Category: Complacency

Penultimate Day And 2021 Thoughts

“The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace.  It failed.  But in the year of the Shadow War, it became something greater: our last, best hope for victory.  The year is 2260. The place: Babylon 5.” – Babylon 5

Why did 2020 cross the road?  To get to the other cyanide.

This year we didn’t celebrate our traditional Wilder family holiday, Penultimate Day.  What does Penultimate Day entail?

Well, you drive south for two hours or so.  Then you go to Best Buy® and, under no circumstances do you buy a cell phone.  But you must look at cell phones.  Then, after not buying a cell phone, you go to Olive Garden® and have some nice pasta.

This celebration started (I think) in 2011 or 2012, I think.  The Mrs.’ cell phone (a Blackberry®!) was going south.  We drove to the nearest cell phone store that was tied to our carrier, which was a Best Buy™ about two hours from us.  We got frustrated attempting to figure out the deals after the phone clerk wheeled out a surgical gurney to take out part of my intestines.  I told him, “No way!”

“Really?  You need to look at the contract closer.  It’s in the appendix.”

We gave up on buying a phone.

Then, frustrated at our lack of being able to find a phone, we gave up and decided to have dinner.

Hobbits always use vibrate on their phones – they don’t want the ring to give them away.

And then we drove home.  It was impossibly silly, driving a total of four hours to go to not buy a cell phone.  And we did it on December 30.  So, I made the joke that since the New Year was a made-up holiday, why not make up our own?  Thus Penultimate Day – the next-to-last day of the year – became an official Wilder holiday.

Over the years, we took Penultimate Day seriously.  There were one or two exceptions where we skipped Penultimate Day, primarily because Pugsley or The Boy had a sports event.  That is, of course, acceptable.  The goal of Penultimate Day is to do something fun together as a family.

We stuck to celebrating Penultimate Day.  Why?   Because it was fun, it was silly, and it was ours.

We didn’t celebrate Penultimate Day this year.

First, traveling into a major metropolitan area didn’t make sense to us – here in Modern Mayberry the case-rate for the WuFlu is relatively low, and we have no idea what the requirements are to even go into Best Buy® in Major Undisclosed Metropolitan Area.  Second, while we enjoy going to the Olive Garden™, I’m still convinced that the free breadsticks are some kind of con game.  I keep expecting a bill to arrive from them in 2028:  “owed to Olive Garden© for “free” breadsticks:  $257,065.”

What’s the only pasta you can get during COVID-19 lockdown?  Macaroni and sneeze.

Instead, we slept in late, played a few games, and more-or-less relaxed the entire day.  Our contribution to the economy of the United States?  We had a nice dinner The Mrs. cooked for us at home, used some natural gas to fire our heater, and spent about $3 in electricity for lighting the place.  That was it.  Our participation in the economy on December 30, 2020 was probably less than $20, total.

That’s the problem if you’re running an economy.  No gasoline, no money heading to the Olive Garden©, and no tip to the waitress.

I read that Christmas spending was down this year, to $851 from $976 in 2019.  That’s a drop of 13%.  But this is Monday, not Wednesday when we talk about economics.  On Monday, we talk about the big picture.

But 13% is a huge drop-off.  And when you add in all of the activities that people aren’t doing?  I imagine it was even more.  The big picture?  Economic contraction increases instability.

I wrote in 2019’s Penultimate Day that we were entering a period of chaos, where entire edifices that we used to stand behind would crumble.  Now, we sit in 2021, and a majority of the people who voted in the national election think it was rigged.

How do you get a baby alien to sleep?  Rocket.

Also rigged?  The system of justice in the nation.  We see Antifa® and BLM© “peacefully” destroy cities.  The massive number of unindicted felons?  It’s okay to loot.

2020 was a mess, but it looks like we got to get a glimpse of the man behind the curtain.

2021 will certainly start out like a mess.  January is going to be chaotic.  Regardless, I’m optimistic about 2021 – not because I’m insane, but because I know what starts the upward rise:  the upward rise starts after you’ve fallen and hit bottom.  While we around the world have fallen and are headed toward the bottom, the biggest lesson is this:  bring something back up with you.

That’s the question for today:  what can we bring back up with us?

  • Understanding that the world can change around you in an instant. One moment, the world was normal.  The next?  Lockdowns, the destruction of an economy.
  • Understanding where your vulnerabilities are. Food?  Toilet paper?  What can you do to fix them?
  • Knowing that your job is not “safe” – the entire economy isn’t safe. Be prepared for more dislocations.  What skills are you working on?

These are important realizations.  In 2021 and for the foreseeable future, complacency will not be your friend.  Constantly question your assumptions.  Constantly try to understand your side, but also periodically ask yourself, “What if I’m wrong?”  Try to understand the other side of the issue, too.

You may or may not be wrong, but questioning (not doubting, but questioning) yourself is key to deep understanding.  Hold your own beliefs up to the same scrutiny you use on opposing beliefs.

Thankfully, hindsight is 2020.  Or did I get that backward?

As I wrote on Friday, I’m not sure that 2021 will be a great year, but it will be a birth year for the next phase of what happens to our society.  What’s probable this year?

  • Unemployment continues, and likely gets worse. Ideas of a quick rebuild will be crushed.  People at the bottom end – twentysomethings and service workers – are already hoisting a white flag.
  • Society will become even more fractured. Left and Right are guaranteed to be further apart in 2021 – the way this presidential election has gone is sure to inflame both sides, no matter what happens.
  • The very mechanisms that we normally see as protecting society will continue to erode. People on the Right who are defending the “thin blue line” will become aware that many (not all!) of the police will do whatever the people signing their checks tell them to do.  This is not the year to be a cop in Portland, Oregon.
  • People will continue to flee California and large Leftist cities in a locust-like plague. They will not leave their Leftist ideas behind.
  • The debt of the United States will continue to climb. My bet?  We add another $4-5 trillion this year.  That doesn’t include personal debt and business debt.  The idea that printing money is better than earning it will continue and probably increase in 2021.  This idea will only stop when events force it to stop.

But as I said in the introduction to Friday’s post, I remain weirdly optimistic that, even given all of these trends, this will be a year that we will look back on and say, “That was the year that things changed.”  Certainly, 2020 was a year that will likely be looked on as the start of the crisis.  2021 will be looked at as the year that the seeds of the new are planted.

How can I better describe it?

1776 is they year that most people associate with the birth of the United States.  What most people forget is that it wasn’t until 1787 that the Constitutional Congress was held.  Likewise, it wasn’t until 1789 that George Washington was sworn in as our first President.  That was thirteen years after 1776 – thirteen years where there was war, economic failure, and finally a coming together over a very unique document.

Change takes time.

What did Washington say before his men got in the boats to cross the Delaware to attack the British?  “Get in the boats.”

So, if I’m right, people will look back on 2021 and say, “That was when things turned around.”

And the good news is, Penultimate Day or not, you’ll be there for it.  Again, I never said it was going to be easy.  It will likely be the complete opposite of easy.

Freedom rarely is easy.  And I’m still pretty sure that the Olive Garden© has a comprehensive spreadsheet somewhere charting my breadstick consumption . . . .

Plato’s Cave, Bonfires, And They Live

“Put the glasses on! Put them on!” – They Live

Jack Nicholson gave us a Colonel of truth in that movie.

Living in the country has advantages.  One of them is being able to conduct experiments into nuclear fusion without a license.  Oops.  Did I say that out loud?

The other is that I can make a bonfire the size of Delaware.  Why would I want to do that?  Just like making my own fusion reactor, why wouldn’t I want to do that?

In my case, the next-door neighbor and I have trees that regularly need to be trimmed, or, as I mentioned in a story (A Tree Fell On My House, But I Have A Chainsaw) a while ago, just plain fall down onto my house.  We haven’t burned the pile for about three years, so I figured it was time to get rid of prime snake habitat and burn it all down.  Winter is the best time for a ludicrously large fire, so we decided tonight was the night.

Now lighting deadwood on fire sounds easy, but this time it was fairly difficult.  We were nearly getting ready to give up, go inside, and let the pile smolder out when a section caught.  Admittedly it was on the fifth bottle of charcoal lighter fluid, so I guess persistence pays off.

If I ever become an island castaway, I’ll set up a flaming signal on the beach:  it’s the shore fire way to get attention.

Within five minutes we had a conflagration pouring tornado-like flames thirty feet into the sky.  There is a moment when, after unleashing that fire, I realized it was utterly beyond our control.  It was burning fuel so fast that branches suspended five feet about the base were burning with a bright bluish-gold flame.  Sparks were shooting 60 feet into the air on an updraft of hot air that would make Maxine Waters blush.

Thankfully, I could release that sweet, sweet CO2 back into the air to Make Siberia Warm Again.

I liked that, because an immense, hot fire burns quickly, and I wanted it to be a boring pile of coals and hot ash before I went inside.  It was – within ten more minutes (seven liters) the fire had consumed 70% plus of its fuel and it was perfect for toasting marshmallows – from forty feet away.

We heard sirens sounded like a fire engine in the neighborhood, but we didn’t go and look – showing up at a neighborhood fire with marshmallow roasting sticks is bad form here in Modern Mayberry.

As I sat there beside the fire, I was thinking about Plato.

No, Plato isn’t Goofy®’s dog, that’s Pluto™.  Which makes me wonder why a cartoon dog has a dog as a pet?  Disturbing.

My computer password is FrodoKirkGoofyScoobyBugsSacramento – just like IT said – five characters and a capital.

What I was thinking about was the dead Greek guy, Plato.  In many things, Plato was a complete idiot, but he wrote everything down, so we remember him.  Diogenes the philosopher, it is rumored, loved making fun of Plato, especially by putting Icy-Hot™ in the nether regions of Plato’s toga.

But one thing that Plato left us with that was useful was his Allegory of the Cave.

The Allegory of the Cave is a fairly simple story.   A group of people are chained in a cave so all they can do is stare at a blank wall.  But behind them is a fire, which casts shadows on the wall.  Not being able to see real, three-dimensional reality, the people stuck in the cave seeing nothing but shadows give names to the shadows.

I tried to come up with another philosopher pun, but I just Kant.  And I Kant lose any more weight.  Another Plato.

Their reality, knowing nothing else, are those shadows that they can see.

But one day, one of the people escapes.  He leaves the cave, and upon looking around sees the rich tapestry of things that are not shadows.  He sees colors.  He sees trees.  He might see a Taco Bell® depending upon where the cave is.

He finally experiences reality as you and I do, especially if he orders extra cheese on the Nachos Bell Grande®.

It must be a stunning information overload – countless things that he’s never seen before – remember, if it hasn’t cast a shadow on the cave wall, it doesn’t exist in his world.

Having friends in the cave, the escaped person goes back in.  “Dudes, you have to see this.  We’ve been wrong our whole lives – there’s a rich world out there.  Nothing is as it seems to you.  Come and see!”

In the kingdom of the blind, is the one-eyed man king?

No, in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is considered, at best, crazy.  More likely, however, the one-eyed man is viewed as a threat that must be eliminated.  So is our escapee that returns to enlighten his friends.

No one wants to be robbed of their illusions.  Many people don’t want to consider alternate viewpoints.  The escapee will be shouted down by the rest of the captives.  “Surely,” they say, “such a world cannot exist.  If it did, I’d have to change my conceptions, and there are two things I never change, my underwear and my conceptions.”

What kind of pants do they wear in Plato’s cave?  Yoga Tights?  No.  Stalac Tights.

The bad news is, to one extent or another, we’re all prisoners of the cave.  We see misperceptions in our daily life, either of our own construct or as constructed for us.

Who would construct misperceptions for us?

Lots of people.  Here are a few examples:

  • Harry Truman, on August 6, 1945, said: “Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base.”  Well, sure.  It was a militarily important city.  And farms were militarily important because they made food that people might eat.  And schools were militarily important because they educated children that could fight us.  But that would be like saying, “San Francisco, an important American Army base.”  (Note:  I’m not saying I disagree with the decision, just that Truman’s statement was shady as a Netflix® show about dancing children.)

Don’t worry, in the sequel the Japanese take out Detroit.

  • Operation Northwoods: Essentially a plan from the Pentagon for our military to stage terrorist attacks in the United States while pretending to be Cubans as a justification to attack Cuba.  Really.  Here’s the Wikipedia® on that (LINK).  Not Alex Jones.  Wikipedia™.
  • The CIA performed illegal mind control experiments on American and Canadian civilians.  Here’s the Wikipedia (LINK).  Most of the documents were burned, so there’s no telling how many people were impacted.  When I first heard of this, my response was that it was impossible.  Nope.  They did it.
  • Let’s pull the media in, too. The New York Times® “reporter” Walter Duranty wrote stories that there was no mass starvation in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s, despite knowing that millions were being starved to death on purpose.  Duranty got a Pulitzer Prize™ for his lies – a prize that has never been rescinded.  I wrote about that starvation here (In The World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold And Silver Medals).

I could do dozens more where the government, academia, industry, or unions lied and most people believed them.  I’ve written about those again and again – the 1960’s Harvard Sugar Study, anyone (High Carbs, Harvard, Insurance, And Avoiding Doctors)?  If it was just statements from politicians that were lies that most of us believed?  I don’t have enough electrons on my computer to store all of those.

Essentially, unless I get up and go outside of the cave I’m in, I’m sitting and watching those shadows on the wall.  But when I do get up and go outside of that cave, I learn amazing things – all those things that are glossed over in history classes, and generally not easy to find, though they’re (for today) clearly documented on even Left-leaning sites like Wikipedia®.

All of those things that receive warnings on Twitter® and are banned on Facebook™?  Shadows.  I’m not saying that everything that gets a Twitter© warning is the Truth.  But I am saying that if they’re suppressing an idea, it merits investigation and clear thinking, and abandoning your preconceptions to try to find Truth.

But if someone would have told fifteen year old me that those things in the bullet points above were true?  Would I have violently rejected that?

Absolutely.

Fifteen year old me wanted to believe in the government, wanted to believe that the press wasn’t hopelessly corrupt.  Me in 2020 has seen too much.

If you haven’t seen the movie They Live, there is a scene where the protagonist tries to help his friend stop staring at the shadows on the wall of the cave.  In the movie, there are sunglasses you can wear to see a different reality.  The clip below from the movie, with Rowdy Roddy Piper playing the protagonist, and Keith David playing his reluctant friend who really, really doesn’t want to put on the glasses (some NSFW dialog):

Rowdy Roddy, rest in peace.

The bonfire in my backyard is now just some smoke and a few glowing coals, not enough light now to cast the amazing shadows that the thirty-foot flame made.  But my television is going, showing a documentary where a gentleman is earnestly telling me about his particular trip outside the cave.  If he’s right, it changes the world.

As does every trip outside the cave.  But, I have my doubts that he’s right because the truth he’s presenting is so counter to mainstream thought, so I’ll keep doing my research.  And learning.

Leaving the cave is scary, and it’s difficult.  And I absolutely don’t promise that understanding reality a little bit better will make you happy – it’s very likely to have the opposite effect.  But it will bring you one step closer to the truth.

Maybe you and I can finally figure out what those shadows really are.

Let’s go see what’s outside.

America: Walking The Razor’s Edge

“The pathway to salvation is as narrow and as difficult to walk as a razor’s edge.” – The Razor’s Edge (1984)

What did the hobbits say as they rode the Ents into battle?  “Run, forest, run!”

It was on July 4.  I had convinced two of my friends to follow me on a bizarre quest – we were going to climb one of the tallest mountains in North America.  By one of them, it’s in the top 50.  So, in my book that counts.

The trip started using gasoline – we had a borrowed Jeep® that we took as far up the hill as we could, since it was a borrowed Jeep™.  My friend who had borrowed the Jeep© didn’t want to wreck it, since it was before YouTube® and we wouldn’t even get likes from a cool video if we wrecked it on the amazingly rough road.

We decided to make this hike a three-day event.  On the first day, we’d do nearly a mile gain in elevation while we camped out 1000’ below the summit of the mountain.  Then, we’d summit the mountain and spend the next night at our basecamp.  Then we’d hike out the next morning.

Of course, it rained.

At the elevation of our basecamp, trees can’t grow, so we boiled filtered water in the rain.  It worked, sort of.  At that elevation, water boils at less than 190°F.  It was enough to reheat a fifteen-year-old dehydrated Mountain House® Chili Mac, even though the beans couldn’t get hot enough to not be crunchy.

After climbing up a mountain, crunchy beans and all, it was the best dinner I’d had in years.  I think I ate two.

The chili mac wasn’t red hot, but there was no way I was going to give it away, give it away, give it away now.

The next day morning we were sore – but we could leave our packs at the camp so we’d just be carrying ourselves and our water.  It was nearly half of a mile to get to the summit – a half of a mile straight up.

The trip up was a true scramble – a broken field of boulders that we sometimes had to ascend on all fours.  It was steep – very steep.  As we intersected the ridge that led to the summit of the mountain, I looked forward to seeing what was on the other side of the ridge.  I was certain that it must be flatter than the steep boulder field we’d just climbed – there was no way it could be as steep.

I got to the edge of the ridge, and looked down.

Until that moment in time, I had never been afraid of heights.  But I was not expecting to see what I saw.

It was a cliff.  A sheer drop off – I was looking at a certified Wile E. Coyote precipice.

When I was stuck on that cliff, they told me not to “look down.”  So, I smiled.

I don’t know if you’ve ever looked straight down and seen a cliff that went nearly three-quarters of a mile straight down when you weren’t expecting it.  For the first time in my life I was experiencing vertigo – it felt like the mountain under me was going to slide off down that cliff.

I moved back down the ridge.  But I still had to climb a few hundred feet upward to reach the summit.  Up the side of the ridge I went.  I assure you, I stayed back from that knife-edge as we crawled up that hill.

Then, finally, tantalizingly close, there was the summit.  I was nearly to the top of one of the highest mountains in North America.

There was one little problem.

Between the ridge I was on, and the top of the mountain there was a path.  It was about six or eight feet long, and probably a foot wide, and it was flat, like it had been machined.

What’s the difference between Humpty Dumpty and 2020?  One of them had a great fall.

On one side of it was, you guessed it, a sheer cliff that bottomed out 3,000 feet or so below me.  On the other side of the path it was a lot better.  There was only about a 1,000 foot drop.

Wait, was 1,000 feet better?  I’d get more time to live if I fell down the 3,000 foot side.

Choices.

But when facing that last few steps, shaky with the first vertigo in my life, I’ll admit those were some of the toughest steps of my life.  But, hey, what was I going to tell the folks back home?  That I climbed to a spot nearly three miles into the air to stop two feet before I reached the top?

Nope.

But that ridge (to me) was a razor’s edge.  On either side was disaster.  I took a deep breath.  I put one foot in front of the other.  And I walked – one step, two steps, three steps – to the top, where my friends were waiting.

What brought this to mind was an email forwarded by frequent commenter, 173dVietVet, where he said (in part) this on discussing where our country is:

“(I’ve) Done a bit of mountain climbing in my Ranger days and I know full well the meaning of knife’s edge, where any wrong step throws you headlong forever into the abyss of death that lies on BOTH sides . . . .”

We are in that zone.  In climbing mountains, the knife edge is more than a metaphor – it’s real.  On either side is death, and it’s not metaphorical death, it’s mangled into a wadded pile of Wilder by the combined forces of gravity and the sudden stop on the rocky outcropping at the bottom.  Sure, Wile E. Coyote could survive, but not me.

Everything went downhill after gravity was invented.

But in life, the knife-edge is a metaphor.  We’ve created a financial situation where the economy is horribly broken, and for the last year we’ve survived mainly by printing money and not allowing people to be evicted from houses, despite the questionable legality of that.

A bigger component to our knife edge is that the rule of law has been progressively ignored in the country.  Where is the right of the Federal Government to stop evictions of tenants?

Oh, there isn’t one.  They just made it up.

That would be (at best) an action by a State, though even then it’s of questionable legality.  But then the Patriot Act made spying on American citizens “legal” so who cares about legal, anyway?  Then every agency with three letters of an alphabet decided to swallow up all of that online data, and all of the phone calls, despite laws to the contrary.

Of course, Federal employees were put in prison.

Hahahaha!

No.

The NSA:  a government agency that actually listens to you!

Despite obviously illegal orders, no one was put in prison, and the only one likely to be put into prison is the whistleblower (Edward Snowden) if he ever shows back up in the United States.  It used to be the Constitution that was ignored, but that’s so 1940s.

Now, the government can ignore any inconvenient law it wants to ignore.  Of course, the people that can ignore the law are those that are either leaders, government employees, or those favored (think Antifa™) by the government.

Destroy evidence?  A felony for most.  But when the government does it?  It’s “a regrettable incident.”

What people misunderstand is that Trump isn’t at all the cause of our problems today.  Trump is a symptom.  Without Trump, the answer would have been (yet another) Bush, this time Jeb, versus (yet another) Clinton, this time Hillary.  Oh, the excitement for electing ¡Jeb!

The difference between another Clinton and another Bush?  Nothing, really.  And America didn’t want that – so America elected Trump.  If anything, Trump cleared the fog, and made the knife edge we were walking clearer.

Jeb has a perfect place in government, as the Secretary of Low Energy.

And now, we are walking, and the knife-edge is sharper and narrower than the one that I walked to get to the top of that mountain on July 4th a couple of decades ago.

We have left the bounds of Constitutional governance some time ago – people think it’s quaint when I bring the entire idea of the Constitution up.  Is there a path back to an actual Constitutional government?

Sure.  It’s narrow – a knife-edge.  But so was getting that Constitutional government in the first place.  But getting that original Constitution depended upon men climbing a mighty steep mountain several hundred years ago.  Were they afraid when they saw the cliff’s edge, the price of failure?

I’m sure they were.  But yet they continued.  And when it was time to thread that final few steps to the summit?

They did, and damn the dangers on either side.

We face the same knife-edge.  Where are we going?

Paranoia, Preparation, and Peace of Mind

“Frankly, your lack of paranoia is insane to me.” – Silicon Valley

In our library, I asked The Mrs. where our books on paranoia were, she said, “They’re right behind you.”

The biggest natural disaster The Wilder Family ever rode out was Hurricane Ike – it passed right over our house when we lived in Houston.  And it was going pretty strong when it hit our place.  We lost power, a tree, siding, and a whole lot of roof.  Thankfully, Led Zeppelin was there to sing that one . . . Whole Lot of Roof . . . .

In review, the hurricane wasn’t so bad.  At one point, I had to do my Captain Dan impression, walking outside in the middle of the hurricane at the strongest winds and yelling into the wind after the power went out and the laptop battery died so we couldn’t watch the John Adams miniseries we were watching on DVD:

“Is that all that you’ve got?”

Since I’ll probably never be able to walk away from an exploding helicopter without looking back as the flames shot up into the sky, it was just something I thought I had to do:  yelling into a hurricane wearing a bathrobe and athletic shorts.

I’ve done a lot of cool things in my life, but I really enjoyed that one.  I’d recommend it, but my lawyer, Lazlo, advises me against advising you to try it.  Maybe you could talk pleasantly into a warm spring breeze?

The reason I did it?  We had hit the toughest part of the storm.  We had ridden it out.  We were prepared.

Never smoke weed during a hurricane – lightning always strikes the highest object.

In truth, the preparation had started before we ever bought our house.  We picked a house that was so far outside the flood zone that Wyoming would be underwater before we were.

Yeah, I checked that before we made an offer.  I’m paranoid that way.

In my life, I’ve always tried to go to the idea of, “How bad can it get?”  Then I thought, “Well, how could it get worse than that?”

In the middle of the night when I wake up with yet another scenario, the answer always comes back the same:  “It really can get worse.”

Reality can get really, awfully bad.  And it can do so more quickly than we imagine.

During the hurricane, there wasn’t a lot we could do.  Stores were picked clean of essentials about 24 hours before the storm hit.  Oh, sure, you could get things like diet cookies and soy milk, but the food actual humans wanted to eat was simply gone.  And booze?  Forget about it.  All of that was sold out.

The first big lesson:  Prepare Before Circumstances Force You To Prepare.  If you’re moving out of a disaster zone (cough San Francisco cough) it’s better to be five years too early than one day too late.  Especially if they’re out of beer.

Why did people hoard all the toilet paper?  It’s just how they roll . . . .

But not having the store was okay for us.  I went to visit one mainly to amuse myself and learn – what would be left?  If more people prepared, then systems wouldn’t be overwhelmed when a crisis strikes.

Thankfully, at that point in our life, our pantry had enough food in it to keep us fully fed for weeks or longer.  Water?  We had a swimming pool (they come with every house in Houston, like mailboxes or manservants) so we had thousands of gallons of water.

Don’t want to drink swimming pool water?  Well, if you had the water filter system I had, you could.  But we also had drinking water stored in plastic jugs for weeks of use.  We ended up using the swimming pool water for bathing and toilet flushing and never missed a beat.

The food was good.  Even though power was out, cold cooked corn and cold Hormel Chili™ tasted okay.  It was “camping” bad, but not “a normal Tuesday in Somalia” bad.  The worst part was the second day after the hurricane – temperatures and humidity skyrocketed, so it was uncomfortable to do anything other than sit around and sweat.  Even sleeping was uncomfortable since the still, hot, humid air was like living inside a whale that’s spending spring break in a crockpot.

Don’t sweat the petty things.  And don’t pet the sweaty things.

The hand-crank radio was our link to the outside world.  Cell service was wiped out.  And then, FEMA helpfully came on the radio and told us to go to their website for emergency locations.

Huh?  Website?  We had a hand-crank radio.

But, outside of minor discomfort, we were fine.  I even had beer, though it was warm.

The one (and only one) hole in my preparations at that point was I was out of propane for my grill.  I had to borrow from a neighbor to cook the steaks that were rapidly thawing out.  That was okay, I lent him 20 gallons of gasoline for his generator, so we were very quickly even-stevens.

Yet another lesson:  Every Detail, No Matter How Small, Matters.

I was planning for a much, much bigger catastrophe.  The hurricane that hit us was, due to the preparations The Mrs. and I made, an uncomfortable inconvenience.  It was in this case that my paranoia made our lives (relatively) easy.

The biggest lesson I learned is one that we speak of commonly now:  No One Is Coming To Save You.

If we had any issues that would have resulted in needing help?  We weren’t going to get it.  The “First Responders” had gotten themselves into an emergency operations building and had no food or water.  The radio broadcast a hilarious plea for people to come save the “First” Responders by bringing them food and water.

When seconds count, First Responders will be there in minutes.

The First Responders are almost always Second Responders – you and I, when we have a crisis, are the real First Responders.

No One Is Coming To Save You.  Get that very simple fact through your mind.  It was one we lived with each day of my childhood up on Wilder Mountain.  If you couldn’t save yourself – you were going to die.  If Pa Wilder cut off his left foot with the chainsaw while we were gathering firewood and my brother John (yes, my brother’s name is really John as well) couldn’t save him, he was going to die.

That never happened.  But we were prepared for it.

Sometimes events I write about go beyond what will happen.  I assure you, not one of the events that I write about goes beyond what could happen.  The descent of a society into madness and chaos has happened again and again throughout history.  Sure, that descent into madness generally doesn’t happen overnight.

Generally.  But sometimes?  It does.

So, when I look at the world around me, I let my paranoia run.  I encourage it.  “How bad could it get?”

That’s a starting point.  What are the additional things current me can do now to help future me?  How many human needs can I solve?  For how long?

Where I live, there are several amazing advantages.  Great water.  Good soil.  Low-ish population density.  Grain elevators filled to bursting with food that the population could eat in an emergency.  Good neighbors that I’ve known for years who think as I do, mostly.

We didn’t move to a rural area by accident.  From every story that was told to me about the Great Depression – people in the country, surrounded by their neighbors, had a much better time than people in the cities.

Think about preparing not as being about stuff, but as a way to buy time.  Saving money buys time.  Stockpiling food buys time.  Living in a low-pressure area buys time.  Living in a high resource area buys time.

Most preppers suffer from Stock Home syndrome.

If you prepare for something big, and nothing big happens?  Not generally a loss.  I can eat the food in my pantry anytime.  If I prepare by building a pantry when times are good?  I often end up saving money because food prices keep going up.

If you prepare for something big, and something small happens, like (for us) Hurricane Ike?

You can ride it out.  You get a few days off of work.  You might gain weight, having to eat all of that food that is thawing.

And you would definitely get the chance to go out and yell into the winds:

“Is that all you’ve got?”

See?  Paranoia has its advantages.  I’ll simply say this:  paranoia is the only way that our ancestors survived.

Don’t sell it short.  Preparation after paranoia brings peace of mind.  Heck, I nearly have a Ph.D. in that – just call me Dr. Prepper.

I guess anyone can be called Dr. nowadays.

 

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.

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.

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!

Election Day 2020: Liveblogging Post

“No thank you, Delmar. A third of a gopher would only arouse my appetite without beddin’ ‘er back down.” – O Brother, Where Art Thou?

How many Russians does it take for Hillary Clinton to lose an election?  None.

Front Matter:  I will start liveblogging (in the comments of this post) the election results when they come in.  I expect this will be about 8pm Eastern Standard Time.  I’ll stop when the mood strikes me – there isn’t a set end time.  I will say this – Standard Time Rules, and I really, really hate Daylight Savings Time.

2020 marks the most momentous election of our lifetimes.  Why?

Trump 2020?

No.

Wilder 2020.  Yes, I am an official candidate.  I can explain.

I’m a skilled professional.

During the state primary season in Modern Mayberry, in Upper-Lower Midwestia, I got a text message from The Boy.

“I put you in as a write-in candidate for NAMELESS OFFICE.”

Immediately I texted The Mrs.  “Hey, honey, please vote for me for NAMELESS OFFICE.”  She didn’t respond.  That’s normal.

I made my own way to the polls, and proudly wrote “John Wilder” in for NAMELESS OFFICE.  It turns out that The Mrs. did, too.

I had three votes.

What does one do with three votes in an insurgent write-in candidacy for NAMELESS OFFICE?  You call the County Clerk the day after to see if you won.

I did that.

“A write in?  Umm, call us next week, sweetie.”

I forgot to call them back.  But then a few weeks later when The Boy was down from State College, he got the mail one Saturday, and brought it into the living room.

I sent a guitar back to the factory once.  I marked it “return to Fender®.” 

“Hey, Pop, it’s a letter from the County.  Are you still burning tires and diesel fuel in the backyard?”  The Boy handed me a big letter – one that might have held the x-ray of bigfoot’s prostate exam.

I opened it.  Nope – not a prostate exam.  It was an official certificate saying that I was an official candidate for election in the 2020 election.  How many of those do you have?

I am running unopposed in the general election.  Since I was running unopposed, I decided on a sneaky campaign:  not let anyone know I was running.  The idea I had was simple – if anyone knew I was running, they would have time to oppose me.  Ha!  I’m too sneaky for that.

But now it’s too late.  There will be one name to vote for:  mine.  I think my chances are good, since I’m sure I’ll get more than the three votes that propelled me on this political odyssey.  I’m hoping for at least a solid dozen votes.

If your refrigerator is running?  I know some people in New Mexico that would vote for it.

You may ask, what does the elected office require me to do?  I won’t give you most of the specifics.  But I did check online and researched the state statutes that describe what I’m being elected to do.  In one, very old book (1883?) I found that I was responsible for the control of underground burrowing rodents.  In none of the modern laws does it mention that I’m responsible for that, but, hey:

The law is the law.

I think I’ll make that the signature of my administration.  I’ll become John Wilder, licensed to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations. A man, free to kill gophers at will. To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit. 

Ever.

If A is for Apple, and B is for Banana, what is C for?  Explosives.

I’m pretty sure that this will entitle me to a badge and unlimited access to fully automatic weapons, rocket propelled grenades, and plastic explosives.  Okay, maybe not.  But I’m also sure that there are absolutely zero laws in my state that prohibit me from making my own badge.  I think I might design my badge to be a big “W” with lightning bolts hitting an underground rodent.

Maybe it will all be over the top of a nuclear mushroom cloud?

Does my badge allow me to do anything special, like turn into a werewolf and roam the countryside naked in the cool autumn nights looking  for a safe spaceship flight.  Well, no.  But thankfully it doesn’t prohibit that, either.

Does my badge allow me to requisition nuclear weapons from the Federal government to control subterranean rodents?  Well, no.   But it does make the requisition request for fully automatic weapons, an old M-60 Patton tank, three F-16 fighters and 53,000 pounds of Compound C seem reasonable.

I mean, how else would you deal with gophers?  You wouldn’t.  That’s why you need a cold-blooded rodent killer like me.   Badgers?  You don’t need no stinking badgers!

My son said he got awarded the Leslie Neilson badge at school.  I asked him, “What’s that?”  He said it’s a big building filled with kids.

Here’s my campaign slogan:

“Wilder 2020, because you want John Wilder to have access to a badge and enough weapons to overthrow Brazil, even though he only got three primary votes.”

See you in the comments tonight!