Category: Fight Club

Financial Advisers, Christianity, and Elon Musk’s Hair

“It’s getting exciting now, two and one-half.  Think of everything we’ve accomplished, man.  Out these windows, we will view the collapse of financial history.  One step closer to economic equilibrium.” – Fight Club

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My financial adviser checked my balance – she didn’t manage to push me over. I’m sturdy and built low to the ground, The Mrs. says.

One of my biggest joys of having children is giving them unsolicited advice.  For example, my daughter, Alia S. Wilder texted me the other day:

The Unsuspecting Alia S. Wilder:  “ . . . also, Lars Úmlåüt (her boyfriend) and I met with a financial adviser about retirement and investment portfolios.”

The Evil John Wilder: (I Swear This Was My Actual Text Answer) “That’s like talking to a mechanic about your Gulfstream® jet.  You don’t have any money.  And this will be in next week’s blog.”

Yes, I really said that to her.  The idea of needing a financial adviser when you don’t have any money is like buying flowers when you don’t have a girlfriend, at least until the restraining order expires.  And The Mrs. was the one that christened Lars.  After he cuts his hair, we’ll have to think of another name.  Although if they get married, Alia S. Úmlåüt does have a ring to it.

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It’s rare that a picture describes a concept so completely.

But the financial conversation continued.

The Still Hasn’t Seen It Coming Alia S. Wilder:  “We have very little (money) but the financial adviser will help get us going in the right direction.  Life is going to suck financially, but you gotta live like no one else wants to, so you can have the future everyone dreams of.”

The part that I’ve italicized above is the part that scared me when I read it in her text message.  That’s nothing but pure sales pitch.  It’s a good sales pitch, too.  It sells the virtue of sacrifice now for future rewards.  And it is a philosophy I fundamentally agree with.  Deferred gratification is the key to most success – work hard now, and the benefits accrue over time.  I wrote about that here (“Be so good they can’t ignore you.”-Steve Martin Plus? A sniper joke.).  Steve Martin spent a decade learning and four years refining before he ended up in wild success.

To be great, you have to put in the time.  You have to work.  But the very best sales pitch will be like a virus – it will work into your brain.  When you have your potential client quoting you?  You have an effective sales pitch.  Back to the texting.

The Sage of Wisdom John Wilder:  “Get a 401k.  Invest in stocks.  Don’t mess with it.  Ten words.  It’s all you need to know right now.”

Alia and I had already talked about other investments – having a month’s worth of food around the house.  Being prepared for emergencies.  Having a set of jumper cables in the car.  These are small things, but they can do everything from making your life more convenient when you accidentally leave the lights on, to saving your life when that first aid kit pays off.

The Probably Getting Irritated Daughter Alia:  “We have a 401k.  We are starting the stocks.  And we’re treating investments like an expense.”

Investments like an expense?  Where did I hear that before?  Just from every financial adviser that tried to convince a Young John Wilder Who Had No Money to sign up for some sort of financial product.  Strong the sales force is in this one.  His sales technique was so good he’d managed to get a second slogan injected into Alia’s mind.

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The force commissions are strong in this one.

Not Going to Let it Drop John Wilder:  “No.  Just the 401K.  No other stocks.  Pay off your debt first.”

As someone in the “Alia owes money to” category, I think I’d be a bit irritated if my loan wasn’t being paid back while Alia was investing in Elon Musk’s latest venture, a time machine that only Elon Musk’s hairline uses.  But investing in stocks when you owe money (outside of a mortgage) is, well, silly.

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Or was it the future?  Musk’s mane mangles moments in the multiverse.

A 401k is different.

Why?  Many employers match some percentage of what you put in one.  The most common amount I’ve seen is a 50% match up to 6% of your wages.  Said differently, if you put in 6%, the company will put in 3%.  This is a good investment – you make an immediate 50% return.

Irritated As A Yak That Just Got Called A Weasel Noggin Alia S. Wilder:  “That’s what (Financial Adviser) is there for.  He works for (Company Name).”

Cool Voice of Experience John Wilder:  “No.  Don’t trust him.  No individual stocks.  Just 401k, and pay down your debt, until the debt is gone.  Then add more to your 401k.  Financial advisers are salesmen.  And this company (After Looking It Up)?  Whole Life Insurance?  STAY AWAY.”

Whole life insurance has two components – life insurance and some sort of investment.  It costs a LOT more than regular “term” life, but has the benefit of paying you back if you don’t use it.  How can I tell that whole life is a bad deal?  The salesmen get huge commissions.

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For the record, he’s also sad he got caught.

The Feeling Like Napoleon Retreating from Moscow Alia S. Wilder:  “No.  They do more than investments.  They look at the whole picture.  He said he was going for more investments if we moved forward.”

The Not Needing to be a Psychic John Wilder:  “No.  Stay away.  I’m sure he’s a nice guy, good sales patter, but you will regret dealing with people like that.”

Now As Defensive as the Maginot Line Alia S. Wilder:  “It doesn’t hurt to get information and a direction on our future.  (Company) is a Christian company for Christians to help with money management on all fronts.”

Rolling Like a Panzer Through The Ardennes John Wilder:  “Sure.  Just don’t give them any money or sign anything.  He’s not doing this for his own health or because he’s a Christian.  He’s doing it so you can help make his car payment.”

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Enough of this Nonsense Now, Has to Go Back to Work Alia S. Wilder:  “I appreciate your advice, Dad.  I love you lots.”

Won’t Let It Rest Because Apparently She Kept Thinking About It During Lunch Alia S. Wilder:  “So why are you so against investments?  If you don’t mind me asking.”

Sweaty Back from the Treadmill And Smelling Like Teen Spirit John Wilder:  “A 401k is an investment.  I’m in favor.  Paying off debts.  Also an investment.  Investments are smart, but individual stocks aren’t an investment, they’re speculation.  Stock funds before your debt is gone?  Stupid.  Using Christianity to sell a service?  Awful.”

What is an investment?  When you’re young and paying off debt, pay off the debt.  You need a financial adviser like you need a staff for your private lair underneath the volcano in the South Pacific.  And for most people, buying individual stocks is similar to gambling.  I heard one person make the comment – “I only invest in individual stocks if I can change the outcome.”  As I recall, he was on the board of several companies, so he yes, he really could change the outcomes.

The overall market is different.  It has had up years, and down years.  If I’m going to invest in stocks, I’m going to invest in aggregated stocks, like an index fund or a targeted fund, which is what I have in my 401k.  Yes, I have bought individual stocks.  And, yes, I’ve lost money on them – not enough to change my life, but enough to change my philosophy.

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There’s an eternity of good deals!

I’m not against Christian businesses – not at all.  I’m not even against Christian financial advisers – Dave Ramsey (at least on radio) talks about his faith, but doesn’t use it to sell his products.  Heck, the guy gives away his ideas on the radio daily.  Does he make money?  Absolutely.

What about Chick-fil-A©?  I love Chick-fil-A®.  The chicken sandwich is the best I’ve ever tasted, and it amuses me how people get bent out of shape that they give up a day’s worth of revenue every week because of their principles.  When I’m in a big city do I go to Chick-fil-A™ because they’re Christian?  No.  I go there because the food is great.  I go there because the employees are uniformly polite and neat.  I go there because the stores are spotless.

I’m not even against financial advisers in general – but when a financial adviser is attempting to “help” people who don’t have money invest?  I’m not a fan.  I’d prefer they charged a fee like other professionals – that’s upfront, and I think those people really are on your side.

I later called up Alia.  “Did you sign anything?”

“No.”

I relaxed.  The world isn’t short of people who want your money.  In some cases, they work really hard for it, like Chick-fil-A©.  In other cases, well, commissions are powerful motivators.

I’ll stick with the chicken sandwiches, they’re better with mayo.

Dang.  Now I’m hungry.

John Wilder is not a licensed professional adviser and you should probably think twice about taking his advice and consult with a competent adviser.  Unless you’re his kid, which you’re probably not.

Arete, Excellence, and Clowns Gone Bad

“Aim small, miss small.” – The Patriot

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“Owning a nuclear weapon means never having to say you’re sorry.” – John Wilders Book of Quotes:  Cannibal Soup for the Soul™  For reals, I’m thinking about publishing a book of collected essays from this blog, and that’s the title I want to use, and thus the ™.  It’s MINE!

One of my professors at college had very, very precise printed block letters.  One day we were talking and he brought it up, especially since my own writing was, shall we say, a challenge to read.  I think I was his Teaching Assistant at that point in graduate school

My professor:  “One day, I was in my forties, I just decided that every single letter that I wrote was going to be perfect.  Absolutely perfect.  So, from that moment, no matter how slowly I had to write, I was going to be the best.  I took a month and just focused on printing my letters perfectly every day.  After a month, it was habit.”

Being 20, I missed the significance of this, and only on reflecting now do I realize what my professor was really saying:

“Wilder, you may have written something great.  You may have written something awful.  I just can’t read it.”

How bad was my hand writing?  When I was in sixth grade, my teacher required every essay or book report to be in cursive so we could practice our handwriting at the same time we produced a book report.  My teacher pulled me aside.  “John, please print your essays.”  She had come to the (correct) conclusion that my handwriting was less decipherable than cuneiform texts, and that her only hope of ever grading one of them was for me to print it or for her to go back to graduate school and learn the ancient secrets of my people:  Those Who Have Crappy Handwriting.

She let me just print my essays and book reports.

It was a big deal to me and I felt free after that.  I hated cursive.  I even remember the book that I was doing the report on:  Farmer in the Sky, by Robert A. Heinlein.  My teacher had no idea what the book was about, and actually had me read the report to her twice so that she was certain that I wasn’t making it all up on the spot.  The skill of reading my own handwriting helped me:  if I could read my own handwriting, I could read anything.

Printing?  That totally worked for me.  I actually do it to this day, but I prefer typing.  It’s quicker, but printing simple block letters works.

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This is, supposedly, a receipt from a slave sale back in ancient Babylon.  Imagine having to write a receipt out in clay, make a copy, and then put it in an oven.  The drive through at their McDonalds® must have been slooooooow.

In thinking back to my professor’s writing self-improvement plan, I realize it wasn’t random, it was a process.  The first step was, by far, the most important:

Wilder Rule Of Excellence Number One:  Raise Your Standards

If you’re trying to write a perfect upper case E, a sloppy E or a tilty E just won’t do.  And maybe your first E won’t be perfect, but I assure you it will be better than the E you wrote when you weren’t concentrating on it.  It isn’t easy.  It’s slow.  It’s frustrating.  But once you’ve changed your standards internally, a crappy E is something you won’t tolerate.  You’ll notice it and it will drive you nuts.  Every E becomes a challenge in perfection.

When you change your standards, your standards change you.  I’m sure someone else has said that before, since there have been roughly 105 billion people that have lived since 50,000 B.C., so if I’m one human in a million, there are 105,000 others just like me who have lived.  Thankfully, we don’t all live in the same city

But the whole “When you change your standards, your standards change you” line?  I came up with it myself.  I wrote it as my own original thought and realize it might be my most profound thought today, even if Descartes™ or Aristotle® or Judge Judy© said it first.  Thankfully, I’m in luck, I had another original thought today:  balsa wood would not make a good salad topping, either in chunks or shredded.  Feel free to discuss.

Wilder Rule Of Excellence Number Two:  There Are No Shortcuts

Okay, I know that’s not original.  I recall a joke about a person who wanted enlightenment and inner peace.  And they wanted it right now!

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Some Random Dude told the Dalai Lama the following joke:  “How does a Buddhist like his pizza?”

The Dalai Lama: “I don’t know.”

Random Dude:  “One with everything.”

The Dalai Lama:  “I don’t get it.”

The above is supposedly true.  In my imagination the Dalai Lama responded with:  “Okay, I know a better one.  Two lesbian surveyors and a horse walk into a bar . . . .”

Getting better at anything is hard work.  It turns out that those who are the very best at, for instance, playing violin, practice more than people who aren’t as good.  Practice is absolutely necessary to creating excellence.  But the practice that works best is the practice that happens when you are right at the edge of your abilities.  It’s when you’re practicing at that edge that this weird blend of focus and trance takes over.  I’m sure that there’s a word for it, but in my mind it’s this state where the sense of self disappears.  Perhaps the best word would be transcendent – when I’m there I lose track of time.  I don’t think about the practice of writing a perfect E.  I am the practice of writing a perfect E.  I am excellence.  With an E.

The management guru Tom Peters! (he likes to put exclamation! points! behind! everything!) wrote a column that I read in 1999.  Tom Peters! was travelling, and decided that Tom Peters! was going to start running.  His column stuck with me.  Tom Peters! noted, more or less, that he was a very slow runner, but there was absolutely nothing preventing him from practicing like a world-class runner.  He could push himself to his limits.  Tom Peters! didn’t have to wait to train like a world-class runner.  Tom Peters! could do it right this minute.

Like my professor, last month I decided I’d improve my writing.  Sure, I can read it and the NSA® can’t, but I decided I’d give it a shot.  I focused every day when putting my daily to-do list together to make each letter perfect, each E a combination of right angles, as straight as I could make it.  Amazingly I got better.  I also noticed this – even when writing a simple to-do list, I could be transcendent.  I could lose myself in a quest to be excellent.

I think, in part, our world today seeks to trivialize the search for excellence.  The Greeks nailed this in what they called Arete.  Catherynne M. Valente described it like this:

The word I love is Arete.   It has a simple meaning, and a complicated meaning.  The simple one is:  excellence.  But if that were all, we’d just use Excellence and I wouldn’t bring it up until we got to E.  Arete means your own excellence.  Your very own.  A personal excellence that belongs to no one else, one that comes out of all the things that make you special and different . . . . It could be anything in the world . . . .  It’s even harder to get that good at it, because nothing, not even being yourself, comes without practice.

Arete also has the additional meaning of living up to your potential, fulfilling your purpose.  I think many things about the way society is organized today serve to sever us from Arete.  Television and movies make you a character in someone else’s Arete.  You replace the feeling of excellence from actual achievement with psychologically experiencing someone else’s Arete.  Some video games are like that as well, though certainly many require a great degree of skill.

And, yes, the highest and best use of some people is to play video games.

But much of modern work today is built around processes and defined procedures.  The idea isn’t that you do work with Arete, the idea is that you do mediocre work consistently.  And you can do that work with people who have an I.Q. of 85 or 90.

Replacing Arete with processes and procedures lowers liability and provides consistency.  It’s why people go to McDonaldsâ„¢ – not many people think of it as their favorite food, but it’s inexpensive, consistent in quality, and fast.

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Honestly, Arete is why I write this blog.  When a good theme hits and I’m writing, I cease being.  I am the blog.  I am living a transcendent moment.  I am Arete.   Modern life takes us from that with process-driven jobs.

I described this post to The Boy while we enjoyed the hot tub tonight.  The best conversations happen in the hot tub.  No phones, no television, just discussion.  The Boy immediately brought up Fight Club.  Fight Club might be my favorite movie, primarily because of the amazing amounts of Truth© that pop up in it.  The Boy reminded me of an early scene in the movie, where the protagonist had a job that sucked his soul, but he could make his own Arete by making the perfect home by buying the perfect furniture from Fight Club Ikea.  The thing missing from our soul today is simple:  we want to be excellent, but the structure of modern society is pulling us away from Arete.

Are we willing to trade in our Arete for the perfect furniture?  Are we willing to trade in our Arete for a video game?

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Can’t you just smell the Arete coming from the cube farm?  No, that’s the smell of coffee.  And despair.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not.  And if you looked at my to-do list?  It’s much better this month than last month.  Excellence is something we can do every day.  We can become transcendent in our tasks, no matter how lowly – if your task in this minute is to clean the floormats of a funky French fraternity’s ferret using your fingers, lose yourself in it.  Do the best job you can possibly do.

This Wilder, Wealthy and Wise post is brought to you by the word Arete, the letter E, and the number e.  (The number e thing is a math joke.)

Bad Self Help Ideas, A Naked Cat Fight, and Johnny Depp (In His Own Gravy)

“If you eliminate the third, fifth, and sixth letters, then it’s Red’s Digest, comrade.” – M*A*S*H

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Yes, Laura Ingalls Wilder is where I got my blogging name.  Long story.

My parents subscribed to Reader’s Digest© as I was growing up.  For those unfamiliar with the magazine, it was a little bigger than a paperback book, and contained shortened versions of articles from other magazines.

TL;DR?  Reader’s Digest™ is like Reddit® for old people.

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Sometimes it really is aliens. 

Reader’s Digest™ also contains several pages of stories from readers, mainly jokes and humorous stories, or at least it did back the last time I read it, when I was just a kid, say 10 or so.  One of the stories has stuck with me since then.  It goes something like this:

One day a mother looked out the kitchen window and saw her children playing in the backyard.  She noticed that her son, about age seven, had a rock in his hand and was using it to strike the top of a soup can.  The can was being held in place by the woman’s five-year-old daughter.  What alarmed the woman was that the daughter was holding the can on top of her head.

“Timmy, stop hitting your sister!” yelled the mother.

The daughter replied, “It’s okay, Mommy, he’s almost done.”

Some of the details of the story might be wrong, but I remember the last line exactly.  It amuses me to this day, because I can see that, while uncomfortable as it may be to have a seven year old whacking at a soup can on top of your head with a rock, you can be certain you will feel better when they stop.

I listen to YouTube® on the drive to work.  Listen.  I used to watch it, but the pedestrians didn’t seem to like sharing the sidewalk, and Pop Wilder told me when I was first learning to drive to never swerve, it was dangerous.  I guess I’ll miss Grandma.  Pity about the will.  Anyway, the terms of my parole don’t let me watch YouTube® anymore.  We have strict judges in Modern Mayberry.

YouTube™ has autoplay, and since I’m driving, I wasn’t watching, and it’s played everything from videos on Stalin to videos on chainsaws to Alice Cooper® songs that he performed for a Philippino werewolf movie.  So this particular random video didn’t surprise me.  In the video, I heard a person talking about how they made their life better through “Negative Visualization.”

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Stalin’s program was so effective, he made 20 million people disappear!  Just like food, this offer is not available in stores.

My first thought was that I had never heard that term and I was wondering if it was some sort of self-help video hosted by Stalin.  Once you get into the Stalin self-help videos, that’s a never ending video sink-hole.  Better Mental Health Through Collective Farming And Not Eating All That Decadent Food Like the Capitalists still gives me the shivers.

It turns out this video was entirely unrelated to Stalin, entirely bypassing the U.S.S.R. self-help craze currently so popular in California.  In this particular video, the presenter suggested you imagine that something horrible happened to your family, say, they were killed slowly in a fire, or were forced to go to a Cher™ concert.  He suggested that then you’d feel better when you realized that none of those horrible things happened to them.  His theory is that you’d love them more and appreciate them more after mentally throwing yourself through a daily tragedy.  What could go wrong?

Timmy, in other words, would stop banging the soup can on your head with a rock and you’d feel better.

I feel that Negative Visualization is a supremely stupid idea, at least for me.  I thought that if I started my day imagining tragedy in all aspects of my life, that my relationships fractured, that I became ill, that I became bankrupt, or that I had to give Johnny Depp a two hour sponge bath with tepid water, I would just be depressed.  So I tried it.  And I was right.  It was just depressing.  Instead of feeling better because my bathroom was Depp-free, the emotions of imagining a nude and smelly Johnny Depp in my bathtub was just gross, so I felt both depressed and unclean.

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Is it just me, or do you think that this room smells like Dinty Moore Beef Stew®, expensive foreign alcohol made from bugs, and despair?  As a note, The Mrs. felt the caption should have used gravy instead of sauce.  Which do you prefer, Depp Gravy™ or Depp Sauce©?

Instead of Stalin’s Daily Devotion® I decided to go back to what I’ve done for most of my life:  just be grateful for what I have.  Today, in this moment I have it pretty good.  I have enough money to not worry for the next ten minutes.  I have a loving family that will pretend to be happy to see me when I get home tonight.  I have friends that I can call up and share the innermost details of my life with, so they can make fun of me behind my back.  And I’m healthy, losing weight consistently, and don’t have an immediate departure date from planet Earth.  Plus?  I just bought a bitchin’ 6.5 Creedmoor that I need to sight in.

My life is good.  Because you have a computer and you’re reading this, you have it good, too.  In fact, chances are pretty strong that you’re part of the dreaded 1%.

Don’t think so?  Don’t argue with Wilder.

I got into a Twitter® slapfight about just this subject.  The thing I have since discovered is that winning an argument on Twitter© carries the same prestige as beating a kitten in a knife fight, so I have (mostly) given it up, which is nice for the kitten.  The kitten was getting pretty tired of it, even though it had it coming.  Sir Flappy Knobkins knows why.

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Cats may be quick, but I have a secret weapon:  I’ve mastered Laser-Fu.

But in this particular Twitter© slapfight, a gentleman from England was complaining about “the evil 1%”.  My response to him was, “dude, you ARE the 1%.”  He then preceded to deny that he was part of the 1%, because they were evil and owned private islands.  I then pointed out the minimum income to crack the top 1%:

$32,400 per year.

Yup.  If you make $32,400 a year, you’re in the top 1%.  But that’s looking at the whole world.  I could tell by the pause that the gentleman I was arguing with looked it up.  Then he responded, “Well, not that 1%.  I meant the really rich people.”  His entire persona was built around the idea that he was oppressed and his Tweets® were filled with envy.  I bet he’s fun at parties.

So my suggestion is this:  get up every morning and don’t imagine those you love being slowly, lovingly, caressed by Joe Biden.  No.  Get up and be grateful.  I know for a fact that many of you reading this blog are multi-thousandaires, so you have a lot to be grateful for.  Gratitude feels better than envy or being depressed any day.  And if something really is wrong?  Remember it will pass.  Eventually life gets tired, and stops hitting the can on your head with a rock.

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Don’t pick a rock that’s too big.

Think how good you’ll feel when he stops!

Entropy, The End of The Universe, Heroes, and Struggle

“The Federation has taught you that conflict should not exist.  But without struggle, you would not know who you truly are.  Struggle made us strong.” – Star Trek Beyond

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Some people think the Universe will last forever.  Silly people.  We’ll only have stars for the next 100,000,000,000,000 years or so.

The Universe is built on multiple simple principles that interact in ways that make Elvis™, PEZ®, and mayonnaise covered garden gnomes all possible.  A light coating of mayo will do – we’re not crazy here at Stately Wilder Manor®.  One of those simple principles is that as time passes, disorder in the Universe increases.  This tendency towards disorder is called entropy, and it’s not just a good idea – it’s the law:  the second law of thermodynamics.  The nice thing about this law is you can’t break it, so there’s no need for Thermodynamics Police and Judge Judy can’t preside in Physics Court®.

A way to think about this inexorable drive toward disorder is to imagine that the Universe is a campfire – one that you can’t add wood to.  At the beginning it’s a great blaze, because you were an idiot and used gasoline to start the fire and burned off your eyebrows.  As the blaze burns, it consumes the wood.  After a time there is nothing left but coals, which glow dimly for hours.  The current most accepted theory (but not the only one) is that the Universe started with a sudden quantum instability, more commonly known as the Big Bang®.

In the beginning (see what I did there?) the Universe experienced the greatest amount of potential energy it will ever see.  The Universe is that blazing gasoline-soaked campfire.  Since that moment in time, the amount of energy available in the Universe decreases continually.  Like a fire, it burns hot at the beginning.  That’s where we are, it’s still hot out there.  The embers will glow as the last available energy in the Universe is slowly turned into a starless thin vapor nearing absolute zero, much like Marvel® movies without Iron Man©.

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Entropy – now maintenance free!

This tendency toward lower overall energy and thus overall lower order is called entropy.

It’s important to note that entropy always increases in a closed system – like when you store a decapitated human head in a Yeti® cooler – who hasn’t had that problem?  The Earth, thankfully, isn’t a closed system.  It has a wonderful thermonuclear reactor pumping energy down from millions of miles away, every day.  To put it in perspective, the Earth only receives one billionth of the energy that the Sun puts out daily, like you only received one billionth of your mother’s love, since the rest of it was reserved for chardonnay and “Daytime Daddy.”

Why isn’t the Earth a closed system?

The Sun allows us to have surplus energy, and thus order on Earth.  With the exception of nuclear reactors, all energy on Earth is solar.  Wind is caused by differential heating of the atmosphere.  Rain is caused by solar evaporation of water.  Even oil is millions of years of trapped sunlight, helpfully stored by God in gas stations.  Nuclear fuel used in our current reactors (and the core of the Earth) was forged in the heart of a star.  Not Nicholas Cage®.  Maybe Johnny Depp™.

This energy is responsible for other things, too.  Salt deposits.  Sand dunes.  And life.

So disorder is increasing across the Universe every day.  And not only in the galaxy, but in your house.  In your carpet.  In your body.  In that Yeti© cooler.

But we know these things for certain.  Without energy:

  • Your house will someday be a wreck.
  • Your carpet should have been replaced Reagan left office. Brown shag is . . . 1980.
  • Your body will die.

Until you die, you have to have standards.  You have to hold the line.

You have to fight for the glorious tomorrow over the whispering of losing your will and relaxing today.

Life is hard.  Life is a struggle.  If you are lucky, you can struggle for mighty things, good things, virtuous things.  Hopefully with a healthy body and maybe a hardwood floor.

But I’ll let you in on a little secret:

We all lose in the end.  Entropy will win.  Entropy always wins.

The struggle is the goal.

Regardless of where you are, this is your golden age, your moment – it’s the only one you have.  When you were six you knew this.  What you read, what you watched – what was thrilling, who were your heroes?  People who went to work at a bank?  No.

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In ancient Sparta, apparently they did Cross-Fit® but didn’t talk about it.  They were advanced!

Your heroes were people who struggled, who fought.  Winning was preferable, but the struggle was enough.  A defiant loss like the Spartans at Thermopylae or the Texans at the Alamo is, perhaps, an even stronger example of virtue.

There are plenty of things in life that are worth fighting for, worth struggling for.  What are you going to do with your life?

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Grandpa McWilder didn’t wear a kilt.  He was an overalls kinda guy.

You have two choices.

You can waste your life.  Or you can struggle.  Do you have the discipline to embrace the struggle?

All the cool kids are doing it.

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At least struggle with a rifle cartridge if you’re gonna fight aliens.

Dune, Moods, Wrestling, and a Way of Life

“Look at the symptoms:  temperamental behavior, mood swings, facial hair.  Uh oh, Dad, I think you have menopause.” – That 70’s Show

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There ended up being roughly 732 books in the Dune series.  I stopped after book four, which was one book too many.

In our basement we have a wrestling mat.  It would be unusual if we had a wrestling mat and dismembered mannequin parts strewn around the room and baby doll heads covered with blood red paint, but we don’t.  The Mrs. and I decided we need to leave some projects for after the kids go to college.  So we use the wrestling mat for the more conventional purpose of practicing wrestling.  Both Pugsley and The Boy enjoy it, and so do I.  Pugsley has expressed an interest in winning a lot of wrestling matches, so he fairly enthusiastically led us to doing independent wrestling practice at home so he could improve.

One night it was time to practice.  The Boy was ready.  I was ready.  But Pugsley said, “I’m not in the mood.”

The Boy turned pale.  He knew what was coming next – the kraken was about to be unleashed.  I did a quick Internet search.  I then looked up from my laptop screen and quoted the following:

“Mood?  What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises — no matter the mood!  Mood’s a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset [JW: a musical instrument].  It’s not for fighting.” – Frank Herbert, Dune

gurneymood

If you’re not in the mood, make it so.

The lecture he got that followed that quote exceeded the amount of time that we would have practiced.  It’s the same lecture The Boy had gotten several years earlier, and he joined in to poke his brother with verbal barbs as well.  You may call it bullying, we call it raising children with values.  Maybe we should have stopped before we gave him a swirly?

The context of the quote is from the novel Dune which has spawned one bad movie (the early 1980’s version) and one underfunded movie (the early 2000’s version).  In the novel, young Paul Atreides is the son of a space Duke somewhere in the far future after humanity has spread through the stars.  Paul has the benefit of being royal, so he has a rather rigorous curriculum of everything from math, physics, and gender studies to small arms combat.  Just kidding.  Study math and physics.  Ha!  Studying math and physics is a sucker game:  study those things and you’ll have to pay taxes.

dunecat

This would have been a better plot than the early 80’s film.

Like all boys, Paul was looking for a day off.  His combat arms teacher, Gurney Halleck, rightly told him the truth:  when trouble is brewing or there is work to be done, the Universe does not care about your mood.

Like all boys, Pugsley was looking to push and see just how far he could get away with slacking.  The answer was simple:  he couldn’t.  He had made a commitment to his brother, to me, but most importantly to himself.  But sometimes, like all boys, he needed a reminder from his father that duty comes before mood.  So, he got the big speech.  I quote books, I quoted Patton, I quoted my father, I quoted Mr. Rogers®, and I noted that I hadn’t taken an unplanned sick day since before he was born.  Call in to the boss on a Tuesday morning with a sore throat?  No.

wrestlingmood

If you’re not familiar with wrestling, the guy in purple is like France at the start of World War II.

As an adult you have to do a lot of things that you don’t enjoy.  You have to go to work when you know it’s going to suck.  You have to take your punishment when you know you’ve done wrong.  You have to pay your bills.  You have to work out.  You have to meet the commitments you made, no matter how painful.

Keeping your word to other people is how the world sees that you have good character.  Keeping your word to yourself is the sign of real integrity.  Some days you don’t want to hit the weights.  You don’t want to go to work.  You don’t want to go to school.  You don’t want to go to practice.  You don’t want to meet that pesky General Grant at Wilmer’s place in Appomattox.

Boo hoo.

leemood

I heard you don’t have to lose the war if you’re not in the mood to lose the war.  Also, is it just me or does it look like they’re playing Battleship® on paper?

When you start failing to keep the commitments that you made to yourself, you’ll stop keeping your commitment to others.  What matters is turning on the alarm clock, and getting out of bed when it rings or beeps or whatever it does.  Every day.

You don’t need seminars.  Or pep talks.  Or motivational posters.  Or Tony Robbins and his weirdly white teeth (I swear that man has the grin of someone who likes to eat things that are small and squirming because they’re still living) and a $2000 seminar.

You need discipline.  Discipline is better than motivation any day.

Why do you need discipline?

discipline

Kevin Bacon understands.

Because motivated is a mood.

But disciplined is a way of life.

Want Dystopia?  Because this is how you get Dystopia.

“Then who is vice president, Jerry Lewis?” – Back to the Future

calhounmice

John B. Calhoun.  Not C.  B.

It’s rare when a real-life series of experiments showing a possible dystopian future for humanity captures the popular imagination.  It’s rarer still when it becomes the basis for a Newbery© award-winning book for children.  To get to the full trifecta of weird?  That novel was the basis for an animated movie that has a 96% “Fresh” rating at Rotten Tomatoes®.

The experiment was John B. Calhoun’s Universe series which he did primarily for the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), which we’ll cover in much more detail below.  The book is Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.  The movie?  The animated 1982 flick The Secret of NIMH.

nimh

Sure, you can turn a science experiment into a children’s movie, but try to go the other way JUST ONCE and you’ve committed Crimes Against Humanity.  Again.  Stupid International Criminal Court.

Yeah, it’s weird.  The only way it could get weirder is if Dr. John B. Calhoun had been visited during his rodent experiments by a time travelling Vice President John C. Calhoun to warn him about the impending Civil War . . . in 1865.  But from now on in this post, anytime the name Calhoun is used, it’s in reference to the scientist.  If I want to refer to Andrew Jackson’s Vice President?  We’ll just call him “Psycho Ex-Girlfriend Eyes.”

doccalhoun

The hair says psycho, but the eyes also say psycho.  Oh, wait, this is Vice President John C. Calhoun Psycho Ex-Girlfriend Eyes.

It’s strange when a scientist has less extreme hair than a Vice President, but not every scientist can be Doc Brown.  But Doc Calhoun didn’t invent time travel – he studied mice and rats.  What he set up was an artificial environment where there was no pressure to find food or water, and plenty of room for thousands of rodents.  In one experiment, Universe 25, Calhoun estimated that there was plenty of room for 3,840 mice to nest and live.  Imagine how many Pizza Rolls® you could make out of that 3,840 mice!

Calhoun created this mice paradise, and tossed in four lady-mice and four bro-mice.  They quickly paired off and started breeding.  After the first batch of mice-babies hatched from the mouse eggs, the population doubled every 55 days.  At day 315, the rate of growth dropped – the population “only” doubled every 145 days, and at day 315, things started to get . . . strange.

docbrown

Spoiler Alert!  He dies in 1850 as Secretary of State.

Dominant male mice had previously protected their harem of mice-ladies.  But when there were 600 mice?  It became difficult.  The mice-ladies had to fend for themselves.  The female mice became aggressive in self-defense.  They became solitary, and lashed out at their own young, often injuring them.  It was as if the higher population density was somehow more difficult to cope with without a male protecting them.

As the social structure dissolved, it led to violent, aimless females who didn’t know how to raise their young.  The male mice (that weren’t dominant) at this point became passive, and wouldn’t defend themselves when attacked.  Females that were outcasts and not reproducing just hid as far away from the main population as possible.  The outcast females would have gotten themselves a dozen cats and endless chardonnay, but, you know, they were mice.

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Calhoun was known to the mice as Godzilla®.

Wikipedia describes what happened next in the following chilling phrase.  “The last surviving birth was on day 600 . . . .”  Rather than the 3840 mice Calhoun calculated could cohabitate in the Universe, the maximum population hit 2200 at day 600.

“The last surviving birth . . . .”

After in an earlier Universe experiment at this stage, Calhoun observed that the (non-dominant) male rodents split into three groups, which he attributed to them being forced out of the nest while still young:

  • Group 1 – Pansexuals – These would mate with anything at any age at any time.
  • Group 2 – The Beautiful Ones – These mice were fat, sleek, healthy, but wouldn’t interact, and were ignored. Since they didn’t fight, they weren’t scared.  Like Justin Bieber, they spent most of their time just grooming themselves.
  • Group 3 – Again, this group was pansexual, but they were violent, and would mate at all costs with anything, and would cannibalize the corpses of the young, even though there was plentiful food. I had been unaware that rodents had their own Congress.

But the end state was always the same:  an entire generation rejected by mothers, unable to exhibit normal behavior, ceased to reproduce.  Those few offspring that were born in this phase of the experiment were born to mothers that ceased to have maternal instincts.

Dr. Calhoun published his findings in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1973.  He had a catchy, upbeat title for his article:  Death Squared.  I think that it would be fair to say that he was creeped out by what he found during his experiments.  It’s not usual for a physician and scientist to quote that cheeriest of all Bible books, Revelation, but Calhoun did so multiple times in the article.

Thankfully, people aren’t mice, right?  Here’s a snippet from Death Squared containing Dr. Calhoun’s conclusions:

For an animal so complex as man, there is no logical reason why a comparable sequence of events should not also lead to a species extinction.  If opportunities for role fulfillment fall far short of the demand by those capable of filling roles and having expectations to do so, only violence and disruption of social organization can follow.  Individuals born under these circumstances will be so out of touch with reality as to be incapable even of alienation.  Their most complex behavior will become fragmented.  Acquisition, creation, and utilization of ideas appropriate for life in a post-industrial cultural-conceptual-technological society will have been blocked.  Just as biological generativity in the mouse involves this species’ most complex behaviors, so does ideational generativity for man.  Loss of these respective complex behaviors means death of the species.

“Death of the species” means us, you and me.  And Universe 25 explains in vivid detail the horror of welfare, of plenty devoid of purpose, of societal breakdown brought about by parental neglect.  I wonder if there’s a graph that shows that welfare is horrible and leads to Universe 25, but with people?  There is:

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Amazing how we conduct an experiment on mice and worry about the ethical consequences, and then do the same thing with people just to get re-elected.  Thankfully, Universe 25 showed that Brave Single Mothers® are just as good as an intact family.  Oh, it showed the opposite?  Never mind.

Why does Jihadi John® leave London to go fight with ISIS™?  Because free food, poor upbringing, and crowded conditions without fathers and with abusive mothers don’t make good men; those conditions make monsters.  Men want to be tested.  They want challenges.  They want purpose, and if they can’t find a good one and have no moral backing, they’ll make a bad one.  Cheetos® and Red Bull© and X-Box™ or blood and steel and difficulty?

Blood and steel and difficulty.  It will win every time.

We have to have purpose, and mothers to nurture us, and fathers to teach us what is right and what is wrong.  And the city is maybe not the best place to live, unless you enjoy alienation.  And the extinction of humanity.

Or maybe we could just get some Ruffles™ instead of the Cheetos®.  I’m sure that will solve the problem, and we can just go get that at the store.

Photo of John B. Calhoun By Cat Calhoun – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia.

Resolutions, Fasting, and Wilder’s Cult of the Blue Bikini

“I’ve never been great at conflict resolution.  Not without a blade, and several rolls of plastic wrap.” – Dexter

wings

I would say that the writing of this book is both Original and Crispy.  This was actually released for free in 2017 by KFC. 

I got home on Wednesday night and the aroma of baked chicken filled the house.  It smelled like Colonel Sanders® had developed a scented candle, and it was amazing.  I wanted to rub the smell under my arms, in my hair, and maybe on my pillow so I could smell it in my sleep.

I had just dropped Pugsley off for wrestling practice, and The Boy had just gotten back from his wrestling practice and had dropped in to grab his term paper to go meet with a study group before flying out of the house faster than a floozy egghead on a baboon crotch.  I am not at liberty to tell you what a floozy egghead on a baboon crotch is, but I assure you it is quite fast.

The Mrs. and I were left alone in the house, a rare enough occurrence, and The Mrs. pulled the hot, plump, greasy, piping-hot chicken thighs and legs from the oven, slowly, letting them linger and adjust to the kitchen air, their moist meat hidden only by the sheerest of skin.  Whew.  I’m getting goosebumps just reading that.

Given that Pugsley and The Boy were normally there for dinner, she’d made about forty-five pounds of chicken.  She had also made gravy and some sort of low-carb mashed cauliflower that was pretending to be potatoes.  I generally try to avoid mashed things that aren’t actual potatoes – I’d just as soon use the mashed cauliflower for drywall repair, or execute it for being an impostor.

“Food’s hot, come and get it.”  The Mrs. walked back with a single chicken thigh and some of the drywall spackle on her plate, covered with gravy.

“I’m fasting.”

“Okay.  Crap.  Now who’s going to eat all of this chicken?”

The Mrs.’ dog Emo looked hopeful and fat.  Her other dog, BWL (broccoli with legs, because he’s so stupid he’s nearly a vegetable) just looked confused.  Which is normal.

Wait, what?  Did you say fasting, John Wilder?

fastcult

Yeah.  On a lark, I decided to fast for two reasons.  The first one is that it tied into a New Year’s resolution to get in better shape.  I’m a strong proponent New Year’s resolutions – they’re a good sign that even when you’re as awesome as me, you have the amazing humility to realize you could be a bit more excellent.  Truth:  it would not hurt me to lose a few pounds, especially if there’s a good story to it and it was unusual and did NOT involve X-Acto® knives and a vacuum cleaner.  I’m not doing that again, at least not without more tarps and duct tape.

The second reason I decided to fast is that I can’t remember going more than, say, two days without eating.  Ever.  I’ve got an iron stomach, and even when I was sick as a small child I never missed more than a single meal.  Could I go longer?  I remember when The Mrs. and I were first married that The Reverend Al Sharpton© had declared a “hunger strike” to protest that he wasn’t getting enough media attention a bombing range in Puerto Rico.  The Mrs. and I were listening to the radio one day when it emerged that Al’s “hunger strike” included actual food whenever he was hungry.  So, immediately we christened it “A Hungry Strike” as in, “I sure am hungry, I could use a lot more soup.”  Imagine that line in Al Sharpton’s voice, it’s funnier that way.

Our society is seems to be built on the idea that limitless on-demand food is normal and has existed since the aliens first created us as a slave race to develop PEZ®.  It’s also taken as gospel truth that if you don’t eat every four hours YOU WILL DIE.  It’s almost like most people think that for all of the history of humanity, we had a Schlotzsky’s Sandwiches© to serve salami subs on sourdough in the Serengeti or a Denny’s™ dishing dinners and desserts to Danes in dusty diluvial Denmark.  But the sad truth is that there has been the precedent of a society going from abundance to starvation in short order – just look at the fall of the Soviet Union, or that night that Wendy’s™ was closed because the Frosty© machine exploded.

overlordcat

Cult leader Mr. Fizzlesticks liked Kool-Aid™ before he got beamed to the Mother Ship.

I’d imagine that for most of history (which is before McDonalds®, Taco Bell©, or even agriculture), when you ate, you ate really, really well from that mammoth you took down.  When you didn’t eat?  Well, that might be a week.  I can see that ancient people wouldn’t get all trendy and put out websites and courses devoted to fasting.  No, they just didn’t have any food.

But even people you thought were tough, well, I remember watching a biography about T.E. Lawrence, the famed Lawrence of Arabia.  In it, a friend (of his, not of mine) related how Lawrence once went 45 hours without eating or sleeping just to see if he could.

Hell, I called that finals week in college.  But, again, never can I recall going over 48 hours without food.  What the heck, I’d give it a try.  And as I write this sentence, I’m on hour 94, so in two hours I’ll have gone four days without food.

I’m not dead.

And the really, really odd thing is that for most of the 94 hours I haven’t been horribly hungry.  After I started the fast, I started doing some research.  It turns out that there are a very large number of people in the world who fast, not because they don’t have food, but because they think it has more benefits than being Jeff Bezo’s $65 billion dollar ex-wife:

  • Weight Loss
  • Cancer Prevention
  • Increased Lifespan
  • Make You Telepathic on Wednesday
  • Reduced Inflammation
  • Urine Glows So You Don’t Need Bathroom Lights
  • Lower Blood Pressure
  • Reduce Type 2 Diabetes
  • Make You Bulletproof
  • More Better Braining, er, Thinking

Okay, some of these are sketchy, and not just the ones that I obviously made up.  It turns out the “increased lifespan” claim was based on some sort of worm that they starved.  The worm lives an average of 21 days and they starved it for a day.  Which is like you or I not eating for three years.  Yeah.  And the cancer claims from starving rats every other day.  If there’s one thing medical science knows how to do, it’s how to cure cancer in rats.

The main reason I did it, though, was curiosity.  Could I?

Yes.

I started out with the idea of doing three days, or 72 hours.  At the end of the third day it was going so well I said, hey, how about doing four days?  I’m glad I did.  I’ll explain below:

On day one it was like . . . nothing happened, because I regularly go 24 hours without eating, and have done so since I was a kid.  I had three mints and a dill pickle.  So, yes, this is technically not a complete fast, but the total number of calories was about thirty.  For the day.

Day two was a bit tougher, and was about four mints.  And three pickles.  So, sixty-five calories.  I felt fine, and not very hungry at all.  Day three was the same, but after exercising (which I do at lunch) for about 40 minutes I felt nearly comatose and my hands were very, very cold all day.  Then, almost like a light going on, I felt fine, and had plenty of energy for day four.  On day four, I had a pickle and two mints, so, 25 calories.

I justified the pickles based on the tiny amounts of calories and the salt that I wasn’t getting anywhere else, even though I was still engaging in some pretty intense and sweaty exercise.  The mints?  Those were for my coworkers.

Total calories:  185 in four days, plus all the coffee and water (both plain and carbonated) that I could drink.  Which was a lot.  185 calories is 18% of a Double Whopper with Cheese©, or like two bites.  Over four days.  So, I count that as fasting even though The Mrs. rolled her eyes and made some comment about “sounds like a hungry strike” under her breath.

cult

Bringing snacks at Fasting Cult?  Best duty ever.

But I’m an amateur at fasting and I know it.  One thing I have learned, however, is if there’s a human activity, there’s a cult on somewhere on the Internet devoted to it.  When started researching, I found people were fasting for periods of up to 100 days.  My little four day fast wasn’t much in comparison to those people.  They had to plan for two things for such long durations without eating, electrolytes/vitamins and refeeding.

It turns out the dangerous part of fasting for a long time, besides starving to death, is starting to eat again.  It turns out that if you start eating again incorrectly that you can short out the lithium battery in your heart, or strip the gears on your lungs.  Or something.  I’m not a doctor, but the Internet Cult of Fasting says you can actually have a fairly dangerous phosphate demand, especially if you eat a lot of carbs when you let your inner fat person out to eat everything in sight.  Your body requires phosphates to process carbs, and you can pull ‘em out of your blood (where it’s required to keep the lithium battery in your heart going) and into your cells (where they’re required to process the carbs).  It would be really stupid to die because of Pop Tarts™, but they probably kill more people than cookie dough (The CDC, Raw Cookie Dough, and Sexy Theocracy).

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There are some cults where recruiting is easy, except for the heretic on the left . . . no respectable cult has maroon bikinis!

Phosphate balance (along with some other conditions) can kill you.  I’d try to be funnier, but refeeding really can be fatal and leave a really stupid headline like “Popular Internet Writer Killed By Eating Pop Tarts® After Not Eating On Purpose.”

But hey, if Al Sharpton can make it . . . .

First Meal in 96 Hours Update:

Three pieces of baked chicken, two handfuls of blueberries, and two hamburger patties from the nearby Sonic™ since Pugsley got the wrong order.  Still not dead.  I’m feeling as full as a French bloomer weasel on Thanksgiving Dinner.  But the French bloomer weasel is endangered . . . .

The Caravan:  Warfare by Other Means

“Don’t worry, man.  Those aren’t narcs, they’re Las Emigras; you know, the Immigration Service looking for illegal aliens.” – Up in Smoke

crossback

Who knew that would be the impact of that one little change? (H/T me.me LINK)

The Caravan on our southern border is an expression of war, and it’s abetted by collaborators right here in the United States.  Or at least in Chicago, which I hear shares a border with the United States.

I’ll explain.

We live in an era dominated by 4th Generation warfare, and have been living in that era since Vietnam.  The “Caravan” of illegal aliens on the southern border of the United States is a concerted attack on the United States using 4th Generation warfare techniques.

Huh?  What the heck is 4th Generation warfare?

Don’t worry – I’ll explain.  I’m a trained professional member of Blog Club™, and the first rule of Blog Club™ is to mention your blog whenever possible – this thing won’t market itself.  Regardless, don’t try this at home or you might end up with and adverb slammed up your philtrum.  To understand what the 4th Generation is, let’s move back in time and understand the first three generations.  These descriptions follow concepts originally developed by William S. Lind (LINK).

In the 1st Generation of warfare, Lind picks the formation of the Treaty of Ghent as his starting point.  Or maybe it was the Simpson’s Treaty of Springfield and Shelbyville.  Regardless of what treaty it was, it essentially took warfare out of the control of small feudal lords and placed primary conduct of war in the smooth clammy fish-like hands of nation-states.  Since warfare back then consisted of cannons, very inaccurate muskets, and lots and lots and lots of dudes, the height of military strategy consisted of lines and masses of men moving to fight lines and masses of men.  It (sort of) made sense.  The muskets were crappy, so everybody shooting all at the same time was a good way to kill the enemy.  Besides, the cannons were inaccurate, too, and needed big targets to shoot at.  Napoleon was certainly the best general of 1st Generation warfare, but, you know, that whole “don’t get involved in a land war in Asia” started with him.  He won lots of battles, but lost the war.  Twice.

napoleon

2nd Generation warfare showed up when machine guns and accurate artillery made standing up in huge masses of dudes a certain prescription to lose the battle and also lose all of your pesky taxpaying citizens who used to be alive.  The real innovation of the 2nd Generation was “hiding” from the machine guns and artillery.  The Civil War in the United States started as a 1st Generation war, and finished with aspects of the 2nd Generation.  The trench warfare during the First World War was the height of 2nd Generation warfare, proving to be an even better way to eliminate your own citizens than standing them up in a line.

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Guess that’s a last tag with Todd.

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The Kaiser is still on Myspace.  Sad.

The 3rd Generation of war incorporated mobility and the idea that the most rapid gains were based on combining infantry, armor, artillery and air power into a war of motion and position.  The German Blitzkrieg, literally meant “lightning war”, which is probably a good description for the 3rd Generation.  The French had ended 2nd Generation warfare by perfecting it – they created the Maginot Line, a series of fixed fortifications.  This forced the Germans to invent an entirely new method of war to defeat it.

During and after World War II, the United States perfected this 3rd Generation warfare – learning every lesson that the Germans could teach.  And then spending trillions of dollars to perfect an armed forces that is perfectly designed to win World War II.  Again.

panzerfest

Those panzers won’t fuel themselves!

The 4th Generation of warfare started in the latter part of the Vietnam War.  4th Generation warfare strikes at the legitimacy of the state.  Tanks, bombs, and mobility don’t count.  The idea is to win the war without (necessarily) winning any battle.  Whereas the 1st Generation of warfare arrived with the nation-state, the 4th Generation arises as people around the world cease to identify as citizens and begin to primarily identify with tribal, racial, religious or cause-based allegiances.  And yes, you can make the argument that Julius Caesar faced the same sort of guerilla tactics when he invaded Britain, but he didn’t have PNN© (Parchment News Network) showing photographs of the slaughter.  Pics or it didn’t happen.

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H/T:  Weapons and Warfare (LINK)

What are some examples of 4th Generation warfare?

  • The Intifada: Palestinians use children to attack Israeli soldiers, hoping for an Israeli soldier to kill the children for an awesome photo opportunity.  Palestinian leaders then launch rockets and missiles at Israel from hospitals and schools, again hoping for as much of their followers blood to be spilled as possible.  Israeli victory depends on . . . not killing these kids.
  • Mogadishu: The warlords walked the streets, surrounded by women and children, again knowing that an American Marine is not going to shoot up non-combatants to get to a bad guy.
  • Antifaâ„¢: To the mother that left her kids out in Berkeley, could you come pick them up?  They’re beating up both Antifa® and the police.
  • The Caravan.

Wait, what?  The Caravan?

Illegal aliens strike at the heart of the nation-state.  If a nation isn’t allowed to control its borders, then how is it a nation?  And there is a group of people inside the United States that are collaborators with the invasion.  They deny that borders should even exist.  An example of tweets from #abolishborders:

  • Shooting teargas at women and children is not “border security”. It’s terrorism.
  • Guess it wasn’t enough for the U.S. government to throw children in concentration camps. This is beyond inhumane. All dirt is the same, and free movement is a human right.

Military force is ineffective against an invasion like the Caravan.  Scenes of violence against unarmed people on TV is powerful propaganda against the middle portion of the United States population that can be swayed to support the aliens.  Imagine the sympathy fest as weepy single moms emote on their way to drop off Brayden, Jayden, Hayden, Aiden and Kirk to their dad who lives in a one-room apartment above the pool hall hear the news on NPR®.  How sad!

Von Clausewitz talked about war being waged on three levels:

  • Physical – Breaking stuff and killing people and taking land.
  • Mental – Making the enemy think what you want them to think. Confusing them.
  • Moral – You have to believe that what you’re fighting for is right, just and correct.

Most military thinkers through the ages (including that French dude, Napoleon) feel that the moral level of war is the most crucial.  If you think what you’re doing is wrong and evil, it’s probably a good bet you’re going to lose.  And if the people back home think you’re evil?  Well, we have Vietnam where news that was looking to support a narrative convinced the majority of the American people that we were on the wrong side morally in the war.  So, we declared victory and left the communists to win.

What if you decide you’re the bad guy?

But there are 4th Generation collaborators on the inside of the United States right now.  A primary organizer of the Caravans is the United States based organization Pueblo Sin Fronteras.  Started by leftist Emma Lozano, this organization is also affiliated with La Familia Latina Unida (LFLU, “The United Latin Family”), and Ms. Lozano is virulently against the United States, noting, “We ride for freedom from our oppressors and we don’t say, ‘please, accept us, we are good workers,’ and make contributions, and wave the U.S. flag.  We know our history – half of the entire United States was originally Mexico.  We have every right to be here.”

According to an email obtained by the Washington Times:

Lozano told supporters that “we will march and run our own Latino independent candidate for president of the United States.” When a staffer for Rep. Gutierrez announced that the congressman wasn’t interested in running for president, Lozano responded that “we’re obligating him to run, we’re not asking him. We’re in a war and when you’re in a war you fight. We’re drafting him.”

You can find much more about Emma here (LINK) or through a casual Google® search.  Based on everything I can find about Ms. Lozano, I would expect that she’s in favor of a racially-based communism that results in the destruction of the United States as we know it and lots of free stuff for people she likes.  And lots of concentration leisure camps for the rest of us.  Free RV parking!

Ms. Lozano is a general in a 4th Generation war.  She is actively seeking to abolish the United States – by directly replacing its people with people that she likes better.  And these activists seek photo opportunities that allow them to establish moral superiority.  I watched footage where a Mexican police officer said (more or less, I’m going from memory):  “Please, please don’t put your women and children in front like this man,” pointing to an activist, “tells you to do.  It’s dangerous.  And he doesn’t care about you or your children.  I’m begging you, don’t put your children up front.”  Pueblo Sin Fronteras is certainly willing to sacrifice your children for a cool photo.

How an organization that encourages and abets breaking the law (Pueblo Sin Fronteras) can operate and not be indicted based on conspiracy charges is beyond me – if this were a right-wing organization I believe the organizers would have been taken to the International Space Station just so they could be shoved out of an airlock as a lesson to others that embarrassing the state is simply not an option.  I guess that I’m forced to conclude that Pueblo Sin Fronteras is doing exactly what government wants them to do.

These activists want pictures of children that were bloodied and killed at the hands of the United States government, and will stop at nothing to get them.  They want to break down the moral will of the United States so that open borders are allowed.  Rather than attempting to take over Dallas at the head of an army, they want to influence the families of the people who live in Dallas to surrender as they never would to what this really is:  a leftist invasion based on an ideology of open borders.

americaclosed

But the logic for open borders is easy to refute:

  • How many people would move to the United States if they could? The answer is:  several billion.  This is simply not realistic.  Where would we keep them?  Does California have a closet and a spare bedroom we don’t know about?
  • Moving all the Guatemalans here doesn’t make Guatemala better – it just makes the United States into Guatemala. Where I live, nobody locks their doors.  In Guatemala?  Locked doors aren’t enough.  You can even argue that, after a point, it does the people who move here no benefit as the system breaks down and the benefits they looked for disappear.  This may be the reason that California is the New Mississippi – the greatest poverty rate in the nation.
  • The values and cultural norms that made the United States great aren’t the values of the invaders. Conscious or not, invasion by an unassimilated alien culture leads to the destruction of the American culture and norms.  And the big value generation-device that our economy has been for 120 years ceases to work.  We become poor.

In order to win this war:

  • The aliens must be gently, firmly, and quickly be sent home.
  • We must stop supporting them with cash if they are here.
  • We must make life here so unhelpful that they voluntarily deport themselves.
  • We must not give their nations cash if they keep coming here.
  • We must stop cash flowing from individuals to their home country.
  • We can help their home countries to build industries and meaningful jobs.
  • If the people like, heck, we could come in and run the country for them since they seem to suck at running countries and we seem to be good at it. Is illegal immigration really the best argument for colonization ever?
  • We must win at the mental and moral levels.

We are in a war.  Are we ready to fight?  Because I don’t think that the 5th Generation of war will be quite as nice as the 4th . . . .

The Funniest Post You Will EVER Read About Genetic Engineering, Now Available in Cream or Roll-On

“Right, then!  I do the best I can for you, the bloody best, to set up your sniveling, snotty-nosed kid the way you want, and all I get in return for pouring fifteen years of research into the bloody boring composition of the bloody damn DNA molecule is a pair of pathetic twits, who, when confronted with bloody stats start a pathetic wiffle-waffle.  Right now, Mr. and Mrs. Stolwry, you have a perfect, beautiful specimen of a stocky, blond-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned, quilted, male shrimp-head welder, with pods.  Now, what more do you bloody want?  Frankly, it makes me sick!  Why don’t you go have your child naturally?” – Eric Idle on Saturday Night Live (1976) – I can’t embed the video but it’s here (LINK) and hilarious.

betteronpaper

Now you know why chicken wings are getting bigger.  If only it would make its own sauce.  I bet it does, in the Twilight Zone©!

We are at the beginning of a new age of humanity, and maybe even an entirely new type of humanity.  The first humans have been born where sections of their DNA (the genetic information that defines most everything of what they are) have been replaced with new information.  It’s exactly like someone recutting Toy Story® using dialogue from Fight Club™.  Oh, someone did that?  I do live in the best possible timeline:

It’s only two minutes: give it a watch, please.  My therapist says I need to share things.  But the first rule is that we shouldn’t talk about it.  Thankfully, I’m typing instead of talking.

But in this case, the genetic information that defines a living human being was cut out and replaced with new information.  And the human is an actual living human.

How did they do it?

Tiny scissors.  Really small ones.  And itty-bitty pieces of Scotch® tape.  Okay, they actually used a technique called “CRISPR”, which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.  But for all you care it could stand for Clever Reindeer Intentionally Shooting Panda Rifles.  It doesn’t matter.  Let’s pretend it’s really tiny scissors and itty-bitty pieces of Scotch™ tape.

CRISPR allows editing of the DNA strand by using segments of DNA to match up with and replace the parts of the DNA that we don’t like.  And even though DNA is comprised of lots of molecules, in reality DNA is just information like pages in a book, or dialogue in a movie except if you try to replace passages in your book with DNA all you get is a mess and sticky fingers from turning the DNA soaked pages.  But back to the DNA:  some of the information on the DNA appears to be actual junk – it may not mean anything – but the rest of the information defines your height, weight, hair color, maximum intelligence, ability to play guitar, affinity for bacon, and, well, ability to write real good word thoughts (PLOT POINT!).

Editing the DNA with CRISPR allows the editing of new pages into a book, and even the individual letters in the book.  But better not end up leaving out the wrong word:

wickedbible

This Bible was printed in 1631 and is known as the “Wicked Bible.”  If anyone actually followed the instructions, there was probably oodles of amateur DNA transfer.  Hopefully not on the pages.

CRISPR can be used to edit mushroom DNA.  Or cow DNA.  Or . . . human DNA.  And now two human girls have been born and inserted into their DNA is the resistance to AIDS.

The first time I ran into the concept of genetic engineering was when I was a kid, watching Star Trek®.  When I was a kid, it was a law that every other show on television was a repeat of Star Trek™.  The idea of one episode, Space Seed, was that a group of genetically enhanced (mentally and physically) supermen led a war.  When they lost the war, they were shot into space in suspended animation.  Because prison was too complicated, I guess.  The leader?  Khan Noonian Singh, played in scenery-chewing fashion by Ricardo Montalban.

khan

Even Kirk is skittish about genetic engineering.

Any measurable human trait or combination of human traits from DNA can now be changed.  And almost every human trait is genetic in nature.  I know this from experience.  As much as you might think that I was conceived of during an immaculate conception witnessed only by the angels and attended by a gaggle of singing heifers in bloomers, well, that was not exactly the case, no matter what I tell my kids.  It was sweaty teenagers.  But I digress.  I’m adopted, but in the weird way where I’m actually related to the family that adopted me.  I couldn’t even get “unwanted abandoned child” right.  Such a failure.

Anyway, for every moment of my life until I was 35, I had zero contact with my biological father.  Zero.  None.  Nada.  Zilch.  Empty set.  And zero contact with any of his relatives.  Complete isolation from that side of my personal biodiversity.  But I had been told his name.  Then, one night under some assistance from a bit of Coors Light® I did an Internet search and . . . called a number.  He wasn’t there, but a week later we talked.  And it was unusual.

If you’ve read this blog, you know that I have a rather strange set of interests.  One day, jokes about fizzy toots, the next day political analysis, then genetic engineering.  But when I called my biological father it was odd – there was almost no subject that either of us brought up that the other hadn’t researched.  Oh, and he’s a writer (THIS WAS THE PLOT POINT PAYOFF).  Please don’t get me wrong, in no way do I want to imply that I feel anything but the strongest loyalty to the family that raised me, but I could see the similarities so much that I made up a really clever original phrase:  “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”  I’m glad that when they rebuild the last remaining Internet server after the Nacho Cheese War of 2331™, that I’m certain to be credited with my wonderful, original phrase.

But your grandma who didn’t like that little tramp you were dating was right:  genetics matter.

CRISPR puts the tools to optimize human traits in the hands of . . . humans.  Sure, we’ve been doing the amateur kind of genetic engineering for, well, ever.  And it’s resulted in some pretty interesting people, like, say, you.  Our genetic engineers were our mothers and fathers.  Men have broad shoulders because women like broad shoulders.  Women have . . . well, we’ll skip that for now.  Don’t want to say the wrong thing and have everyone think I’m a boob.

3boob

Beware of 12 year olds with the ability to create genetic modifications.

Who gets to play with CRISPR first?  The rich.  Specifically rich Chinese people.  Yes, regulations exist in China, but the regulations exist to protect the State, not the people, silly.  The only reason the Party would restrict rich kids from having SuperBabies 3000® is if the Party feels the technology is too powerful and keeps it for itself.

Make no mistake, this is an incredibly powerful technology, like alcohol on prom night.  I think that the Chinese elite will start snipping and tucking DNA so that their children are smarter.  Taller.  Stronger.  More confident.  Better nose hair, you know, the kind you can braid.  If you’re a billionaire, why not?  The Party will be fine with that, since it gives them the ability to see what the technology does.  I mean, understanding the complicated interactions between DNA molecules is tougher than dancing a polka striptease with a gopher.  And we all know what that’s like.

khan2

Khan we fix your DNA?  Yes we Khan! 

Can you imagine being the master of this technology?  You can eliminate undesirable human traits, such as enjoying Taylor Swift® music entirely from your gene pool.  You can, if you are the Party, create the perfect Chuck Norris-like soldier.  A 9 foot tall (37 meters) basketball player.  The most loyal citizens.

If you are willing to sacrifice and experiment to quickly understand what the interactions are between multiple genetic changes and patient enough to await the results, you’ll quickly lead the world in a technology whose limits we can barely perceive.  And in a state controlled by a central Party, well, soon enough we could see a split so wide in human ability that humanity might look more like a colony of insects with different classes of humans genetically modified to follow their role as drone, soldier, queen, scientist, and blogger than the normal wild and feral band of humans we’re used to.  They’d be farther apart than Morlock© and Eloi™.

timemachine

H.G. Wells couldn’t have imagined that 800,000 years of human evolution could be done in an afternoon in an uncomfortably warm doctor’s office. But he also couldn’t imagine that Leonardo DiCaprio would ever win an Oscar®.

In China in a few years embryonic DNA modifications might become as common as vaccination in the United States.  Once the DNA gets into the gene pool of the country, it will stay there.  Perhaps in two or three generations China will have citizens that are entirely immune to some sort of biological agent that just, whoops, “accidentally” gets released to depopulate the planet and leave it free for China.

Shhh, but I think the Chinese have already measured Africa to see if all of their stuff would fit.

But in a twist resulting from an interaction between a snip that removed unsightly ear hair and a tuck that allowed all men to grow mustaches as full and perfect as the one Burt Reynolds had in Sharky’s Machine©, the remaining citizens develop an insatiable desire for eating humans.  What an ending!  Then Rod Serling can come out, smoking, with a good moral to the story.  Yay!

plagues

Okay – I love comments, and would love to have more, so don’t make me change your DNA so you’re chattier.  And don’t forget – you can just subscribe to this in the box above, and I’ll show up at least three times a week in your inbox.  Which won’t break it, unless you have a weak, girlie-man inbox.  And I won’t send or sell your address, ever.

Twitter, The 1%, and Thanksgiving (Not Available in Canada)

“If you could fight any celebrity, who would you fight?”
“I’d fight Gandhi.” – Fight Club

twitterfight

I’m not saying that an evil psychic entity made me send those tweets at 2am.  But I’m sure the wine had nothing to do with it.

Twitter® is living proof that the IQ of any group can be measured by the taking the average group IQ (which should be close to 100, I would hope) and dividing it by the number of participants.  Since there are over 6,000 tweets per second on the system, well, that means the IQ of Twitter® is 0.02, which is slightly above a rock, but still slightly below anyone dating a Kardashian or a common houseplant.  But I repeat myself.  Slap fights between dim kindergartners are often more founded in firm intellectual rigor than a Twitter© argument, and said arguments are generally about as productive as trying to teach a dog to say “milk.”

But I hadn’t figured that out a year ago.  It was back then that I commented on a breathless news story about the evil top 1% in the world.  I pointed out that almost everyone on Twitter® was in the top 1%.

The howls of outrage began.

outrage

I admit the whole Handmaid’s Tale obsession on the left cracks me up, you know, because we’re on a course to live in a theocracy.  But if we have to live in a theocracy, can’t it be a sexy one?  Sexy, sexy theocracy.  Mmmm.

Okay, it was mainly just this one guy – I think he was from Great Britain.  He was incensed that I would make such an outrageous statement.  His idea was that the 1% was evil.  It must be taxed, and taxed ferociously for the betterment of the entire planet.  He was filled with a mixture of outrage and envy.  Outrenvy?  Anyway, I then cited statistics that stated that to be in the top 1% in income in the world you need to make only $32,400 per year, or whatever the equivalent was in the fancy wrapping paper that he used for currency instead of sweet, sweet American dollars.

englandmeme

Ahhh, England, using children to do the jobs Americans won’t.

There was a long pause.  $32,000 per year is only $16 per hour.  $16 per hour seemed like not a lot of money to him.  Certainly he didn’t want to be taxed, he wasn’t an evil rich guy.  Other people are evil rich guys.  So, he switched the argument to wealth.  To be in the top 1% in the world in wealth, yes, the bar is a little higher.  Including all sources of wealth, homes, chickens, cars, that toenail clipping collection, and your mom’s secret spaghetti sauce recipe (tomato paste and a little garlic and oregano), to hit the top 1% requires $770,000.  That’s a taller hill than the $16 per hour, but still one that’s achievable for many Americans in their lifetime.  I don’t know about Great Britain, since my conception of their economy involves lots of singing chimney sweeps with bad teeth and I have no idea what chimney sweeping (singing or not) pays.  But let’s be frank, $770,000 isn’t Bond villain-level money, unless James Bond’s villain is living in a partially paid off house in the suburbs and maybe has a decent 401k balance.

bond villain on a budget

Times are tough, even the Bond Villains are on a budget.  Hope they have enough credit limit left for date night and a space-based orbital laser system.  You know how much date night can cost.

So, in the big scheme of things:

  • You’re doing okay.
  • You’re alive.
  • You’re likely in the top 1% in income . . . in the world.
  • Besides – you’re more than your money, more than your income, more than your net worth. You’re also your Rolex® collection.
  • You’re a handsome devil, and have an intellect way above average.
  • You’ve got a lot to be thankful for.

We’ll get back to the big picture soon enough in future posts, but in the time it took you to read this sentence, you have to admit – you were doing okay.

And me?  I’m thankful that I figured out not to get involved in Twitter© slapfights.

So, Happy Thanksgiving, wherever you are.  Except Canada.  You can’t even get that right, Canada.  Thanksgiving in October?  Is that when the Moose and Beaver signed a treaty not to invade Nova Scotia or something???

candian navy