Happiness – Page 15 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

500th Post, Including Nic Cage

“Well, my normal fee is $500, but seeing that it’s for you, I’m gonna need it in advance.” – Futurama

You can always tell an identity thief’s Twitter page. Their pronouns are ‘you/yours.’

Dear Readers and Friends,

This is my 500^th post here at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise, so I’m going to celebrate by writing a letter to you, which is great because I don’t have to steal from other bloggers research notes and prepare. Yay! Up front, I want to say that I appreciate you coming by more than you know, and I appreciate your comments, too.

I thought I’d start out by answering a question I’ve seen on the blog. I have seen more than one comment of the general flavor: Why do you do this? I’m not sure if it was:

Why do you do this? or,
Why do you do this? or,
Why do you do this?

The answer to all of those questions is the same: I really enjoy doing this. That’s at least the start of the answer. Do I have some other goals with this project someday? Sure. Maybe. But I love writing and all of those other projects depend on that fact.

I must love it though: the schedule is rough.

I heard there are no cats on Mars – Curiosity got to them first.

Often I don’t manage to finish writing these gems until it’s 4:30AM or so. On a couple of occasions I’ve jumped right from writing a post overnight into the shower to get ready for work. Why does it take so long? Well, there’s work, and then time with family, and then the time spent smoking cigars that I lit with flaming $100 bills in my hot tub filled with rare Mongolian* champagne.

Those are things I just won’t give up.

So in order to write, I have to replace the one thing that’s sort-of negotiable – sleep.

It didn’t used to take me until 4:30AM to do a post, I’d generally knock them out by 2AM at the latest. I blame The Mrs. for it taking so much longer. The Mrs. told me in 2018, in no uncertain terms, that I wasn’t working at my writing. It was okay, she said.

But.

The Mrs. then told me that the quality of my posts hadn’t gotten better in some time. Really thinking about this, I realized that The Mrs. was right. I’d been coasting in my writing like Nic Cage has been coasting in his acting since 1998.

Despite all my rage, I’m still just Princess Cage.

When I was younger, that sort of criticism might have stung me or I might have ignored it like Nic Cage does. But 2018 me realized that ego is a tool. I can dial it up, or dial it down. And dialing it down is the only way a person can have a receptive mindset so that they will listen, take advice, and improve. So I listened. And I studied. And then I did what I did in college when I had a test in Numerical and Voodoo Simulation Methods for Advanced Partial Derivatives: I worked really, really hard.

The problem with hard work is that it takes time. The odd thing I’ve found is, as I’ve gotten better (my perspective, yours may vary) I cannot abide by turning out work that I consider less than my version of my best effort. I just can’t. And the paradox of this is, as you get better, your best effort does, too. And that takes time.

If only I had low standards like Nic Cage.

Seriously, is he hiding both his receding hairline and his butt?

An example: commenters here are really sharp. One commenter (I’d mention your name, but don’t want to draw attention unless you want me to) mentioned an error I made, and followed up with, “I’m not giving you a hard time, I just got the idea from your writing that you’d want to know.” That was a really, really perceptive statement.

Old me who was driven more by ego? Would he want to know? No.

Me now? Yes.

I want to make these posts as perfect as I can make them. I want to make people laugh, out loud, and be a little embarrassed that they did. I want to present ideas that people haven’t had, and have them be intrigued at the new horizon I’ve opened up. Either one is a win. In my very best posts, I hope I do both, and have you laugh as your mind expands. It’s a good thing, because when you’re laughing as your skull gets bigger, it distracts a little from the pain.

This guy should be feeling zero pain.

What happens when I think I’ve written a great post? I hit “publish” and schedule it for 7:29AM Eastern, and I think I’ve done a good job, I’m as happy and excited as Johnny Depp when he finds out he’s purchased square whiskey bottles that don’t roll under the bed. I find it nearly impossible to sleep because I’m so happy.

When you’ve been up for 22 straight hours and are too excited to go to sleep?

That’s a pleasure. Or it’s Johnny Depp some Hollywood® celebrity on an ether binge.

That joy went from showing up monthly, to showing up weekly to now happening most (but not all) of the time. That’s killer when you have to get up 100 minutes after your head hits the pillow, being so excited you can barely sleep. But I still go to sleep with a smile on my face.

That’s not the whole story. I’ve never heard of a writer that writes only to write and shove boxes of paper in a trunk. A writer writes to be read, even if they’re writing a personal journal – they imagine their kids will read it someday. With me, as I mentioned above, it’s at least partially about making people laugh. Making people surprised at a new fact, idea, or concept works, too. But in order for people to experience that uplifting humor or mind-expanding concept, they’ve got to read it.

I try to write so the message will be timeless. But yet often the messages and the inside jokes are tied to our time and culture. That’s a contradiction.

Yes, a meme on a guy who was burned at the stake 420 years ago. Oh. Burn? 420? How blunt.

I bought Giordano Bruno’s book The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast (published 1584 A.D.). Why? It was one of the breadcrumbs I was looking at for some reason I can’t remember. Then the book showed up. After about six pages, I realized he was making references to stuff you could have only seen in the 1584 version of The Tiger King®. Let’s be real: in the year 2050 nobody is going to remember Joe Exotic or Stupid Carol unless they follow the footnotes.

Even though Bruno was burnt at the stake for his dangerous thoughts, going through his (relatively half-baked) ideas was going to take twenty minutes a page to sift through the references. Likewise, in the year 2436, I’m pretty sure that no one will get any of my Escape From New York® references about everyone thinking that Snake Plissken™ was dead. The good news is that I don’t expect the Catholic Church in Italy to sentence me to death via Inquisition.

I guess no one expects the Italian Inquisition, which I guess is one of their main weapons?

In the year 2025, if man is still alive, if woman can survive, they may find: Joe Exotic (Zager and Evans and Wilder)

Regardless, I’ll own the topical jokes that I make. It should at least be interesting to the archaeologists in the year 3351, so there’s that. Bruno had friends that put up with him while he was writing his crazy books filled with made up heresy.

And I’ve got you guys.

I spent an hour putting together a list of people and commenters who helped along the way. I got to forty, and realized I wasn’t even halfway close to a good list. Then I had the realization that even when I got to a good list, I’d be leaving someone important off.

Dangit. And I thought I’d be getting to bed early tonight.

I had one guy who worked for me who told me, “John, you’re one of the first people I’ve worked for that says, ‘Thank you’ on a regular basis and I appreciate that.” He’d worked for over forty years when he told me that, and that meant something to me. Too often we walk through life without gratitude to those we are close to, those we work with. And those that care for us. I want to be clear – I’m 100% grateful to the people that have helped me grow and introduced me to larger audiences and commented here.

How long will I keep the writing up? My best guess is at least 750 more posts. That’s five years. And, if this experiment goes the way I think it will? They’ll have to pry the keyboard from my cold, dead hands because I’ll never stop because I’ll be court jester to the new Emperor of North America.

Michael J. Fox was a little shaky on me using this meme.

We will be looking at difficulties in the future – I think we all can feel that. But look around and realize that we can and should be thankful for the people around us, and the good fortune we find. And I am thankful for you, and thankful for the circumstances that brought us all together. If you’re reading this, that includes you.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Sincerely,

John

*0.00075% of my readers are Mongolians (and that’s an actual number). I like to think it’s The Hu.

Questions: Important For Llamas And Finding The Truth

“Have you calculated the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything?” – Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Sean Connery is a stickler for grooming. I was stuck in a burning building while he was using the extinguisher to keep a path open for me. Then he told me, “shave yourself!”

A few years ago I was meeting with a person that reported to me at work. I was asking a question with a yes or no answer. One thing that being in thousands of hours of corporate meetings has taught me is that if you ask an open ended question, people will talk. And talk. And talk. Even if they have nothing to say – those meeting room corporate doughnuts aren’t going to eat themselves.

So, a lot of my questions were phrased in the form of, “Do you know where the llama is?”

My company doesn’t use llamas except for unlicensed medical experimentation to find a cure for chronic nose picking, so in this case “llama” is really easier than referencing the “Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator” that we really make.

There are really only two answers:

“Yes, John Wilder, the llama is in the break room playing beer pong with Vladimir Putin.”
“No, John Wilder, I have no idea.”

Well, I guess we know what’s going to happen in July.

A pattern that I had noticed was that when the answer was “Yes, I know where the llama is,” people would just say, “Yes.”

Simple. We’re done. Move on to the next question.

But if people didn’t know where the llama was, what I mentally thought of as “The Story” started. The story had a million variants: “No, John Wilder, I don’t know where the llama is because it had sticky glands and we were out of llama soap and a friend came in from out of town and I just quit heroin and Vladimir Putin took off his shirt and making sweet talk to the llama last week.”

The Story is long. The Story isn’t really relevant.

People didn’t want to tell me “No.” If they had, and knowing where the llama was mattered, I could follow up with a question. Most of the time my question was, “Well, when are you going to find the llama?” Frankly, I’ve heard more excuses than Joe Biden has lost memories, so “Why don’t you know where the llama is?” was most of the time something I didn’t really care about. But they made the decision that I cared why they didn’t know where the llama was.

Never worry about food when you travel with llamas. Alpaca lunch.

I had one very bright employee, Bill Nothisrealname, that a recent college grad. He started to explain why he didn’t know where the llama was: he was winding up to tell The Story.

I stopped him.

“Bill, you were first in your class in high school, right?”

“Yes.”

“And then you went to college at Southern North Eastern Midwestia State, which is a pretty good school. Heck, I bet that you were in the top ten in GPA in your degree?”

“Yeah, I was in the top five of the class.”

I gestured at the offices up and down the hallway. “Bill, everyone here was at the top of their class in high school and graduated at the top of their class from college in a degree just as tough as yours. My boss, Boris. He’s as smart as a Vulcan that crossbred with a computer and has the personality to match. When he asks me a question, he wants me to answer that question. He’s no dummy.

“And Boris isn’t afraid to ask questions, either. He’s realized that even as a top executive in the company, he doesn’t and can’t know everything.”

Bill nodded.

I never really liked that Coppola movie, Alpaca Lips Now.

“Here’s what I think. When you were in third grade, you were smart. When the rest of the class didn’t know the answer, the teacher looked at you, right?”

“Yes.”

“And that didn’t change in high school. Or, for you, even in college. I think that you think you have to know the answer, because you were the smart kid. Bill, everyone, and I mean everyone here is that smart. You weren’t hired because you knew all of the answers – you were hired because you were smart, and had good character. Don’t be afraid to not know everything – asking questions is a sign of power. And . . . answer the question that was asked.

“Bill, do you know where the llama is?”

“No.”

But don’t-a worry – health is her new issue. She’s still all-in for Ollamacare.

I moved on to the next question. In this case, the llama wasn’t all that important, except as it related to teaching Bill that he didn’t need to know everything, and that asking questions isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of self-confidence. And if it sounded like the exchange was mean, it really wasn’t. Bill’s worldview was just a bit off. Besides, I knew that once Putin got his claws into a really pretty llama like this one, we wouldn’t see either of them until they’d ridden through the mountains together and hunted the Rocky Mountain Spotted Poodle – the only true sport for men.

The point is still valid. Whenever I’ve seen a good leader, that leader isn’t afraid to ask questions, and isn’t afraid to admit that they don’t know everything. Part of writing this blog is me answering my own questions. And I have to be right – you’re a tough but fair crowd, and you tell me when my participle is dangling.

Questions are important.

The first thing I like to question is myself. Scott Adams says that two people might watch the same event and give it entirely different meaning – he calls it watching two movies on one screen. An example is Trump: Leftists think that everything, and I mean everything he does is comprised of a pure evil that requires he eat a live puppy every day. There’s even a name for it: Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). The symptoms include being triggered, literally shaking, wandering around in a circle muttering, “impeach . . . impeach . . . impeach.” Thankfully, many sufferers have found work as extras on The Walking Dead.

That’s one movie. There’s a second group that views Trump as a genius God Emperor who is sixteen steps ahead, playing 11-dimensional chess. This group thinks that the riots are perhaps his crowning achievement since he can use the riots to . . . ummm, I’m not sure what. I bet that plan shows up soon.

Both groups are wrong. My experience is you can talk to the God Emperor crowd, but the TDS sufferers just can’t discuss Trump. At all.

How much of my reality am I allowing to be filtered? How much am I deluding myself? These are the questions I repeatedly ask as I look for Truth.

Or you could just take their lunch money and buy yourself something nice.

The second question are my sources. People write all sorts of things, and on the Internet I can find a theory that all of the Challenger space shuttle crew survived the explosion and are still living today. Why? Because the Earth is flat. Really, that’s what they believe. There are also people who believe that the world is run by reptilian aliens who run the banks.

Of course those are absurd. The Internet is so questionable when it comes to facts that I’ve even seen Internet reports that I have hair. But how many shades of truth do we believe in each day without checking? I know that I’ve been shocked when I do research for Wilder, Wealthy and Wise that it’s not what I know that shocks me: it’s what I know that isn’t right. Who knew kittens couldn’t fly, even if you used a really big slingshot to give them a good takeoff?

The next question are my viewpoints. How many are wrong? In some cases I have taken years to figure out what I think about a subject, because I just hadn’t figured out the right way to look at it: I just don’t have a mental or moral model that fits it properly. I ended up being a ping-pong ball. There were good points on each side. How do the pros and cons line up?

When I was younger, I was more of a pure libertarian, even sometimes a Libertarian. I believed that if McDonalds™ wanted to sell me a hydrogen bomb and I had the cash, I should be able to order a McNuke®. As I get older, maybe not. And I now think that young children shouldn’t have guns: they’re much more effective using a crew-served weapon like a heavy machine gun or a mortar since they can overcome their inherent weakness by working together. If only a six year old could lift artillery shells….

My militia may be small, but they work for chocolate milk.

The final question is what can I learn from others? And I can only do that by asking questions – and having the humility to listen to the answers, no matter how stupid they are. I kid. I really have learned a lot by listening instead of talking.

So, anybody know where the llama is? Did another one fall in love with Putin?

Your one job? Be a good person.

“Mr. Towns, you behave as if stupidity were a virtue. Why is that?” – Flight of the Phoenix

Well, at least someone gave this post two thumbs up.

My older brother, John Wilder (our parents were notoriously uncreative), got a job at a motel when he was in college. His duty was to sleep in the apartment above the front desk, and if anyone wanted a room late at night, to get up out of bed and check them in. Technically, he got paid to sleep on the job. When I try to explain that’s what I’m doing to my employer, they seem to think it’s a violation of company rules. They won’t even listen when I explain I won’t be sleepy on the job if I just sleep on the job.

Go figure.

One day the owner of the motel was looking for someone to do an extremely important job: sweep the parking lot every Sunday. As I had heard of a broom, my brother put in a good word for me, and I ended up with my first official job. As I don’t recall quitting, they might be irritated at me because I haven’t been in to work in decades.

This was a job that I was well suited for, since I was willing to work for the one-ish hour a week (on Sunday) sweeping up the parking lot. I even had a time card, and got paid minimum wage. So early each Sunday morning I’d get on my ten speed and bike down to the motel and sweep the parking lot.

My bike kept trying to kill me, though. It was a vicious cycle.

The best part wasn’t the few bucks after tax that I made, but rather sitting down with my older brother and having breakfast in the office. I timed it so that I’d be done sweeping so we could watch a television show on TBS® together: The Wild, Wild West. I’m pretty sure I saw my first episode ever in that motel office.

By the time my brother and I watched it on the 12” screen in the office, The Wild, Wild West was decades old. And yet it was better than anything on prime time television. The Wild, Wild West, if you haven’t seen it, was Robert Conrad starring as secret agent James West in the 1870’s Western United States, complete with science fiction gadgets.

The villains were ludicrous. One episode featured obviously rubber cobras. And in one fight scene, Robert Conrad’s pants split wide open and they just kept filming – they were on a schedule, you know. On top of that, the costumes resembled nothing ever worn by an actual human in any place and during any period in human history.

Silly? Certainly. But why was the show good enough that I planned getting up early to watch it?

It’s because the character James West (and his fellow secret agent, Artemus Gordon) were good. West was a hero. He was smart. He could fight. He had wit. He laughed in the face of death. And if he had a weakness, it was for a lovely lady.

We’ll pretend that Will Smith took 1999 off. There can be only one Jim West.

Why was James West’s contemporary, Captain Kirk so popular? He was a cut from the same mold as West.

A boy needs a hero to look up to, who models virtue and strength. And you could do much, much worse than either James West or Captain Kirk. For some reason, the values of the networks changed, and The Wild, Wild West was cancelled (like Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies) in 1970 even though they did great in the ratings. Hmm.

It was like there was a social agenda . . . .

As time has gone on, many of the “heroes” in movies and television are given “depth” cheaply by making them either morally weak or having the system they work for be compromised in some way. When a hero sneaks by like Mal Reynolds on Firefly, well, the system takes care of him pretty quickly.

Captain Tightpants aims to misbehave.

Culture is, of course, upstream from politics. Culture is in part created by those heroes we are given to worship. Where do those heroes come from? Well, I mentioned James West, but I recall being pretty psyched about the Founding Fathers when I was a kid. Dad got pretty mad after the third cherry tree.

Our political reality is therefore created in part by media (now a tool of the Left) and academia (also a tool of the Left). And now the Founding Fathers are, instead of being revered for attempting to create a whole new type of country are regularly bashed in schools.

This attempt of the Left to steer culture obscures the real message. As a human, we have one (and only one) job.

That job is to be a good person.

It’s that easy. We waste a lot of time and effort wondering what it is we should be doing, when the answer is laughingly simple. You can’t control your height. You can’t control your intelligence. You can’t even control society. What can you control? Your actions and attitudes.

So, be a good person. That’s it.

The Left tries to obscure that simple truth because it has to. The Left doesn’t want you to be a good person. The Left wants you to be a Leftist. When I look at the memes from the Left, I’m astonished by two things:

They’re horribly unfunny, and
They’re based on a big wall of text.

No editing required.

The Lefty memes aren’t funny because funny requires truth. I wrote about that recently in The Leftist War on Culture: Comedy Edition. When truth is strangled, humor disappears which is why tyrants will kill comedians before they kill dissidents. Humor is one of the most potent weapons of truth.

The Lefty memes have to rely on a large blocks of text because half of the meme is required to try to refute reality and re-define it. If you’ve ever heard an actual Leftist talk, half of it is redefining terms: boy used to mean boy, but now it’s an entire spectrum which might indicate that boy means boy on Monday, but when it’s time for the state track meet, boy means girl. Sometimes.

If you want to watch real Olympic®-level verbal gymnastics, watch a Leftist try to define “racism” – it’s a hoot. For bonus points, see if you can get them to read the dictionary definition.

That’s the good news. Your job, being a good person, is so simple it’s hard for even the Left to mess up. But I bet they could come up with a 600 word meme to describe that “good” is only “good” if it results in more Leftist votes and the abolition of private property.

I wish that I could promise to you that if you were a good person, you’d be rewarded. That would be a lie. Being good doesn’t guarantee a tangible reward, or even that you will succeed, or even be liked and admired in your time.

I’m not sure I can promise a leprechaun will deliver them, though.

Likewise, being bad doesn’t guarantee punishment. Heck, some research indicates that 4% of Chief Executive Officers of companies are psychopaths. If you think long enough, you can come up with several names of people who are downright evil, but seem to be thriving.

The other bad news is that being good is hard work. First, you have to figure out what good is. Society isn’t necessarily a help here. As I write this, The Boy is watching livestreaming rioting and property destruction across multiple cities. When I try to calibrate the whole good/bad thing, I’m not sure that looting a Target® or burning a Hyundai© serves much of a purpose.

Being good isn’t about being good for today, either. I could easily ruin a child by making life too easy, or not holding them to high standards. Would it result in a happy child now? Sure. But every parent knows that short term success builds children into monsters who end up burning a Target™ or a Hyundai®.

Brought to you by the Minnesota Vistor and Tourism Bureau.

To be good, a moral code and the courage to follow it is required. Christianity is the one that built the West, and you could do worse – you rarely hear of Amish drive-by shootings, since everyone can hear the clip clop of the horses from pretty far away.

The Romans (Roman Virtues and Western Civilization, Complete with Monty Python) had a well-developed system of virtue thousands of years ago and spent a lot of time working to figure out how to be good – that’s pretty close to the basis of the Stoics. Making it up your own individual code as you go can lead to rationalization and relativism. If it feels good, it may not be good – a lot of bad things feel very good at the time.

But generally, if it feels bad, it nearly always is.

Be a good person. Ask yourself: WW(JW)D? No, not John Wilder.

Jim West.

But make sure you get your sweeping done first.

The Funniest Post You’ll Read About Life and Death, Featuring Vikings.

“I understand. In death, a member of Project Mayhem has a name. His name is Robert Paulson.” – Fight Club

I don’t want to be killed by a large sneeze, though. I don’t want people saying I bit off more than I could achoo.

As a culture, at least in the developed West, fearful of death. We hide from it to a degree that I’m not sure most of us are aware of. How could we be aware? Like our browser history, we’ve spent so much time and effort hiding it from public view.

I noticed a pattern in my life. First, when I was young, we went to funerals. Those funerals were where we buried my grandparents. As I got older, I started going to a lot of weddings as friends tied the knot, and funerals dropped to nearly zero. But as I get older, I’m seeing more funerals again. Most recently, it was for The Mrs.’ grandfather. Her grandfather was a crew chief on B-17’s for the 8^th Army Air Force. He was buried in the same Army olive drab uniform that he’d worn in World War II.

Funerals are, and should be, a time for reflection. When I looked a little at the big picture, in modern America most people rarely see dead people unless it’s in a hospital bed or at a funeral. Sure, there are exceptions. Cops, soldiers, people in medicine, and morticians see them all of the time outside of those limited settings, but those people are a pretty small percentage of the population.

When I pass away, I don’t want a fancy funeral. One like this is fine.

I was half-watching a movie, perhaps in the 1990s, so I’m a little shy on details. The movie was set during the Great Depression, and the husband had died. The wife had prepared the body and it was sitting ON THE DINNER TABLE for people to come and see for the visitation. Okay, not sitting. But the husband’s corpse was stretched out where they ate their fried okra and possum sushi or whatever it was people ate during the Depression.

What the heck? “Surely they didn’t really do that,” I said. There was an older person in the room who had lived through the Depression. He corrected me. “Surely they did. Funeral parlors were for rich people. And what are you gonna do, put him on the floor?”

Wow. I guess the old saying of “dust bunnies don’t mix with the dead” is true.

Being a product of my time, I hadn’t really thought about that at all. Dead people? Call a professional. Very nice and tidy and nothing but a bill that you can pay by check or credit card.

But when you look back at life in the 1930s and before, I guess there was a reason that people had little graveyards on the farm: they were used to dealing with death and couldn’t pass the duties required by death to someone else. Who else was going to do it? You couldn’t hire it out like today. Our ancestors knew what we have now forgotten. Just as birth starts a life, death ends it. I heard a statistic from the CDC® that life has a nearly a 100% mortality rate.

I will say I’m in favor of the new congressional cheese support bill. Count me as pro-volone.

Close physical contact with our dead relatives used to be the norm, not the exception. For them, death was a part of life. My mother-in-law was doing genealogy of her family. For the most part, genealogy is not horribly interesting to me unless there’s a story. Just knowing that I had a great-great-great-great grandpa called Duncan McWilder back in 1788 doesn’t tell me a lot. Was he a scoundrel? Why did he hop the boat to America? Was it for better Internet?

I did jump on the Mormon database and at least someone thinks I am the great²⁹ grandson of Harald Hardrada, who had a notoriously bad day in 1066 A.D. when he forgot to put on his armor when going up against the English. At least Harald has a story. After one of Harald’s vacations in Bulgaria, he got the nickname “Bulger-burner,” which is probably a lot funnier of a nickname if you’re not from Bulgaria.

And I hear that dead Viking Scrabble® players go to Vowel-halla.

Okay, that was a digression. I’ll see if I can’t get off at the right exit this time. Anyway, my mother-in-law was doing genealogy. One particular male relative had three or four wives. Polygamy? No. His wives kept dying in childbirth or from some plague that we can fix with a shot or thinking that arsenic and lead were what made makeup good, or wearing asbestos corsets and radium jewelry. People were acquainted with death in a real and up-close manner in the Victorian era.

Sad clowns don’t wear arsenic makeup, they use frown-dation instead.

I think that as we isolate ourselves from death, we start to pretend that it doesn’t exist. In some cases, people like Ray Kurzweil are attempting to figure out how to stop aging and live forever. Failing that? Ray is planning on being frozen into a corpse-sicle for later defrosting and infinite life. My bet? People will be able to live longer, but they won’t be able to live forever, because testing immortality drugs takes forever. And everyone is doing it: a guy outside of Wal-Mart® was selling immortality supplements, and it looked like a scam, so I called the cops. They were aware – they arrested the guy last year, in 2000, in 1968, and even, they said, back as far as 1880.

Ray may be able to squeeze a few more years out, but I thing that physical immortality isn’t something that we’ll see. At least not in my lifetime. Sorry, but immortality jokes never get old.

Even though life is part of death, that doesn’t mean we have to like it. But we don’t have to fear it, either. Very few of us will get to choose the time and place of our death. But we have the choice as to what we are going to do tomorrow to make this a better world – to do things that matter.

If a Viking is reincarnated, is he Bjorn again?

Heck, if I was immortal, I’d probably never get around to doing things that matter, since there’s always another tomorrow.

Until there’s not.

Just like Harald Hardrada, there will be a time and place when we’ll die. But Harald was a smart Viking, and he knew he wouldn’t drown. He knew that you could lead a Norse to water, but you can’t make him sink.

So, get going. And don’t forget your armor.

American Factory and Thoughts on the Future American Economy

â€œChina is here, Mr. Burton. The Chang Sing, the Wing Kong?Â They’ve been fighting for centuries.â€ â€“ Big Trouble in Little China

I mean, the camo looks so good, maybe they wanted to show it off?

I watched the documentary American Factory this weekend, and it seemed like a good jumping off point to discuss several topics â€“ globalization, employment, and JengaÂ®.Â In 2008, the General MotorsÂ® plant in Dayton, Ohio was closed during GMâ€™sÂ© bankruptcy.Â According to American Factory (now streaming on NetflixÂ®), 10,000 people in the Dayton area lost their jobs when the factory closed.Â In this current climate, Iâ€™m trying to come up with more unemployment jokes, but they all need work.

Fast forward to 2016, and a Chinese company, Fuyao Glass AmericaÂ®, started a new business making windshields for cars in the old GMÂ© plant.Â Fuyao bought the empty factory and spent on the order of $500 million dollars setting up the glass factory.Â Then Fuyao brought hundreds of Chinese supervisors over to start the facility and train the American workers.Â This makes sense â€“ you donâ€™t want to come across an ocean and have an employee like me when I sold used cars.Â One customer, looking at a minivan, asked me, â€œCargo space?â€

I answered, â€œCar no fly.Â Car go road.â€Â Obviously that didnâ€™t go very well.

One of these Chinese supervisors mentioned that he was committed to stay for two years.Â This was a father of two, and heâ€™d receive no extra pay for being away from his family.Â The Chinese supervisors were sleeping four to an apartment with furniture from the offices supplies aisle at Wal-Martâ„¢.Â Living with a roommate is tough.Â One roommate suggested I had schizophrenia.Â The joke was on him â€“ I didnâ€™t even have a roommate.

Poster from the documentary.Â Thatâ€™s it.Â No joke.Â Move along.

Clips from workers talking as they were just starting their work at Fuyao made it clear that the Fuyao jobs were nowhere near the pay of the GMÂ© jobs:Â At GMâ„¢, one worker made about $29 an hour in quality control until the plant closed.Â In the new Fuyao plant, she made less than $13 an hour.Â I talked to a local dog breeder about a summer job for Pugsley.Â She said that she only paid in expensive pure-bred puppies.Â Pugsley thought about it, and decided it was income-petable.

And the work is tougher than the GMÂ® work was.Â The temperature in some parts of the production area was 200Â°F, or about 63 kilograms.Â One worker spent over an hour a shift in ten minute increments in that heat in the furnace room, and the plant safety guy was trying to figure out how to keep him from overheating.Â But that level of heat had a plus side: Â during the filming I saw two hobbits throw a ring in the furnace room.

What surprised me was that the Chinese gave such access to the people making the documentary.Â They caught candid moments with the Fuyao founder, Cao Dewang, (called simply â€œChairman Caoâ€) throughout the documentary.Â There were moments where he was clearly doubtful, arrogant, or out of touch.Â We all have those moments, but most of the time billionaires try to avoid looking stupid in public.Â I mean, except Elon Musk.

I kid.Â I actually admire Mr. Musk, who seems to be able to do what NASA forgot.Â Fly people into space.

On starting the plant, production levels were described as â€œlowâ€ so Fuyao took the step of sending several of its plant supervisors to China.Â The clash of cultures was obvious at the start of the documentary, but it was during the sequence in China that really showed the difference in the way Americans and Chinese do business.

The conflict started at the first meeting.Â All of the Chinese business people were in suits. Â Most of the Americans were in jeans and t-shirts â€“ one of them was wearing a JawsÂ® movie t-shirt.Â In what was probably pretty embarrassing for the Americans, in the next scene you see them wearing Fuyao company logo polo shirts.Â How did that conversation go?Â â€œExcuse me, perhaps you would be more comfortable in a new company polo shirt and not your mustard-covered t-shirt advertising a forty year old movie?â€

But it was far, far beyond just the informal dress thatâ€™s common with line supervisors in a factory.Â One sequence showed all of the employees singing the corporate anthem.Â Another showed line production employees in a line, yelling out productivity slogans and propaganda like Marines responding to R. Lee Ermey when he was a drill instructor.

They were all out of bat.

One of the American supervisors (who had learned Chinese) was bad-mouthing his employees to a Chinese supervisor.Â To me, the American supervisor came across as someone who would do anything to make the Chinese like him â€“ he was a suck-up.Â After one negative comment about his own team, the Chinese supervisor said, â€œYou should all be united and concentrate your efforts.â€Â It was a subtle but nuclear insult â€“ the Chinese supervisor was slamming the American for not being united with his own workers.Â And the Chinese supervisor was right.

So, refresh the page.Â Am I still dead?

And working in China sounds as bad as Iâ€™d expected.Â Workers typically only get one or two days off a month â€“ a five day work week hasnâ€™t made it to China yet.Â The workers also work 12 hour shifts.Â The Chinese want their workers engaged in the company.

In fact, the American supervisors were there for the company annual Chinese New Year party, where the show was put on entirely by the employees.Â And as for engaged?Â There were several marriages performed at the company party.Â One of the Americans was so overcome with the sense of belonging around him that he was as emotional as a teenage girl watching Titanic.Â Me?Â I like my emotions like I like my beer.Â Bottled.

A quick trip through the Fuyao workers union (which is also the companyâ€™s communist party headquarters) showed that the division between company, country, party, and worker is non-existent.Â The Chinese are certain that they are superior to Americans â€“ several times in the film this is stated by Chinese people on camera.Â But they are also very proud of being Chinese â€“ when Chairman Cao was talking to his Chinese employees in America, he told that that no matter where they go, or where they are buried, that first and foremost they will always be Chinese.

China is nationalist, (mostly) ethnically homogeneous, and unambiguously pro-Chinese at the expense of everyone else on the planet.Â Work is for the government and the party.Â Why are the Muslims in China in reeducation camps?Â Because Islam isnâ€™t Chinese.Â China is a country built on unity and Islam isnâ€™t on the menu.Â And if youâ€™re not on board?

Literally.Â Â

Next, Fuyao fired the plant manager when production and profits were too low, but it was probably the lawsuits on safety that sent him over the top.Â The plant manager had been an American â€“ they replaced him with a Chinese guy.Â Iâ€™ve actually seen this in real life in one company I did business with.Â When things werenâ€™t going well, the owners fired the American and replaced him with a person from their country.Â I mean, if youâ€™re going to yell at the guy, you probably donâ€™t want to do it through a translator.

The documentary ended with increasing tensions ahead of a vote to bring in a union.

Iâ€™m torn.Â Nearly every union person Iâ€™ve ever worked with has been the opposite of what I see on television.Â Theyâ€™ve worked hard and with great skill.Â But to listen to a labor organizer for a union talk makes me feel nothing but that I want to keep one hand on my wallet.Â They have a sense of entitlement that seeks to make the worker feel that they are a victim, and to a certain mindset thatâ€™s an easy sell.Â One person who early in the documentary had been so thankful to have a job, any job, had now put himself in the role of a victim at a union meeting.Â Heck, in America we even have unions for pirates â€“ but their claims always end up in arrrrbitration.

As noted above, safety and adherence to American laws wasnâ€™t really a Chinese priority, at least at first.Â But with the union vote on the line, the Chinese gave a $2 per hour raise across the board and the Plant Manager committed to solving most problems in just one day.Â The plant workers voted to reject becoming unionized, by a 2-1 landslide.Â After that, the Chinese terminated several vocal union supporters, but since this wasnâ€™t China, that wasnâ€™t a literal termination.

Some thoughts that this movie brought out:

The Chinese like being Chinese, and like being around Chinese people. They donâ€™t have much use for everybody else on the planet except economically.Â Iâ€™m sure they keep visiting the United States to measure to make sure that their stuff will fit.
A factory worker used to be able to support a family as a sole breadwinner. The same can be said of the skilled trades.Â Immigration (illegal and legal) destroyed this because demand for jobs didnâ€™t increase, while numbers of workers did.Â â€œGreedyâ€ factory owners get blamed, but the reality is open borders means all jobs that donâ€™t require certificates or diplomas are under pressure from about several billion people willing to do it cheaper, especially if it can be done over the phone by â€œBobâ€ from Bangladesh.
Every union worker Iâ€™ve worked with has been awesome. Every union organizer Iâ€™ve ever seen on a documentary has reminded me of a conman.
This documentary showed the aftermath of the outsourcing of American manufacturing, a transition that has been ongoing since 1995.
The next economic transition is upon us. The new jobs that will be created are going to be quite a bit different than the ones disappearing.
The Mrs.â€™ Grandmother would offer her a shiny nickel to rub her corns. Thereâ€™s a job that wonâ€™t be taken away soon.
The documentary ended with discussions on how the Chinese were trying to automate the factory even more â€“ replacing workers with robots. It was less than thirty seconds of the documentary and the equivalent of writing something at the end of the essay that you wanted to write about but forgot.Â Given Chinese recent history with something as simple as eating bats, I imagine that automation will turn into automated killer robots that will kill all of humanity.Â But, hey, productivity is up!!!

I purchased some suspenders a few weeks ago.Â Pugsley immediately pounced.Â â€œWant me to get your varmint rifle, Pa?â€

Iâ€™d like to think that globalization is doomed, however I read a story two weeks ago about a surgical mask and protective equipment maker in Dallas.Â During the Swine Flu wave back in 2012, the owner had expanded capacity to meet with demand.Â What did the buyers do after the rush?Â They went back to sourcing from China.Â The owner was left with high unemployment insurance cost and new equipment that he had to pay for even though it was unused.

This time, the owner was more than happy to expand production, but heâ€™d only do it on a long-term contract.Â Last I heard?Â No takers.

But nah, Iâ€™m sure that weâ€™ll figure out that at least partially, globalization was what made our economy so fragile that a virus could cause it to collapse like a JengaÂ® game played by a drunk Michael J. Fox.

Groundhog Day: COVID-19 and The Long Now

“I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster. Drank piña coladas. At sunset we made love like sea otters. That was a pretty good day. Why couldn’t I get that day over and over and over?” – Groundhog Day

It’s Quarantine Day. Again.

Groundhog Day is one American film where the word “treasure” isn’t used lightly. It features Bill Murray in his last collaboration with Harold Ramis – a duo that together made the funniest movies in the world for more than a decade. But there’s something different about Groundhog Day: mixed in with the comedy is a story of personal consequence you don’t see in Ghostbusters or Stripes.

The movie also features a suicide with a groundhog driving a pickup off of a cliff ending in a fireball. Harold Ramis had originally written Groundhog Day to be a typical Bill Murray comedy. Murray wanted something deeper and more meaningful. Together that tension created a thoughtful movie about a weatherman who takes a bath with a toaster.

If you are one of the three people on planet Earth who haven’t seen it (I exclude people from France, for obvious reasons) I’ll give you a short synopsis: Bill Murray plays a self-absorbed weatherman who is sent to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania for Groundhog Day. Again. The weatherman has done this silly segment for the television channel he works at again and again, and he’s not happy. The entire concept of doing a trivial public event to amuse groggy morning television viewers having their morning coffee is something he feels is as meaningless to him as trying to teach Paris Hilton to read.

Paris Hilton got tired of a man knocking on her door all night. She finally let him out.

Bill Murray’s character and the television crew don’t make it out of town before the roads close because of a snowstorm. When Murray wakes up after spending another night in Punxsutawney, he finds he has to live that very same Groundhog Day over again on an endless loop. The movie’s cue that Murray character is stuck in the same day?

The time on the clock radio flips to 6:00AM with a click.

The radio starts playing the same song to start each day.

It’s bad enough to have to live the same day again and again, but to turn it to a special kind of hell, the song every morning for the rest of his life is: Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe.”

After Cher spent time at Chernobyl, you could tell she was happy when she was wagging her tail.

The only variable is what Bill Murray’s character does during that particular version of his one endless day that has become his whole life. When asked, Ramis said that Murray’s character probably spent “thirty or forty years” living the same day over and over again. But not making love like a sea otter.

Babe
I got you babe
I got you babe

Which is how I (and probably millions of others) feel right now. Corona-chan has infected the county where the Wilder family lives at a rate 10 times less than the nationwide infection rate. Even COVID-19 doesn’t seem to want to vacation in Modern Mayberry. Perhaps it’s because of the human sacrifices we make to Opie, the Old One, at our Harvest Festival? I keep telling the Chamber of Commerce that they should stop advertising that. Let it be a surprise to our visitors!

The recent shelter-in-place orders that have popped up all around the country have changed everyone’s life. I’ve written a LOT about the thermonuclear economic disintegration machine that’s munching at our GDP. But, wait, there’s more. It’s also the cause of the change in the routines of nearly everyone in the country.

I hear even pirates can’t take vacations, since ArrrrBNB® is closed, too.

Normally, families go on vacations. This year, I expect that most family vacations will consist of not taking vacations with the people you’ve been in the same house with for six weeks. Will the NFL® play games to empty stadiums this year, so that 11 people not from Cleveland will play on the field against 11 people not from Tampa Bay? I imagine that the NFL™ players might pay big money to get out of the house. Will the local high school team play? I think the local kids will play because the parents would pay big money to get them out of the house, but who can say? It’s all up in the air.

All of the things that we normally take for granted are likewise up in the air – for many people that includes having a job. Yet, with all that tension lots of us are living the same day, again and again. But for me, it’s not the same day I’m used to. Over time, I built up a schedule around work. Get up at the same time every day. Go to work, hit the gym for lunch, and then come home. When we got home, the family would do something – often that would be going out for dinner. On the weekends? Visiting friends. Eating Midwest sushi. Pugsley’s frequent cross-country corn skiing tournaments.

All of those options are gone.

We had variety in our lives, and choices. Want to drive two hours to go to a big city? Sure. We’d do that once every other month for a $9 hamburger (that’s -$26 in metric dollars). We didn’t do it often, but we could do it. We could still drive to the big city, but why? To eat an expensive burger in our car?

Oh, that’s the Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion? I guess the French don’t know what a $9 burger is.

So, the weekends have looked pretty much the same. We goof around the house, have a nice Saturday dinner, sit on the deck, maybe play a game. It’s fun, and it’s good family time. But in doing that, we’re forced to confront each other. Daily. All the time. Again. In the same situation. And even though we’re bombarded by daily news about the WuFlu and the reaction to it, the only real variable is how we interact in that particular day.

Babe
I got you babe
I got you babe

A few weeks ago Pugsley and I were in Wal-Mart©. We went through the checkout line and the clerk was a girl who had gone to high school with The Boy. Small towns are great that way. She had just started working at Wal-Mart® and even though she had known our family for years, she was surprised. “Oh, having a cookout?” she asked as she looked at the hamburger, bratwurst and steaks on the belt.

“Yes.”

“I guess you’re learning to cook!”

Well, no. Even Pugsley has been able to turn out a tasty dinner from scratch since he was about 10 or so. And The Boy is now the grill master and does a fantastic job, even though I keep him out of the grill master’s secret beverages. Who knew that the ice cold, golden bubbly elixir wasn’t the source of my grilling powers?

What kind of burgers do adopted boys get? Bison burgers.

The Mrs. has been the heavy lifter in cooking forever. And although each of us has been cooking, The Mrs. gets tired of the male preference for “meat and bratwurst every night.” I will admit that after a while The Boy and Pugsley both looked like they were suffering from withdrawal symptoms related to pizza roll and Taco Bell® depravation.

One big missing piece in my new “routine” is exercise. Missing 40 minutes of treadmill time, five days a week? Yeah, that’s easy to skip the discipline I built into my life on days when I’m not even bothering to wear pants.

It’s my fault. I built that routine to make the discipline of daily exercise easy for me. When I traveled for business, I had one that kept me exercising. But now, when staying home is what I’m doing? Have I built that routine?

No. Not yet. Like I said, it’s my fault. And it’s especially my fault because I know how to build that routine. The key is fairly simple. I just need to do it. Even though I don’t know if I’m going to even have a vacation, I do know where I’ll be tomorrow.

Babe
I got you babe
I got you babe

COVID-19: A Brave New World

â€œBecause if just one of those things gets down here then that will be all! Â Then all this – this bulls**t that you think is so important? Â You can just kiss all that goodbye!â€ – Aliens

I canâ€™t stand people who are xenophobic.

Corona.Â COVID-19.Â Thereâ€™s a catastrophe always lurking, but itâ€™s never what you think.Â But itâ€™s always something. Â Beer Flu.Â Kung Flu.

Do you understand the magnitude?Â Most people donâ€™t.Â Iâ€™m not even sure I do.

The last few nights here at Stately Wilder Mansion Redoubt have been especially enjoyable.Â I took off some time last week, and plan on taking some time off this week, as well.Â Itâ€™s a great time, especially if youâ€™ve never read Poeâ€™s Masque of the Red Death (LINK).

Rarely do things change so quickly:Â we Wilders were preparing to go to a state-level event where Pugsley was going to compete.Â Competing was an honor â€“ it means that he was one of the very best in the state at competitive freestyle dramatic baking rhythmic knife combat.

The championship was cancelled â€“ 6,000 people in the same place probably doesnâ€™t make sense.Â Why?Â Mathematically Iâ€™m betting that at least one of the competitors or spectators would have been COVID-communicable.Â 6,000 would have been a wonderful place for one person to donate billions of virus fragments to thousands of others, just like one South Korean was responsible for over 1,000 cases.

Ahhh, panda.Â So very tasty.Â I like it with a side of bald eagle.

One of my friends and I were talking before the event was canceled and said to me, â€œJohn, itâ€™s cancelled.Â There is no way thatâ€™s going to happen.â€Â There was no uncertainty in his voice â€“ it was clear he was 100% certain.Â In my mind, I thought that somehow this event would sneak under the radar.Â It did not.Â And in retrospect, I found myself guilty of one of the chief sins of the universe:Â thinking that normal can win in abnormal circumstances.Â Thankfully, the penalty here wasnâ€™t the usual penalty for such a sin:Â death.Â Okay, that was dramatic.Â Mainly itâ€™s feeling stupid.

Pugsley was disappointed since he had his katana sharp, his Hamlet memorized, and his recipe book tattooed on his left thigh, but cancelling the event was the right call.

The Boy was back in town for spring break, so the four of us Wilders are hunkered down in the basement as I write this.Â The other three idiots have been taking turns invading my writing space playing a video game.Â Thankfully, we like each other and have a reasonable supply of deodorant and soap.Â If the soap runs low, I volunteer to try to make some out our fire pit ashes and the cat.

But is it made from cat?

The Boy and Pugsley have been out into the world since COVID-19â„¢ hit more than The Mrs. and I.Â The Boy went back to his college on Saturday.Â They say that the college will open at some unspecified time in the future, but sent a note out that maybe you should think about coming to get your stuff.Â The Boy and Pugsley took a road trip for just that purpose.Â While The Mrs. hasnâ€™t had her job officially cancelled for the foreseeable future, I expect that will be the case.Â I donâ€™t expect either of the three of them to be required to be outside of the house in the month of March except for runs to Wal-MartÂ®.

Okay, it wasnâ€™t that bad.Â They didnâ€™t even ask me for gas money.Â Hey, have you guys seen my credit card?

My job?Â Itâ€™s probably not directly required for the United States to keep going on a daily basis, so I could see myself being restricted to working from home unless I absolutely had to be somewhere to defuse a bomb or perform a circumcision an alien.Â As it is, if I have symptoms of Corona, I canâ€™t come back to work unless Iâ€™ve been cleared via a doctorâ€™s note.Â Assuming I can find one of the six doctors in the county, but, hey, I can sign a signature that might look like a doctor?Â It looks just like an EbolaÂ© virus, right?

Iâ€™ve really enjoyed the time at home.Â Itâ€™s surreal, since as I listen to the Internet radio, I can hear everything crumbling as the news gets weirder by the day.Â I dumped my 401k (the part that was in stocks) into the money market fund this morning on Sunday.Â That means theyâ€™re supposed to dispose of it tomorrow.Â But as the market is lock-limit down already, what does that even mean?Â Can my money even find an exit point?

Iâ€™m betting the Fed dumps a trillion dollars, or maybe even two trillion into the market.

Tomorrow.

Itâ€™s that bad.Â I hope Iâ€™m wrong, but I think itâ€™s going to be October in 1929 bad.

Maybe this will work.Â Seems stable, right?

Itâ€™s obvious that the world around us has already changed.Â As we drove to Wal-MartÂ© on Friday for a scouting expedition, I looked at a parade of businesses that would soon be closed as I drove by them one by one on the street.

Move theater? Whoâ€™s going to go, especially since the movies are crap?
Diner frequented mainly by old people? Â Old couples are going to be self-quarantined watching the Price is RightÂ® until they welcome COVID-19 to escape each other.
Car dealerships? Â Iâ€™d like to buy that new JeepÂ® Coronaâ„¢ Wagon.
Scented candle places? Okay, Iâ€™m not sure how they stay in business anyway in 2020, unless they launder meth money.
Insurance companies?
Laundromats?
Thrift shops?
The VFW?
Churches?
Bars?
Liquor stores? Â Letâ€™s not get crazy here.

People donâ€™t really need those things.Â Except for liquor stores.Â From start to finish, what do people need in a modern society? Â I left off Law Enforcement because they keep people I donâ€™t like away from me.Â Yeah, some of them are tools, but for the most part we really do want them around for a modern society.Â Or, if we donâ€™t have Law Enforcement, a lot more ammo.

But the FBI seems reluctant to stop them.Â Even for speeding.Â

And need is not for the basics of life, it is for the basics of life for a modern society.

Water
Transport
Grocery Stores
Electricity
Their Bank
Pharmacies
Internet
Gasoline/Fuels
Natural Gas

But each of these requires people going to work to make things happen.Â The people who run the water system have to purify the water.Â The farmers have to farm, ranchers have to ranch, and dairy owners have to, um, dairy?Â The systems that provide water, milk, eggs, meat and corn are fundamental.Â They keep us in DoritosÂ® and salsa and Monterrey Jackâ„¢ cheese.

What will keep the system going? Â The city water department needs chemicals, so we need a chemical plant to make chlorine.Â But will we open the potato chip factory, or expect people can figure out how to cook potatoes?Â Will we open the frozen food factory, or assume people can make their own pizza?Â We move from a market economy to one where â€œshortagesâ€ are created based upon allocations â€“ whatâ€™s the best way to minimize the number of people that congregate while minimizing the spread of CoronaChan?

I donâ€™t know.Â Â But I do know that some foods will be considered so frivolous or interpersonal contact intensive that good sense wonâ€™t let them be made.Â Eating at a restaurant?Â That involves additional people, from cooks to servers that are potential additional viral vectors.

And as far as the tip, wash your hands.

What else donâ€™t we need?Â Thatâ€™s a tough question.Â Do we need the latest spring fashions shipped in from China?Â Do we need the latest iPhoneÂ®?Â Do we need Stephen Colbert?Â Definitely not.Â Heck, Iâ€™m not sure we need most of those things on any given day at all, let alone during a catastrophe.

And thatâ€™s just consumer products and a lame late night host.Â How much gasoline do we need if weâ€™re not travelling to and from work?Â Not very much.Â Lots of diesel is needed to move products in semi-trucks and on trains.Â In the United States, about 9 million barrels (42 gallons per barrel) are used each day as motor fuel.Â After Corona?

Three quarters of that?Â Half?

This weekend I would have probably used 30 gallons.Â Instead?Â None.Â Multiply that by millions of people, and gasoline demand is sunk.Â Get ready for the lowest gasoline prices youâ€™ll ever see in your life.Â And, since weâ€™ll not be transporting a lot of â€œstuffâ€?Â The lowest diesel prices, too, and unlike the hoarded toilet paper, theyâ€™ll hit bottom.

Maybe there will be new markets???

I look at this from a standpoint that Iâ€™ve got some food in my house that Iâ€™ve bought for times just such as this.Â I donâ€™t owe much to anyone.Â As Iâ€™ve indicated before, if you have money (and if money is still good, which may not be a given) youâ€™re in for the buying opportunity of a lifetime.Â Want an oil well? Â Youâ€™ll never have a better chance at getting a good one, if you have money.Â Especially the baby oil wells.Â Contrary to popular opinion baby oil isnâ€™t made from babies, but from toddlers.

But itâ€™s the people who donâ€™t have money that Iâ€™m concerned about.Â The theater owner canâ€™t keep the theater going if there are no butts in seats.Â The diner waitress canâ€™t make the payments on their car if they canâ€™t bring plates filled with eggs and bacon with a side of biscuits and gravy to Grandpa Verne.Â She depends on the tips that pay the bank for that car, since Virgil canâ€™t hold a job now that heâ€™s in the county lockup for fighting Clem again.

Most people depend on this weekâ€™s income to pay this monthâ€™s bills.Â Iâ€™ve been there.Â I lived several years of my life one month and one lost job away from bankruptcy.Â Thankfully, now I can live without a month of income.Â Most people canâ€™t.

How does that end up?Â Itâ€™s simple enough to say, â€œWell, let the banks take a hit on a month of payments.Â Theyâ€™re greedy and donâ€™t need that money.â€

But . . . itâ€™s my money youâ€™re talking about.Â My money is in the bank.Â How does Hells WargoÂ® pay me back if my money isnâ€™t collected from the waitress and the theater owner?Â For every transaction, thereâ€™s another party.Â And if you have more money than zero, youâ€™re impacted.Â That money of yours that your bank has?Â You loaned it to them.Â And if the loans that they made donâ€™t pay back?Â What happens then?

Another system failure.Â Iâ€™m expecting that the Federal government will just pony up several trillion to make it all go away.Â They have a printing press, ink, and paper.Â Why not?

It worked out okay for Zimbabwe and Venezuela, right?

From the best available information Iâ€™ve seen slowing down the WuFluÂ® isnâ€™t enough.Â It has to be stopped.Â COVID-19Â® isnâ€™t the flu.Â All available data indicates that it is far more deadly, and far more contagious.

At the high end of mortality, it would kill up to 7,500,000 Americans, assuming half of the people in the US get it.Â What else is a factor?Â How quickly we get it.Â If you want to live, having a ventilator will be an issue for some percentage, say, 5% of people who get it.Â No ventilator for that 5%?Â They die.Â Mortality rate skyrockets without care â€“ itâ€™s the difference between as low as 0.5% (as observed in South Korea) to as high as 5% in overwhelmed countries.

My trigger for â€œnot the fluâ€ is 30,000.Â That seems like a big number, but when you divide it by the number of people in America, itâ€™s really not.Â The flu (as near as we can see today) is a LOT less fatal.Â And, unless I missed a day in kindergarten, 30,000 is a lot less than 7,500,000.

Okay, not me.Â I have to write.Â And I have HBOÂ®.

But until we see how it pans out, I guess I get the big prize:Â spending time with Wilders.Â And Iâ€™ll enjoy spending time with each of them.

Except the cat.

Uncertainty, Retirement, and Immortal Lawyers

“This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.” – Fight Club

The 13^th Rule of Fight Club: If your mom is going to drive you home after Fight Club, make sure she signs you out first.

With everything in the news right now, it’s probably a good time to talk about money and life. There are significant uncertainties right now, and here are a few examples in no particular order:

Corona Virus – A big deal? It might be. I just saw that Corona® beer had changed their name to Bubonic Plague™.
Nuclear Iran And Nuclear North Korea – The plus side of nuclear war is no more pop-up ads.
Impending Market Meltdowns – Escalators were down, while Pencils lost a few points. Paper was stationary and Diapers remained unchanged, while Toilet Paper reached a new bottom.
A Left Wing That Has Bad Intentions When It Gains Power – The upside is that when a Leftist walks into a bar after the Revolution, he’ll order shots all around.
Jack’s Raging Bile Duct – Wait, hold up?

Okay, it’s not really a bile duct. And the guy’s name wasn’t Jack.

I was reading about a guy who just retired at about age 60. He had saved and invested his whole life, making sure that he would have enough money to last until he was 90. Since he had been a high-powered Wall Street guy, he did really well. He had saved millions, so he intended to live a pretty nice retirement with lots of travel around the world. Oh, he wanted to live in a pretty expensive town. And, even though money isn’t everything, it kept him in touch with his children.

Then?

Mario had to retire from plumbing because the Yelp® reviews all mentioned him raiding the fridge for mushrooms and stomping on any pet turtles he saw.

He was diagnosed with cancer – but a type that’s incurable. And it’s a fairly tough type: it’s got a 50% survival rate to make it for 5 years. Amazingly, he was writing about what people in their fifties might do in the current investment climate. He wasn’t writing about the fact that the remainder of his life was maybe reduced by 83% from his plans.

Me? If I were him, I’d be spending at least some of the money that I’d saved to last me for twenty-five years of life until 90 on a very, very nice bottle of scotch. And perhaps a cigar made from angel wings. For dinner? Nothing special. Maybe some surf and turf: yeti with Loch Ness monster filets grilled over lava pulled from the center of the Earth. I’d make sure that I used every second that I had left to me.

No clowns though. They taste funny.

But what if our lives were infinite, would that change anything?

I was driving down the street with The Boy and Pugsley several years ago. We were driving home from a camping trip, and were going through a small town on a sleepy Sunday morning. It was early enough that people hadn’t even gotten up for church yet. As we drove I saw a sign that said, “Jim McGill, Insurance and Real Estate” and decided to make a joke, because we’re a fun family.

I pulled out my best booming operatic voice, so deep and resonant it makes Brian Blessed sound like he hasn’t yet hit puberty:

Don’t hate him because he’s beardiful.

“Jim McGill is here to help you with all of your insurance and real estate needs, as he has for a thousand years here in Cedar Ridge.

“No one has more experience than McGill, who has studied the intricacies of umbrella insurance policies for decades of the countless years of his nigh-immortal life. McGill can also use his communion with the deep and ancient dark spirits of the Earth to find the very best property for you. Since the dawn of single-celled life on this puny planet, there is no insurance agent or realtor who will ever get you a better deal.”

The Boy piped in: “Brought to you by the power of the Necronomicon™.”

See, I told you we’re a fun family.

Oh, I thought you said immoral. My bad.

I was making a joke, but stumbled upon a truth. The joke was supposed to funny because here was an immortal being, selling insurance in a small town in the Midwest. But as I drove on, I realized a different truth: if an immortal can’t afford to spend his life doing trivial things, why do we?

Not that there’s a problem selling insurance, or a problem with selling real estate. I have a friend who dreams about selling real estate. She’s going to get her license. I think she’ll have a lot of fun with it – she likes working with people, and it’s something that’s important to her – finding the right person to sell the right house to will probably be fun and she probably won’t have to summon demons and other Satanic spirits to find a nice three bedroom on a cul-de-sac for a married couple with a baby on the way. Probably.

For me, personally, selling real estate would be one of the punishments that would be reserved for a deep level of Hell: lower than people who mow lawns at 8am on Saturday morning but not quite as low as Congressmen. But I think it will really make my friend happy.

He has a very special set of skills . . . .

And that’s a good reason to be a realtor – being happy by helping other people. It’s also a good reason to sell insurance. But never forget, doing a job is just that, doing a job.

We may not like everything we have to do at work, and we’re certainly not special snowflakes who deserve the job of our dreams just because we got a Master of Fine Arts in Paranormal Entity Identification and Eradication. We get paid to go to work because it’s not a hobby. Lots of times we’ll do things we’d only do if you were getting paid, like when I polished Grandma’s corns for a shiny new nickel.

It may be that the gentleman with cancer is writing for a reason – because that’s how he’s wired. I get it – I’m writing this sentence at 4am. But he has a choice.

There comes a time to realize that, if the basics are covered, you really do have a choice. Money only buys a certain amount of happiness. A new car isn’t necessary if you have one that works – no matter how old it is. You are trading your life for money, and even if you die with a lot of money, you’re still dead.

Make sure the trade is worth it, because you’re literally trading your life for it.

Meanwhile . . . somebody go pluck an angel’s wings.

Don’t wish your life away, complete with Catch-22 and bikini picture

“Mr. Frond. He’s a tall glass of . . . annoying.” – Bob’s Burgers

I guess you could say that Bernie engages in wishful thinking.

A few years ago I was in a meeting with my boss, who has since retired. It was a particularly hectic time at work – we were looking down at a calendar of 13 hour days, 7 days a week, for the next few weeks. We had already been on that hellish schedule for at least 20 days. We couldn’t have been more exhausted if we were a car muffler or the guy charged with keeping Joe Biden away from functional microphones.

At this point, the most dangerous place in the office was getting between me and the coffee pot. HR had cautioned me about my threatening language when I found someone in the way of the coffee, but I responded that growling wasn’t really a language. They said I was being intimidating, but I stared at them silently and then they went away.

So, we were busy. As I said, I had a meeting with my boss. My boss leaned back in his chair. In a very tired voice he said, “Well, I don’t want to wish my life away, but I’m looking forward to finishing this.”

The part of that sentence that really stuck with me was, “I don’t want to wish my life away.”

When faced with something unpleasant, I want it to be over, and the sooner the better. I think that’s just human nature. I’d actually never given that desire a second thought. “Let’s finish the bad times so we can get to the good times, right?”

It serves you right, you knock-kneed slobbering tuna monger.

I also recalled another, slightly different example of this kind of thinking. When I was a child waiting for Christmas, I wanted the days before Christmas Eve to dissolve into the past like all of those bodies in Bill Clinton’s basement so I could begin unwrapping presents like a Tasmanian Devil® with chainsaw arms. A similar example is how people can’t wait for the work week to finish so that they can get to the weekend and live their “real” life.

But life isn’t just the good times – it’s also the crappy ones, too. It’s also the dull ones. It’s the hours spent at work. And it’s the hours spent in a dentist chair. And that really is the sum of life – it’s not the great moments, it’s all the moments. It’s what we live in every day: that’s life. Life isn’t just hopping from peak to peak, victory to victory, Christmas present to Christmas present. Nope. Most of life is spent in the valleys and hillsides and Bill Clinton’s basement.

I will say the one time I had Tequila I did end up on my knees.

I did an experiment once on a warm spring day. I was in the parking lot of a liquor Bible store to get some beer to buy extra Bibles for the Bible room in my house. For whatever reason I stopped and just looked around. I observed as closely as I could. I looked everywhere. Up into the blue sky and the wisps of clouds moving lazily to the east. I looked at the grain of wood in the gray sun-bleached privacy fence by the parking lot. The staggered brick pattern of the store wall contrasting with the evenness of the mortar joints holding them in place caught my eye. From the natural to the manmade, I looked deeply.

As I spent time that afternoon really looking at and observing my surroundings I was struck by how much beauty that I was surrounded by, day after day. This was a beauty that I never noticed – it was just visual noise in my daily life. But that beauty really was there, hidden in the small things that are everywhere. Also it was in bikinis, but those really weren’t hidden.

It has been mentioned that I needed more bikini. I assume you mean on hot chicks, because it’s considered an international war crime if I posted one of me in a bikini.

There was a weird majesty in the moment. Most days I don’t take the time to look for it. But I know that it’s there if I want to take the time to look. After that, things weren’t really the same. I began to look closer at all aspects of life.

Not too much later I read an article that said that even when it gets fairly cold, say -5°F with a wind of 10 miles per hour, it would take up to half an hour to get frostbite. I’m not making fun of those temperatures – they can be deadly. But if I was walking around outside and the temperature was 40°F with a wind speed of 10 miles per hour I might be a bit uncomfortable, but a healthy person with exquisite DNA that was the result of a secret government breeding program named Project Lunchbox (like your humble host) could easily stand those conditions for hours in just a light jacket with no lasting negative impact. Shiver? Sure. But I’d be fine. And so would anyone else without a weird medical problem even if they weren’t part of Project Lunchbox.

When we had to do a group project in school we were in trouble – we were all “that guy”.

The same is true about high temperatures. Yes, I might sweat – it’s not like I’m a member of the English royal family. But for the most part, most ranges of heat you’d encounter in the United States isn’t life threatening to a healthy person. Uncomfortable? Yes. Sweaty? Certainly – we already established that. But only uncomfortable, not in danger. One summer the air conditioning went out on my car. My response? I rolled the windows down when I headed home from work. After a week or two, the heat ceased to bother me at all.

As I kept at it, I realized that there were a lot of other conditions I could simply ignore if I chose to:

Hunger – Most people reading this have never been really hungry in their lives.
Thirst – Water is important, but it how many times are we actually thirsty versus just drinking because of habit?
Airline Seats – Okay, these really are from the fifth circle of Hell. But I can scrunch up in one for an hour or so.
Ear Hair – If I let it grow long enough, I can braid it like the bride at a Leftist wedding.
Bad Smells – How many of them are just annoying? I mean, besides the French?
Disorder – Not everything in my life needs to be perfectly arranged, but it would be nice if Pugsley put the Vise Grips® back after he was done braiding my ear hair.

After all of this, the minor irritants of life ceased to irritate me on most days. As I became less irritated, the thing that oddly became more irritating was people complaining about minor irritations. I then had yet another realization: some people just like to complain. So I added another thing to my list of things I could ignore if I chose to:

Annoying People

I’ll admit that not everything in my life is always exactly the way I’d create it if it were entirely up to my choice. And that’s good. It’s that difference (along with carbohydrates) that forces me to grow. Bad times give me an excuse to call my friends and discuss my problems with them.

Jesus told me I could turn water into whine. I guess he had enough the third time I brought up airline food.

Also, I am human. Annoying people, especially the professional-level annoyers, still annoy me. And the list of things I can choose to not be angry about is just that, a choice. From Catch-22:

Dunbar loved shooting skeet because he hated every minute of it and the time passed so slowly.

…

“Do you know how long a year takes when it’s going away?” Dunbar asked Clevinger. “This long.” He snapped his fingers. “A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you’re an old man.”

“Old?” asked Clevinger with surprise. “What are you talking about?”

“Old.”

“I’m not old.”

“You’re inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow time down?” Dunbar was almost angry when he finished.

“Well, maybe it is true,” Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. “Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it’s to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?”

“I do,” Dunbar told him.

“Why?” Clevinger asked.

“What else is there?”

Joseph Heller was probably a bit more pessimistic than I am. I don’t think that living a life filled with unpleasant conditions is required for a long life. If so, people would be lining up at chiropractors to have them misalign their spines. But, on the other hand, someone did marry my ex-wife . . . .

And you pay half of all your stuff.

No, the wisdom that my boss shared with me is clear. Spending your life torturing yourself isn’t productive, except in California. But even during a bad time or when you’re anticipating a good time in the future, don’t wish your life away. Each minute is a precious one.

Use them all.

I suggest skeet.

Focus is a Key to Life and Look a Squirrel!

“Maybe we’re at war with Norway?” – The Thing

The Norwegians have the best parties – Fjord Fiestas, you could call them.

You’ve been there.

There’s a state where you experience full awareness. But it’s full awareness of a very specific kind. There is no past. There is no future. There is only now – the immediate now. You cease to be aware of anything but what you are doing.

You have become a verb. You are lost in the moment. You are the moment.

This state transcends time. Minutes, hours can pass. It seems like an instant.

This state has a name. It’s not tequila.

It’s focus. But tequila is a close second.

When I was in athletics in high school, coaches would tell me to “focus.” That was it. I think they told me that because they knew focus was important, and or maybe because that was what they were told when they were in high school. But they could see the impact that focus had on an athlete in a game, or a wrestler in a match. The difference between a focused player and one that isn’t focused is . . . sorry, what was I saying?

Anyway.

Well, the string certainly looks alive when it’s on a bikini.

What advice did we get with the command to focus? Well, in my case, none. I was expected to figure it out. I drilled takedowns in wrestling hundreds of times. Tackling drills for football? Again, at least hundreds of repetitions. Sprints? I think I did thousands of those, or at least it felt like thousands after practice was over.

How much time did they my coaches spend on teaching us focus and mental preparation?

Umm, I just told you. They told us to be focused. That’s it.

And I’m not complaining, some of the coaches were outstanding by any definition, and in one case objectively the best coach in the history of the state where I grew up in his sport. I don’t know, maybe they all thought that focus was second nature to some people. And maybe it is. But not to me. I get distracted by something as small as a bikini. Heck, if I had a dollar for every time I got distracted, I wish I had a beer.

Gradually, I figured it out, or at least figured it out as best as I could. Fast forward to this weekend: I caught myself telling Pugsley to focus before a wrestling match. I had a moment of epiphany. What does focus even mean to a kid whose entire life has been distorted by the distraction of technology? How do you even describe it? Maybe, perhaps, I could help him figure it out after his batteries died.

How many Aztecs does it take to change a lightbulb? None. The Aztec Empire dissolved hundreds of years before the lightbulb was invented. For some reason my kids don’t like my lightbulb jokes.

It’s true that in our lives, physical preparation in athletics or training for work often takes precedence for the mental preparation for what we do. The physical preparation is easy to see. It’s easy to objectively measure. How many pushups can you do in one minute? At work, the training for the job can be measured in certificates and completed coursework and compiled grades. And don’t ask candidates to prove how many pushups they can do in one minute no matter how amusing you think that might be. Have them do something like wax your car instead.

But mental preparation is tougher. You can’t directly see it. But yet it’s crucial to performance in nearly everything we do.

In athletics, the mind must be ready for the task at hand. If you’re wrestling, you’re going to war. You’re preparing to try to spend the next six minutes making the other guy regret he ever stepped on the mat with you. A bad place to be is to focus on what can go wrong before a match. A better place is to focus on the moment – to understand that no matter what happens, there is a way.

If I focus on what happens if I lose, I will wrestle not to lose. If I live life focused on what could go wrong, I will live life not to lose. My entire life would be spent in damage control, defending against failures that may not even exist.

Whoa! This is most excellent and triumphant!

The solution is focus. I wasn’t born with it. But focus can be taught. There’s even John Wilder’s Patented Focus List®, presented below with only limited commercial interruption thanks to a generous sponsorship by the MacArthur Foundation™ (hint, hint, I’m still waiting for my #GeniusGrant).

Know what you want. This is basic, but yet there are hundreds of people walking around who don’t know what they want out of life. In sports, it’s easier – people want to win. Some more than ever. But we’ll talk more about that next Wednesday.
Believe that it’s possible. I had a boss that was exceptional at this. He often had more belief in me than I had in myself. But if you don’t believe that what you’re doing can be done, you’ll find ways to make sure that you’re right. Plus believing it’s not possible is one way of making an excuse for failure before you start. Heck, most things are impossible, right up until someone does them. But enough about me losing my virginity.
Know every second counts. Clocks are unrelenting. 0:00 is coming. Every second that passes without you taking action is a second that can never come back.
Give everything, right from the start. Closely tied to using every second, is using every bit of you for every second. It’s your force multiplied by your time that is your momentum.

See, it’s so simple a fifth grader could derive it.

Prepare relentlessly. That means working through every detail you can, and as close to the real thing as possible. I guarantee your opponent is. Well, one of them is. When his iPhone® battery is dead.
Focus on winning, not losing. Reasons eloquently established above.

Too soon?

Lock out distractions. Everyday life tends to intrude in your brain. Push it back. Like an ex-wife it will be there after you’re done.
Avoid feeding your ego. Your ego, that part of you that holds all of your self-importance? The ego that thinks that people remember silly mistakes you made? It will fight with everything it has to be protected – it will sabotage you to prevent you doing your best. Sure, in rare circumstances people will remember your silly mistake (putting hydrogen in that dirigible, for instance), but that’s not the norm.
Have confidence in yourself.
Have faith. I’ve been lucky time and time again. I know the old saying that “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity” – but that was the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca who said that. And where is Seneca, hmm?
Remember why you’re here – not a specific way to win, but to win.
Focus on now, not the next game. Nor the next match. Nor the ride home.
Use your tension to build focus. Being nervous is okay, and can, if used properly help your preparation.

Use music. There is nothing that so impacts emotion and sets mood than music. Good rock music helps a workout. Appropriately aggressive music helps focus – Come Out And Play by the Offspring, or Electric Worry by Clutch or even Shoot to Thrill by AC/DC come to mind. Please feel free to suggest your favorite music that psyches you up below. I promise not to make too much fun of your choice, unless you pick something like Madonna or Justin Bieber. Yes, that includes that odious little man, Phil Collins. He knows what he did.

Have a routine, once you get it right. Play the same songs every time. Play them in the same order. Spend the same amount of time warming up each time.
Be ready physically. We’ve spent all this time getting your mind ready. It would be a shame if your body weren’t ready, too.
Have a strategy. Execute it. Having a strategy is important. Having the courage to execute it is important, too. Will it have to be sufficiently broad to account for surprises? But why do you have to bring broads into it?
Don’t deviate from the strategy too soon. There may be a time to give up on your plan, but it’s not immediately. Unless it is. This is more of an art – there is absolutely a time when Plan A will fail, and you’re stuck with Plan B. Or Plan C.

Okay, I never said it was a short list.

One other piece of advice: Be as outcome independent as you can be. The poem If by Rudyard Kipling makes this point well (The Chinese Farmer, Kipling, Marcus Aurelius, and You). Winning everything you try, every time you do it is impossible for everyone. But after the victory or the loss, you will remain. Yes, losing sucks. But the outcome of any specific event in your life is much less important than the input that got you there, which is (more or less) something Seneca also said.

I swear, I got lost for 20 minutes looking at Bill and Ted related information while writing this post. The Internet is the devil.

Yes, you read that right. You can’t control every outcome. But you can control your attitude. You can control your effort. You can control a large part of your preparations. You can control the virtue of your actions. If you do all that and still lose?

Winning is still better than losing. Winning is always better than losing. Losing sucks, and you should never really be proud of it – it will become a habit. But look for the lessons you can pick up for next time.

More next Wednesday when we look at how this impacts the rest of your life.

(And don’t forget to leave your psyche up to be aggressive music suggestions in the comments.)