Happiness – Page 9 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Now What?

“Well, that’s the end of the film. Now, here’s the meaning of life.” – Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life

When my boss died, I spent a moment at his coffin. “Who’s think outside the box now, Terry?”

I have (sometimes) in my life found myself in a weird and uncomfortable place. No, it’s not the backseat of a VW® Beetle®. No, it is something that normally people are happy about. I had accomplished most of what I wanted to do, and then I asked myself, “Now what?”

That is a difficult question. I have long made it a practice to observe people, or at least I did until the restraining order. Okay. Restraining orders. My observation is that feeling like I felt came normally comes from:

a lack of ambition,
waking up with amnesia
too much success, or
having goals set too low.

In my case, it was probably the last one. I can (happily!) say that I’ve accomplished almost everything that I’ve wanted to do in my career, and I’ve done a lot. Do you know the team that got Osama Bin Laden? Not to brag, but I’ll have you know I read a news story about them once.

It must be nice being a Democrat, knowing who voted before the election.

Could I have accomplished more than I have? Probably.

I suppose that could be viewed as a lack of ambition. In my defense, I’ve seen a lot of jobs that I don’t want. And a lot of those jobs come with compromises I simply won’t make anymore. At one point, when I was much younger, I had a job where I was on the road an average of three days per week. I can recall one time my boss wanted me to travel to Chicago and I didn’t want to go, so we compromised – I traveled to Chicago.

I’ll admit, travel was fun at first. One week I started Monday in Portland, Maine and ate lobster, flew to San Antonio and had Tex-Mex, and ended up in Fresno, which is known as the “Akron of the Pacific”. When I was young, that was a pretty nifty gig, plus the work was fun and varied.

At first.

I ordered a “Chicago style” pizza. It started shooting right out of the box.

It actually got to the point where I was on the road for eight straight months in the southern part of Chicago. I did manage to come home alternate weekends – I will say that Midway airport is the only place I’ve ever been that rents cars with a slot for a tail gunner. The charm of traveling went away. The fortunate thing is that it cost me a marriage.

But I’m done traveling like that. There are compromises that I’m not willing to make. And, as I said, I’ve done most of the things I want to do with my career.

So, it’s not that.

What, then?

If anyone has no family and will be alone this Thanksgiving, let me know. I need to borrow chairs.

What about family? Family is always a challenge because being a parent requires almost as much responsibility from me as that one night when they asked me to be a designated driver. But when kids are grown, it’s up to them to determine what course their lives will take. Oh, sure, they sometimes want to chat with the old man, but for the most part, they’re independent. That’s the way I raised them – drop a Bowie knife and some paracord into the crib and if they make it the first month, they’re keepers. The result of this type of parenting (I think the technical term for it is “neglect”), though, is that the kids are able to make decisions and take action between therapy sessions. No family is ever perfect, but mine is pretty good.

Okay. Work was fine. Family was fine. What now?

That’s what I was struggling with. What now?

Then I remembered Joe.

Joe is a friend that I’ve known for years. Talked to him last week. I’ve mentioned Joe before. Pure genius. Joe, however, wasn’t challenged at his job. So, he’d let projects go until there were almost due, and then start work on them at the point where he thought that it was just nearly possible that he might not be able to make the deadline and then work at a furious pace. If Joe had been a chef, the danger would have been that he might have run out of thyme.

Instead, it was a way to keep himself challenged and in the game.

Being a blanket weaver must be the worst. They always have a looming deadline.

That’s not for me, either. The challenge was a real challenge, but it was artificial. It didn’t make Joe better. It just kept Joe’s job interesting enough so he wasn’t bored enough at work to dial random numbers and say, “I’ve hidden the body. Now what?”

So, I thought about it. And thought about it.

What was a challenge big enough? What could be my vision?

It turned out it was this place. That’s the reason I keep hitting my deadlines on my posts. Not every post ends up the way I imagined it would when the idea came into my head – sometimes the posts take on a life of their own in the writing. And sometimes I have to take two or three runs at an idea until I get exactly the post I was looking for.

I was looking for a challenge, for meaning.

What’s the difference between death and taxes? Death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.

So, I decided to give my life more meaning than that poor man who installs turn signals on BMWs®. Now, on a given day when I come home from work, I’m a bit tired, but when I reach for the keyboard, it feels good. I have a goal, a challenge, and meaning.

These things don’t come from without, they come from within. Even if the circumstances are already there, they have to be recognized and acted upon.

Now what?

If you don’t have a vision of what you want to achieve, make one.

If your life doesn’t have meaning, give it meaning.

These things are in your hands.

That’s what.

Regret And Dread – Two Problems You Don’t Really Have To Have

“I have people waiting for me. They don’t know what I do, they never will. They’re protected. But I do what I do so they can have a better life. And if I live or if I die, it doesn’t make a difference to me, as long as they have what they need. So when it’s my time to go, I will go knowing I did everything I could for them.” – Better Call Saul

If you press your gas and brake at the same time, your car takes a screenshot.

I tend to like writing my Friday posts the most. Why? Most generally, I get away from the reality of the present situations that we are living in. That’s nice.

Why do I feel like I can do this?

Because nothing is done yet, and nothing is settled yet. I’ve written posts about regret. I still feel that regret is a wasted emotion – the past is done. Of course, I try to learn from my mistakes. But I can’t spend my life being upset about them. The real question is how can I incorporate the mistakes so I have a better future? I even told The Mrs. that she should embrace her mistakes, too. She was so happy she hugged me.

Especially of note are those mistakes I made that weren’t mistakes I made based on a lack of virtue. If I did the right thing, for the right reason, the result is the result, and I will live with the consequences. Sometimes bad things happen when you do everything right. I mean, when the doctor told me I had a rare disease, I asked, “How rare?”

“Well, you get to pick a name.”

Those are the breaks.

Firefighters in Athens have it tough – you’re not supposed to put water on Greece fires.

A similar emotion is dread.

I read a quote when I was a kid – Heinlein? Twain? A fever dream while on laudanum writing about Xanadu? – that stuck with me. “Worrying about what might happen is paying interest on money you haven’t borrowed yet.” It’s a good quote.

Regret is looking at the past, dread (or its cousin, fear) is about looking at the future. But they’re the same. Neither of those two things are real. One once was real, and one might be real.

I’ll admit that when I look out at the future, I do see dark days ahead. But right now, I’m sitting in my basement, The Mrs. had gone upstairs for sleep, the basement is perfectly comfy, and all is right with the world. Something might happen next week. Next month. Next year. The price of tires is up. The price of gasoline is up. Heck, Hunter Biden can’t even find decent meth nowadays. It will get worse.

So?

I fell down at the airport once. Almost missed a flight.

I think that often we are more upset by the thought of potential future discomfort than actual, present discomfort. It can be consuming, and all for something that hasn’t happened yet.

And, it used to be me. I used to do the math – how many months could I make mortgage payments if I lost my job? How many days could I feed my family? And, it’s one thing planning for that, but I was also sometimes scared.

Until one day I just decided to not be scared – I’d go through life and do my best, and let the chips fall where they may. I decided that it was fine to plan, it was fine to economize to save money, but it wasn’t fine to worry.

So I stopped.

It was weird – one night I was worried, and the next night I decided that I wasn’t going to worry anymore. I just made the conscious decision I wasn’t going to worry anymore about that. It was the last significant worry that I gave up. I also worried about my short attention span, but that problem seems to solve itself.

The Kamikaze instructor to his class: “Now, class, pay attention because I’m only going to do this once.”

And it’s not like I live in a world where bad things don’t happen. I know bad things happen – horrible things. But today, I can choose not to worry about them.

Heck, I can pick something that is real and we can be certain that is going to happen – death. The shadow of death looms above us all. But to be consumed by it so that it causes a life lived in fear? That’s like already being dead.

It might surprise some people, but death is something that isn’t new. Seneca, the (very dead) Roman stoic philosopher, said:

“No man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it. Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.”

Kelvin and Celsius interviewed for a job, but Celsius got it. Kelvin absolutely didn’t have a degree.

Reflect on death – if you knew that you wouldn’t wake up ever again, what would you do with your remaining hours? This reflection on death has multiple values to you and your character:

It reinforces that which is important to us, here today.
It exposes the frivolous that consume too much of our time.
It shows what’s really of value – the money you made will be less important than the lives you’ve changed.
You don’t have to worry about returning that library book.

Today is pretty good. Enjoy it. Skip the regret, the worry, and the dread. While you’re breathing, live.

What can you make happen today?

The Funniest Post You’ll Read Today About The Stoics

“First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man you seek?” – Silence of the Lambs

Never trust Hunter Biden to pick up pizza and coke for a party.

The last five posts have been fairly dark, and Monday’s post will be dark, too. I already know that dark humor is like aid for the citizens of Ukraine – not everyone gets it (this is a repeat from 1932, LINK). That’s to be expected. We live in interesting times. But the good news is, it’s Friday. Last Friday, I happened upon a friend. I promise, I have more than one, despite what the NSA says.

In the World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold and Silver!

My friend noted that he had to go shopping, and he wasn’t particularly looking forward to it. I responded, “Well, Marcus Aurelius said that you can find happiness in whatever moment, and the limiting factor is often what you feel about the situation, rather than the situation.” I said this even though I haven’t been shopping since Jimmy Kimmel was funny.

He smiled. We continued talking, and he went off shopping. As I was sitting at my table, I found this quote, from the inestimable P. G. Wodehouse’s , as found here (LINK) from his Jeeves and Wooster series of books (also a television series starring Stephen Fry as Jeeves and Hugh Laurie as Wooster). Setup – Jeeves is the intelligent, dry-witted, valet to Bertie Wooster, an idle British aristocrat. Thanks to Wodehouse, hilarity often ensues:

“Who do you think I am, Alfred Einstein?”

I turned to Jeeves. “So, Jeeves!”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do you mean, ‘Yes, sir’?”

“I was endeavouring [Wilder note: the British cannot spell] to convey my appreciation of the fact that your position is in many respects somewhat difficult, sir. But I wonder if I might call your attention to an observation of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. He said: ‘Does aught befall you? It is good. It is part of the destiny of the Universe ordained for you from the beginning. All that befalls you is part; of the great web’.”

I breathed a bit stertorously. “He said that, did he?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you can tell him from me he’s an ass.”

Bonus points if you knew what stertorously meant. I had to look it up. Snort.

Is she attractive? Neigh.

I’ve heard it said that life is a tragedy to those that feel, a comedy to those that think. Given that, the really funny part of life is that when times are down we don’t want to listen to the simple stoic Truths of life:

Control what you can, don’t let those things you don’t control (like the Wendy’s® drive through line, or Hunter Biden’s amazing appetite for crack) drive you nuts.
There is Virtue. We can spend our lives splitting hairs about what is virtuous, or, we could just be virtuous. Be Virtuous.
Most passions aren’t healthy. Some are, but taken to extreme, even those become unhealthy, like when I lift weights and become so strong that I can rip apart the fabric of the Universe just by tensing my glistening pectoral muscles? See, unhealthy. Understand the difference, and don’t be ruled by emotion. Passion is for 18 year olds, reason is for adults.
Johnny Depp was pretty good in the movie Dead Man.
Seek wisdom to guide your virtue.
Seek justice to create a more virtuous society. Not an equitable society, but a virtuous one. Let Disney™ know that there’s a difference.
Understand that courage is required – Virtue often comes with a price, which may be about $3.50, in 1973. Or a career in 2020.
Living outside of Virtue is the clearest definition of Vice.
Possessions are, for the most part, neither good nor bad, but what we do with them determines their value. Anyone want to buy a slightly used copy of the Necronomicon?

The lures that pull us away from being virtuous are many. PEZ®. TikGram©. InstaFace©. SnapTwit®. PornHULU©. TinderMAX®. EskimoBrotherDataBase (EBDB)™. The idea is that if we’re distracted, we don’t focus on the things that are important in life, like virtue.

One of the things that sets humans apart is that we think about our actions and the consequences. The result of all the lures? It pulls us away from improving ourselves, from having introspection and working through our issues. Issues? I don’t have issues. Like most people, I have subscriptions.

Surround yourself with people who have issues – they always have beer. And 21-year-old nannys.

True life: I was having a problem, something that really, really made me mad, like the Game of Thrones™ parents who named their kids “Daenerys” saw her turn into a war criminal. I didn’t let it consume me like a dragon consuming a daycare center, but in those small, still moments of life that issue managed to creep into my conscious.

Like when I woke up at 3am and it didn’t mean I had to go to the bathroom (which never happens, because I’ve evolved beyond needing liquids to live), I’d think about it. Finally, a hypnogogic conversation with myself provided the answer.

“John, what would you tell your best friend if he had this same problem?”

“Self,” I answered, “I would tell my friend to let it go. It happened a year ago. It wasn’t personal. And it’s probably for the best.”

Coffee spelled backwards is eeffoc. And before I have coffee, I don’t give eeffoc.

I had clarity. I had an answer. I had closure. And it didn’t come from social media. It came from thinking and understanding what advice I’d give my closest friend. Since I hadn’t talked with, well, really anyone, I had to deal with it myself.

I finally did deal with it. And now, when I wake up at 3AM? I worry about the devil since I haven’t had to pee in a month.

Introspection is our friend, as long as we don’t allow ourselves to drown in a sea of self-pity, and as long as we use it to measure ourselves against virtue. How do we measure it?

As near as I can find, Marcus Aurelius was religious, but certainly not a Christian. As Caesar, he was the Humongous Maximus of religious stuff, and his writings wondered about what impact the gods had in the lives of men, at least after he got that petroleum from those pesky kids.

Marcus Aurelius, the early years.

The impact of religion is enormous. When we live without a concept of a greater purpose, it’s like having pancakes without syrup, or thermonuclear weapons without the initial fission core that puts the hydrogen in H-Bomb. With no greater purpose, our lives are less than what they could be. As I’ve said before, most atheists aren’t atheists – they actually hate God, generally because they know that the life they are leading and/or the choices they are making are not virtuous. They know it.

Of course, I’ve met (and almost every atheist reader here) atheists that don’t hate God. Those folks? We’re cool. Generally, they don’t dislike people like me who believe in God, they just approach the world in a different way. But I’ve noticed this about the atheists that don’t hate God – they generally like living in a society where people believe in God. Why? It’s a more virtuous society, and the streets are very empty on Sunday morning.

I won’t hold myself up to be Virtuous, or even virtuous. I will note that I really, really do try. I think I’m more virtuous this year than last year, though I shower less because of my greater virtue. And that’s the point. Every day, I try to be better inside than the last. I try to make the world a bit better than it was the day before. And I try to tell the Truth.

Unfortunately, I bet sometimes people still say after a post like this, “John Wilder? Well, you can tell him from me, he’s an ass.”

Ha!

I’m not even awake.

The Space Between The Words

“Well, I don’t care if it was some dork in a costume. For one brief moment, I felt the heartbeat of creation, and it was one with my own.” – Futurama

I love my step ladder, but it’ll never be my real ladder.

It was March of 2005. I remember it fairly well. It was when we were living in Alaska. The move had been a big risk for The Mrs. and I – moving north across the better part of a continent for work. I was fortunate to have a good boss and good co-workers.

It was there that I had what I would normally call an epiphany, but epiphany seems too strong. A realization? Maybe. Regardless, to me, it seemed profound.

The Space Between The Words . . . it was a throwaway line by a guest on a radio show that The Mrs. and I were listening to on KFBX, the local AM station. But sometimes a phrase sticks with you, and this one stuck with me like the phrase “floozy crotch snout” sticks to Kamala Harris.

Or am I the only one who calls her that?

Yup, real quote. Her real words are better than almost any meme.

Regardless . . . The Space Between The Words. It seemed as insignificant as Hunter Biden’s willpower until in that hypnogogic state between wakefulness and sleep I thought about it . . . The Space Between The Words.

What exists there, in The Space Between The Words?

My realization was that The Space Between The Words isn’t made of silence. It is far from that dead and sterile nothingness that silence implies.

My HVAC guy sure has his ducts in a row.

For me, that space is infinity. It is the engine of creation itself.

I wrote “The Space Between The Words” down on a piece of Post-It® note and taped it to my computer monitor. I still have that piece of now-faded pale yellow paper stuck in a book I carry with me every day. To me, it is a touchstone and a personal reminder.

Why does it matter to me?

When I am talking, (or doing public speaking, which I do 10,000% more often than I want to do and potentially 20,000% more than the audience wants me to do) if I ever get flustered, I can just stop. I can pause. I realize that I can tap into The Space Between The Words, that creative power that allows me to choose whichever of the thousands of words I know as the very next one. I get to choose that next phrase. I get to choose the way the conversation can go. I get to create the possibilities with only the choice of my words.

The Space Between The Words is crucial.

If I choose well, I can turn a simple conversation into something meaningful. One of the powers of words is that, when applied correctly, is that they can become something transformative. A simple conversation can change a person’s life forever. Especially if it’s on tape – just ask Richard Nixon.

My buddy and I got a huge contract to make toy vampires. There’s only two of us – I have to make every second Count.

The choice of words is, as I mentioned before, the power of creation. I don’t claim to own that power. Again, the word I would use isn’t that I came up with the idea or invented the concept I’m describing now. I just discovered something that I’m sure many others before me knew was there, just like I discovered that someone was keeping a list of all of my jokes in a dad-o-base.

I won’t claim to be a great or charismatic public speaker. I’ve had my moments. But I do know that I’ve changed at least one or two lives through things that I have said, and I do know that I’ve said more of what I mean with greater clarity when I allowed The Space Between The Words to guide me.

I bet no one expected that meme.

Likewise, when I write, I don’t claim to be a great writer. I do, however (when it’s not 3am!) try to carefully edit what I write so that it has the meaning I want to share. Sometimes I don’t get there. Sometimes, when writing one of these posts, the content takes a sharp turn, and I let it run. I know that the full idea I was trying to get out will get born, eventually.

Or it won’t.

That’s the beauty of The Space Between The Words. Even when writing, it is there.

And, to a certain extent, it has changed me. I’m no longer afraid to stop, to pause, and to collect. In one sense, that vast galaxy of creation that I feel I’ve tapped into is something much greater than I will ever be, especially if I keep losing weight.

I wonder what other planet worms exist on . . . otherwise why do we call them Earth worms?

In a religious sense, it feels like I’ve come into a brief (and unworthy!) contact with Logos – a deep universal well that I can only see dimly. Not Legos®, but Logos. Legos™ just hurt your foot when you walk down the hall in the dark.

In my experience, The Space Between The Words contains wisdom. The Space Between the Words contains creation. The Space Between The Words contains . . . redemption.

Listen for it – I assure you there is no silence there between the words. There is no self-doubt. It is calm. It is patient. It is Good. And, for me, it has certainly been worth keeping that Post-It® note around.

Warning: next week we’ll take a darker turn, probably all week, if not longer. I’ll still try to be the “Mary Poppins of Doom” and interject humor and a smile where I can, but realize – there are many twists and turns ahead, and probabilities leading to a dark future are rapidly coalescing.

41 Things I Think I Know (2022 Revision)

“That’s a short list. That can’t be everyone you want to kill. Are you sure you’re not forgetting someone? – Game of Thrones

The Mrs. asked me to put ketchup on the shopping list. Now I can’t read it.

This is a revamp of an older post from way back in 2017. Are these fundamental rules? No. But between when I first wrote them and today I didn’t see much I’d change, except item 22.

Tell the truth. This will have the beneficial added benefit of changing your behavior so you’re not ashamed of what you do. The whole truth. Even about that. And that. People might not like you, but they’ll respect you. Except for the thing about the cat. Keep that to yourself – no one will understand.
Showing up on time is important. It shows respect. It is also is easy to track, if you’re a boss wanting to get rid of people. Even if you do a great job, you’ll be the first to go if you show up late. I guess that’s changed since the invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions – everyone has stopped Russian.
Don’t give up. Sometimes break-out success means ten years of study and effort and of not giving up. Even Johnny Depp succeeded, which proves that anyone can.
There are no friends like those formed in youth. When you’re ten, there are no pretenses. The cruel calculus of testosterone and estrogen has yet to set in. Greed is not an issue.
Be nice. Life is already really hard enough for many people. Don’t be their villain, unless it pays really well, and even then, the karma is . . . tough.

One time I asked for a lobster tail at dinner. The waitress started, “Well one day this brave lobster . . . .”

When you speak, or write, or think, you own the space between the words. You have the ability to turn your words into something amazing, since infinite possibility lies between one word and the next. This is the one most people will ignore, but one of my most powerful things that I found out for myself.
Don’t continually do things you hate, or things that make you feel like a failure. Putting yourself in situations like that is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It also destroys your ability to naturally smell like musk and sandalwood.
Apologize. But only when you are wrong, which, if you regularly read this blog, is hardly ever. If you were not wrong, don’t apologize.
Be of value. If you don’t contribute, you’re part of the problem. Which problem? All of them.
Don’t make yourself into a victim. Almost everybody is where they are because of their choices. Own your choices, and own your outcomes. No one likes victims.

Jussie was just sent to prison. I hope he doesn’t beat himself up over that.

If you really are a victim? Act like you’re not. Because even if victimhood status is legit, see item 10. No one likes people who act like victims, even when they really are.
Opportunity is found where responsibility is neglected.
Solve someone else’s biggest problem: that’s the virtuous road to wealth. It’s also harder.
Remember, giving a gift creates a debt in the mind of the recipient. The larger the gift, the bigger the debt. And nobody likes someone they owe a lot of money to – giving large gifts can make people not like you.
If you don’t want to go to bed because you don’t want to get up tomorrow? Fix your life.
If you don’t want to get out of bed because you don’t want to live the day? Fix your life.
Have children and have them early. But only if you have a spouse. And can keep your spouse.
Cooking your own food is cheaper. And it gives time for conversation. Some of the best conversations occur around the barbeque grill and the deck late into the night.

I grilled for the board of directors once. It pleased the steakholders.

Be tough when you have to be. To be kind when toughness is required results in tragedy.
A pleasure repeated too often becomes a punishment.
Beware of ignoring public opinion. Public opinion resulted in witch burning, the guillotine and Hula Hoops ®. You can be on the other side, but understand there may be consequences.
Don’t see conspiracy when simple laziness, plain stupidity, or normal greed would explain the situation just as well. Removed after living through 2019, 2020, 2021 and the first quarter of 2022.
Schools used to be run by school boards. Now they’re run by unions and lawsuits. None of these groups have the students in mind.
You don’t win ‘em all. Deal with it.
You are the sum of your experience, your intellect, your body, your surroundings, and the people you interact with. You also control your own change. So, get up. The you of today isn’t ready for tomorrow unless the you of today is changing to meet those challenges.
Betrayal of trust is an indication of character. Never trust someone who betrays you. Forgive? Perhaps. Trust again? Never.
Real personal changes don’t happen unless an emotional experience occurs. The bigger the change, the more significant the experience needed.

What’s worse than biting into an apple and finding a worm? Getting shot.

You have your shot. Would have and could have don’t exist. (Unless the Many Worlds Theory of quantum mechanics is correct, in which case all things happen, so have another beer.)
The best (and maybe only) way to win at gambling is to own the casino.
No matter how awesome your idea, it has no value unless you make it real. This takes risk, execution, and work. Which is a lot more difficult than talking about your wonderful idea.
Unless your boss is a good boss, being younger and smarter than him won’t impress him, it will make him jealous or fearful. Neither of those things are good.
Having a boss that makes less money than you is also not good. Envy is a powerful emotion.
Know the strengths and weaknesses of your (biological) parents. You’re not too much different than them. At best, you can avoid their weaknesses. At worst, you’ll follow every one of their downsides.
Tip well, if you can afford it. Waiting on tables is tough work. And if you do tip well? They’ll remember you and take care of you. It’s nice to show up and find the right bottle of wine waiting for you.
You’re not going to win the lottery. Unless it’s the one that Shirley Jackson wrote about. (LINK)
If you’re traveling in winter, travel on the top half of your gas tank. It doesn’t cost any more.
Keep your napkin in your lap while at the dinner table.
Always use deodorant. And if in doubt? Have a breath mint, too.
Keep in touch with people who have helped you, so you can help them. And because you’re a person.
If you have too much stuff, your stuff will own you. Except books. You can have as many of those as you want. And ammo.
The only way that you can know another person across centuries is to read what they’ve written. Have you written anything worthy of reading by your great-great grandchildren? No? Get to work.

What’s the name of the Grim Reaper’s dog? Snuffles.

You’re going to die, and we all die alone. Understand that the only person with you throughout your life is . . . you. Be prepared to keep yourself and those you love alive in any emergency you can imagine. Our time will come when it comes, but there’s no reason not to push it back as far as you can.

The Modern World Part IV: What To Do?

“Would you say I have a plethora of piñatas?” – Three Amigos

He was also the first person to use CTRL-C.

So, I promised three blogs on the Modern World. They are here – The Modern World Part I: Health And Strippers, The Modern World Part II: Wages, Subscriptions, and Dating, and The Modern World Part III: You Exist To Be Farmed. As I sat preparing to do the blog tonight, I realized there was one more post to provide the capstone to the series, which I present in this post.

How do we deal with modernity outside of moving to a cabin in Montana?

Listen, despite the name, Ted made more than one bomb.

First, if you’re not healthy, get healthy. That’s actually horribly simple to do for most people.

Limit the amount of food that you eat – we’re provided with a plethora of food choices daily. Most of it I don’t need. As I’ve railed for years, most (not all!) people in the United States could go without food for two weeks with no ill effects, and many would find the experience a positive, not a negative. Here is some sound advice I’ve incorporated into my life: you can’t outrun your teeth. But I can outrun most Leftists – you can tell they like carbs.
Sure donuts (in metric, doughnuts) are good. Avoid them. Will one a week kill you? No. Will one a day? Maybe. Same with chips. I had a “snack size” bag of chips two weeks ago. Since I’ve been eating well, they made me feel queasy. Same with donuts. When your diet is good meat and real vegetables, donuts and that gooey cheese they serve with movie-theater nachos taste like . . . a chemical product. Which they are. Corollary: don’t let your teeth dig your grave. I wouldn’t want to ruin the gravedigger’s hole career.
Pick foods that are as close as possible to actual food. If you’re gonna have a chicken sandwich at McDonalds®, pick the one that’s made out of actual chicken rather than some sort of processed chicken stuff. A baked potato or French fries? Baked, thank you. Seriously, once I stopped eating crap, crap tasted like crap. If it has vegetable oil or a list of ingredients longer than, say, seven, once a week. At most. Heck, I even had a kid’s meal at McDonalds today. It sure made his parents mad.
The food pyramid is even poor geometry – heck, I read Pharaoh used slaves to build his. Bricks might have been easier? Regardless, real fats and meat (butter, a well-marbled ribeye) are good for you and make you feel full. Flour spikes your insulin and all the breads (except the ones I make from grinding the bones of door-to-door salesmen) are made from flour. Insulin tells your body to store fat. Do the math.
Get exercise. It’s good for you. If nothing else, walk. If you can’t walk, undulate like a snake on a baby oil-covered shower curtain. One thing I’ve seen in life – when a man stops walking, death isn’t far away. Keep moving. Even if your legs are weak, you can still do diddly-squats.
Avoid it, except, say, once a week. Maybe. I’ll have an entire post on that at some point.

The other day I said, “Alexa, turn on CNN®. I want to hear the news.” Alexa responded, “I’m sorry Lord John, you’ll have to pick one or the other.”

Second, feed your mind.

Feed your mind like you feed your body. Go to the source, and check everyone (even me!) and determine what isn’t Truth. Journalists are now being taught in journalism school (it’s like real school, but they use pictures and coloring books) that being an advocate for the globalist, Leftist viewpoint is the point of news reporting. Understand that virtually every news story you are reading today in mainstream media is written by a rich kid who wasn’t smart enough to go to law school and believes that lying to you is ethical, as long as it advances The Agenda and The Narrative. And sometimes they change The Agenda and The Narrative in less than a week. Don’t believe me? Ask Psaki about COVID.
The media lies. But I repeat myself. “Truth is the first casualty of war,” quoted Ethel Annakin-Skywalker in 1915 according to something I read on the Internet. Remember that “nurse” who told Congress of Iraqi soldiers tossing infants out when they took incubators from hospitals when Iraq invaded Kuwait? She was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. Look it up. Before you believe a single thing coming from Ukraine, look it up, and understand this: your emotion is the aim. Heck, I hear manipulating your emotions is all the rage.
Propaganda: even when you’re aware of propaganda, it’s effective.
Look for things that make you happy. When I go on the Internet, sometimes (when I’m in a growly mood) I look for things that will make me mad. There’s plenty. Twitter® is a sea of it. Most social media is a sea of it. That’s why (except for when writing for research purposes) I avoid it like the plague – remember, all work and no plague makes for an entirely different 13^th
For 95% of people, there is no reason you can’t be happy in this moment, right now. There are people in this world who have serious problems, but for the most part you’re really not one of them. Even if you are, why would you let those problems rob you from a moment of being happy? There is a time to grieve, a time to be sad. When you let it rule your life, you’re a victim. Stop it. Don’t make me come over there and make you.

I brought a grenade to a water balloon fight once. It did level the playing field.

Then, there’s marriage. These rules aren’t for 1970, (though they would have worked) but more for today – the world has moved on. It is far harder today to find a good match than it was even when I met The Mrs. two decades ago. If you’re happily married, ignore and skip to the next section.

If you’re not married, take care in picking your partner. A lot of care. A bad match will last just as long as a good one (if you have kids) and be amazingly costly. And never pick woman obsessed with Star Wars® – divorce is strong with this one.
Avoid dating apps. They’re really just casual sex apps. And never go casual. Get competitive.
If you’re a young dude (below 35), try to get a wife who is no older than 20-24 years old and marry for values and character. Why? Nothing good happens with a single woman in their mid to late 20s now.
If you’re a young woman, find a quality guy who has values and character, and stay a virgin until marriage.
If you’re a young person, especially a man, avoid marrying a spouse whose parents divorced when they were young (0-16). Understand their family and their values. Understand that the values on display with the parents are another clue to how your future spouse will be.
If you’re a man, don’t let your wife’s work interfere with raising the kids and keeping the house. Raising kids with decent values are more important than most luxuries.
And while we’re there about kids, understand this – the move to turn government schools into an indoctrination center has never been higher. Which values do you want your children to have? Yours? The governments?

But I hear it’s at a pretty low interest rate. Heck, I think we could refinance New Zealand to make the balloon payment.

What about economics?

Avoid debt to the extent possible. Never borrow to buy a car, unless it’s the only choice. Never buy a new car unless your net worth is over $1 million or a company you own is paying for it. Heck, I hear the best way to get back on your feet is to miss two car payments . . . .
I have one. I could pay it off in cash. Why could I pay it off? Because I never borrow to buy cars (since 1997). I hear Spongebob® isn’t paying his mortgage – his house is underwater.
Understand that luxury has multiple costs: first, there’s the cash that has to be paid every month. Second, there’s a moral cost. Just like a donut, occasional luxury won’t dull the character. But every month, and forever? It robs bank accounts and robs the most precious thing that any person controls – their time.
Video games are a luxury. If a person spends 20 hours a week playing video games, what else could have been done with their time? Imagine if Hemingway spent his spare time playing Grand Theft Auto instead of sitting under the Catalan Sun drinking wine from a bota and watching bullfights? GTA is a life stealer. And for Ernest, so was a shotgun.
Why live in a big city? The high housing cost? The crush of incessant humanity surrounding you? Oh, yeah, you can get Thai food at 3am.
Realize the dollar is going to die. The United States prints them, and then other people take them. When Jen P-saki said that this was “Putin’s Inflation” I asked the question: “When did Putin take control of our money supply and then started printing trillions of dollars?” If you salted away a bit of gold and silver (and lead, too) the best case is that you could give it to your kids when you pass on. The worst case? Well, between you and me, silver and gold might be the biggest bargains of the century in 2022 (I am NOT an investment advisor).
Realize that in the future, there is a high degree of probability that having “divergent” opinions to The Narrative will result in cutting people off from their money – it has already happened in Canada. You may not believe it, but it’s Tru-deau. How will you prepare for that?
You have a year’s worth of food, right? You buy a little extra each month and salt it away? It’s a lot easier to do when the shelves are full, and when shortages hit you’re not part of the problem – you’re part of the solution because you won’t be adding to the panic. It’s not hoarding if you bought it before the panic hits.

I heard he was sad later in life. He had a Kipling depression.

The Modern World thinks that this is a new scenario. It isn’t. Kipling wrote about this many, many years ago in The Gods of The Copybook Headings:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Modern World Part III: You Exist To Be Farmed

“I have nipples, Greg. Could you milk me?” – Meet the Parents

Klaus, and his cat, Mrs. Triddlesworth.

This is the third and final (for now) commentary about modern life and what modernity has brought us. The first one was dealing with health (The Modern World Part I: Health And Strippers), the second with life in general (The Modern World Part II: Wages, Subscriptions, and Dating). This last one deals with the essence of the modern world: Money.

We are being farmed. For money. For time. For votes.

I started noticing the money-farming thing in the 1990s. I looked at what Sears© was doing back then because I was at the point where I needed to start paying bills or cultivating the lifestyle of an urban outdoorsman. To me, what Sears® was attempting seemed obvious – they were attempting to see what the average family spent each month and were trying to swallow it all.

You could even get a Sears© store credit card to pay for it all (plus a wee 20% interest fee). Sadly, I heard that their Sears™ credit card database has just been hacked – they now have the personal data for everyone born between 1899 and 1921. Sears™, of course, sold everything from tools to toddler beds to toasters to towels to trench coats to twine.

But that wasn’t enough. Sears™ bought Allstate™ so they could insure your house and car. Sears™ bought Dean Witter Investments©, Coldwell Banker Real Estate™, and developed the Discover™ card to boot.

Outside of food, you could get a majority of your needs covered if you had a family just by buying stuff from Sears© product and their companies. You could invest, buy a home, and even (in some places) have Sears™ mechanics work on your car.

I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a Toys’r’Us© kid . . . bankrupt and empty inside.

This strategy failed, spectacularly, because Sears™ forgot how to sell stuff – it imagined it was a finance-real estate – insurance company and forgot that the big business that brought people in the door was the stuff. Today, there are fewer Sears™ stores left than movies Nic Cage did in the last three months, so only 36 or so.

But the concept of “farming people for monthly payments” stuck with me. The very best companies start with an idea of how to serve people, but at some point, the goal of all of them become money extraction. Then they (generally) fail. I’m looking at you, General Electric®.

Sometimes, companies even get the law changed to make a product legally required. Example?

Car insurance. There was a time it wasn’t required. As of 2020 (the latest data I could find), two states don’t require it, but the other 48 require it (or bonding). Before 1956, no states required car insurance. Is it a good idea? Yeah. But I think the biggest proponents were car insurance companies who were tired of covering for the 45% of accidents that were caused by women drivers, which is weird. The steering wheel isn’t even on their side.

What’s the worst thing about parallel parking? The witnesses.

What other regular bills do most people pay in 2022?

Cable TV,
Subscription streaming,
Internet,
Elvis impersonators,
Property taxes,
Mortgage or rent,
Trash,
PEZ®,
Water,
Water soluble dog wax,
Sewer,
Johnny Depp, and
Homeowners’ associations

I could keep going. Everyone wants a check, and most of them want it monthly so they can be as regular as Biden’s strokes. Some of the things on the list are optional, and some are compulsory. It took The Mrs. and I quite a lot of hunting when we moved to Texas to find a house that didn’t have a homeowners’ association. And Johnny Depp? Who can avoid that on a Saturday night?

But the farming gets worse. It used to be that many (not all) families in the 1950s could get by with only one income. Then, enter feminism. It was far from natural – but women were made to feel in some way inadequate if they didn’t burn their bras, start smoking, and go to work and type PowerPoints®. Or whatever women did at work in the 1960s. Help the Clampetts? I’m at a loss.

I gave a friend a book for his birthday. I hope he returns it on time, it’s due in two weeks.

The number of houses for families didn’t go up any faster, but the income of the families did as mothers entered the workforce. So, as women began to make money, the same number of families were chasing the same number of houses (suburbia could only grow so fast), but with higher income.

The result? Housing prices went up so the standard of living didn’t even increase that much. The nuclear family, already pulled from the extended family by events I’ve talked about in earlier posts in this series, began to feel the stress. The net gain from women entering the workforce for many families was nearly zero, if not negative.

Don’t believe me? Check housing prices around big cities.

As the stress from two working families shot up, the divorce rate went up. And government dependency went up. Thus?

People farmed for their labor became dependent people farmed for votes. How can the Left keep winning like this? That, sadly, wasn’t the only big economic change to hit the modern world.

College became (during the 1970s) another way to farm people for money. The Average Midwestern College® in the 1970s could be paid for with a typical part-time job with money left over for pizza, Pepsi®, and a Ford® Pinto™. The Pinto® might have been the best argument ever for car insurance.

Before then, most people didn’t go to college, because it wasn’t required to get a good job or start a good business. But as numbers of people attending college went up, supply and demand kicked in.

The supply of college slots increased, sure, but the colleges found that they could charge a lot more for school. But politicians decided that everyone should be allowed to go to school, so they introduced the Guaranteed Student Loan. This was a government program where you could borrow enough to cover the tuition at most schools.

Okay, say it out loud.

Heck, I’d like to thank student loans for getting me through grad school. I don’t think I can ever repay you. I kid. But the last loan payment was due on 1/1/2013. I made sure to not pay ahead, so if 2012 was the end of the world, at least that last payment would have been a freebie.

Colleges, of course, decided that you could pay the borrowed amount PLUS more money, so tuition went up with loan amounts. More students plus higher tuition led to more loans. This led to more debt.

Now the average student loan debt is over $39,000. The total student loan debt in the country is $1,7 trillion.

Where did this $1.7 trillion go? To climbing walls. To cool dorm rooms. To spring breaks. To new buildings. And, far too much of it went to Leftist professors teaching their students that the problem is too much tradition, and the solution is even more modernity and “free” medical care.

What kind of Medicare would Moses have? Part C.

Yes. Medical care. In general, the very best medical advice I’ve seen says to stay away from doctors as much as you can. Eat healthy food. Get exercise. Stay hydrated. Wash your hands. Try not to get crushed under heavy things. Avoid Chicago.

The problem is that none of this is very profitable for the medical industry. Healthy people are lousy customers. Goldman Sachs® asked it themselves, “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” Yes, this is a real quote.

Well, no, curing patients doesn’t work for big financial companies – they hate that idea. No one makes money off of diet foods if you maintain a healthy weight. No one makes money off of insulin if you can avoid diabetes. And they actually want you to get cancer. This is again a comment from the same Goldman Sachs® report: “Where an incident pool remains stable (e.g., in cancer) the potential for a cure poses less risk to the sustainability of a franchise.”

Hmmm. Does the Pfizer™ vaccine make more sense now? If they have their way, boosting will be an annual event. Does that sound sustainable? I’m sure Goldman Sachs© is thrilled.

Are psychoactive medications sustainable?

But people owning things appears to be cramping the style of the elites. The latest idea that has been widely talked about is the Great Reset – a transition away from past economic ideas, such as “ownership” and “family” and “freedom” and “sleeping in on Saturday morning”.

We’ve been moving towards the Great Reset. According to their thoughts: We’ll own nothing, and like it. Then, our time could be farmed forever. Our desires could be controlled and programmed. We’ll like having nothing because that’s what they designed. And they’ll further atomize and alienate us.

Because that’s profitable. Don’t believe me? Listen to them, in their own words:

The Modern World, Part I: Health And Strippers

“Learning about Cuba, and having some food.” – Fast Times at Ridgemont High

“Sir, I found the IED – Ice Cream, Eggos® and Diet Coke™.”

I had (before Vlad decided to put on the Imperial March and send the tanks down south) promised a three-post series based around a single theme. As the name of the blog implies, this first one covers the “health” theme of the blog . . . . Unless events in Ukraine dictate, expect parts two and three on Monday and Wednesday.

What happens when society conspires to make people . . . unhealthy? We’ve experienced an upheaval in the traditions and previously self-imposed and society-imposed limits to behavior (behaviour is the metric spelling for you in Chairman Trudeau’s People’s Republic of Canada).

By (nearly) any measure the United States is far less healthy as a nation than it was five or six decades ago. About only good thing we’ve seen is a lowering in heart disease and other diseases related to smoking. That’s a bright spot. Many of the metrics are fairly grim, though on other health statistics. Even life expectancy, which had been increasing, is now trending downward faster than Kamala Harris at the county fair zipper pull.

So, Joe Biden sent her over to manage the Ukraine situation. I’ll bet she’ll suck at that, too.

I’ll throw out this idea: many of the health issues that we are facing are the product of modernity – changes in society that break with time tested traditions:

I can pull up numerous articles that point to how America is the fattest that it has ever been. Homer Simpson was portrayed as comically obese in the 1990s when he reached the weight of 239. Now that qualifies him to wear medium clothes. From the child’s section.
We’re also at a high point of kids being raised in broken homes, which causes health issues as well. I mean, if being in jail is a health issue.
Finally, we’re in many ways unhappier than ever before – opioid deaths aren’t happening because life is peachy. Kids in high school today don’t think they’ll do as well financially as their parents. And people are looking for increasing escapes from reality.

Let’s start with weight – I’ll spend more time here since I think it’s a topic where we tend to blame people because they’re fat. However, I am not particularly a proponent of the idea that self-control just disappeared and that’s why America decided to pack on the pounds. Nope. Things changed which made it much easier to pack on the Dorito® muscle.

This is exactly what AOC weighs when she has both her saddle and feedbag on.

Join me for a minute in a time machine back to the 1960s. What did people eat?

Food. Duh.

But what kind of food? Food with much lower levels of processing. For example, frozen pizzas and microwave Pizza Rolls® and Bagel Bites™ didn’t exist. If you wanted a TV dinner, they were required to be placed in an oven for approximately sixty years and then pulled out. I never had a 1960’s version of a TV dinner, but the photos I’ve seen made them look as attractive as Nancy Pelosi.

They were a novelty.

When I was growing up, Ma Wilder made dinner. Sure, she bought noodles sometimes, but she also made her own, from scratch. I can’t remember my mother ever making something from a kit. She bought me some pizza kits about twice a year where you made your own dough because I think it amused her to watch me try to cook.

No, when Ma Wilder made mashed potatoes, she started with . . . potatoes. Then she added milk and butter and salt. Four ingredients. She even made gravy from scratch. Much of the food Ma bought didn’t have labels. Why would you need to label a steak? I mean, the only ingredient is: steak. Same with lettuce. Same with tomatoes. It’s . . . food.

I think I channeled Aesop for a minute there.

How many moms in 2020 have the time to cook like Ma Wilder did? How many are, instead, thrown to work and then due to time pressures toss the kids Pop Tarts® and Tropicana™ and Kid Cuisine©? When I was a single dad (and much stupider than today) I’ll raise my hand – I did.

So did/do a lot of people. The food that is convenient is categorically different. And, at least until inflation makes it nigh unaffordable, it’s now ubiquitous. Soda pop costs less now (adjusted for inflation) than ever. Buy it in the 2 liter (2 milligrams in metric litres) bottles and it’s amazingly cheap. Buy the off-brand stuff and you can get it inexpensively enough that you could bathe in it.

Food is also available all the time, everywhere. When I was a kid, there was breakfast (I always skipped it due to the high quality of my genetics) lunch at school (I nearly always skipped that because I could buy a comic instead of lunch if I saved my lunch money) and then dinner at home. Mom may or may not have made dessert – it was generally a once a week thing. And convenience stores are selling Snacky Cakes© at 3am. When I was a kid, everyone was asleep at 3am.

They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. But what if there’s no fast to break?

Compare that to today? All school food is free for all students this year. Pugsley could have free breakfast, a free snack, a free lunch, and then a free afternoon snack if he wanted. Every day. And then dinner, and then a fridge filled with snacks.

The cooks at school aren’t (mostly) getting actual food ingredients to cook, either. They’re getting highly processed foods that contain (in some cases) ingredients other than salt that were mined instead of grown. They contain oils and chemicals that were made in facilities that would make an oil refinery blush. Oh, wait, the “vegetable” oil is made in a refinery that uses solvent extraction and then bombards the oil with hydrogen to create a chemical reaction to make it shelf stable.

Do we wonder why we’re fat? We’re not eating food. And what we are eating is so available that we’re stuffing ourselves with it constantly.

Why?

Moms have to work because society says that making PowerPoints® is more important than raising kids. Besides, it takes a village, right? Oh, and since all the moms are working, a family can’t afford a house on just one income. That’s, of course, if the family is intact. Single moms and dads have even less time.

Yup. This modern world is a winner, am I right?

I tried pole dancing once, but Kowalski didn’t like it.

That brings us to issue two: single parents and blended families. Do I understand that it’s sometimes required? Yes. I was married to someone before The Mrs., and it didn’t work because it was a mixed marriage – I was human and she . . . wasn’t. I kid. She might be human, but the test kept turning to smoke when her DNA was exposed to light.

Society has made divorce a go-to option. Again, I’ve been there as a parent.

But not as a kid.

I had two parents for most of my childhood, which was awesome. (I was adopted after the mother wolf left me on the Wilder doorstep, which was seen as a fulfillment of the Great Prophecy that I would be the one to unite the mayonnaise and mustard – the condisatz haderwich – I even survived the Everlasting Gomstopper© jabbar.) Sure, they argued. Sure, there were problems from time to time.

I never had to worry, though, who Ma or Pa was going to bring home.

I never had to help them emotionally through a divorce. I got to be a kid. And when Ma said, “Wait until your father gets home,” I was damn scared. They were united in punishment, and they would absolutely not undercut each other.

But Pa saved his blue shield for special occasions.

If I was in trouble, I couldn’t escape the consequences.

Now? The pathology of single parenthood is clear:

43% of prison inmates grew up in a single-parent household
90% of repeat juvenile arsonists live only with their mother
75% of patients in drug abuse facilities came from a single-parent household
63% of youth suicides are from homes without a father

I could go on and on. Society has made divorce by women for “fun and prizes” cheap and easy. It’s even celebrated by the “I don’t need no man” crowd. Who suffers? Society. And the kids.

So, the tradition of divorce being very, very hard to get and socially undesirable seems so outdated now. Right?

Let’s add on our final contestant for this post: the financial pressures and collapsing economy brought out by a relentless globalization and continual change. Careers are gone. Gigs are in when an economy has all turned to “services” driven by cheaper labor.

In many cases, businesses are built with just the idea to use cheap labor to financialize the industry. What’s the forty-year-old guy who used to carve gravestones going to do when the boss buys a laser engraver that does twice his work in half the time? There’s not exactly a market for monument carvers.

At Mozart’s grave, you can watch him decompose.

Let’s also add this into the mix: The constant streams of gratification available from infinite Internet porn to infinite Internet social apps (I hear the kids have found something called MySpace®) haven’t created the sort of real-life experiences that were common in the past. Now, the negatives are accentuated, amplified, and immediate. Is it a surprise that kids today are nihilistic and escapist and jaded on male-female relations?

Still, in all of this, there is room for personal responsibility. We are each responsible for our individual outcomes. I can’t pass the buck for my failures back to society, but I can look at the trend. Have the people who got fat changed? Not really. It’s just far easier to get fat today, but still the responsibility of the individual.

Have plenty of kids from broken homes turned into champs? Sure! But the statistics show that parents, shockingly, matter to the outcomes.

If I pick a career that gets replaced, is that on me? Yes, yes it is. But how many people have picked careers where they have been replaced? Twitter® even banned people for telling journalists (who had told coal miners, “learn to code”) to “learn to code.” We live in a society where careers are ephemeral, coming and going faster than Nancy Pelosi’s bouts of sobriety. And what do we do about a generation raised by computers that are programmed to be as addictive as possible without creating actual achievement?

I heard an actual journalist was recently at CNN®. They had Security escort him out.

If I leave a kid in a candy shop politician unsupervised, it’s my fault, as well as the kid’s politician’s fault. You just don’t leave irresponsible people where they can cause damage, even though the moral choices were made by the kid politician.

Perhaps, moving away from traditions means moving away from problems that have been solved before?

Life Is Short, But It’s Funnier If You Read This

“So I really am important? How I feel when I’m drunk is correct?” – Futurama

When I went to the hospital and they were done with the surgery I asked if I could do the stitches. The doctor said, “Suture self.”

This past weekend The Mrs. was in the hospital. No, it wasn’t the ‘Rona (really) but instead it was scurvy. I told The Mrs. that she should have eaten that pineapple, but, no. She refused.

We didn’t intend to take her to the hospital, but the doctor sort-of insisted after running a batch of tests which included things that shoot radiation at her and other things that have rotating magnets. There was a lot of blood drawn, but even though I asked to do the parts that would cause The Mrs. pain myself, they declined.

The short version is that after several gallons of intravenous antibiotic, The Mrs. got a lot better. The doctor described the infection as guacamole. He said it was the technical term that medical professionals use to describe sickness, with the antibiotic that slowly scooped the guacamole out by a basket of tortilla chips. I hate technical talk like that, I mean, I don’t even like guacamole. I’m more of a salsa guy.

I guess I should have been tipped off when he told me the special was the chimichanga plate with refritos.

After about 36 hours, they booted The Mrs. out. She feels better, but is not quite at 100% as I write this. One virtue of having a sick relative is that it clears away a lot of the mundane things that we deal with daily. We are used to life being normal – get up when the alarm goes off, shower (every other week) get gallons of coffee, and deal with that five-minute commute to work. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, and months turn into late notices if I forget to pay the natural gas bill. All of this, of course, is accompanied by the theme song of the latest news and outrages that are taking place in Washington or points further away where they wear funny hats and have no idea how to properly make barbeque sauce, like Texas.

I like Texas, and I hear one of their neighbors is OK.

When events like The Mrs. being in the hospital intrude, everything that’s normal takes a back seat. Things that were important fade into the squabbling trivialities that they really are. The events of our lives that define them aren’t the minutes we drain into offices and cubicles, but rather the impact felt on our lives by others and the impact that we provide to the lives of others. At least that’s what it said on the Hallmark® card, but it was in a really fancy script.

The important moments in our lives are really that, moments. One problem I’ve noted in myself is that I tend to be able to be swallowed by the constant noise of the days turning into weeks. I turn my head down and find that another year has passed.

We also argued about how global warming wasn’t a threat, but that was anti-climactic.

What do I have to show for that year? How have I gotten better? What have I accomplished? Whose lives have I touched, I mean, within the limits of those restraining orders?

The soundtrack of our lives is often the things that we can impact only in the most negligible way, unless of course you’re the guy who makes sure that Biden doesn’t trade the nuclear codes for an extra pudding at dinner. But regardless of our roles on the local, state, or national stage, all of us can impact the lives of the individuals that are close to us.

Sometimes those efforts take years. Pugsley is growing into a fine young man, but we fought a titanic battle for years. Raising a boy can be like that, especially if he’s as stubborn as his father. And he is. We even have arguments over who is more stubborn.

You can’t argue with Pete Buttigieg. He’s not thinking straight.

On the other end of the spectrum, though, a chance comment might be the gentle stir of a butterfly’s wings. Just with a single word or phrase, you never know whose life you might change, either for better or worse. Even now, I can still remember that nice gentleman in the grocery store asking me, “Are you sure you need to buy a dozen doughnuts?”

Then there are those whose lives we touch who we never will meet. In my case, for writing P.J. O’Rourke was a big influence – he was prolific and funny and the grocery store clerk had no idea she was selling a really grown-up magazine when I handed over my cash for the latest issue of National Lampoon. There are other mentors that I have met only in books, whose lives and words have inspired and continue to inspire me today.

Day-to-day life can take me away from focusing on what is really important. There are times when I thought I was making a lot of progress, and instead I was just walking in big circles. Having a guidepost and a goal, even if (and perhaps especially) that goal can never, ever be met.

This was something I already knew, but that’s the insidious nature of the daily grind, it can make you forget those things that are important. There is a joy in losing self in action and work, but there is a danger, too – losing sight of the things that are the core of existence. It’s like going out to dinner and ordering something besides steak. I mean, if there’s steak on the menu, why do you need any other pages in the menu?

My crazy high school girlfriend is like that cheap grill I bought – they were both smoking hot and burned the house down.

As I said, The Mrs. is better, but not 100%. She’ll never run a marathon, but the last time I saw her run at all was in 2014, so I don’t think she’ll lose any sleep over that. One side effect of her no longer storing the guacamole, the doctor said, is that she might lose an inch or two in height over the next two months. I guess The Mrs. will have to learn how to be a little patient.

The Virtue Of Being Unreasonable

“I’m a reasonable guy, but I’ve just experienced some very unreasonable things.” – Jack Burton, Owner-Operator of the Pork Chop Express

I put some giant, big, huge, enormous bread in the toaster today. I made synonym toast.

I remember hiking my first 14,000 foot (43 liters) mountain. It was a spur-of-the-moment trip. I grabbed two of my friends and off we went. We intentionally spent the night above 12,000 feet (12 kilopascals). The world above 12,000 feet (32 ergs) is strange, to say the least. Water boils at a very low temperature due to the low atmospheric pressure and cools very quickly. I’ll tell you – low atmospheric pressure certainly makes my blood boil.

The next day we finished the ascent as planned. Also as planned, we decided to hike our way back out to the car. We made our way back down, losing well over a mile in altitude, thankfully not all at once. I had worn sneakers up the hill. Those were perfectly fine for going up. But when we started heading down from our camp, the bottoms of both feet started to feel a bit warm.

Some of you probably can guess where this is going.

After several more horizontal miles and several thousand more vertical feet, that warmth in my feet had turned into a blaze. I looked forward to the creeks that cut through the trail, which provided cool water to cool my feed as we waded through. It felt wonderful.

I met a moray that had been knighted. Now that was Sir Eel.

I didn’t realize it then, but what was happening was with each downhill step I took, my foot slipped just a bit inside the sneaker. Just a bit. That slipping of foot against the inside of the shoe generated friction. That friction was multiplied by thousands of downhill steps. The primary location that friction showed up?

The soles of my feet.

Finally, we made the Jeep® that my friend had borrowed for the trip. I peeled off my shoes when I got in the back. The sole of each foot was covered in a single, large blister from heel to where the toes start.

One friend asked, “Why didn’t you have us carry your pack?”

My response? “I carried it up. I’ll be damned if I wasn’t going to carry it down.

Hey, don’t laugh at those shoes – ATF agents have to wear those every day.

Certainly, that was more foolish than heroic. I had in my mind that I wasn’t going to shirk my responsibility to someone else. It certainly wasn’t a reasonable idea, but that’s okay.

Change isn’t made by reasonable people. Real accomplishments are made only by people who are fanatics.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to the weekly trip to the grocery store: being Mad Max in the aisles is probably counterproductive. But when working on trying to accomplish something significant, being reasonable has to go right out the window.

On the other hand, given how Biden has messed things up, this might be what shopping looks like this summer.

I was talking with Pugsley about diet (last week’s post was a taste of the conversation). The Mrs. overheard the conversation. “Ahhh, your dad has a case of the TB – True Believer.” She paused, “Pugsley, if you’re ever around someone who used to smoke, it’s the same thing.”

And she is right. Quitting smoking is hard. Nicotine is highly addictive, and quitting, once started isn’t a reasonable thing. It requires willpower. And, like Mark Twain said, “Willpower lasts about two weeks, and it’s soluble in alcohol.”

It’s so very hard to quit tobacco that it often takes several tries – I know, I did it. So, to finally quit takes fanaticism. This is, in the end, the same sort of fanaticism that it takes for any significant change. It’s the same sort of drive that makes Elon push SpaceX®. It’s the same sort of drive that the Founding Fathers had when they forged a new nation.

Elon Musk is a bully. He beat up NASA and took their launch money.

It’s the same drive that creates great teams. Once people buy into the vision of what can be created, they give of themselves to further the vision. If the goal is big enough and important enough people ignore their sense of self. That’s when the magic happens.

Not only do we get amazing things done, we don’t really care who gets the credit. Big goals create big teams, dedicated teams. They come together and work towards success. Do they always win? Certainly not. Sometimes the biggest goals are tackled by amazing teams and the team fails.

But not as often as you might think. Let’s look at the difference between NASA and SpaceX®. When NASA and SpaceX™ started working on a project together, NASA freaked out. Why? SpaceX© was going too fast. They were achieving in a month things that would take NASA a year.

Although NASA still has people driven to get man into space, there aren’t many. Most just want to keep a job until the Federal pension kicks in. SpaceX™ just wants to get people into space, and it’s pounded into them daily. The difference is a vision. In the 1960s, NASA had both a vision and some particularly talented scientists that had some rocketry experience from previous jobs. They achieved one of the most amazing feats that humanity has every accomplished.

Why do wolves howl at the Moon? They don’t have cell phones.

Vision and fanaticism matter. And they’re good things when the vision is good. When the vision is dark, that fanaticism is dangerous.

I’ll change gears from outstanding feats back to my feets. The blisters (one per foot)came off, and most of the fresh skin underneath was exposed. It stung. For a while. A day later? It was like nothing had happened.

Something did happen, though. I climbed a really tall mountain. Did I accomplish the goal? Certainly. And I was completely unreasonable in the way I went about it. The good news? You can be unreasonable, too. Because if life is a hike, it’s only done at the end. And to accomplish things?

Sometimes you have to do something unreasonable.