Creating havoc since 2006. Fair use is claimed for images on this site, but they will be removed (if owned) on request out of politeness. movingnorth@gmail.com
“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.
“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.)
“He was poisoning me? It was all there in the job title. The head of Human Resources. This time, it’s personnel.” – Dr. Who
Umm, I can’t top this.
I’ve posted before about how government is a jobs program (LINK), but increasingly government has made businesses hire more and more people that produce nothing in order simply to meet government regulations or to fend off lawsuits. It’s like welfare, but with the whole, “you mean I have to be there at eight . . . am?”
Think I’m kidding?
Let’s start with Human Resources. I love the title. HR. Every company has someone who does this, right? The title makes me think they go to a mine and take a pickaxe and look for bits of people that they can assemble into Frankenployee.
I’m wondering where I go to complain about the other employees and their “made from living tissue in a normal manner that doesn’t insult God” privilege?
Well, what’s the problem with HR? They’re there for their workers, right? (Notice the They’re, there, their trifecta!)
Let me tell you a story that I’ve seen unfold several times during my career.
Person A, unhappy about employee favoritism, to John Wilder: “I’m so angry, this isn’t right! I’m going to tell Human Resources!”
John Wilder: “Umm, dude, Human Resources reports up to the President. They are not on the employee side, they’re on the company side.”
Person A, after talking to HR: “They asked me if it was sexual harassment. I said “no.” Then they said they didn’t care – quit whining.”
If your boss treats you poorly, and fires you, and is wrong in every way possible from being rude to being born as ugly as a cross between a turkey and a cat, Human Resources is . . . on their side. As long as he doesn’t take a fire axe and try to kill you at your desk – they’ve got him covered. “Unconventional leadership! Attempts to motivate by leaving a dead rodent in their tea! Didn’t actually kill employee!”
The only way to get Human Resources on your side? Own the company.
Sure, HR helps with finding and hiring people, but that’s primarily so the hiring manager doesn’t screw up and create legal liability by asking the person being interviewed if they’re fat or pregnant, then telling them they must be fat, because they’re too old to be pregnant. HR tells them not to do that. But if they do it? HR will defend you (if you own the company).
HR also helps with setting up employee benefits. Yup. Employee benefits still exist in some places – they’ve not vanished, but they are as rare as a coelacanths. (pronounced see-lo-can-thhhhhhhhhhh)
Yeah, coelacanths are almost as old as your mother. And what would Mom say? Don’t be a coela-canth, be a coela-can!
Let’s pretend that businesses didn’t have to pay taxes. What then?
Well, your accounting department would shrivel – and not the individual employees shriveling so all seventy could fit into a filing cabinet (though that is amusing). You’d only need the accountants that sent the bills, paid the bills, and then do whatever reports you wanted and maybe a couple to make sure employees aren’t stealing too much from you. Sure, it’s important to know why your company makes money (don’t laugh – there are some companies, profitable ones – that have no idea how they make money) and the accountants can be sent out to find which parts of the company cost more than they make, but the current sea of accountants that are devoted to taxation and special treatment of the way the company spends money so it can conform to what the government wants? Yeah, they could go away.
Thankfully, Big Brother Government will never let this happen, though, due to public safety concerns. Nobody wants that many introverts walking around the streets staring at their own shoes. The poor dears would get run down right and left. And how would we pay for cleaning up all the accountant blood off of our cars?
Next victim? Investor Relations folks work with the company lawyers to help the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) pretend that they know what a business is when Congress calls them and invites them to come and talk. Congress then kicks them a few times to show them who is boss, and then sends them back to do exactly what they previously did before they got yelled at.
In reality Investor Relations fills out forms and does annual reports. The purpose of the annual report is so that the CEO can show off how much he cares and about the new charity hospital the company set up in Belgium. Why Belgium? Your CEO thought Belgium was in Africa.
Don’t let the Legal Department reproduce, or your company will have three lawyers for every person engaged in productive activity. It’s like that movie with the aliens with the seed pods. But in this case the seed pods just turn into more lawyers.
Every industry in the United States has “Industry Regulation Experts.” Things that a farmer can throw on a trash-heap in his north 40 are (sometimes) things that a chemical company would get fined for even thinking about purchasing since hazardous waste is the in the eye of the beholder.
(True Aside: There are two kinds of hazardous wastes under Federal law: listed and characteristic. Listed is just because an unelected regulator put it . . . on a list. Many of these items make no sense. But characteristic is funny. Originally EPA was gooing going to set characteristic hazardous wastes as those with a pH less than 3 (that means it’s an acid). OOOPS! Coca-Cola™ has a pH of 2.5. So they set the pH of a characteristic hazardous waste at . . . 2.
Let’s go to bases/caustics. These can still burn you. So, the EPA decided that we’d set a limit of 12. Again . . . OOOPS! Wet concrete has a pH of 12 to 13. So, they set the pH for a hazardous caustic waste as . . . 12.5.
Government is stupid, but not stupid enough to outlaw Coke® and concrete.)
Food production people in California have vastly different regulations than a similar company in Utah might have. And as government finally comes around? Tech companies will soon require hundreds of extra personnel just to sit in your office to tell you why you’re not allowed to do.
Thankfully, there are companies you can hire to do everything we’ve talked about. You can outsource accounting, payroll, HR, and even legal. Groups of consultants know your business better than you.
Rob Halford knows HR and Legal says you’re not supposed to mix Judas Priest® and Babymetal™. But Rob doesn’t care . . .
It’s my theory that our country could be as productive as a boxcar filled with kindergarteners that just had sugar cookies after trick-or-treating. We just need to get everybody rowing and we’d be on Mars in two years.
If not rowing? At least tell them about our new colony on Venus! We’re shipping out new colonists starting every Tuesday!
Found at (LINK). Story “Marching Morons” can be found at (LINK).
I find this picture . . . disturbing. Should this be the XY-Files?
I think that a lot of times, we have no ideas of the capability of humanity. From the ability to understand subatomic particles from the basis of equations and thought experiments that we constructed to the ability to build pyramids and land on the Moon, we continually do lots of stuff the warning label said not to do. And we make bratwurst. Which is, when cooked right, the Best of All Possible Foods®.
Human senses are apparently much more finely tuned than we ever expected and we’ve managed to gather data that we’re way smarter than we ever thought we were. Human senses are adequate to:
Around 60% of the time, judge from a photo if a man or woman is gay or straight. For some reason, this gives gay people the heebee-geebees.
Determine which student came from a rich or poor family with about 53% accuracy. Not super accurate, but better than chance. Perhaps it was because Ivana Trump was in the photo stack?
Determine if people are sick from looking at a picture of their stupid sick face – 81% of the time.
And we might have even more amazing skills:
That could have been the end of it. But another biochemist encouraged the pair to track Milne down and try a blind T-shirt test: She sniffed six sweaty tees from people diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and six from healthy controls. Milne correctly identified which six had Parkinson’s, but she also tagged one of the control subjects as having the disease.
Despite that error, Barran was intrigued—all the more so eight months later, when the same supposedly healthy control subject Milne had identified was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
This is from National Geographic . . . you can view the article here (LINK). It’s not a great article, but I’ll cite the source . . . .
Sick people and well people, I’m not sure who is who, mainly because I don’t care about other people. (Audrey Henderson/St Andrews University)
Yeah, humans can smell diseases. Or, at least old British women can smell Parkinson’s disease, and some people can see them, at least some of the time.
And AI shows that what our brains are doing is processing subtle biological cues that are actual, physical patterns. An AI was set up to determine the whole gay/straight question by feeding it tons of pictures of gay and straight people, and the accuracy of the algorithm was in the high 80% level, if you gave it five facial images per person. Me? My ability to judge gay people vs. straight people is totally non-existent unless I “accidently” open the door when they’re having sex. My ability is zero.
Here’s what the AI figured out: both Gay and Straight people are blurry. NYTimes was where I found this, but it was originally from the original study.
One thing I’ve noted – generally just watching two wrestlers walking onto a mat, I can guess the winning wrestler about 80% of the time. And I can tell which two bratwurst will be tastiest when I grill them. Even if it’s a tie. (It’s always a tie – they’re bratwurst.)
“Nice fish, Ken. You know what Nietzsche said about animals? They were God’s second blunder.” – A Fish Called Wanda
Kids are very expensive, much more so than the tax deduction you get for them. But I’m hoping mine pay back in dividends if I ever need a kidney or four. Don’t think of them as your offspring, think of them as living replacement organ storage.
As most of you know, I’m a big fan not only of Dilbert® (LINK), but also of Scott Adams (LINK). I think that he is the second most perceptive person in our country today. Second most. Ahem.
Back over a decade ago in 2003, he wrote about his financial advice for, well, everyone. He thought that life was pretty simple, and the rules to not screwing up were likewise simple. And, in general he followed his own advice. His list is in bold. My comments follow without the bold.
Make a will. I haven’t done this. I understand that it would solve a lot of problems if I died, but I won’t be around to watch. Unless I become a WilderGhost®. And then I could haunt them as they bickered over who got my circa 1995 mechanical pencil. This is just asking me to take time out of my day and money out of my pocket now so people won’t have bicker in the future. Well, they’re gonna bicker regardless.
Pay off your credit cards. January 15, 2001. That day I paid off my credit cards. For good. The reason I had the balances in the first place was to pay for a divorce, which was quite expensive. Divorces are expensive because they’re worth it. I kid. But not really. Credit card interest rates are high, really high. Whatever it takes to pay off your credit card debt (outside of an overly complicated heist involving George Clooney and a group of tanned Hollywood sex criminals actors and a French goat) it’s worth it.
Get term life insurance if you have a family to support. I’ve always had this, but as I get older the amounts are less – The Boy and Pugsley have less time at home every year, and The Mrs. is getting older, so will have a day less of need for cash . . . each day. Again, Mr. Adams is asking me to fork over cash for things that only are beneficial after I’m dead. Not a great sales pitch.
Fund your 401k to the maximum. It’s now in a comfortable, identified place for the government to eventually raid so they can buy fighter jets, healthcare for people without jobs, and PEZ® for Albanian albinos with alopecia. You’re welcome. I guess I don’t need heat after I retire.
Fund your IRA to the maximum. I’ve never had an IRA. Again, time off from work to go set one up. And I’m confused as to what I would do with an Irish Army anyway.
Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it. Nice, simple language. I’ve owned five houses (on the fifth now) and I think that they’re net neutral as far as investments (I came out well because I negotiated a clause in my offer for my last job. Without that, I’d only be up $10,000. But I’m not really up $10,000, since I’ve had to pay much more than that in upkeep over the years. I don’t expect to make money on my current house when I finally sell it. Don’t live like you have to make money on the house – houses can be really crappy investments and can also kill your financial soul (LINK).
Put six months’ worth of expenses in a money-market account. This simple measure means that emergencies are not as threatening. If you have six months – you can get rid of stuff, change your financial structure, and find a new source of income. If you’re waiting on next week’s check to pay your (late) power bill? You’ve got no maneuvering room. Money is stored freedom. Have some hanging around. Corollary? It’s easier to get that level of cash if your expenses are low.
Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement. Great advice. Wish I would have done it. But my money mainly showed up in lumps. So, I need to (gradually) get it into the stock index funds. The last thing I want to do is dump all my cash into a market near an all-time high. As a side note: almost every single stock I’ve ever bought has been a poor decision, since I was just picking randomly, not with a value investment strategy like Warren Buffett uses. Thankfully, I’ve not hurt our family, since my stock picks have been limited in size to the point I only care marginally.
If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, or tax issues), hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio. Never trust a person whose income is decided based upon their choices with your money. Pay them upfront.
Things I would add:
If you’re a guy, don’t marry early. Thirty might be a good number. Have some really lousy relationships before you select “the one”. Because the wrong “one” will mess your finances up for years. But you might walk away with good stories.
If you’re a girl, find the best guy you can. Early (20?) marriage is okay for you, provided he’s on his way in his career and can afford stuff. It’s probably preferable to marry early. (Uncomfortable Truth) Oh, and girls? It appears the stereotypes are true. Don’t sleep around before you get married – the number of guys a girl has slept with is directly correlated with probability of divorce. It doesn’t work the other way around, the ability of a guy to be faithful seem to be unaffected by the number of partners they had. Don’t shoot the messenger – the facts are the facts.
Don’t have kids. I’m joking. If you’re reading this blog, you should have a dozen or more, because you’re smart, handsome, and the world needs more of your type. (I’m not kidding.)
Don’t have kids outside of marriage. You’re just as financially entangled, but no snuggle time.
Don’t marry someone you’ll divorce. How would you know? You followed my steps one and two.
Don’t have kids with someone you’ll divorce. Kids rarely make a relationship better. And they certainly won’t make the house smell better.
Don’t buy a new car. Unless you have a million dollars. And probably not then. (LINK)
Nietzsche, circa 1875. He was 31 in this picture. His mustache was 44. I wonder if when his neighbors were loud and he was trying to sleep if he twirled that thing up and used it to plug his ears?
Now don’t go asking me how many of my adders that I’ve broken. Okay, I’ve broken 1., 3., 5., 6., and 7. That’s how I knew to add these to the list . . . experience, like a divorce, is expensive. And worth it.
Remember what Nietzsche said: “That which does not kill me makes me stronger, but it does make me unable to retire at age 45.”
“J-Roc, I’m not a pessimist, I’m an optometrist but you gotta keep your eye on Randy, he’s doin’ stuff. I don’t trust that guy, I don’t.†– Trailer Park Boys
The Boy with his first pair of glasses. He might be ready to be an NFL® referee.Â
If I were an Optometrist, I’d be afraid, very afraid?
Why?
The Optopocalypse is coming, and it’s coming fast.
What’s the Optopocalypse?
To get to that, you have to start at the beginning . . . .
Optometry was originally the practice of figuring out which glasses went with which eye. The first pair of glasses for corrective vision were most likely used in Europe about 700 years ago. They were Ray Bans®. Tom Cruise (who never ages) may or may not have been the first customer.
Books mentioning how to fit people with eyeglasses date at least as far back as 1623, with nary a mention of Johnny Depp, who, to be fair, only smells that old. And Benjamin Franklin saw that there was a LOT of real estate left on the eyeglass, and he invented bifocals so he could stare at the ladies both far away and up close. Franklin was a genius, and his invention (probably around 1784) was the most significant invention in optics up to that time. All so he could see the ladies. And the Constitution and stuff.
So, ladies, swipe left or right? (Image Courtesy Federal Reserve)
And that brings us to the most significant innovation in optometry since Franklin’s bifocals. EyeQue™’s Personal Vision Tracker®.
I might be overstating it, but I don’t think that I am. EyeQue™ is a system . . . and it’s a pretty cool one.
I have worn glasses since I was about 20. My original pair were round gold-rimmed glasses, because Indiana Jones® wore those, and it partially made up for the fact that they wouldn’t let me carry a bullwhip and a pistol around the college campus. It was amazing (the glasses, not the lack of bullwhip, that sucked). I remember looking out over a valley in winter the day I got them, the outline of the mountain was so crisp in the winter air. And trees! They had individual branches that had edges and everything!
My prescription hasn’t changed much since then. It’s been stable for decades. Most recently I’ve been wearing glasses that were made before Pugsley was born (Pugsley is 12 now). They work fine, but they’re twelve year old glasses that are scratched a bit. I’ve been to the optometrist more recently, but my glasses were getting pretty bad.  One pair was eaten by a puppy (you could still use them but the lenses had little teeth craters in them), one was scratched up and the nylon that kept the lens in place broke.
I’d been meaning to go to the optometrist two years ago (just for a new prescription, no other problems) but she had cancelled my Saturday appointment. My choices? Take a day off of work to go see an optometrist, or . . . wait. Waiting always works.
Second day air brought me the EyeQue™. It’s pictured. It consists of a small plastic cylinder with a rotating eyepiece. It straps to your phone screen.
After you get the physical diagnostic piece (which I’m assuming contains prisms, mirrors, elfin magic and a small piece of dark matter) you have to download an app. Once you’ve done that, you use the serial number that came with the EyeQue™.  The app, curiously, asks if you have a screen protector, but doesn’t ask you to remove it.
I tried it on my cell phone, but since I’d not updated my Android operating system since 2015 (really), I used The Mrs.’ updated phone and logged into the app.
The device/app combination is ridiculously easy to use. The eyepiece is dialed between 1 and 9. You start at 1, and use the + and – keys on the screen to make a green line and a red line merge into a gold line. Most boring video game ever. The only difficult part (and it isn’t very difficult) was to make sure that you could see both lines at the same time. After you merge the lines, you tell the app that you’ve done it.
You then turn the eyepiece on the EyeQueâ„¢ to 2 (I assume this rotates the elfin dark matter, but if you don’t rotate the eyepiece it won’t work.) . . . and repeat until you’ve gone through all 9 settings. Then Gandalf’s voice comes on and says, “You shall not pass.â€
That’s one eye. Repeat for your left eye. Unless you’re a cyclops, in which case Odysseus would like a quick word with you.
Done, right?
No. You might be not very good at easy tasks, or drunk or something. EyeQue™ makes you do the same nine measurements at least three times on each eye, for a total of a (minimum) of 54 measurements. I’m pretty sure this is to make sure that your readings are consistent, as you have to have a minimum cumulative score prior for it giving you the measurements of your eye required to order eyeglasses. I got the max score each time, so only had to repeat the process three times.
I wrote my EyeGlass™ Number (that’s what EyeQue™ calls it) down. They looked pretty close to my last prescription, but my last prescription had probably been through the laundry, eaten by prescription-moths, or taken by Russian operatives to be included in the Trump dossier. Whatever. It was gone. But the numbers looked right.
I got online.
I went to Zenni Optical (LINK) and bought a relatively inexpensive pair of glasses to test out the numbers (I won’t call it a prescription) that I got from the Personal Vision Tracker. I waited nine days, and got my new glasses.
Wow.
Wow.
I’d never had a prescription so good. My go-to test required the stars to be up . . . I looked at Orion, and, boom, you could see that the third “star†in his sword was really two stars. I’d read once that this was a test the Sioux had used to see if a young man could be a hunter – he had to be able to see the two stars. And I could! Even the bifocals were awesome! Now I must get ready for the hunt.
I’ve since ordered three more pairs of glasses from Zenni (more on that on Monday). All of them work stunningly well. All of them are amazingly inexpensive.
The Boy is similarly nearsighted, and has a fairly recent prescription, but is pretty sure his isn’t as accurate as it could by – he thought my glasses were better than his. I can buy another subscription to the Personal Vision Tracker® for him (LINK), and will do so tonight so he can get some better glasses. The cost of the subscription is a bargain – and is fair, reflecting the tremendous amount of time, research and effort put into programming this wonderful App.
The idea that I can, in twenty minutes or so of easy work in my home, get a stunningly accurate set of numbers that I can order cheap glasses online is amazing. It is revolutionary, Ben Franklin level (but with less time in France). Let’s be honest – the only reasons anyone goes to the optometrist is:
Because they need glasses,
Because they have other vision issues/symptoms, or
Because they are married to the optometrist.
And you should go to an optometrist regularly for b., because going blind isn’t a laughing matter. But there is no reason to go (anymore) just for an eyeglass prescription, which is the revolutionary part of what EyeQue™ has done.  (Contact lenses are different – and the Personal Vision Tracker® is NOT calibrated for those. And you people who stick your fingers in your eyes make me shudder.)
Right now there are only 23 colleges that graduate optometrists in the United States. That’s probably too many. If you take the ENTIRE population of the United States and say they should get a checkup every four years (young people longer, older people more frequently) and it takes 15 minutes for a checkup, you only need . . . (working 40 hour weeks) 3,500 optometrists. A visit should cost a little more than $25 for the fifteen minutes for $200,000 of revenue per optometrist.
Currently there are 40,000 optometrists, and they’re trying to sell you expensive glasses, and vision data that you can get very accurately now for a fraction of the cost of even the $25 visit, I can see this profession going down by 36,000 in the coming years. Maybe if I’m off it will come down a bit less, but even a reduction of 30,000 at an average total compensation rate of $120,000 yields a savings to the economy (and consumers!) of $3.6 billion every year. And people will see better! It’s a win-win, unless you’re an optometrist.
So, the Optopocalypse is coming – and I predict a 90% attrition rate. This type of dislocation always happens with professions where technology changes a profession, just like Ned Ludd (LINK) leading the frame-breakers in response to the industrial revolution. You can’t stop the tech.
Yup, this is a drawing of Ned Ludd. Great fashion sense. Also, a giant. (wikimedia, public domain)
I’ve not been compensated (yet) for any relationship with EyeQue™ or Zenni Optical®. And I might never be. But any link that gets me compensation will be noted as such on the page, should that ever happen.
Also, I’m a blogger, NOT A DOCTOR. THIS IS NOT MEDICAL ADVICE. The only thing “blogger†has in common with “doctor†is that they end in a similar sound. Do your due diligence on this or any other advice you get from the Internet. Heck, there’s one site that says you should avoid setting yourself on fire!Â
“Lies are like children: they’re hard work, but it’s worth it because the future depends on them.” – House, M.D.
Pugsley, prior to going for his midnight shift in the PEZ® mines.
I was talking to a friend yesterday when he mentioned that he had been transferred to manage a group of newly graduated college kids. To be clear – this group of college graduates is in no way typical – I imagine that they’re making in range of $80,000-$90,000 a year. Not Harvard Law money, but still pretty good for the small(ish) town my friend lives in. So, as a new manager to the group (he’s been managing people for decades, and he’s a good one) he got the group together to explain what he was looking for from them, what his general expectations were of his employees. In one line that has been standard for him for years, (I heard it from him when Bill Clinton was President) he indicated that he expected the group to put in, on average, fifty hours a week.
Chaos!
Pandemonium!
My friend had become Literally Hitler.
He eventually backed down to forty-five hours per week, and was demoted to just being Literally Saddam Hussein.
As he told the story, I laughed.
The irony is that these college grads that actually do put in the long hours that my friend suggested will soon be so far ahead of their colleagues that their colleagues will never be able to catch up with them: the harder worker will have more knowledge, more skills, more credibility, and very soon, much bigger raises and promotions. Their colleagues will call them, “lucky.”
90% of success is showing up on time. At least 5% is working just a bit harder, so your skills build up faster, especially when you are young. (The remaining 5% is turtles. All the way down.)
What’s the point in all this hard work and achievement? To be rich? To stress yourself out to the point where you have a heart attack in your 30s and die?
No.
The point is Value Creation.
One of the coolest aspects of the capitalist system is that it allows you (really, forces you in a purely capitalist system) to be of value to your fellow man. Capital flows to those that create and provide value. So, in a truly capitalist system, you create wealth for yourself by creating value for someone you might not even know or ever meet. Bill Gates made money when I bought my copy of MicroSoft® Word™, and yet he’s never invited me for dinner. Nor will he, unless that restraining order lapses. I’ve told him to stop calling me, but that man won’t listen.
Value creation is like magic. You take an idea or concept to make someone else’s life better, and then you create a product or service out of wood, metal, plastic, or just plain computer code, or, like this blog, just out of pure ideas. If your idea is good, people will buy it, eat it, or read it, but probably not all three, unless it’s breakfast cereal.
Capitalism is simple – you (should) make money only when you create value for someone else. Value Creation is nearly alchemy. Alchemy was (at least in part) focused on turning lead into gold. Capitalism is better. It can turn cow poop into gold – when sold as fertilizer. In a capitalist system, we transmute lower valued items into higher valued items every day.
The flows of capital follow the paths cut by Value Creation. Those people (and businesses) that are best at creating value get more money. What do they do with that money? Do they put it in a box? No. They use it to create more value.
And that’s what my friend’s newly graduated college students do not get. The business isn’t there for them to have a great life. It doesn’t exist to pay them a living wage. It won’t pay more because housing is more expensive where the business is. Companies pay based on the value the employees create. Don’t create more value than somebody else would for minimum wage? You’ll get minimum wage. Don’t create enough value for a three bedroom house on two acres in San Francisco? Your boss and company don’t care.
In the end, it’s Value Creation. How do you do it?
“I must have started drinking again, because the woman who tried to activate a supervolcano with a giant fork is standing here, and you’re all acting like it’s a potluck.” – Warehouse 13
A picture of Abraham Lincoln as he was fighting against both the Confederacy and German engineers.
“The world was a web.”
This wasn’t the quote from a Tom Petty song. These were words that would echo through my head for two decades.
I started to write a novel back a long time ago. It started with those words.
And the novel itself? Oh my. I’m sure that if it ever saw the light of day someone would name an award in its honor for the worst novel of the year.
But . . . “The world was a web.”
There are words that haunt you through your life, and this sentence haunts mine, just like wondering how it felt while the Roman Empire was ending (LINK). I have been, since as long as I can remember, really fascinated by the unravelling of society. Once I went to the Wikipedia entry for “Apocalyptic Novels” and just nodded. I’d read nearly all of them. (I just revisited the page, and it’s all filled with editorial stuff, so, much less useful. I won’t link it.)
But the late author James P. Hogan (I read most of his stuff) wrote a novel called “Voyage to Yesteryear.” It’s a good one, though out of print, but to me, it had a fairly stunning philosophical analogy.
We as humans think a lot (and live with) more or less reversible processes. I put ice in the freezer, it freezes. And then it melts. Though once upon a time, I don’t think that there was anything at all in physics that would have predicted that the ice would have floated on the water (most frozen liquids sink – if you freeze gasoline, the frozen stuff drops to the bottom), but it turns out it’s pretty important, especially if you’re a fish. You can stay in the nice liquid water while the ice freezes above you, which, I imagine is important to a fish.
But the second discussion from the novel is that some changes are irreversible – if you burn your laptop in your charcoal grill, there is simply no thawing it out afterwards to get your keyboard to not look like a bunch of charred Doritos®, or get back all of those downloaded pictures of Emilia Clarke from Game of Thrones® or all of your Tom Petty MP3s. Those are gone, dude.
The fire (presumably from a dragon?) goes beyond the phase change represented by freezing and thawing. The physical structure has been changed to the point that it’s not remotely recognizable. And you can’t go back. There’s no way to find all the carbon atoms that baked off your display and combined with oxygen and put them back in the screen, let alone the same place in the screen that previously held them.
It’s gone, dude. And even the Roman Stoics (LINK) knew this prior to Rudolf Clausius coining the term “entropy,” which led indirectly to the U.S. Civil War through a series of humorous translation errors that made Abraham Lincoln think that Clausius was making fun of his big hat.
But let’s go back four score years (that’s 80 years, for those who are used to the metric system) from that hatastrophe. What happened then? Besides Ben Franklin being in the prime of chasing every young lady who could spell “yes” there seemed to be this revolutionary event. Pardon. Revolutionary event. Like the American Revolution.
And you just can’t go back. You can morph into something different, but you can’t go back. There are some ideas that are so radical, so amazingly simple that once they pop out – they hold the attention of almost everyone who hears them. The American Revolution was one such thing – you could never turn back after that.
Unless you hit reset. I was leafing through the Internet as The Boy piloted our car up the road for a short road trip – I alternated between reading and a light nap. The light naps were ended with (small) bursts of adrenaline when our cars trajectory was different than my half-snoozing mind expected. It’s like Dad radar. Even asleep I was looking for that change we could never recover from.
On article popped up during the ride about the Yellowstone Volcano, and how NASA was developing a plan to stop it.
Reread the sentence above. I’ll wait.
NASA has become convinced that a massive volcano is of greater threat to humanity than asteroids. I mean, both would ruin your day, but Yellowstone seems to pop off a continent cleansing burst every 600,000 years or so (last one 630,000 years ago) and some folks with a LOT of time on their hands at NASA are convinced that they should be the ones that handle it.
What NASA thinks might be in the volcano.
They’ve even advanced plans on how to stop it. And, I’ll admit that saving the lives of upwards of two billion people might even be considered a laudable goal in some circles. But not me.
It’s not the saving all of those people that I object to. I’m probably neutral on that, unless one of them is me. Then I become a raving supporter.
I don’t give NASA any slack. If it doesn’t involve activities that directly get humanity to Mars, I’m thinking that they should just close up shop and give the money to Elon Musk (LINK), who actually seems to be interested in space exploration.
But even worse, it appears that NASA is letting people write stuff that have NO understanding of math: the NASA plan involves pumping water (which is not exactly in huge supply in the Rocky Mountains) into the magma chamber and to extract the heat. Which has how much to do with NASA’s mission? Zero. Maybe less.
Here’s the latest mission I could find:
To pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research.
So, if this involves trying to cool hot coffee so you can drink it faster by adding an ice cube or two, I’m on board. Takes a few minutes, doesn’t distract NASA from their actual day job.
But in this case the coffee is 11,500 cubic miles of coffee. At 1300˚F to 2400˚F. And NASA wants to cool that. With water.
Okay, I’m pretty sure that drug testing isn’t required to work at NASA. But the amount of heat we’re talking about is simply staggering. At a depth of five miles (that’s 8km to the “people who use money that looks like Christmas paper, and also happen to use metric”) to the top of it, keep in mind that this magma pocket sends pockets of superheated boiling water five miles through rock. The amount of energy is stunning – almost as much energy as a D.C. NASA bureaucrat with a liberal arts degree uses to avoid doing work on a typical Tuesday.
First, the good news!
I won’t bore you with all the mathy stuff, since The Boy and I figured it out. It’s not hard, it’s just thermodynamics done in hotel room on three sheets of hotel room note paper.
Let’s say you had to cool the Yellowstone magma chamber. Latest number that I had on how big it was? 11,500 cubic miles.
Cubic miles. Drive from Seattle to Los Angeles. That’s 1137 miles. Do it 10 times. Next to a mile high wall of magma. Or just once. Next to a ten mile high wall of magma. That’s a mile thick.
Hmmm.
But, let’s pretend we can cool that 52,800 foot high wall with water. Where do we get it?
Well, the Colorado River is a big one. Let’s pump all of that to Yellowstone to cool it down. I’m not going to bore you with even more thermodynamics, but you have to heat the water, and then add even more heat so it boils. (I actually saw one billion dollar business venture implode because they didn’t know you had to add the extra heat to make it boil).
At the current flowrate of the Colorado River, it would take 435,843 years to cool the lava.
I know that NASA seems to not math very well anymore, but, given past rates, Yellowstone would have exploded at least one more time, if not two. And the people in Los Angeles would have to go nearly a half of a million years between bottled-water drinks.
And that’s the good news – that only half a million years of concerted effort beyond anything the world has ever seen will maybe stop one human extinction.
But some scientists worry that the addition of the cooling water might turn the magma chamber brittle – increasing the likelihood that Yellowstone would explode in a big catastrophe. And that’s the good news!
Second – the bad news.
But that’s really not the point. There are a whole host of things that are much more likely (given the last 100 years or so) than a 600,000 year periodicity (like Yellowstone has) volcano to mess with our world.
But most folks look at this risk incorrectly – there’s a probability of occurrence, but also a severity related to the risk. Low probability events occur everyday, but they have low severity. I might lose yet another hair on my head, never to return. But the impact? Not very big.
An asteroid the size of Dallas heading towards, well, anywhere at 50 miles per second? Bad day. For everyone. Yet heart disease is more likely to kill me than the kinetic impact of an asteroid.
As catastrophes go, that’s pretty bad. But research (dating back 15 years or so) on genetics of humanity indicate that it’s likely that 70,000 years ago after the supervolcano Toba lit off, only 2,000 humans remained. Not on Toba. Anywhere.
We were that close to the lights going out on us forever.
These big, nonlinear events are very low probability, but they have a huge impact, and may impact the ability of the human race to appreciate Tom Petty.
Think aliens like Tom Petty? They should. But who can account for taste?
“Truth is, identity theft isn’t hard. A number and an ID is all you need to drain a bank account and return some money to some very surprised retirees. But why stop there? As long as you’re stealing someone’s identity, why not use it to contact some known terrorist organizations on unsecured phone lines? Why not use it to threaten federal judges and insult the local drug cartel? Most fun I’ve had in Miami.†– Burn Notice
Come and Take It was a Texan callback to Leonidas and his comment to the King of Persia. Not an invitation to my bank account, weasels!
Turns out it was my credit card company. I only have two credit cards, pay ‘em off in full each month, and they’re issued by the same bank. Why two credit cards? That will become apparent shortly . . .
Bank Lady: “Mr. Wilder, did you open an account with us on July 12?â€
Since opening a credit card account is something I do, on average, every five years or so, I shook my head.
Since this isn’t the future, she just waited until I answered in actual words. “No, I’m pretty sure I’d remember that. Besides, I’m too busy digging in the blogging mine each night to take valuable minutes of my day to eat, or open a completely redundant credit card account.â€
“Well, someone did. And, Mr. Wilder, they have your birthdate. And your Social Security Number.â€
Great. There’s another one of me out there – exactly like me, but with a goatee. Oh, wait, no . . .
I need a gold sash. Does it matter if yours is on the left or right?
Name, birthdate, and Social Security Number are the trifecta for an identity thief. Those were the Holy Grail of information. With that information, anyone can open an account. It wasn’t another person – it was a thief!
Me: “How much did they charge?â€
Bank Lady: “This is weird – looks like nothing. Only the annual fee. We sent the card and it was returned to us. I’ll cancel this account.â€
Me: “Where did they send the card?â€
Bank Lady: “Looks like Texas.â€
Great. Stupid hot summers, and now full of credit thieves. Stupid Texas.
And I wondered how I got hit? I’ve tried very much to practice safe financial practices:
No online banking.
Shred all personal information and credit card offers before throwing away. Preferably treat like a witch and burn. Bonus points if the credit card offers scream while burning.
Only share information with those that “need†it. I had to punch a Nun one time because she was too nosy. My religion? That’s “need to know.â€
I wear latex gloves while in any bank. No reason. It freaks them out, though.
I had dreaded this moment. There is some portion of my personality that is works off of fear. There is some part of your personality that works off of fear, too (LINK). The oddest part of this fear coming true?
The dread was gone. The identity theft had happened, and it was “go†time. Let’s fix it!
Me meeting evil me. Or is it me meeting nice me? Probably me meeting nice me.
My second call was to my bank. I verified my account balances and wasn’t missing any money, though I did tell my banker about the time that over 10% of my net worth went missing from my account (LINK).
She laughed. (And you will too – read the story).
I also asked her about account security. Since she wouldn’t talk to me without a special code that was texted to me, that was nice. Additionally, she said:
“I see that you don’t online bank, and you don’t have a debit card. You should be good.â€
Let that sink in. My banker just pointed out that online banking and debit cards are huge potential security holes.
And they are. I did some research, and it turns out if you online bank and get hacked? You’re screwed. This one gentleman had nearly $1,000,000 lifted from his accounts over the course of months because his laptop was hacked. And debit cards? That’s like walking around a pitbull pen in porkchop panties. Not a good idea.
My last call was to LifeLock®. I vaguely remember the CEO put his Social Security Number (457-55-5462) on billboards, on commercials, and everywhere. I also remember that someone opened a fraudulent line of credit on the guy. And I seem to recall hearing that the CEO went to the thief’s house and kicked his butt – I think it was a story I heard on the radio. I can’t find any record of this online, but I like the concept: “If someone messes with you, our CEO will go to his house and beat him with a broken pool cue.â€Â That’s one way to earn a consumer dollar!
I normally hate the hard sell, but this day I was okay with it.
So, I got the double-platinum bejeweled version of LifeLock®. Normally I like to think about financial decisions before I make them, you know, let a bit of reason kick in so I make a sound decision.
This wasn’t rational thinking. It was total, complete reflex action. Doctor taps my knee with rubber hammer? Knee jerks. Robber takes personal information? Wallet jerks. I want the best plan, you know, the CEO ass-kicking plan. Can LifeLock™ waterboard? If so, I want to add that to the plan.
Can I get the “Wet Electrodes on the Nipples†plan? Oh, yes, I’d pay double.
A thief took my information.  Could they get more? Yup.
At 6:50 AM Monday morning, my bank (credit card) texted me, asking if I’d made a purchase from an online store at 5AM for $300. They’d declined the purchase.
Did I make the purchase? No.
If there is anything that all Wilder family members are in agreement on? 5AM is the devil’s time. We should sleep through that. And, my bank probably noticed that. And also noticed I don’t live within 750 miles of the state where they asked the stuff to be delivered.
So a thief has my Social Security Number, my birthday, my name AND my credit card number. One of those I can change (credit card). Actually, two if I decided I was transgender. Then I could change my name, too. But I would be an UGLY woman. But I could be Laura Ingalls Wilder. Has a ring to it?
I have not been nor ever will be a geologist. Just sayin’.
My bank politely asked me to call them. When I did, they asked me if there were any purchases that I had to make today?
No. I’m okay.
(THAT’S WHY I HAVE A SECOND CARD! Two is one, and one is none. Always have a backup on important stuff. And I even carry emergency cash. And a small parachute. And a nosehair trimmer.)
The credit card number I’d had for nearly 14 years was cancelled. A new one, with a new number, would be headed my way immediately, per my bank.
And it turns out this is fairly common. 11,000,000 people a year have to go through this. So, statistically?  It’s not if, it’s when it hits you. Sorry to be the voice of bad news.
But now I have to deal with other stuff. Notify the IRS (there’s a number for that) and notify the Social Security Administration (there’s a number for that, too), because both of those are also conduits for fraudsters to mess with my life. Somebody messing with my tax return, which in some years would buy a small country in South America (very small country, like an acre or so). Somebody taking my Social Security (don’t want to get old and find out that somebody other than politicians has stolen my Social Security).
And it gets even more twisted – identity thieves are also stealing identities for getting prescription drugs. And for having medical bills charged to other people.
And, honestly, I think that’s where my leak was. I think an M.D. I went to hired a sticky fingered weasel that deserves to be nipple-electrocuted like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, since that’s one of the few places where I can see all the above information being in one place.
I’d pay extra if they let me be Gary Busey. Not in the movie. I’d pay extra just to be Gary Busey.
Note: John Wilder has received no compensation for this post, or any of them, yet. If LifeLock(R) offers me a big pot of money? I’m on it.
“When a man of Scotty’s years falls in love, the loneliness of his life is suddenly revealed to him. His whole heart once throbbed only to the ship’s engines.” – Star Trek
Why, oh, why does it not say Texas Pain RELIEF Institute?
Daniel and I were friends from second grade onward, until I moved away.
I’m not sure if it was our mutual love of Mad® magazine, parody, or wearing army fatigues that we found here and there and the unearned ranks, units, and qualifications we’d poorly sew onto the faded olive drab fabric (I’m pretty sure I was a sergeant of a unit that never existed). We’d regularly sleep over at each other’s houses, throw up poorly breathing nylon tents in the back yard, and then go on maneuvers with our toy rifles; fording quickly flowing rivers or assaulting fortified hills. Daniel even managed to find a Korean-era K-ration we were too scared to eat. I mean, it smelled okay, but . . . . And we each shared magazines we certainly didn’t want to let our parents know we had (hint: boobies). And I still have one book he made me promise I’d return to him because it wasn’t his, this really has weighed on me, and I’m not kidding.
What magazines we looked at may or may not have looked like. I plead the fifth.
During the school day we skipped lunch together, talked science fiction together, and told bad jokes together. Our conclusion on Mel Brooks and Hogan’s Heroes? The best things on television, ever. Carrie Fisher and Sigourney Weaver? Our goddesses, along with Madeline Kahn. Especially when we saw Carrie in a bikini one night at Daniel’s house. Wow.
It was also Daniel who taught me that in Tom and Jerry, Jerry was the evil one.
When I visited him at Easter I knelt and did the novena, even though I wasn’t Catholic. We were brothers. Daniel and I belonged to the same tribe, until time and distance pulled us (mainly me) away.
This week a study (really, a metastudy, or summary of other studies, which is like a summary of Game of Thrones for your friends who don’t watch Game of Thrones) was released about loneliness and how being lonely negatively impacts health. (Hint, being lonely is worse than being obese, drinking too much, or not having enough Pez® to stick to your eyebrows on St. Johns’ Day in Nova Scotia.)
AARP commissioned a study that says that 42 million people older than 45 suffer from “chronic” loneliness. Since there were only 120 million people older than 45 when they did the study, that means that over 35% of those people over 45 are . . . sad. And it’s very sad when that many old people with that many wrinkles are sad.
What does chronic loneliness do to you?
Nothing good.
It increases your odds of death by . . . 50%. That sounds like a lot, and it is. That’s almost worse than the wrinkles.
So in the age of Facebook®, people are less connected to one another. In fact, in another study they found that old people who relied less on email and social media for their social connections were . . . happier. Let me write that in blazing letters across the sky:
Facebook® is no substitute for calling the people you know and love and talking to them. Period.
Let this be a reminder, the people on Facebook™ have bad morning breath, have bad armpit smells, and leave their socks all over the place (except, of course, me). But to a lonely spouse, or worse, and idealized memory? Not so much.
Well, my parents had dinner parties. When they were in their 50’s I was still a pup, and had to got to go to their dinner parties, at least when they were at our house. The couples would get together, and they’d immediately split up. The ladies would go the kitchen and drink whatever Mom made for ‘em, even though it smelled like something that would catch on fire if a stray spark veered by.
The men would retire to the dining room (nobody smoked anymore) and drink bourbon, scotch and talk about elk hunting, war (real, actual war) stories, or how the weather was, or what the crops were like. Someone would make an off-color joke, and give me a wink and a nudge. Really, it was always Vern that did that. Honestly, most of the jokes were right over my head unless they were directly and obviously about boobs, but at least I was part of the game.
After drinks, there would be dinner. Which would also include drinks.
The gatherings were even more wide ranging than that – on occasion we’d go spend the night, for instance, at a cabin deep in the mountains that one of the families owned. During the course of that weekend we built a mountain road with a road grader, rode horses, and I outshot all of them with Pop Wilder’s .222. Oh, I and won a game or three of Risk®.
We hunted together with Pop Wilder’s friends. We went on wide-ranging 4×4 trips deep into the forest at 12,000 feet. We rode snowmachines together. Although I was certainly the junior member, more than anything it looked like a tribe – a group of friends that supported each other and shared in each other’s joys and sorrows as we snacked on ziplock-fresh sandwiches at 12,000 feet.
And today I don’t see that. Although I know a zillion adults, most of them don’t get together like this. Most of the adults I could get together with like this (there’s a pretty big implied trust) live very far away.
In our current world, we spend our time chasing our children on their adventures (wrestling, football, academics, Boy Scouts, etc.) and focusing on our spousal relationship, and finally, work. I know that sounds like the best way to spend your time, but . . . is it, really?
Right now, as a family, we depend upon the iron triad of children, work and spouse. All of my adult friends (locally) come from either my children or my work, or, IS The Mrs. What happens when work changes (this is a minority of friends we see, so not much) or the kids get older? Two thirds of the local social network dries up. That day.
And, I recall that the social network for my parents lived on with them after I graduated. After Pop Wilder retired. It was a durable network. They may have been alone, but they were never lonely.
In some weird way, we seem to have taken the informal support networks from men and women. We seem to have replaced them with the evanescence of work and children.
We have, when those support networks crumble over time, ignored those left over. And they get lonely. They don’t have Vern attempting to turn the butter into my thumb when he passed it to me (it never worked, I was young and fast, and he was older and a bit inebriated).
Where are they now? Are they in our past, those who trust us with their very souls?
There is an endless summer.
That endless summer contains every single day young boys spent together in a world bound only by imagination, in a world where each barley field represented a chance to crawl on our bellies toward enemy lines to stop the Germans in their tracks, or to stop the Cylons® before they could hit our main base. One last swig from the canteen before we braved the minefields and tried to take out the German 88mm gun before it savaged our boys to pieces.
We played at life, at courage, at understanding where we fit in our tribe. We discussed love before we knew what it was. We discussed right and wrong when we were living it. We displayed strength because it was intertwined with our being.
I called Daniel’s number tonight for the first time in years. I remember their house, and I know right where they were when they picked up the phone, heck, the number was familiar with me. They remembered me through the fog of ages.
I’ll talk to Daniel soon.
Why did I wait so long? Guilt. I felt (and still feel) that I’m the one who killed our endless summer with the starting of my car and the loss of my virginity. I’d left the fields of play behind. I’d left the best friend that I’d ever had or will ever have behind.
Tonight I gathered up the courage to make the call back towards summer, the call back to the innocence of boys bound together in blood, in bad comedy, in Steve Martin, in mutual, total trust.
And we’ll go back to the summer, where we belong. At least for a few minutes when we talk.
Did it get dusty in here? My eyes seem to be watering.
Nobody gets to be lonely in summer . . . especially not an endless one.
A picture of Abraham Lincoln as he was fighting against both the Confederacy and German engineers.
