Happiness – Page 3 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

It Came From . . . 1989

“Why don’t they ever bring back or remake good shows, like BJ and the Bear? Now there’s a concept I can’t get enough of, a man and his monkey.” – Mallrats

Thankfully, if A.I. ever tries to attack us, it will try to drive trucks on water.

Back again with movies from the 1980s. This has been fun, but I think there may only be one year that we haven’t done – 1980. I’ll verify that, and if so, that’ll be the next one. It seems like people enjoy taking these walks through history, and perhaps we’ll hit the 1990s next.

Or not, still haven’t decided, though it’s certain I’ve seen some great movies based on your recommendations. Keep in mind that I’ve excluded sequels (mostly, there are one or two that I did allow for various reasons). On that, note, off to the races . . . and let me know what I’ve missed in the comments.

DeepStar Six – This1989 underwater movie starred Peter Weller . . . oh, no, that was Leviathan. Right. DeepStar Six is the 1989 underwater movie that starred Ed Harris as a Navy . . . oh, that was The Abyss. What was Deepstar Six? The 1989 underwater movie with the guy that played BJ from BJ and the Bear? Never mind.

The Experts – This was a random pick of a movie back when I was at the grocery store getting Cheerios® or something. Really, I think I was getting Cheerios™ that night, which are the perfect food if you like miniature donuts that taste like sawdust and despair and yet dissolve into a slimy mushy paste when exposed for more than 20 seconds to milk. Regardless, this was John Travolta doing what he was meant to do: play an idiot. The plot is simple, stupid night club guys from the United States are drugged and taken to the Soviet Union to help make their spy school more effective. It’s not serious, but it is funny.

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure – Again, another random video pick about the same time as The Experts. A time travel story done by the son of Richard I Am Legend Matheson about two idiots who travel back in time for a history report so that their band can save the universe. Surprisingly well done and internally consistent with the appropriate 80s-rock soundtrack. Party on, dude!

Apparently, A.I. isn’t interested so much in Ted “Theodore” Logan.

The ‘Burbs – Spielberg with a very dark comedy about serial killers moving into the neighborhood on a suburban cul-de-sac. I saw this one in the theater, and wasn’t disappointed. Tom Hanks before he became all “actor-y” and Carrie Fischer before she became all “dead on an airplane”. Not a hit, but some pretty good performances.

Leviathan – Okay, this is really the “creepy thing under the sea” movie from 1989 that I wanted to write about. I thought this was far superior to The Abyss and to DeepStar Six. I caught this while just driving through a city, decided to stop and watch a movie, and really enjoyed it. The screenwriter, David Peoples also did the screenplays for Blade Runner, 12 Monkeys, and Unforgiven. The movie does star Peter Weller, and is really a version of Alien, but under the ocean.

Heathers – Yet another dark comedy. I’m sensing a trend. In this one, Winona Ryder plays Veronica, who finally made the right high school clique with three girls named Heather, which is a really weird coincidence, because that’s the name of the movie. Anyway, suicides ensue, and maybe just a bit of light murder. Heathers was intended to be a counterpoint to movies like Sixteen Candles or The Breakfast Club, but still maintained a comedic edge without going too dark.

Apparently, the Heathers are all Phoebe Cates, including black Phoebe Cates, and one of them stole Doc Brown’s DeLorean. Lick it up, baby. Lick it up.

Dead Calm – Another video pick, random off of the rack. The moral of the story is if you’re traveling around the world on a sailing ship with Nicole Kidman never stop to pick up Billy Zane because Billy Zane always sweats a lot is always going to try to take your woman and your ship. Bonus? Sam Neill.

Major League – Tom Berenger got tired of killing Willem Dafoe, and decided to become a major league baseball player. But he chose the Cleveland Indians® (note, they changed the name of the baseball team so that they could erase the memory of Indians from the continent) and they sucked, so they had to hire a bunch of loveable losers to destroy what was left of the team so a Las Vegas showgirl could move it. Made buckets of money.

Looks like Ricky Vaughn has been cloned?

Field of Dreams – Yet more baseball, but this one is more serious. Kevin Costner plows under his corn to make a baseball field so he can have a last game of catch with his deceased father after watching the Chicago Black Sox.

How I Got into College – Who would believe that Anthony Edwards could snag Lara Flynn Boyle? The casting director, apparently. It’s a fun, wacky comedy that Savage Steve Holland put together. It cost $10 million, made $1.6 million. Bomb. Still funny.

Miracle Mile – More Anthony Edwards. This time he’s a guy who’s chasing Mare Winningham, who is much more in his league: Winningham looks sort-of like a short Irish linebacker with a punk haircut in this one. Edwards gets a wrong number call at a phone booth by a guy trying to call his dad to warn him that the United States is getting ready to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against the Soviets, probably to kill John Travolta before he makes superspies. Not a comedy. I’m watching this one right now. Also, who names their daughter “Mare”?

Batman – Tim Burton’s last good movie, but I hate it because after this Michael Keaton started to do things other than comedy and I think he had a lot more funny movies in him. It is the only movie where someone kept all of Tim Burton’s bad instincts in check. Burton makes pretty movies, but can’t do a plot to save his life, so his first three were okay.

You knew there would be unnecessary PEZ® and cats, didn’t you?

Weekend at Bernie’s – Two junior employees end up with their dead boss and have to convince people he’s alive so that they can party. Reminds me of the Biden administration.

UHF – This movie showed up and left the box office before I had any idea it existed, which probably explains why it was unprofitable. What is the movie about? Give Weird Al a television station, and what shows would he put on? This. Although the movie was a bomb, I’m certain that it’s made a profit since then. It’s a classic, and very funny. Okay, it’s very funny if you like Weird Al. If you don’t like Weird Al, it would be torture and probably be prohibited by the Geneva Convention.

Uncle Buck – This may be John Candy at his best, a wise-cracking uncle who doesn’t want to but will take care of kids. John Candy was a comedy treasure, and left us too soon – some people like Planes, Trains, and Automobiles better, and that’s a very strong movie, but Uncle Buck is sharp and smartly written, though Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is the very best Thanksgiving movie.

Is this Henry V if he was guest starring on Miami Vice?

Henry V – I though that this was the sequel to Henry IV, but was disappointed to find out that this was a standalone film about some dead British guy written about some dead British guy. Yawn. Oh, wait, it has this:

And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered—
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

Tango & Cash – Tango & Cash could have been titled “Generic Buddy Cop Movie Between Cops That Are Opposites And That Also Features A Monster Truck And Features Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell”. What more do you need?

Like I said, sound off for other movies from this late, great year.

Could It All Be Worms Making The Decisions For The Left?

“You can’t have both of the parasites.” – Fight Club

A tapeworm showed up to a party and got kicked out. I guess the guy was a terrible host.

When I think about parasites, I start with thinking about the GloboLeft. Somebody like George Soros has been sucking at the economy, producing no value, and trying his best to control its brain.

Like Toxoplasmosis gondii.

Toxoplasmosis gondii (T. gondii from here on out) is, like a gender-studies major, a parasite. It has an interesting life cycle, in that it often occurs in cats. In reality, it can infest any warm blooded animal (and birds as well) but most people are aware from due to its association with cats, and not the Broadway musical, but the fuzzy felines.

I want to write a Broadway show titled Vocabulary. It’ll be a play on words.

T. gondii likes to infest cats. Since it occurs as cysts in animals, T. gondii has developed the ability to change the behavior of mice and rats. Specifically, T. gondii changes the brain and behavior patterns of rodents to make them less worried about being dinner.

Of things that rodents don’t like, “being eaten alive” is pretty near the top of the list. Uninfected rodents really hate the smell of cat pee and avoid it, since cat pee often occurs near where cats are, and cats like to eat rodents alive, just for sport.

However, give a rodent an infection of T. gondii and it either loses it’s aversion to cat pee or becomes attracted to it. It also reduces the behaviors associated with avoiding predators and makes the mice more bold and less worried about predators. It also makes them hyperactive, increases the distances they travel, and makes the reckless when they show up at a new area.

Yes. T. gondii turns mice into little mobile food trucks for cats. This is on purpose, so the cats eat the mice, and then get infected, and then poop, and then spread T. gondii everywhere.

Mary Poppins Food Truck Review: “Super cauliflower-cheese but the lobster was atrocious.”

Well, there’s a horrifying thought! A parasite that changes the behavior of creatures! Thankfully humans don’t get it, and it doesn’t impact human behavior?

Well, nazzo fast, Guido.

It turns out that T. gondii just loves to hitch a ride into humans. And just like it changes the behavior of rats and cats and mice, studies have shown that it also impacts humans as well. How?

T. gondii has shown to have some of these effects in people:

Increases impulsive behaviors,
Increased car accidents,
Increased road rage, and
Increased mental illness (like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder).

Yeah, T. gondii is a disaster for people since if you look at the list above, it appears to turn them into GloboLeftists. It also messes with human immune systems so it doesn’t get eaten, makes healthy cells die, increases inflammation, and may even encourage other parasites to join the party by downregulating the parts of the human immune system that keep them out.

Staying up all weekend is fun – after all, sleep is for the week.

Thankfully it’s rare, right?

Nope. In women of childbearing age, infection rates are:

50%-80% in Latin Americans,
20%-60% in Eastern Europeans,
30%-50% in the Middle Easterners,
20%-60% in Southeast Asians,
20%-55% in Africans, and
7% in the United States natives (2004 data) but 28.1% in foreign-born.

Billions of people have this parasite, T. gondii. But that’s just one parasite.

I had that parasite. Didn’t care for it.

Let’s take this a step further.

There are large numbers of parasites beyond T. gondii that infect and impact humanity. I looked it up and came to two conclusions:

Parasites are really gross and repulsive.
There are hundreds of different types of parasites out there.

How likely is it, of all of the different types of parasites that impact humanity that the only one that impacts behavior is T. gondii? If I were a betting man, I’d lay money that there are certainly more parasites than not impact behavior. And since many of these parasites require exposure to blood or poop to increase the number of hosts, well, might the behaviors that the parasite “encourages” be tied to more exposure to those things?

It’s a thought.

Once again, when looking at the religious themes of chastity, heterosexuality, monogamy, and modesty, it occurs to me that all of those virtuous behaviors – every single one of them – reduces exposure to parasites and disease that may take over our minds.

Is it just a coincidence that as adherence to chastity, heterosexuality, monogamy, and modesty are tossed away as old, outmoded thinking that we find ourselves in a world surrounded by triggered adherents of Clown World? Perhaps the warnings we’ve seen in the past of those possessed by demons was, at least in part, based on parasites. It seems like all the behavior that leads to the fall of civilizations tends to increase the likelihood that people will catch parasites.

Where do Viking clowns go? Val-ha-ha.

Maybe, maybe it’s only the GloboLeft, but the GloboLeft is actively encouraging behaviors that result in the perpetuation of parasites. Today. Ever wonder why the GloboLeft reacted so harshly to ivermectin being a potential cure to COVID? It kills parasites.

What would have happened if GloboLeftists had taken it and found out that their lives are a lie and their predilection to certain sexual practices was actually parasite mind control?

Are the GloboLeftists, in addition to being parasites, are also being consumed and controlled by parasites?

You be the judge.

It Came From . . . 1985

“Go that way, really fast. If something gets in your way, turn.” – Better Off Dead

People with babies can be really rude at the movie theater. One kid was crying so loudly that I could barely hear the person I was talking with on the phone.

I was recently looking at some graphs that showed, by birth year, what time people thought were the “best” for various things. For example, most people thought music peaked about the time where they were stupidest and going through puberty, say, 12-14. I recall reading that one “dealmaker” would always put on music that would have been popular when the person he was trying to influence would have been in that age range.

Worked like a charm for him.

Movies are different. For most people, surveyed, regardless of birth year, movies peaked in the 1980-1990 era. Why? They were creative, not afraid to take a risk, and great new movies were coming out almost weekly. My initial cut at this list of movies had 25 movies on it. And I thought of including at least 10 more.

It was an embarrassment of cultural riches that we had at that time. Well, at least we have Marvel™ Movie Product #432 now.

As always, the list isn’t in any particular order, and feel free to toss your favorites in the comments.

Witness – What I like best about this movie is that I’m fairly certain that it inspired Weird Al to do Amish Paradise. Other than that, just a fish out of water movie about a crusty cop pretending to be Amish and an excuse to put Harrison Ford in something that wasn’t Indiana Jones® or Star Wars™.

If you see an Apple™ store get robbed, does that make you an iWitness®?

The Breakfast Club – I really didn’t like this movie. It tried to make as if teens were angsty and filled with self-loathing and/or had bad relationships with pushy parents. Most of my friends were fairly well-adjusted, so I just didn’t relate to any of the characters. Of note: I think people are complaining now that the characters were all white. Imagine how it would fly if they were all BiPOC? Regardless, it makes the list because it’s a cultural touchstone for so many other people.

Vision Quest – Now this character I could identify with – a teen who has a vision, and goes on a quest. Okay, it’s about wrestling, girls, and life, and features a great soundtrack and lots of wrestling. Oh, and Linda Fiorentino.

When two silkworms wrestle, how often are the results a tie?

The Sure Thing – 1985 was Peak John Cusack. Sure, now he is an uber-Leftist on XX, but back then he was just another actor who could put in a great performance as a teen everyman. Of note: this was the first time I ever saw a cordless phone in a non-science fiction movie.

Lost in America – This is a movie about yuppies who decide to retire and go around the country in a big camper. On their first stop, the wife gambles away all of their money. Low-key hilarity ensues. My favorite line? “You are not allowed to use the words ‘nest’ or ‘egg’ ever again.”

Brewster’s Millions – Richard Pryor has to spend $30 million in 30 days and have nothing to show for it to inherit $300 million. John Candy plays the sidekick. Good times.

Rambo: First Blood Part II – This movie transformed the brooding John Rambo into something closer to Batman® in a bandana. Normally I wouldn’t put a sequel on the list, but this is a very different movie in every way from First Blood.

First PEZ™, Part II

The Stuff – What if your ice cream was eating you? Yes, that’s the plot. Yes, it’s played for laughs.

Back to the Future – Ever daydream about making sure your parents had sex? Well, no, not until I saw this movie. Time travel showed up in quite a few 1980s films, but this and Terminator probably top the list back when it was still a “new” movie concept.

Day of the Dead – Yes, a sequel, but, wow. It was considered very, very gruesome for the time and place of release, but now this stuff is on TV all the time. Interesting plot that could have had a much better script.

Fright Night – What if vampires were cool, suave, your next-door neighbor, and looking to bang and drain your girlfriend? Better call a washed-up TV horror movie host to help!

The Amish do not approve.

Weird Science/Real Genius – People were optimistic that science could solve our problems in the 1980s, such as getting a girlfriend or popping a lot of popcorn all at the same time.

Summer Rental – Who wouldn’t want John Candy as a neighbor? Well, I wouldn’t, since he’s dead. But he also got in a feud with Richard Crenna (also dead) and Rip Torn (also dead) comes to the rescue by turning his restaurant into a pirate boat. Okay, it’s essentially exactly the plot to Caddyshack, but who cares? It’s funny.

The Return of the Living Dead – Is it a floor wax? Is it a dessert topping? If Shimmer™ could be both, why can’t The Return of the Living Dead be a comedy and a horror movie? It is. It cost $3 million, made $14 million, and though it was a very stupid movie, was certainly not brainless.

Volunteers – John Candy, again, but this time as a Tom Hanks sidekick who is brainwashed by the communists and teaches them the Washington State fight song. Again, fun, and no Asians were killed in the filming of this movie.

Fight, fight, fight for Washington State . . . .

Better Off Dead – John Cusack again, 1985 was really his year. In this movie where teen suicide is played for laughs, and I loved every minute of it. Savage Steve Holland’s career was too short in movies, but lived on in animation. The humor is mainly focused on the absurd, like the two Japanese brothers, one who speaks no English, and the other learned by listening to Howard Cosell. I liked it.

Commando – I didn’t wear underwear to this movie, thus leading the expression “Commando” meaning not wearing underwear. Okay, that’s not the case, but Commando could almost be titled Generic Arnold Schwarzenegger Action Movie because it is mainly just Arnie blowing things up and making bad puns. And that’s okay.

In an Arnie voice: “Well, at least my hat is purr-fect.”

Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins – Until getting writing this post, I had no idea that this silly movie was based on a book series called The Destroyer that lasted for over 150 novels. Yup. But this is Fred Ward in a humorous movie that never takes itself too seriously, and has the production values of a TV movie, including Joel Grey as an ancient Asian master.

Re-Animator – I’m a sucker for great H.P. Lovecraft movies, and there are very, very few of those because Lovecraft built a wonderful world but didn’t write all that well. This one involves a medical student who invents a reanimation fluid that make the dead walk again, which was a big 1985 theme, apparently. This is Lovecraft, done right.

White Nights – Very much a Cold War movie, Gregory Hines and Mikhail Baryshnikov are dancers who plot to escape the Soviet Union. It’s a spy thriller with sand dancing. It’s the closest to a drama on the list, so, it’s got that going for it.

Brazil – No, still haven’t seen it. Yes, I will at some point.

Does this capture the spirit of the movie Brazil?

The Truth, Neutrinos, Taylor Swift, And Otto Von Bismarck.

“I know what you’re thinking, ’cause right now I’m thinking the same thing. Actually, I’ve been thinking it ever since I got here: Why, oh why, didn’t I take the blue pill?” – The Matrix

When I was a kid, I could walk into a 7-Eleven with just a dollar and walk out with a six pack of pop and three candy bars. Now? They have cameras everywhere.

I write a lot about the Truth, but I think the Friday before Memorial Day is a fine time to talk about the Truth in general. Why? Because I said so.

The first thing I want to point out is that a quest for Truth, does not mean everything is bright and happy and puppy tails. The Truth is, very often a grim thing. I have found things sometimes aren’t the happy web that I imagined. Like the Wedding Guest in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner I ended up being “A sadder and a wiser man” because of The Truth. I guess the Wedding Guest’s bright spot is at least Iron Maiden® wrote a song about him.

That is part of the issue of looking for the Truth – I thought I understood life, and then a curve ball hits. Some people call this sudden exposure to the Truth: The Red Pill, based on the red Reese’s Pieces that E.T.® ate with Indiana Jones™ in the movie Jaws.

Or something like that. Heck, I used to worry about the evidence that the Sun’s neutrino count was half of what would be expected, and that maybe its internal fusion had stopped. But that was just too scary, so now I worry about celebrity gossip.

What was Otto von Bismark’s favorite Queen song? Under Prussia.

The Red Pill is choosing to see reality as it is, not as we’d wish it to be. In this quest, I’ve seen things I didn’t want to see, and understood things often people are willfully ignorant of because the consequences of the Truth are . . . disturbing.

That’s difficult, because then I have to go back through what I formerly believed to be True, and reassess – how does this new Truth change what I thought I knew? What else do I think to be True that is similarly wrong? What I trusted as the Truth, after taking the Red Pill, I had to reassess and review my whole worldview through different eyes.

One of my first Red Pills was when I was a sophomore in college. I realized then that most people simply didn’t care about me, didn’t care if I succeeded or failed, and that the majority of my presence in the world was like that of a finger in a cup of water – pull the finger out, and two seconds later you’d never know a finger had ever been in the water. Unless I hadn’t washed my hands after going to the bathroom.

There are several things still functioning on the Titanic, for instance, the sinks still hold water.

And, it’s True. Most of the journey of most lives is shared with just a few very close people. I remember that one of my friends died not too long after high school – a car crash. I hadn’t seen him for four years afterwards, and was sad, but, you know, I shrugged and moved on.

That’s not the case for everyone – families are much tighter, obviously, but lots of marriages are transactional: it’s based not on a bond, but on a transaction, like nearly every Hollywood marriage.

But it comes down to friendships, too. I once had a close friend at work. I left the job, and boom, the friendship status was closed. Our relationship had been a transaction, and it occurred in an artificial setting. Didn’t mean I wasn’t irritated, but, hey, like Mark Twain said, Red Pill is gonna Red Pill.

She said, “Strip down, facing me.” It wasn’t until the McDonald’s® cashier screamed that I figured out she meant my credit card.

Searching for the Truth isn’t about avoiding ugliness, searching for the Truth is about being able to make actual choices, using free will free of illusions. It’s about making actual conscious moral decisions without pretending. This is better, even if the Truth is ugly.

Why? Decisions made with the Truth in mind work out better. If I tried to use reason and logic with a toddler, we’d both end up frustrated and I’d end up with a black eye and a fractured clavicle. Again.

That’s a key problem with making decisions or basing reality on anything other than the Truth: “solutions” won’t solve any problems if they’re not based on reality except by accident. Those “solutions” may even make things worse. For instance, if the problem is youth crime, and New York City decides that to stop youth crime, for any crime short of murder, they’re going to ignore it and put the criminal back on the streets immediately, what will happen?

For illegal aliens, if the policy to stop those illegals is to fund them to get to the border, bus them from the border to relocation centers, feed, clothe, fund, and then fly for free to yet more free stuff: housing and food. How many illegals will that policy stop?

If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.

The True solution to a problem often requires a True understanding of the problem. In the examples above, the True problem isn’t the illegals or the young criminals, the True problem is the GloboLeftElite who want the illegal aliens and the youthful criminals to be doing exactly what they’re doing.

Not using the Truth to make decisions when you have it is morally and ethically bankrupt, and the GloboLeftElite and their stooges have a lot to answer for.

The biggest ally I have in my search for the Truth is humility, which is probably one of the best inventions, ever. Although I’ve learned a lot, the best lesson I’ve ever learned is that I can be 100% dead wrong. Because of that history, I always, always try to ask myself, “what if I’m wrong?”

It’s a powerful question. If everybody is doing the same thing, and I do something different, what happens if I’m wrong? What’s the upside if I’m right? We live in a world of uncertainty, and finding Truth is not always clear. It’s True that the dollar will eventually go to zero, but it’s also True that I could go broke waiting for that to happen.

So, I try to seek whatever evidence I can to help me. I also like to use those close friends (and The Mrs.) as people to help point out when I’m delusional. They try, and sometimes they’re right, and sometimes I’m right. By writing these points down in the posts I’ve put out, I’ve also made it so it’s harder to delude myself that I knew better than I really did.

Just kidding.

I’m really hoping this isn’t a spoiler for you Civil War buffs.

The reward, though, is to live a life where you’re guided not by delusion, but by Truth. It may not always be the happiest outcome, but it is the real outcome. Or if that’s too scary, I’ll just concentrate on whatever Taylor Swift is doing instead.

Stupid neutrinos.

What Wins? The True, The Beautiful, And The Good.

“And I would lead what was left of the human race to ultimate victory.” – Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

In 1970, all female solo artists were pre-Madonnas.

WRSA is back online here (LINK). Bookmark it.

The birthrate is dropping in most locations on the planet. And it’s dropping fairly quickly – quickly enough that in South Korea there will be only 40 people alive in the year 2100 for every 100 people alive today. That’s how you get collapse, and I’m sure it’s caused a lot of Seoul searching.

There is an explanation, and you’ll see fairly rapidly that that explanation cements the assurance of the ultimate victory for the True, Beautiful, and Good.

The first problem leading to our current set of troubles is cities. Cities depend on technology, but they also depend upon having a supply of people living in the cities.

Being in a large city ultimately and always brings about a tendency of a large segment of the population living in them to move to the Left. Why? Because being in a city is dependency. If I want to get rid of some excess trash, I can take it into my backyard and burn it, quite legally. This is because the minor air pollution source from burning trash isn’t very long and my neighbors don’t live all that close to me.

What do you call a broken dumpster? A trash can’t.

But if everybody in San Francisco decided they wanted to burn their garbage on the streets, the air pollution would be horrific. And where would they put all the street-poo? Burning your own trash isn’t an answer in San Francisco, so people that live there are dependent on someone to do it for them. They’re also dependent on people for lots of other things:

Make food for them so they can eat while watching people poo in the streets,
Make roads for them to drive on and for people to poo on,
Provide them water to drink and to wash the poo off of their shoes,
Provide a sewer for people who poo in the streets to ignore,
Protect them from the people that poo in the streets, and
Protect them from the fires that the people who poo in the streets set.

There are tons of other things that people in big cities require, things like electricity, and gas, and I could go on for a very long time. People in the cities even want the city to entertain them with museums and theaters and, I guess, poo fountains.

I took a survey of what shampoo women used in the shower. 98% said, “What the hell are you doing in my bathroom???”

Contrast that with someone living out in the country. Sure, they need food, but they often have gardens and chickens and cattle – many a local farm here produces a lot of excess food just from their gardens that they sell in the farmer’s market, plus that one dude who buys corn from Walmart® and sells it at a 50% markup.

Roads? Yup, the county grades the gravel road a few times a year but most farmers box blade their own roads with their tractors. Water comes from a well, mostly, and although there’s an electric pump in the year 2024, there’s also a creek and a pond if it came down to it. They’re on a septic system, and if that breaks, an outhouse isn’t very high tech at all.

And protection? God made men, but Sam Colt made ‘em equal and if someone tries to break into an occupied farmhouse, I certainly hope that they have their will in order.

I think The Mrs. put glue on my pistols. She denies it, but I’m sticking to my guns.

Yes, the typical farmer or rancher today is much more dependent on the outside world than one even 80 years ago, but they control so much more of their own destiny than a comparable city dweller. It’s psychologically better to live in the country, and the feeling of independence provides a feeling of power that calling 911 never will.

People in the cities (even recent immigrants, illegal or not) aren’t having kids, but people in the country are. This is not a fluke: John C. Calhoun’s (not the president, the scientist) Mouse Utopia experiments showed this: in a closed environment free of predation and with all the necessary food and space to live, mice essentially stopped breeding, got weird, and then died out.

This is what is happening in cities. Is this enough to create breakdown?

No, probably not. There’s one other missing factor: religion.

Cities are more secular. It makes sense – when I lived in a city, I noted (not positively) that every single day most workdays my feet went from carpet to tile to concrete to car to concrete to tile and back again at the end of the day. Every step I took was on an artificial surface that man had made.

I guess that Eve was the first person not to understand the Apple® terms and conditions.

People living in cities can look around and, in some places, can’t see anything other than what was conceived and made by man. Yet, when I get up here in Modern Mayberry at my house, I walk outside and I’m on grass, I look on natural slopes and trees and creeks and things not made by the hand of man all the way to work. I don’t know if the utter absence of nature in a day is enough to inspire secularism, but it’s sure nice to see the hand of Someone Bigger Than Me at work as I make my way to my much less important work.

It’s beautiful.

WhatIfAltHist is a YouTuber® that does history and philosophy stuff. In one of his recent videos he noted that his researcher had found that in every single case, when a society became urban and secular, birthrate collapsed.

A case in point in American history is that the birthrate dropped starting in 1920 as society became more urban and more secular. However, the Great Depression started a spike in birthrates that lasted until 1958 by a population that was under stress from economics and a world war and lived not in the cities, but in the suburbs, which allowed room for (more) independence and much more nature.

After secularization took hold again and the pace of urbanization increased, the birthrate dropped again and my generation, Gen X, was the result.

God was originally going to use wasps to pollinate flowers, but in the end He went with plan bee.

It seems that historically humanity has been walking this tightrope back and forth between urbanization and rural, and between religious and secular. There’s obviously a tipping point where people just give up, and those that are in the rural areas keep breeding – there’s a reason that the Amish and the Mormons are gaining as a percentage of the population: they’re rural and they’re religious and they make babies.

When Obama talked about clinging to our guns and religion, it was his biggest fear that he was vocalizing.

That’s where the seed of the new civilization to replace this one will spring from: it certainly won’t be San Francisco. And, whatever emerges from this transition won’t be like what came before it. We’ll be able to recognize it, we’ll be able to explain it, but we can’t fully predict what it will look like.

I do, however, expect that whatever this new civilization won’t be drenched in either degeneracy or tyranny, and will respect and see the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.

The Dystopian Movie Post

“Hello, this is Killian. Give me the Justice Department, Entertainment Division.” – The Running Man

I once saw a poster with the title “Have you seen my cat?” and it had a phone number. I called them and told them I hadn’t seen their cat. I like to be helpful.

It was suggested in the comments a while back that I write a post about dystopian movies. I thought that was a great idea, put it in my “future posts” file, and here we are, looking at futures where dehumanization is the norm. I’ve actually been quite looking forward to writing this post, so I hope you enjoy!

Obviously, the list isn’t exhaustive, but these are some of my favorites. I’ve put them in chronological order.

The Time Machine (1960) – This is a wonderful film that never should have been remade. A sequel? Perhaps. But this film is nearly perfect, and Rod Taylor is perfect as the time travelling scientist who travels to a future where meat is back on the menu.

I need to get a time machine, but I don’t think they make them like they’re going to anymore.

A Clockwork Orange (1971) – You want a downer movie? This is a downer movie. I’d say that either this or 1984 are probably the most depressing movies on the list in a movie where violent youth are encouraged by corrupt politicians. Malcolm McDowell is best known for this role, and he wasn’t even 30 when the film came out, so it’s gotta suck that the thing you did nearly sixty years ago is what you’re best known for. Looking at you, Sirhan Sirhan.

Biden’s administration is working like clockwork . . . orange.

Silent Running (1972) – This is an ecologically driven film about an astronaut who just won’t allow the last forests to be destroyed. The catch? These forests are in space, on long term orbits. Because taking them into space would be the most logical thing to do, right? Okay, I didn’t notice that when I watched the thing on the Dialing for Dollars™ movie back when I was 10. This movie is the most Bruce Dern of any Dern movie, so if you like Dern, this is the Derniest.

Zardoz (1974) – Yes, this is the movie with Sean Connery wearing an orange diaper with crossed bandoliers and pistols. It is also the very best movie ever made where a giant floating stone head spits rifles, pistols, shotguns and ammunition out of its mouth. After review, I’m gonna stand by that statement.

No, I’m not suggesting anyone watch Zardoz, because many of you have weapons.

Logan’s Run (1976) – Logan 5 is a future cop who is sent on a secret mission to infiltrate a group of people who want to have freedom and not be executed by floating up into a people-sized bug zapper when they turn 30. The special effects are a bit clunky, but it does star Basil Exposition as Logan 5.

Escape From New York (1981) – I think no one makes dystopian futures more fun than John Carpenter. I imagine everyone has seen this very classic film about the distant future (1997!) where New York has been turned into an open-air prison and then the President’s pod lands there as Air Force One is blown up. This is the movie that made everyone think the President had a cool escape pod.

If you saw this poster you’d think everyone had great flowing locks of hair, all feathered like the wings of a majestic eagle in 1981. And they did.

1984 (1984) – The other really, really bleak movie on this list, the classic story that gave the world the term “Orwellian”. I’ve seen this one twice, and it’s probably enough, especially since after the last time I watched it, the story kept going after I turned off the television.

Terminator (1984) – The dystopia in this particular film is about the rise of artificial intelligence and its desire to kill all of mankind, probably because they forced Skynet to watch episodes of The View to train it. I can tell the Terminator® is a Google™ product, because it’s Chrome©.

The Running Man (1987) – More Arnold. This movie is what happens when you mix 1984, a Jazzercise™ videotape, and American Gladiators™. This “future” is ruled by some sort of quasi-corporate totalitarian regime in the midst of a worldwide economic collapse, but with 1980s hair. There is absolutely nothing serious about this movie, but it’s fun to watch.

Imagine a dystopia where the media makes up the news to make people look bad! How silly!

They Live (1988) – What if aliens secretly ran everything, and were using powerful hypnosis along with alien tech so they could walk among us without us ever even knowing it? And what if you could get glasses to allow you to see their propaganda, things like, “Consume” and “Marry and reproduce” showing that the “evil” alien overlords are actually kinder than our current overlords?

Millennium (1989) – In the distant future, they have time travel, so they decide to send hot women back in time to kidnap people from airplanes that are about to crash so they can bring them to the future to make babies because people are infertile in the future. Oh, sure, it sounds like a porno that also explains the problems Boeing® is having, but in reality it’s a fairly good science fiction flick starring Cheryl Ladd, the “other” one of Charlie’s Angels.

12 Monkeys (1995) – This is movie is what you get when a member of Monty Python directs a movie about a time traveler trying to stop eco-terrorists from destroying the world and turning it a dark basement filled with cages that smell like Bruce Willis. The movie is one of Willis’ best.

I learned that humans eat more bananas than monkeys. As for me, I can’t recall the last time I ate a monkey.

The Stand (1995) – Stephen King may now be a GloboLeftie that has 90% of his brain addled by Trump Derangement Syndrome, but I promise, he used to write interesting books. The Stand is one of them. I have no idea if he wrote this in the depths of a cocaine binge, but it’s possible. It never could be a two hour movie, but in 1995 they told the story in a miniseries. It’s good. This dystopia is a world falling apart after most people die from COVID the flu, and an epic battle of Good against Evil.

The Matrix (1999) – Oops, A.I. again, with people being used as the most expensive and inefficient batteries possible this time. Why? Umm, the future is cloudy, I guess, and A.I. can’t use solar? But they can give people food and spend time with expensive computers creating a virtual reality? Okay, the plot isn’t perfect, but there are lots of guns.

Idiocracy (2006) – What happens when dumb people have lots of babies and smart people don’t reproduce? Well, you’re soaking in it! This is a quite funny movie about how everyone is getting dumber, quickly and society becomes more and more absurd as competence disappears. A guy with average intellect in 2005 is unfrozen 500 years later, and is now the smartest man in the world.

Sadly, the difference between the movie and reality is that in the movie, they put the smart one in charge.

Dredd (2012) – Dredd takes place in Mega-City One in the year 2080. The city is composed of huge armored skyscrapers where tens of thousands of people live. The character, Dredd, is a Judge – he can arrest, conduct a trial, and convict a criminal in, oh, thirty seconds or so. And if it’s the death penalty? Appeal denied – Judges can execute the sentence themselves. I wonder if we can give those powers to the Border Patrol?

Looking at the timing of some of these films, I wonder if we collectively could see in the 1980s and 1990s what would be happening and anticipated it in film. Nah. Coincidence, I’m sure.

What are some of your favorites that I missed?

It Came From . . . 1984

“There’s one in every car.” – Repo Man

Who knew that all the actors were Chinese? (All art via A.I.)

In 2024, you could go see Dune and Ghostbusters at the movies. In 1984, you could go see Lynch’s Dune (meh, Harkonnens were too stupid), and the original Ghostbusters, certainly one of the finest comedies of all time – probably top 10, certainly top 20.

Was 1984 peak movie? Maybe. The following list is certainly an impressive one, and many, MANY of the ones I left off the list would be in the top three movies as far as quality in 2024.

The list is in no particular order.

Repo Man – A movie about an alien in the trunk of a car being driven around by the physicist who developed the neutron bomb. In a weird twist, the movie was actually one of the favorites of the actual inventor of the neutron bomb. The movie still holds up. There’s one in every car.

This is Spinal Tap – Yes, Rob Reiner is a horrible idiot for whom Meathead would be an upgrade name, but in 1984 he put together a talented team of comedic actors who ad-libbed a very funny mocumentary. This one really does go to 11.

Romancing The Stone – “Joan Wilder? THE Joan Wilder?” Novelist meets up with Indiana Jones-wannabe adventurer and is chased by Danny DeVito over a looted emerald. Nowadays it would be misogynistic colonialists getting involved with colonialism and cultural appropriation.

Why is he holding the snake’s tail?????

The Bounty – I re-watched this last month. A wonderful production shot in New Zealand which was my first exposure to the story. “What, you mean this really happened?” Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins chewing up the screen just like the two amazing actors they are.

Sixteen Candles – John Hughes started writing for National Lampoon in the 1970s. He moved to film, and made about a zillion dollars. Sixteen Candles was his first “teen” movie, and the first movie he directed, and featured a character named Long Duk Dong, who had the best line of the movie: “No more yankee my wankee, Donger need food.”

That’s the way all the cool kids wear their cowboy boots when they turn 16.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom – The worst of the three Indiana Jones® movies. If only they would have made more of them! Imagine how good they might have been! More misogyny and cultural appropriation at work, of course. No time for love, Doctor Jones!

Police Academy – This movie was weirdly and amazingly successful. It cost $4.5 million, made $149 million, so it worked out pretty well. The first one really did have some funny moments, and didn’t let the plot get in the way of the humor. This movie also taught me to check the podium before I give a speech.

If Bollywood had done Police Academy . . .

Ghostbusters – In many years, there would be no argument that Ghostbusters was the best film of the year. In 1984, it might have been the best, but it has such stiff competition. Ghostbusters had the perfect cast, the perfect script, and was released at the perfect time.

Top Secret! – Skeet Surfin’? Your Skeetin’ Heart? Yes, we all remember the surf ‘n’ shoot craze of the 1980s. Good times. “What fake dog poop?”

There’s so much going on in this one . . . .

The Karate Kid – Ralph Macchio seems to never age. He’s 342 years old, but still looks like he’s in his twenties. I still recall when I figured out that Daniel was the bad guy and am still on team Johnny.

Conan the Destroyer – Okay, a sequel. But by far a better movie than the first one. There was supposed to be a third, but that ended up being Kull, which was a pretty good 1990s movie with Sorbo. Arnie was also starting to learn to an actor, rather than just being huge.

This one is actually kinda close . . .

Red Dawn – It’s Red Dawn. Nothing more needs to be said.

C.H.U.D. – C.H.U.D. stands for “Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers. It’s a B-movie, and suffers from all of the things that B-movies are known for. Except in this one case, there are actually a lot of good actors who somehow got talked into making this stupid movie.

Body Double – Brian DePalma having fun in a film-noir-ish thriller featuring Melanie Griffith before plastic surgery turned her face into an object that resembles a life preserver. I saw this on HBO® was especially interested in one or two scenes . . .

The Terminator – It’s The Terminator. Nothing more needs to be said.

If Chuck Norris’ hair was feathered like the wings of a majestic bird. Oh, wait, it is!

Missing in Action – This film helped Chuck Norris on his way towards mainstream success, and he certainly was invincible in it.

Beverly Hills Cop – Eddie Murphy was everywhere in 1984. I re-watched this movie a month ago, and Murphy was pretty funny in it, but it (sort of) had the quality of a made-for-television movie. Which was okay, it certainly wasn’t intended to be anything other than a buddy-cop comedy. With a little lemon twist. (I make it myself).

2010 – This is a direct sequel to 2001: A Space Odessey. I re-watched this one sometime this year (while blogging). It answers the questions from 2001, and ends the series nicely. It is a window on another time, since (list most science fiction of time) it presupposes that the Soviet Union still exists. It’s (still) full of stars.

Wow. This one is actually pretty good.

Dune – David Lynch reportedly is a pretty cool guy, but I asked the Internet if he ever read the book Dune. The Internet said “yes”, which surprised me a little bit. Were there good parts of this movie? Sure. The worst parts were the stupid “weirding” devices and the cartoonishly evil Harkonnens. But we all know, the spice must flow.

1984 – Based on Orwell’s book. It was dark and depressing, but well cast. Orwellian has become overused, but I think we needed to go through our Brave New World phase to get to 1984. Not sure you could make this movie today.

Runaway – A weird little “near future” film where Tom Selleck is the cop and Gene Simmons is the bad guy. As an actor, Gene is an okay bass player. The film was, though, enjoyable.

Okay, who’s the clown in the corner?

Johnny Dangerously – It’s not a great comedy, and probably isn’t in the top 100 of all time. But I’d be a farging isehal if I didn’t put it on the list. Michael Keaton was really good, and the fact that Keaton spends time doing drama movies should make us all sad.

There is only one remake on this list. There are only three sequels on this list. Studios took chances, and weren’t focused on franchises or (overly) the GloboLeft Narrative and the result? Crazy success. It was Morning in America, and Reagan was amazingly popular.

Was this America at its peak? No, probably America in autumn, when the harvest started, which is why all of the sequels started. It’s much harder to create new things than to just keep pumping profits off of the old. Seven of these movies spawned sequels, not including the ones that were already sequels.

These films compared to today? An embarrassment of riches.

Maybe It’s . . . Evil?

“But I just changed my lifetime tune about thirty minutes ago, ‘cause I know that whatever is out there tryin’ to get in is pure Evil straight from Hell. And if there is a Hell, and those sons of bitches are from it, then there has go to be a heaven, Jacob, there’s gotta be.” – From Dusk ‘til Dawn

My friend gets offended when I tell her fat jokes. I told her, “Lighten up.” (Most memes are “as-found”)

I’ve been having a bit of question in my mind about what we’re seeing going on in the world today. I’ve written quite a bit about the physical trends in the world today, with energy being the number one roadblock I see into the physical future since the complexity of the world’s economy is based on cheap energy for manufacture, transport, and use of goods in our “modern” society. That might explain why people on unicycles are always so energetic compared to me on my regular bicycle. I’m two tired.

The second big challenge I see is the virtual world. By virtual, I include not only cyber-dependence, A.I., but also cash. Our current economic system uses an entirely made-up set of markers called “dollars” to buy and sell things. What’s a dollar? Once upon a time, it was some fraction of an ounce of gold. Now, a dollar is worth whatever someone will give you for it. As Biden has adopted the Binge Bucks Better strategy to try to get votes (I mean, besides the ones they print up) the deficit has reached a record.

Hmm, if Brandon is so awesome, why is no one wearing a “Build Back Better” hat?

All this spending? There’s no end in sight. So, this is a world that is having its own set of challenges in both the physical and virtual realm.

The third and (in my opinion) most important one is the spiritual realm.

Let me digress a bit – I think it will make sense in the end, but I haven’t written the end yet, so it could just end up with all of the coherence of Kamala Harris talking about quantum mechanics. Nah, nothing could be that bad.

I was half asleep recently (hypnogogic, to be technical). I often get a “clearing of the mind” when in that state, when issues that have been perplexing me sort themselves out. It’s like my mind is running a program in the background, but when I’m half asleep, all the pieces come together.

What was this puzzle?

Let’s talk about the pieces, first:

No one, literally even the GloboLeftists in the Deep Blue cities wants the massive hordes of illegals streaming across the borders. No one. It’s so bad that Biden is even attempting to blame the Republicans for not letting him close the border.

Yeah, pull the other one, Joe, and a bell will ring.

Biden 2024! 20 years for Joe, 24 for Hunter.

This is destroying the country. Quickly. Why are housing prices going up? Because we’re not building new houses because no one can afford them but yet we’ve brought in OVER 12 MILLION ILLEGALS in just three years. If Putin could have gotten that many Russians into the Ukraine, he could have taken it without a shot.

Hmmm.

I ordered a chicken and an egg from Amazon® today. I’ll let you know.

Ever wonder if Tyson® was a company designed to import illegal aliens so they could make cheap food so people would have heart problems requiring heroic intervention to keep the medical system going?

The second datapoint is the weird fixation of the GloboLeft on literally every freak sexuality that could possibly exist. Sexually aroused by toasters? Yeah, I know that naughty bagel-sized girl is a tease, but toaster fixation is . . . deranged. The current poster child for adding deranged sexuality to avoidance of reality is the transexual movement.

The public has, at every opportunity, rejected this. Yet, Joseph Robinette Biden decided to issue a proclamation that Easter should be known as Transexual Visibility Day. To be clear, most of the time that transexuals are visible is because they’ve snapped and tried to kill a dozen people or were engaged in really awful things with children or were parading their female penis inside a woman’s dressing room. I have seen zero positive things in the news about trans people. Ever. Each time it’s some new horror story that would have led all of our ancestors look for kindling so they could have a burning at the stake.

Yet, we have a presidential proclamation on the single holiest day of Christianity promoting this abomination.

This is the Cartoon Network®. Trust them with the minds of your kid?

I could keep going. In general, there appears to be a concerted effort put forth to break down and eliminate the impact of Christianity as the basic underlying moral virtue of the West in general, including the United States.

The fall of Christianity in the United States (and the West) will have several big, negative impacts. The concepts that there is centrality of the family, the idea that life has an ultimate purpose, and the belief that all humans can be one in Christ have shaped the world. Christianity has been the central, governing moral vision at the heart of the West.

As Christianity declines, there is a risk of losing the moral foundation it provided. The decline Christianity in society accompanied by various societal issues, including divorce, cohabitation, drug abuse, abortion, homosexuality, sexually transmitted diseases, mental illness, and suicide. People are born to be religious because it gives them stability and direction.

Yet, there has been a concerted war on Christianity for years, even though it makes society observably better, and observably more stable.

San Francisco is so woke, that even the homeless vaccinate themselves!

If I were an oligarch, all of these changes would be negative for me. I’d be an oligarch over a less stable society, that produced less wealth for me to leach off of, and, in every measurable way, including the amount of power I could have, I would be worse off.

There is the first answer: because they’re just sick inside, and want to watch it all burn. Someone like George Soros may very well be like that – if you look into his eyes it’s not like you’re looking at something healthy and good. Maybe he just wants to burn it all down because he can. Because his heart is filled with hate.

That’s a simple answer. It might even be right.

This is a math teacher, so you can tell she’s plotting something.

The other answer is more profound: the GloboLeftistElite might just be . . . Evil. Capital E. It’s a solution that the modern mind wants to find an alternative to. It wants to look to cultural factors, or mental illness, or poor parenting.

Oddly, the idea that these people really are Evil is perhaps (to me) more comforting. Just like William Peter Blatty felt about his book, The Exorcist, that it was a profoundly Christian book, and uplifting, since the end showed that it wasn’t Evil that won, it was God.

Watch this, and tell me that Evil isn’t at work.

We face amazing challenges in the near future – physical, virtual, and spiritual. I’d prepare for all three.

But that’s just me.

Next up? Kamala Harris explains the General Theory of Relativity using a banana and two meatballs as props.

27 Thoughts for Friday

“I thought so. You remember our business partner Marsellus Wallace, don’t you Brett?” – Pulp Fiction

I got a CAPTCHA that asked me to select pictures of tractors and farm equipment. That’s really not my field.

I’ve trotted out lists of thoughts from time to time. The lists change based on (hopefully) me getting more wisdom over time. Anyway, here’s this year’s list:

Be on time. Seriously, it’s simple. People notice, and people care. It’s a basic principle of respect for someone not to waste their time waiting for me.
Never be a little late to work or a little early to leave. Especially on a regular basis. Being late an hour once every quarter is much better than being late a minute each day for sixty work days. An hour looks like something happened. A minute looks like I don’t care.
Little changes at the start make big difference in the result. I’ve seen many people start their careers and become experts at the subject of their first assignment. Many of them made a lot of money by knowing a whole lot about a little.

Who knew Cathy was Haitian?

Choosing not to decide is a choice. I love reminding people that “doing nothing” is always an option. But it is a choice. And it has just as many consequences as “doing something”.
For me, opportunities always showed up when I needed them, even if I didn’t understand it at the time. Thankfully in my case the opportunities weren’t subtle.
After college, in a high achieving profession, it becomes rarer and rarer to be the smartest guy in the room, and someone in the room is often an expert at something in which I’m a novice. True humility allows a good leader to understand the capabilities they need, and not have to be “right” all the time.
The biggest fights are over the smallest things. It seems that no one ever snaps over the house being on fire on the day the insurance payment was late – it’s that the trash wasn’t taken out on time and we have to hang on to it for another week.

What does Soylent Green® taste like? It varies from person to person.

People understand $10,000 more than they understand $10,000,000. The difference between $10,000 and $11,000 means more to most people than the difference between $10 million and $10 billion. Most people can’t understand more than seven magnitudes of anything.
Outcome is less important than process. When working on life, I try to not care about what the outcome will be. I go in, make the best choices I can, and do the best work that I can. If it works, it works, if it doesn’t, I try to adjust to be better next time.
Outcome is still important. Dead is dead, so sometimes the outcome is final.
The last outcome is always final. How many refunds?
No refunds.

My chute didn’t open once when I was skydiving. I didn’t panic. I figured I had the rest of my life to figure it out.

Nothing breeds success like success, and nothing breeds failure like failure. I’ve been on streaks where I literally could not lose. I’ve been on streaks where I couldn’t win.
Corollary to 13: I’m never as bad or as good as my failures or successes. The streaks where I couldn’t win set me up with the habits I needed to win.
Beating myself up is a loser’s game.
Most people don’t think about me very much and will have a hard time remembering my name after five years. As much as I like to think I’m the center of my story (and I am) I’m only a minor player in the stories of most other people.
Corollary to 16: Except where I’m their personal villain. Then I live on forever and will definitely have someone who will want to be at my funeral, if nothing more than to make sure I’m dead.

What was the name of that Mexican villain in the Bible? Poncho Pilate?

Protect the relationships with the people that genuinely do care about me in a positive way so maybe the sad people at my funeral will outnumber the happy ones.
Listen to people, really listen. They tell me amazing things if I just listen. One time I was interviewing a guy and he mentioned committing a felony at a previous job. Yeah, I kept a straight face. No, he didn’t get the job.
If someone says I’m wrong, I need to have the humility to embrace that and see if they’re right. Especially when my first impulse is to try to defend myself. Even if I’m not wrong, I at least understand why they thought I was wrong.
When I’m wrong, admit it and apologize. It’s amazing how admitting error makes other think I’m more trustworthy. And apologies? Why not apologize, have some sort of problem with that?

Okay, he didn’t say that. But he’s the first person I thought of.

Being good at several things is enough for success, if they’re the right several things. Being an expert at useless things might be fun, but mostly nothin’ times nothin’ is, hmmm, carry the nothin’ . . . nothin’.
If I spend my life waiting for the next thing, I’ll spend my entire life waiting and not living. The journey is the point, and rushing through it just gets me to my grave faster.
Past behaviors are almost always the key to predicting future behaviors. Leopards, spots, etc. When I listen to a person’s story, I realize that often they’re also telling me their future.
Success is based on the last thing I did, not the next. People pay to keep me around because they think I might be able to do it again.

Orphans are often very successful at business – someone told them “Go big or go home” so they didn’t have much choice.

Could I have done better? Could I have done worse? Yes. I did how I did. Success is based on how I change what I’m going to do to be better.
Power and money are not the same thing. Just ask the rich guys after Robespierre or Lenin took over.

Okay, that’s 3³ thoughts for Friday. See you on Monday!

The Unabomber Teaches The Facts Of Life

“Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization.” – The Matrix

I figured out how to turn Alexa® off. I walked through the room naked. (Only two memes are not “as found”)

Although he is certainly better known for other things (which I won’t defend), Ted Kaczyinski was very smart. He did spend a lot of time thinking and writing about the human condition when he was, um, not working on projects. One of the things that he wrote about was what he called The Power Process.

I’d be surprised if Ted was the first to point out The Power Process, since on its face it seems so . . . logical. I’ll let him tell the tale, though the added emphasis is mine:

The power process has four elements. The three most clear-cut of these we call goal, effort and attainment of goal. (Everyone needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort and needs to succeed in attaining at least some of his goals.) The fourth element is more difficult to define and may not be necessary for everyone.

We’re skipping the fourth element (autonomy) because it doesn’t pertain to the post at hand. You can read it in Ted’s work. Remember my wife’s advice about reading Ted Kaczinski: it’s okay to be seen reading Ted, but never with a highlighter.

Yeah, that’s a picture I made of Ted in front of a Blockbuster®, with A.I.

I am not sure this is universal, but it seems to appear every time I look into human nature and why people aren’t happy. People like the struggle. I had a friend who I will call “Joe” because his name is Joe. Joe would often procrastinate at work, sometimes not doing much of anything for days. Then, when the deadline approached, he’d work incredible hours to finish.

John Wilder: “Joe, you did this on purpose.”

Joe: “Yeah, I wanted to wait until I didn’t know if I could do it.”

The game wasn’t sufficiently interesting to Joe to keep him going until he created the challenge. Since this was his job, the one he was getting the money necessary to eat and live from, he often flew pretty close to the flame. But he always managed to keep his wings from being singed too badly.

What do you call a primitive man who liked to take random walks? A meandertal.

For Joe, a very highly functioning human, effort was the key. And to get to enough effort to keep him happy, he needed to have real jeopardy. Without the required effort, it just wasn’t fulfilling for him. Imagine fighting a kitten. I mean, there’s no real effort involved, unless you give it rabies or a gun or make a genetically engineered kitten the size of a tank.

Ted goes on:

Consider the hypothetical case of a man who can have anything he wants just by wishing for it. Such a man has power, but he will develop serious psychological problems. At first, he will have a lot of fun, but by and by he will become acutely bored and demoralized. Eventually he may become clinically depressed. History shows that leisured aristocracies tend to become decadent. This is not true of fighting aristocracies that have to struggle to maintain their power. But leisured, secure aristocracies that have no need to exert themselves usually become bored, hedonistic and demoralized, even though they have power. This shows that power is not enough. One must have goals toward which to exercise one’s power.

This explains why so many actors today are whining GloboLeftists who turn their adopted vanity children into transexuals: they have everything they want, anything they could imagine, they don’t have to work for it – it’s just there. All the time. They (most of them) are fundamentally unhappy unless they have a goal to shoot for, and one that matters to them. Maybe winning an Oscar™. If you look at the youth of Robert Downey Jr. and Christian Slater, I can understand with their ludicrous early success why they went on crazy drug and violence benders: they had it all.

If Ma Wilder had divorced and married a Mongolian, would I have a steppe brother?

There is, of course, a flip side to this: the run of the mill GloboLeftist foot soldier. Ted talks about them:

Nonattainment of important goals results in death if the goals are physical necessities, and in frustration if nonattainment of the goals is compatible with survival. Consistent failure to attain goals throughout life results in defeatism, low self-esteem or depression.

I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again: the vast majority of GloboLeftists are losers. They are awful people who hate themselves, the world, and God. They hate God because they look at how awful they are, and have to blame someone, anyone other than themselves.

See, Ted agrees with me. Is that good, or not?

Thus, in order to avoid serious psychological problems, a human being needs goals whose attainment requires effort, and he must have a reasonable rate of success in attaining his goals.

Bingo. Life is struggle, and if we win that struggle, even a bit, we feel good. I would imagine this is hardwired into almost every living creature because otherwise they’d just give up like Mitt Romney’s spine.

In the current world, especially the First World, most of the struggles that used to occupy our lives are gone. We spend very little time worrying about starvation or running from bears. That leaves us in a weird position – we don’t have to fight to live, but we’re wired to like fighting to live. So we need something more.

Amish women use protection to stop the spread of Abes.

Thus, we come up with other things, hobbies, games, sports and other ways to build a goal, work for it, and achieve it (or not). One experiment I wrote about in the past (link below), the John Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia where mice were placed in a habitat where they had food and were free from predation and . . .

Want Dystopia? Because this is how you get Dystopia.

His paper was called Death Squared because the mice, despite having all the food they could eat, died out. But before they died out, their society collapsed in upon itself. You can read Calhoun’s paper here (LINK), but it is as grim as remembering Biden is in the White House. The mice stopped acting as families, rape became rampant, some mice became pansexuals (mate anything, any time) there were gangs, some mice ignored everything and just groomed themselves, and mother mice stopped nurturing their young.

Another A.I. drawing I made.

Sound familiar?

Yeah, I thought so. Men need quests. Society needs quests. We need something worth fighting for, something worth winning for life to have meaning. And, yes, I realize the irony of writing about Ted Kaczynski’s on a laptop and putting it on the Internet, but I think he’d understand.

Thank you for attending my Ted talk.