfigures itself into a new form on national television during Super Bowl® LIV. His new body appears like a low slung muscular tank, and Brady “throws” passes by expelling the football explosively downfield from a brand new fleshy orifice designed by Bill Belichick, based on the anatomy of a platypus. Sadly, this doesn’t help the Patriots© at all, since they were eliminated earlier in the playoffs and are not even playing in the Super Bowl™.
The New Hampshire Democratic primary is won by Kim Jong Un. Unfortunately, it was actually Hillary Clinton being mistaken for Kim Jong Un after her next round of plastic surgery. Rumor is she was secretly pleased to be called Dear Leader instead of the usual nautical term, “Seaward.”
Brexit happens on schedule, but Boris Johnson’s hair stages its own Borexit and joins the Labour Party.

I guess technically we’re all undead, but Ruth takes it to the next level.

March

Super Tuesday, a collection of 13 primaries is held on March 3^rd. The top three Democratic finishers are Johnny Depp, Harvey Weinstein, and a resurgent O.J. Simpson. Nancy Pelosi states, “We are so proud to have our Democratic values and inclusivity on display in these results.”
Patrick’s Day replaced by a new gender and religion inclusive holiday: “Buy Expensive Green Things and Drink if You’re Not a Muslim Day.”
Joe Biden again suspends his presidential campaign, noting that he needs to focus on saving lives by using his true talent – being able to detect diseases in women by holding their shoulders and sniffing their hair while standing behind them.

“Don’t thank me . . . now. Thank me later. Want to play with my leg hair?”

April

Ralph Northam, governor of Virginia, is discovered eating living children on the front lawn of the governor’s mansion while in blackface. After calls for his resignation, he noted that it was, at most, a “youthful indiscretion.”
Ruth Bader Ginsberg develops a desire for human flesh much like Tom Cruise or Keanu Reeves, and soon appears to be no older than about 30.
A vortex connecting our dimension to another dimension containing hellish beasts is accidently opened by Pentagon scientists. This is almost exactly like the plot to the Stephen King novella The Mist, though not in a legally actionable way, at least according to my lawyer, Lazlo.

“How could I make this worse? Oh, yeah, I’ll go after the guns.”

May

Beto O’Rourke, while no longer a presidential candidate, decides to create an anti-gun organization, PistolsMakeScared (PMS®). He noted, “I really needed something to do while my wife has quality time with her boyfriends.”
France declares war on Canada on Tuesday morning. France surrenders to Germany later that afternoon, declaring Paris an open city. The Germans refuse the surrender, indicating they can’t determine the number of troops required to defend France, since that’s never been tried before.
Australians will discover a spider that is the size of a cat, is as fast as a mongoose, has a diet of eagles and crocodiles, and is as poisonous as a middle school girl’s Instagram®. They name it “Dave.”

Pictured: Australian infant’s crib mobile.

June

LGBT Pride Month (June) officially replaced with LGBT Smug Condescension Months (June, July, August).
Elon Musk unveils a Kleenex® dispenser that automatically pops up a new Kleenex© every time you take one out at a base price of only $45,000. 25,000 people place a deposit, even though there’s a two year wait.
Chick-Fil-A® decides to start serving food on Sunday, adding hamburgers to their menu, and encouraging the worship of Satan as part of a new marketing campaign. “We’ve got to change with the times,” said their new spokesman, Lena Dunham.

I mean if you have to choose between values and a tasty sandwich . . .

July

The Democratic Convention is moved from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Malmo, Sweden as the Democratic Committee considers it unfair that people outside the United States have been denied a vote. Greta Thunberg, noted school dropout, is nominated. Her vice presidential nominee, Joe Biden, is quoted as saying, “I’m thrilled to be behind her.”
The Republican Convention is held in a hollowed out volcano somewhere in the South Pacific. Donald Trump is nominated as the presidential candidate, and in a surprise move, he is also nominated to be vice president. “Job’s too easy. And I need someone whose I can trust to be vice president.” Trump also adopts a pure white Persian cat with a diamond collar.
The 2020 Summer Olympics® open in Tokyo. Bingo is not an approved Olympic sport, primarily because the Japanese are still a bit superstitious about “B-29.”

We now know what Paul Tibbets would do for a Klondike Bar®.

August

Google® is found to be censoring ______, ______ and _____, and working with Facebook™ and Twitter© to also censor _____. It is feared that the election might be impacted because ____ ____ ____, ____ and ____.
Elon Musk unveils an electric reusable coffee mug – he calls it Teasla©. Initial claims are that it is autonomous and can be used for both hot and cold liquids. It also requires the new Teasla™ Supercharger, which can recharge it in 70 minutes using a 50’ by 50’ solar power array costing only $25,000. The mug weighs 43 pounds.

(Pssst – it’s in the trunk.)

September

For the second straight year, September is again cancelled by general consensus.

October

Two televised presidential debates and one televised arm wrestling contest are held. The planned presidential MMA bout is cancelled when Greta Thunberg tests positive for high levels of testosterone. She is furious, “How dare you assume my gender? You have ruined my fight plan.” She then proceeds to spend all of her campaign funds on a live commercial showing her eating seven pounds of mashed potatoes (no gravy) in one sitting while scowling at the camera.
Gormongous, Ruler of the Dark Empire, emerges as a dark horse third party candidate after having emerged from the Pentagon’s dimensional experiment earlier in the year. “Everyone can be an American,” he hissed through clouds of sulfurous vapor. The Ninth Circuit Court ruled that his alternate universe was “technically America” so he was a valid candidate for president, despite him being seven stories tall and covered in an exoskeleton made of material from neutron stars.

Never take potatoes from a testosterone-raging Swede with fetal alcohol syndrome. It’s a rule I live by.

November

The 2020 presidential election is held on the third. California immediately protests because the Electoral College now has fraternities, and no one asked California to join one so she could go to that cool Kappa Sig kegger and maybe hook up with Montana.
Donald Trump wins both the popular vote and the Electoral College. Democratic candidate Greta Thunberg says, “That is not enough – it makes a mockery of our democracy. You must also defeat me in a best-of-seven game of Jarts®.”
Joe Biden celebrates his 78^thbirthday. His hair and teeth turn 22.

Many a G.I. Joe® experienced a fatal chest wound to Jarts™.

December

Santa Claus is now required by the 9^Th Circuit Court of Appeals to be race, gender, and species neutral when used in any public school setting. Ironically, this has the effect of making most kindergarten pictures of NuSanta™ highly accurate.
Gormongous, Ruler of the Dark Empire, decides that he will use the fame from his presidential run to launch a top tier tequila as well as a chain of animal shelter/fast Asian restaurants in the Midwest.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg looks down on the lights of the city at night from her perch at the top of the Washington Monument. She smells, senses, and sees the life below her. The life that she drains, person by person, to prolong hers. Then . . . a target. She aims her bat-like wings to take her quickly down the side of the monument, and then to strike. Ahhh, fresh blood. Ruth feels the gravity drawing her down as she leaps . . . .
National Park Ranger Report, 12/22/20: Bat killed by hawk near Washington Monument.

To all: Happy New Year!

Bad Bosses, Part I, Including Garfield as Written by H.P. Lovecraft

“Michael, we don’t have a lot of time on this earth! We weren’t meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about mission statements.” – Office Space

“That’s what she said.”

I had just gotten the greatest performance review of my life. It was outstanding in every way. My boss (let’s call him Miller, it goes with the song) went on and on about how I was a stunning example of every possible good quality a person could have, and how I was universally loved, admired, and generally made women fertile just through a fleeting glance, and made men better than they thought they could be through the slightest example. If the company needed someone to walk across a pond, on the top of the water, John Wilder was your guy.

For about a second, I bought it. Flattery works because your mind really wants to believe all those nice things. It’s like a horoscope, keep using nice adjectives, and you’ll find one that the person is already predisposed to agree with.

Then I thought about it – this guy Miller, my new boss, has been with the company about a month. He barely knows where his office is and he’d only visited my office once. For him to write a performance review like this? I didn’t believe it. As much as I’d like to think of myself in such glowing terms, I rejected his flattery.

Beyond mentally rejecting his praise as an attempt at manipulation, I also made the mental note never to trust Miller.

Why?

Anyone who will be quick to praise will be quick to condemn. Besides, when I looked at him while he was smiling, he only smiled with his mouth – never with his whole face. He was smiling because he was “supposed” to be smiling, not because the smile was genuine. During those smiles Miller had the dead, flat eyes of a predator, like he was attempting to see if you were fooled and really believed the smile.

I never did meet Miller’s wife – I think her invisibility suit worked pretty well.

I was careful to document every conversation with him. Always trust your gut, people, unless your gut says socialism is a good deal. If your gut says that, remember: never go full Bernie.

I worked pretty far away from the company headquarters, where Miller’s office was. I set up weekly calls to keep him informed on what I and my team were doing. I’d done this in the past for my previous bosses. These calls allowed them to understand what we were doing, and digest it for top management if they needed to.

Except.

Except I found out from a colleague that during these meetings, most of the time Miller was shopping for things online, teaching himself to play the banjo, translating Garfield® into cuneiform (did they even have lasagna in ancient Sumeria?) or, in general, not paying any attention to what I was saying. My colleague noted that Miller generally wasn’t listening at all.

If you get the cuneiform wrong and accidentally translate a passage from the Necronomicon© this is what you get.

Normally, that’s not a problem, I ran had been running my end of things for years, and after a few years you get used to the usual problems – and are expected just to handle them. But my boss had a boss – call him my Grandboss. When my Grandboss wanted to know about some aspect of what I was doing, he’d ask my boss, Miller. Since Miller had literally no idea (despite weekly written reports and the phone call mentioned above) what I was doing, he did the simple thing: he made it up.

Most of the time, it worked fine. My Grandboss generally had an idea of what was going on, even if the specifics were a bit off. But when the results my boss made up promised didn’t happen? The Grandboss got mad. Very mad.

So mad, in fact, that my Grandboss called me up one day and was yelling. I explained, calmly, the real situation and the plan, and that seemed to calm him down. He checked up a few more times to make sure what I said was really happening, and then went away. But the troubles with Miller continued. Our conversations became a random affair – one day he would be polite. The next day, he would be literally yelling over the phone. What had started out as a bad feeling based on that too-good-to-be-true performance review had morphed into a full-blown sitcom level bad boss.

I mean, can you imagine such micromanaging?

I had one or two advantages – first, I had been at the company much longer and had several well-placed friends, and second, I wasn’t a deceitful sack of weasel meat. I’m certain that my boss was lying based on my informants at headquarters, and I’m equally certain that the things Miller was saying weren’t very positive. It’s been several years, and my career is still recovering from his “help.”

I’m ashamed to admit it, but one of the happiest days of my life was when Miller got fired. “But, you can’t fire me! You don’t even know what I do!” were his comments as they took away his keys and allowed him to pop his personal possessions in a box and gave him a complementary cement bag (for the weight, dear). And, he’s right – the Internet sure won’t surf itself.

As near as I can tell, the company didn’t skip a beat in his absence. I’ll also admit that on the day he got fired, I had one of the best workouts of my life. The entire time I worked out that lunch, I just listened to Mack the Knife on a loop for 45 minutes of the best treadmill time I’ve ever put in. I smiled every second. Why Mack the Knife? I have no idea. I rarely listened to it before, and haven’t listened to it even one time since that day until tonight. As I write this, it’s on a loop in the background.

It may be a song from a Marxist play written by a Leftist, but it makes me happy that it made so much money – after the Marxist author died. Also? The most upbeat song about multiple murders. Bonus trivia: Lotte Lenya, mentioned in the song, played Rosa Klebb in the James Bond movie From Russia with Love.

As you can see, she’s the perfect Bond® girl for 2019.

I’ve tried to feel bad about feeling so good because Miller was fired. Even years later, it’s still a pleasant memory. Yeah. I shouldn’t feel good about that, but I do.

Okay, the choice was a single post that was twice as long as this, or this broken into two parts. I chose two parts. Next part is on Friday.

Death, Taxes, Ancient History, and Bad Advice

“I have to do it alone. Don’t you get it? Everybody dies here. It’s just a rule. Death, taxes, more death, and I don’t pay taxes. So all I know is death.” – Ash vs. The Evil Dead

Don’t delay on filing your taxes . . . any longer than me.

If I could write a book about taxes, it would be a very short book:

“Avoid paying taxes if you can and do in such a way as to not be thrown into jail.”

That would be the title. That would also be Chapter One. There would be no Chapter Two.

“Tis impossible to be sure of any thing but Death and Taxes,” wrote Christopher Bullock in The Cobler of Preston in 1716. There is, however, biblical evidence that Bullock was only partially correct: in the New Testament, Jesus was hanging with Peter and they were talking about taxes. Jesus tells Peter to go down and catch a fish, and money would be inside the fish, and Peter could go pay taxes for both of them. Peter did, and they even have the picture to prove it since they didn’t have receipts back then:

Is that Jesus or John Lennon behind Peter?

So, even though Jesus could both return from the dead as well as make dead people live again, he still paid taxes. This therefore means that the only real certainty in life is . . . taxes. If you’re an atheist, however, it’s okay to plan for both.

The biggest tax (for me) is income tax. But the list of common taxes is mindboggling:

Federal Income Tax
State Income Tax
Sales Tax
Social Security Tax
Medicare Tax
Property Tax
Liquor Tax
Gasoline Tax
Tobacco Tax

I was going to make up some joke taxes for the list above, but throughout history, I believe that government has taxed . . . everything. New York City has a tax on food, but if the restaurant slices your bagel that means it’s prepared food, so thus you get to pay yet another tax for the privilege of living in New York. But taxes aren’t new – taxation spans recorded history – the earliest documents relating to accounting go back to at least 5,000 B.C. I suspect taxation goes back even deeper into the past – there are tally sticks that go back at least 40,000 years, and I imagine that they were counting out taxes on profits from sales of knickers made out of baboon fur even then.

Is it just me or does it look like the Egyptian accountants have huge Egyptian bongs? Talk about creative accounting . . .

As tribes wandered around in the distant past, the idea of supporting others within your tribe was probably pretty natural – these were your people, after all. But as tribes grew bigger, and connections more tenuous, taxation started. I think the idea of taxation came as soon as one man could count and see that another man had a little more than he did, was a little bit better of a hunter, a little bit better at fishing.

That man (or maybe his wife) then got other men and planted the idea of envy. “Why Oog need three bearskins? Me have only one, so Oog one percenter. He am greedy for having thing Thag want.” Thag went on to write the first tax regulation. Humanity, I guess, has evil people who are filled with hatred that show up all throughout our history – we call them the IRS® now.

Okay, sometimes I use colored pencils and also write quotations from Moby Dick.

For all of that time, governments have taken taxation seriously. Murder? Arson? Burning an elementary school? Overthrowing the government of a small (really small) country for fun and profit? All petty crimes when compared to cheating on taxes. I think the current punishment for tax evasion includes snakes and having to share a cell with a Hollywood® C- list actress-mother who bought her kid into USC®, so I certainly don’t advocate that – I mean, snakes are not so bad, but Hollywood™ mothers?

So what can you do?

First, file your taxes. TurboTax® makes it easy, sadly. I wish that taxes were difficult to pay. I wish that every person got paid weekly, in cash, and had to count off actual cash payments to an IRS© agent. Or that there was no withholding so that people HAD to write a check every year for the full amount of taxes due and didn’t live with a fictitious “I got a refund – the government paid me” mindset.

Second, max out any things you can do that lower your tax burden. 401K’s are nice for that – they allow you to invest money (often in the stock market) before taxes are taken out so you make stock gains on the pre-tax dollars. This puts your tax burden out into the future when you will need Depends® and a walker and worthless paper dollars will be used by barbarians for heat due to the new ice age due in 2028. But at least you avoided taxes now.

Actually the records are in an envelope under my camping gear in the basement in that back room. I think.

Third, set yourself up as a corporation and have your employer hire the corporation to do your job and pay yourself minimum wage. The rest of your salary can then be paid out in dividends to you, which are taxed at a lower amount and you can be just like Warren Buffet. Really, Warren does just that, and then he complains that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary, although there’s really nothing that would stop him from paying your taxes, or mine. But he won’t because he’s busy having cheeseburgers in Margaritaville. Oh. Wrong Buffet.

Fourth, don’t make up your own currency to pay your taxes. As cool as “Bi$onBuck$” sounds, unless you want three free meals a day for the next 33 to 60 months, you should probably not use ‘em to pay your taxes.

Yes, I know they’re Euros, but don’t they look like Christmas wrapping paper? Besides, all you can do with Euros is buy baguettes, bassinettes, marionettes and cigarettes in France.

Fifth, put off doing your taxes to the last minute. It lowers your risk of audit, and, if you’re like me and have to send off a check most years, you can keep your money for just a few more weeks so you can roll on your bed in it. Unfortunately the pennies stick to my butt, so be careful if I give you change.

Sixth, remember that John Wilder (me) is an Internet humorist and is not licensed to be a financial advisor or tax consultant or provide legal advice, because what would the fun be in that?

How I Got Into Debt, Trench Warfare, and an End of the World Cult You Can Believe In

“Well, if you don’t like that, try some Archduke Chocula.” – Futurama

After World War One, the phrase, “Happy as a Hapsburg in Serbia” fell out of favor, as did the “Hair Smile” style of mustache.

I’ve already told the story about digging out of debt. In retrospect, it seems to me that all of those stories end up sounding the same: “I weighed six hundred pounds, my kitchen floor was covered in dirty dishes and cat food, and I had $3.7 million in debt until I found Wildernetics© and the First Church of PEZology™. Look at me now!”

Proof that I am a reincarnated World War One soldier (Part One). These are from a soldier’s joke newspaper, The Wiper’s (a mangling of Ypres) Times, produced for soldiers by soldiers that found an abandoned printing press.

I know my methods can solve everything, but today I had a crazy idea. How about spending some time talking about how I got into debt in the first place? I know that might cut into the revenue of the Wildernetics© End of the World Cult and Take-Out BarBeQue Restaurant®, but I figure you might come back for the brisket. It’s very tender.

I’ll quit teasing. How did I get into debt? First a little. Then all at once.

Let me rewind a whole marriage. As regular readers will know, The Mrs. was not the first, but she is the final spouse. My first marriage was an example of a series of escalating poor mutual decisions where each side seemed to lack a brief moment of sanity to back out before anyone got hurt, sort of like the run up to World War I. Even before Archduke Franz Ferdinand proved that .380 ACP was a useful round against Hapsburgs and their notably gelatinous bones, World War I was inevitable. Before I said “I do” everything was in place for the trench warfare of future divorce.

Okay, I apologize for this joke. I think it violated the Geneva Convention.

But, rewinding. After graduating college I got married and got a starter job, which is to say I had a job that just barely paid the bills. Nearly exactly. In fact, after working at the job for a few months, we were exactly (most months) at zero. We weren’t saving any money yet, but we also weren’t in the red. Success. My credit card limit was 10,000 . . . Siberian Lira. This was equivalent to a whole bright and shiny quarter. This helped me stay debt free.

Then came the table.

Proof that I am a reincarnated World War One soldier (Part Two), this one is for James.

We had a dining room table. It wasn’t great, and the chairs that came with it were a bit ratty – the vinyl arms had been slammed into the table often enough that it looked like a pack of rabid Chihuahuas had spent their lives sitting on the chair seats and gnawing on the arms. I imagine them growling and chewing in unison as they sat around the table, like Viking Chihuahua rowers. Most all of our furniture was second hand or gifted, but the table really was the biggest eyesore.

Okay, this one isn’t mine, but I couldn’t resist.

At some point discipline broke. I know how silly it sounds to say that now, but back then, month after month of not buying anything but actual necessities takes more discipline than Elizabeth Warren around a tribal gathering. Eventually I gave in. We bought the table. Using debt. Back then, individual stores would give you amazing credit limits just to buy their crap. They gave us more than enough credit to buy that table, and with the money I saved from shipping the Chihuahuas back to Denmark, I figured we’d be money ahead.

Proof that I am a reincarnated World War One soldier (Part Three).

The table was only $500, but the difference between having no debt (outside of a mortgage) and having debt, even a small one, was a huge psychological hurdle for me. It’s like having a doughnut when you’re doing low carb. “I got weak had one doughnut, so I might as well have, say, 36. And do you have any whipped cream I could just guzzle straight from the can? I broke my diet, and don’t want to waste it.” Pretty soon other nice to have things showed up, very few of which I still own today. But I had crossed that mental barrier from peace (debt free) to war (spend away!). Suddenly, the credit card companies realized I had debt, and immediately wanted to lend me more money. My credit limits tripled.

I hope that this doesn’t sound like I’m blaming The Ex. Like Adam in the Garden of Eden, I was fully complicit. Ultimately the debt grew faster than my wages. This led to the idea of grad school: I could get free tuition plus be a paid graduate assistant. Would it work?

Sure. There were also student loans. Free money! Oops.

Okay, let’s all admit that Nachos Bellgrande® is NOT a war crime.

Proof that I am a reincarnated World War One soldier (Part Four).

There were some places along the way that I could have gotten off the merry-go-round. When I sold that first house to move for a new, post-grad school job, we’d made a stunning 40% profit in three years. It would have more than paid off a good chunk of my student loans. Nope, that would have made too much sense. We did pay down a little debt and bought a new house, putting down the minimum down payment.

But most of the money was just spent. About this time I also had one of the worst ideas I’d ever had in my life. The Ex and I were always arguing about money, and about the thermostat – I knew that 50°F in winter and 90°F in summer were reasonable temperatures, but The Ex disagreed. Well, if she had to pay the bills, she would certainly understand how tight money was. Right?

No.

We had a different view of not only household temperature, but the idea that one should pay monthly bills, well, monthly. I didn’t figure this out for three years, by which time I owed enough money to qualify as a third world country, but one of the nice, mainly atrocity-free ones. Mainly.

Taco Bell® inspired outfits?

Debt is like George Washington’s description of fire, it’s an amazing tool, but a fearful master. My advice is to pay all of your bills in full, monthly. I know that the people who own your debt disagree. Why? They want you to have debt, as much as you can pay.

I had a friend (since passed away in an accident) who I called Batman© on this blog (“I’m Batman,” – Batman, in Batman). He had one particular investment that was worth about $12 million – a series of apartments. He had paid the apartments off before they were even built by selling future property tax credits to other businesses. Yeah, that kind of friend.

But he viewed his tenants as slaves (his term), who went to work daily so they could send him money every week. I heard him use exactly that phrase to describe them. He liked his tenants, and was a good landlord. However, he knew the score: when they went to work each day, they went to work so they could pay him.

And Batman was a good guy and he taught kids that debt was a form of slavery of ordinary people to wealthy guys just like him, not that they always listened.

My marriage to The Ex? That particular marriage is proof of the old Henny Youngman joke:

“Why are divorces expensive?”

“They’re worth it.”

Yeah, divorce just STARTS the argument.

The day she moved out was one of the happiest days for both of us.

I was still digging myself out of debt when I met The Mrs. As our relationship blossomed, I thought it was only fair to tell her of the debt that I had.

“The Soon To Be The Mrs., I have something to tell you. You might want to sit down.”

The Soon To Be The Mrs. looked shaken. She sat. I told her about my debt. She laughed.

“Is that all? I thought you were going to tell me you’d been in prison.”

No, not prison. But I still owe reparations payments to France.

The Worst Economic Idea Since Socialism, Explained Using Bikini Girl Graphs

“Grab a brew. Don’t cost nothing.” – Animal House

The future economic expansion is so bright, she’s gotta shield her eyes with a hat.

So, today I’d like to talk about economics. No, wait, don’t leave! I promise pictures of girls in bikinis if you stay!

Today’s economic idea is a particularly stupid one. Just about as stupid as when the Ming Dynasty tried to disarm Japan by buying all their swords. This really happened around 1432 A.D. (according to some experts) but was less successful than the Ming projected: the Japanese just made more swords – at least 128,000. Today’s stupid idea is called, “Modern Monetary Theory.” Epsilon Theory had an article on it (LINK), and I did some research and thought I’d give you a rundown on this horrible, horrible idea which smells worse than Johnny Depp’s sweat socks after a night running through a farm ditch in Utah. Don’t ask.

Okay, John Wilder, I’ll humor you if you promise bikini pictures. What is Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)?

This poor person is deprived by a Marxist economy, so poor she cannot afford proper clothing and is weak enough from hunger that she’s forced to crawl along the beach.

Here’s a bikini picture to prove that these will be the sexiest graphs in the history of economics. Now pay attention and I’ll explain Modern Monetary Theory. MMT is simple:

The main idea of MMT is that since government creates money there are exactly no limits to how much money government can create. Back when money was backed by gold (say, with one ounce of gold being worth $20) there was a physical limit – by definition you couldn’t have more $20 gold coins than you had ounces of gold. MMT says, “Hey, since Nixon took the world off of the gold standard, we’ve been making up this money stuff anyway. So let’s go all in.” This is not exactly like a drunken 21 year old with Mom and Dad’s credit card in Las Vegas. Not exactly. The credit card has a credit limit.

So, under MMT, there is no limit to how much money government can print. The genius idea (from Bill Mitchell, an Australian economist who came up with the name “Modern Monetary Theory”, and whose dog’s name is “Dog” and daughter’s name is “Girl”, and whose pet name for his wife is “That Woman On The Couch”) is that there is also no limit to the amount of money that government can spend. This is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s high school prom fantasy where Justin Bieber picks her up in a pink helicopter and makes her all warm in her special place. Oh, and by special place I mean other people’s wallets: this is a family-friendly blog, get your mind out of the gutter. The implications are stunning. “Why not just pay for everything? The government can just print the money, right?”

Yes. She really said that. See, pure economic genius!

Yes, this is exactly the logic of a twenty-something girl who can’t figure out how to pay for an apartment, and wonders what fruit Froot Loops® are made of.

Bill Mitchell has a doctorate in economics, which shows you how easy it is to learn absolutely nothing while getting a doctorate, just as Ocasio-Cortez can demonstrate that an undergraduate degree in economics is essentially majoring in pure pre-barista. An analogy used on a website that promotes MMT is that football referees don’t have a limit to the number of points that can be awarded during a football game. There’s no requirement that they come from somewhere, and giving someone else a point doesn’t take a point away from you. Therefore points are infinite and don’t change the way the game is played.

Genius.

You can clearly see the equilibrium required in an economy consisting entirely of tequila shooters and cocoa butter.

Why not make every dollar worth, oh, say $10? That way everyone could just add a zero to their bank balance? Doesn’t cost anything, right? And why not pay for every person’s medical care? We’re just making up the dollars as we go. While we’re at it, there are unemployed people. Why not pay your average unemployed art major to make Xir’s (a gender-neutral pronoun) armpit-hair sculptures each and every day?

Don’t cost nothing.

This is an amazing idea! Government can have it all! There is no limit to the amount government can spend because Tom Brady can make all the touchdowns he wants during a game. Yay, tortured grade-school logic!

There’s a corollary to this – Dr. Mitchell thinks we can have all of this infinite money and low interest rates. There’s no need for inflation. Print the money. Prices won’t go up. MMT says we can spend ourselves into prosperity*.

*As long as you appropriately tax people to soak up excess money. Mitchell, in the fine print, says that we can spend up to the entire productive capacity of the nation on, well, whatever. When we get to that capacity, then we have to soak up the extra money with taxes. The taxes don’t really go to anything, we just use them to pull money out of circulation. Government still buys stuff with whatever money it prints. Taxes exist only as a sponge to soak up excess cash.

Two consecutive quarters of GDP contraction make a recession, and they’d also leave a nasty sunburn.

This puts the printing of money into the hands of the Federal Reserve Bank, and the spending and taxation into the hands of Congress. Sadly, Mitchell never postulated putting adults in charge. Regardless, Congress never ever spends too much money and certainly wouldn’t structure taxes to be punitive against groups they don’t like. So, sober people like Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi would have infinite spending ability. I’m sure, like Goldilocks, they’d get the porridge “just right.”

MMT will be the next economic pied-piper of the political class in Washington, and will probably be the torch carried by the next Democratic presidential nominee. It has no downside! Spend today because deficits don’t matter. Interest rates are 100% controllable. Only have to pay a few taxes, and we’ll have free prosperity for all.

We’ll just print the money. “You just pay for it.”

And, no one will have to be a barista! We can guarantee a living wage to each and every artist so that the United States can be the undisputed leader in the creation of sculptures made out of armpit hair.

There’s no reason this can’t work. Why, The Boy, when he was in kindergarten, came up with a system that was very similar. For whatever reason, his class had made “feathers” by cutting out feather-shapes out of different colors of construction paper. The Boy got into his Gummi-bear® addled kindergartner brain that these construction paper feathers were actually worth real money. He even had an exchange rate in mind – each feather was worth three dollars. He had three feathers, so, he demanded nine dollars. I tried to negotiate, but it was useless – he drove a hard bargain, what with the laying on the floor and crying.

But he made the same mistake that Karl Marx and MMT make.

GDP is proportional to the height of the girl in the bikini. That’s a basic economic concept.

You see, Marx’s theory (as well as MMT) both incorporate a fascinating idea – that the value of an item is based on the inputs that it takes to make the item. So, from that standpoint, our armpit-hair artisan should be able to charge the cost of her Xir schooling (plus that summer in Europe with Marco!) and her Xir apartment and food cost for that armpit hair sculpture. It is that valuable.

Real world economics that don’t result in economic collapse and the starvation of millions of people would disagree. An armpit hair sculpture is worth only what someone is willing to pay for it, and not a penny more. It’s a market, and it’s based on free exchange. It’s that simple idea of the market setting the price that makes capitalist economies work. And it’s the brutality of the market that ensures that armpit-hair artists have to have a real job actually producing things that people want. Like coffee.

Ideas like MMT seem to be too good to be true because they are too good to be true. They always end in failure, poverty, and human suffering. Thankfully they can use that taxation sponge to soak up all the blood after the revolution.

But “infinite free stuff” is sure a great line when you’re running for office. Worked out great in Venezuela….

The Funniest and Most Meaningful Black Friday Post . . . Ever. Now 50% off, Today Only.

“It’s Black Friday, the day when ordinary house moms turn into vicious bargain hunting animals, blinded by low prices, and eager to get the Christmas shopping done early. If this was a zoo I’d say run for you lives, but this is Buy More!” – Chuck

Mabel’s family was upset with her on the drive home. They used Apple® products and didn’t have Windows™. (I’m sorry for that joke, but by way of explanation I’m a father.)

Like many people, I try to avoid the stores on Black Friday. If I were a mullet wearing geezer with my toga full of elf chum (please don’t ask me to draw a picture of that, I’m not even sure what elf chum is, and now that I’ve written it I feel vaguely dirty), I’d say Black Friday is maybe the one real American holiday that most people agree on. Christmas is great, but when was the last time a group of people attempted to choke each other to death to get a gift-wrapped package of underwear on Christmas? Never. But put a 50%-off tag on socks with a pattern of Iron Man® smoking a bong with Donald Duck™ on them? Heck, I’d drop kick a calico kitten through a box fan for a bargain like that! Sure, we have great holidays like Fourth of July, but nobody ever died in a riot for 2 for 1 fireworks.

Bargains! Free stuff! Perhaps that’s the new slogan of the United States – Free Stuff! And don’t forget that buying stuff is easier than actual salvation or real effort to be a better person. And even if you don’t like toast – that toaster is only $5. You can learn to love toast.

Perhaps Black Friday not only our true holiday, it is perhaps our true religious holiday.

You can tell that these zombies aren’t leftists – they don’t appear to be lecturing anyone.

I’m not going to make fun of people who are short of cash and frugal and truly need the items that they buy, but that only accounts for a small percentage of purchasers on Black Friday. As Americans, we have been conditioned to shop. Until we drop. And don’t let Debt stand in your way. And I use the word “we” for a reason – I’ve done it, too. No, I would sooner investigate my hotel room with a black light and then still stay there than go in a store the day after Thanksgiving. But I do have the Internet. And I’ve bought stupid stuff:

Dog Waxer – rechargeable! Never let your unwaxed dog embarrass you again.
Solar Powered Night Light – Works best on a sunny day.
Internet-Connected Underwear – With your app, you can check the temperature and humidity.
Night Vision Scope for Caulk Gun – Now you can apply your caulk, even in the dark.
Crossword Puzzle Book for Dogs – Just as it says.

So, yes, I’ve bought my share of stupid crap, which made me ask the question: why do we buy useless crap at all?

Impulse: I see shiny things. I must have them. The depths of the brain, that part that grunts instead of talking and that never uses underarm deodorant that drives this fascination. Just give it meat, scotch, and women and the impulses will go away.
Herd Mentality: I will fight you to the death for the toaster that puts the fuzzy face of Bob Ross on toast! They actually make a toaster that does this and I am hoping that the Discovery Channel® has a series coming where people fight to the death for consumer items. Makes me feel so, well, Roman. Humans want to have the things that other humans have, which is why so many ex-wives exist. I’ll just stop right there.

What a happy little toaster!

Makes You Feel Better: Shopping really works to make you feel better – it gives you a sense of accomplishment. No matter how hard your day was, and what tasks you face, there is a 100% chance that you can buy something and it will make you feel a little bit better. It gives you that sense of control, no matter how poor your decisions were today, you can find a breakfast cereal or, say, 436 pairs of shoes. You can make a choice and follow through. People even have a name for this type of shopping – “Retail Therapy.”

The nice thing about Retail Therapy? It costs about the same as real therapy, and you can still hate your mother when you’re done shopping for those 436 pairs of shoes. So you have hatred and shoes left. I call that a win-win.

Why not shop until you drop? You can. If it’s not a problem:

Well, if you’re going into debt for power tools just to chase the kids around with (a circular saw works well as long as you have enough extension cord) or sacrificing your ability to retire just so you can have a “Hello Kitty®” ashtray, it’s a problem.
If you have boxes of stuff you’ve never opened inside of other boxes of stuff you’ve never opened, it’s either a problem or a movie premise for Leonardo DiCaprio© for a movie called Inshopsion. There is a rule, however, that DVDs starring Burt Reynolds™ do NOT count in this category, so don’t even ask.

If you really need something to complete you, shopping isn’t it. It’s short term, and only lasts until you’ve bought the next thing. And the more crap you buy, the more confusion you bring into your life – sooner or later you have to spend more time managing the crap than it is worth. Again, I know this from experience – my own. And I still can’t find that spare kidney I bought on Kidney-Bay® on Black Friday back in 2012. Maybe it moved back to the original owner.

How do you cut back? Thankfully, the solutions are simple:

Replace shopping with something that’s a real achievement. Blogging for thousands of wonderful readers who have wonderful hygiene, immaculate mullets, and stunning good looks counts. You know, as an example.
Look for real competition in the world. I mean, soccer was invented by European beatnik nudist jugglers to provide something to do while their berets dried and they drank cappuccino. But, yes, even soccer will do. Find something.
Bored? Learn to not be bored. Take up chainsaw juggling. European beatniks do it all the time between cigarettes and poetry readings.
One of the things we don’t thing about too much when we think about shopping is time. And time, my friends, is all we have, each day that ticks away is lost forever. Plan your time to be and do something real.

We have to shop. We have to buy things. But as the Roman philosopher Seneca said, any over used virtue becomes a vice. Or was that Captain Kirk? I’ll go check my 12 disc collection of Star Trek: The Original Series Commemorative 32^nd Anniversary Edition Complete with Pink Tribble Box Set. I got it on Black Friday in 2009 on sale for $24.99. It might be here over behind the Original Smokey and the Bandit 2 jacket. Who knew that Burt Reynolds was exactly my height, but only weighed 155 pounds? Thing doesn’t even fit around the shoulders.

Eastbound and Down.

Bonus: Deliverance interview between Burt and Johnny.

Okay – I love comments, and would love to have more, so don’t be shy. Or I will dropkick another kitten through a box fan. And don’t forget – you can just subscribe to this in the box above, and I’ll show up at least three times a week in your inbox. Which won’t break it. And I won’t send or sell your address, ever.

Civil War, Neat Graphs, and Carrie Fisher’s Leg

“That’s not an argument, that’s just contradiction.” – Monty Python’s Flying Circus

Hmm, I’ll have what he’s having.

Wilder Note: Normally, Friday posts (for the last 70 or so weeks) have been devoted to health topics. I figure why not make everyone feel thoughtful right before the weekend, rather than guilty on a Monday for eating a whole cake and two tubs of Betty Crocker® frosting on Saturday night while drinking enough chardonnay to dull the pain from having lost that stupid election to that stupid guy from New York. Oops, too personal? Anyway, as the TEOWAWKI series has gone from one post to maybe weeks and weeks of posts (in outline) that I realized I’d put a topic on the back burner that I really want to write about and it really fits the “big ideas” Monday slot that’s now been invaded by the End Of The World, well, Fridays had to give. So until The End Of The End Of The World As We Know It (TEOTEOWAWKI – top, that Internet!), Friday posts may or may not be related directly to health for the next few months. This one isn’t.

Here are the links to the TEOWAKI posts (for now):

Now on to Friday’s first Big Ideas post:

I’ve written before about how it seems that our culture is unraveling around us at an increasing rate. You can see those posts here:

Is there any data to back up these theories?

Yes.

I originally thought that the Pew Research Center primarily did research into the sounds that kids made while using finger guns. These are sounds like Pew, Pew, Pew, Bang-Bang, and Rat-a-Tat-Tat. I was informed that finger guns are now illegal because they can be easily concealed and have far too large of an ammunition capacity, needing to be reloaded only when “making a shotgun loading sound” would be cool.

It turns out Pew does research on social and political trends, which is maybe more important than finger gun noises, but far less fun. And political trends wasn’t even my second theory, which included fart and skunk smell research. But Pew put together one report titled “The Partisan Divide on Political Values Grows Even Wider (LINK)” that’s especially relevant in describing what’s going on in American life today. The excellent blog Epsilon Theory (LINK) had a post that referenced the Pew Report, which is how I found it, and it fit perfectly with the posts we’ve been doing about the dissolution of the American political scene, though I think we come to different conclusions on what will ultimately happen.

Imagine how happy I was to see yet more proof of my theory that everything is falling straight apart and that millions of Americans will, within my lifetime, be engaged in bloody civil war!

Let’s start with the big graph. It tells (broadly) the story.

1994

In 1994, sure we had differences, but mainly we had more in common than divided us. Going through the numbers, Democrats and Republicans broadly agreed that illegal immigration was, well, illegal and was a thing to be stopped. Also about this time, Bill Clinton got punched in the teeth when he lost the House of Representatives by trying to go too far left too fast.

Bill’s response was to take the position of the Republicans and the position of the Democrats and steer between them. Republican points that were really popular, like making welfare recipients work? Adopt it. There was a vast overlap in the center – the overlap between Republican and Democrat is significant. The results of this policy were also pretty significant – this tension actually restrained government spending for the first time since Andrew Jackson made Congress personally count out every expenditure in piles of nickels on the Senate floor.

I remember being at a political rally for Democrats at around this point in time (1994, not during the Jackson administration). It was a big rally – Carrie Fisher was there with the Democratic candidate in question. So was I – with a sign for the Republican opposition. We didn’t go into the rally, but stood on one side of a driveway while a small group of Democrats stood on the other side. There were 50 to 100 in either group. We yelled at each other, each making fun of the other’s candidate, but the yelling was light hearted and humorous. Everyone had fun. I think I saw Carrie Fisher’s leg.

At that point in time, there was more extremism on the right than on the left, but even that wasn’t pronounced. With the defeat of Evil Communism, well, life was good. Heck, a guy named Francis Fukuyama even said that The End of History was at hand. Western liberal democracy would be the final form of government in a more peaceful world where capitalism was pretty significant feature.

2004

Not too far past 9/11, Americans had something that kept them unified – war. It appears that several people skipped reading Fukuyama’s book. At this point, a feeling of cohesion in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was still evident, W reluctantly called legitimate. Americans are actually politically closer than in 1994, but now more extreme leftists than extreme right wing folks. When Bush beat Kerry? Meh. No protests. No outrage. Bush personified the center. But the far left wing was growing.

2017

Democrats have all scampered left. Far left. Republicans have moved right certainly, but not nearly as far as the Democrats have moved left.

How bad is it?

97% of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican. 95% of Republicans are to the right of the median Democrat. Yes, there’s still overlap, but rapidly we’re nearing the point where we don’t even recognize the same facts. Imagine how little regard there is for the opinions of the other side.

And it’s worse with the media. As a whole, they’ve been leftists since . . . forever. But now? Not only do Republicans represent less than 7% of journalists, the places where journalists work and live are in big cities where people wearing Make America Great Again hats are shot on site. Or they would be if the leftists currently believed in individual, rather than state gun ownership.

The media are ideologically leftists, and live in cities where they might not even see a Republican in a day. They work in a bubble (leftist journalists) and live in a bubble (leftist cities and often states) and have no conception that people on the right exist. This explains why, on election night, the media was stunned that Trump won. They didn’t even try to hide their bias and dismay. Rachel Maddow alone cried enough tears to create minor flooding in the basement of the broadcast building.

There is simply very little the median Democrat has to say to the median Republican beyond “give me your stuff”, and little the median Republican has to say to the median Democrat other than “no, there aren’t 621 genders and 627 on Saturday night.” They don’t even speak the same language and in some cases this is literally true.

Part of the shift has come because the composition of American has changed. First and second generation immigrants are now roughly 25% of voters, a far higher proportion than at any time in history. And 70% of immigrants are leftist, compared to 18% that tend toward the right. This makes sense – most immigrants come to the United States from countries that are far to the left of the United States. I remember listening to the radio where a left-wing journalist was gushing with enthusiasm that a communist (literally and self-described) woman from India had been elected to the Seattle city council. When you talk about foreign influence on politics, well, the immigrants that are here legally have distorted politics and added to the overall polarization. This explains why the right has fought back so strongly – they (correctly) sense that the immigration desired by the left will disenfranchise (forever) their entire political ideology. If Hispanics voted on for the right, Republicans would have put forth the Everybody’s Really An American plan and the Democrats would have put forth a bill to mine the border with giant radioactive scorpions on either side of the 500 foot deep pit.

It also explains why so many Democrats (and Independents) have (quietly) defected to the Republican side. The party is moving away from them.

And the extreme left turn of the Democrats explains why Alexwhatshername Occasionally-Cortez, who is running on an actual and explicit socialist platform is the future of the Democratic party, not an outlier – this is the type of person that will win primaries as the Democrats float left. And I think the Republicans will continue to float farther right, which, in time, will make Trump look like a moderate.

What happens when/if the next leftist gains the White House?

Whiplash on every conceivable policy, but with a side order of vengeance. And a system like that will produce, rather inevitably, an economic dislocation, a government crackdown. A step too far.

This will be the spark.

And there will be war. If the United States weren’t so divided, the war could be external as politicians looked to focus people against the outside to reunify the country. But for now, we couldn’t even agree on a common enemy. So our enemy will be . . . us.

But, hey, cake is out of the oven! Who wants cake? I even have some spare tubs of frosting . . .

Scadenfreude – You can feel great I forgot to put a post title on this post for 18 hours.

“So don’t go anywhere, folks. The Schadenfreude is about to begin.” – Dodgeball

Wikipedia chose Return to the Convent, by Eduardo Zamacois y Zabala, 1868 to symbolize schadenfreude. Good choice. There’s no better source of humor than monks. Oh, I meant clowns. Wait, both of those things are scary. And have odd hair.

The German language is delightful, if you think delightful is a sound that people make when they are angry and choking. But the Germans have some amazing words – kummerspeck – literally “grief bacon” which means the weight you gain because you eat too much when you’re sad. Another good one is treppenwitz – literally “staircase joke” which the feeling you get when you’ve figured out the perfect thing to say in the argument. The argument that already ended.

But the Germans also have a much more common word – schadenfreude. Schadenfreude is feeling happy when something bad happens to someone you don’t like. How awful, right? Well, one day I had the biggest single case of schadenfreude that I’ve ever had, and it didn’t involve something embarrassing happening to Tom Brady, like him breaking his leg after he slipped in his hair gel in the shower and having accidently lost all of his money so now he’s an Über driver that’s taken up smoking. Yeah, that would make me happy inside.

But my case was totally Brady-free.

Some background: I had worked with a person that was uniquely difficult to work with. I won’t bore you with the details, but this person wreaked havoc across multiple departments – including mine. Sadly, in the blind thrashing around, that passed for “work” that this person did, well, more than one person was set up to take the fall for the odd behavior. I’m keeping the details vague, because it really doesn’t matter – and if you’ve spent more than five or so years working, it’s nearly certain you worked with an idiot someone like this.

Heh heh – Scott Adams should be knighted. But first, we need a King . . . maybe King

One happy morning, I heard that they had been escorted from the building. I felt schadenfreude in abundance. While working out on the treadmill that day, I just listened to Mack the Knife on a loop. Why Mack the Knife? Dunno. It felt right.

It’s a good song, even though the first time I heard it was in 2007. Thanks, YouTube!

Part of my schadenfreude that day was a sense of justice – this person had personally made life difficult for several of my friends. And for me. Even though getting fired was hard for that person to go through, the entire company was better off now that they were gone.

But, even though I’d like to engage in more schadenfreude (it’s fun to enjoy the pain of others and sniff the sweet, sweet smell of their tears), I try to avoid it. Why?

Karma. Treat a person badly, and it comes back to you, with interest. Maybe not from the same person, but I do think there is a balance in the universe. Unless that person has wronged you – so watching Charlie Sheen implode wasn’t any fun – he’d never wronged me.

Long-term readers will know Johnny Depp has been the source of several good-natured jokes on this blog – but Johnny’s never done me wrong. So, here’s an open letter to Johnny Depp:

Dear Mr. Depp:

I really enjoyed your work in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Dead Man. I also recently read the relatively unflattering recent story in Rolling Stone (Link). If you want to invite me to drink outrageously expensive wine and hang out with you, I assure you that I will post on this blog a true and fair accounting of the kick-butt time I’m sure we’d have. Do you have any tobacco?

Sincerely,

John Wilder – Noted Internet Humorist

So, see, I’m trying to make amends.

It’s bad enough that I now have fernweh. That’s German for “distance-pain” – sort of the opposite of homesickness. I can only imagine the awesome wine that Depp has – so I get fernweh waiting for his private jet to come pick me up. I imagine this would be more fun than that weekend I spent with Mickey Rourke, who mainly spent it eating cabbage, not showering, and watching old VHS recordings of The Price Is Right.

Smoking, Health, and the (Very Small) Risk of Spontaneous Combustion

“Someone is either a smoker or a nonsmoker. There’s no in-between. The trick is to find out which one you are, and be that. If you’re a nonsmoker, you’ll know.” – Dead Again

I sense a contradiction in these signs . . . can anyone help me figure this brain teaser out?

One of the more notable downsides to being a human is that there are numerous activities that you can do that (apparently) have no significantly bad effect on you. Smoke? Sure. You might cough some tomorrow, and your mouth might taste pretty ugly for a day or two, but everyone knows that smoking’s not bad for you, right?

Smoking even has some pretty good immediate impacts – smokers weigh less than non-smokers. And a smoker who quits – gains weight, so there’s a direct negative effect tied to giving up smoking. Plus, when you have a smoker who quits smoking, their brain has to rewire itself. Huh?

If you’ve been using nicotine regularly for any length of time your brain changes. Nicotine has an impact on almost everything you love by increasing the level of serotonin in your brain. What does serotonin do? Not much: serotonin helps to regulate mood and social behavior, appetite and digestion, sleep, memory, and sexual desire and function. Oh, and it increases your mental acuity and speed of thought processing. And (early on in using it) it gives you a nice buzzy feeling of peace.

I’m not sure about you, but if you add in football and beer, well, that’s most of life. Just “quitting” nicotine means impacting . . . everything about your life that you like. I’ve heard it said that nicotine is tougher to quit than Wonder Woman®. Oh! That’s heroin, not heroine. My bad.

Yes. Your brain has to rewire itself. Full disclosure: I’m a former tobacco user (not a smoker) so I know about this personally. I takes three days for the immediate nicotine to drop to nearly zero in the bloodstream. It takes three weeks for the brain to not be foggy every day, and three months for the brain to (more or less) completely rewire.

Second full disclosure: I really like nicotine. When I turn 65 or when the doctor gives me a short timespan on the Earth? I’m going to take in all of the tobacco. Get a tobacco suit. Bathe in tobacco water. Use it as toothpaste and underarm deodorant.

Nicotine is easy to start, easy to love, and has some great short-term properties. What’s not to like?

Well, there might be some longer term problems – not so much with nicotine (which might mess with your heart after decades – but probably isn’t much more of a risk factor than being fat) but with the delivery system. Inhaling buckets of smoke daily for thousands of days in a row might be bad for you. Who knew? And chewing tobacco and vaping appears to have (some relatively minor) increase in risk of several cancers plus some heart stuff.

But when you’re feeling that wonderful feel from tobacco, 23 year-old-you doesn’t care a bit if 65 year-old-you gets lung cancer, because 23 year-old-you is pretty sure that aging is what happens to other people, and not to 23 year-old-you.

That’s the other thing about the brain – it prioritizes things that are happening to you, right now, today over things that might happen to you in the future. And each of us values that future differently.

The “different value” of the future is apparent when we look at different deals. Would you prefer $50 today from me, or $50 from me three months from now? Everyone (except three-year-olds) will pick “now”. Tons of things can happened in 90 days. You might spontaneously combust. You might get hit by a tiny asteroid while out walking your pet penguins, poodles, and parakeets.

Okay, what if I offered you $100 in three months? That sounds like a deal many people will take. You realize that spontaneous combustion and tiny asteroids aren’t all that common. You decide that a risk is worth it to double your money. But even this deal is situationally dependent. You might really need that $50 to buy more trashbags so you can throw away all of your Star Wars® dolls action figures after that horrible last movie.

This is what economists call a “discount rate” – it’s literally how much you discount the probability of a future event versus your present needs. Most often it’s used with money and a specific percentage is used, but in the end, it’s all about how different people value the future.

Why do we value the future differently? Beats me. And, I think it beats everyone. And it’s certainly not the whole story (LINK):

The first study examines health-related variables associated with making tradeoffs between the present and future, including body mass index (BMI), exercise frequency, dieting, and smoking. The authors find that the discount rate is a significant determinant of BMI, exercise, and smoking and that it can explain 15 to 20 percent of the variation (or differences in these variables across people) in each of these measures. Interestingly, no other variable explains as much of the variation as the discount rate. When the authors create an index of these four health variables, the results are even more striking – the discount rate explains one-quarter of the variation in the index, while no other variable explains more than one-tenth.

Thankfully, our tax dollars went to study the correlation between how people do deals involving money and whether or not they exercise. In the end, the answers appear to be pretty messy. People smoke, because . . . maybe . . . they like it?

Some people might even need it.

80% of schizophrenics smoke versus 20% of the population. The one (actual, diagnosed) schizophrenic that I knew smoked constantly. It turns out that the nicotine from the cigarettes regulates the dopamine thingys in their head/brain thing, and is a pretty substantial benefit. Schizophrenics smoke a lot, and are (from everything I’ve heard – from real doctors) actually amazing good at self-dosing with cigarettes to provide themselves meaningful benefits, and, well, not be as crazy.

Humans are complicated in their behavior, even when not schizophrenic.

What is the impact of a choice today versus an outcome in the future? Does the first bite of cake care about the second? Not really, but your discount rate may tell you how much you eat.

Oh, and back to tobacco:

So why did I quit? Three reasons: to (1) see if I could, to (2) lower future health risks (self-diagnosed) and to (3) stick it to the man. Tobacco products are heavily taxed. If I can voluntarily lower tax payments and then live longer so I can drain Social Security?

Yeah, count me in!

(John Wilder is NOT a doctor, except in an amateur, Civil War doctor sort of way when extracting splinters from Pugsley and The Boy, so please don’t consider this medical advice.)