Creating havoc since 2006. Fair use is claimed for images on this site, but they will be removed (if owned) on request out of politeness. movingnorth@gmail.com
“Yes, sir! That’s exactly who I am and what I am, sir. A victim, sir!” – A Clockwork Orange
What’s black and white and red all over? A victim of an industrial accident at a newspaper printing press. (All memes today are as-found)
The inversion of virtues: I’ve written on this topic recently, but decided I needed to have another go at it. Part of the blogging theme is that my posts are limited in space. No one wants to read a 10,000-word post on PEZ™ on Friday morning as they drink their coffee.
Virtues make a civilization worth living in. I’d rather live in a poor civilization with great values than a rich one with poor values, and both of those sound better than what we’ve got going on now. And I’d suggest that our current free-fall is due to that loss of virtue.
What were Epstein’s last words before he committed suicide? “You don’t have to do this! I promise I won’t talk!”
Let’s compare values at the peak of Roman Civilization, the peak of Western Civilization, and what the Left is shoving down our throats right now. For instance:
Rome: Worshiped gods.
The West: Worshiped God.
The Left: Worship man (atheism) or the State.
See? Inversion. Who did the cultures idolize?
Rome: Worshiped heroes.
The West: Worshiped heroes and Saints.
The Left: Worship victims.
See, that’s not hard, and yet more inversion. What about sin?
Rome: Sin of hubris.
The West: Sin of pride.
The Left: Sin of privilege.
I’ll just quit making inversion comments, because this is a slam dunk. Who are the spiritual leaders?
Rome:
The West:
The Left: Professors, Leftie politicians.
Ideals?
Rome: Ideal was glory, excellence (Areté).
The West: Ideal was holiness, modesty, courage.
The Left: Social Justice, victimhood.
Ideal social class?
Rome: Warriors and those who served their fellow men.
The West: The middle class.
The Left: The lower class, victims, victims, victims.
Even a virtue, charity, has been turned from a voluntary act that provides spiritual growth in the terms of the classic West, to taxation to provide forced “charity” to the (often) undeserving.
I’m thinking I don’t want to know how my tax dollars are spent because I’m afraid all mine went to buy crack pipes in San Francisco.
This inversion bleeds over into all of society. “Drag Queen Story Hour”?
Wonder why they don’t read to old folks in nursing homes, or to the blind? Whenever I hear about that, my mind sees:
And then there are questions that are more difficult to answer:
Inversion, of course, shows up in the obvious things:
Jazz Jennings is a transgender person who feels no need to change with no sense of irony:
And their goal is that you will live and produce and that you should be okay with not being meaningful or having any joy, so live in the pod, and eat the bugs, wagie.
And we now have a Marine Corps who worries about people’s feelings. Perhaps they’ll land with Nerf™ guns so that they won’t have their feelings hurt.
But the pushback is well underway. Or overweigh:
But there’s a catch:
And I think this has broken the Left, mentally:
And the internal contradictions in their “victimhood” matrix are starting to show:
Canada has shown that it certainly can’t be trusted with the power of life and death:
The inversion has hit, but people (and maybe Higher Powers) are pushing back. And, I think we will win. Why? Because we’re so very pretty. And? PEZ®.
“Crazy people can be very persuasive.” – The X-Files
Do werewolves live in warehouses?
I’ve enjoyed Scott Adams for years – the first time I saw his strips were on office photocopypasta in the 1990s where his brand of humor really hit home with folks at the place I was working. So, he’s an awesome cartoonist, and very funny. We’d say things like, “Dilbert’s just like me!” but then realize that we were in color and three dimensional.
Adams also picked Trump as a walk-in winner in 2016 way ahead of the crowd, but was dead wrong on the ‘Rona and the Vaxx®, so he’s not an oracle or a cult leader. But he does have interesting thoughts and I like reading him, and his podcast, while not good as mine, seems to have attracted a slightly larger audience.
So, when he tossed these Tweets® (or are they Xeets™ now??) up I thought I’d share them. Here are the rest:
I’ll admit, I’ve been fascinated by UFOs (the old name before they got fancy and started calling them UAPs) since I was a kid. I’ve been following the unfolding story since the “Tic-Tac®” videos came out in 2017 because any version of an answer for what was observed was interesting. Either the United States had amazing tech beyond anything, .gov is faking it, or it was something that fell into that big bucket of “aliens and demons and interdimensional beings – oh, my!”
Scott presents the idea that this subject is being brought up at the very moment that lots (and I mean a record number) of other things are brewing in the news:
We live in a nation at the brink of civil conflict,
White House Resident Joe Biden is facing a presidential scandal, with amazing evidence, that is the biggest since Watergate,
We might be seeing a soft coup against Biden right now as the Left wants to jettison him for someone else,
Prices for luxuries like food have jumped, and are set to jump again as the Ukraine Conflict enters day 5,000, and
Payments for interest on the national debt are starting to be higher than Johnny Depp.
What’s the difference between Hunter Biden and his prostitutes? His prostitutes probably pay at least some taxes.
Is there something to distract us from? Yup.
Everything.
Why? Because that list above isn’t even close to being complete.
This is the danger. Scott describes it as a secret war, but I’m not sure that there are even two sides, since the FBI, CIA, and most other (but not all) organizations are tied back to supporting the Left.
I bought my ex a big diamond ring. She said, “Thanks, but we really need a new car.” Me: “But they don’t sell fake cars.”
So, is all this fake, the biggest and fakest thing ever?
I don’t know. It would make sense that it was. The Soviets Russians seem to have their “it’s all a lie” face on and China’s doing, well, whatever it is that China does when no one’s watching. Maybe hate-eating a box of Twinkies®?
And as we see all of the shiny, sparkly news going on, keep in mind the important things – your faith, your family, and your friends. There’s a lot of news that we get that we simply cannot do anything with, that for many of us is nothing more than a signal of what’s going on in the greater world.
We need to come together, find like-minded folks who share your values, and be ready for the changes that are coming in the world, because if they’re using aliens to distract us, well, they must be very scared indeed.
I’m glad that Hillary didn’t win, because then so many people would have moved to Benghazi, because at least there she’d leave them alone.
Don’t let it make you fret, and certainly don’t let it control your mood.
Because Scott is right from the standpoint that we have to keep living our lives, yet keep an eye out for the real story.
So enjoy that kitten while you can – they grow up so fast.
“The Moon Unit will be divided into two divisions: Moon Unit Alpha and Moon Unit Zappa.” – Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
There’s always that one kid who won’t smile in the team picture.
(Repost from 2019)
I was at a garage sale the other day when I came across a small leather-bound journal in a box filled with Tupperware®. Embossed on the worn cover was a now faded and flecked NASA logo that had once been a solid, shiny gold. In the lower right-hand corner I noticed, so faded they were barely visible, two initials: N.A. I flipped through and saw page after page of journal entries in what I assumed to be Neil Armstrong’s printed writing. I quickly paid the $2.50 price on the orange sticker on the book.
Here are the journal entries:
7/14/69, 21:00:00 GMT
Countdown begins. I will admit to being a bit excited. A rocket launch is never a routine event. They’ve kept us busy though, re-practicing procedures, re-reviewing maps of the Sea of Tranquility, and, for Buzz Aldrin, eating meals consisting entirely of re-fried beans. He says it’s for luck. Michael Collins continues to be . . . Michael Collins. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him smile. Or blink.
7/16/69, 07:22:15 GMT
Last shower, shave and breakfast. Collins doesn’t eat anything, stares blankly ahead – I guess that’s the way he deals with stress. Buzz had 16 cups of coffee – I counted them – and about thirty eggs. “For luck.”
Fun fact: your car insurance may cover you if you’ve got a rental, but generally not if you leave the United States.
7/16/69, 13:00:00 GMT
Ignition of the main engines, then 17 long seconds later, liftoff as the Saturn V slowly moves past the tower. The first stage burns for three minutes, total, and then stage two kicks in after a brief lull, and burns for nearly six minutes. Two minutes later, we’re in orbit. All of this is exactly as planned, exactly as written down in the procedures. Eleven minutes for Apollo 11 to enter orbit. That’s got to be a good omen.
For the first time in the mission, we’ve got some time to kill. I can’t stop smiling. Collins continues to stare directly ahead. “Mike, are you doing okay?”
He slowly turned his head towards me: “All of my systems are operating at nominal levels.” He then turned his head back towards the controls.
Does he blink? I’m interrupted by groaning coming from Buzz.
“Oh, man, I’m hurting. I didn’t think about the pressure differential.” He’s holding his stomach.
The pressure inside the Apollo Command Module, Columbia, is only 5psi, or the pressure at the top of Mount Everest. At sea level on Earth, the pressure is 15psi, or three times as much. We don’t pass out, because the atmosphere is 100% oxygen.
Apparently the food that Buzz ate is causing him discomfort. A minute later, Buzz sighs.
It smells horrible. I said, “Oh, Buzz, how could you?” My eyes are watering. Eggs and beans. The smell is nearly incapacitating.
Even Collins jumped in, “My nasal sensors detect a significant increase in organic gasses in the atmosphere.”
Collins was rechargeable, thankfully.
Mission Control: “Apollo, are you alright up there? We have just monitored a significant increase in methane in the cabin? If this keeps up, your atmosphere will become explosive. Do you have a situation?”
Buzz sighs again.
7/16/69, 16:16:16 GMT
Translunar injection burn started – that’s the boost that gets us to the Moon. Six minutes later, we’re on the way. Thankfully Buzz’s extravehicular emissions end about an hour later and the atmospheric scrubbers manage to keep the atmosphere safe until Buzz is finished.
7/16/69, 16:56:03 GMT
While we’re on the way, it’s time to dock with the Lunar Module. It’s in that last stage that boosted us to the Moon. Buzz then gets an idea.
“Hey, let’s change the name of the Lunar Module from Eagle to something else. How about we name it something funny, like Soviets Suck?”
I’m against this. “Buzz . . . we can’t do that. NASA already has the t-shirts printed.”
Buzz continues, “Okay, let’s vote on it. All in favor?” Only Buzz raised his hand.
Collins added, still staring straight ahead: “This violates mission parameters.”
The long distance rates shut that particular business down.
We can hear his side of the conversation: “What are you going to do, send NASA police up here and put me in NASA jail? Ha!”
It’s about this point that Buzz starts to try to read over my shoulder as I write in this journal. He pretends he’s not looking when I catch him.
7/19/69, 17:27:47 GMT
Lunar orbit. We’ll spend about a day here while we get ready to go down to the Moon. I’m starting to get a little irritated with Aldrin. First, there’s the humming. He won’t stop humming the theme to the Wild, Wild West®. Then, there’s his ear hair. Doesn’t he know that it’s there? It’s this one, long, 2 inch hair coming out of his ear.
If that wasn’t bad enough, I swear I hear a faint whirring, as if from small electric motors and gears from Collins during sleep period. Maybe it’s the space ship. I hope it’s the space ship.
7/20/69, 17:44:00 GMT
Lunar Module undocked. When we said goodbye to Collins, Buzz made a joke, “Hey, don’t go out joyriding while we’re gone!” Collins said, “No. I will be in rest mode while you are gone to conserve supplies.” Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Michael eat during the trip so far.
7/20/69, 20:17:39 GMT
The Soviets Suck Eagle has landed! This is the first gravity we’ve had in days. Aldrin immediately takes the opportunity to, umm, do things that are easier in gravity. The Lunar Module doesn’t have a vent fan, but we will dump the atmosphere when it’s time for our EVA. Which can’t come soon enough.
7/21/69, 02:56:15 GMT
First step on the Moon! On one hand, it’s pretty exciting. On the other, the responsibility is pretty big. Buzz follows behind me after about twenty minutes. He’s sulking – we rock-paper-scissored for the chance to go first, and he lost. He always, and I mean always throws rock. Speaking of which, it’s time to collect a few.
Heck, we can’t even do it since we’ve started using the metric system a little.
7/21/69, 05:11:13 GMT
The walk on the Moon is complete. We’re supposed to sleep, but we’re on the Moon. Buzz tries to tell spooky stories, but I’ve heard the one about the hook on the spaceship door before. He tries to make it scarier by thumping on the wall of the Soviets Suck Eagle. I remind him that even though the wall is supposed to be tougher than a steel beer can, we left the duct tape on Columbia.
Thankfully we were AAA members.
We’re supposed to sleep. Aldrin is laying down on the floor, and I’m propped up on the ascent engine cover. Not really sleeping, neither is Buzz. Finally Buzz stops humming the Wild Wild West® theme, only to start humming “In the Year 2525.” This is not much better.
This was the number one song as Apollo 11 lifted off. Even the Moon wasn’t far enough away to escape it.
“Neil, we need women astronauts.”
“Why, Buzz?”
“Those sandwiches aren’t going to make themselves.”
He’s not done.
“The next time I dump a girl, I know what I’m gonna say.”
“What, Buzz?”
“I need more space.”
Neither of us sleep at all that night, though I do come to the conclusion that there is no jurisdiction that I could be convicted in if I were to kill Buzz.
Yeah, I know. I’m mad, too.
7/21/69, 17:54:00 GMT
Liftoff from the Moon! Heading home.
“No, you’re upside down.”
7/21/69, 21:35:00 GMT
We’ve docked with the Columbia. As we open the hatch we see that Michael Collins is in the same exact position that he was when we left. It was as if he’d never moved.
“Welcome back, fellow humans. Was your excursion enjoyable?”
Buzz responded, “It was like any spacewalk, Collins. No pressure. Get it? No pressure!”
Collins stared blankly and then said, “I am not programmed to respond in that area.”
Getting back into the Columbia was pretty rough. It smelled like swamp and wet dog, and that was after Buzz had already been gone a day. Ugh. Why did Aldrin choose so many space tacos and burritos for dinner?
7/22/69, 04:55:42 GMT
We fire our engine to return to Earth. Two and a half days to home. Did Aldrin really order refried beans with every meal?
If I my rice is too dry, do I put it in a bag of cellphones?
7/24/69, 16:50:35 GMT
Splashdown. I never thought that smelling air would be so wonderful. I couldn’t wait to open the hatch to the Columbia. A deep breath with 100% less Aldrin.
7/24/69, 19:58:00 GMT
In quarantine – Collins, Aldrin and I are stuck here so we don’t start an epidemic of space pox. I can certainly understand why we would want to quarantine aliens so they didn’t bring in epidemics of disease.
There was a two-drink minimum.
8/10/69, 20:00:00 GMT
Release from quarantine. I’m outta here. Maybe I shouldn’t share this journal, after all. Perhaps it’s best if history remembers the official story . . . .
100% heroes.
Okay, yes, this was parody, or at least that’s what my law firm, Dewy, Cheatum and Howe suggests I say. Outside of my supposition that Michael Collins is really a robot, none of this is true. The Apollo astronauts represented the best of us in our nation at the time, men able to go into space, yet with enough humility to understand that their achievement was made possible by 400,000 other Americans working together to design everything from their underwear to the F-1 engines of the Saturn V to the food that they’d eat during the three weeks they spent in quarantine after returning to Earth.
An aside, they really did have problems with bad smells and space gas. NASA even calculated to see if the gas would build up enough methane to cause the ship to explode.
“Wait a minute. Connie Swail? Don’t you mean The Virgin Connie Swail?” – Dragnet (1987)
I slept with a rich girl who was a bit of a tramp once. Got lobsters.
I’ve had several posts about how sex and economics are intertwined more tightly than a bachelor weekend at Bill Clinton’s place. It is one of the more misunderstood parts of what is slowly destroying the family in the West. This, in turn, will gradually destroy the economics of the West. Without the culture of the West, the West effectively disappears.
This post will be pretty heavy on pictures and memes, almost all of which are as-found.
Let’s take a step back to 1776. I would love to do that in reality, and (in future posts) we’ll look to see how close we are to that. But back to the people that were there the first time. They were, mostly, pretty young. Sure, there were old dogs like Ben Franklin, but Jefferson was only 33. Madison, who would steer the Constitution to completion just over a decade later, was only 25.
Man, John Marshall must have had a hard 20 years on him.
Men were young (even though, yes, the paintings above weren’t done in 1776), yet doing amazing and important things. George Washington was 57 years old at his inauguration, which is astonishing since our likely presidential candidates in 2024 will be a combined 741 years old.
Back then, most men could find a woman and get married, sometimes once or twice (when wife 1.0 died in childbirth). This led to a certain stability, combined with the family economic structure. In this case, most families were Corporate Families – everybody worked, and everybody pitched in to keep things going. The reason that schools had spring breaks wasn’t to go to drink tequila in Cancun and go “woo” but to help plant. Summers were off to work the farm. And fall breaks were necessary for the harvest.
Kids were small farm implements, which is why families had lots of them. Divorces: uncommon. Religion: common.
Sadly, not a bikini graph.
In my lifetime, the Wilder Family has generally always existed in the tan area, including great-grandparents with a male breadwinner, though Great-grandpa and great-grandma McWilder ran an inn near a railroad where they only rarely killed and ate unsuspecting guests.
The golden age of the Male Breadwinner model was between 1900 and somewhere between 1960 and 1970. I’d note that around 1920 when women got the right to vote that the decline in Male Bread started, though it really began in earnest at the Great Depression.
At least Canada knows the score.
During World War II, there was a need for female labor as many men were given multi-year European and Pacific Island vacations. When the war was over, the decline continued at the same pace as the dual income model became the norm.
Until feminism and Leftism infected society at large leading to the steepest decline in stable family economic structures. This predated the economic decline of the United States, which I date to 1970-1973. Gee, I wonder if they could be related?
Now, Dual-Earner is the predominant economic model, with Female Breadwinner starting to make itself known.
New York Times Headline, 2025: Fathers’ Day: Women and Minorities Most Impacted.
Are there any economic or societal consequences to this change in the economic composition of the family? Why, yes. It’s killing society. It’s killing the kids.
The kids even have a name for it: No Girlfriend, No Work. There are other names, such as No Heir, No Work. It seems that young men have become utterly uninvested in society because they don’t have a girlfriend, nor the prospects of one. Things like Tinder® haven’t helped. As noted below, one young man was on Tinder® 3 and a half years. Nearly 40,000 swipes. 2 matches. Zero dates.
What? What’s going on?
In their youth, women are all fighting over the smallest number of men, the 9’s and 10’s. Since on a slow night, a 9 man will hook up with a 5, the 5 now thinks she’s worthy of at least a 9. Consider a 5 man?
No way.
This is not unique. This is not cultural. This is built into the innate preference of women to date up for offspring, and men to create as many offspring as they can. Here’s an example out of China (LINK) where an (American) teacher gave varying treats to a mixed class of boys and girls. On the first day, the girls got to pick first, and picked the best treats. The girls shared only with the two most popular boys, ignoring all of the rest. On the second day, the boys got to pick first, randomly. The treats were randomly distributed among the boys, so the girls interacted with all of the boys and everyone was happier.
When women pick, the distribution is (at least) skewed like the graph below, if not more skewed.
Most 22-year-old girls can have an 8+, if it’s 2am and the 8+ is drunk enough.
What are the results? Virginity in boys (not girls) is rising. Dating is going down among people who should definitely be dating.
As difficult as that is for guys, women use it as a golden ticket (again, in their early 20s) for fun and prizes:
But when these same women hit their thirties, the game is over. The 9s and 10s are either married to 9s and 10s, or they’re dating 22-year-olds. Just ask Leonardo DiCaprio.
Leo’s max age for dating is 25. And he’ll get 25-year-old 9s and 10s until he’s 75. Look at Al Pacino, who can barely walk:
I’m sure they’re super compatible, since she was born when he was only 53.
The woman who was in dozens if not hundreds of relationships in her 20s with the hottest of men will only settle in her mid to late thirties with a man who meets her qualifications. Those men who would have met those qualifications, being fit, making great money?
They’re married. They have kids, and that 5 (or less than 5) would rather be a drunken wine aunt then settle. Women use youth, beauty, and relative chastity to capture worthy men. If those are wasted on huge numbers of Chads? Off to the wine and cat farm with an empty womb. And the military will fight for that “right”, too.
I’m old enough to remember when the military was supposed to kill foreign enemies, not American babies.
Just like most things, this has a very, very simple solution. To be clear, the solution will be implemented when the circumstances require it. Oddly, the women will be happier, too. And we can finally stop listening to women complain about body shaming.
“Dredd, there’s no way in. Are you even listening to me? We can’t just knock on the wall and say “Hello, Cursed Earth Pizza”.” – Judge Dredd
If I had a nickel for every time I’d been cursed by a one-eyed Romanian gypsy after midnight at a 7-11®, I’d have two nickels. That isn’t a lot of money, but still weird that it happened twice.
I remember when we lived in Houston, we went shopping in Wal-Mart®. Once. We walked into the store and it was simply depressing. Not a person in the place seemed happy to be there. The clerks at checkout seemed to be quite angry, to the point where I wondered if the store’s policy required them to rub six tablespoons of Frank’s Red Hot® on their genitals before each shift.
It also showed on the shelves: towels, instead of being neatly stacked, were on the shelves in a random and sloppy way. There was residual trash in the shopping cart that we selected. Why not pick a different cart? Do I have a fetish for pushing trash around in a shopping cart? No, there was some sort of trash in each cart. I chose one, on purpose, that didn’t have liquid-y trash in it.
I seem to recall we did buy something, and quickly left.
We never went back. The store wasn’t in a bad section of town, but it seemed oddly . . . cursed. It’s like they built the whole store over the pit where the hospital used to bury all the severed limbs that they amputated when the leeches and bloodletting didn’t work.
After moving to Modern Mayberry, the experiences in Wal-Mart® was drastically different. It’s a small detail, but when I go in there, the towels are always neatly folded and stacked. There is no, and I mean zero trash in the carts and the floors are always entirely spotless.
Where’s Arnold’s favorite spot in a Wal-Mart™? Aisle B. Back.
And the people who shop there and the employees who work there seem happier. Sure, some of the employees grumbled, but they grumble at me because I’ve known them for years. The checkouts are fast and efficient, and if the store policy requires rubbing anything into their crotch, it’s not Frank’s Red Hot®.
I don’t mind going to Wal-Mart™ in Modern Mayberry because it’s not a gloomy place. It seems to be a happy one. People smile while they buy their ham and mayonnaise and potatoes and chicken thighs. They’re polite to one another, and I’ve seen more than one adult talk to a kid they didn’t know to tell them to stop shenanigans in the aisles. And I’ve done it myself.
I think part of the reason that Wal-Mart™ here is different in Houston is that none of us are anonymous. We walk into the store and see people we know. Be a jerk to a clerk? That might just be your friend’s kid who is just having a bad day.
Congrats Whitney, you’ve been drug free for years now!
The other part is I think there is a much greater sense of community in a place like Modern Mayberry. We’ve been here a decade, and while I’m not the new kid on the block, many people I come into contact with have been here for generations. Oops! That makes them sound like vampires. But parts of The Mrs.’ family have been in this area at least since the 1890s. When Pugsley goes out with people, we ask “who” since you can generally infer if the family is trouble just through the last name.
We never let him hang out with anyone named Clinton. I mean, the parties are great, but bad things happen if you get on their bad side.
I knew someone would want an Epstein joke, and I didn’t want to leave them hanging.
In my experience, people on the Right are happier (by far!) than people on the Left. In study after study, it’s weird that people on the Right are more tolerant of the viewpoints of others. One recent study (LINK) of college kids (is it bad that I assumed their species?) showed that Leftists absolutely hate people on the Right and are scared to be exposed to their ideas. 62% of Leftists said they would probably or definitely not room with a normal person. 28% of students on the Right said they were fine rooming with a commie.
Leftists also show much higher rates of mental problems (I could link a study, but you have search engines and also know Leftists) and are generally far less competent. I think the “far less competent is why they’re Leftists in the first place.
My county voted 85% for Trump, so by inference we’re happier, more competent, and far more tolerant than any Leftist enclave.
What do you call an Italian Chad? An Alfredo male.
Regardless, once again the pathway to being happy proves to be devastatingly simple: avoid cities, be on the Right, be competent, and don’t put Frank’s Red Hot® down your pants.
“An idea is like a virus. Resilient. Highly contagious. And even the smallest seed of an idea can grow. It can grow to define or destroy you.” – Inception
I’ve heard that King Charles at his coronation vowed to keep his armies in his sleevies.
During the Great Recession I read an article about the economic resilience of families. I can’t find it, since I’ve slept several thousand nights since then. Heck, I’m not sure even Frequent Commentor Ricky could find it. The conclusion of the article was interesting to me – two-earner families were actually less economically resilient than sole-breadwinner families.
The article went on to explain that in most two income families, the families weren’t stashing tons of money away, but rather spending at about the level of the two incomes – nicer cars, shinier PEZ®, more velvet Elvis paintings. They were operating on a similar margin as a typical sole breadwinner. The big difference was in flexibility. If one member of a two-income family became unemployed, it was often a hit of 50% or more of the family income.
This may be the best painting ever done – the Mona Lisa could not show such elegance.
Sure, losing 50% of family income sounds bad, and I’m sure it is. The flip side, however, is that if the sole breadwinner lost a job, that family lost 100% of their income. That sounded worse to me, but those families performed better during hard times.
Why?
It turns out that a dual income family was already operating at nearly 100% efficiency. The mortgage, the cars, the PEZ®, the private schools, whatever expenses they had were based on Mom and Dad going out and making nearly their theoretical maximum incomes. To lose half of that is devastating, unless they had saved some of that cash.
It turned out that in economic hard times, the assets that people buy often go down in value. So, during the Great Recession, people bought hella-nice houses complete with granite avocado sharpeners and walk-in nail-trimming rooms that they could just barely afford the payments on.
But during an economic downturn, the price of the McMansions® went down. I talked to several folks during the Great Recession that dual-incomed themselves into bankruptcies as they lost jobs and had to walk away from expensive houses in half-finished subdivisions to move across the country to places that they didn’t want to live. Ouch. One dude I knew was bitter for just this reason. I think he was a tool anyway, but this magnified it.
I guess my regular ladder went for a pack of cigarettes and never came back.
Sometimes this economic stress ends in divorce as Dad loses his mojo and Mom loses a bit of respect and better-deals Dad. This isn’t an indictment of women, more so a realization of the fact that women want (in survey after survey) to have a man that’s more economically successful than them, despite them wanting equal pay.
Contradiction? Yeah. But still and amazing stress on a family.
And they want a man who is sensitive but who will also take charge.
On the other hand, I knew some single income families (intact families) where Dad lost his job, and Mom went into the labor force, Dad took a job to get by, and the family didn’t skip a beat in making payments. Did things like daycare go up?
Yup, unless Grandma could help out or Grandpa could use the kids as help down at the still. But the families weren’t flying so close to the flame, so they made it, and in most cases Dad found something again, maybe not as good as before, but close enough so Mom could cut down on hours or quit her job entirely.
I’ve made many, many, many arguments against efficiency. This is another one. It’s also insidious because that quest for economic efficiency ends (often) in weakness.
This idea that women should go out into the labor force, make as much as men, and thus make their families more vulnerable to economic dislocation caused by (spins wheel) inflation, COVID, immigration, or recession has been propagandized into the population for decades. There is hardly any little girl that wasn’t exposed to the idea that she shouldn’t go out and be just as good as a man and that she had some sort of duty to work because, well, because women.
It’s powerful when that’s the propaganda that millions in Gen X and later grew up with.
Chuck Norris told a joke about Jada Smith. Will Smith then slugged Jada.
To be fair, there are some amazingly capable women that I know who have had very strong careers, executive level stuff, who have kept it together and been great moms, to boot. In most cases, though, if those women quit tomorrow their family could do fine on their husband’s income. But that’s not the norm.
As we move into a time of greater economic instability, this will have the impact of making families more dependent on government, because efficiency is the enemy of independence. This may very well be the plan – dependent people are easier to control. When the next meal is dependent on pleasing power, people tend to stop testing boundaries, tend to be pushed to conform to power.
The opposite of efficiency is resilience, finding our own way economically, becoming independent rather than dependent. This is difficult when focused on trying to meet the ideals of a society bent on consumption at all costs.
That’s a big one. I guess my faith in huge manatee has been restored.
Economically, this flies in the face of propaganda we’ve seen for decades. It flies in the face of the desired outcome to treat people as economic units whose purpose is to create money to pay of a debt so large as to be unimaginable by any person alive atop a technological framework that is increasingly prone to failure.
Resiliency is our future, the only future outside of living in the pods and eating the bugs, which is a perfect life for an economic unit, but no life for a man. The end part of the 2020s will be (my guess) the biggest change that we’ll ever see in our lives, which includes the time when we added those extra four digits to the zip code.
“How much can you know yourself if you’ve never been in a fight? I don’t wanna die without any scars.” – Fight Club
Bach used to be a composer. I guess he’s now a decomposer.
I remember listening to the radio . . . you remember the radio, right? That’s where people take a part of the Internet and send it out using big towers and as many watts (ounce-inches per fortnight in non-commie units) of power as is used in the The Mrs.’ hairdryer so that this faint amount of energy can be picked up by a metal strip and then amplified a zillion times so you can rock out while cruising Main.
Sorry for the digression. I remember listening to the radio way back in the before time, and hearing a song that sounded pretty good. The singer mumbled most of it, but the big, brassy chorus of Born in the U.S.A. was pretty strong.
Made me feel good, made me think that in 1985 we were ready to unite as America. Then I finally made out the lyrics. Hmmm. After listening to them, I came to the (correct) conclusion that typical Leftist-Simp Bruce Springsteen was just another Leftist-Simp who made a bunch of money because he had a good chorus and everyone thought he was on America’s side.
I’ll leave you with this, “I’m embarrassed to be an American” – Bruce Springsteen, talking about Trump to Australians in 2016
I have not changed that position. If you like him, fine. You’re wrong. Springsteen is a tool.
Another song like that was All I Wanna Do by Sheryl Crow. When I first heard it, all I heard was they chorus, and figured it was some empty-headed pop song. Meh. I’ll skip it.
Then I listened to it. Wow. Deep. I was shocked. I thought it was vapid pop, but here was a song that had some soul, and talked about people drinking beer at noon on Tuesday in a bar because that’s all they have. The lyrics . . . “And a happy couple enters the bar, dangerously close to one another” is shocking – it jarred me because these people were a contrast to the gloom and despair on display in the bar.
Another one that I just found out about was Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonny Tyler. What’s it about? Vampires that want to share more than blood (wink wink). Honestly, I didn’t really care about this song ever, and still don’t, but like it a bit more now that I know that it’s just a bit weird.
Did she have to book a second ticket on the flight just for the hair?
Don’t even get me started on Squeeze Box by The Who® since when I heard it I was certain that it referred to a particularly musical family and even made the defense of the virtuousness of the song to a friend’s mother with all of the innocence of an entirely ignorant 10 year old who is smarter than he is experienced.
My Friend’s Mom: “That song . . . is that song about . . . sex?”
Young John Wilder: “No! That song is about a family and the mother has a concertina, an instrument played by compressing air and passing it through a series of reeds to make a melody like an accordion. She plays it and the house is filled with glorious music all night.”
My Friend’s Seventeen Year Old Sister, Butting In: “No. The song is totally about sex, Mom.”
Barbie? If you’re reading this? Yup, I got that one really wrong.
And don’t get me started on how badly I misunderstood Lola. I’m ashamed to say that I was over 21 before I got that joke. In my defense, that wasn’t a thing anywhere around Wilder Mountain, and the only burned-out old tranny I was familiar with was the one in my 1976 green GMC® truck.
Good news! It just needed a new clutch. Sometimes young drivers get a awkward and anxious and burn out clutch pads by popping the power too soon to the drive train.
I miss the days when working with a difficult tranny meant it was an automatic transmission.
Life, and experience, changes interpretation of events. Like a song, an experience may have one meaning when young, but yet another experience when older. The very experience of living life changes the message we get from those experiences. All through life “we see through a glass, darkly”, but as we age, we see the world differently.
That is natural. We age, we learn, we understand. Our innocence is, especially in 2023, horribly brief.
Cell phones and the Internet bring knowledge to children long before they can really come to grips with what they are seeing. In my age, a furtive glimpse at a Playboy® was how we gained forbidden knowledge. In 2023, 10-year-olds know all about Lola and are even taught in class that what once was forbidden is now exalted – there’s even a month for pride, yet not even an afternoon set aside for humility, but I guess if you’re Hunter Biden there’s a 20-minute plea bargain case with the DOJ.
So, I read today Hunter didn’t pay taxes on over six million dollars, and deducted the amount he spent on whores as business expenses. I wonder if he ever paid Lola?
Change is part of growing up. I am certainly not the person I was at 18, nor the person I was at 38. And wisdom has a price – innocence is free, but innocence is also harmless. As we grow and learn, we learn what is worth passing on, and what is worth fighting for.
I also believe this one weird thing, that this knowledge is not without structure. When I look back at the hard things, the difficult things, the things that seemed like a catastrophe at the time, all of those things led to better things as I grew up. I just had to live through them to understand.
My life will probably never go back to the simpler days. Like a character in a spy movie, I now know too much. But I can still, on a summer day, roll down the window and listen to a song and sing too loudly as I drive.
“Yeah, yeah, it came in the shape of a bottle? We’re from the Kingsman tailor shop in London. Maybe you’ve heard of us.” – Kingsman, The Golden Circle
During COVID they said I needed to wear a mask and gloves to go shopping. They lied. Apparently I needed clothes, too.
There was a time in my life when I had to make a choice. It was a dark time for me. Let me give some background. Please, everyone pretend that there’s a swirling motion and fuzzy stuff as we go back in time . . . to a land before cell phones and Google®.
In my first semester at college, I did pretty well. I studied for a few hours and got a 3.4 at a college that had the reputation as being the toughest one in the state. Life was good. I believe that I spent more time with Coors Light™ that semester than I spent studying calc, physics, or chemistry.
My second semester wasn’t the same.
In my first three tests (within the first two weeks of the semester) I got three Fs. These were the first three Fs I had ever gotten in my life on tests.
Ever.
They asked me to describe failure in two words. I replied, “I can’t.”
They weren’t horrible Fs, but the percentages were all in the 50s, except for physics 2 which was in the 40s. To be fair, the average score for the physics 2 test for all students was in the 50s – physics 2 was a designated “weed out” course.
Right before spring break, I had midterms. I didn’t know the scores that I had gotten on the next tests, but spring break was not fun. I had a full ride scholarship, and it required that I keep my grades above a certain GPA for both semester and cumulative to keep the scholarship.
Yikes. Do you mean there are consequences for my actions?
For the first time in my life, I was looking real failure in the face. It was the long, dark, Kobayashi Maru of the soul.
I got 8 out of 10 on my driver’s test. Two jumped out of the way.
I sat on the hood of my car at the end of spring break for a few hours at an Interstate rest stop under the gentle spring Sun, still hours away from the school. I figured I had two options:
Go back to school and tough it out. Nine more weeks of hell, and no promise that I’d do any better than I had done in the first nine, but if I did, it would mean studying harder than I ever had studied anything, except those times I studied the rare illicit Playboy® that came into my hands.
Drive north. It was before there was much of a border, and I could just drive into Canada, get a knit hat. I already knew the language, I could say “aboot” and “take off, eh” as well as anyone. I had a Visa® with a $500 limit, and a car that was owned free and clear, I had half a can of Copenhagen®, and I was wearing sunglasses. I could drive to Saskatchewan and become a lumberjack. Yes, this was my backup plan, even though I’m not sure Saskatchewan even has trees.
After a long time thinking, I . . .
There are several strategies in life, just like there are several strategies in a supermarket. Oh, sure, I could shop like everyone normally does here in Modern Mayberry and cover my nipples in yogurt while I’m in the dairy aisle (because nipple yogurt is free here), but I’m not talking about the shopping part, I’m talking about checking out.
The first option is to pick a line and stick with it, even if the lady in front of me has 43,238 coupons and price matches every item on the sale flyer from the competing grocery store and ends up getting $983,365.55 worth of groceries for $1.98 plus a raincheck for sour cream. For the nipples, you know, if you’re allergic to the yogurt.
What’s the most important culture in the world? Agriculture.
Okay, that’s not a great option, because every other line in the grocery store will cycle 43 times while the lady does one checkout and the clerk silently fantasizes about going home for a few gallons of gin.
Option 2 is a different one. In this one, I could flit from line to line like a politician being:
against gay marriage during election season
to being for gay marriage in special circumstances when election is comfortably far away
to being silent before election season
to sponsoring mandatory hormone treatment for toddlers because toddlers can’t consent to choosing their gender.
Yeah. While that might get a politician lots of money and votes, it just gets me moving from a stopped line to a moving line that stops as soon as I get in it and I don’t even get appointed as an ambassador to the Swedish Bikini Team.
I sold my Swiss watches to a friend in Mexico. Adios, Omegas!
Option 3, however, is probably the sanest one. Look around for the best line. If the coupon lady gets in, or there’s a price check, or the clerk is obviously on some sort of depressant medication because they’re not at home drinking a few gallons of gin, move to the next best line.
In my career, I jumped lines a couple of times. My first job was into an industry that was in the middle of a slump in the region I lived. So, I jumped. In this case, I jumped to an entirely different industry, and had a pretty good career. When that industry slumped, I jumped again, and then jumped back.
All of the jobs were basically related, except if you looked at them from the inside – they were all different. The combination of those experiences led me to a career that turned out to be a pretty good one, though there is the possibility that if I had jumped one fewer time, it would have been even more lucrative.
Or not. I might have ended up as a clerk who was missing their evening gin. I’m not going to worry that I might have done better if I had or hadn’t jumped a line, because life is far too short for that type of regret.
Also?
I’m going to try to not let the choices I’ve made in the past make me too timid. As many of the readers here, there are likely more years behind me than ahead, and it’s far too early to stop trying to kick a dent in the Universe, which in itself requires risk. I may win, I may lose, but I’m still in the game.
Looking back, I’m fairly happy with the progression that developed from my choices. And it’s because I stayed in line at the first opportunity to jump: college.
I made a paper airplane that wouldn’t move. I guess the problem was that I used stationary.
Back to that Interstate rest stop, far away in time and space . . . . (imagine the swirly thing again)
After a long time thinking sitting on the hood of my car on that warm spring day so many days ago, I decided that I could pack up my stuff and go up to Saskatchewan any time to be a lumberjack, even at the end of the semester if things didn’t work out. I could also take the time to learn if there were trees there or if I would have to fight the beavers for maple syrup so I could be strong when the wolves come.
But I only had one shot to try to see if I could dig myself out of the hole that I had made for myself.
I did. I got two Cs and a D – the best-looking D (and still the only D) that I’ve ever had in my life. My scholarship was safe. The semester after that one was okay, and then every semester after that I got great grades. I had learned that I could come back from failure, and though I changed lines later a time or two, I decided to see if this line would move for me because I was only risking failure, and only risking nine more weeks of my life. The line moved.
In life, pick your line. Move when you need to. And realize that the choice is yours.
“I didn’t know there was a no train list.” – Archer
If you would like a list of ways technology has made life worse, press one for English.
It’s been a long time since I’ve done a list post, so, why not?
Here are some things I think:
The struggle is important. If every day were placid and peaceful and there was no want, life would become dry and boring, and we would choke on our luxuries. The Garden of Eden could never last.
When I come home my dog is always happy to see me, but then I remember he also gets happy sniffing the cat’s butt and chewing on furniture.
Risk is important, too. Judging good risks and bad risks mainly comes from taking bad risks. Avoiding all risk is perhaps the worst risk.
They say a penny saved is a penny earned, but it really takes a few million to buy enough crack and prostitutes to make Hunter happy.
Again?
Women are best when they’re being women, not crappy imitations of men.
Men are best when they’re being men, and masculinity isn’t toxic.
If the glass is half empty, there’s probably room for some vodka.
The biggest fights are over the smallest things. A trillion-dollar budget shortfall? No one on Earth can even understand it. The neighbor’s lawn being an inch too tall? That’s a fight.
If men are strong in the balance of power, civilization endures. If women are strong in the balance of power, civilization is imperiled, in the end for lack of children.
If Life give you lemons, look Life right in the eye and say, “I want beer instead.” Life should know better by now.
If you put root beer in a square glass, do you just get beer?
Moderation is good, because there should be balance in life.
Moderation is bad, because there is power in passion, and no progress was made by anyone being reasonable.
Both 11. and 12. are true.
They say money can’t buy happiness, but it bought Hunter Biden so many laptops he forgot where they all were.
I find the most peaceful sleep I have is when the thunder is blasting out a constant tattoo against the night sky, the worst when it is utterly silent.
All things must end. This is good. Without an end, there is no new beginning.
That thing about all things must end? I forgot revolving doors.
That door hit me as I got out. It was a pane in the butt.
Success is often more damaging than failure.
As Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be lived forwards, but understood in reverse.” The worst things in my life have always led to the best things in my life.
Corollary to 19., if you don’t have a plan to go somewhere, you won’t go anywhere. If you have a plan, you might not end up where you thought you’d be, but at least you’ll be moving.
Corollary to 20., I might be lost, but I’m making good time.
Corollary to 21., don’t just follow your dreams, chase them until they file a restraining order.
Of course the game is rigged. What’s bothering you now is the idea that they’ve stopped pretending it isn’t.
They say, “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.” What could be closer than locked in the crawlspace?
I wish I had a wine cellar with an elevator. That would lift my spirits.
A large part of the last few decades has been spent in trying to convince Americans that their culture is entirely based in commerce and pop culture. That is not true – the values that built America rely on neither.
What are you doing today to make sure that today matters?
Kindness is free. So is sarcasm. I found out that one of these works better at funerals than the other last week.
As I’ve said before, happy is easy. Not being bored is easy. Standing up for something that matters is the most important thing.
One of the saddest things about today’s society is that young people find more challenges in the virtual world than in reality. When reality catches up to them they won’t be prepared.
Jenga® would be more interesting if the pieces exploded when the tower fell.
Beauty exists. Truth exists. Goodness exists. Those who would rule you would blind you to those simple facts.
It’s called work because they pay you to do it. If it were always fun, it would be a hobby.
I think Elon Musk has a lot of hobbies. And ex-wives.
If Musk started making robot lawnmowers, would he call them E-Lawn®?
If you have a choice about your attitude, be positive. Enjoy the moments you can, and you can enjoy most of them.
You have a choice about you attitude. Sometimes it’s your only choice.
“Forget cyborgs. What about some more money for my cloning experiments?” – Upright Citizens Brigade
I asked the librarian if she had a book that featured Pavlov’s Dog and Schrodinger’s Cat. She said it rang a bell, but she wasn’t sure if it was there or not.
Seth Roberts is dead. I’m sure that this isn’t news to him, since he died in 2014. He was a psychologist who taught at Berkeley. Again, don’t get mad at him for working there – he’s dead.
What Seth was most well known for was his idea that the best way to experiment was on himself. He even wrote a paper about it (LINK). It’s a pretty cool paper, and it talks about the individual experiments that he tried so that he could make his life better – controlling his weight, sleeping better, and having a better mood. I’ve done personal experiments on many of those, and have found that beer is wonderful for two out of three of those goals.
In his paper, where Roberts talks about how well his experiments worked, he wondered why more scientists don’t do experiments that, well, actually help people rather than produce yet another paper about the mating habits of Kardashians in the wild.
Given Biden’s inflation, pretty soon a male deer will be called $20.
The reason that Roberts came up why many college professors are almost actively useless makes sense:
Roberts cited an improbably named author (Thorstein Veblen) who is also dead (I hope) since he wrote his book in 1899, and if he’s still alive, he’s probably some sort of Norwegian ice-vampire. Veblen wrote a book called The Theory of the Leisure Class. In the book, Veblen stated that people try to show their social position by doing useless things. He noted that these included:
Display Wealth. That means buying expensive stuff like platinum PEZ® dispensers just so other people can see it. Oh, sorry, I misspelled “iPhone®”.
Display Uselessness. Veblen notes that people wore ties because it showed they couldn’t be doing manual labor if they were wearing a tie since it would get caught up in a spinning thingamajig and kill them and then they’d show up on a LiveLeak® video.
Display Refinement. This meant spending a lot of time doing mostly useless things, but only if other people could see you doing these mostly useless things. I think the BLM® riots might count here.
I can’t wait for their final show. Think they’ll call it “The Viewing”?
Roberts noted that professors don’t have a lot of money, but there’s nothing stopping them from being useless and, being professors, they can spend lots of time doing stuff that is useless in a very public way. The book review I did on Monday (LINK) proves the point – I have it on good authority that trees regularly cry when they find out she consumed their oxygen.
It’s a fun theory, and Roberts backs it up. He talks about medicine, where the lowest rung (according to Roberts) was obstetricians. They have an actual job that is very useful, mainly, bringing babies into the world. Darn it for those guys. And they can’t display refinement while working because, you know, if they’re useless the baby dies and parents sue.
I’d buy a ‘vette, but I’d worry about my chest hair getting stuck in my gold chain.
Roberts notes that self-experiments allowed him to move quickly, taking data and determining the results of his trials. It also allowed him to fix himself on the things that were bothering him. He took a lot of data, and could take a lot more data than he could if it were an actual study, because he was inputting the data on himself. He put his self-experimentation on his brain (mood, etc.) as 500,000 times more effective than traditional research, because he could take data on himself continuously. Of course, his experiments aren’t double-blind, but, does it matter? Roberts came up with a solution that worked for him.
Now, personally, I have followed this practice for a large part of my life. To be fair, it drives The Mrs. nuts, especially that one time I did one experiment that probably increased my blood pressure so much that if I had nicked my artery the blood flow probably would have drilled through drywall. To be clear, that was the very worst self-experiment. And most of them have worked well. 20 years ago, I had difficulty falling asleep. Now? I can generally be asleep in 2 minutes or less, nearly any time of the day, and I stay asleep.
Someone asked me what my dream job was. “Well, in my dreams, I don’t work.”
How long did that take? Years. An experiment here that worked. An experiment that didn’t. I added them up, and finally know how to get to sleep. I know it doesn’t sound like something to brag about, since I was really good at sleeping as a baby. It’s not quite a superpower, but if I get better at it, perhaps I’ll become Slumberman®, “Look on the bed, is it a pillow? Is it a blanket? No, it’s Slumberman™.
My experiments though, don’t meet Veblen’s definition so I could be called a member of the leisure class – they cost nothing, they are something anyone could do, and they are (for me) very useful. For instance, I noted that if I was getting ready to have a sinus infection, if I did a cardio workout, hard, that the sinus infection would go away nearly immediately.
This was a 100% solution. Every time, it worked. No theory. No real reason. And it might not have anything more than my belief, which doesn’t matter. Why doesn’t it matter? I can’t tell you, because I’ll be asleep.
Certainly, there are some places where (like that time I decided to pressure-test my veins) my ignorance could cause problems. And there are places where there are solved problems that experts (say, doctors) already know the answers.
People say I’m a skeptic, but I’m not so sure.
But most of my life is in my hands. I can run a dozen experiments a day, on what my actions are, and what the results are. If I want to look at longer term trends, I can write things down.
So, is self-experimentation good? Yeah, mostly. I don’t plan on doing it for replacing my spleen with my dog’s spleen, especially since I don’t know what a spleen does.
