Happiness – Page 2 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Think Movies Suck Now? You’re Right.

“Freedom costs a buck-oh-five.” – Team America: World Police

I’ve lost to a computer at chess, but never at kickboxing.

I write about movies (and books) sometimes because they are important – very important. They are a part of the myths and backstory that defines a people and a country. Part of this entertainment is (often) a reflection of who we think we are, or who we aspire to be – those are the characters and stories that endure and grow over time.

Comedies certainly have their place, as well. Comedies can be rooted to universal truths that are (more or less) unchanging with time, think greed, yappy women, and farting. Yes. The oldest recorded joke in history that we have yet discovered is a (not very good) fart joke.

Why can’t you make fun of Steve Jobs dying? It’s not PC.

Part of comedy, especially movie comedy, is the unexpected. For that to happen, most of the time someone is the object of the joke – the person who is being made fun of. In comedy in the 1970s, that person was almost always a white male, and almost always was the father and was almost always on the Right.

Why?

Feminism. Comedy of the 1970s and onward was almost always written from the Leftist perspective. Think Archie Bunker, who ended up being popular in spite of them trying to make him a buffoon. Who had the first flush of the terlit on television? Archie. To make fun of white men who were on the Right.

Another tip: don’t use the toilet brush as a microphone when you sing in the shower.

Heck, when I was in junior high and wondering why the only funny things were Leftist (I was on the Right, even then). Then I read P.J. O’Rourke, and understood that it was more than possible, it was far, far funnier than Leftist humor ever imagined it could be.

The Right is funnier because the Right has Truth on its side.

For a long time, movies have been propaganda of one type or another. Top Gun? There’s a reason that the Navy spent millions to help make the movie – they approved the script.

There have been wild cards – people who make fun of everyone and everything – think Airplane. One that really pushed the boundaries was Team America: World Police. South Park used to be funny, back when the stories were about the kids. When the stories started to be about the adults? Less funny.

But Team America: World Police was something else. It made fun of jingoistic movies while at the same time gutting hard-Left, virtue signaling idiot actors like Sean Penn, Janeane Garofalo, Alec Baldwin, Michael Moore, Danny Glover, and Tim Robbins. They were all part of the Film Actors Guild, or F.A.G.

Yes. They went there. They also made fun of AIDS and homosexuals. And Moslems. And movies like Top Gun. The rumors are that the studio approved it because it was so politically incorrect, and might be cheap because it was made with puppets instead of actors.

I’m glad COVID didn’t come from a Chinese bear. Then we’d have had a pandademic.

Needless to say, making a movie that makes fun of any protected group is no longer allowed. Why are comedies dead? Because it gets really old, really fast, when the only person you can make fun of is the same person who buys all the movie tickets: heterosexual white Christian men who have XY chromosomes. You know, “literally Hitler”.

Comedy is now unfunny, mostly. Please feel free to leave exceptions in the comments. And movies as a whole are borderline unwatchable. Part of the collapse of the box office (and small theaters) was COVID. The other part is that movies suck.

The reason that movies suck is that they’re now just blatant propaganda, start to finish. The latest Marvel® movie, The Marvels™ is a commercial failure, and a box office flop. The studio is blaming the usual suspects: the actor’s strike, superhero fatigue, white supremacy, anti-feminism.

That’s easy.

Harder to face is that their stupid movie sucks.

This was even in his speeches . . . remember him saying, “Let me be clear”?

Why does it suck? It’s about women that don’t need no man. Oh, and couples who have kids don’t want to spend money to have their kids watch Gay Buzz Lightyear™ and ask questions about why Buzz© has two mommies. That’s it.

Who is the primary consumer of superhero movies? White men. Who is the primary consumer of movies for children? People capable of making children, which, for every year in the history of mankind before 2020, were known as “men” and “women”.

Yes, white men like to look at attractive women in skintight costumes, but only the most Leftist is willing to sit and watch a movie that makes fun of them and marginalizes them.

Why does Marvel© (and Disney™) lose money? Because they forgot who buys the tickets.

Men.

I’ve gotten to the point that, unless I’ve heard about a movie, if it was made in the last four years, it’s a hard pass, even if it looks interesting. The movies started going south in, say, 2018. My take is that was a reaction to Trump. It so triggered nearly everyone who writes or acts in a movie that all they wanted to do was attack a relatively Centrist guy who just happened to be President.

What do your get if you take an entire human digestive tract and lay it out on a football field? Arrested.

The reaction led to . . . crap. Every Leftist simply had to get their message out that trans was the new normal and white men were awful and stupid and that NASA stuff on the Moon was a fluke. Oh, they tried to take credit for that, too. Because white guys, you know, can’t do math.

I also noticed it with books. I was a lifelong reader of science fiction – I loved the ideas. Then, around 2010, I started to notice that the books in Barnes and Noble® mainly . . . sucked. I thought it was me. I thought I was old and jaded. But, nope, I read some of the old stuff and it was still great.

Science fiction was destroyed by The Narrative, too. The people who picked the books that made it to the shelves only picked Leftist crap filled with weak people who hated themselves and hated everything True, Beautiful, and Good. In this breakup, it wasn’t me, it was them.

They came for comics and killed them. They came for books and killed them. Lastly, they came for movies, and killed them. Every book and every movie has a message, and most are propaganda of some sort or another, for good or bad. Propaganda to get kids to brush their teeth? That’s good.

But propaganda to turn them into self-loathing transexuals? That’s 100% against the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.

This was the 2022 “woman” of the year. Guess guys do everything better.

Watch what goes into your mind. Watch what goes into the minds of your children. Help them to aspire to be noble and virtuous and strong. Help them to understand that jokes about yappy, farting women have been funny for 4,000 years, and will be funny for as long as women fart.

There are still good books out there. There are still good movies, though they are uncommon, since the rot is very, very deep. But freedom?

It still costs a buck-o-five.

Forgiveness: It’s Not Just For Breakfast Anymore

“But when you forgive, you love.” – Into the Wild

Dogs go to Heaven, cats go to Purrgatory.

Each and every person has been wronged. Everyone, but the degree differs for everyone. Me? I have approximately three people on my “you’re so morally repugnant that I wouldn’t set them on fire if I were peeing on them” category. Or did I get that wrong. Whatever. In my entire life, only three people. I’m pretty sure two will drop off the list fairly soon, but it really takes a lot to get on that list.

But at least one of those people I’m fairly certain hasn’t thought of me in a few years. Yet, for a while I would wake up in the middle of the night and be angry at how I’d been wronged. There’s nothing worse than being mad an awake at 3 A.M., with the possible exception of having to watch Amy Schumer pretend to do comedy.

So, what did I do?

I let it go, for several reasons. First, I’ve seen that karma is real and doesn’t have a sense of humor. Almost everyone who has wronged me in the past has come to great difficulties that my attorney advises me to tell you that I had nothing to do with, and that, besides, I was out of town that weekend.

The Irish gunslinger killed five people with one shot. His name? Rick O’Shea.

I have to learn to get past my old grievances. It’s not for them, you see, it’s for me. That grief that the person caused me is done. Heck, they might not even know that they caused it in the first place. In most cases, the people who wrong us don’t care about us, at all. It’s less than personal.

In general, when I share your problems, it helps me.

Grievances don’t count.

Grievances aren’t one of those problems. I don’t know about you, but when a person is constantly bringing me down about things that happened years ago, the evil John Wilder that lives in my head often screams, “LET IT GO! Who is this complaining helping?”

I’m giving up drinking for a month. Oops, wrong punctuation. I’m giving up. Drinking for a month.

Generally, no one. Yes, when a wound is raw, it’s fair to have others share the burden. But after a while, complaining about it makes it easy to stay stuck in the pain.

That’s why I try to not complain. Fix a problem? Yes. Complain about something I can’t fix? No. Complaining makes me a victim. Now, there’s a person who wronged me, and I put myself in the place of a helpless victim.

Tell me again how this is winning?

So, this is one I choke down and don’t share. In reality, it helps me. First, people don’t run away or throw themselves into woodchippers when I walk up to avoid hearing me whine. Second, it removes the subject from my mind, and eventually removes the power over me.

If I started a zoo I’d want to have at least a panda, a grizzly, and a polar bear. That’s my bear minimum.

The Mrs. and I have talked about the power of forgiveness. The last time we talked, I was on the favor of, “Nah, they don’t deserve it.” The Mrs. was relatively constant, however, and I’ve rethought it. Forgiveness isn’t for them, it’s for me.

The rationale for this is simple: every time that I think of a tool who wronged me, it results in me being angry. Who is the only person who should create that emotion? Me.

Yes, there are times I enjoy being angry. It’s like taking a shower in chocolate syrup, sure it’s fun once in a while, but I wouldn’t want to make a habit of it, mainly because of the yeast. But once in a while?

Sure.

Never be angry at lazy people. It’s not like they did anything.

I have, in the last month, consciously let myself get angry because it felt good. But forgiveness allows me to get angry when I want to, and not every second of every day and be the emotional puppet of some other person, or worse, some event.

Yeah. An event. To be clear, if I stub my toe in the dark of night on the couch while going to get more vodka some water, does the couch care?

No. The couch doesn’t care. Events don’t care – they just are. Being mad at events is has a similar impact to being mad at Tuesday. Just like that damn, lazy couch, Tuesday doesn’t care. It just is. Being mad at something in the past is understandable, but it doesn’t make any sense.

I can be mad about (spins wheel) the Franco-Prussian War, but, well, why? If I am mad at a situation the way to review it is to understand if I can change it or not. If I can’t change it, it’s merely a fact, like Tuesday or those damn raisins that keep existing no matter how much I hate their wrinkly expressions taunting me in my dreams.

According to an online survey, 0% of people are Amish.

If there’s a lesson from the past event, I pick it up. If there’s something I decide I need to change, I change. If I wouldn’t do anything different, well, what then?

Being upset or angry is okay, but I’ve learned I have to let it go or it’ll eat me up inside, wreck my sleep, and make a situation I’m obviously not happy about worse.

I’ll leave vengeance on people that wronged me to the Manager, since He does that far better than I ever could. If it’s a situation or event and there’s nothing I can do, I have to let the Manager take care of that, too. I mean, that’s why He has a job, right?

Don’t avoid difficulty in your life, but don’t take negative situations or people that you can’t control and turn them into situations or people that control you, since I’m officially telling you that you don’t have to pee on them if they’re on fire, I mean, firemen don’t even do that.

Enthusiasm or Passion? Choose Passion.

“In fact, it had been observed by some, that the Hobbits’ only passion was food; a rather unfair observation as we have also developed a keen interest in the brewing of ales.” – Fellowship of the Ring

Why don’t they teach sailors how to swim? So they will defend the ship with more enthusiasm.

I hate enthusiasm. I really do.

Enthusiasm is motivational posters. Enthusiasm is a group of cheerleaders chanting out “H-U-S-T-L-E, hustle, hustle for victory!” when the football team is down by 25 points in the fourth quarter. It’s pretending to be excited in a job interview.

Enthusiasm has always been a bit (as the kids today would say) cringe to me. It really does make the skin crawl on my spine when I think about the mindless enthusiasm that I see in the world.

Why?

Because it’s generally fake. It’s not based in any sort of reality – it’s a series of mindless platitudes that don’t mean anything or show any true or real commitment. Enthusiasm is what I see from political candidates when they’re at their most smarmy and useless. Oh, wait, that’s every day for them.

Like I said, I hate enthusiasm.

But I love passion.

Cattle don’t cheer, but I heard that they give encowregment.

Passion is real, it’s deep, and it’s not at all afraid of Truth. Passion is the part of you that keeps you playing in that football game when you’re down by 25 points in the fourth quarter. Passion is the fire inside of you.

When I was in high school, every year the wrestling coach would have a parents’ meeting at the start of the season. As a part of the meeting, he’d have a demonstration match between two of his wrestlers. I was lucky enough to appear in the two of those matches, one held my junior year and one held my senior year. I think he did it to get the parents excited about the season.

In my junior year, I was wrestling a senior that was stronger and better than me – my only claim to fame was that I outweighed him by 15 or so pounds. When we started the match, he slipped on a throw and ended up on his back – I got the takedown plus two back points before he reversed me. He won the match 5-4.

It was the best I ever wrestled against him.

I’ve never met The Rock, but I heard he was shy. I guess I would have expected him to be a Little Boulder.

The next year I was the senior wrestling a junior who outweighed me by about 35 pounds. Right before the match, he said to me, “Wilder, please don’t pin me in front of everyone.”

My response? “Jimmy, if I can pin you, I will. This is wrestling.”

There was, in my mind, no half-measure in a wrestling match. To go easy on someone stepping out on to the mat would, in my mind, then and now, be cheating. I was passionate about wrestling, and the mat was sacred to me – you’re out there just you and another man, going toe to toe, and every second you spend on the mat in a real match you give it everything you have.

That, in my mind, is passion, though you might just say, “Wilder’s just a tool” and you wouldn’t be wrong. But to not pin Jimmy if I could, well, that would be cheating the sport. It wasn’t personal, it was the simple principle that every time, every single time I went on the mat it was deadly serious to me – I gave every single bit of myself. To do less than I could? That would be a lie.

I asked for no quarter, and I gave no quarter. Jimmy was still my friend afterwards,

I bought a tie for my dog to wear on our walks. He looks sharp when he does his business.

I think passion is like that. It’s a drive from the core of your being – it’s not about trying to be something, it’s who you are. Passion alone is an amazing thing, and allows peak performance.

The other variable is talent. Just by my body’s geometry I’m unsuited to some sports. Long distance running? Probably not with these short Viking legs and long Norse torso. Lifting very heavy things?

That’s more like it.

Talent is also unfairly distributed. I’ve seen people who have zero talent for something throw their entire lives, passionately into an activity. Ma Wilder was passionate about art. And, I still have some of the landscapes she did as oil paintings. When it came to landscapes, she had a gift.

But when it came to people? Ma was Modern Museum of Bad Art bad at drawing people.

The one on the right looks like the clues I get in Pictionary®.

Add talent to passion?

That’s where “world class” comes in to existence, because passion is the only thing that can keep a man driving himself to his limit day after day. The best concert violinists practice more than the average ones, not less. Their talent plus passion is what creates that world class performance. Talent alone? You get a collection of people that all fall into the “could have been” category, gifted people who didn’t have the passion to turn that gift into world class performance.

Working hard, day after day, year after year, is what it takes to be great at anything. Raw talent isn’t enough.

Fake enthusiasm? No thanks. It’s time to get passionate and angry about something.

Me? I’m starting with raisins. Man, they piss me off.

Shaving, Emotions, And Having A Good Day

“I have gold. What can I buy with gratitude?” – Game of Thrones

I’d tell you a joke about a broken pencil, but there’s no point.

I was in a meeting with a guy that I worked with. We were discussing a project and an everyday task that one of the employees would have to do. “Well, that shouldn’t be controversial. It’ll take, what, a minute for someone to do that every day?” It would have taken something like $50,000 to automate the function, and people would still have to check that the automation was working.

He responded, “John, that’s how you and I think. It’s part of our jobs, right? But I know these guys. They’re gonna fight this with all the power of Oprah Winfrey fighting Whoopi Goldberg to get the last piece of cheesecake on Earth. To you and me, it’s a minute of our day. No problem. To them? These are people who get up in the morning and think, ‘What, do you mean I have to shave? Every day? For the rest of my life?’”

He was right. We still didn’t spend the money, thankfully.

This comment about shaving . . . every day . . . for the rest of my life . . . always cracks me up. There is a category of people that are eternally and forever upset about everything, and get upset about every aspect of life, even (and maybe especially) for things they had no control over.

Those people? I avoid them as much as possible, and I’d rather spend a day chewing aluminum foil or having someone take a cheese grater to my spinal column (the bone part, not the fleshy bits).

Then The Mrs. asked me why I lost the whisk. I told her, “It beats me.”

Instead, I’ve just started a simple experiment to control my own mood. The first part of the day, I try, even before the toothbrush hits my teeth, to think about the things that I’m grateful for.

This is not the first time that I thought about feelings the first thing in the morning. That would have been in sex ed in high school, which I took because I needed something first hour and the teacher was so mellow, I don’t think he left any pot unsmoked in the 1960s.

One exercise that he asked us to do was to think about our feelings and make a (I kid you not) feeling wheel the first thing in the morning. As a man, I only have a small number of feelings available to me: salty, drunk, hungry, cold, and sleepy are the three that come to mind.

Newton walks into a bar. Or did the bar walk into Newton?

Other guys on the wrestling team in the class with me would, I kid you not, copy my answers for their feeling wheel. The other reason I didn’t have much to write is because I was 17. The only way I ever felt for every day of my 17^th year on Earth was AWESOME! Being 17 rocked. Gratitude? What was that, I was too busy enjoying life and feeling awesome every day.

Now I’m no longer 17. I find that, for no reason at all, something hurts every morning when I get up. I look in the mirror and can see I’m definitely not 17, at least after my eyes focus, but thankfully the mirror is blurry because I haven’t put my glasses on yet.

I could choose (and I see many people who do this) to feel a little grumpy. To be clear, I did notice that I was waking up grumpy recently. And I thought is this fun? Do I enjoy this?

No, no I do not.

If it’s not enjoyable to me, and it doesn’t serve any purpose, then why am I doing it?

I read that someone in New York City gets stabbed every 43 seconds. Poor guy.

So that’s why I started the experiment. I would, from the first moment that I got up avoid thinking about:

Things I wasn’t looking forward to that day.
Things that make me mad.
Situations that I couldn’t control.
How warm the bed was and how cold the room was.

Instead, I decided, I would think about something that made me happy or something that I was grateful for. It didn’t have to be a big thing – the way that the coffee was going to taste, for instance, or the idea that I was going to get ready for the day faster than usual, or a song I liked that I could play while I brushed my teeth.

I also learned that you should never brush your teeth with your left hand. A toothbrush works much better.

Instead of being mad, I would focus on something that made me want to get out of bed, something to look forward to, no matter how small. Maybe today I could do just a little more than I did yesterday, or serve just a little more than I did yesterday, or be just a little bit better than yesterday. It’s possible, right?

Immediately, my mood was better. Oh, I certainly wasn’t skipping down the hall, but I was not in the mood to complain, in fact, I was feeling happy about things that

I would think about something that made me want to get out of bed.

Oh, sure, the chaos of thoughts about things I had to do would come, but I could push those off until after I had a cup of coffee. Each day I have is a unique day, and the biggest variable is how I deal with it.

If someone gave me a dollar for every time I didn’t understand what was going on, I’d be like, “Hey, why are you giving me all these dollars?”

As I’ve mentioned before, I get to choose how I feel, and I get to choose how I react. In this world, sometimes those are the only things fully under our control. So, if I have to choose?

Today, I chose to be grateful. And, it felt pretty good. Maybe sometime I’ll choose to be grumpy, or angry, or mad.

But not today.

And the good news about having a beard? I didn’t have to shave today, either.

Great News: Everything’s Going Wrong!

“If we can stop him, we shall prevent the collapse of Western civilization. No pressure.” – Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

How many contractors does it take to screw in a light bulb? I’ll let you know when I get one to call me back.

Many times we look at a mess, and think, “Well, that’s just so broken that nothing, nothing will ever be okay again.” That would describe my first marriage. I don’t write more about that bad marriages because bad marriages aren’t all that interesting unless it’s in Florida and involves an alligator, meth, and a Clinton. Besides, it’s over.

So, did it really matter?

In my case, yes.

When I sat back after it was all concluded, one of the things that I did was really think about it, and try to figure out what (if anything) that I had done wrong in the marriage. On hindsight, there was plenty that I did wrong. Though I’d love to blame it all on her since , I certainly played my part. In the end, I knew I’d never find anyone like my ex-wife again. Of course, that was my goal.

There I was, recently divorced, in debt, underwater on my house, and with a stack of bills that were immediately due. It was the worst place I’d ever been in my life, with the exception of being married to my ex. Why are divorces expensive? They’re worth it.

Do divorcing stoners get joint custody?

I realize now that this wasn’t as bad as I thought it was then, but back then it looked like a jet had crashed into my life.

What did I do?

I put one foot in front of the other, met The Mrs., paid off my bills (that took four years), had first one kid and then another, and sold the house right as the housing boom was taking off. None of this was predictable to me at the time of the divorce.

But this isn’t about me.

What kind of eel hits your eye like a big pizza pie? That’s a moray.

When you look at, say, Japan in 1945, it was almost worse than my divorce. Almost. The land had been nuked, bombed, and about 4%, nearly one out of twenty, of the Japanese population had been killed in the war. Their industry had been devastated; their army dismantled, their anime undrawn.

So, they gave up.

No, just kidding. They didn’t give up. They buckled down and became the economic growth story, leading the world in the production of quality cars and electronics by the early 1970s, just a little over a generation after the end of the war and the devastation.

You could not have predicted that Japan would have been so successful that by the late 1980s people were expecting it to have an economy that many felt would soon be larger than the economy of the United States. Luckily, the Japanese discovered mascot suits, and have settled back into being one of the largest, most functional, highest standard of living places in the world who is also a bit crazy.

Why did U-Boats in World War II have dogs as mascots? So they could have a sub woofer.

The point remains – you cannot guess the end by the beginning.

As I look around the world now, I see a world that is filled with conflict, some of which is horrifying. Some of the conflict threatens to change the entire world balance of power. Some of the cataclysmic changes we’ve seen in society have ripped apart the basis for stability of the atom of society – the family and have created new structures that are actively against every virtue and celebrate their opposites.

All of that is true. And yet, I still am optimistic. Why? Because, when I look back through history, we’ve driven to the cliff, again and again and even tried to jump off. When the Roman Empire fell because of many of the same things ailing Western Civilization today, the game wasn’t over. Europe rebounded and eventually (after a lot of struggle) reached heights that had never been seen before in the history of mankind. The setback of the fall of the Roman Empire had been the catalyst for the rebirth of Europe.

Was everything the same?

No. But the foundations for a stable society that can create wealth, freedom, and exemplify virtue haven’t changed since civilization itself was formed. These things are necessary. Humans have changed since civilization started, but the basic things that motivate us and keep us going when it’s cold and dark out haven’t: the things that give us hope are family, religion, and the will to create – something far more than just the will to survive – amoeba and Leftists can do that.

These things don’t include so much of what we see being indoctrinated into the culture today, things that are anti-child, anti-family, and anti-life. These are now being celebrated as virtues, and it’s devastating and causes civilization to unravel.

Surely that burning oil could have created a full tank?

This unravelling, however, will end up being the basis of something new and wonderful: although all great civilizations rhyme, they don’t have to look exactly the same. I really believe that, perhaps, the greatest and most golden age of humanity may be before us, rather than behind us.

You really can’t see it now in a world that’s falling apart because of the absolute inversion of values, but I assure you, it’s there. We will win. Deep down, Kipling knew it over 100 years ago when he penned The Gods of the Copybook Headings (which I’ll trot out once more, full poem below).

We cannot lose because those values that make civilization worth living have nothing to do with the cultural change being forced down our throats. The irony is that, by weakening our culture they bring their defeat closer to them, faster. Hormone treatment of children has not, is not, and will never be a way to create a stable society. It is, in fact, a way to create a crushed number of people that are so broken and confused inside that there is no way that they can create any sort of civilization.

No, everything is breaking apart, and it will lead, inevitably, to the next stage, which is going to be wonderful, though the route won’t be easy. Be of good cheer. I’ll put it in better hands than mine to point out what’s coming:

The Gods of the Copybook Headings, by Rudyard Kipling

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Naughty Girls And Inner Peace: A Short Guidebook

“Okay, Wang, let’s just chew our way out.” – Big Trouble in Little China

Who wears a red suit and knows if you’ve been naughty or nice? The Spanish Inquisition. Bet you weren’t expecting that.

It’s Friday. So why not be happy?

In truth, being happy is one of the easiest things to do, most of the time. You just do it. It’s literally as easy as just telling yourself, “I’m happy now.”

I know that there are difficult things going on in the world, and on days that aren’t Friday I spend a lot of time writing about them, because I like to do my best to try to get the Truth out. I firmly believe that some things are utterly predictable in life, like what happens when Democrats get to count votes.

If I drop a glass from five feet above my ceramic tile floor in the kitchen, 999 times out of 1,000 it’s going to break. It doesn’t take psychic powers to tell me that.

I’m horrible at predicting the future. I guess you could call me a non-prophet.

But I certainly can’t tell you where all of the pieces are going to go, and I can’t tell you what shape each piece will be in. I can only guess.

Most of the things that are going on in the world are like that falling glass, and most of the questions we have are how is it going to break. Yeah, $34 trillion in debt is unsustainable – some people work a whole year and don’t make that much. How will I do? I really don’t know.

I can, maybe, make some changes that make the crack up a little better for me. Maybe not – there’s a lot of things that can happen, since, as Yogi Berra said, “Prediction is hard, especially about the future.”

So, when I’ve done the thinks that I think I can do, and it’s the end of the day, I turn it off. I don’t fret. I don’t worry about the things I can’t control. Unlike a Clinton, I let life happen.

Suicide hotline put my uncle on hold, just left him hanging.

In the words of the youth, I “touch grass”, which is the phrase of those hep cats who caution that we can make ourselves crazy by losing touch with those things around us, like nature. I good walk on a cool autumn day as the Sun starts to become dimmer with its march towards winter is . . . awesome.

We have the choice, each day as to how we’re going to feel about the day.

Most of the time that I’m feeling glum, it’s not at all about what has happened, instead it’s about what might happen. In the words of Mark Twain, “Worrying is paying interest on a debt you might not even owe.”

In that case, I know the answer to “What Color Is Your Parachute” – that would be red.

I can think of a million things that can go wrong before lunch, if I let myself. I prefer not to get wrapped up in that sort of thought, so I try to limit my worries to things that it might be good to worry about, things like, “Is there another beer in the beer fridge?”

It is, generally, easy to just take a step back and smile. Even if I’m out of beer, it doesn’t mean that life is bad.

Most often, I get upset when I find that life isn’t doing what I want it to do. This happens much more than I’d like, obviously. I don’t give up, but I also want to keep focused on a simple idea – life happens the way it happens. I can do my best to alter outcomes here and there (which is part of the reason that I write) but in the end I have to understand and make peace with the idea that, although I certainly won’t go gently onto that goodnight, I can learn to make peace with it.

If you can’t win the Nobel Peace Prize, might as well try for the Darwin Award.

The other thing I’ve had to come to grips with, is often my plans sorta suck. If everything had gone the way I wanted it to go, in most cases it would have been horrible for me. As much as I plan, my plans fail to see the things that have helped me grow as a person and become better.

I don’t think that if every plan I made would have come true that I would be as happy as I am now. I certainly wouldn’t have accomplished as much.

In the end, I’m not content. I’m not satisfied. And I’m always trying to get better.

But I can be happy, too.

Maybe The Kids Are Alright?

“We’re a generation of men raised by women. I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer we need.” – Fight Club

The French love my generation. They say it has a certain Gen X sais quoi.

I can see what’s going on, I really can. To be fair, there are dozens of things, each day that I see that are signs of The Change. In many ways, The Change has been coming for decades, and has hit us harder than old age has hit Madonna.

Many of the changes we’ve seen are negative. I generally write about them on Mondays and Wednesdays. But Fridays? No. Because despite of all of the negatives that I see, I am as certain as the outcome of a vote if a Leftist is counting it that we will win.

What does winning mean? Well, it doesn’t mean that things will go back to “the way they were” – whatever that was. We won’t see that because those times are gone. The new good times will be different in many ways. Some I can guess because they’re inevitable, and some I can’t even fathom.

No, winning means a place for freedom and families and the things we associate with virtue. It doesn’t mean endless wealth, and it doesn’t mean endless amusement.

Why is Michael Jackson bad at bowling? He’s dead.

The big reason that this cannot last is because the current trend is the most unnatural and unstable in the history of humanity, with a few potential exceptions here and there that only lasted for a few decades.

This instability is in our favor. We can already see that the current boys in high school are fed up with Leftism and everything Woke. They’re done with it. They see that Leftism is poison. They’re rejecting it.

One reason is simple – it’s in the nature of youth to rebel. And, the Leftists having won so many battles are now The Man. They’re the ones the boys are rebelling against, and it’s glorious. The Leftists thought that when they took over and had the ability to control what went in the minds, that was the end of the story.

Yet, the Leftists still think they’re rebels working against the system when they manifestly are the system. The boys in school can see that, and they react accordingly, completely making those Leftists spitting out the propaganda go crazy. The Leftists are like like that guy who is in his forties and still is wearing his letter jacket because he wants the kids to think he’s cool. Now, based on every picture I’ve seen of every Leftist, the word “cool” isn’t remotely the first word I’d use to describe them. It’s not in the top 100. In reality, they fall somewhere lower than “turd stooge”.

The Three Stooges can do anything. They have Moementum.

This turns off the boys. Now, the girls are another subject altogether because the feminist imperative to teach the gospel of avoiding consequences of actions at all costs seems to resonate with them. In the turmoil to come, it’s the views of the boys that will matter the most.

The youth has also seen the fruits of Peak Leftism and are disgusted by it. Just like Gen X was shaped by the time they grew up in, being latchkey kids that learned from an early age to be independent, Gen Z is learning lessons about not trusting the government.

Their pivotal moment (so far) was the insane combination of COVID plus the Fentanyl Floyd riots. They see that their concept of “equal justice for all” has been tainted by racial politics to twist a system where punishment is based not on the crimes committed, but rather by the victim status of the alleged criminal.

Over three years, drug free!

How will that manifest? I think it will manifest in a deep distrust of the justice system, and I think that it will lead to, ahem, extrajudicial endings to criminal cases.

They’re also viewing the world and seeing it fall apart with cops that are prevented from arresting mobs looting stores week after week. As I believe white Gen Xers were propagandized to be the least racist generation in the history of humanity, I believe that white Gen Z kids will view race the same way black Gen Z kids will, with huge distrust.

The next thing in the mix is what hasn’t happened yet – the economic changes that are due. Just as there is a distrust being built up in the justice and governmental systems, there will be a distrust of money being created out of nothing. The system is going to, very soon, fail them in a spectacular way.

The economic changes will change them. We’ll still be able to send billions to the Ukraine, but it won’t matter because a billion won’t buy a Happy Meal®.

In the Ukraine it’s called corruption. In the United States we don’t talk about it.

Gen X was cynical. Gen Z will likely be a force of nature. If they aren’t the hard men, Gen Alpha will be. We’re that close, folks.

The pendulum is swinging back, and will swing back with a vengeance. We really have reached Peak Woke or Peak Clown World (honk honk!) and it’s here. I’ll see the start of The Change, but likely won’t live to see the next Golden Age.

That’s okay. I know it will be back, and I know this – there will be free men living on this world as long as there are men living on this world. There are ups and downs, but nothing is finished, this isn’t over.

We will win because we are strong. And we will win because for thousands of years we’ve been winning, and that won’t stop anytime soon, no matter how dark it looks outside right now.

Enjoy your day. It’s dark out, but the ending to this story will be glorious.

The Kids Aren’t Alright: Sex

“I don’t know much about geopolitics, but that is one cool name for a country: Chad.” – Norm Macdonald Live

Ever notice you never see Chad with Chad in Chad? Hmmm.

Technological change has been very difficult for the kids of today – it has changed entirely the way that they relate to each other, how they spend their time, how they are rewarded, and the very nature of the male-female relationship. Since I’m writing this post, it’s about as positive as Biden’s impact on the economy.

Of course, technology had changed the way that previous generations lived. When I was a kid, our entertainment on a Friday night was cruising main. We’d get in cars, and ride up and down the street, listening to loud music, revving engines.

Why?

To see each other. To find out what was going on. To meet girls. The girls would go to meet guys and chatter and drink some occasional peppermint schnapps snuck into a Big Gulp® cup. Often the girls and boys would do no more than flirt. Sometimes, though, well, more would happen.

This was an in-person interaction that was natural. The technology of the car and cruising Main were just minor adaptations of behavior that was certainly as old as the concept of the very first city – boys wanting to watch girls, and girls wanting to be watched.

Does mentioning cruising Main make you feel old yet?

This in-person interaction gave us the dopamine hits of the day. And, even at the breakneck speed of 25 miles an hour, there was an absolute limit to the number of boys a girl could see in a night of cruising Main of, maybe, a few dozen.

The reality is, of course, that we all have a finite number of choices of people to date (and mate) with. Cruising Main was a dance that was as old as time. In this dance, the woman offered her youth and beauty in return for the commitment of a good man. The man offered his commitment for the youth and beauty of a woman. And, when I was much younger, if I stayed up late enough I could watch it all on Cinemax® after my parents were asleep.

Those trades are, generally, good trades. They create a stable society, and provide a woman the chance to find, marry, have children with a man and raise them. Women tend to try to date and mate upwards in socio-economic status. Men? Well, you know.

Hey, derpy girls need love, too.

Now, for many, the meeting place is Tinder©. In Tinder™, women have infinite choices – they are the commodity to be possessed, and they swipe left or right, alternately accepting or rejecting hundreds of men in a minute. In this new bargain, the woman now trades her youth and beauty for endless one-night stands with Chad Tinderchuck. Example:

Chad always has a date, since girls always swipe to talk to him. In this, Chad ruins women. Chad’s a 10, but when it’s 2am at the bar, Chad’s fine with the average 4 or 5 or 6. In this way, that 4 (Flora Foura) thinks that, for the rest of her life, she deserves a Chad Tinderchuck in the prime of his life. She is a widow, forever pining for that man that she thinks she deserves. Don’t believe me?

Wait, is that a lunch lady from 1983? And she’s calling anyone mediocre???

The actual 5 or 6 guy Flora should be with? Well, after Chads marry and disappear, and younger Chads start ignoring her, she’s ready to “settle” for that 5 or 6 Andy Average. And, she’s angry about it every day that she sees Andy, since, deep down, Flora knows that she’s good enough for Chad.

But we’re seeing now that Andy Average isn’t quite so interested in Flora Foura after she’s spent her twenties on a revolving carousel of men, maybe picking up a child or two.

Let’s be fair – most of the things that most men do (especially young men) is to get quality females. If those aren’t available, Andy Average shuts down. Why work overtime when Xbox® is cheap? Why pump iron when Flora puts him on ignora?

¡Jeb! is always on ignora.

Men then go NEET – Not in Employment Education or Training. Why work hard? Why try to get great education? Why work at all? One segment of men has gone beyond MGTOW – they’ve gone full NPNW. I’ll let you sort out what NPNW means.

And who can blame men? When I was in high school, women liked men taking charge. Men were supposed to try, and women were supposed to put up a struggle so they didn’t feel like tramps. To be clear, I never engaged in any behavior that the young fräulein didn’t enthusiastically support, and when she said “stop” and meant it, I did.

It was well ingrained in women that they didn’t want to look like tramps, so they had to pretend they didn’t like or want to make out. Meat Loaf’s song trilogy Paradise by the Dashboard Light is a perfect description of a healthy sexual dynamic of the type that produced . . . me, and probably you, too.

We now live in a world of #MeToo. Russell Brand (who I don’t know because he doesn’t return either my emails or my calls) is being accused of, hear me out, having sex with (really!) a girl who wanted to have sex with him, who was (drumroll) of legal age. The cad! If a multimillionaire celebrity can be accused and lose a couple of million dollar a year of income for doing legal things, well, what chance does Andy Average have, especially since the average woman don’t need no man?

This is, perhaps the biggest lie. Women who don’t have children or a husband in their 40s are, perhaps, the unhappiest demographic on the planet. And, as I noted earlier, women want to marry up. The big paradox is women want to get a college degree (skip having children) and earn a lot of cash.

Women won’t marry men who make less than them, so they die childless and alone.

But, hey! At least they got to make cool PowerPoints™ between boxes of chardonnay and the trip to the vet for Sir Buggles Von Fancypants. I’m not exaggerating. Check this out:

When you sold your family, soul, and children for Internet likes.

Did I mention this is ruining the economy, the family structure, and the future?

The good news (for me) is that I wrote my notes on this post, and I’ve only touched a third of them. That means probably the next two Wednesday posts will be around this theme.

The bad news is that there are two more posts. As much as I’d like to say the kids are alright, they’re most definitely not. This has tremendous impacts on the near-term economy, as well as the future of the West.

But, hey, at least Biden’s still Building Back Better!

Oh. That didn’t age as well as a cat lady.

Wilder’s Cures for Male Loneliness

“Here’s to swimmin’ with bow-legged women.” – Jaws

If you’re lonely you could buy some stocks. Then you’d have some company.

In July, the New York Times® ran a story titled, Is the Cure to Male Loneliness Out on the Pickleball Court? It wasn’t particularly political, and I think I can summarize it in just a few words: “If you’re a dude, have a few friends. The best friends are those that share some sort of common interest with you. Friends make you happy.” Writer Michelle Cottle strung those three sentences out into several hundred words of mainly forgettable fluff that would be obvious to anyone with an I.Q. higher than a Phoenix, Arizona winter temperature. In centigrade.

The real joy of this particular story, however, was the unleashing of memes. The picture that accompanied the article, however was, shall we say, regrettable. It’s above, showing a man (I think, it’s 2023, so who can even define a man in 2023) with massive, fat tears containing enough water to keep California going through a megadrought. I think he might be crying because he hates pickleball, or maybe because he can’t afford a shirt with sleeves.

I have so many orb memes.

Regardless, the /Internet/ reacted predictably to the picture, and created a list of memes that would make all those sages pondering orbs proud. I saved a few of them, just for you in the hopes that you, dear reader, might find your key to cure your loneliness. If you’re like me, you don’t have feelings other than cold, salty, and drunk, so I haven’t figured out what the whole “lonely” thing is.

Anyway, here are the memes, as found, with some annotation.

I think that drinking with Quint and killing sharks is definitely going to solve any issues with loneliness.

Curling? Not so much.

Now being in a Roman Legion? That’s the stuff! Hiking every day! Just avoid Germany.

It’s weird that the Turks mispronounce “Constantinople” as “Istanbul”.

I, for one am always happy when I’m at Chili’s. It is the booze.

I’ve never tried it, but, what could it hurt?

Now this looks inviting. I think termites like saloons, because they like the bar tender.

I wonder if he’ll be a crying-on-the-inside NPC?

Can confirm, this is fun until the cops show up.

Is the Wendigo related to the Whodigo, or the Wheredigo, or the Whatdigo?

Who can be lonely interacting with 400’ tall anime girls?

Travolta and Cage walk into a bar. Bartender says, “Why the wrong face?”

Lovecraft walked into a bar, and the rest is too humorous to even describe.

Ever notice that you never see Walken and Buscemi in the same place? Discuss.

Hell yeah, brother!

Well, even Hunter gets lonely.

I guess it didn’t work for Kaepernick.

But it might have worked out for Kaepernick’s dad.

Sometimes, it’s the simple things.

Or many simple things.

What’s a little psychosis between friends?

If I tried that, I’d be grounded.

Well, back to giant women . . .

And who doesn’t need another synthesizer?

Is there more to life?

Yes, yes there is.

Thankfully, my job will let me work as many hours as I want to.

There might be one other option?

Experiments 2023: Wilder Is The Guinea Pig

“I can’t hear you. I’m too busy hitting buttons randomly.” – Phineas and Ferb

At dinner sometimes I pretend to gag. My kids know it’s just another dad choke.

There’s a time for odds and ends, and Friday is as good as any since a lot of them are on the health side. These are sort-of random, and are around a central theme of experiments that I do to myself and some of the results. I’m not going repeat the one where I replaced my arms with animal limbs – that idea still makes me mad enough to rip up a car with my bear hands.

First: Humans have been taking drugs for at least 12,000 years. I have written (and stand by the idea) (Beer, Technology, Beer, Tide Pods, Beer, Civilizational Stability, and Beer – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise (wilderwealthywise.com)) that the reason that civilization was formed was so we could have beer. If you look at the artifacts found at Göbekli Tepe you’d find that one of them is a stone trough perfect for making beer, with residue from making beer. People have also been ingesting or smoking various things for millennia from coffee to mushrooms to the Devil’s Lettuce. Humans are drug using – it changes our mood.

I was listening to Scott Adams while flitting about this week and he led off with an interesting comment. “Music is a drug,” because it alters our moods. I was working the other day with earbuds in and found myself really happy. Why? Music. It put me in a great mood and I was amazingly productive.

I hear wind turbines are big metal fans.

Adams is right, music acts like a drug. But there’s more: literature and television and Twitter™ I mean X© all fall into the same category. When I was dating in high school I also (accidently) found that horror movies were an amazing aphrodisiac for the girls I dated. Who knew?

I watched a LOT of horror movies on dates when I was in high school. I guess you could chalk that up to Pavlov’s libido.

I have made this point many times: be careful what you let into your head. It can act like a drug, and the wrong drug at the wrong time can be fatal. Choose wisely, and avoid things that make you feel despair.

Second: YouTube® recommended an 8-hour dreaming track that they promised would allow me to have lucid dreams. For those not aware, lucid dreaming is where you’re dreaming, but you’re fully conscious. It’s an odd state – it’s not like being hypnogogic, where you’re in that twilight zone between being awake and being asleep. Nope, you’re dreaming but you’re fully conscious.

My boss said I was on the Dream Team! He also asked me to stop sleeping at work.

Sounds like something good, right?

The first night I tried it, The Mrs. reacted very negatively. “What on Earth were you playing last night? It gave me awful dreams.” I persisted for a few weeks. Normally, I go to sleep quite easily, and just like Epstein’s prison guards, I can sleep through almost anything. I still found it easy to go to sleep with the “music” but my dream quality really changed over several weeks. My dreams became incredibly dull. Imagine dreaming about being at work. On a normal workday. Doing normal work.

Aaaargh! I love dreaming when I’m a pirate, or hanging out with Tom Cruise having adventures or being asked by ZZ Top® to play bass at a concert because they were desperate. Those are good dreams. But being at work doing normal day-to-day crap?

It was awful. And I was conscious during the work dreams. Sometimes I’d end them, but end up going right back to work. In my dreams.

That was bad enough, but the final straw that ended this experiment for me was that I would wake up at 4am and I couldn’t go back to sleep. I’d be there hours, awake in bed. Or so I thought. In reality, I was dreaming that I was trying to get to sleep, but I was fully conscious. I figured this out one morning when my alarm went off during a dream about trying to get to sleep.

That was weird.

I cannot recommend this sort of “music”, unless you want to relive a boring day at the office without being paid for it.

After I stopped, within a week my old sleep patterns returned.

Third: I was the victim of a plagiarist this week. Oh, sure, I’ve actually seen that someone tried to make .pdfs of my posts and (maybe?) sell them a few years ago, but that isn’t what I’m talking about – I’m talking about someone taking one of my posts and re-writing it, beat for beat, even using the same analogies.

I’m still mad at the guy who did it.

Surprise: It was me.

Sometimes I take notes (I used to use notecards, but don’t have the same set up, so don’t anymore) for posts. Other times? Walking around, or snoozing, and a post idea hits me. I’ll often work it out in my head, and then write it out.

Plagiarist? Their words, not mine.

I did the latter in this case. Then I saw an old post of mine getting traffic with a really similar name after I posted the piece I had just finished. I clicked on it, and it was amazingly similar – the algorithm that suggests posts based on the post I have up suggested it. That post was also four years older, so I guess my main defense was that I’d written somewhere north of 600 posts (nearly 750,000 words) and slept over 1300 times (1260 if you discount the lucid dreaming nights) since then.

Fourth: I’m really enjoying doing the podcast. This isn’t a commercial or anything, since if only one or two people listened I think we’d still be doing it because it’s fun. It’s a livestream now, but I think it’s pretty tightly produced, so we don’t end up with a lot of the awkwardness you’d expect with an amateur like Shawn Hannity. Nope, we’re professionals. Also, I’m thinking this makes us journalists. For legal reasons. You can watch it here (LINK).

I bring it up because a) I can prove The Mrs. actually exists, and b) it’s something we have a lot of fun doing, and it’s creative and we mostly have our clothes on when we do it. As far as you know.

Fifth: I used to hang out with The Mrs. at lunch, but since her schedule changed, I don’t. Instead, I’ve packed off my laptop and tried to be productive wherever I am during lunch, and it saves mileage and I just don’t eat, so that’s a bonus, too. I’m writing this at lunch, and I’ve been pretty pleased with the results so far since I tend to do the first drafts and then when I get home later I do the research and edits and add the (bad) jokes.

Actual German joke: “Why are there so few crimes in Germany? Because it’s illegal.”

It may not sound like a big change, but it shaves hours off of my writing time, and those are hours that I can sleep instead rather than building up a big sleep debt and paying it off on the weekend. Plus, I’m fasting at lunch. In reality, when I went home I’d eat, but I find I don’t miss it at all.

I also think I might get a better overall quality since I’m writing during my most productive time, and editing and cracking jokes at my sillier times. We’ll see.

As always, YMMV.