Happiness – Page 4 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Be Bold. Life Is Too Short For Anything Else.

“That’s a bold statement.” – Pulp Fiction

A lion would never drive drunk. But a tiger would.

One of the problems with life in Modern Mayberry is that it often moves at a fairly slow pace. Especially in the time when an adult is focused on raising kids, the days tend to blur one into the next.

If your life is good, this isn’t really a problem. When I was younger, my life was spent going to weddings. Now that I’m older, more time is spent going to funerals. It is important to not get mixed up as to which you’re at, although sometimes “My condolences,” is appropriate at a wedding and I’d almost be willing to bet $20 that at least one person will say “Congratulations!” after my funeral.

However, in the event that I’m wrong, collecting on that bet might be a problem.

Maybe I’ll add bikini girls. Will that put the “fun” in funeral?

One thing that facilitates this blur is reading stuff on the Internet. One blogger I read (LINK) is giving up doomscrolling (or reading the unending list of negative stories that are available in the news) for Lent. I suppose you could leave him a comment, but you’d have to wait a few weeks to get a response.

But when it comes to doomscrolling, there are huge numbers of these stories available. The business model is simple: scary stuff attracts eyeballs, and eyeballs means revenue. As I look at my own past posts, I’m thinking that, even though I talk about a lot of scary stuff, that I’m mostly relentlessly positive. I can even recall a comment section or two where I’m called a Pollyanna because I’m so positive.

What do we want? Hearing aids. When do we want them? Hearing aids.

I can live with that. Being positive, being for things and knowing that, in the end it’s all going to work out keeps me positive. In most cases (most, not all!) the things I write about don’t make me angry, either.

Again, stress on the “mostly”. And I try not to get worked up about events occurring half-a-world away that I can’t control or even much influence. Things are what they are.

And, for most of us, things are generally pretty good on a day-to-day basis, even when things aren’t perfect. Even on a bad day, most parts of the day are good. The thing that gets us is built into the doomscrolling: spending time worrying about things that simply have not happened.

My friend wrote me a text that said, “What do you get when you mix a gullible person with an optimistic person?” I replied, “I don’t know!” He texted back, “Read it again.”

I write about the coming Civil War 2.0 not in hopes that it comes, rather to make people aware that it’s coming. Do I sit and worry about it daily?

No!

That would take away from the time I spend thinking about the Roman Empire.

In this moment, there are things that I could let bother me. However, I realize that letting them bother me gives them power over me when that’s the last thing I want. “Take not counsel of your fears,” is attributed to George S. Patton, Jr. I’m sure other people said the same thing in similar ways in the thousands of years that people have been saying things, but when Patton says it, well, it’s been said.

“Better to fight for something than live for nothing.” – GSP

If I let my fears fill me up, I live a life of fear regardless of if it’s a perfect 63°F, and I have a wonderful cigar, and a great book beside me while sitting in a comfortable chair.

I think fear comes to people as they age. I certainly saw Pa Wilder get more and more cautious as he aged. I could give a few examples, but it doesn’t much matter. I did notice. And when I saw the tendency to do it start to crop up in myself, at least I understood what was going on and I could choose to be cautious or choose to be bold.

I think, however, that as I get older it is precisely the time to be bolder. Life moves in a blur, and days stack up faster, so they should mean something. If I knew I had only a year? What would I do?

Something to make that year worthwhile. If a month? A day?

The shorter the time left, the more that boldness matters and the less caution should. If I only had an hour of my life left, you can damn sure bet I’d do something with it, as much as I could.

Oh, that’s Samuel L. Jackson, not the famous English dude Samuel Johnson. I guess that’s the Netflix® version of the quote.

But life is built on compound interest. The more I try to write, the better I get. The more I lift, the stronger I get. The time to start is now.

The actions should be bold. While my days may pass fast, the more I can do with them, the more I will do.

When I pass, what will be left are the lives I’ve touched, the children that I’ve raised, the ways I’ve made the world better, and the words that I have written. Since the restraining order dictates who I can touch, and the lessons to the children are mainly done, that leaves making the world better and writing.

Even a full human lifetime isn’t enough, because they are so very short. But I’ll make do. With the remaining decades (hopefully) of my life, how big a dent can I kick in the Universe?

I guess I’ll see. And I’ll smile some, every day. And enjoy that cigar, and book, and chair when I’m not being bold.

“L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace.”

I’m For Not Being Against Things

“A new power is rising. Its victory is at hand.” – Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers

I guess she didn’t see that coming.

Trump Derangement Syndrome is real. Back a decade ago, Anonymous Conservative (link below) was writing about the term “Amygdala Hijack”. An Amygdala Hijack occurs when a person is “an emotional response that is immediate, overwhelming, and out of measure with the actual stimulus because it has triggered a much more significant emotional threat,” according to Wikipedia. Basically, it means that someone has gotten in the target’s face so much that their brain breaks – they can’t contain the emotion and either lash out or stroke out.

The Amygdala Hijack In Action – A Video Example

This is the definition of Trump Derangement Syndrome. People are willing to disfigure their bodies and write “Trump” permanently on them to signal they hates him, they hates him so very much.

My friend got a tattoo of his favorite Star Wars™ character on his cheek. You should have seen the Luke on his face!

As much as the GloboLeft® hates Trump, most of their beliefs are made up not of provable facts (as much as they F*****g Love Science™) but rather the way that they feel on a subject. A great example is abortion: as much as they try to hide it, an unborn child is a discrete human entity with its own DNA, blood type, and body. That’s actual science.

But to disguise that very unpleasant truth, an entire web of “feels” has to be developed, focusing on the edge cases of rape and incest. As such, members of the GloboLeft™ cannot discuss abortion in any terms other than emotional ones, mainly because they want jobs where they can make PowerPoints® and a child wouldn’t be convenient.

What’s logical doesn’t matter. It’s what the GloboLeft® feels that matters.

Men have feelings too! Like hungry. Or drunk. Or salty.

Note that this leads to a subtle but important difference: GloboLeft© people aren’t for Joe Biden, they’re against Donald Trump. When a person is against something in emotional terms, they’re ripe for their amygdala being totally hijacked. They’re deranged, raw anger because something they’re against has happened.

On the other end of the spectrum, I thing most people on the TradRight™ aren’t for Donald Trump, they were for the border wall. They were for lower gas prices. They were for a return to normalcy. The were (and are) for America, first. When Donald deviated from what the people were for, well, they let him know. Remember the choruses of “boo” at a Trump rally when he began to brag about the Vaxx?

Pepperidge Farm remembers. Trump never led us. He saw the caravan and sprinted to the front.

Michelle has a “big” future.

But the experience of GloboLeft© was the exact opposite. When it was Trump’s Vaxx, it was poison that they would never in a million years put in their veins. When it became Biden’s Vaxx, it became a holy sacrament and a sign of their oh-so-virtuous behavior. The reason for the change is that they weren’t for the Vaxx, they were against Trump and anything he ever tried to do. People on the TradRight© were always skeptical, because, I mean, what is that stuff, anyway?

Being for something is generally positive. I’ve got to say generally because there are some pretty twisted folks out there that are “for” some pretty awful things. If the thing I’m for isn’t based in virtue, well, that’s a problem.

In the long run, “our” (I’ll count you in, dear reader, but feel free to opt out) movement must be a movement about being for things, because by being against things, we’ve already lost, and we’re on the defensive.

Why did Norm MacDonald never have a farm? Because he never got old. (I think Norm would appreciate that)

We have not lost, and we need to go on the offensive for things we are for. I know, it’s a subtle point, and sometimes difficult to get to. It could be said that I’m against immigration, but I can easily swap that and say that I’m for a culture which values the lives and fortunes of its citizens more than economic growth at all costs to depress wages and serve the elite, which is the driver of our current tidal wave of immigration. I’m for a unified culture based on Western values.

It’s the same thing, but it’s not. Being against war is not at all the same thing as being for peace. I am for peace for my people. And if it takes a war to get peace for my people, then so be it. Being against war just makes a nation a victim.

By making myself state what I’m for, rather than what I’m against, I force clarity to my thoughts, and also have created the basis for going on the offense. Being against Donald Trump gives him the ability to live rent free in the heads of the GloboLeft®, which makes them exactly what Donald calls them, losers. And they hate him even more for being right.

Being for makes us winners from the beginning. It gives us a goal, even if it’s so lofty that even our grandchildren might have to wait to achieve it. It gives us hope, and a vision for a brighter future. By being for something, it gives us the pathway to achievement, and the belief that we can move to victory.

I guess a Middle Eastern nation was providing armored vehicles to Ukraine for free. Is that tanks-giving Turkey?

Do I fall into the trap of being against things? Certainly, but I try to take step back and understand and flip the script to focus on the things that I’m for. But when I’m out there creating the vision of things I’m for, I know that I’m planning and plotting the seeds of our inevitable (and I do believe it is inevitable) next victory.

All of this with my amygdala firmly my own.

Purpose, Calculus, and the “Why” of Life

“As you will find in multivariable calculus, there are often a number of solutions for any given problem.” – A Beautiful Mind

When you take a calculus test, make sure you don’t sit between identical twins – you’ll never be able to differentiate between them.

Often as I go through my daily life, I have to step back and ask the question, “Why?”

“Why” is a really important question, but Sir Isaac Newton was focused in his science on “What”.

Newton figured out (to the best of available information and measurements possible at the time) a very large amount of the “What”. His equations of motion and gravity are really, really accurate, right up until the point where very large speeds (think how quickly illegals pass over our “border”) or very large masses (think your mother) change the game. Newton’s rules allow us to predict the orbits of most of the planets with precision.

This is all based on based on 1690’s tech, which your mother would have been familiar with.

He also designed a second Pink Floyd album cover that day, after he set his roommate on fire.

Gottfried Leibniz, though, was really focused on the “Why” question even though he and Newton discovered calculus about the same time.

For Newton, the “Why” was a given. Newton spent more time in study of the Bible than he did in study of nature or of economics (Newton was the Grand Baron of the Mint, or some such, and was really in favor of executing counterfeiters and people who clipped coins.

Like I always say, for every problem there is a very simple solution.

Leibniz wanted to go further and understand why gravity existed. Ultimately, that was a question that he couldn’t solve with the measurements available at that time, and we still really don’t have a good idea for the “why” of many basic features of the reality that allows us to make and enjoy PEZ™, watch movies, or sit in a hot tub.

Yeah, things like “time”, “inertia”, “why everyone likes Italian food”, and “why we are even here in the first place”. Those are things that are, so far, beyond the ability of physics and science in general to explain.

And that’s okay.

What kind of chicken did Leibniz order? He always Gottfried.

When I look at my own life, I often wonder “why” about a ton of different issues. I really believe that I’m fortunate in many ways that I really can’t understand the “why” of. I remember when teachers would tell me that my kids were smart, well, I’d feel proud.

Now? I realize that I had (almost) no impact on that, at all. They were born with it – as Rush Limbaugh (PBUH) used to note that he had “talent on loan from God.” When I first heard that, I thought it was braggadocio, but then realized that Rush was acknowledging that his way with words and skill at communicating, even his sense of humor were nothing for him to be personally proud of – they were on loan from God.

I get it now.

The events of our lives are like that, too. Some are random, and some have a deeper meaning that either is immediately apparent or is apparent at some future point in time. The random ones are just that, random. It doesn’t generally matter (much) if a leaf falls on the east side or the west side of my house – I can ignore them perfectly well on either side. It’s meaningless.

When a BMW® owner learns to drive, what car do they generally switch to?

But I’ve observed that little delays in my life, the “where did I put my keys” moments that slow me up getting out the door have several times saved me from getting into accidents. A small thing?

Certainly. But there are bigger ones that happen, too, things that are so unlikely to happen that they are effectively miracles – those have occurred far too frequently in my life for me to ignore. Yes, once you’ve lived through 10,000 or more days, 5,000 or more commutes, some unlikely stuff is going to happen.

But we all know the bigger coincidences when we see them – the events that occurred in our lives that, looking backward, were either omens or led to situations we never expected.

This leads, ultimately, to a contradiction in my life there is John Wilder who:

Tries to prepare all of the important things so that everything is covered, and tries to live a virtuous and Godly life,

And,

Sees the outcome of the planning slowing turning into a colossal mess and the attempts at being virtuous leading to negative personal outcomes and says, “Meh, whatever.”

It’s true – virtue and grace don’t guarantee economic success – soulless creatures like George Soros prowl the world like a Lovecraftian Monster, using their money to spread chaos and disrupt cultural traditions dating back thousands of years. And he’s rich. If Soros has even a single positive virtue, I have yet to hear of it.

Kamala got chosen as VEEP for her race and gender instead of for providing sexual favors – which might make it the proudest moment of her life.

There is a scene from that great classic of cinema, BASEketball, where the main character (Joe Cooper) has reached rock bottom, he’s been abandoned by his childhood friend, his girlfriend is filled with contempt for him and he’s being publicly vilified.

His boyhood friend, however, has gotten everything: public acclaim, money, and gets into a hot tub with a Playboy® playmate (they used to be girls).

Spoiler: Joe Cooper sticks to the path of virtue, and in the end, everything is returned to him.

That’s the way that, as humans, we want to see life work out, so the good guys win.

What happened to the Russian who told a joke about Stalin? I don’t know, either.

But it doesn’t always do that, and that’s okay – Soros will be rich until he leaves that money (along with control of dozens of Evil Foundations) to his son. I can’t change that, and I won’t be upset about it. It just is.

In the end, I’ll try to be like both Leibniz and Newton. Like Leibniz, I’ll work as hard as I can to try to understand the “why”, but like Newton, if I don’t get there, I’m good with that.

I mean, they were okay with your mom, so you should cut them some slack.

Christmas 2023 – Looking Back

“It’s like Christmas at the Kennedy Compound.” – The Simpson’s Movie

What happens if you hallucinate and see a psychologist?

I was going to write a story about one of my Christmas experiences, but instead I thought I’d write about more than just one. Since my only boss at this blog is you, dear reader, I thought you wouldn’t mind.

So, for this Christmas, I’ll share some of the Christmas memories I have of my family while growing up. Why? Because those Christmas memories are the strongest in the young, but our understanding of Christmas as well as our experience of Christmas changes as we age.

The very first Christmas memory I recall as a child was of sneaking out of my bedroom, late at night on Christmas Eve. As an adopted child, I might have been looking for firearms or an exit so I could exit if these adoptive parents wanted me to do chores or something. Or not. I was four. Long after everyone had gone to bed, filled with excitement, I got up and headed towards the fireplace where I had been told Santa would be dropping off presents. I recall seeing Santa, putting presents in the stockings, his back to me. Or it might have been an alien. I was four, so it was probably just a dream. Or maybe Ma and Pa Wilder put something extra in my eggnog so I “slept well”.

That would have been an uncomfortable parent-teacher conference for them, “Hey, he’s thirty and in the fourth grade, but he sleeps well.”

Jeff Bezos doesn’t sleep naked – he sleeps with pajamazon.

The next year, when I was five, I recall that there were presents under the tree. Of course, I was drawn to them like the Colorado Supreme Court is drawn to crack cocaine. Being five and having the coordination of Joe Biden biking, I stepped right one of the presents that was meant for me. The result? My foot tore right through the wrapping paper, revealing to me what the gift from Uncle McWilder was. It was awesome: a tool belt, complete with real tools including a flashlight, screwdriver, and metal pliers. Immediately, I imagined putting the belt on and helping Pa Wilder fix things, like the sink.

Our sink had never been broken to my knowledge, but if it ever did break, I had a pair of real metal pliers and all the tools a five-year-old could imagine would be necessary to fix a sink.

We never did fix a sink, though I believe I did an unsanctioned fieldstrip of an Electrolux™ vacuum cleaner. Note: I still have the pliers.

I once bought a three-foot long ruler at a yard sale.

I don’t recall a particular present from first grade, but I do recall sitting at dinner. Being an idiot, I announced to Ma and Pa Wilder (who I think had stopped drugging my food by now) that there was no Santa. My brother, John Wilder, kicked me savagely under the table.

“Ow! Why did you do that???”

“You idiot, now they won’t give us presents for our stockings!”

I’ve written about second grade before, here:

A Wilder Story, or, The BB Gun, The Black Bear, The Soviets, and Me

In third grade, we had moved to Wilder Mountain. We were in a very small place while the rest of Stately Wilder Manor was still being constructed. Ma Wilder decided to make wine, which involved really good, thick balloons.

My brother John and I decided to play a strange version of volleyball using one of the really thick wine balloons over the small pine tree Ma Wilder had made since we were living in a house the size of Hunter Biden’s sense of morality. Good times.

In fourth grade my brother John Wilder was proven wrong, as my parents really went all out filling our socks. In addition to several G.I. Joes®, my brother and I got wind up cars that, when they hit something, all of their body panels flew off. I had no idea that kind of toy existed. What was best? The surprise.

What crayon is in charge of answering the phone? Yellow.

In fifth grade my parents had said we weren’t going to get any presents. It was part of a deal – they were going to buy some new snowmobiles, and because of the expense, those would be our Christmas presents. To be fair I was fine with that – a snowmobile is just awesome. But, my parents lied, and on Christmas Day we found lots and lots of presents under the tree. What were they? Boardgames, galore. Everything from Mousetrap® to Clue™ to giant checkers.

The present I remember most from sixth grade was one from my brother – he got me the cassette version of Alice Cooper’s album, Alice Cooper Goes to Hell. An odd Christmas present? Sure. But I’ll never cry.

Welcome to my lunchline . . .

Seventh grade brought probably one of the most peaceful Christmas Days from my youth. I recall on Christmas Day quietly doing a Star Wars™ jigsaw puzzle. If ever there was a day where there wasn’t a single problem, no strife, nothing but a completely happy time spent with my family growing up, this was the day.

The biggest present I recall for Christmas in my eighth grade year was a Nerf® football, which my brother and I promptly took and threw in the driveway for hours on an unseasonably warm Christmas Day.

As a freshman, my brother and I were out shopping for Christmas presents for Ma and Pa Wilder. One gift I saw was a towel. It wasn’t just any towel, but one that had metal snaps and the Everlast® logo. It looked like boxer’s trunks when you wrapped it around your waist. This was the era of Rocky™, and I told my brother, “Man, that’s cool.”

He said, “Yes, it is. I like it, and I’m buying it, for me.” I was only slightly disappointed, since he had the money, and I didn’t. Imagine my surprise on Christmas morning when I unwrapped his present to me and found . . . the towel.

I named my pet rock “Rocky” – not because it’s a rocky, but because it has trouble speaking.

When I was a sophomore, all the varsity wrestlers shaved our heads. Why? I have no idea. We were in high school. Ma Wilder took great amusement in this, and, for Christmas, she made me a knit hat in my high school colors. The hat was ludicrously long, and perfect in every way.

My junior year was the last year that my brother was with us before he got married, so, in a sense, it was the last, close family Christmas. Pa Wilder could see the nerd in me, and my present that year was an HP-15C programmable calculator that used reverse Polish notation (RPN). Back then, HP™ had no equal.

My senior year, I recall that Pa Wilder gave me a metal puzzle – one that he had given all of his friends that year. Made of brass, it wasn’t a hard puzzle, but I still have it, a memory of the last Christmas before college.

Going through this, it’s interesting (to me, at least) to see the changes over time as I moved from greedy excitement to looking for meaning and peace. This year? Not sure I’m getting a present at all, and I’m certain I don’t need one. I’m also not sure if there’s going to be a Monday post, I’ll give myself permission to skip it if we’re having a good time here at Stately Wilder Manor.

I hope your Christmas is a wonderful one, and brings you peace and meaning as well.

It Came From 1983

“Oh, fishy, fishy, fishy, fish, that went wherever I did go.” – Monty Python’s Meaning of Life

What A.I. thinks 1983 looked like. It’s not entirely wrong.

As we drift farther and farther from movies that have a great plot or are actually funny, I’m enjoying this look back every so often to review what we had in comparison to what we have now. Sadly, the past seems to win, especially in comedies. But here they are, in no particular order except chronologically by release date – movies that came from 1983. Yes, your favorite may not be on this list, because as much as I like the horror, comedy, action, and science fiction from the time, most of the “drama” movies from 1983 were just plain unwatchable. The Big Chill? Tried to watch it twice, nearly died from boredom. If you like that movie, I’m sorry, you’re just wrong.

Like I said, here’s the list:

Videodrome: You could also title this movie, “Everything you want to know about sex but were afraid to ask David Cronenberg”, but that describes all of Cronenberg’s movies. I didn’t see this movie in 1983 (too young) but when I rented it on video, well, wow. This is an interesting take on the way that media is used to reprogram your mind, but very, very creepy.

High Road to China: Tom Selleck tries to be a more realistic Indiana Jones®, and pulls it off. It’s an action movie set in the pre-WWII era, and it’s fun. Fun enough to go back and buy it? No.

Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life: It’s absurd, from the beginning insurance-pirate ship documentary to the end scene. If you don’t like Monty Python®, well, you certainly won’t like this. I loved each and every scene. One of the things I really enjoyed was sitting in the seat with my popcorn watching people who really didn’t get the joke hating the movie and walking out. Not a movie that could be made in 2023.

Return of the Jedi: An acquaintance once remarked to me that Return would have been a better movie if, when the Emperor said, “Now, young Jedi®, you die,” and Luke™ did die. And then the rebellion failed. Can you imagine the sequel to that movie? Wow. Maybe he was on to something.

The Man with Two Brains: Steve Martin. Brain surgery. Kathleen Turner before she turned all Wilford Brimley on us. Good times.

WarGames: Mainly included for nostalgia purposes. I was only lukewarm on this movie since I thought it was a lot of Leftist propaganda. Still better than anything in the theater here in Modern Mayberry in the last month.

I want to watch this movie, right meow.

Trading Places: Ackroyd, Murphy, and Curtis all in top form in a hilarious movie that taught me about futures trading and what happens when you put a criminal in a cage in a gorilla suit. The usual stakes, please.

Mr. Mom: Micheal Keaton back when he was making comedies, which is what he was supposed to do. Plot is simple, dude loses job, wife has to work. Yeah, Feminist propaganda. Keaton still makes it work because he’s funny and I was stupid and didn’t catch the propaganda.

I think Mr. Mom would have been a better movie if the characters were sea otters with robot legs.

Krull: This movie was a weird mess of science fiction, fantasy, and maybe documentary of Al Gore’s childhood. It worked for me, since I expected nothing, and the movie was sincere in what it was trying to do. Krull also inspired a really cool pinball machine at the local arcade that Travis and I would go and pour quarters into.

National Lampoon’s Vacation: A great theme song, a funny premise, and understated humor. I’ve actually had a picnic lunch at the table where Chevy ate the urine-soaked sandwich, but with 100% less pee. It is one movie that gets funnier with age. Shout out to Cousin Eddie!

If only Vacation had been set in Rome.

Risky Business: I didn’t know what a Porsche® was before I watched this movie since no one anywhere near Wilder Mountain owned anything more exotic than a GM® or Ford™ pickup – a Toyota© was an exotic car. It’s the classic story: boy meets girl, girl is a prostitute, boy runs bordello, boy gets into college, boy joins Scientology®.

Easy Money: This is one many won’t remember – it was P.J. O’Rourke’s script based on Romeo and Juliet, where Rodney Dangerfield had to lose a bunch of weight and stop smoking to inherit millions of dollars. Still funny on a recent rewatch.

Strange Brew: It’s a movie based on a sketch comedy bit based on Hamlet. Take off, eh!

Scarface: I had no idea what I’d see when I wandered into the theater with this one, but I was not counting on people being dismembered with chainsaws and Al Pacino wanting people to say hello to his little friend.

What if Tony Montana had become the Mattress King of South Miami instead?

Sudden Impact: This movie went ahead and made my day. Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry. Yeah, there was a time when they were new. And glorious. And horribly politically incorrect.

The Keep: The Wehrmacht vs. H.P. Lovecraft. I read the book before I saw this one, and thoroughly enjoyed the movie. An Ancient Evil versus and Ancient Guardian all fighting together in an Ancient Crypt? During World War II? Only thing missing were tanks.

Okay, I liked The Keep, but this poster looks 100% more lit.

What do you see on the list above? Two sequels, and those were earned: Star Wars™ and Dirty Harry®. Just two. The rest was Hollywood rolling the dice and failing (Krull) or succeeding wildly, (Trading Places, WarGames, Mr. Mom, Risky Business, Vacation).

While there was propaganda about the Leftist world that the filmmakers wanted to create (WarGames, Mr. Mom, Trading Places, and one not on the list, Tootsie, were especially filled with it), it was a more subtle time – viewers were gently led to a conclusion instead of the 2023 version of being battered over the head with it.

They knew they couldn’t make money if the audience didn’t show up to see the movie, so they focused on making a good movie. Yes, most of the people making films hated Ronald Reagan with a passion, but Reagan Derangement Syndrome wasn’t a thing, unless the person was John Hinkley, Jr. The nation in 1983 was one where there wasn’t this current schism and near ideological war against the Right, since it was just one year later Reagan won one of the most lopsided victories in electoral history.

It was morning in America. And we knew how to make movies.

What are your favorites from 1983?

Thanksgiving 2023: PEZ, Garfield, and Lab-Grown Poodle

“Look, sit down, all right. It ain’t cool being no jive turkey so close to Thanksgiving.” – Trading Places

(All memes A.I. today)

Turkeys can be thankful – they never have to worry about buying Christmas presents.

I’ve mentioned before, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Most of the time it’s four or more days off for me, long enough not to be rushed. It’s also a holiday that doesn’t have the desperation of Christmas, nor the somber elation of Easter. Thanksgiving is peaceful for me.

Although I like to do this fairly often, at this time of year, I do like to sit back and think about the things that I’m thankful for. It’s a long list, so, here it goes the Thanksgiving 2023 version:

I’m thankful for Pa and Ma Wilder, who took me in and then didn’t drown me. I was an awful child. How bad? I caused more damage to our house than the First Gulf War. To be fair, the First Gulf War didn’t really do much damage to our house.

If we’re not careful, Iraq may have to invade us to make sure our elections are free of corruption.

I’m thankful to my big brother, John Wilder, who pushed me into things that I needed to do, things that weren’t comfortable to me that helped me face difficulty and learn to overcome it. I also threw up all over his school clothes one year. Not sure how you get vomit out of a leather belt.

I’m thankful for Joe Biden, because there’s never been an easier, more corrupt, or more incompetent president to mock. Joe has single-handedly turned more Zoomers to the Right than any living man.

I’m thankful for winter, because no matter how cold it gets I can still put on more clothes. In the summer, there is a limit to how much clothing I can take off, or at least that’s what the police tell me.

I’m thankful for hot coffee on a cold winter morning when it’s silent as the snow keeps falling.

I’m thankful for PEZ®. Because it’s PEZ™.

The Abyss, it speaks through Garfield®. Odie™? Not so much.

I’m thankful for each morning. I hate mornings, but they’re better than the alternative. Oh, wait, I like afternoons. Sadly, everyone gets cross when I sleep into the afternoon.

I’m thankful that I have so few moments in life that are truly awful, and knowing that I can get over them because the world is actually a pretty great place, and I always know that there’s someone I can talk to, if I need to. Thankfully, I don’t have many feelings like you humans er, nevermind.

I’m thankful for firearms. They cause a lot of damage in the wrong hands, I’ll admit. But they cause even more damage when they’re only in the hands of the government. So if the government wants to have a gun-free world, they can disarm first.

I’m thankful for cats and dogs, but sorry cows taste so good. Cows look like they might be good bros and fun to hang with, but, sorry. They’re just too tasty.

I’m sorry, but how else will I create cowlamari?

I’m thankful for my close family, {The Mrs., kids). For whatever reason, most of them seem to put up with me, or at least haven’t filed restraining orders.

I’m thankful that you, reader, come here on a regular basis to share your ideas with me. I’m hopeful you get a chuckle or two.

I’m thankful for the taste of a turkey sandwich the day after Thanksgiving. Toasted bread, mayo, turkey, mustard, some salt and pepper are enough. Add in some lettuce and tomato if you have them, but they’re not required.

I’m very thankful for the time I have, and just wish there were more hours in a day. As I grow older, I know the most precious of all things is our time and attention. Of course, if I hadn’t eaten in a month or so, I’d probably be even more thankful for a gnawed pork chop bone. But sitting here, right now? It’s time.

In the future, will the Chinese be satisfied with lab-grown poodle?

I’m thankful to live in the time and place that I do. I’m sure the past was wonderful, and I’m sure the future will be wonderful. But, you know, there’s a problem with both of those. My stuff is all here, and I’m not even sure how to pack for 1850 or 2432, I mean, what’s the weather like?

Lastly (and firstly), I’m thankful to the Creator. It has been a weird ride so far, but enjoyable. I’m sure I’ll figure out the “why” part in the end. As Soren Kierkegard said, we can only understand the past from the vantage point of the future. But he said it in Danish, so he probably sounded like the Swedish Chef® when he said it.

If the Swedish Chef™ is actually Danish, does that make him an artificial Swedener?

I hope that your Thanksgiving is peaceful, joyful, and that you are surrounded by those that love you, or at least by PEZ™ dispensers from another cosmic realm that may eat your soul. Whichever you prefer.

What did I miss? What are you thankful for?

Think Movies Suck Now? You’re Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s easy.

Harder to face is that their stupid movie sucks.

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

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

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

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

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

Men.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It still costs a buck-o-five.

Forgiveness: It’s Not Just For Breakfast Anymore

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

Dogs go to Heaven, cats go to Purrgatory.

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

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

So, what did I do?

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

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

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

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

Grievances don’t count.

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

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

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

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

Tell me again how this is winning?

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

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

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

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

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

Sure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enthusiasm or Passion? Choose Passion.

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

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

I hate enthusiasm. I really do.

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

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

Why?

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

Like I said, I hate enthusiasm.

But I love passion.

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

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

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

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

It was the best I ever wrestled against him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s more like it.

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

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

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

Add talent to passion?

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

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

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

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

Shaving, Emotions, And Having A Good Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No, no I do not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But not today.

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