Health – Page 20 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Fit For Service: Fat Little Dogs With ESP And You

“We’re on a mission from God.” – The Blues Brothers

I thought this guy looked like a werewolf. If he bit me, I’d go to the doctor to see if I had a beast infection.

~~The proprietor over at Adaptive Curmudgeon (LINK), who goes by Adaptive Curmudgeon,~~ Hank Curmudgeon challenged me that he’d only type naked until I did a post where all of the memes come from a particular web page, specifically this one (LINK), which documents Victorian beard styles.

(Update: Do go visit Adaptive Curmudgeon! I’m sure I have already confused him with several comments, so I’m owing him big time!)

It’s getting cold, so I thought I’d allow him (Update: Hank) to at least get a blanket. Since this isn’t normally how I do my memes, we’ll see how it goes. But I’m concerned for him – I hear it’s so cold where he is that you can get soft-serve straight from the udder.

(Update: So, yes, as usual, the problem exists between my keyboard and my chair. I was thinking that Hank Curmudgeon was Adaptive Curmudgeon sharing a first name and didn’t want to share that name without permission. So, it turned into a big Frasier episode where Frasier doesn’t know that Daphne spiked the eggnog, and then he spikes the eggnog, and then Miles spikes the eggnog, and then they catch Martin on fire.

All error belongs with me. End update!)

On to the story.

My dog has ESP. Well, that’s not really true. It’s not my dog. It’s The Mrs.’ dog, MacReady. I’ll do in a pinch when The Mrs. isn’t around, but I’m not the preferred person – that’s The Mrs.

That’s understandable. The Mrs. feeds MacReady and pampers it. In my world? Dogs get kibble and (once in a while) leftovers. In The Mrs.’ world, dogs get canned dog food. So, yeah, MacReady probably picked the right person.

This particular dog is a miniature pinscher, so it’s supposed to be about eight pounds of misplaced aggression. The Mrs.’ has currently “overserved” MacReady, so he’s currently about sixteen pounds of misplaced aggression and high self-esteem.

I can hardly remember when I tried to get into optometrist school. It’s all kind of blurry now.

By misplaced aggression, I mean the dog is sixteen pounds, yet it barks like it thinks it’s a linebacker for the Chicago Bears® when someone rings the doorbell, and will bravely waddle to the door to defend the house as fast as its little legs will carry it.

When MacReady jumps off of the bed, I’m constantly in fear that his legs will collapse up into his body and we’ll be left with a sort of dog/sandworm mix that will only be able to wiggle around the floor. If that happens, we’ll keep still keep him. You know, for the spice.

The Mrs. is worried MacReady might rupture like a bag of soup. If so, we’ll toss him in the compost heap. Then he’ll be min-pin soup for the soil.

Anyway, MacReady has ESP. By ESP, I mean that he has extra-sensory perception.

I was going to make a joke about his eyes, but I worried that would be two cornea.

And my phone is the cause.

See, whenever my phone isn’t on mute, it makes a particular noise when my front doorbell senses motion. It’s like a set of not-annoying wind chimes. The Mrs. used to have the same app on her phone, and somehow MacReady associated that sometimes when the wind chimes played, there would be a person, like a UPS® guy evil eldritch horror or monstrous alien threat* (LINK) at the door.

So, MacReady has figured out that whenever my phone makes that chime noise it means that bad men, perhaps wearing hats are lurking outside to ring the hated doorbell? He clomps his huge min-pin butt to the door and barks, as threatening as a feather duster in a biker bar fight.

But, as fat and as tiny as MacReady is, he is fit for purpose. He has two jobs: be warm and cuddly, and be annoying when someone rings the doorbell. That’s really it.

Maybe he grew that to cover a neck brace? If so, he never looked back.

As people, though, we have a purpose, too.

Are we fit for it?

And, that’s the question I have for you today.

I can’t tell you your purpose. I can only give you ideas on how I found mine. But I assure you that you have one even if you don’t know it.

I once read that you should write down things that you could do and do it until you break down and cry with the beauty of what you have written. I think that smells kinda bogus, and really doesn’t fit well with reality as I’ve found it, and I haven’t cried since Hornady developed the 6.5 Creedmoor.

Me? I’ve found my purpose (as I know it now) by trying things. First one, then another. I’ve found a few things that I’m good at. Sleeping. Eating Ruffles®. I’ve even found some things that I do that are useful. Putting laundry into the dryer is definitely one of those things.

His girlfriend left him, too. She found out he was seeing someone else.

But I’ve found far more that I’m awful at. Singing. I love to sing. People love it more when I don’t sing. Playing guitar. People like my guitar playing better than my singing, but not by much.

If you have no talent in a subject (or, like me an aggressive anti-talent in music) it’s rarely going to form the basis of a purpose. Finding those talents that you have, developing them, and then combining them (Scott Adams calls it a talent stack) is really the basis of a purpose.

A purpose is, in the end, the reason that you exist. And eating Ruffles© and sleeping, no matter how good I might be at those things) is not it. This blog is part of that purpose. And my purpose is constantly evolving, not because I’ve lost focus, but because I’ve learned more about who I am and what I can do.

And a purpose may not have anything to do with your job. Often it is. But in the end, you do the job you need to do so you can feed your family, even if it sucks. Of course, if you don’t need money, that rule goes right out the window. But most people who have jobs find them distasteful from time to time – that’s why they’re not called hobbies.

His other hobby was taking pictures of trout wearing clothing. He said it was like shooting fish in apparel.

But if you do have your purpose, especially if it’s a special purpose, I can tell you that you need to get fit for it. Even as MacReady’s purpose is pretty easy to meet – be a warm furry throw pillow and be a tool by barking like a chopper door machine-gun two dozen or so times a day – I bet yours isn’t that easy.

So what is it that you have to do to fulfill that purpose with all of the impact of a fat miniature pinscher impacting a carpeted floor accelerated by gravity at 32.1740 ft/s² (6.62607015×10⁻³⁴Js)?

Is it physical? Get in the best shape you can.
Is it mental? Practice improves everything.
Is it spiritual? There are many folks that can help you there – who knows what you might find.
Is it courage? Is it scary?

It might be. Actually attempting to fulfill a purpose can be daunting. What happens when you fail?

Not if. When. If the purpose is big enough and worthy of you, you will fail – that’s the basis for learning. And you will fail until you don’t. You have to be strong enough to keep going, building yourself up layer by layer.

I like having lots of layers on my bed – that’s a blanket statement.

You’ve got to bark at that door every day, if that’s your purpose, even if you don’t have ESP.

*I went with the spelling from the 38 year old movie – I figured it was more commonly known than the spelling in a story written over 82 years ago.

Black Friday 2021

“Who buys an umbrella anyway? You can get them for free at the coffee shop in those metal cans.” – Seinfeld

I never understood why people got attacked by sharks. Can’t they hear the music?

Black Friday is easy to make fun of, but I won’t (so much) this year. As other people go nuts over shopping, I get to sleep in on a Friday morning and not go shopping. It’s a win-win: other people get to do what they want to do, and I don’t have to join them.

I can see the appeal – the idea of, perhaps, getting a deep discount on something they wanted to buy anyway is attractive. And economizing by not wasting money is a very good thing, especially if you’re able to afford something that you normally couldn’t buy. By not participating, though, I save 100% in every store.

I have no idea how well the sales figures will be on Black Friday, 2020. I expect that the economy is significantly weaker than people imagine. Multiple shutdowns for Coronavirus seem to have taken a major toll on the economy, so I’m not sure how many people are going to want to spend extra for new cooking gadgets. I know that there’s a mask mandate in most places, but please be aware: around here they expect you to wear pants, too.

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and flies like a duck, it’s probably a government surveillance drone.

Many retailers, including our local shopping choice, Wal-Mart®, were closed on Thanksgiving.

As we all know – if there’s a buck in it, stores will stay open. That is, after all, why they’re in business. Someone did the math and figured out that it wouldn’t make sense to be open on Thanksgiving this year. That should tell you a lot about where the economy is.

The real economy.

The idea that the Dow-Jones® Industrial Average (DJIA) just hit a record 30,000 should also tell you something – the economy has split. FaceBook® is doing so well that they’re still hiring Congressmen. As several astute readers here have noted – the DJIA seems to be entirely disconnected from the reality of the actual economy most people have to work in, even though once upon a time there really was a connection.

But there is a connection between Black Friday and Christmas. Several people I know complete all of their Christmas shopping either on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Businesses count on this behavior to make a profit for the year, although big businesses (Amazon®, Wal-Mart©, etc.) have already had a great year.

If you used your COVID stimulus check to buy baby chickens, did you get your money for nothing and your chicks for free?

The Mrs. and I no longer get very excited about Christmas presents – we’re fortunate that we have most of our needs met and the best gifts are the small ones that require some thought, like when The Mrs. bought me that book on anti-gravity. I just couldn’t put it down!

The Boy seems generally content, and when I ask him what he wants, the answer is generally, “I’ll think about it.” Pugsley still has a list.

Well, not a list. A dozen lists. He emailed me the first one. Of course, knowing him, I entirely ignored the list. Never even opened it.

Why?

Because there was a new and entirely different list the next day. And a new one the day after that. Finally, he seemed settled.

I named my iPad® Titanic, so when it was updating it said, “Titanic is syncing.”

“I want an iPad®.”

“Why don’t you take my old one? I never use it. Enjoy.” It had originally been given to me by a Chinese friend – I do love homemade presents.

“Wait, what?” After complaining that it was the 2015 model, he finally accepted that making do with an old iPad® and something else for Christmas was actually a pretty good deal. Honestly, I think he’ll remember that more than getting a new iPad™.

Like I said, our family is in a good place, but we know that not everyone is. I expect that there will be a lot less spent on gifts this Christmas. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The best parts of healthy relationships aren’t material. Long after a gift has worn out or been lost, the benefits of a real relationship remain.

If Schrödinger’s cat went on a crime spree, would he be wanted dead and alive?

I expect that the recession is far from over. I also think that we’ve moved from a period of relative plenty into something . . . new.

New doesn’t mean bad. New means different.

And if that meant that Black Friday stopped being a materialist holiday?

We might all be better off.

A Tree Fell On My House, But I Have A Chainsaw

“I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay. I sleep all night and I work all day.” – Monty Python’s Flying Circus

What’s black and white and red all over? Two mimes fighting with chainsaws.

I saw a quote this week that made me smile a lot. I’ll share it with you:

“When God put a calling on your life He already factored in your stupidity.”

A few weeks ago, a tree fell down and hit our house during a storm. And by a tree, I mean a huge one. I had snapped off 15 feet (57 Joules) up the tree. It was nearly horizontal, and resting on my favorite roof.

I’ll admit that I was sitting in the hot tub during the storm that brought down the tree.

It was glorious. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a tree fall. It’s wonderful. Approximately once every five minutes, I’d hear the tearing of wood and then, after a pause for the amount of time it took for the vertical tree to become horizontal, the crash. The next day, one more tree fell.

It fell into my house. The Mrs. sent me a picture.

I waited until Saturday when The Boy was down from Upper Lower Midwestia University to solve the problem, because the one thing a boy home from college wants to hear? “Hey, son, glad you’re back from college for a weekend of rest. I’m going to grab you and your brother and we’re going to work all day in one of your dad’s crazy adventures. Oh, and it involves you getting up early and chainsaws.”

Honestly, he should be used to it by now.

Looking back, I realize that in a normal world, I would have called my insurance company. They’d send out adjusters who would look at the tree. They’d measure it, weigh it, and sensuously cup its fallen boughs, which still happens to be legal in my state.

I’ve heard you can save a lot of money on car insurance by switching. Switching to reverse and leaving the scene.

They would look in the book of “Tree Falling On House Payments.” They’d then tell me that elm trees falling on houses in Upper Lower Midwestia were excluded. I would then correct them because I live in Lower Upper Midwestia and the tree was actually a son of a birch.

Then he says, “Oh, you’re that John Wilder. Of course! Insurance will cover it.”

Then, I would call a tree company to come and move the tree. Since everyone in town had a tree fall on their house, it would take a month for them to show up for an estimate, and another month for them to remove the tree. After the tree company charged me $2200 to move it, I’d toss the bill to the insurance company.

I’d pay the deductible (which is currently set at my left kidney for my homeowner’s policy, and my cornea for auto), and that’s it.

But would that be the Wilder Way? Of course not.

I can sleep in on the weekends. The Mrs., who is borderline insomniac, feels that this is my superpower. Generally, I can get to sleep in less than five minutes, often in less than one. The Mrs. can only sleep on Tuesdays after 9 P.M. if it’s not Daylight Savings Time. The Mrs. has walked into the bathroom to brush her teeth and returned to find me sound asleep. I can even do it when I’m driving, though my passengers don’t seem to care for it.

What’s green, fuzzy, and will kill you if it falls on you out of a tree? A pool table.

The reason I can sleep is only when I don’t have a Mission. When there’s a Mission? I wake up and I’m ready to go. I don’t even need an alarm clock. The tree on my house represented a Mission.

As it was, I had Pugsley and The Boy available, and daylight was burning. I knocked on each door as I went out to start work.

I started with the branch trimmer. Alone. The sleeping leviathans inside had yet to move.

Branch trimmers are like the scissors that Hannibal Lecter would use to, umm, prune a rose bush. This was my third set. The problem with the first two is that The Boy and then Pugsley pulled the handles too hard and bent the metal. Sometimes, living with them is like living with five-year-olds that don’t understand that they can twist metal with their bare hands.

So, a paid for the expensive trimmers this time.

Trees don’t walk. They lumber.

These trimmers were good enough to cut through about a 2” branch, which is pretty stout. I took the trimmer and started hacking. I was about 30 minutes into hacking when The Boy showed up. Pugsley showed up slightly later. It took us 10 years to convince him he had to shower, and now he has six of them a day. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that he takes a cheese plate into the shower.

When Pugsley showed up, I had him get the chainsaw, mix gas, chain oil and chainsaw sharpener. I showed him how to sharpen the chainsaw blade, which took all of 30 seconds, but then he knew how it worked. I also showed him how to adjust the chain. These may seem like small things, but they are rites of passage. There are many tools in a cabinet, and some are mostly harmless, like a screwdriver. But a chainsaw?

A fear of spiders is called arachnophobia. A fear of chainsaws? That’s called common sense.

For the next seven hours we were like ants, taking branch after branch off of the tree, first with the branch trimmer and then with the chainsaw.

I had a dentist who used to be a lumberjack. He pulled a tooth by mistake. I’ll never to Axedental again.

Finally, we were down to two major branches. By the time we’d gotten there, I realized that what I had done was, slowly, cut off all of the minor support points. It seemed like a good bet. But it was also a nagging feeling that I might be making the problem worse.

I was. While sitting down, I heard a sharp crack.

Like wood breaking. The exact sound I had heard while having a beer in the hot tub during the storm.

One of the two branches left holding up the whole tree was cracking. Looking at the tree, I saw that it was big. I estimated that what remained was about 5,000 pounds (one metric “Your Momma”) and a quick check of my estimate that I did while writing this backed that number up, unless the tree was on a low carb diet.

That 5,000 pounds was going to fall on my deck, and if I wasn’t careful? 5,000 pounds dropping 15 feet is a lot of energy – enough energy to smash a deck, a Wilder, and maybe an insurance adjustor to boot.

I had The Boy and Pugsley run into the garage looking for whatever lumber they could find that was the right length to prop up this rapidly deteriorating situation. After ten minutes, I had two 2×4’s and one mangy plank holding the tree up. It wasn’t moving, but it wasn’t stable, and it was 10.5 feet (one metric Barron Trump) up in the air.

The Mrs. took a picture of my makeshift supports. She sent it to her high school friend list. One friend who is in city planning responded, “Oh, no! This looks like all of the ladder safety videos that they make us watch.”

I thought about what I’d do, and sent The Boy and Pugsley off to buy a 10’ stepladder and some ratchet tie-offs. When they got back, I propped the 10’ stepladder under the branch, shimmed it with lumber, and then got the chainsaw-on-a-stick.

The chainsaw-on-a-stick is just that – a tiny electric chainsaw mounted on a stick. This one has an 8” blade, and is meant to cut things far away. That’s good, because that’s exactly what I intended to do. I would have liked to cut this particular tree from orbit, because it was lopsided – it looked like it wanted to twist, hard, clockwise.

I used to be a lumberjack in the Sahara Forest. Well, it used to be the Sahara Forest. I’m that good.

I tied off the branch to a convenient tree so when I cut it loose it couldn’t fall into the garden shed. I further tied off one of the remaining branches so maybe that it wouldn’t twist as it fell.

Pugsley pulled out his camera to record the action.

“Nope. Put it away.” The situation that I had put myself into was less than optimal. I realize that as men we are here not to live a life without risk, but to live a life. And the Sun was now going down. It was now or never. One way or another that tree was coming down before the Sun went down.

Getting injured because you refused to let someone else clear the tree? That seems like a stupid and futile gesture.

Well, if you’re looking for stupid and futile gestures, you’ve come to the right place. I just didn’t want my particular stupid and futile gesture to result in YouTube® videos of my death. I proceeded to take the chainsaw on a stick and started to cut into the branch.

As far as tense moments go, having the stored energy of a Ford Explorer® 15 feet up in the air, dependent upon your calculations and being right?

It’s tense.

When I was back in Alaska, I could regularly drop trees within a degree of where I wanted them to go. Was I a lumberjack? No. But I had to lay in dozens of metric Your Momma’s worth of wood a year just to heat the house. You get pretty comfortable with a chainsaw doing that.

When I cut wood in Alaska, I didn’t get overtime, even though I logged a lot of hours.

But that was 15 years (3 centimeters) ago. I cut into the tree. I first cut a relief cut in the top of the horizontal branch. I didn’t want stress to build up there and hang the whole mess up. Then I started to cut from the bottom up.

You have to cut a tree that’s acting like a beam from the bottom up. If you cut it from the top down? It will bind the saw, and you end up in a crazy place where you have a stuck saw and a Ford Explorer®’s amount of energy dependent upon you freeing it.

I cut into the tree. A lot. Then paused. The opening the chainsaw had made grew larger as the stress pulled the tree apart. I cut into the tree again. By now, the entire 5,000 pounds was hanging by a 3” by 2” slab of wood. Still no movement.

Finally, I cut deeper. I hear the “crack” as the tree split. Pugsley was watching from a safe distance. He said the tree dropped perfectly down. I wouldn’t know – I was headed the opposite direction. Not only was there the 5,000 pound tree, there was also the bit still on the roof. I could easily imagine that part whipping around as it was pulled by the main branch.

The final crack came.

The tree did come down. Perfectly. The bit left on the roof? Didn’t move an inch. Exactly as I wanted it to go. I sat down as The Boy and Pugsley removed the rest of the debris. Pugsley even got me a beer and said, “You’re done, Pop. Have a rest.”

I trained my kids that if I ever choke on a beer, they should give me the Heineken® maneuver.

The damage to the house was minimal, actually. A bit of gutter needs to be moved back into place. One shingle lost its gravel in a small circle. A solar light was broken. I need to replace one deck board, one chair, and one plastic bench. Oh, and we spent 27 hours of labor. I was sore for the next three days.

If a tree falls on your house and that’s all you lose? You’re as lucky as me. Which is pretty lucky.

Or, more likely? God has factored my stupidity into my life.

The 2020 Election: Don’t Let It Make You Crazy

“We’re here to preserve democracy, not practice it.” – Crimson Tide

The Times Square New Year’s Eve Committee asked Hillary to join the committee. Turns out that sometimes dropping the ball at the last minute is a resume builder!

We are currently in the “crazy season.” As years of elections go by, people on every side of the political question have become better at influence and persuasion. Why? The prize is huge. Political power provides billions of dollars, if not trillions, for favored industries. In the 2020’s – it also means immunity from prosecution for supporters of the winners.

Like Hunter Biden, the stakes are high.

Political campaigns, unlike the NBA®, learn over time. What worked last election? What didn’t work? What does the focus group say?

After the primaries, the campaign isn’t focused on getting the votes of die-hard supporters. All seven of the people in the United States who are “really excited” to vote for JoePedo will vote for JoePedo. Who is JoePedo?

JoePedo was an early slogan of the Left that sorta backfired on them. They were going for Joe as a torpedo, not as, well, a Pedo. It’s important to understand how people might make fun of your name.

Thankfully, in 2020, ISIS is WASWAS.

About 99% of Biden voters are only voting for Biden because he’s Not Trump. They will continue to vote for Biden as long as he doesn’t turn into Trump. Biden could kill and eat live kittens on during the debate, naked, while taking billions of dollars in checks from Satan for “services rendered”, and Never Trumpers would still vote for him. Heck, let’s be really honest: they don’t even require a pulse. Given Biden’s mental, umm, “difficulties” it’s obvious that even dementia isn’t a disqualifier.

Trump voters are (mostly) voting for Trump because he’s Trump – a finger in the eye of the establishment. Trump voters are unhappy with a country that they see is no longer a country. In the view of Leftists, the United States is nothing more than an economic entity, one which every person on the globe has a right to move to. Trump voters reject that.

Never-Trumpers are gonna vote Biden, and Trump doesn’t care about them. Trump voters are gonna vote Trump. Biden doesn’t care about them.

Neither campaign is attempting to get the votes of the diehard supporters of the other candidate. Instead, this last campaign stretch is only to convince the people who follow politics so little that they haven’t figured out who they’re voting for. But right now? Both sides are pulling out all of the stops.

I can hear the campaign staffer defending his meme: “At least it’s better than Turboanalisis.”

JoePedo will tell you that he’s running for the Senate if his handlers aren’t able to shut him up in time. But the staffers in the know managed to get Trump’s tax records to the New York Times®. The fact that this is a felony, well, who cares, right? If Biden wins, a felony is just a wink and a nod. But the taxes seem to be a poor weapon: there’s nothing of interest, outside of the fact that Trump has way better tax advisors than I do.

But Team Biden isn’t done. They have at least three “gotcha” attacks planned for Trump in the next 20 days. And those attacks will escalate. They’re saving their best attacks for last.

But Trump will fight back. Trump has an arsenal of information on the JoePedo. He’s going to unleash it, bit by bit, like a Chinese water torture. And he’ll Tweet® and laugh the whole time.

My prediction that we hadn’t yet seen the craziest part of 2020 is proving to be stunningly accurate. Honestly, it was really an easy prediction – the only prediction that is easier is that the Sun will rise tomorrow, or that Ruth Bader Ginsburg won’t.

What do you call a Supreme Court Justice that was so cheap she would eat the scraps on other people’s plates at the diner? Booth Raider Ginsburg.

The goal of these next twenty days is manipulation.

Now, when The Mrs. was just The Miss and we first started dating, one particular date we had was one we called the Forever Date. It started on a Friday night, when we went to play mini-golf. Mini-golf is a great date idea. Everyone sucks at mini-golf, and seeing how a potential spouse deals with being awful is a great insight on their personality. Sadly the courses are packed now, since the economy is so bad that CEOs are now forced to play miniature golf.

But after mini-golf? Dinner. Then we walked down and got an expensive coffee at a hippy coffee bar. Then we went back to my place and watched Babylon 5. The next day, we had a bunch of other things on our schedule – a renaissance fair, a play, out to another dinner, and a movie. In all, we had spent 24 hours together in two days.

In that time, we had done a lot of things. The sheer number of things that we did made that 24 hours seem like weeks – it compressed and amplified our relationship. It didn’t hurt that most of the activities, outside of the play and the movie, involved a lot of conversation.

In a weird way, this Forever Date was manipulative. Unintentionally so – but when you put a compatible unmarried man and woman together?

And put them through activity after activity?
Fun things, unique things, unusual things?
That involve conversation?

After learning about how couples interact as I got older, the only answer is if you put people into the circumstances that The Miss and I were in? Those people are going to become close. And if even remotely compatible? Married.

Jesus turned water into wine, most men drink to make a six look like a nine.

That same time compression is exactly what the manipulators want from voters right now. They want to hit the voter with crisis after crisis until the voter’s mind is available for persuasion. Like the Three Stooges, the candidates want Moe-mentum.

The persuasion we’re seeing now is aimed squarely at the undecided voters. It’s ironic that the people who care the least and know the least about politics decide the election every four years. It’s like having the Senator without thumbs winning every election, but that’s not surprising since he’s unopposed.

Remember, Kamala placed lower than all of the above candidates. It’s okay, she’s used to being on the bottom.

So, the next twenty days will be filled with more information than in any election in the history of the United States. It worked really well when there was a last minute announcement that George W. Bush had been arrested for Driving Under the Influence. That cost him a lot of votes.

When John McCain was told by the news media that the problem was all in his head, he took the news media seriously. Those videos of Sarah Palin painting seals and birds with oil? Yeah, those hurt.

Okay, the fact that McCain’s personality had all the warmth of a Soviet Gulag and all the compassion of an African tribal war is what really cost him the election. Sarah Palin? I could have been Michael Palin and they still would have lost the election.

Michael is still a funnier Palin than Sarah.

But, like I said, campaigns are a learning organization, and they have learned that October is the best time to spring a surprise. So the result is that every four years, October will get progressively crazier until each political party hires individual mimes to stalk and convince undecided voters. There are dangers to hiring mimes: one of my relatives became a mime – I haven’t heard from him since.

Here in 2020, however, knowing what they’re doing is enough. It’s certain that voters are fine in convincing themselves, but when it comes to propaganda? They resist. The only solution is to confuse them with so much information that they become susceptible to changing their mind. And thinking that they changed it themselves.

This particular election will be the most expensive in history. Yet, the election will likely come down to relative handfuls of voters in a few key states. California? Not an issue. But Pennsylvania? Wisconsin?

But you’re not likely the target. And here’s the key – if all of the nonsense you’ll hear in the next few days annoys you? All of the radio ads? The campaign mailers?

Ignore it.

My kids voted for pizza for dinner the other night. They got tacos. We don’t live in a swing state.

The real key to life has nothing to do with the daily news cycle. The real key to life has to do with keeping your values in sight.

And that’s good news. If you want to ignore the political nonsense going on right now, you can.

If, like me, you want to enjoy the nonsense with a bag of hot popcorn?

You can do that, too. It may be the crazy season, but it doesn’t have to drive you crazy.

If you feel yourself getting crazy from this political season, don’t worry. If you get lost, you can always take the psychopath.

Victim? No. You Have A Choice.

“We all have it coming, kid.” – Unforgiven

There’s a serial killer who is strangling victims with t-shirts and he keeps using smaller and smaller sizes of shirt. Police say he’s still at large.

There comes a point in everyone’s life where they look at Carrie Fisher and say, “I ran out of gas. I got a flat tire. I didn’t have change for cab fare. I lost my tux at the cleaners. I locked my keys in the car. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! It wasn’t my fault!”

That might even be true: 100% true. A meteor might have fallen on your house, and you might have unknowingly chosen the slightly cheaper “meteor-exempt” policy from Allstate®, and the Helping Hands™ people would then be justified in giving you the Flying Fragment Finger™.

Everyone on Earth could legitimately claim to be a victim at this point. This, my friends, is the biggest trap in the world.

Why?

It’s against everything that is virtuous and good. Victimhood is the poison that destroys lives and civilizations with all of the wanton carelessness of a feminist wine aunt trying to “find herself” on a booze cruise through the Caribbean.

When alcohol says to you, “You can dance,” this is what it means.

Victimhood says there is something wrong with the situation. Let me clarify something: there isn’t anything wrong with any situation. Reality is real. The situation is the situation. The first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club.

Fairness is a lie. Expecting things to be different because we want them to be is, perhaps, the most insidious poison that we dose ourselves with on a regular basis. And that is the basis of being a victim.

Being a victim is like being in a prison, but it’s a prison that is especially strong. Why? Victims willingly build their own prison.

What is the essence of victimhood?

Like France, a victim is at the mercy of outside forces.
Like Sweden, a victim takes no responsibility for their current position.
Like Mongo, victim merely pawn in game of life.
Like the Italian Army, victims are weak.

Why do people choose to be victims?

Well, I said they are weak. But they use that same weakness to control others around them.

“I can’t do this. Can you help me?”

Never play chess with an Islamic terrorist – it’s always “pawn to C4.”

Victims are horrible to be around. They’re constantly complaining, but take no action to make their lives better. Honestly, they don’t want their lives to be better, since they’ve begun to use their victimhood as a weird superpower – as if Superman® won because Lex Luthor™ got embarrassed from beating him up.

Victims don’t expect anything from themselves, so they can’t fail. The world is against them, so why even try? They have a world where everyone is responsible for everything.

Except for them.

Like I said at the beginning of this piece, the corollary is that sometimes we really didn’t have anything to do with the fate that happened to us. It just happened.

So?

Just like there have been times when I haven’t had money, but I’ve never been poor, there are times when the breaks didn’t go my way, but I try never to be the victim.

See, this man may be broke, but he’s not poor.

The stunning truth that many people go through life is that, even when the meteor hits their house they still don’t have to give up control. There’s no real reason to be a victim.

Cold? Good! You can make it through that, and won’t that make the hot coffee taste great?
Tired? Wonderful! You can rest later, and sleep like a king.
Hungry? Excellent! The next meal may be the best you’ve ever tasted.
Someone make fun of you? Fantastic! An opportunity to get better and get tougher.

When I was in high school, Ma Wilder had a stroke.

Now, say what you want about Ma Wilder, but that woman had a willpower streak as deep and wide as the Grand Canyon. This might explain some of our epic fights when neither one of us would back down. Sometimes our fights would last for days, until the voice of reason, Pa Wilder, intervened.

Strangely, I think Ma Wilder would have liked Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.”

Pa wasn’t interested so much in justice as in watching Monday Night Football® in peace, and knew that a fight between a determined third grader and his 50+ year old wife (I’m adopted, but within the family – Ma Wilder was my biological grandma) would interfere.

Anyway we Wilders don’t do anything small. Ma’s stroke was a big one, which paralyzed half of her body. It left her in a wheelchair, an eloquent woman cut down and left unable to speak except for “yes” and, more often, “no.”

But the one thing her stroke didn’t impact was her will.

One day she wanted a Coke®. She wheeled over to me with the Coke™ in her one good hand. I loosened the top of the Coke© bottle so it was finger-tight but left it on for her to finish.

Pa Wilder was a little bit mad. “John, take that off for her.”

Ma Wilder jumped in. “No!” She took it from me, wheeled over to the table, unscrewed the top with one hand, and poured herself her drink. As much as that woman could do for herself, she was resolved to do for herself.

The opposite of victimhood is:

Strength
Will
Determination
Perseverance
Purpose

Okay, maybe it won’t regrow your hair.

Fortune may determine your circumstance. You determine how you act and what you make of your circumstance.

And, win or lose?

It really was a fair fight. Honestly, we really do all have it coming.

Heaven, Atheists, and Happiness

“Heaven, darling. Heaven. At least get the zip code right.” – The Prophecy

If all dogs go to Heaven, I expect cats go to Purr-gatory?

Life has often been seen by me as a series of delayed gratification games. It’s like an “If – Then” statement. Something like:

If I go to work and work really hard and save money in my 401k, then when I retire I can have fun.

This first one is one that we’re told from when we’re little. Work hard now, and get the rewards later. And, for the most part, it’s true. Like the old Chinese proverb, “Try the crunchy bat! It’s tasty, if a bit undercooked!” “The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The next best time is today.”

Over time, hard work really does pay dividends. But the downside of that fairy tale is that you’re going to have far more fun when you’re thirty than when you’re ninety. I’m not saying I don’t want to live as long as possible, but understanding that if all you do is work until you’re used up, you never did learn to have fun.

Oops.

I also know a lumberjack who logs a lot of hours.

If I work hard now, I can make money now, and go back later and get in better shape.

This is one I fell for. I can put in a 3,000 hour year for two years in a row, right? Well, I could. But if I spent all the rest of my time with family, then when was there time for me? This is a tradeoff that looks a lot like the first, but probably has a more significant health toll, since the reason you’re working 3,000 hours in the first place isn’t because the work is stress-free.

Strangely, the healthcare program was also the retirement program.

If I’m good on Earth, and have faith, when I die I can go to Heaven.

Now, I’m going to start off with this: I know that there are atheists and agnostics that are here. Bear with me. I’m not. But the nice thing about all of the atheists that comment here is that none of them are atheists because they hate God, it’s because they don’t believe. Those kinds of atheists roll their eyes because to them we folks who believe are goofy.

That’s okay.

I asked my atheist friend why he celebrated Christmas. He looked at me and said, “Well, you celebrate Valentine’s day and no one likes you.”

It’s my theory that atheists that hate God hate Him because they think He gave them a raw deal. But that’s based on a sample size of two. My theory may suck, but for the two atheists who hated God that I knew, well, they were constantly angry at Him because of the way that their lives had turned out. For whatever reason, I haven’t seen the haters show up here often.

But the point I’m going to make is a new point to me, because just like points one and two, I believed point three until I really thought about it. Then I realized:

I was being really stupid. I believe I had Help in this realization.

My realization was simple. To the extent that I structure my life for a reward that only occurs after my heart stops beating, well, that’s goofy. Sure, I have faith. But why am I waiting when I can have all of the benefits now.

The inventor of AutoCorrect was an atheist. He’ll go to he’ll.

This is where I pick the atheists back up. From their standpoint, that they live a mayfly existence, a one-shot of being born, getting a driver’s license, getting a job, retiring, and then ceasing to be. They have to get meaning, as much meaning as they can out of life, now.

But even if you have faith that there’s an afterlife, you can have the benefits that most people think about being tied to Heaven, now.

Peace
Love
Calmness
Virtue
Certainty
Hope

It was my own (very bad) If-Then thinking that said to suffer now for bliss later.

Nope. Now, you still have to be as good as you can. You can’t actually get the benefits listed on the label if you’re not good. For instance, if you know you’re doing something wrong, say juggling kittens, you’ll never be at peace. Likewise, if your primary focus is pursuing, um, “physical affection,” you’ll never know actual love until you start looking for actual love.

The Tibetan monk was shocked when he saw Jesus’ face in a tub of margarine – “I can’t believe it’s not Buddha!”

Is life still hard work? Yes. Enjoy it. It’s making you better.

Does life still involve pain? Yes. Embrace it. It gives you a contrast, and often a lesson so you’ll learn.

Does life still involve sadness? Certainly. Use it to mourn for those who have left us.

Does life still involve difficulty? Every day. Be calm. See the beauty and hope that come from avoiding fear.

And, if you’re not an atheist, use every moment that you can to get closer to God, because, after all, what is Heaven, anyway?

Contrast: It Makes Your Life Worth Living

“Now we will destroy your leader, or at least make him keep hitting himself, unless you let us live in peace.” – Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends

What do you use to contrast different Scandinavian cultures? A Sven diagram.

When I was a kid, the Wilder Family had a subscription to Reader’s Digest®. Reader’s Digest™ started out in 1922 when a bored wounded World War I veteran started re-writing and condensing articles he read and combining them because there was no Internet. It must have worked, because 40 years later Reader’s Digest© had a circulation of 23 million when the bored vet finally retired.

Regardless, the Internet was still didn’t have pictures of dancing cats when I grew up. Not that it mattered – the thing that most closely resembled a computer within 100 miles when I grew up was the one that was used by Adam and Eve – an Apple®. Their computer had a downside – one byte and everything crashed.

So, Reader’s Digest™ was something I read as a kid.

Reader’s Digest© version of Titanic: “The boat sinks.”

It will probably not be surprising to any regular readers here, but the first things I read every month in Reader’s Digest® were the jokes and the humorous stories. One, in particular, has always stayed with me, and I’ve quoted it before here.

It goes something like this:

One day a mother looked out in to her backyard and saw that her eight year old son, Timmy, was holding an empty can on his five year old sister’s head. He was hitting the can with a rock.

“Timmy, what are you doing!”

The little girl replied, “It’s okay, Mom! He’s almost done.”

There are multiple ways to create a humorous story, and this one (to me) is a classic story because it wraps at least three different methods of humor (familiarity, cuteness, and absurdity) up so very well. But, in the best humor, there’s always a grain of truth. And that may be why this simple story has stayed with me for decades.

Also Scott Adams? “There’s nothing more dangerous than a resourceful idiot.”

As I exercised this week, I was listening to Coffee with Scott Adams (of Dilbert© fame). I’ve listened to his podcast and once or twice he’s featured a theme I just published. No, I don’t think he’s reading here, but if he really is thinking along the same lines as me, he should probably consider professional help.

There was one phrase that hit me this week: memories are built from contrast.

That stopped me in my tracks, and immediately made me think about the old Reader’s Digest® story.

Contrast. That’s the key. Like beer, Contrast is both the cause of and solution to all of our problems.

Scott Adams’ point was that when you have a long series of crappy days, the good one stands out. If you spent all day in abject misery having to rub oil on Joe Biden’s hairy back moles, and had five minutes in a hot tub eating ice cream while angels tickled your feet? Those five minutes would be wonderful, assuming you got to wash all the Biden back oil off of your hands first. The contrast of those five minutes with the rest of the day would make them a wonderful memory.

Joe Biden would love to have memories.

Contrast is also the father of Envy, which I seem to recall is a bad thing. I recall that at one company I worked at, the CEO’s pay was openly mocked (in public, to other employees) by a person that I knew was making six figures – he thought it was shameful that the CEO made so much (high six figures) while he made so little (low six figures). I knew the CEO. The CEO wasn’t a rocket surgeon or even a brain scientist, but yet the CEO was making big money.

So? The guy who was complaining had a pretty good job, and a pretty good life. But he didn’t make as much money as the CEO. That Contrast, that Envy, worked against him. It made him unhappy for no real reason.

Part of the magic of Contrast is how you focus on it. Had the employee in the example above focused on how well he had it, perhaps he’d think like me: I want the CEO to make gobs of money, so when they look at my pay they think, “wow, he created so much value, and he makes so little money.” In that way, Contrast can work for you. Contrast is your friend, but only if you let it be.

But I hear the CEOs of pretzel companies are the most twisted.

Life would not be possible without Contrast. Every single process that we understand is built on thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is just a fancy way to say that “energy moves.” And the Contrast between hot and cold drives power plants, cars, light bulbs, and every bit of energy used by every cell in your body. Don’t like thermodynamics?

Move to another Universe.

Outside of being the gears that move the planets around the stars and allow the fusion reactions that warm those planets, Contrast is also what drives Virtue. Bravery versus cowardice. Modesty versus pride. I could go on, but you get the idea.

One time, when living in Texas, I was trimming a hedge. I decided to increase the difficulty (and try to get a higher score from the Romanian judge) by trimming the hedge while standing on a fire ant hill. Fire ants are called fire ants for a reason, and it isn’t because their hearts are fully of loving fire. One time one SINGLE fire ant bit me on my hand and a friend looked at the resulting swelling and said, “That looks like one of those things an alien will pop out of.”

Fire ants seem to bite simultaneously – all at once, regardless of where they are on your body. Non-psychopathic ants, like the ones I grew up with, would just bite you whenever. Not fire ants. They want to have dozens and dozens of them on you when they all decide to chomp down and inject an alkaloid poison that has cytotoxic, hemolytic, and insecticidal properties. That’s 95% of the venom. The other 5% of the venom contains proteins that create an allergenic reaction in animals.

That’s a lot of syllables that mean that fire ant venom is a finely tuned combination of chemicals that are made of hate and spite.

Some people think it’s the vibration that they react to, as I said up above, I think it’s just that the ants are psychopathic. 27 ants bit me at the same time. I know, because I counted each bite.

Ouch.

I jumped. I jumped so hard that I thought that I pulled a hamstring. I have no idea why they call it a hamstring. Me? I’d call it a thighcep instead of a hamstring.

Anteaters never get Coronavirus – they’re already filled up with ant-y bodies.

The hamstring pain went on for months. It was fine when I walked, but when I sat down? My hamstring was like an electric rod jammed down my left leg, and not in the good way. A guy I worked with finally said to me, “John, that’s your back, not your hamstring. Same thing happened to me.”

It was my back. I started doing some exercises to build my back muscles and core muscles. In a week all of the pain went away. After three months of excruciating pain, I was finally pain free. It was like Madonna® had never been born.

That was a Contrast that was wonderful. The pain hasn’t come back, and it’s now been a dozen years. And I’ve moved very, very far away from fire ants. If you’ve ever had pain for an extended period that went away?

The Contrast is delicious. It’s like there’s a can on top of your head, and someone stopped hitting it with a rock.

So, if you’re driving yourself crazy with Contrasts, especially Contrasts that don’t matter? Take the advice that my older brother always gave me.

“Stop hitting yourself.”

Fragility, Resilience, Or Antifragility?

“When we finished he shook our hands and said, ‘Endeavor to persevere!’” – The Outlaw Josey Wales

I guess there are a lot of rivers in France, which makes sense. Water follows the path of least resistance.

In our lives we have choices in how we react to the world, just like you have a choice of computer passwords. I tried to choose “hi-hat” but the computer responded that “Sorry, password cannot contain symbols.”

While models always come with limitations, I was struck by an analysis that Vox Day (LINK) posted the other day. In this, the original author that Vox discusses, Samuel Zilincik, refers to three types of opponents – Fragile, Resilient, and Anti-Fragile. The author discusses these qualities in terms of how certain nations fought through the history of time.

When I was reading, I thought that’s one way of looking at people as well as civilizations engaged in conflict, so, why not? Bear with me a little bit as I use World War II as an example that relates three nations to three states of being.

As an example, France was Fragile during World War II. Yes, I know that World War II France wasn’t a person since if France 1939 was a person they’d have been Inspector Clouseau, but stick with me. After the German invasion, everything about the French and British response was fragile. Horrible communication, absolute battlefield collapse of poorly disciplined and trained soldiers, failure of leadership to create even the most rudimentary strategy against mobile warfare, and a general collapse of all French public will after the Germans showed up on the doorstep of Paris.

And the food wasn’t great, either.

We know the jokes about French military performance. But France was fragile.

How are people fragile?

Bakeries in Denmark don’t add too much sugar to pastry – they don’t want to be sweetish.

I’ve been in tough situations with people, and seen some give up. In extreme cases, it took very little for them to break down – relatively minor incidents led to implosions. It was like an Antifa® member losing their cellphone with all their Starbucks™ points. A complete catastrophe!

But I’ve seen normal people lose it, too. More than once. Ever see someone break down because of a bad test score? Ever seen someone break down because they couldn’t get over a break up?

Fragility comes from having to defend things that aren’t your principles. The French couldn’t stand to see Paris become a war zone. My friend couldn’t stand to see a girl that he wasn’t suited for go away. I wasn’t there to give the French emotional support, but I was there for my friend. And he was there for me when I got divorced. The core of fragility is holding on to things that aren’t principles.

Once you understand that everything that you own can be taken from you, but that you still own your attitude and the way you feel about things, you are less fragile. In fact, you move toward the next stage: Resilient.

In World War II, the one country that screams resilience more than any other was The Soviet Union. Yes, Stalin was perhaps the most horrible man to have ever lived and communism is the worst system ever devised, unless your goal is human suffering and misery. But the Soviet people fought. And fought. And fought. Whenever a Russian dropped, he was replaced by another Russian and a Mongolian and two Uzbeks for good measure. The Soviet Union had redundancy. Even though they were generally inferior in many ways, the Soviets didn’t give up. And, when the German supply lines were overextended?

I hear the bread was great in the Soviet Union. People would wait in line 8 hours for a single piece.

The resilience worked. The gradual wearing down of the technical superiority by numerical superiority and a willingness to not surrender. If you have to choose to fight an enemy, a resilient one is far worse than a fragile one.

What makes a person resilient? That’s the focus on values. Sure, the Soviet Union had some really lousy values, but they were willing to fight in what they called The Great Patriotic War for the idea of Russia, even though sometimes the troops advanced with guns pointed at their backs, that was more the exception than the rule.

When you live for values and refuse to give up, you become resilient.

The last way a person can live is to become Anti-Fragile. Anti-fragile is a term that I saw for the first time from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the econo-philosopher. It means that if you drop a vase, it doesn’t shatter, it doesn’t persist, it becomes stronger. Vases don’t do that. But systems do.

Well, maybe not drop it, but attack it with several carrier air groups?

The United States in World War II is an example of an anti-fragile system. When attacked at Pearl Harbor, it became stronger. Even though Battleship Row at Pearl was in flames, that attack mobilized the American people. Pa Wilder signed up on December 8, 1941, as did millions of other men. But those that didn’t sign up formed a pool of men and women that filled empty factories, constructed new ones, pumped oil, farmed, and built ships and planes and truck and tanks on a level never seen before in history.

Although it’s certain that the majority effort that it took to win World War II in Europe was done by the Soviets, it’s arguable that the Soviets would have folded in 1942 or 1943 without the food, trucks, planes, and ammunition that were provided by the United States.

The United States won the War of the Pacific nearly singlehandedly, although it’s early efforts in North Africa left the British shaking their heads and wondering if the United States could even field an army capable of fighting. The United States emerged after World War II as an industrial, economic and military behemoth. No one would argue that the United States of 1945 was weaker than the United States of 1941. The United States in 1941 is a great example of anti-fragility.

Oh, yeah, don’t forget the atomic bombs.

The prettiest atoms become atomic models.

How do people become anti-fragile? Well, start by being resilient. Then? Add learning. If you can recognize your mistakes and learn from them? That’s a good start. Capacity? Oddly enough, a person operating at peak capacity has less anti-fragility – they have little capacity to improve and a great deal of capacity for failure. Efficient systems are prone to failure. The two-income household was, even before this economic downturn, more prone to bankruptcy, rather than less.

Why?

Because the system is too efficient – most couples tend to use every dime they earn. When one income goes away? They system fails. Unused money (savings) is redundancy. It’s inefficient, but it’s capacity that you have for the unexpected.

And if you’re not focused on keeping everything, you can take risks. Lots of them – just so long as the risks aren’t so big that they crater you. This blog is one of mine. And the younger you are, the bigger risk you can take without cratering your life – you have time to make it up even if you lose everything at age 25.

I wouldn’t let my kids sleep in the bed with me when they were little. I told them I couldn’t risk the monster following them into my room.

A vision of Truth is required. One time a friend of mine and I were discussing this, and he noted that I might be trying to write what people want to read, rather than what I believe. Nope. My soul is in this. Do I agree with everything I’ve written? Of course not. I’ve written over 535 posts over the course of 3.5 years. I’ve learned. Some of my views have changed as I have changed. I’d be foolish to not change my views as I learn and understand more. But as I experiment, my soul has to be involved – I have to be a seeker of Truth, even in my experiments.

I’ve had a few moments of being Fragile in my life – mainly when I was trying to hold on to things and situations that I should have left behind me. I’ve had the majority of my life lived in a Resilient mode, putting one foot in front of the other and moving onward.

I can see that the best and most productive times in my life are when I’ve lived it in the Anti-Fragile mode. It may seem odd, but in many ways the Resilient mode is the enemy of the Anti-Fragile mode. Resiliency is about persevering. It’s not bad. There’s rarely any traffic on the second mile and working harder is, in some ways, the easy way out.

But when you achieve an Anti-Fragile life? Sometimes you achieve something amazing enough to even surprise yourself.

And always remember that when Germany and France go to war, you know 100% who will lose.

Belgium.

Investing? Invest In Yourself.

“If M.A.D starts making gold out of lead, it will undermine the world economy!” – Inspector Gadget

I invested in a series of walking trails for mental patients, but it failed. I guess Psycho-Paths® was a bad name.

By the time the stock market crashed to signal the beginning of the Great Depression, the economy of the United States had already gone through an amazing decade of change. Electrification was moving rapidly across the country, and prisons could finally retire the acoustic chair. Radio was a miracle that was now bringing masses of people together as the radio waves propagated across the country at the speed of light. Natural gas, long a nuisance in the oil patch, was being piped and compressed and shipped across larger areas of the country, bringing instant heat (and some explosions, since they hadn’t added the stuff that makes it smell bad yet) to millions.

Perhaps one of the biggest dislocations was that horses were rapidly being replaced by cars and trucks. The economy was being motorized. Some have even come to the conclusion that part of the dislocation in the economy was that the millions of horses required to plow, move freight, and move people weren’t required anymore, leading to an oversupply of horses. That’s not a situation that lasts long – the oversupply of horses, can, um, be solved. I mean, too many horses for the barns? That’s un-stable.

But if once the oversupply of horses is solved what about the oversupply of food for the horses?

Well, what are they going to do with all of that farmland, now suddenly made even more productive through the addition of tractors and cheaply made nitrogen fertilizer?

Produce more. Which drives prices down. Which leads to . . .

Deflationary depression.

It’s hard for the Amish to travel – their system is a little buggy.

I would say that “for the want of a horse, and economy was lost,” but in hindsight the real problem was the bankers. The bankers during the 1920’s and 1930’s even developed the first birth control – their personality. The Federal Reserve Bank® (which is neither part of the government nor really a bank) managed to destroy the economy through poor currency manipulation choices.

Part of the secret of the efficiency of market economies is that there is no controller telling people to start restaurants or PEZ® vineyards or bikini ranches. The feedback from the economy is measured in customers buying the product, and if the product is good enough, profit encourages people to make it.

The flip side of that is business failure. I originally wrote that was the down side. It’s not. Businesses, in a normal economy, that can’t produce a viable product should fail. Note that I’m forced to write in a normal economy. 2020 has created the situation where tens of thousands (I’m not exaggerating) of businesses have failed due to the restrictions from the reactions to COVID-19. It’s even been an international problem – Finland closed their border. No one will cross the Finnish line.

The riots in Detroit don’t get many news stories, but I heard the rioters there have caused $20 million in improvements.

That’s not normal, of course. Hair styling places are failing in the more restrictive states. In Modern Mayberry? Not so much. But in San Francisco? You can’t get your hair styled, unless you’re Nancy Pelosi. I guess that the rules prohibiting business operation are only for common people. St. Nancy can go in and get a cut and a blow dry when no one else can. Sadly, Nancy wasn’t wearing a mask, which was the only positive thing about CoronaChan since the whole thing started.

In normal times, business thrive or fail, and both of those things lead to a stronger overall economy. The services and goods that aren’t wanted anymore go away, like Beanie Babies®. Thank Heavens. But in these times of artificial economic crisis? Good, strong businesses fail.

Regardless of the type of crisis we have now, it is upon us. Whether or not the business would have failed is irrelevant. The only real question is what happens next.

One thing that is sure, the economy after this crisis passes won’t look like it used to.

I’ve posted about possible good investments in the past – if I were betting, I’d bet that gold in ten years would be a better bet than Netflix® or Tesla™, even if Tesla© starts its own religion, and builds Elon Mosques. But who knows what the economy will even look like after this crisis? I can’t guarantee any of it.

I hear that Space-X has designed electric grass for Mars. They call it E-lawn.

So what to invest in?

Yourself.

Time is potentially quite short. How should you invest your time? In yourself.

There are so many skills that are required of a human. PowerPoint® is probably not really high on them, so I wouldn’t spend much time there.

The first place I’d begin to prepare is mental. In the United States, we have become very used to the most modern conveniences. Air conditioning when it’s hot. Central heat when it’s cold. Even in Modern Mayberry, day or night I can go and get gasoline, a gallon of milk, and some beef jerky. Fast Internet that allows me to stream a television show that’s been off the air for nearly 20 years.

What happens when you don’t have those things for a day? A week? A month? When you’re used to being able to see what the temperature is in Moscow, Manila, Manhattan or Manchester, what happens when the weather becomes a mystery?

At least Biden can hide his own Easter eggs.

When you’re used to seeing real-time riots in Kenosha or Portland, what happens when you don’t know what’s happening in your own city?

I’m not saying that’s going to happen – the Internet is robust, and the systems we have built for delivering milk, gas, electricity and natural gas have redundancy.

But still, these things are possible.

Have you put your mind in a place where they have happened? What would you do? I mean, if your spouse convinces you to go to a psychiatrist, will your couch talk you out of it again?

After the mind, invest in your body. If you’re out of shape, get in better shape. Anything will help. Get out and run. If you can’t run, walk. Being able to count on your body is always good – and if you’ve been neglecting it because of work, it’s time to pay back that debt, with interest. I am fortunate enough to already have the body of an athlete already – a sumo wrestler.

Hmmm. Maybe I need some work, too.

I got a sumo wrestler for Christmas one year. I had asked for a heavy sweater.

What other ways can you invest in yourself? There are thousands of skills that are valuable, no matter what the future brings. Can you do basic medical care? I’m not asking if you can sew up a lung, but can you clean a flesh wound? Do you have Band-Aids® and Neosporin™ for a year or two? Iodine? All of that is cheap and available now. Will it be in six months?

The Mrs. bought a book on medicinal plants that showed up the other day. I was surprised that it didn’t list thyme as a remedy – I heard that thyme cures all wounds. What kind of books do you keep?

Can you garden? Annually, The Mrs. spends about $117.53 to grow about seven tomatoes. I would make fun of that, but I would also say that The Mrs. has learned lots of ways to not grow tomatoes, too. Her gardening knowledge is better than mine. It’s a little late to invest in gardening this year, but it wouldn’t hurt to start to understand what it takes. There’s a whole Internet. Heck, you could practice by killing some houseplants, like I used to do.

This isn’t a bad time for a hobby. What kind of hobby?

Lots of farms have auctions and I’ve seen farmer forges there.
Carpentry, with and without electricity.
Small engine repair. Small engines can do a great deal beyond weed eating.
Always easier when ammo isn’t so dear, but we are where we are.
Making wine or whiskey – both are great for barter, and legal to make in most places.
Fixing things around the house. When’s the last time you patched a leaky roof?

I could probably come up with a dozen more in ten more minutes, and I imagine the comments will fill up with them. Again, in some circumstances, these are nothing more than hobbies, and if you pursue them with a local club or group, you’ll build more community in addition to building yourself.

Regardless of the future we will see, investing in yourself pays dividends. Plus? It’s always better to try to grow tomatoes and fail when failure is just results in a humorous story.

Have The Kenosha Riots Given The Right Our Rosa Parks?

“We’re all Sons of Liberty here.” – John Adams (2008)

What was it that Jefferson said about the Tree of Liberty?

Friday posts originally were about health related topics. I’ve deviated away from “health” as a topic to focus on what might be more important now – mental health, specifically attitude. There’s a reason for this.

The goal of the Left, as amply illustrated by Yuri Bezmenov (Yuri Bezmenov’s 1980’s Prediction of 2020), is to demoralize the West. Demoralization’s goal is to destroy the moral outlook of our nation. The goal of Demoralization is to destroy your moral outlook.

If you’re a Christian, the goal of the Enemy (you know who when I write the big E) is to make you feel despair. If you’re not a Christian, and still on the Right, the goal of the enemy is the same – to make you feel despair. To make you feel you cannot win. To make you feel that there is nothing you can do to stop the inevitable march of history. The Enemy (or enemy) wants you to believe that the victory of the Left is inevitable.

That’s why my Friday posts are, at least recently, focused on the opposite. The victory of the Right is inevitable. And that’s what scares the Left more than anything. They will do absolutely everything they can to make you feel powerless. They will do whatever they can to make you feel that nothing you do matters. You can’t fight them.

That’s smart. But a 17 year old in Kenosha proved it was a lie, and may very well be the Rosa Parks of the Right.

I was wrapping up the writing on Wednesday’s post when the events in Kenosha happened. By events, I mean where Kyle Rittenhouse allegedly killed two people and wounded a third. I say allegedly, because even though I saw it from nearly six different angles, nearly in real time, by saying allegedly that makes me sound official. And my attorney Lazlo says it makes it harder for Leftists to sue me.

What I saw was fairly simple. It was a 17 year old kid who ran from someone who was allegedly going to hurt him. I allegedly saw a muzzle flash, which meant that someone shot at Kyle as he was fleeing. A melee ensued, and several shots can be heard on the video.

Kyle is then seen on video, first looking to provide medical care to the man on the ground, and then talking on his cell phone. The dying man on the ground is 5’3” manlet Joseph Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum was an ex-convict who had spent nearly a decade in jail for sexual misconduct with a minor, who was required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. Clearly, Rosenbaum was a gem of a manlet.

Rosenbaum made the mistake of chasing someone with an AR-15.

Oh, maybe that explains it.

Running from a fight is clear evidence of attempting to de-escalate and avoid bloodshed. When shots were fired by others first? When Rosenbaum caught the pudgy Rittenhouse? Someone shot Rosenbaum in the head. It’s not even clear at this point that it was Rittenhouse, but if it was, he was clearly being attacked.

In another video just after the first, you can see Kyle running toward the police. Kyle falls, since it looks like he has a body made for being the first kid knocked out in dodgeball during PE class. Immediately, Rittenhouse is attacked, kicked in the head. What amazes me is that Kyle rolls into the attacker who is allegedly kicking Kyle in the head, knocking him over. While he’s rolling over, it looks like he’s clearing a jammed round on his AR-15.

Are you sure this isn’t John Wick? Or John Wicksconsin?

That first attacker moves on, wisely deciding that trying to fight someone with an AR might have fatal consequences.

The second attacker, one Anthony Huber, then slams a skateboard down on Kyle’s head. Anthony Huber was convicted, twice, of domestic abuse. Including strangulation. It’s amazing that out of two BLM® protestors, we have two dirtbags. Hmm. Surely this isn’t a pattern?

Clearly that’s a peaceful use of a skateboard, right? Now who is going to raise that kid his girlfriend had with another dude?

Kyle allegedly brings up his AR-15 and launches one round, center of mass, straight into Huber. Now, where I come from, if someone is attacking you with a fifteen pound piece of wood and steel while you’re lying down on the ground, that just might be considered an attack with a deadly weapon.

Huber staggered a few feet, and then collapsed. He ultimately lost the battle with life, as predicted in the Book of Eugene Stoner, Chapter 5.56. Huber was 25. His pronouns are was/were.

The final person that Kyle allegedly shot was Gaige Grosskreutz, 26. Grosskreutz is a member of the “People’s Revolution Movement of Milwaukee,” and we all know how level headed communist revolutionaries are. But Gaige, good commie that he is, was allegedly (I can’t verify this independently right now) convicted of felony burglary, because hey, private property is theft, right comrade?

Mr. Grosskreutz allegedly held both hands up to Kyle, who was sitting on the ground. One of the hands held a pistol. Kyle didn’t shoot. But when Grosskreutz moved to draw down on Kyle? Kyle reacted with the reflexes of a cat and allegedly blasted away Grosskreutz’s right bicep.

Grosskreutz’s pronouns are now Lefty the Leftist and Ow, I Found Out. Oh, and alleged felon in possession of a handgun? I’m sure that will go over well.

Yup, that’s a gun. But certainly a peaceful member of the “People’s Revolution Movement of Milwaukee” wouldn’t want to hurt Kyle, right? Re-education is what commies do best. Right?

Ooops. Forgot. Commies want one thing, I mean, besides food.

When reviewing the footage I was astonished at the discipline of Kyle Rittenhouse. Each person he allegedly shot was clearly attacking him. He held back the second each threat passed. If I had been shooting, I’m not sure that I wouldn’t have kept shooting at the targets commies until the magazine ran dry, especially with Grosskreutz. It’s also astonishing how quickly it happened. The elapsed time from when he was attacked by Huber and when he allegedly shot Grosskreutz? Less than five seconds.

Life comes at you very, very fast.

The Leftist press has lied, again and again and again about what happened. “Shooting into a crowd” was a headline I saw. Didn’t happen. This was from Reuters® tonight:

“The charges against Rittenhouse in Kenosha County include first degree intentional homicide in the death of Anthony Huber, who was carrying a skateboard when he was gunned down.”

Well, technically Huber was “carrying a skateboard.” But Reuters™ failed to mention that Huber was using that skateboard as a weapon to smash in Kyle’s head right before Kyle allegedly shot Huber. This is clearly shown in the picture above. Sadly, Huber’s string of domestic abuse convictions will have to end at two, and the world will be deprived of his skateboarding. It’s like saying that JFK was not able to comment after a mostly peaceful ride through Dallas. Technically true, but still a lie.

The reaction from the Leftist-controlled media is proof – if you’re not taking flak, you’re not over the target. The Kyle Rittenhouse story scares them to death. A young man, with a gun, saves his own life while trying to do the right thing. The biggest irony is that every bit of information about the people he allegedly killed or wounded shows that these people, like George Floyd, like Jacob Blake (allegedly shot seven times while allegedly going for a weapon after allegedly resisting arrest in Kenosha) appear to be failed human beings. Drug addicts. Violent. Pedophiles. Wow, the Left sure chooses heroes from the wrong side of the track. I’m sure they’ll show a heart of gold by the end of the movie.

The person in opposition? A 17 year old kid who wanted to be a cop who was seen scrubbing graffiti off walls earlier in the day. This scares the Left more than anything. They want every city to be as lost and broken as Portland. But the lesson here is that cities fight for themselves. Why would people from Montana come to the rescue of Portland? The people in Portland made the mess.

Kenosha means, in Potawatomi, “the place of the pike.” Wonder what the Potawatomi translation is for “the place of the AR”?

One 17 year old has pulled the underwear tightly up the butt of the Leftists in America. One. That’s why they are frightened of him. This is the same way that society was afraid of Rosa Parks. Here was one man, standing up for his rights. He stood up, even though he was 17, to fire and chaos.

Can a black woman sit in the front of the bus? Sure. Can a 17 year old defend himself from people trying to kill him? Sure. And all of the virtue signaling in the world won’t save you from the Left. They have proven that, again and again.

Well, honestly, it’s not like Unitarian Universalists believe in anything, anyway.

Kyle Rittenhouse has just been notified that the same attorney that atomic-wedgied the Washington Post® for Nick Sandmann is now on his side. And, I hear, he has a funding site from this news article (LINK).

If real justice is done, Kyle Rittenhouse will be out of custody within a week. I’m not holding my breath. But now the Right has a face. A story. And the real truth about what it takes to fight and beat the Left. Honesty.

And a 17 year old boy. Remember, the victory of the Right is inevitable. Not necessarily today. Or this week. Or this year. Or this decade.

Remember, we are stronger than the Enemy, or enemy, ever will be.

And smile.

For the last several years, most of my memes have been forged in my underground meme foundry. These are all “as found” on the Internet – thanks, /pol/. Comments are mine.