Category: Big Thoughts

Declaration of Independence: Not Just A 1776 Thing?

“I have nothing to declare, my dear man, except my genius!” – Babylon 5

Best breakup letter.  Ever.

Despite the common opinion that Thomas Jefferson was a hockey player for the Saskatchewan hockey team, “Saskatoon Blades®” (who was remembered for scoring three hat tricks in one season against the “Prince Albert Raiders™” in 1986) there was another Thomas Jefferson that history also remembers.

This Thomas Jefferson was an author, a president of the United States, a founder of a university, and wrote a really great mandolin solo, which has sadly been ignored since the invention of the guitar.  Sadly, this Thomas Jefferson was wholly unable to play hockey at all, probably because he couldn’t skate any better than my kid sister.

Regardless, Thomas Jefferson was only 33 years old when he also wrote a document that has been long remarked upon and probably contains some of the most famous sentences in the English language:  The Declaration of Independence.   In a little bit of history, John Adams had to get Jefferson drunk to convince him to write it because Jefferson was a bit nervous (this is actually true).  I’m sure that the next morning, Jefferson said, “I agreed to do what?”

I’m with you, Thomas.

Your eyes aren’t real – they’re just in your head.

About 25% of the original draft was deleted in editing.  Apparently, Jefferson had gotten carried away and ended up writing several paragraphs about how he loved potatoes.  The committee wasn’t pleased.  They didn’t like the part where Jefferson waxed poetically about the way they made his chest glisten when they rubbed the buttery mashed potatoes into it.

In the end, Jefferson decided to hit the print button on the sheep the parchment came from, and the document went out.

A girl:  “Hey, Stalin, come over tonight, my parents aren’t home.”  Stalin replied, “I know.”

It was not at all in small print, like a car lease at a Mercedes® dealership.  The Declaration was meant to be read – a copy of it was sent to King George III, though a bunch of sales fliers for hardware stores and Target® were also included, so George might have thrown it out thinking it was all just junk mail again.

The principles of the Declaration were in common discussion at the time in America, so Jefferson wasn’t making stuff up.  Likewise, the people who got the Declaration understood what it meant:  times were going to get spicy.

It’s been a while since I’ve read the Declaration, so I thought I’d review it.  It’s good stuff, so I thought I’d share it.

For no reason.  No reason at all.

The downside is that Jefferson didn’t have a good word processor, and that he didn’t have PowerPoint®.  If so, he could have had it down to a dozen slides or so.  I’ve made a few changes by adding bullet points and capitalizing the word “Earth”.  If Boston is capitalized, Earth should be, too.

Stupid Jefferson.

I trained my dog to smell out fruit, but he doesn’t like doing that.  He’s a melon collie.

Regardless, here it is:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the Earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

  • That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
  • That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
  • Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
  • But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
  • Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

The rest of the Declaration of Independence is an indictment – a listing of reasons why the Declaration had to be written, a “we told you so” section, and the “it’s not me, it’s you” breakup section.  There was another section about how Jefferson would really, really, miss Great Britain and keep the big stuffed teddy bear they won him at the arcade, but the committee told him to “not be a wuss” and leave that out.

You never want to reach the end of the Y-axis on a plane.

In reality, when I re-read the Declaration, I was amazed at how, pardon me, revolutionary it was.  The United States wasn’t founded by guys doing it “just because” – it was founded by guys who really thought about it, and who couldn’t check up on the Internet and find out about how Cardi B was upset about her hair care products.

They had time to think deeply through these issues.  And they came up with this list.

To be clear, I love America.  Thomas Jefferson, in 1775 said that he would:  “rather be in dependence on Great Britain, properly limited, than on any nation upon Earth, or than on no nation.”  Jefferson loved Great Britain, dearly.

The thing that I came away with is these men cared deeply about those around them.  But there was a limit to what they would take.  That limit was simple:  the idea that they couldn’t take part in any fashion in the determination of what happened to their State simply wasn’t acceptable.

  • They demanded laws, laws that weren’t arbitrary and capricious. They demanded courts that were free of bias.  How are we doing now?  We have courts that turn a “thou shalt not” into a “thou shalt” within a half of a dozen decisions.
  • They also demanded that their fate not be judged by bureaucrats who were beholden to government, but only be judged by a jury of their peers. How are we doing now?  Administrative law puts people at risk of life and property and doesn’t allow jury trials.
  • They demanded to be protected by those who would invade the country. How are we doing now?  Fine, as long as a complete disregard for our laws is okay with you.
  • TL:DR, also a bunch of other stuff.

The Federal government of the United States has crept up in size and power.  The charter of the Federal government is (if you actually read the Constitution) very small.

  • Foreign policy.
  • Make naturalization laws.
  • Run part of (not the full part, just part of) the military.
  • Make sure there are independent Federal courts.
  • Making sure that free commerce could happen between the States.
  • Regulate commerce with foreigners.
  • Borrow money and collect taxes for the stuff they do.
  • Own the post office.
  • Make war and all the stuff that goes with making war.
  • Coin money and stop counterfeiters.

Anything in there about making sure toilets don’t use too much water?  No.  Anything in there about regulating what fuels your car uses?  That your car must have an airbag?  That the toothpaste you use meet FDA standards?  That you pay someone a minimum wage?

Nope.  Not in there at all.

Hmm.  Does this sound like a long chain of usurpations?  I could probably think of a few other things.  You could, too.

Remember, if you start a revolution, aim for the tsars!

What is the last straw?  Is it a tax on tea?

Or is it an election that may have been stolen?

So, think about what the future may hold.  Don’t be Wayne Regretzky.

Money In 2021: What’s Next?

“I picked a hell of a day to quit drinking.” – (Randy Quaid) Independence Day

When the aliens finally decided to invade Earth, they started with Poland – didn’t want to ignore local customs.

2020 has been . . . unexpected.

If anyone would have submitted it as a draft for a screenplay, Hollywood would have rejected it since it was too farfetched.  Unless Randy Quaid was in it, flying a biplane to attack aliens.  Then it would have made perfect sense.  Oh, wait, a high ranking Israeli says we’re already in negotiations with the aliens?

Never mind.

That being said, 2020 is (thankfully) nearly over.  That gives us a chance to look forward to 2021.  Keep in mind that no one said that 2021 would be better . . . we just seem to hope it will be better.  It certainly is time, however, to look forward.

I know that whatever things we think 2021 will bring, the actual events of 2021 will be crazier than that.  Regardless of who is inaugurated on January 20, 2021, what are some of the things that we can look forward to?

Here are some of my guesses:

Congress and whatever President we have will keep spending as fast as they can.  Taxes may or may not be raised, but they certainly won’t match the increased spending.  Obama nearly doubled the national debt – he took the United States from $11 trillion in hock to $20 trillion.  Right now, after four years of Trump, we’re at $27 trillion or so in money owed.  This is completely on track to take the national debt to at least $36 trillion in the next four years, which is a little more than I have the last time I checked around the couch cushions.  But I did find out where all the spoons were going.

And to think I’d blamed Pugsley.

The Presidents of the United States must all be Irish – during their terms the debts are Dublin.

But $36 trillion in debt?  That’s certainly gonna leave a mark.  Like Oprah’s dressmaker learned after Oprah demanded Spandex®, you can only distort an economy so far and so long before there are consequences, and I expect that this is near the breaking point for ours.  Thankfully, when Oprah’s dress finally went, the injuries to her crew were covered by worker’s comp.

Of course, I’ve been wrong before.  I would have thought this level of debt was poisonous.  If it was, it’s at least been a slow poison.  The system is so broken that interest rates are low, in some places less than zero.  For now.

Is that enough of a bright side?

The biggest consequences of the money printing will first show up in third world nations with relatively weak economies.  The big consequences of COVID-19 have shown up here already in the damage to the economy of the United States.

In a globally connected world, however, the consequences of United States monetary policy don’t show up in the United States first – they show up first in economies where people don’t make much money.  The “Arab Spring” that led to revolutions across North Africa and the Middle East were a direct consequence of the United States spending money like . . . well . . . Democrats in charge of the presidency and the legislature.  The Syrian Civil War is a direct consequence of the Federal Reserve’s® response to the Housing Bubble.

If you watch an Apple® store get robbed, does that make you an iWitness®?

Don’t tell me that bad lending habits don’t have consequences.  When you see riots in the streets of Cairo or Mumbai or Carcosa, you know that the big consequences from the money printing have hit the world.

Once that happens, be prepared for inflation showing up at home.

Poverty rates will greatly increase in the United States, at least in the first half of 2021.  Sure, there have been billions spent on COVID-19 relief.  Almost all of it has gone into the pockets of big business.  People on the streets?  Not so much.  In some places, businesses are locked down.  In others?  Businesses are going, but limping along due to the consequences of previous lockdowns.

I heard Bernie likes to fight poverty – every weekend he goes out and slugs homeless people.

When businesses can’t afford to pay people, poverty is the result.  The average American had only small amounts of savings – by one measure I found, nearly 70% of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings, which is only enough for a minor emergency.  After that, who can say?

The economy is in the process of fundamental change, and the middle class will significantly decrease in the next year.  What has been conserved after the Coronavirus Collapse®?  Big business has done great.  Mom and Pop restaurants?  Horrible.  Modern Mayberry’s main business district got hollowed out long ago by Wal-Mart® – as did most business districts across the Midwest.

All of the small businesses are struggling – imagine owning a theater that hasn’t shown a movie in nine months.  The local theater was even broken into during lockdown – thieves stole $7,000 in merchandise – two small sodas, some Mike and Ikes® and a medium popcorn.

The transfer of economic power from small business to large has been going on for years.  The space for a small business to compete is getting smaller and smaller.  One local shop did 90%+ of its business in online sales.  Amazon® made one small change to the way that affiliates were paid and deleted the business in three months.

That business is now gone, but Jeff Bezos now has a net worth of over $200 billion – which we can all agree is an expensive net.

I got my degree in kids’ medicine online, too.  You can call me a Wikipediatrician. 

And the people going into poverty?  They won’t exactly be customers of restaurants – eating out will become (if it hasn’t already for them) an easily avoided expense.  People will actually learn to cook again.  Which doesn’t help Mom and Pop.

China will be very close to surpassing the United States as the largest economy in the world in actual GDP.  China’s economy grew last year, while the United States contracted.  Even though China has a lot more people, this still translates into political power on the world stage.  Everyone has been predicting that China will collapse for, oh, 25 years.  Instead?  China has grown relentlessly.  Sure, there are structural weaknesses, but it’s hard to bet against that kind of economic inertia.

Why didn’t Chinese factories close during the pandemic?  Kids don’t catch COVID-19.

How does this impact the average person who isn’t Chinese?

Well the good news is that if you like dollars, they’ll still be useful.  But as other countries, like China, grow relatively stronger, the dollar grows relatively less powerful.  Especially if the United States mains determined to keep printing them as fast as it can.

I’ll toss it over to you, now.  Outside of Randy Quaid in destroying the alien mothership, what do you expect to see in 2021?

Fit For Service: Fat Little Dogs With ESP And You

“We’re on a mission from God.” – The Blues Brothers

I thought this guy looked like a werewolf.  If he bit me, I’d go to the doctor to see if I had a beast infection.

The proprietor over at Adaptive Curmudgeon (LINK), who goes by Adaptive Curmudgeon, Hank Curmudgeon challenged me that he’d only type naked until I did a post where all of the memes come from a particular web page, specifically this one (LINK), which documents Victorian beard styles.

(Update:  Do go visit Adaptive Curmudgeon!  I’m sure I have already confused him with several comments, so I’m owing him big time!)

It’s getting cold, so I thought I’d allow him (Update:  Hank) to at least get a blanket.  Since this isn’t normally how I do my memes, we’ll see how it goes.  But I’m concerned for him – I hear it’s so cold where he is that you can get soft-serve straight from the udder.

(Update:  So, yes, as usual, the problem exists between my keyboard and my chair.  I was thinking that Hank Curmudgeon was Adaptive Curmudgeon sharing a first name and didn’t want to share that name without permission.  So, it turned into a big Frasier episode where Frasier doesn’t know that Daphne spiked the eggnog, and then he spikes the eggnog, and then Miles spikes the eggnog, and then they catch Martin on fire.

All error belongs with me.  End update!)

On to the story.

My dog has ESP.  Well, that’s not really true.  It’s not my dog.  It’s The Mrs.’ dog, MacReady.  I’ll do in a pinch when The Mrs. isn’t around, but I’m not the preferred person – that’s The Mrs.

That’s understandable.  The Mrs. feeds MacReady and pampers it.  In my world?  Dogs get kibble and (once in a while) leftovers.  In The Mrs.’ world, dogs get canned dog food.  So, yeah, MacReady probably picked the right person.

This particular dog is a miniature pinscher, so it’s supposed to be about eight pounds of misplaced aggression.  The Mrs.’ has currently “overserved” MacReady, so he’s currently about sixteen pounds of misplaced aggression and high self-esteem.

I can hardly remember when I tried to get into optometrist school.  It’s all kind of blurry now.

By misplaced aggression, I mean the dog is sixteen pounds, yet it barks like it thinks it’s a linebacker for the Chicago Bears® when someone rings the doorbell, and will bravely waddle to the door to defend the house as fast as its little legs will carry it.

When MacReady jumps off of the bed, I’m constantly in fear that his legs will collapse up into his body and we’ll be left with a sort of dog/sandworm mix that will only be able to wiggle around the floor.  If that happens, we’ll keep still keep him.  You know, for the spice.

The Mrs. is worried MacReady might rupture like a bag of soup.  If so, we’ll toss him in the compost heap.  Then he’ll be min-pin soup for the soil.

Anyway, MacReady has ESP.  By ESP, I mean that he has extra-sensory perception.

I was going to make a joke about his eyes, but I worried that would be two cornea.

And my phone is the cause.

See, whenever my phone isn’t on mute, it makes a particular noise when my front doorbell senses motion.  It’s like a set of not-annoying wind chimes.  The Mrs. used to have the same app on her phone, and somehow MacReady associated that sometimes when the wind chimes played, there would be a person, like a UPS® guy evil eldritch horror or monstrous alien threat* (LINK) at the door.

So, MacReady has figured out that whenever my phone makes that chime noise it means that bad men, perhaps wearing hats are lurking outside to ring the hated doorbell?  He clomps his huge min-pin butt to the door and barks, as threatening as a feather duster in a biker bar fight.

But, as fat and as tiny as MacReady is, he is fit for purpose.  He has two jobs:  be warm and cuddly, and be annoying when someone rings the doorbell.  That’s really it.

Maybe he grew that to cover a neck brace?  If so, he never looked back. 

As people, though, we have a purpose, too.

Are we fit for it?

And, that’s the question I have for you today.

I can’t tell you your purpose.  I can only give you ideas on how I found mine.  But I assure you that you have one even if you don’t know it.

I once read that you should write down things that you could do and do it until you break down and cry with the beauty of what you have written.  I think that smells kinda bogus, and really doesn’t fit well with reality as I’ve found it, and I haven’t cried since Hornady developed the 6.5 Creedmoor.

Me?  I’ve found my purpose (as I know it now) by trying things.  First one, then another.  I’ve found a few things that I’m good at.  Sleeping.  Eating Ruffles®.  I’ve even found some things that I do that are useful.  Putting laundry into the dryer is definitely one of those things.

His girlfriend left him, too.  She found out he was seeing someone else.

But I’ve found far more that I’m awful at.  Singing.  I love to sing.  People love it more when I don’t sing.  Playing guitar.  People like my guitar playing better than my singing, but not by much.

If you have no talent in a subject (or, like me an aggressive anti-talent in music) it’s rarely going to form the basis of a purpose.  Finding those talents that you have, developing them, and then combining them (Scott Adams calls it a talent stack) is really the basis of a purpose.

A purpose is, in the end, the reason that you exist.  And eating Ruffles© and sleeping, no matter how good I might be at those things) is not it.  This blog is part of that purpose.  And my purpose is constantly evolving, not because I’ve lost focus, but because I’ve learned more about who I am and what I can do.

And a purpose may not have anything to do with your job.  Often it is.  But in the end, you do the job you need to do so you can feed your family, even if it sucks.  Of course, if you don’t need money, that rule goes right out the window.  But most people who have jobs find them distasteful from time to time – that’s why they’re not called hobbies.

His other hobby was taking pictures of trout wearing clothing.  He said it was like shooting fish in apparel.

But if you do have your purpose, especially if it’s a special purpose, I can tell you that you need to get fit for it.  Even as MacReady’s purpose is pretty easy to meet – be a warm furry throw pillow and be a tool by barking like a chopper door machine-gun two dozen or so times a day – I bet yours isn’t that easy.

So what is it that you have to do to fulfill that purpose with all of the impact of a fat miniature pinscher impacting a carpeted floor accelerated by gravity at 32.1740 ft/s2 (6.62607015×10−34Js)?

  • Is it physical? Get in the best shape you can.
  • Is it mental? Practice improves everything.
  • Is it spiritual? There are many folks that can help you there – who knows what you might find.
  • Is it courage? Is it scary?

It might be.  Actually attempting to fulfill a purpose can be daunting.  What happens when you fail?

Not if.  When.  If the purpose is big enough and worthy of you, you will fail – that’s the basis for learning.  And you will fail until you don’t.  You have to be strong enough to keep going, building yourself up layer by layer.

I like having lots of layers on my bed – that’s a blanket statement.

You’ve got to bark at that door every day, if that’s your purpose, even if you don’t have ESP.

*I went with the spelling from the 38 year old movie – I figured it was more commonly known than the spelling in a story written over 82 years ago.

Luck And (Sort Of) $20

“What’s this, then? ‘Romanes eunt domus’? People called Romanes, they go, the house?” – The Life of Brian

When Clint was taking pottery class, before he put his ceramics into the oven, he’d snarl:  “Go ahead, bake my clay.”

I went on a long-ish walk today.  Walking is fun, gets me outdoors, and allows me to feel the wind on my scalp.  Not that being bald is bad – when I was younger I used to play chess with bald old men at my hometown’s park.  It’s really hard to find 32 of them all at once, though.

I went on the same walk yesterday.  The thought came to my mind, hey, I’m going to find a $20 bill when I go walking soon.

And today?  As I had just finished 1.56 miles (still heading out) I looked in the ditch by the side of the country road.  Could it be?  Was it?

It was.

No, not another Bud Light® can.  It was my $20 dollar bill!  I’m not making any of this up.  Here’s a picture.

I got home and found that someone ripped the center pages out of my dictionary.  It went from bad to worse.

Now it’s not the worst thing I’ve found inert, piled in the weeds next to a crumpled Bud Light™ can – that would be the Ex.  But it wasn’t exactly a full $20 bill, either.

I sent a picture of it to my friend.  “Looks like you’ve got about $9.50 there, John.”

Yup.  It is a real $20 bill.  Just not a complete $20 bill.  And since you need to have 51% of a piece of paper currency to trade it in – it’s not $9.50, it’s $0.00, although I’m sure that in Pennsylvania (or Wisconsin, or Georgia or…), my 45% of a $20 dollar bill would magically transform at 3AM into a full 55%.

So, was I lucky?

Yup, I was.

Why would I deprive an Uber driver of a chance to take part in a marathon?

Although we talk about all of the right things to do with your money (or bullets, or gold, or PEZ®) one thing you have to factor in is luck.

Pa Wilder, generally, did it all the “right way” – saved money, owned his home free and clear for years, bought his cars with cash, and stayed out of debt.  About 25 years after he retired, he was broke – he had spent most of his savings, so my brother John (yes, my brother’s name really is John, too) kicked in and helped Pa along.  Pa didn’t spend it all on pantyhose and elephant rides – generally, he just lived a very quiet life.

Then there was relative “B”.  They went from one cash shortage to another for almost their entire lives – not because of any sort of fault – they were frugal and worked hard.  In one particular cash crunch, they ended up having to sell cattle to pay an emergency bill.  Then, one day, a group of geologists came on to their land just as they’re ready to retire.  The oil company drilled a few wells and started sending them checks.

How much were all those checks worth?

Enough to allow them to get a bulldozer to push over the house they were living in.  Honestly, they didn’t need a bulldozer since the only thing holding the house together were mice holding hands with termites.

I enjoy testing microphone/speaker combinations.  Have any feedback for me?

And enough was left over to build an entirely new house.

It was . . . luck.

As humans, we plan.  We can’t help it.  And we observe patterns:  not getting married until you’re ready, finishing school, not getting divorced, saving money, being thrifty, and investing are things that generally lead to financial stability.

Choice of career is also important – there are few composers of 17th and 18th century-style music that are wealthy.  But for those composers that are?  If it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it.

But we should all take a step back and understand that the future isn’t based entirely on skill – it’s also based on luck.  And, yes, I know what you’re saying – the same thing I normally think – quoting Seneca (the dead Roman):  “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

I try to live my life by those words.

But there’s still just plain luck.

Did Romans kept fit by doing Pontius Pilates?

I am normally that lucky guy.  Seriously – I started writing down a list of incredibly good luck that I’ve had in my life.  It was a very long list.  If I took a hard look at the list, sure, some of it happened because I was clever enough, or fast enough, or strong enough, or just so very pretty – too damn pretty to die, some might say.

But some of those coincidences that happened to me were none of that.  The opportunities were so amazingly rare, and yet, there I was.  It’s not just me who has observed this.  A good friend once described me like this:  “John, if you were walking down the street and fell down into a pile of gum, you’d come back up with a $100 bill stuck to your forehead.”

Part of luck, however, is just understanding that some days are your day – nothing can go wrong.  And other days?  Nothing will go right, even if you’ve prepared wonderfully and meticulously.

Yes, I believe that Seneca is right, and you prepare as hard as you can for those days and seize the ever-loving snot out of those days.  So when it’s my day?  I try to push my luck as far and as fast as I can.  The Romans had this one sniffed out, too:  Fortis Fortuna adiuvat.  Fortune favors the bold.

What kind of aspirin do fortune-tellers take?  Medium strength.

When it’s not my day?  I just slooooooow down.

What I really have seen is that people who are in great moods have . . . the best luck.  Those same people often find opportunities where others don’t see them.

Maybe I’m just an optimist.  I think great things are going to happen to me, so, they do.  When I was out walking on the deck when it was raining and one foot slipped and I did the splits?  The kind of splits that you feel some muscle in your left leg streeeeeeeetch, and then feel that same muscle “give” because I haven’t bent like that since I was in high school?

Not lucky?  Right?

I can’t be sure.  Stretching my leg like a pretty, pretty ballerina sure fired me up to get walking to build that muscle back up.  And it’s working just after a few days.  And I found this neat $20 bill.

Or at least part of one.

Weird, huh?

The United States And The Road From Abundance To Bondage

“Is life in bondage better than death?” – The Ten Commandments

I heard Leftists can’t find tasty mushrooms:  someone said they lost their Morel compass.

Henning W. Prentis, Jr., presented a speech at the mid-year graduation of the University of Pennsylvania in 1943.  Mr. Prentis was the President of the Armstrong Cork Company.  Now, you might think that a cork company would only be of interest to the Swiss Army, but Armstrong was a different breed:  during World War II Mr. Prentis had Armstrong Cork making .50 caliber ammo, tips for warplane wings, sound insulation for submarines, and camouflage.

If your wife can fix a car, fix dinner, and then set a broken bone?  You have a Swiss Army Wife.

Eventually, several divisions were spun off, and it’s certain that you’ve walked on Armstrong Flooring and sat on furniture that was made by yet another Armstrong subsidiary underneath ceiling grids and ceiling tiles that were made by yet another Armstrong company.  All of this was started in a little Pennsylvania cork company way before Pennsylvania’s voting fraud made Kim Jong-un consider moving to Philadelphia.

Anyway, Mr. Prentis seemed to have an awful lot to say – his commencement speech clocked in at 4,953 words.  At 125 spoken words a minute, that’s nearly 40 minutes of straight talking, with zero memes or bikini graphs – looks like he didn’t know how to put a cork in it.  And all of those speeches were before the long lines of diplomas.

Graduation must have taken six days back then.  If you want to read the whole address, it’s here (LINK).

Mr. Henning Prentis’ essay has some very relevant content to today – I’ve posted just a few bits of it below.  I’ve fixed some punctuation, but the words are still Henning’s.  But I still haven’t found the answer to the most important question:  Who the heck names their kid Henning?

The historical cycle seems to be: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more.

At the stage between apathy and dependency, men always turn in fear to economic and political panaceas. New conditions, it is claimed, require new remedies. Under such circumstances, the competent citizen is certainly not a fool if he insists upon using the compass of history when forced to sail uncharted seas.

Usually, so-called new remedies are not new at all. Compulsory planned economy, for example, was tried by the Chinese some three millenniums ago, and by the Romans in the early centuries of the Christian era. It was applied in Germany, Italy and Russia long before the present war broke out.

Yet, it is being seriously advocated today as a solution of our economic problems in the United States. Its proponents confidently assert that government can successfully plan and control all major business activity in the nation, and still not interfere with our political freedom and our hard-won civil and religious liberties. The lessons of history all point in exactly the reverse direction.

Prentis’ quote can, thankfully, be summed up in a single chart that won’t take you 40 minutes to read:

Let’s not be like Russia circa 1917, okay? (Source for base: Wikimedia, CC-BY-SA-4.0, J4lambert)

In the United States, we were (mostly) blessed by abundance for decades at a time.  The Great Depression wasn’t the normal condition for the United States – it was an aberration of a fairly prosperous place.  But the Great Depression really was bad – Bob The Builder® was just called Bob then.

Inertia has a quality all of its own, but luck always helps.  After World War II, Europe was mostly devastated by the war.  Half of a decade of bombs and artillery shells and tanks and armies had killed millions, but also destroyed a majority of European and Asian governments plus much of the productive infrastructure.

America, meanwhile, had been untouched.  It had the oil, the steel mills, the agriculture, and the workforce.  It created consumer goods for itself and products for the world.  There was little competition.

Last time I bought land it was in Egypt.  Turns out I fell for a Pyramid scheme.

Oh, sure you could buy the Soviet version of Chevy Camaro® called the Lada Latitude©.  The Latitude™ was modeled on the Soviet T-34 Tank (500 horsepower diesel engine) that went zero to 32 mph in 45 seconds, and sported a stunning 1.17 miles per gallon in the base model.   It was also available with optional dual jet engines from a MiG-21.  Sadly those engines didn’t allow the tank to move, but did allow the wolf to blow down that pesky brick house, along with those capitalist swine.

There are many things you can call Soviet engineering.  Subtle is not one of them.

But post World War II gave the United States, and then, gradually the world, abundance, leading to selfishness.  Selfishness was probably best showcased in the 1970s and 1980s.  Tom Wolfe even titled the 1970s “The Me Decade.”  The 1980s followed suit – the pursuit of wealth was seen by many as the goal.  Morality?  The market (and leisure suits) were the definition of morality.

The 1980s bled into complacency, and finally into apathy.  The Grunge movement was a reaction to materialism.  What did it all mean?  What does any of this matter?  Pure apathy, so let’s not bathe and get a bunch of piercings and tattoos.

Now we are in a nation where citizens aren’t seeking freedom – they’re actively seeking dependence on the government – free money (guaranteed basic income), free healthcare (Medicare for all), and all manner of other support systems.  To quote one Mr. Harvard McClain (1950s?):  “If your government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take away from you everything you have.”

Sure, I want everything for nothing from the State, but in every single time that’s been tried in human society, it always ends the same way – with the people becoming the enemy of the State.

And that’s how you get to Mr. Prentis’ last stage: bondage.

For a guy dealing with cork, Mr. Prentis has some pretty good vision.

Oh, and I don’t have to yell to get The Mrs. to come downstairs – she can hear a cork pop all the way across the house . . . .

Black Friday 2021

“Who buys an umbrella anyway? You can get them for free at the coffee shop in those metal cans.” – Seinfeld

I never understood why people got attacked by sharks.  Can’t they hear the music?

Black Friday is easy to make fun of, but I won’t (so much) this year.  As other people go nuts over shopping, I get to sleep in on a Friday morning and not go shopping.  It’s a win-win:  other people get to do what they want to do, and I don’t have to join them.

I can see the appeal – the idea of, perhaps, getting a deep discount on something they wanted to buy anyway is attractive.  And economizing by not wasting money is a very good thing, especially if you’re able to afford something that you normally couldn’t buy.  By not participating, though, I save 100% in every store.

I have no idea how well the sales figures will be on Black Friday, 2020.  I expect that the economy is significantly weaker than people imagine.  Multiple shutdowns for Coronavirus seem to have taken a major toll on the economy, so I’m not sure how many people are going to want to spend extra for new cooking gadgets.   I know that there’s a mask mandate in most places, but please be aware:  around here they expect you to wear pants, too.

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and flies like a duck, it’s probably a government surveillance drone.

Many retailers, including our local shopping choice, Wal-Mart®, were closed on Thanksgiving.

As we all know – if there’s a buck in it, stores will stay open.  That is, after all, why they’re in business.  Someone did the math and figured out that it wouldn’t make sense to be open on Thanksgiving this year. That should tell you a lot about where the economy is.

The real economy.

The idea that the Dow-Jones® Industrial Average (DJIA) just hit a record 30,000 should also tell you something – the economy has split.  FaceBook® is doing so well that they’re still hiring Congressmen.  As several astute readers here have noted – the DJIA seems to be entirely disconnected from the reality of the actual economy most people have to work in, even though once upon a time there really was a connection.

But there is a connection between Black Friday and Christmas.  Several people I know complete all of their Christmas shopping either on Black Friday or Cyber Monday.  Businesses count on this behavior to make a profit for the year, although big businesses (Amazon®, Wal-Mart©, etc.) have already had a great year.

If you used your COVID stimulus check to buy baby chickens, did you get your money for nothing and your chicks for free?

The Mrs. and I no longer get very excited about Christmas presents – we’re fortunate that we have most of our needs met and the best gifts are the small ones that require some thought, like when The Mrs. bought me that book on anti-gravity.  I just couldn’t put it down!

The Boy seems generally content, and when I ask him what he wants, the answer is generally, “I’ll think about it.”  Pugsley still has a list.

Well, not a list.  A dozen lists.  He emailed me the first one.  Of course, knowing him, I entirely ignored the list.  Never even opened it.

Why?

Because there was a new and entirely different list the next day.  And a new one the day after that.  Finally, he seemed settled.

I named my iPad® Titanic, so when it was updating it said, “Titanic is syncing.”

“I want an iPad®.”

“Why don’t you take my old one?  I never use it.  Enjoy.”  It had originally been given to me by a Chinese friend – I do love homemade presents.

“Wait, what?”  After complaining that it was the 2015 model, he finally accepted that making do with an old iPad® and something else for Christmas was actually a pretty good deal.  Honestly, I think he’ll remember that more than getting a new iPad™.

Like I said, our family is in a good place, but we know that not everyone is.  I expect that there will be a lot less spent on gifts this Christmas.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing.  The best parts of healthy relationships aren’t material.  Long after a gift has worn out or been lost, the benefits of a real relationship remain.

If Schrödinger’s cat went on a crime spree, would he be wanted dead and alive?

I expect that the recession is far from over.  I also think that we’ve moved from a period of relative plenty into something . . . new.

New doesn’t mean bad.  New means different.

And if that meant that Black Friday stopped being a materialist holiday?

We might all be better off.

Time, Treasure, and Talent: Three Gifts To Be Thankful For

“We paid him in gratitude and life lessons.” – Psych

But it’s what we got. 

The other day I went to McDonalds®.  This is not a usual thing, because the McDonalds® in Modern Mayberry is run and staffed by people who (really) once gave me a bare McMuffin™ instead of the Sausage McMuffin™ with Egg© that I had asked for.  Some of the folks who work there (not all of them) couldn’t spell dog if you spotted them a “d” and a “g”.

I ended up going there because The Mrs. asked if I wanted to have lunch with her and one of her relatives.  I was intended to get the food.   When I asked what she wanted, she said, “Surprise me.”   Since I like spending time with The Mrs., I agreed.  Since we never went to McDonalds™, I figured that would surprise her.

The Mrs. said to meet at noon.  Immediately the calculations went off in my mind:

  • It will take me fifteen minutes to get to McDonalds®.
  • It will take 10 minutes in the drive-through at McDonalds™. In Modern Mayberry, McDonalds© isn’t fast food, it’s convenient food (at least when they get the order right).
  • It’s another 10 minutes to the relative’s house.

To be on time, I’d have to leave home 35 minutes before lunch.  Simple.  And, as it turned out, my timing was exactly (nearly to the minute) correct.  But my biggest revelation of the trip was this:  to feed three people a warm lunch from the drive-through cost $23.74and took 20 extra minutes from my life.

I bought lunch for the three of us (again, with me eating light) and I did the math – with the cost of my lunch deducted, each of them could have had a one pound ribeye steak and side dishes if we cooked it ourselves I and could have done that in 20 minutes or less.

Oh, sure, you say, who would want a one pound ribeye steak when one could have a box of ten lukewarm chicken McNuggets®?

Well, me.

Well, I guess McDonalds® has a pretty sophisticated social media group.

And that brought me to today’s thought.  It’s the week of Thanksgiving and I already hit gratitude, but I’m going to drive that psych-out home with this post, too.

Gratitude is being grateful for the gifts that you are given.  That implies that you use those gifts wisely.  The biggest gift is the only one that we all get right out of the box when we are born:

Time.

Time.  It’s been a subject that has fascinated me since I discovered that there are irreversible processes.  You can’t unbreak a glass.  You can’t uncrash a car.  And you can’t undo intentionally leaking all the ink from 20 or so pens on an oak hardwood floor under your bed and drawing pictures of horses when you are three.

My parents were really chapped about that last one.  Oh, they weren’t happy about the car, either.

Each of us only has so much time.  It’s both a blessing and a curse that (most of us) don’t know how much time that is.  It’s a blessing because we can face life unafraid without knowing our fate.  It’s a curse because we might waste our Time.

Literally the first item in my search for the term “time”.  I could have picked another term, but ain’t nobody got time for that.

Waste of anything we have is a failure to show gratitude.  We are each given our measure of Time.  To waste it?  You are wasting everything that your life is made of, and what you could achieve.  To be clear – your achievement isn’t for you, it’s for the future of mankind.  What are you doing with those precious moments that you have to make the future of mankind better?

Or, at least you could use your time to get on the cover of The Rolling Stone.

Even if you aren’t religious (to be clear, I am), this duty is simple – what are you doing to make the world better?

Don’t waste your Time.

The second thing that you can waste is your Treasure.  Good heavens – when I looked at the prices I paid for lukewarm McNuggets® compared to the cost of a home grilled steak dinner, it was embarrassing.  Seriously – the cost of a Quarterpounder® with Cheese™ and a medium fries was the cost of a ribeye steak.

I’m not saying that I’m only going to eat ramen noodles warmed by the heat of my thighs rubbing against each other as I spend quality time on an elliptical trainer.  Nope.  Besides, that’s much messier than keeping the ramen duct-taped under my armpits.

You really don’t want to know where I warm the pâté.

But each one of the people reading this (I’m hoping that Bezos and Musk don’t read this) have a limited amount of money.  What you do with it really matters.  Ma Wilder (who was my adopted mother) didn’t deal well with waste – to her, a wasted drop of gravy was an affront against all that was good.

And Ma Wilder was right.

“What’s the most expensive food in the world?  Food you buy and then don’t eat.” – John Wilder

But that’s also why we don’t make candles in summer – we have to pay for the heat to melt the wax and then to get the heat out of the house again.  I love having candles in the basement, but most of the year I can’t have them – who lights a candle when the air conditioning is on?

That’s the most expensive light in the world.

I’m sure someone else has said that the most expensive food in the world is the food you buy and don’t eat, since it is the most basic idea in the world.  But I haven’t seen it before, so I’ll take it until some bright commenter (Ricky?) notes that the Internet says that some French monk said it in 457 A.D.

(And, no, that won’t bother me a bit.)

But I guess that’s maybe why the French eat snails?

Well, he’s no Pinochet.  He didn’t have helicopters.

But wasting your money is wasting your time, and wasting your life.  I’m not sure about many of you, but my inheritance was the time and love I got from my parents and family.  Oh, and a box of rocks (this is true, I’ll save it for a future post, maybe).  But the Treasure you have represents potential.

There was a story I read once, I’m going from memory, and it went (more or less) like this:

A group of monks asked a Chinese Emperor for more robes.  The Emperor asked:

“What will you do with the old robes?”
“We will turn them into sheets for our beds.”
“And your old sheets?”
“We will turn them into rags to clean the floor.”
“And your old rags?”
“We will incorporate them into the bricks that make up our monastery.”

Do not waste your Treasure:  exhaust it.

The final thing you should have gratitude for?

Your Talent.

I am really grateful for each of the Talents that I have.  But, like Time and Treasure, wasting Talent is, well, wrong.  Just like Time (mostly) and Treasure (at least partially), most of the Talents you have weren’t earned, but given at birth.

What do you do with your Talents?  That’s where it gets interesting.

I have used many of my Talents during the years, and only a few of them are on display in this blog.  After all, you can’t see how shiny my scalp is over the Internet.  NASA uses it as a beacon to guide spacecraft back from orbit.

Wasting Talent is probably the worst, even more than wasting Time and Treasure.  Time is determined in many cases by forces beyond our control.  Treasure?  Treasure is fleeting.  Elon Musk made $100 billion dollars this year.  And it can evaporate as quickly as it rained.

But Talent is the most inborn of the traits, and in my opinion, the most tragic thing anyone can waste.  I can’t gain the Talent of Eddie Van Halen even if I devoted my entire life to playing the guitar.  If I spent the next decade studying the guitar, or trying to sing?  People would pay me for those talents.

Pay me not to use them.

Well, I never bought any Princess Leia CDs.

I’ll explain:  one time we went to church and I was too hoarse to sing.  The Mrs. said after that service, “I never knew how beautiful that music could be.”  This is a true story.  I guess that if people can have Talents, I can have an anti-talent, too.

In the end, I have to be grateful for the Talents that I have, and grateful for the Talents I can use.  Can I be filled with pride for them?  Nope.

So, as I sit here typing – my goal is this:

To use every Talent I have, for every minute left in my life, as much as I can.  Why?

Because a Talent is a gift.  And if I use it well, for the benefit of me and those around me in a positive way?

That is Virtue.  And that is a goal all of us can share in:  living the most virtuous lives we can.  Think of your Time, Treasure, and Talent as ways to become virtuous, because they are the greatest and, perhaps, only gifts you will ever have.

Also, don’t look up Rule 34.

So, to sum up:  I’m grateful for the Time given me, the Treasure I have earned, and the Talent I was given at birth.  These are three of the things in my life I’m most grateful for.

I’m also thankful for the Hot Mustard Sauce® from McDonalds™ on lukewarm McNuggets©.  That still tastes pretty good.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Fight Club: A Dystopia We Can Learn From?

“Fight for us.  And regain your honor.” – The Lord of the Rings:  The Return of the King

What’s a robot’s favorite Mexican food?  Silicon carne.

When I was a kid growing up, I read 1984 by George Orwell.  This was the grim version, as opposed to the much funnier version by Mel Brooks.  It had a profound effect on my worldview, as books often do when you read them in 7th grade.  In it, a globalist group of communists fought each other continuously, while subjugating the entirety of the human race.  Hmmm, wait, that sounds familiar?

1984 was a bleak book.  I’m not sure who I talked about it with, outside of writing the chicken scrawl of a report in schoolboy block letters and handing it to my really hot 7th grade English teacher.  Since my reading scores were, well, advanced, she just let me read what I wanted to read while the rest of the class all read the same book.  It felt nice being a special pretty pony.

I followed 1984 with Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.  I think my teacher suggested it.  Whereas 1984 was a dystopia built on the subjugation of a boot eternally stomping on a human face, Brave New World was a dystopia built on frivolity.

I fell into a vat of chemicals once.  My quick reaction nearly killed me.

Frivolity was where the masses were, more or less, endlessly drugged and entertained and so that their opinions never had a chance to develop, or impaired at birth so they could never think.  The tyranny in Brave New World was the tyranny of a vapid public who never thought beyond the most recent mindless and sexual encounter (strongly encouraged by the state) and the latest movie.

Oh, wait, that sounds familiar too.

Yet another dystopia is the movie (and book) Fight Club.  Fight Club is a 1999 movie based on a 1996 novel that (mostly) tracks the movie.  It is a creation of the 1990s, but, to quote the most excellent YouTube® movie reviewer, The Critical Drinker (LINK, some PG-13 language), it is very relevant to today’s world.  If you haven’t watched this 21-year-old movie and are interested, I suggest you watch The Critical Drinker’s review afterward – he includes spoilers.  I’ll warn you – the R rating was earned, and there are some very dark moments to the movie.

There won’t be any spoilers here – what I have to say doesn’t require me to spoil the film.

Tyler Durden told me handcrafted soap is the best.  No lye.

To really get Fight Club?  You have to watch it at least twice.  It is a thoughtful movie.  Does it have detractors on the Right?  Sure.  It’s R-rated.  Some have called it nihilistic (I disagree) and there are other complaints which I won’t go into here.  Regardless, I won’t beat myself up for going against the grain of other folks who didn’t like the movie.

Very few movies are perfect, but this one is very, very good.

I first watched Fight Club in 2012 or so.  It made over $100 million at the box office, so at least someone talked about Fight Club.  When I finally watched it (which was no fewer than three basement furniture re-arrangements ago) I was stunned.  How stunned?  It’s the only movie that has its own tag on this blog.

Vegan Club?  Everyone talks about Vegan Club.

The constant, pervasive theme of this movie is that the systems of globalism have created boxes for men that make them less than men.  Here’s Tyler Durden (one of the movie characters):

“We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.”

This is a simple translation.  A large proportion of the citizens of the United States define themselves by:

  • How much and what kind of furniture do they have?
  • How nice is their apartment?
  • How well can they write reports in a soul-killing job where large corporations seek to avoid liability in a cold, systematic way?  Does that kill their soul?
  • How can they avoid deviating from the norm to wear the right tie to the meeting?

These things are death to the soul.  As the character Tyler Durden explains:

“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your (deleted by J.W.) khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.”

I saw a robbery in an Apple® store once.  I was an iWitness©.

Marcus Aurelius and Seneca nod in approval.  They’d follow up:  you are your virtue.

And you, dear reader, are not your money or your clothes.  In many ways we are conditioned by society to believe that those are the things that define us.  We are not.  And if you believe that, you’re not alone.  Tyler describes the twilight of the soul brought about by a life dedicated to consumerism and status.  Live for the material world, and you’ll be swallowed by the material world.  You can never achieve enough, because someone always has more, does something better.

With that philosophy?  Money becomes the god that men seek:

“Damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy (stuff) we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war.  Our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

I saw a meme (didn’t save it, don’t have the author but I’d love to credit them) that I (sort of) reproduce below:

Michigan is going to ban car sales based on popular Internet videos – the governor wants to stop car-owner-virus.

This meme gets me.  It’s the essence of Fight Club.  We’re a species that is, more or less, programmed to achieve.  For who?  For our group.  It’s why the NFL® is popular today.  Okay, that’s why the NFL™ was popular until they showed us that we’re really not part of their group at all.

We run races for a reason.  We play basketball.  We wrestle.  We have swim races.  Well, you guys have swim races.  I was in a 100-yard swim race in sixth grade and placed 11 out of 12.  I wasn’t dead last because some poor kid got the cramps.  My 11th place finish wasn’t close.  I think they ended up timing me with a calendar and an abacus.

Regardless, we compete.

Why?

It’s wired into us.  Competition partially defines us.  And the stakes have to be real.  There is, of course, a religious aspect as well.  A man has to serve a higher power.  It’s not just competing for today.  There is a bigger game, and there are bigger stakes.  That’s what makes it worth playing the game.  Life is more than consumption and procreation.

Q:  Why did the Libertarian cross the road?  A:  TAXATION IS THEFT!!!  

But men who can run a race fairly and lose with grace are men.  They don’t have to like losing – no man does.  But loss is a forge that makes us stronger, gives us incentives.  Thomas Sowell (I think?) once said that if he were designing a car for safety, he’d put a Bowie knife pointed at the driver in the center of the steering wheel, not an airbag.

Incentives matter.

Now?  We insulate children from the Great Game.  Lose?  That’s okay, you tried.

No, it’s really not.  I lost the swim meet because I suck at swimming and am only slightly better than a car at swimming.  Slightly.

Did I cry?  No.

Antifa protestors – never have to take time off from work.

Did I focus my energy on something where I could be as good as nearly anyone in the state?

Yes.

Swimming was pointless.  Telling me that it was okay was worse than pointless.  It was a lie.

Back to Tyler:

JACK, in voiceover:  On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

CLERK:  Please… don’t…

TYLER DURDEN: Give me your wallet.

Tyler pulls out the driver’s license.

TYLER:  Raymond K. Hessel. 1320 SE Benning, apartment A.  A small, cramped basement apartment.

RAYMOND:  How’d you know?

TYLER:  They give basement apartments letters instead of numbers.  Raymond, you’re going to die.  Is this a picture of Mom and Dad?

RAYMOND:  Yes.

TYLER:  Your mom and dad will have to call kindly doctor so-and-so to dig up your dental records, because there won’t be much left of your face.

RAYMOND:  Please, God, no!                            

JACK: Tyler…

TYLER:  An expired community college student ID card.  What did you used to study, Raymond K. Hessel?

RAYMOND:  S-S-Stuff.

TYLER:  “Stuff.”  Were the mid-terms hard?  I asked you what you studied.

JACK:  Tell him!

RAYMOND:  Biology, mostly.

TYLER:  Why?

RAYMOND:  I… I don’t know…

TYLER:  What did you want to be, Raymond K. Hessel?

Tyler cocks the .357 magnum Colt© Python™ pointed at Raymond’s head.

TYLER:  The question, Raymond, was “what did you want to be?”

JACK:  Answer him!

RAYMOND:  A veterinarian!

TYLER:  Animals.

RAYMOND:  Yeah … animals and s-s-s —

TYLER:  Stuff.  That means you have to get more schooling.

RAYMOND:  Too much school.

TYLER:  Would you rather be dead?

RAYMOND:  No, please, no, God, no!

Tyler uncocks the gun, lowers it.

TYLER:  I’m keeping your license.  I know where you live.  I’m going to check on you.  If you aren’t back in school and on your way to being a veterinarian in six weeks, you will be dead.  Get the hell out of here.

JACK:  I feel sick.

TYLER:  Imagine how he feels.

Tyler brings the gun to his own head, pulls the trigger — click.  It’s empty.

JACK:  I don’t care, that was horrible.

TYLER:  Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessell’s life.  His breakfast will taste better than any meal he has ever eaten.

How many people would love to have Tyler come into their lives and make them live their dreams?  How many people struggle through life, because they can’t take the next step?

You’re not too old.  If you’re breathing, you can make a mark on this world.  You’re not too poor.

My limiting factor is my imagination.  I realize that – it’s probably yours as well.

Regardless of the dystopias of 1984 and Brave New World, Fight Club shows a dystopia where we can win.  How do we win?

By understanding that our lives are in a precarious balance, just like Raymond K. Hessell.  And the first step to living life?  It’s letting go.  Achieving.

I learned to swim when I was very young.  My dad taught me.  I thought I’d never get out of that bag. 

And if you lose at swimming?  Try again.  Or try a new game.

At the end of Fight Club, men prove themselves to be stronger and larger than the dehumanizing systems that they serve.  It’s your choice.  How will your breakfast taste tomorrow?

Also:

Avoid the clam chowder.

 

 

Unrelated:

Steve is a blogger who is a FOW (Friend of Wilder).  Unlike me, he’s talented.  Because of the idiots who run his state, you’re lucky he has time to create something like this for you.  Do it.  No, I don’t get paid.  Steve does.  He’s Our Guy.

Do it.  Here’s the LINK.  There is just enough time for Christmas.

A Tree Fell On My House, But I Have A Chainsaw

“I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay.  I sleep all night and I work all day.” – Monty Python’s Flying Circus

What’s black and white and red all over?  Two mimes fighting with chainsaws.

I saw a quote this week that made me smile a lot.  I’ll share it with you:

“When God put a calling on your life He already factored in your stupidity.”

A few weeks ago, a tree fell down and hit our house during a storm.  And by a tree, I mean a huge one.  I had snapped off 15 feet (57 Joules) up the tree.  It was nearly horizontal, and resting on my favorite roof.

I’ll admit that I was sitting in the hot tub during the storm that brought down the tree.

It was glorious.  I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a tree fall.  It’s wonderful.  Approximately once every five minutes, I’d hear the tearing of wood and then, after a pause for the amount of time it took for the vertical tree to become horizontal, the crash.  The next day, one more tree fell.

It fell into my house.  The Mrs. sent me a picture.

I waited until Saturday when The Boy was down from Upper Lower Midwestia University to solve the problem, because the one thing a boy home from college wants to hear?  “Hey, son, glad you’re back from college for a weekend of rest.  I’m going to grab you and your brother and we’re going to work all day in one of your dad’s crazy adventures.  Oh, and it involves you getting up early and chainsaws.”

Honestly, he should be used to it by now.

Looking back, I realize that in a normal world, I would have called my insurance company.  They’d send out adjusters who would look at the tree.  They’d measure it, weigh it, and sensuously cup its fallen boughs, which still happens to be legal in my state.

I’ve heard you can save a lot of money on car insurance by switching.  Switching to reverse and leaving the scene.

They would look in the book of “Tree Falling On House Payments.”  They’d then tell me that elm trees falling on houses in Upper Lower Midwestia were excluded.  I would then correct them because I live in Lower Upper Midwestia and the tree was actually a son of a birch.

Then he says, “Oh, you’re that John Wilder.  Of course!  Insurance will cover it.”

Then, I would call a tree company to come and move the tree.  Since everyone in town had a tree fall on their house, it would take a month for them to show up for an estimate, and another month for them to remove the tree.  After the tree company charged me $2200 to move it, I’d toss the bill to the insurance company.

I’d pay the deductible (which is currently set at my left kidney for my homeowner’s policy, and my cornea for auto), and that’s it.

But would that be the Wilder Way?  Of course not.

I can sleep in on the weekends.  The Mrs., who is borderline insomniac, feels that this is my superpower.  Generally, I can get to sleep in less than five minutes, often in less than one.  The Mrs. can only sleep on Tuesdays after 9 P.M. if it’s not Daylight Savings Time.  The Mrs. has walked into the bathroom to brush her teeth and returned to find me sound asleep.  I can even do it when I’m driving, though my passengers don’t seem to care for it.

What’s green, fuzzy, and will kill you if it falls on you out of a tree?  A pool table.

The reason I can sleep is only when I don’t have a Mission.  When there’s a Mission?  I wake up and I’m ready to go.  I don’t even need an alarm clock.  The tree on my house represented a Mission.

As it was, I had Pugsley and The Boy available, and daylight was burning.  I knocked on each door as I went out to start work.

I started with the branch trimmer.  Alone.  The sleeping leviathans inside had yet to move.

Branch trimmers are like the scissors that Hannibal Lecter would use to, umm, prune a rose bush.  This was my third set.  The problem with the first two is that The Boy and then Pugsley pulled the handles too hard and bent the metal.  Sometimes, living with them is like living with five-year-olds that don’t understand that they can twist metal with their bare hands.

So, a paid for the expensive trimmers this time.

Trees don’t walk.  They lumber.

These trimmers were good enough to cut through about a 2” branch, which is pretty stout.  I took the trimmer and started hacking.  I was about 30 minutes into hacking when The Boy showed up.  Pugsley showed up slightly later.  It took us 10 years to convince him he had to shower, and now he has six of them a day.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find that he takes a cheese plate into the shower.

When Pugsley showed up, I had him get the chainsaw, mix gas, chain oil and chainsaw sharpener.  I showed him how to sharpen the chainsaw blade, which took all of 30 seconds, but then he knew how it worked.  I also showed him how to adjust the chain.  These may seem like small things, but they are rites of passage.  There are many tools in a cabinet, and some are mostly harmless, like a screwdriver.  But a chainsaw?

A fear of spiders is called arachnophobia.  A fear of chainsaws?  That’s called common sense.

For the next seven hours we were like ants, taking branch after branch off of the tree, first with the branch trimmer and then with the chainsaw.

I had a dentist who used to be a lumberjack.  He pulled a tooth by mistake.  I’ll never to Axedental again.

Finally, we were down to two major branches.  By the time we’d gotten there, I realized that what I had done was, slowly, cut off all of the minor support points.  It seemed like a good bet.  But it was also a nagging feeling that I might be making the problem worse.

I was.  While sitting down, I heard a sharp crack.

Like wood breaking.  The exact sound I had heard while having a beer in the hot tub during the storm.

One of the two branches left holding up the whole tree was cracking.  Looking at the tree, I saw that it was big.  I estimated that what remained was about 5,000 pounds (one metric “Your Momma”) and a quick check of my estimate that I did while writing this backed that number up, unless the tree was on a low carb diet.

That 5,000 pounds was going to fall on my deck, and if I wasn’t careful?  5,000 pounds dropping 15 feet is a lot of energy – enough energy to smash a deck, a Wilder, and maybe an insurance adjustor to boot.

I had The Boy and Pugsley run into the garage looking for whatever lumber they could find that was the right length to prop up this rapidly deteriorating situation.  After ten minutes, I had two 2×4’s and one mangy plank holding the tree up.  It wasn’t moving, but it wasn’t stable, and it was 10.5 feet (one metric Barron Trump) up in the air.

The Mrs. took a picture of my makeshift supports.  She sent it to her high school friend list.  One friend who is in city planning responded, “Oh, no!  This looks like all of the ladder safety videos that they make us watch.”

I thought about what I’d do, and sent The Boy and Pugsley off to buy a 10’ stepladder and some ratchet tie-offs.  When they got back, I propped the 10’ stepladder under the branch, shimmed it with lumber, and then got the chainsaw-on-a-stick.

The chainsaw-on-a-stick is just that – a tiny electric chainsaw mounted on a stick.  This one has an 8” blade, and is meant to cut things far away.  That’s good, because that’s exactly what I intended to do.  I would have liked to cut this particular tree from orbit, because it was lopsided – it looked like it wanted to twist, hard, clockwise.

I used to be a lumberjack in the Sahara Forest.  Well, it used to be the Sahara Forest.  I’m that good.

I tied off the branch to a convenient tree so when I cut it loose it couldn’t fall into the garden shed.  I further tied off one of the remaining branches so maybe that it wouldn’t twist as it fell.

Pugsley pulled out his camera to record the action.

“Nope.  Put it away.”  The situation that I had put myself into was less than optimal.  I realize that as men we are here not to live a life without risk, but to live a life.  And the Sun was now going down.  It was now or never.  One way or another that tree was coming down before the Sun went down.

Getting injured because you refused to let someone else clear the tree?  That seems like a stupid and futile gesture.

Well, if you’re looking for stupid and futile gestures, you’ve come to the right place.  I just didn’t want my particular stupid and futile gesture to result in YouTube® videos of my death.  I proceeded to take the chainsaw on a stick and started to cut into the branch.

As far as tense moments go, having the stored energy of a Ford Explorer® 15 feet up in the air, dependent upon your calculations and being right?

It’s tense.

When I was back in Alaska, I could regularly drop trees within a degree of where I wanted them to go.  Was I a lumberjack?  No.  But I had to lay in dozens of metric Your Momma’s worth of wood a year just to heat the house.  You get pretty comfortable with a chainsaw doing that.

When I cut wood in Alaska, I didn’t get overtime, even though I logged a lot of hours.

But that was 15 years (3 centimeters) ago.  I cut into the tree.  I first cut a relief cut in the top of the horizontal branch.  I didn’t want stress to build up there and hang the whole mess up.  Then I started to cut from the bottom up.

You have to cut a tree that’s acting like a beam from the bottom up.  If you cut it from the top down?  It will bind the saw, and you end up in a crazy place where you have a stuck saw and a Ford Explorer®’s amount of energy dependent upon you freeing it.

I cut into the tree.  A lot.  Then paused.  The opening the chainsaw had made grew larger as the stress pulled the tree apart.  I cut into the tree again.  By now, the entire 5,000 pounds was hanging by a 3” by 2” slab of wood.  Still no movement.

Finally, I cut deeper.  I hear the “crack” as the tree split.  Pugsley was watching from a safe distance.  He said the tree dropped perfectly down.  I wouldn’t know – I was headed the opposite direction.  Not only was there the 5,000 pound tree, there was also the bit still on the roof.  I could easily imagine that part whipping around as it was pulled by the main branch.

The final crack came.

The tree did come down.  Perfectly.  The bit left on the roof?  Didn’t move an inch.  Exactly as I wanted it to go.  I sat down as The Boy and Pugsley removed the rest of the debris.  Pugsley even got me a beer and said, “You’re done, Pop.  Have a rest.”

I trained my kids that if I ever choke on a beer, they should give me the Heineken® maneuver.

The damage to the house was minimal, actually.  A bit of gutter needs to be moved back into place.  One shingle lost its gravel in a small circle.  A solar light was broken.  I need to replace one deck board, one chair, and one plastic bench.  Oh, and we spent 27 hours of labor.  I was sore for the next three days.

If a tree falls on your house and that’s all you lose?  You’re as lucky as me.  Which is pretty lucky.

Or, more likely?  God has factored my stupidity into my life.

The Four Best Stocks For After The Death Of The Last Human On Earth

“You kids change partners more than square dancers.” – That 70’s Show

Marie Antoinette should have known the time was right for a revolution in France – she had a Coup Coup clock.

Okay, the title is clickbait.  We all know the Four Best Stocks For After The Death Of The Last Human On Earth are Rock, Paper, and Scissors.  Oops.  I think the real answer is Rock, Rock, and Rock.  I mean, who is going to make the paper and the scissors?

Oh, wait, I said four.

Add Google®, I guess.

One constant theme of this blog since I started writing it is that I want to convince everyone I can that tomorrow may not look like today.  I think this is important, because too often we start to think that our lives of today are the lives that people will live forever.

Why?

That’s the way we’re wired, to think that tomorrow will look like today.  It’s complacency.

Dozens of my ancestors lived as kings, having all the food they wanted and the choice of the peasant maidens in the dozen miles (metric conversion of one deciliter) around the mud hovel they lived in.  It may sound dreary, but it’s still better than Netflix®.

Genghis Khan is far better known than his brother, Gingivitis Khan.  

My ancestors lived every day of their life just like that, until they died at age 32 after they got a nasty infection because they were sharpening their bronze and flint nosehair trimmer, and accidentally conquered China.  That seems to keep happening.  I blame . . . well, all the people that conquered China.

For 100,000 years our brains, as wrinkly and wonderful as they are, grew up in a world where yesterday was mostly like today, and today is mostly like tomorrow.  Except for you people who have wonderful smooth brains.  I think I have some Bernie Sanders™ coloring books for you.

There’s a danger to thinking that tomorrow will be just like today.

Let’s pretend you’re a turkey on a farm.  There’s a nice farmer that feeds you every day.  What a nice guy!  You keep gaining weight, and getting bigger.

What a nice farmer!  Farmers must love turkeys.

Then, one November near Thanksgiving the impossible happens:  the farmer fires the turkey due to the COVID-19 outbreak and his turkey 401k drops 90% and his turkey wife tells him that . . . all those eggs?  Not his.

That turkey has found a fate worse than being roasted at 350°F for three hours (6.02×1023 Watts for six fortnights).  Turkey alimony.

The point remains:  life changes in an instant, never to return to the way things were.

I shot my first turkey this year.  Scared everyone in the meat aisle, and now I’m banned from Wal-Mart.

Here’s another one (I’ve used this example before):  I’m quite sure that there was a British guy at the dock watching as the last Roman Legion left Britain in 407 A.D.  What was he thinking?

“The Romans have been in Britain since 43 A.D.  They’ll be back.  Why wouldn’t they?”

It’s nearly a 100% chance that was exactly what he was thinking.  Our hypothetical British dude had never lived a single day when Roman troops weren’t controlling Britain.  They have to come back, right?

Well, not really.

There are reasons that hordes of Roman coins are found buried in Britain.

When Rome was strong, a Denarius (Roman coin) contained about $4.00 worth of silver at today’s prices.  As Rome continued, successive Caesars trading in Rome’s military might, reduced the amount of precious metals in the Denarius until it hardly contained a whiff of silver.

I hear there are extraterrestrials living in Rome – someone said that there were Italiens there.

Then one November near Thanksgiving, the impossible happens:  the guy in Britain gets fired and the Roman 401k drops 90% and his British wife tells him that Joe Biden (who was only 35 in 407 A.D.) was elected.  The worst part?

Joe Biden is carrying the British woman’s baby.

Our Roman’s world collapses.  Everything that he knew changes overnight.

When archeologists go digging in old British trash piles, they find something interesting.  The trash at the bottom of the pile (when Rome left) contains really cool broken plates.  Archeologists love plates.

Why?

Because angry wives break them all the time, so they make it easy to date a culture by the number of wives that go crazy and start throwing plates.  Apparently, the number of mad wives that throw plates is a scientific constant like the speed of light, so trash pickers archeologists can date the change in a culture based on broken plates.

The archeologists determined this:  the broken dishes at the time the last Roman Legions pulled out of Britain were awesome.  They were great dishes.  And everyone had them.  It turns out that dishes in the Roman Empire were mass-produced in southern France and shipped everywhere in the Roman Empire.  Southern France was the Wal-Mart® of quality dishware.

You can plainly see that Indiana Jones’ least favorite band is the Rolling Stones.

Then archeologists looked at dishes that were 100 years later in the trash pile.  They knew this particular trash pile was a king’s trash.  The dishes in the king’s trash were something that a kind parent would have congratulated a mildly retarded child for because the mildly retarded child tried really hard.

But these Roman plates weren’t widely available – only a king could afford them.

History happens one day at a time.  People lived it, the hard way.  Let me give you some examples that might add some perspective:

  • A French girl born at the start of the French Revolution would have been 26 and had multiple children when Napoleon finally lost at Waterloo.
  • A German girl born at the end of World War I would have been 27 and had multiple children before the end of World War II.
  • An American girl born at the end of the Clinton administration already has 43 earrings, sixteen tattoos, and herpes.

What I’m trying to explain that there are two types of changes the first one is fast, really fast, like the turkey’s bad November day.  The second type seems fast only when viewed from 200 years in the future.  Remember, love can last for a lifetime, but herpes is forever.

In my estimation (for what it’s worth) we are in an atmosphere where both types of change will happen.  We will have sudden changes, like the turkey, or like Marie Antoinette. These will be changes we cannot go back from.  If you burn a receipt from Arby’s©, there’s no going back to get those curly fries if they shorted you.

We all burn our receipts from Arby’s™ as soon as we get home, right?  Otherwise The Man would know how much we like Horsey Sauce®, and you where that leads:

Tyranny.

I digress.

But I will* note that I had a conversation with a friend over a year ago.  He and I were talking about investing and other things.  During this conversation, I had an epiphany.  Where was my money?  Mainly in a single bank (this has now changed).

Where does the Federal Reserve hide its economic failures?  In debasement.

My question to my friend then was this:  “How much of your money is diversified?”

His response was, “Well, it’s in mutual funds, and in a wide variety of stocks and bonds.  So it’s diversified.”

I followed up:  “No, I mean how much of all of that is in dollars?”

There was a long pause.  “All of it.”

I guess this post is mainly to point out that just like we don’t buy things in 2020 with a pocketful Roman coins, and we don’t buy things with French Francs from before their Revolution, and we can’t buy things with Soviet Rubles, how long will we be able to buy things with Dollars?

Just asking.

I’m not even suggesting any particular path, though I will disclose that if everything goes well, my kids might inherit some silver and gold when The Mrs. and I pass on.  Like any turkey, I know one thing:  tomorrow generally looks like today.

Until it doesn’t.

*Standard I’m Not A Financial Wizard Blah Blah Blah And If You Listen To Me For Financial Advice You’re Insane Differently Mental Disclaimer.