Happiness – Page 2 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Time Of Your Life

“There are some spare fuses in the crawlspace.” – Scary Movie 3

If I had a dime for every time I think about you, I’d definitely think about you.

Often, we spend much on things of little value, and little on things of great value. I’m not the first to observe that, some dead Greek or Roman (probably both) beat me to it by thousands of years.

Regardless, it’s one of those truths that hits like a freight train when I remember it, but until then, it’s just humming along in the background of my life like the fridge in the kitchen or the bodies buried in the crawlspace. There, but we just don’t think about them.

It’s easy to chase the shiny, the expensive, the Facebook™ fodder by pouring cash and hours into stuff that delivers about as much lasting joy as a two-week-old ham sandwich served by a lunch lady that looks too much like Ellen DeGeneres.

Meanwhile, the really good stuff, the stuff that actually fills my soul and makes me excited and glad to be alive, sits there free for the taking, and we walk right past it like it’s yesterday’s newspaper.

Take a sunset.

My first girlfriend reminded me of a sunset: purple and hard on the eyes.

Not some fancy resort sunset that cost $5,000 and six hours in an airplane after the TSA cavity search to see. Just the one out my front window, or even on the drive home. Those shockingly bright filaments of cloud turning the sky into purples and oranges and pinks that no paint company has ever quite matched. That experience costs exactly zero dollars and maybe minutes of my life to really look deeper at the world around me and see the wonders embedded there.

I can stand, tilt my head, and for that brief moment connect to something bigger than my to-do list or 401(k) balance. Natural beauty is raw and free in the Recommended Daily Allowance, and served whether anyone notices or not. I’ve had days where that pause reset my entire mood.

No app, no subscription, no ticket required.

Or this blog, for that matter. Sure, you say, “Wilder, how can you be so funny? It’s drugs, isn’t it?”

No, dear friends, that’s silly, unless you call sunsets, puppies wagging their tail, purring cats, alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine drugs! What nonsense!

What’s the difference between meth and math? Meth is a stimulant, math is a depressant.

But I get a lot of enjoyment out of the writing, which is why I do it.

It’s the same with a good book, which I can get at the library for free because they don’t have a good anti-theft system. Or a conversation with The Mrs. over coffee that isn’t about bills or schedules or why the carpet is wet again.

This is free. Abundant, even.

Ben Franklin nailed it 5,000 years ago when he designed the Great Pyramid: “If thou lovest life then wasteth not time, for that is what lifeth is madeth of. And, a little lower and to the left.”

Time is the one resource I can’t buy more of, can’t borrow, and that I can’t refinance.

Every second I spend is gone forever.

The opposite side of the coin is even uglier.

How many times did I give away the truly precious stuff: hours, health, relationships . . . for pennies?

I asked seven CEOs “what’s the secret of your success?” and they each answered the same way, “How did you get in my house?”

So many people trade five full days a week doing work they actively hate for the fleeting dopamine hit of a weekend. I get it. It’s called a job, not a hobby, for a reason and that reason is that they give you money for it. Bills gotta get paid, mouths gotta eat. But when the dread starts Sunday afternoon and doesn’t let up until Friday at 5 p.m., I’m not living. I’m enduring.

And enduring is what prisoners do.

The rest of us, unless you’re literally locked up because those pesky kids kept snooping around and just would leave it alone, have choices.

Real choices. The guy staring back at me in the mirror every morning is usually the one who got me into whatever fix I’m in.

Bad career move? My choice.

Skipped the workout? My choice.

Put off that hard conversation? Yep, still me.

But here’s the kicker: we’re all surrounded by free gold.

I guess he caught the Germans with their panzers down.

A walk outside costs nothing and gives me fresh air, movement, and a chance to clear my head. Gratitude practiced daily, literally just listing three things I’m thankful for, rewires my brain toward the good. There are millions of these things that surround us. I can remember when I met The Mrs. (at that time, The Miss). If you took the square root of our net worth at the time, it would have an imaginary component because it took digging even to get to zero.

I worried less then than I do now. Quality of life is more about gratitude and hope than it is about net worth. Understanding that I will die gives me power, and no excuse for not going all in. I don’t get an extra prize for running out the clock.

Purpose and consequences are the secret ingredients to the Big Mac® of life. Easy happiness is cheap: a little weed, endless video games, or passive scrolling. It’s bliss without accomplishment, and it leaves everyone who follows that path hollow inside.

Real happiness, the kind that sticks, comes from choosing what’s worth being temporarily uncomfortable for. It’s never as glamorous as the movies make it look. No montage, no random hot stranger fixing your life, no making punji sticks to impale the crooked sheriff just because he hated Vietnam vets. Nope. Just brutal honesty, some discomfort, and the slow compound interest of time spent wisely, though you can still make the punji sticks.

Me? I’m trying to audit the tradeoffs. Where am I spending much on little? Where am I skimping on the great?

The bright side is at Easter they get their bunnies for nothing. And Peeps® for free.”

We’re all headed to the same exit ramp. The good news is, until then, most of us get to choose how we spend those miles unless a pack of comedic crime-fighting kids and a dog start snooping around my crawlspace. The guy in the mirror is the one who decides. Choose the sunset. Choose the conversation. Choose the book on the deck. Choose the work that doesn’t feel like slow death. Stack the free wins.

They compound faster than any investment account, and the dividends are paid in meaning, not just money.

Why Henry VIII Would’ve Killed for Your Tuesday

“Dying in our sleep is a luxury that our kind is rarely afforded. My gift to you.” – Kill Bill: Volume 1

I guess he had a bad heir day.

Henry VIII could have anyone killed in England killed, whenever.

That’s a historical level of flex, right?

“Off with his/her/their/xir head!” and boom, problem solved. The only way he could have had a more complete solution is if he had ye olde Hellfyre Missyll that he could have obliterated the parts with. Hank had more wives than most guys have pairs of underwear, threw parties that made Vegas look like a church potluck, and ate so much roasted swan he probably needed a crane to get out of bed.

Yet the poor bastard was miserable. Hank’s leg was a festering horror show of oozing sores that never healed. Doctors, if you could call them that, mashed it with hot pokers and prayed to Saints who were clearly not looking out for Henry.

Summers? Hank oozed sweat in every royal crevice like a Somalian in a daycare because air conditioning hadn’t been invented yet. Winters? Drafty castles that made your average Motel 6® feel like the Ritz™.

Fresh vegetables in January? Forget it, unless you counted the mold on last year’s turnips. Antibiotics? Nope. He died at 55 looking like a bloated, angry grape because a simple infection laughed at him.

Bill Gates claimed that it was hard to give away $100 billion. Then he discovered divorce.

Meanwhile, the poorest person reading this right now has:

Climate-controlled comfort (except when the power goes out and we all act like it’s the apocalypse)
Aspirin that kills headaches faster than Henry could yell “treason”
Strawberries in February flown in from well, wherever, for $2.99 a pint
A phone in their pocket with more computing power than NASA used to put men on the Moon, back when they still did that sort of thing

And we complain the Wi-Fi is slow.

As a society, we’ve lost the plot. We chase the next luxury like it’s the last helicopter out of Saigon, never noticing we’re already living better than every king who ever lived.

Marie Antoinnette didn’t like the chopper that took her out of France.

That’s where fasting, prayer, and meditation come in.

They don’t add luxury. And they’re not anti-luxury, either. Instead, they intensify life real life by pulling away things that dull it. They rip the blindfold off so you can finally see the ridiculous abundance that’s been hiding in plain sight.

Take camping, which is another life-intensifier. Or better yet, backpacking, because backpacking is camping for people who like suffering without a car nearby. You hike ten miles with everything you own on your back. Hot shower? Nah. Cold beer? Dream on, pal.

Clean socks after three days? Suddenly they feel like silk sheets at the Four Seasons®. That lukewarm instant coffee at sunrise after a 14,000-foot summit? Nectar of the gods. And that single cigar you packed for the top?

It tastes better than the $80 Cuban some hedge-fund guy is smoking in his climate-controlled man cave. The Luxury Meter resets. Hard. The stuff I took for granted becomes decadent again.

I felt motion sickness on the airplane yesterday. It didn’t help having all of those people screaming for lifejackets and rafts.

That’s exactly what fasting, prayer, and meditation do as I get older, except I don’t have to carry a 40-pound pack or sleep on rocks.

Let’s start with fasting, because I actually do this every week and some of my happiest days are while I’m doing it.

Yes, I’m the weirdo who smiles while hungry. Judge away. After 72 hours without food, that first bite of whatever I eat next hits different. It’s not “dinner.” It’s a religious experience.

Last week I broke a fast with a salad of lettuce, and my own dressing (olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and Frank’s Hot Sauce™.

I swear the lettuce tasted like it was grown by angels on Mount Olympus. I actually said “thank you” out loud to vinegar. The Mrs. asked me, “Are you planning on starting a cult?”

“No, it’s too hard to find enough people who are willing to shave off all the hair on their bodies. Just no commitment nowadays.”

Fasting reminds me that food isn’t a background app: it’s a miracle, a gift. My ancestors fought wolves for scraps, and won. That’s why I’m here.

Right now I’m so hungry I could eat my watch, but that would be time consuming.

Henry VIII had entire forests of deer murdered for his gouty pleasure and still died angry. Me? I can open the fridge and there sits last night’s leftover steak and a bag of midget tomatoes.

Fasting turns the volume down on “I want more” and turns it up on “Holy crap, this is amazing,” when one of those ripe tomatoes explodes flavor in my mouth as I bite into it. Prayer does the same thing, but with gratitude instead of hunger and with fewer seeds.

I’m not talking about the fancy stained-glass, organ-music version. I’m talking about the five-minute reciting the “Lord’s Prayer” or just sitting there praying “thanks” for all the little miracles in my life, like cigars. Thanks for the roof that doesn’t leak. Thanks for the truck that started this morning. Thanks for antibiotics that would’ve saved Henry’s leg and probably at least one of his marriages if the Habsburgs weren’t trying to kill him. Thanks for the fact that I can complain about gas prices while eating pineapple from Costa Rica on a pizza in February.

I think that if I do this regularly my brain chemistry changes. I cease envying the guy with the bigger bank account and start noticing that I’ve never missed a meal, except on purpose.

And then there’s meditation, which I used to think was for hippies in hemp pants smoking hemp and praying to a bong with hi-fi playing sitar music in the background.

Turns out it’s just shutting up for five minutes. Sit. Breathe. Notice the thoughts racing around like caffeinated squirrels.

After a few minutes the squirrels calm down. And suddenly I notice things. The warmth of the coffee mug. The feeling of my head against the back of my chair that just happens to adjust six ways. The ridiculous luxury of quiet.

Only self-aware people will understand this joke. You know who you are.

Henry VIII never had five minutes of peace: someone was always trying to poison him or marry him or overthrow him or he had another wife to kill.

I can have it peace and quiet whenever I want, and it costs exactly nothing.

When I do all three together it’s like a factory reset on my soul. The constant “I need more” noise fades.

I’m not saying sell everything and move to a cave and become a monk. I like my truck, my cigars, and my central heat as much as the next guy. But I’m not going to let “luxury” make me the modern version of Henry VIII: rich in stuff, poor in joy, angry at the world because the sores never heal and the wives won’t die. These things remind me that the real luxury isn’t the next thing, it’s realizing the things I already have would’ve made kings weep with envy.

Though say what you want about Henry, he did have a cure for wives who had headaches.

Happiness, Desire, Whiskey, and Purpose

“Is this making you happy?” – Fight Club

Why are mathematicians always happy? They know that the root of anything negative is imaginary.

“Happiness is all that it wants, and resembling the well-fed, there shouldn’t be any hunger or thirst.” – Epictetus

Think back to the moment that were really content. Happy. Maybe it was after a nice steak. Maybe it was after a draw on a good cigar. Maybe it was in on the bench seat of a 1978 GMC® truck on a warm summer night.

Whenever it was, in moments of true contentment, true happiness, you don’t want or need anything. The moment is complete. It is as it is. I feel that way after I write a post I’m especially happy with. I feel that way most mornings after the first sip of coffee. In those moments, in those times, I simply don’t need anything more.

W.C. Fields: “Always carry a whiskey flask in case of a snake bite. With that in mind, always carry a small snake.”

This is why I say that happiness is the easiest thing for most people, most of the time. It’s simple. Stop wanting what you don’t have.

Done. Easy. Unless it’s air. I need that most of the time and get quite cross and panicky when I don’t have it. And water, yeah, I need that on occasion. Food? Not an issue. Like most people in current-day USA, I could skip a meal or a few dozen meals and still be physically fine.

So, happiness is easy.

My brothers Sin and Cos stayed out in the Sun too long. They’re now tanned gents.

Why then, are most people unhappy?

They want what they don’t have. In some cases, they want what they can never have. Some mid-tier 8 who spends a night banging Brad Pitt now wants a Brad Pitt type guy to love her. That’s simply not going to happen in this universe because Brad Pitt has all the twenty-year-old 10s he wants to have, and one of them might be a keeper.

So, our mid-tier 8 is unhappy. If she didn’t think she deserved Brad Pitt, well, she might have a chance to be happy. But, no, she’s made herself unhappy. And, she’s made herself unhappy in the stupidest way possible: she’s pining for something she will never ever be able to have. In her case, it’s confusing being Mrs. Right Now with being Mrs. Right.

After A.I., how will programmers make money? Selling their laptops.

This unhappiness didn’t come from outside her: she made it up. So, whenever I’m unhappy, it’s typically because of a really simple reason: reality isn’t conforming itself to the way I want it to be. You know, the post didn’t say what I wanted to say in the way I wanted to say it.

The post is outside of me. It’s something I made. I can choose what I can do with it. I can abandon it. I’ve done that about five times, I think. I can decide, “You know what, good enough.” I’ve done that a few times. But most of the time, when I press the button that schedules the post, I’m happy. Very happy. I put in the effort on a cause that was worthy of my time.

If I’m unhappy with a post, it’s because I chose to be unhappy about it. I write because it is something that makes me, on balance, very happy.

If it didn’t, I wouldn’t do it.

The problem, though, is happy people don’t get much done. That’s why weed and vidya games are bad. They give bliss without accomplishment. It’s the easy road to happy.

But that sort of happiness, for me at least, is without meaning because it’s without accomplishment. I’m unhappy all the time, but I’m unhappy about (mostly) things I choose to be unhappy about. I rarely choose to be unhappy about things I can’t control. If I can’t control it, it’s just the way the world is.

When you break up with an A.I., does it experience machine yearning?

But if I’m unhappy, and I think it’s worth the effort, even if it’s big, I’ll choose to be unhappy to try to make it happen.

That’s the definition of purpose. It might be small, like mowing the lawn. It might be big, like changing the world. But I get to choose. It should fit my talents. And, as I’ve been prattling on about them, yeah, it should be in service of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.

It needs to be worth it, and that defines what worth it is. Well, at least to me. YMMV.

I think so many people are unhappy because they simply don’t have a purpose, they don’t see a way that they can be of substance, be of consequence in a world where 8 to 10(!) billion people exist. It’s overwhelming.

It makes one feel small, sometimes.

But me? I keep pushing. I’ve even distilled my purpose down to a sentence: “To make visible that which would otherwise not have been seen.” So, the writing is kinda core to a purpose like that, unless I want to sit in the backyard yelling at the squirrels on how they’re being inefficient with their nuts.

Do Catholics ever give up cleaning their drier filter for lint?

Purpose, then, is a double-edged sword. It provokes me to action, and leaves me with a fire inside. But this is one that I choose to carry. It’s one that I wish to have.

I control (mostly) my emotions. Being happy means not wanting. Except when I choose what I want. And right now? I want elimination of Evil, a steak and a cigar.

In that order. But I’ll work on getting rid of the Evil while I enjoy my steak and cigar.

The Wilder Guide to Self-Reinvention

“Ultimately, anybody could crash on an island like this, and the idea of being surrounded by strangers and getting to reinvent yourself in some way is sort of readily identifiable.” – Lost

The NFL® has an obscure rule that players cannot own ducks or geese. Those are called “a personal fowl.” (all memes as-found)

Sometimes I’ve felt like I’m stuck in a sequel nobody asked for.

Same plot, same villains, same scriptwriters, same predictable ending where the hero, me, ends up in the same place where the movie started. All of it happened, and all of it changed nothing.

Reinvention sounds like one of those self-help buzzwords peddled by people with suspiciously not-grey hair, perfect teeth, and look like they smell vaguely of Lemon-Scented® Pledge™.

Me? I’ve lost most of my hair, have okay but not perfect teeth, and more often smell of cigar than citrus. I’m not selling you anything. Except songs. And you can listen to all of those for free. But if reinvention is done well, it changes everything, which should be no surprise because it’s in the name.

I’ve reinvented myself a time or two. Switched careers, changed habits, even moved across state lines once. It’s never as glamorous as the brochures promise. I have never yet experienced a slow-mo training montage with Eye of the Tiger blasting in the background. More often it’s like grinding through a B-movie script where the director keeps yelling “Cut!” because I flubbed the line again.

Plot twist: it was really Freddy Kruger™ that killed Martin Luther King, Jr. After all, he had a dream . . .

In the changes I’ve made, however, I have learned more than a few things. First, real reinvention demands a brutal assessment of what’s True, Beautiful, and Good and how that differs from what I see in the mirror. People, me included, want to believe pretty little lies whenever they can. Real assessment is required.

If it isn’t hitting at least three out of three of the True, Beautiful, and Good criteria, why bother? I try to take stock without mercy.

Is it True?

Does it square with reality, or am I kidding myself?

Is it Beautiful?

Does it create something worthwhile, or is it just pumping out more plastic widgets for the landfill?

Is it Good?

Does serve a higher purpose, or is it just vanity?

If the answer’s a resounding “meh,” to any of these three, it’s not worth the effort. If I lie to myself here, the whole reinvention turns into a farce.

Would you like three alternative punchlines?

Hollywood peddles a different script, of course. Change is always Good™, wrapped in a rom-com bow. Picture the uptight stuffed-shirt. Khakis pressed, 401(k) maxed moping through life until a random crazy hot chick crashes in.

She’s got purple hair, a tattoo of a dreamcatcher, and a backpack full of “experiences.” She drags him to a rave in the desert, teaches him to juggle fire and smoke weed, and poof, he’s ditching the corner office for a food truck.

Roll credits, cue the indie soundtrack. This is celebrated as a modern goal.

Reality check: I’ve crossed paths with more than a few random crazy hot chicks.

Positive contributions? Slim to none. All the experiences rhyme, though: a whirlwind of chaos, pain, and stories that start with “So there I was…” and end with lawyers or bail money.

Random crazy hot chicks didn’t reinvent me, they just rearrange the furniture in my life until nothing fits.

Real change doesn’t need a manic (or maniac) minx catalyst.

She keeps sending mixed messages.

It just needed me to stare in the mirror and decide the current plot sucks.

Change itself?

That’s the bonus, the change is immediate.

Change happens now, effects come with time. Flip the switch.

Boom, reinvented. The results take time. The bigger the change, the more patience required for the results.

That’s why urgency is my ally. Time multiplies effort like compound interest, and the old saying goes: When’s the best time to plant a tree? The best time to start is 20 years ago. The next best time is now.

Silly me, I would have thought the next best time would have been 19 years ago, but maybe I missed that day in Arbor Academy.

The message, though, is clear. Act now, act deliberately. Not in a panic but with a purpose. Delay, and I’m just leaving Future Me a bigger debt.

Which brings us back to the noun. The what. I had a boss that would always slow me down with this one simple question: “What do we want the outcome to be? Start with the end in mind.” Again, the criteria for me is simple. Is it True, is it Beautiful, is it Good?

Also, how I frame the change dictates the ending and the success or failure. Any change that constantly demoralizes me is doomed. If I have an end state in mind, and I’m not there, I’m failing. Right?

No. Remember the montage. Starting the montage is the success. You’ve gotta have a montage.

Seriously, though, my mind rebels against endless punishment. Why should I keep showing up if every step feels like defeat? For me, I often measure effort rather than outcomes. Build a habit of study, and not measure myself against the end. Even a little progress (if the change is big enough) is what I’m looking for. Patton put it perfectly: “A good plan executed now is better than a perfect one executed later.”

My dudes, attitude is everything.

There are exceptions: any positive reinvention that energizes me? That’s the winner. It creates a feedback loop: my effort sparks momentum, my momentum delivers wins, my wins fuel more energy. These can even be bits of the montage, if you will.

Quick wins? I grab them whenever I can. I’m wired for routine. Once a habit locks in, it’s tougher for me to break than to keep. Like autopilot, I set the course, and it flies itself. Your mileage may vary, but for me, momentum is king. Get the ball rolling, and inertia works for me, not against.

I’ve learned to not wait for a muse. She’s probably off with that random crazy chick anyway. Just consistent action.

At its core, reinvention isn’t about morphing into someone else. It’s honing the best of who I am, aligned with Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. Brutal honesty spots the flaws, urgency launches the fix, energy sustains the burn, and time polishes the gem. When it clicks? It’s worth every sweat drop, every dawn patrol, every skipped shortcut.

Whenever I am at a crossroads I always stare into a bowl of rice, hoping to find a grain of truth.

I’m beginning to think the only bad ending is the one where I don’t change. Oh, and all of the Disney® movies since 2017 or so. They all suck.

No To Resolutions, Yes To Future Me

“You’re right. We could sit around here all day, talking, passing resolutions, making clever speeches. It’s not going to shift one Roman soldier.” – Life of Brian

When I farmed sprouts I was assertive. I was an alfalfa male.

I have mentioned before that the whole New Year holiday has never resonated with me.

New Year’s Eve means amateur drunks on the roads, bad decisions, and an excess of early September births. One of the things that I thought about when I was a kid (not born in September!) was the idea of a resolution. I’ve always thought of a resolution as a promise not outwards, but inwards: a promise from today me to future me.

I tried it a few times when I was young. As I got older, I decided that resolutions didn’t make sense. I have now decided that Future Me is probably in a better place to make decisions than Current Me. I mean, Past Me in 2020 should have bought a lot of gold, as Current Me can now attest. So, promising Future Me something that Future Me might not even want isn’t the best idea.

I mean, twelve-year-old me wanted to join the Columbia® Record Club™. Twelve CDs for one cent! Now I realize that the Columbia™ Record Club© is a circle of hell somewhere between having to listen to Whoopi Goldberg for 20 minutes a day and having to smell Whoopi Goldberg for 20 minutes a day.

I lost my ABBA CD. Where did the disco?

I’ve since thought about changing Current Me into a better Future Me. I decided to do that instead.

So, I wrote down on a piece of paper, “Making 2026 The Best Year Ever”.

Nice header. Could I do it? Jury is still out, and I never judge a story until I see the end. I’m giving it a current “okay”.

I wrote down this stuff the second week in January, so I’m two weeks in. I was rather stunned on how making some small changes could translate into immediate and large results, making a whole year’s goal in a week. Guess I was aiming too low. Lots of times, my guess is that the biggest thing standing between me and a goal is me just doing it.

I’m not going to share entirely the things I’m doing, but one of the actions that I could take was:

Spend an hour a day doing something for Future Me.

This was absurdly successful on day one. It’s the art of anti-procrastination. Find something that would make life easier for Future Me. Spend an hour doing it, every day.

That’s it.

They used to call it Stalin.

I’m actually doing that right now. Normally I write these the night before I post them. Tonight, I’m writing this a day earlier than I normally write a post. Each minute I spend on the post is a minute I won’t have to spend tomorrow. The other bonus is it will give me time to review it and edit it and think about it.

This works well. Absurdly well.

Most of the other things have been based around organization. My den now looks much better, and when I walk into the room, it makes me happy to be there, rather than staring at a pile of papers I know I have to deal with on a messy desk.

Now, that stack is half as high and I know that with four or five more hours, my den will be my favorite place in the house.

Moore’s Law says that transistors double every two years on a chip. They do that by making them smaller, so less is Moore’s.

The part about devoting an hour to it is important. Most of the time my procrastination works on the idea of, “well, it will take me six hours to do that, so I’ll wait until I have six hours.”

That’s not good. It’s a thought that allows me to rationalize putting something off until tomorrow. But if I have to do it because I owe Future Me, it gets easier. I just go, start, and put in an hour, and be free to stop after that hour is done.

Wow. The results have been big. I think one of the big hurdles to overcoming procrastination is just doing the very smallest part of what I’m planning on doing. Tonight, it was: ”Okay, I’ll open Word®.” Opening Word© is easy. One second later, I’m staring at a blank page. I remember a video I wanted to reference for this post, and 30 seconds later that video is up in the adjacent window.

Boom. Ready to go.

Absurdly easy, yet now I’m two thirds of the way through the first draft of the post. That’s work that Future Me doesn’t need to do. It’s done. I’m actually not at all unhappy now, but tomorrow me will be absurdly happy that he was given this little gift of time. (I can verify this)

Is the past tense of William Shakespeare Wouldiwas Shookspeared?

That’s just one example. But to build the Future Me I wanted to build, I decided to see if there was a path. If there was a path, I’d break it down to the smallest possible step. Once I had that step, it actually solves another hurdle: the brain hates failure.

Or, at least mine does.

It would rather have a mediocre non-win than a chance to lose. So, I break the task up into smaller tasks that are impossible to fail at. Open Word®. Who can’t open Word™? This actually short-circuits the willpower part of life. If it’s easy to do, I’ll do it.

An example: if I think of shaving my face (I haven’t done that in years, but hang with me) I can think of it in two ways. First, I can think, “I have to shave my face. Every day. For the rest of my life.”

That’s soul-sucking. Awful. And you know you can never win because the hair keeps growing back. I know people who think like that. Ugh.

Or, I can say, “Shaving, two minutes in the shower, done.”

I try not to make things bigger than they are.

I also need to build out a mechanism to change that doesn’t require willpower, about which I believe Mr. Twain said, “lasts about two weeks, and is soluble in alcohol.”

What can I replace willpower with?

Willpower is easy. I’ve quit tobacco dozens of times.

Aversion. Yeah, it’s a negative emotion. So what? I’m actively avoiding something, and I need to visualize that person I don’t want to be, and then act in the opposite way that produces that person. It’s actually much easier than willpower, and the farther away from that person that I don’t want to be that I drift, the better.

I don’t have huge changes to make (though with a few, I’m expecting huge results) and I plan to revisit this every week, and see what the next steps need to be, or, if Future Me has gotten smarter and decided that there’s an even better way to go.

Okay, I cheated. I decided to make one New Year’s resolution for 2026. I decided to resolve to gain weight and exercise less. Perhaps I’ll fail at that one, too.

Penultimate Day 2025

“He has to operate wholly by touch.” – Top Secret

Think about the penultimate letter of the alphabet. Because I wanted you to.

Penultimate Day. This is a particular and peculiar institution of the Wilder family. It started over a decade ago, my guess is 2011 or 2012. The Mrs. was having problems with her Blackberry® phone (the one with the cool trackball and the tiny keyboard and complete inability to innovate after Apple® showed up) and wanted a new cell phone. I was on vacation, and the closest place that sold phones with our carrier (which no longer exists) was 90 miles away.

We popped the kids in the car, and headed south to buy a phone. We went to Best Buy®. We ended up not buying the phone (the deal was awful) and decided to eat at Olive Garden™. As I drove home, I decided to have fun with the kids, and told them that this was a Wilder family holiday. They bought it, and we had a lot of phone fun. The day before New Year’s Eve would therefore be forever known to us as Penultimate Day.

The next year, we remembered, and did the exact same thing.

What are the rules of Penultimate Day?

Wait for December 30,
Drive 90 miles south,
Look at cell phones,
Under no circumstances whatsoever actually buy a cell phone, and,
Have some Italian food at a casual-dining chain.

While it’s not a tough holiday, we’ve missed one year entirely (2023) and only Pugsley and I celebrated on 2022. Oh, yeah, and then there was COVID, where being afraid of everything was encouraged.

So, we try to observe it when we can. This year we had two exceptions:

Wait for December 30 (check),
Drive 90 miles south (a new restaurant opened nearby),
Look at cell phones (check),
Under no circumstances whatsoever, buy a cell phone (check), and,
Have some Italian food that incorporates pasta at a casual-dining chain (mostly check: The Mrs. was tired and took a nap, so we brought her a to-go entrée back).

So, while we did keep it, we didn’t manage to keep it wholly, so I guess still doesn’t count as a wholly holiday. I’m okay with that, because life is change. I’m fortunate that The Boy and Pugsley could both make it and spend time with the family. I’m also very, very thankful for that. I realized sometime around the time a kid gets 10 or 11, in the way the world works now, that I had spent half of the days I’d ever get to spend with that kid, so I did my best to be memorable.

But the holiday has changed for us. Back then the kids were little. Now, not so much.

Time goes by very quickly. Don’t wish even a minute or an hour away. And don’t forget to enjoy the things and people that you have in your life. Heaven is being grateful for what you have, Hell is being envious for what you don’t.

You can choose Heaven, and you can also still work to make it better. I have more full-family Penultimate Days behind me than in front of me, and that’s okay. I’ve had the ones that we’ve had, and hopefully we’ve made a memory or two and in fifty or so years, one of my children will look back on December 30 and smile at the thought of Penultimate Day. But that’s their choice, and that’s for them in the world that they make.

One of my resolutions was to drink more water. I’ve only gotten to “drink more” at this point.

For me? I’m glad we have this silly holiday. I’ve always thought that the New Year holidays (Eve and Day) were contrived. They were (and are, mainly) meaningless to me. But Penultimate Day? I also use that as a time to think about the passage of time and one of its most important elements, the time I spend with family and the memories that we’ve made.

That being said, then is my wish that all of us have a wonderful and prosperous 2026, but don’t feel the need to wish it away too quickly.

And when midnight hits you, I hope you have a Happy New Year!

(this is a better version of what I said last year)

The Post of Christmas Past

“The most enduring traditions of the season are best enjoyed in the warm embrace of kith and kin. Thith tree the a thymbol of the thpirit of the Grithwold family Crithmath.” – National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

The Mrs. made a Christmas decoration out of $100 bills. She called it her Aretha Franklins.

Notes: I’ll have a new song tomorrow and two for this weekend. I am, however, debating on putting together a post for Friday. We’ll see – it’s a coin toss right now and probably depends on how sleepy I am after Christmas dinner.

Ahhh, Christmas. One of the things that has become traditional in the time since the VCR ruled supreme is, of course, the Christmas movie. Many of them are quite bad, but a few stand out in my mind and they’re below. This doesn’t include Christmas TV specials, of which A Charlie Brown Christmas is clearly the very best.

It’s a Wonderful Life is on the top of many lists and it’s the oldest on this list with the next-oldest showing up forty years later. It’s got a solid cast, and a message that, perhaps, unbridled capitalism isn’t the way so it probably makes Libertarians sad. Yet, the reason it’s so popular is, like Night of the Living Dead, the copyright holders failed to renew that copyright in 1975 so television stations could flog it like a rented horse and pay nothing. If you have ever been around people in the broadcasting business, “free” is their heroin, so they played it over and over because, hey, free Christmas heroin.

Home Alone is a funny movie, but not horribly Christmas-y. Change the setting to Thanksgiving or summer vacation or the execution of a convicted killer based on a wacky misunderstanding and nothing really changes. But a lot of people really like this one, so it’s in. And it is hilarious, especially the Stooge-esque scene of mayhem at the end. Heartwarming? I little. It tries but mainly fails, because my heart is mainly immune from warming.

Die Hard? Yes, it’s a Christmas movie. The real villain in the movie was Joseph Takagi. Why? He scheduled an office party on Christmas Eve. Who does that, the Japanese Grinch®? The movie is really well made from start to finish, and holds up to repeated viewings. And, after all, as my kids say, “It’s not really Christmas until Hans Gruber falls off Nakatomi tower.”

Elf. So, let me get this straight, Santa kidnapped a baby and we give him a pass? I’m not really that fond of Santa movies. Why? I don’t know. Let’s just say I figured out that scam pretty quickly and hold a grudge. But Will Ferrell is generally funny, and plays childlike enthusiasm very well, especially bouncing it off of Jimmy Caan.

A Christmas Story. Top tier, and probably tied for my very top spot as a Christmas movie. It is very uniquely a story about Christmas in America before globalism and while commercialism was still amateurish (Drink more Ovaltine®?). It did also capture that great sense of joy, wonder, and anticipation that comes from being a kid awaiting his first shootin’ iron. It also was wonderful at showing a family that was cohesive despite of (and maybe because of) the daily ups and downs and struggles. When I was younger, I saw it through Ralphie’s eyes, and then through the eyes of The Old Man. Perfect on all levels.

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Did I ever mention that the clerks at the grocery store would let me buy National Lampoon® when I was 8? I think they would have sold me booze and smokes, too. Regardless, this is clearly the best of the movies that National Lampoon™ ever put its brand on. I’d also say it’s the most consistently funny movie on this list. Randy Quaid still makes money autographing photos with “Shitter’s Full.” Why can’t I have that career?

Scrooged. This is a favorite of The Mrs. Peak Bill Murray hamming it up with a message that, perhaps, it’s not all about him, but rather his family, which (as far as I can tell) nearly all in this film playing various roles. But maybe stapling the antlers to the mice would have been an interesting scene to make the movie more engaging? I think the late, great Michael O’Donoghue was the spark on the script, but whoever was responsible, they did a very good job bringing this story into the 1980s. Making fun of commercialism while bringing $100,000,000 back to the bank was pretty good work.

Fatman. It’s Mel Gibson as Santa taking a contract with the military-industrial complex to produce weapons because business is down while being pursued by a hitman. Santa Claus becomes John McClane? Barely a Christmas movie.

The Long Kiss Goodnight has Geena Davis at her hottest playing an amnesiac assassin in a story written by the guy who wrote Predator and directed by the guy who directed the only move I’ve been in (The Adventures of Ford Fairlane). Christmasy? No, not really even though it’s set at Christmas. And, this is crucial to the plot, but it could be almost any holiday. Why on the list? It’s an excuse to post a picture of Geena Davis.

I very much expected this list to be longer, and, in fact, had to throw on a few that I normally wouldn’t (Fatman, for instance) to pad it out. I’m imagining there weren’t a lot of surprises on the list. Did I miss any of your favorites?

2025 In Review: The Wilder Way

“You’re up for review.” – Fight Club

I wrote a review of why graphs should use wider lines. It’s called, “The Plot Thickens”.

As an annual feature of Wilder, Wealthy and Wise, we poll our writers and editors and ask them to nominate the top stories of the year. Since they are just me, it’s a far less complex process than you might imagine. Here are the top stories of 2025:

January 2025

Donald Trump is inaugurated as the 47th U.S. President. Trump immediately issues executive orders on immigration, trade, and withdrawing from international agreements like the Paris Accord. Alexandria Occasional-Cortex protests, “I didn’t even know the French could pronounce ‘Honda®’, I mean, wouldn’t it sound like ‘Onda? So we should let them have an Accord®. It’s a sensible car.”
Wildfires ravage Greater Los Angeles, destroying over 13,000 structures, prompting evacuations and a state of emergency. Governor Gavin “Reptile Smile” Newsom declares homeowners may rebuild that the land will be confiscated and given to people that buy him nice things.
Bulgaria and Romania join the Schengen Area, lifting land border controls in Europe. Bulgaria is still awaiting its first visitor and has the crepe paper decorations and everything along with party poppers and a 10% discount coupon to Bob’s Bulgarian Borscht, Baguette and Baklava Buffet®.
Liechtenstein legalizes same-sex marriage, becoming the 37th country to do so, and demands to be known as Gay Liechtenstein.

February 2025

Trump imposes 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, and 10% on China, sparking retaliatory measures and trade tensions. Trump then immediately lowers them, noting, “I shot the tariff, but I did not shoot the subsidy.”
China retaliates with export controls and tariffs on U.S. imports amid escalating trade war, threatening to send more TEMU® products and advertisements if the U.S. does not relent.
Canada wins the 2025 4 Nations Face-Off hockey tournament against the U.S. Nic Cage and John Travolta are unavailable for comment.
The Taliban visit Japan for first diplomatic engagement since 2021 as the Japanese noted they were no longer talibanned.

March 2025

Trump pauses U.S. military aid to Ukraine after tensions with Zelensky when Zelensky wouldn’t eat his peas at dinner.
Romanian protests erupt against election annulment, supporting the far-right one candidate who doesn’t Romanians replaced by Syrians.
The Nagoya High Court in Japan rules non-recognition of same-sex marriage unconstitutional, primarily because of military pressure from Gay Liechtenstein.
Trump increases tariffs on Chinese imports to 20%. Or 60%. Or 200%. Can’t keep track.
India launches missiles into Pakistan after a terrorist attack, escalating border tensions over regional fights against body hygiene, deodorant requirements, and who had first scamming rights over Oregon.

April 2025

Trump imposes sweeping tariffs on imports from multiple countries, escalating global trade wars. Or lowers them. Or maybe doesn’t change anything at all. I can’t remember.
Pope Francis dies at 88 after mentioning he had inside information about Clinton crimes.
China increases tariffs on U.S. exports to 84% in retaliation. Or lowers them.
South Korean President Win Won Soon impeached and removed and sent to Alabama to coach football.

May 2025

Robert Prevost elected as Pope Leo XIV in the papal conclave, narrowly edging out Grammy®-nominated artist Taylor Swift.
Germany’s AfD designated as extremist because it objects complete replacement of Germans by 2032, instead demanding it be put back to at least 2040.
Japan allows bears in urban areas to be shot by hunters, as long as the bears are not gay, though the hunters can be gay and are encouraged to be vegan.

June 2025

Protests erupt in Los Angeles over ICE deportations, leading to clashes and National Guard deployment and threats of military intervention from the Grand Gay Dutchy of Gay Liechtenstein.
The U.S. intervenes in the Israel-Iran conflict by bombing Iranian nuclear facilities, which is less an intervention and more of a bombing.
No Kings protests occur across U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan, and Mexico against Stephen King, Larry King, King’s Hawaiian Rolls® and King Kong™.
An Air India© flight crashes in Ahmedabad, killing 242, proving that Indians can manage to kill more Indians than Pakistan can. Prime Minister Modi proclaims: “India Global Superpower 2030!”

July 2025

Republicans pass sweeping tax changes through reconciliation in U.S. Congress. No one is sure what is in them but the lobbyists say that it’ll be great.
The International Court of Justice® (Superman presiding) rules countries can sue over historical greenhouse gas emissions. White Americans immediately sue the descendants of black slaves for greenhouse reparations, noting that if they really were the ones who built America, it’s time for them to pay up.

August 2025

OpenAI® releases GPT-5™. Sam Altman celebrates by sacrificing a small child, but the evil god he worships rejects it because, “It’s not really a sacrifice because he does it every Tuesday.”
The Russia-U.S. summit at Joint Base Elmendorf in Anchorage focused on the Ukraine conflict, got nothing done, but did have a nice burger and a promise to meet up again “in a week or two, you know, I’ve got a lot of stuff going on”.
Air Canada© flight attendants strike to ban requiring stewardesses to serve in-flight beverage service to Indians hanging on the wings.
Anti-immigration rallies in Australia lead to clashes against the evil white people who are totally not being replaced by the hundreds of thousands of refugees brought in to replace them.

September 2025

The French government collapses after no-confidence vote. Again.
The Grand Gay Dutchy of Gay Liechtenstein demands the return of their gay crown jewels from France. France protests, noting, “We’re not exactly sure where Liechtenstein is.”

October 2025

In the U.K., Sarah Mullally becomes the first female Archbishop of Canterbury and immediately offers apology for all Christians resistance to moslem grooming gangs, noting, “It’s really white privilege to expect to not be sexually violated by short swarthy men with no upper body strength.”
Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg abdicates as the Gay Grand Gay Dutchy of Gay Liechtenstein attacks and begins to consolidate a European Homohegemony.

Why did Bing® A.I.® put Manson in the picture?

November 2025

Canada’s measles-free status revoked. Which is weird, because they had been measles-free since 1998. Wonder how that could have happened? No reason at all, I guess. Odd coincidence that some of the highest measles rates in the world are in India.
The Saskatchewan Roughriders win the Grey Cup. Whoever and wherever they are, and whatever that it.

December 2025

Trump’s economic approval hits a new low at 36%, but that only fills him with strength, and he decided to annex Antarctica and name it New Greenland.
Sanae Takaichi becomes Japan’s first female prime minister, and immediately begins plotting to re-take Manchuria after tidying up a bit and doing some dishes.
The Gay Grand Gay Dutchy of Gay Liechtenstein cedes the Gay Presidency of Europe to The Trans Republic of Trans Transylvania.
Thieves steal priceless jewelry from the Louvre in France, but after they’re caught and determined to be moslem, are then given a key so they can loot whenever they want.

What a year!

What did I miss?

Tranquility Was Never The Goal

“Our Great War is a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives.” – Fight Club

The ultimate participation award.

As humans, we’re wired wrong. Or right, depending on how you look at it.

We chase peace like it’s the ultimate prize at the carnival of life. We say that we want a world without war, without struggle, where everyone has a comfy couch, unlimited Wi-Fi, more liver capacity, and steak that cooks and delivers itself.

Sounds like Heaven, right?

Wrong. When I was a wee Wilder, Grandma McWilder would talk about how I should do nice things in life rather than bathing the cat in a paste made from DDT® and Lysol™ so I could go to Heaven. Obviously, I asked, “What is Heaven like?”

Grandma told me it was nice and peaceful and that nothing bad ever happened up there. I believe I said something like, “That sounds boring.” Grandma did not look pleased, but I don’t know if it was about my statement or the cat.

Let’s just say I was a technicolor handful as a kid. Oh, the stories I could tell.

But I wasn’t wrong.

But wait, there’s more!

Tranquility isn’t the goal. Tranquility is the trap.

Peace isn’t just boring; it is deadly to the human spirit. We need the fight, the blood, the steel. Without it, we rot from the inside out. And that’s not me, John Wilder making crap up again. We have actual studies where the government tortured mice to verify that I’m right.

Take John Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia experiments, please. I’ve written about them a couple times before, you can use the search thingy in the upper right hand of the screen to find them. I would have done that for you but you’re not my supervisor and I could type this sentence way faster. Short summary:

In the 1960s, Calhoun built paradise for mice: unlimited food, water, space, unlimited beef jerky, no predators, SNAP benefits.

What happened? At first, boom, the population soared. But then, the weirdness set in. The mice stopped breeding normally. Males became either passive or hyper-aggressive or “beautiful ones,” preening themselves instead of fighting or mating.

Females abandoned pups. Society collapsed into violence, isolation, and extinction. All of this happened in a “utopia”.

No threats, no struggles: just free cheese forever. And they died out. Stop me if you’ve seen this recently in other mammals.

I’m not going sugarcoat my jokes about diabetes.

Humans aren’t mice, but we’re close enough if you ask my parole officer. Look at the downward spiral of the United States after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. The Cold War ended. We “won.” Yay! No more Soviet boogeyman lurking with nukes and unibrows.

Instead? Peace! Prosperity!

What did we do? Got fat, lazy, bored and divided: music went from “I’m gonna kick your ass” in the 1980s to “Oh, man, I need lithium because I’m sad”. The ‘90s brought endless economic booms, but also the seeds of today’s mess: identity politics, endless entertainment, and a generation starting to get hooked on screens instead of life.

Without a real enemy, we turned inward, fighting over pronouns and safe spaces. Tranquility bred complacency, and complacency bred decay.

Same story with the Moon landing. July 20, 1969: Armstrong steps on the lunar surface. Humanity’s greatest leap. We beat gravity, the Soviets, and the odds. Then? Crickets as the ratings dropped.

We went back a few times, planted flags, played golf (shoutout to Alan Shepard), and then just . . .stopped.

And then she refused to talk to them for six hours.

NASA shifted to the gay space trucks shuttles and looking for non-binary muslims and lesbians to shoot into orbit. No more bold frontiers. Why? We won. The Sea of Tranquility turned space exploration into a budget line item.

Need another example: a Syrian teen in London.

Picture this: an eighteen-year-old from war-torn Syria, resettled in a taxpayer-funded flat in London. Free food. Free education. Free X-Box®.

Utopia, right?

Wrong. He drops the controller and goes to Syria andjoins ISIS or stays in London and joins a gang and becomes a rapefugee with a machete.

Why?

Blood calls to blood. Iron to Iron. That flat was Mouse Utopia 2.0: safe, soft, soulless and, let’s face it, that kid was inbred and not very bright to start with. He craved the jihad, the struggle, the validation of existence through fire and fight. Comfort didn’t kill his spirit, comfort starved it. In part, this is why allowing refugees from incompatible countries is immoral.

I played hide and seek and ended up in the hospital. ICU!

Why do we have wars?

We want wars. If they weren’t popular, we’d have stopped having them a very long time ago.

Why do we want them? Not because we’re monsters, but because we’re human. Struggle validates us. High stakes forge character. Leaders like Alexander or Churchill didn’t thrive in peace; they rose in the crises they created.

Without enemies, we manufacture them, internal or imaginary. Look at modern “wars”: culture wars, gender wars, class wars, cola wars. We can’t help it. Tranquility isn’t our default; it’s a rare condition that, when it lasts long enough we pop our collective corks.

Think about it: our history has wired us for survival, not spa days. Hunter-gatherers fought for food, territory, mates and because it was Tuesday. Civilizations brought people together and made a professional league and channeled that into empires, exploration, and innovations. Remove the fight?

We devolve.

Mouse Utopia showed it: no threats equates to no purpose. Humans need the arena, the sweat, the sand, and the blood. We were built for the Colosseum, not the couch.

But here’s the rub: the struggle creates a spot for growth, it’s literally the engine of history. Without high stakes, we fail to thrive.

We back ourselves into existential corners: depression epidemics, fertility crashes, societies crumbling under their own weight and people who need drugs to stop that nagging feeling that they should be doing something that matters. Oddly enough, our very humanity appears to be built upon the fight.

If you meet a dolphin and feel a connection, can you say that you just clicked?

So, what now?

We can’t “prosperity” the struggle out of us. We need leaders who rally us to real frontiers and put real goals out in front of us, not fake fights over tweets®. Stakes high enough to matter: colonize Mars, cure aging, harness fusion. And something for the masses to do, like watching re-runs of Ow, My Balls.

Something. If we don’t have something, we’ll make something. Give us blood (metaphorical or not), steel, the feel of it all. In the end, tranquility was never the goal.

The struggle is the point. It’s what makes us scream, fight, and conquer. As I’ve seen in memes: “I want to go out of this world the same way I came into it: screaming and covered in someone else’s blood.”

And Heaven?

I think it isn’t at all as Grandma Wilder described. I think it’s more like:

Player 1: Ready Level 2.

It Came From . . . 1997

“The only good bug is a dead bug.” – Starship Troopers

Grok™ is getting better – this was a first attempt, and normally it requires a lot of wrestling.

OT: probably a Saturday song will drop tomorrow morning. I’ve got three more in can and think that two of the three are the best so far. I may even drop one on Sunday. We’ll see. Going forward I’m going to target dropping songs on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. As I’ve just started, there seem to be an endless spring of ideas that I’ve been hoarding up my whole life, and I’m enjoying making them come to life. Oddly, I’m my new favorite artist. Working on distribution, still on a steep learning curve.

Once again, were’ back. The high of the 1980s is far in the rearview mirror. Now we’re on the long slope down. Still, there were some fun movies. These aren’t necessarily the best movies of 1997, instead they’re the films I think really exemplify the year. As always, they’re in no particular order.

Waiting for Guffman – This is an ensemble comedy where I think the plan was that you have a basic plot and you let the talented, goofy people making the movie fill in the details. Silly? Yes. Life changing? No. One thing from this particular movie that I find very sad is that the opening scene shows the local cops planning on having sniper overwatch for a local harvest festival in a small Missouri town. It was funny in 1997 because it was absurd. In 2025 it’s not. I guess that’s just the price we pay for ethic food. I wonder why we didn’t import only the recipes?

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery – Mike Myers creates a parody of a James Bond® film. The particular genius is that the plot is just strong enough to hold everything together and not get in the way of the comedy. The box office was quadruple the cost, so that worked out okay for Mike. Bonus points for lovingly parodying the details of the Bond™ films, such as naming a female character Allota Fagina. Sadly, this caused the James Bond© producers to make the Bond® films less fun by hiring Daniel Craig.

Breakdown – There is nothing special about this movie other than it is a very competent thriller that couldn’t be made in the time of cell phones. Kurt Russell is good, and J.T. Walsh is suitably evil. Cinematic popcorn.

Men in Black – The X-Files™ was pretty big during this time period, so Hollywood decided to make a big budget science fiction comedy based on a fringe UFO topic. I was this many years old when I found out it was also based on a comic book. It made nearly $600 million 1997 bucks, which would have topped the box office for the year except for that pesky Titanic.

Contact – This was a decent movie, though not one where I look forward to seeing it again. It was decent, not great. Plot summary: aliens send us Hitler pics and instructions on how to build a wormhole.

Air Force One – More cinematic popcorn, where president Han Solo tries to kill Count Dracula on an airplane. Silly action fun.

Event Horizon – My favorite movie on this list. Huge critical and commercial failure and yet they nearly made a TV series based on it before COVID came along. Evil Scientist Sam Neill? Yes, please. If you like cosmic horror and haven’t seen it, you’ve been missing out. Warning: it’s not for the faint-hearted.

Kull the Conqueror – Robert E. Howard was the creator of Conan the Barbarian, and also Kull. This is based around his work, and was originally intended to be the third part of the Conan movie trilogy, but that fell apart. I’m glad. This movie is comfy and is its own thing. I loved it, and am perhaps the only one, since it only made $6 million on a $35 million budget. I guess I would suck as a test audience member.

L.A. Confidential – It came out in 1997, but I hadn’t seen it until recently. It’s a decent film noir, and Guy Pearce does a great job as a smart, young cop eager to get ahead. Huge hit, but I avoided it because I loathe Kim Basinger, who strikes me as a person with the intelligence of a basset hound.

Wishmaster – So an evil genie lives in a ruby. In one scene, the camera penetrates they gem, showing that it contains a vast cavern throne room inside the gem. In the cavern, it moves towards a dark, demonic figure sitting on the throne. During the scene, when the camera finally centered on the genie’s face, I said, “Just sitting ‘round, being evil,” and The Mrs. laughed uncontrollably. That’s now a family catchphrase. Other than that, I don’t remember anything about this movie.

Boogie Nights – This is a very good movie, showing how the depravity, drugs, and money of the porn world lead only to pain and dejection, but I’m sure OnlyFans® will turn out differently. Plus? Stark nekkid Heather Graham. Okay, I have contradictory motivations here. Also, one of Burt Reynolds’ best serious roles.

RocketMan – Cost $16 million to make, made $15.4 million. It was hilarious. The underappreciated Harland Williams plays an accidental astronaut whose space hijinks include space farts. It’s stupid-funny, so if you like adolescent humor, this is your show.

Bean – Rowan Atkinson is an engineer with a master’s degree and also a master of comedy. Who says engineers don’t have a sense of humor? Oh, and this film made $250,000,000.

The Devil’s Advocate – Soooooo much overacting in this horror movie which could have also been titled “Al Pacino’s Vocal Coach Is Seventeen Packs of Cigarettes a Day.” No real desire to watch this one again – it’s not a great horror movie, but everyone liked it, because the boxoffice of $153,000,000 was nearly triple the cost.

Gattaca – This movie is about the dangers of genetic engineering on the future, where it creates a society where beautiful, healthy people are everywhere and bad genes are bred out. The horror!

Starship Troopers – Whenever this movie comes up in the comment section everyone argues about it. Every time. Was director Paul Verhoeven trying to make Robert Heinlein look like a fascist and make the humans as the bad guys? Yes. Did almost everyone miss that? Also yes. To try to make fun of Heinlein, he had to actually quote Heinlein, which backfired in a big way. Heinlein’s ideas in the book Starship Troopers are pretty powerful, but also simple. They glimmered through Verhoeven’s attempt to make a woke film, which counts for most of the good parts of the film. But the other fascist elements he added for the parody boomeranged on him to such an extent that all of the GloboLeft critics he wanted to please by making fun of the TradRight thought Verhoeven was a fascist. I guess he sure showed the TradRight by being pro-human rather than loving bugs. My verdict? The only good things (which are very good) are the parts from the book. The rest is mediocre at best.

Once again, I was surprised on how many movies I liked from this year. Almost every movie is beautiful, but the attempts are being made to push the GloboLeft agenda even further, which is (along with foreign markets) what eventually choked Hollywood. I’m debating if we’ll do 1998, and if so, that’ll be in February.

What did I miss?