Category: Health

Bad Self Help Ideas, A Naked Cat Fight, and Johnny Depp (In His Own Gravy)

“If you eliminate the third, fifth, and sixth letters, then it’s Red’s Digest, comrade.” – M*A*S*H

digest

Yes, Laura Ingalls Wilder is where I got my blogging name.  Long story.

My parents subscribed to Reader’s Digest© as I was growing up.  For those unfamiliar with the magazine, it was a little bigger than a paperback book, and contained shortened versions of articles from other magazines.

TL;DR?  Reader’s Digest™ is like Reddit® for old people.

aliensmine

Sometimes it really is aliens. 

Reader’s Digest™ also contains several pages of stories from readers, mainly jokes and humorous stories, or at least it did back the last time I read it, when I was just a kid, say 10 or so.  One of the stories has stuck with me since then.  It goes something like this:

One day a mother looked out the kitchen window and saw her children playing in the backyard.  She noticed that her son, about age seven, had a rock in his hand and was using it to strike the top of a soup can.  The can was being held in place by the woman’s five-year-old daughter.  What alarmed the woman was that the daughter was holding the can on top of her head.

“Timmy, stop hitting your sister!” yelled the mother.

The daughter replied, “It’s okay, Mommy, he’s almost done.”

Some of the details of the story might be wrong, but I remember the last line exactly.  It amuses me to this day, because I can see that, while uncomfortable as it may be to have a seven year old whacking at a soup can on top of your head with a rock, you can be certain you will feel better when they stop.

I listen to YouTube® on the drive to work.  Listen.  I used to watch it, but the pedestrians didn’t seem to like sharing the sidewalk, and Pop Wilder told me when I was first learning to drive to never swerve, it was dangerous.  I guess I’ll miss Grandma.  Pity about the will.  Anyway, the terms of my parole don’t let me watch YouTube® anymore.  We have strict judges in Modern Mayberry.

YouTube™ has autoplay, and since I’m driving, I wasn’t watching, and it’s played everything from videos on Stalin to videos on chainsaws to Alice Cooper® songs that he performed for a Philippino werewolf movie.  So this particular random video didn’t surprise me.  In the video, I heard a person talking about how they made their life better through “Negative Visualization.”

stalin

Stalin’s program was so effective, he made 20 million people disappear!  Just like food, this offer is not available in stores.

My first thought was that I had never heard that term and I was wondering if it was some sort of self-help video hosted by Stalin.  Once you get into the Stalin self-help videos, that’s a never ending video sink-hole.  Better Mental Health Through Collective Farming And Not Eating All That Decadent Food Like the Capitalists still gives me the shivers.

It turns out this video was entirely unrelated to Stalin, entirely bypassing the U.S.S.R. self-help craze currently so popular in California.  In this particular video, the presenter suggested you imagine that something horrible happened to your family, say, they were killed slowly in a fire, or were forced to go to a Cher™ concert.  He suggested that then you’d feel better when you realized that none of those horrible things happened to them.  His theory is that you’d love them more and appreciate them more after mentally throwing yourself through a daily tragedy.  What could go wrong?

Timmy, in other words, would stop banging the soup can on your head with a rock and you’d feel better.

I feel that Negative Visualization is a supremely stupid idea, at least for me.  I thought that if I started my day imagining tragedy in all aspects of my life, that my relationships fractured, that I became ill, that I became bankrupt, or that I had to give Johnny Depp a two hour sponge bath with tepid water, I would just be depressed.  So I tried it.  And I was right.  It was just depressing.  Instead of feeling better because my bathroom was Depp-free, the emotions of imagining a nude and smelly Johnny Depp in my bathtub was just gross, so I felt both depressed and unclean.

depptub

Is it just me, or do you think that this room smells like Dinty Moore Beef Stew®, expensive foreign alcohol made from bugs, and despair?  As a note, The Mrs. felt the caption should have used gravy instead of sauce.  Which do you prefer, Depp Gravy™ or Depp Sauce©?

Instead of Stalin’s Daily Devotion® I decided to go back to what I’ve done for most of my life:  just be grateful for what I have.  Today, in this moment I have it pretty good.  I have enough money to not worry for the next ten minutes.  I have a loving family that will pretend to be happy to see me when I get home tonight.  I have friends that I can call up and share the innermost details of my life with, so they can make fun of me behind my back.  And I’m healthy, losing weight consistently, and don’t have an immediate departure date from planet Earth.  Plus?  I just bought a bitchin’ 6.5 Creedmoor that I need to sight in.

My life is good.  Because you have a computer and you’re reading this, you have it good, too.  In fact, chances are pretty strong that you’re part of the dreaded 1%.

Don’t think so?  Don’t argue with Wilder.

I got into a Twitter® slapfight about just this subject.  The thing I have since discovered is that winning an argument on Twitter© carries the same prestige as beating a kitten in a knife fight, so I have (mostly) given it up, which is nice for the kitten.  The kitten was getting pretty tired of it, even though it had it coming.  Sir Flappy Knobkins knows why.

catfight

Cats may be quick, but I have a secret weapon:  I’ve mastered Laser-Fu.

But in this particular Twitter© slapfight, a gentleman from England was complaining about “the evil 1%”.  My response to him was, “dude, you ARE the 1%.”  He then preceded to deny that he was part of the 1%, because they were evil and owned private islands.  I then pointed out the minimum income to crack the top 1%:

$32,400 per year.

Yup.  If you make $32,400 a year, you’re in the top 1%.  But that’s looking at the whole world.  I could tell by the pause that the gentleman I was arguing with looked it up.  Then he responded, “Well, not that 1%.  I meant the really rich people.”  His entire persona was built around the idea that he was oppressed and his Tweets® were filled with envy.  I bet he’s fun at parties.

So my suggestion is this:  get up every morning and don’t imagine those you love being slowly, lovingly, caressed by Joe Biden.  No.  Get up and be grateful.  I know for a fact that many of you reading this blog are multi-thousandaires, so you have a lot to be grateful for.  Gratitude feels better than envy or being depressed any day.  And if something really is wrong?  Remember it will pass.  Eventually life gets tired, and stops hitting the can on your head with a rock.

canhead

Don’t pick a rock that’s too big.

Think how good you’ll feel when he stops!

Health, Wealth, and Chainsaw Hands

Captain Murphy:  Wait a minute, he gets eye beams, but I can’t get x-ray vision?

Sparks:  Okay, everybody gets x-ray vision.

Captain Murphy:  Yeah, and big chainsaw hands! – Sealab 2021

tats

Hail to the King, Baby.

Recently there was a fairly large windstorm across large parts of upper/lower Midwestia.  We live in a fairly calm region, but, it’s Midwestia – there are no mountains or even ambitious ant hills to slow down the wind once Global Warming® causes it to blow.  I am reliably informed that the entire Earth was sunny and 72°F (0.15°C) with no wind and gentle rainstorms before Global Warming©.

Despite all that, I also live on the slope of hill – which shelters us on the days the wind acts in ways entirely unapproved by several Congressional committees.  But this windstorm brought a very special wind.  One might call it a mighty wind.  Since it did damage all over Modern Mayberry, one might even call it a breaking wind.  Stupid Global Warming™.  I guess that they could even use it as a symbol of Global Warming®:  they could call it Breaking Wind©.

The Breaking Wind™ came at night, while I was asleep.  And make no mistake, I was really, really asleep, I’d been up late the night before, lovingly crafting these thrice-weekly missives for you out of Elven dreams and stud weasel chum, so I was exhausted.  The rest of the Wilder Family was up, doing whatever it is those people keep doing in my house which as far as I can see consists of making all that noise, leaving a trail of unidentified sharp plastic objects on the stairs, and a creating a continual kaleidoscope of weird smells.  What does a thirteen year old do, exactly, to make the hallway smell like bigfoot’s armpit after he ate a lot of asparagus, broccoli, and cabbage?

So, I was sleeping.  Soundly.  The Mrs. threw open the door to the room and turned the light on, which is how I like to be wakened at 1:15AM.

“You need to get up.  We just had a huge gust of Breaking Wind© hit the house and Pugsley says that there are trees down everywhere and possibly an attack of people from Ecuador.  It even pushed my stapler off the table.  The wind pushed the stapler, not the Ecuadorans.  I don’t think we need to worry about the Ecuadorans, they’re not even taking cover properly as they advance up the driveway.”  I may have mangled part of this, like I said, I was sleepy.

stapler

It’s that exact model, but the one that blew off the table is blue.  I’d work for a better joke, but I’m already up to my armpits in elven dreams and stud weasel chum.

The Mrs. had one window open on the windward side of the house, a two foot by three foot (16 meter by 27 liter) sized window.  Not very big.  But the gust had blown leaves and debris into the screen on the windows.  Not on to the screen – the leaves and other biological material had been embedded into the screen like rap fans attempting to leave a polka shindig.

I knew with winds that severe, it might be dangerous outside.  Very dangerous – heck, there could be branches even now getting ready to tumble out of the sky like a camera-seeking-Kardashian missile.  So dangerous.  Then I realized the best way to brave the wind, rain, and hazards of falling hairy women outside.

I’d send Pugsley.

He’s younger than The Boy, and we have less time invested in raising him at this point, so he’s the most expendable.

“Go check it out.  Take some pictures.”

I kid. It was just wet and I was in my footed Yoda® pajamas.

yodajoke

The only appropriate use of Yoda© themed apparel.

Okay, I don’t really have footed Yoda© pajamas, but I still had a fantasy of being able to get back to sleep, and being soaking wet at 1AM would lower the odds that would happen.  I mean, under those conditions, sometimes it takes me minutes to get back to sleep.  Minutes!

Pugsley came back inside, thankfully Kardashian-free.  “A tree hit the house!”  I walked outside into the torrential downpour.  Nothing of the sort had happened.  A tree fell, but it missed the house.  So much for my housecat-like fantasy of not getting wet.

The next morning, we surveyed the property around the house.  Only one entire tree was down, but there were huge branches that had been ripped off several other trees, including a big branch off the apple tree in the front yard that nearly blocked the driveway.  Nearly.

The Mrs. was not enchanted with my “just wait a few years and they’ll rot away” strategy.  The Mrs. is not in favor of nature’s way, and I bet The Mrs. even doubts Global Warming®, even after having firsthand evidence of the Breaking Wind™.  The bright side?  I had a good excuse to buy a chainsaw.

kill

You get more attention with a kind word and a chainsaw than with just a kind word.  Frankly, all you need is the chainsaw in that situation.

I had owned two chainsaws when we lived in Alaska, but I hadn’t cranked them since Bush 2 was in office, and they were “somewhere” in the garage.  Why two chainsaws?  Two is one, and one is none.  The last thing you want is to be 35 miles from home in the middle of getting firewood and have to stop because you have a broken chainsaw or if you need to have a duel with a grizzly bear.  It wouldn’t be sporting to not have two for a duel.  Also:  best way ever to die – having a chainsaw duel with a grizzly – not that I’m planning anything, but that’s really something for a tombstone . . . here lies John Wilder – Died in A Chainsaw Duel with a Grizzly.  My pallbearers would grow immediate beards from the testosterone oozing from my coffin.

I realize the frugal thing would be to spend the three hours required to get my two old chainsaws back up to speed, after spending the six hours to find them, but I was out of frugal.  Thankfully, Wal-Mart sells chainsaws.  Also, thankfully, I also had a good reason to buy one.  Since my chainsaw work would be around my home and there were no grizzly bears here, I could just go inside and get some iced tea if the saw went south.

Guilty admission:  I like running a chainsaw nearly as much as I like shooting.

When we lived in Alaska, we heated our home exclusively with firewood, getting massive amounts of firewood each summer.  But it’s been a lot of years and a lot of carbs since we lived in Alaska.  But I figured that Pop Wilder ran a chainsaw until late in his life, much to the consternation of the people running the nursing home.  If he did it, I certainly wasn’t too old.

chainsawfacebook

And his Instagram® is made from real grandmas.

But with my brand-spanking-new chainsaw I discovered that in three hours, I can cut more branches and trees than my two boys could move to the burn pile in eight.  And when you have a chainsaw in your hand, everything looks like a branch or tree that needs to be cut and added to the burn pile.  That may explain why the cat was scarce.

Oh, and in Modern Mayberry, whenever I want to burn my burn pile?

No permits?  No permission?  No problem.

It’s a thing we call freedom, baby.

But I come by my love of chainsaws, firewood, and the forest honestly.  Pop Wilder also heated his exclusively with firewood when I was growing up.  Cord after cord after cord of wood.  Pop was prepared, and needed to be:  the winters were often -40°F (-273.15°C) for an extended time.  So every summer weekend when Pop wasn’t working at the bank, it was off to the forest to make the forest a little less susceptible to forest fires.

I was the youngest, so I wasn’t allowed to run the chainsaw – they seemed to like the idea of me having two hands.  Pop Wilder and my brother, John Wilder (Yes, we have the same first name, for reals in real life.  My parents forgot about him once I was born and saw my magnificence and accidently named me John, too.) ran the saws.  They told me I had the easy job.  I got to pick the wood off of the ground, put it on the tailgate.  Once there was enough wood on the tailgate to stack in the truck bed, I’d hop up there and stack the wood in the truck in rows.  Then I’d hop back down and repeat the process until the truck was full.

firewood

The Boy with the firewood we got in one weekend when we lived in Alaska.  It was a busy weekend.

Once we got home, Pop and my brother would go into the house to shower up and get some cold drinks.  Me?  I got to unload the truck, sweep out the truck bed, and finally go in to see my freshly washed father and brother having a snack and some cold lemonade.  Some weekends we’d get four loads of wood.

We were a fun family at parties.  Firewood?  Well, there’s split firewood.  Blocked firewood.  Kindling firewood.  Stacked firewood.  Piled firewood.  Fireplace firewood.  Stove firewood.  Burning firewood.  Firewood ashes.  Aspen firewood.  Pine firewood.  Birch firewood.

And that’s all we know about firewood.

But one thing was certain – cutting, loading, splitting, and stacking firewood is great summer exercise.  It’s not bad exercise in the winter, either, bringing the wood in from the piles to the house.  In Alaska, not only was it great exercise, we figured it saved us about $1000 a month in fuel oil – in January it was regularly -55°F (-7,000,000.15°C), and if the house was 65°F (4.15°C) inside, there was a 120°F temperature difference between outside and inside.  And we were living in a log cabin.  Holy Dehumidifiers, Batman!  We kept a pot of water boiling on the wood stove continually.

I was in great shape then.  Now?  I’m 14 years older, and I’ll admit even though I now had The Boy and Pugsley hauling the blocks of wood and branches, I was more than a little sore the next day.  That was okay, because when I got finished with the all the hard chainsawing work?  I was soaking my sore muscles in the hot tub while Pugsley and The Boy worked on hauling wood to the burn pile.  From time to time I made encouraging noises.  I’m sure that they appreciated that.  Thankfully they were on hand to get me some cold beverages.

I mean, the hot tub is sweaty work, right?

No staplers were injured in the creation of this post.

staplerpet

The Last Weight Loss Advice You’ll Ever Need, Plus a Girl in a Bikini Drinking Water

“I need food, food to be strong for when the wolves come.” – Conan the Barbarian

communist fasting

Communist humor is like food:  not everyone gets it.

Normally I’d end a post like this with a warning, but this week I’ll put the warning straight up front.  I’m a freedom blogger with a side order of humor.  I’m not a doctor, except in my role as John Wilder – Civil War Surgeon to His Children®, Remover of Splinters and Super-Gluer® of Grievous Wounds.  The following advice has worked flawlessly for me and for thousands of others.  There may be some medical reason that it might not work for you.  As always, I suggest you go see a doctor, even though I’m pretty willful and just skipped that step entirely.  I’m not on any medications, so it’s hard to screw up medications that aren’t there.

I think, in all seriousness, this is one of the more important personal health posts I’ve written for anyone who wants to lose weight, which from the statistics is most of the United States.  As far as I can see, the biggest weight loss issues people normally face (besides your mother) are:

  • The diet isn’t working.
  • Okay, it’s working. But it’s working slooooooowly.
  • Wait, it didn’t work this week at all.
  • I’m not sure why, but this week I gained
  • Is it just me, or can everyone gain weight on a box of McDonalds® fries?
  • Wine or Beer or Chocolate Shakes or Twinkies® don’t have that many calories, right?
  • I just walked half a mile! I need to reward myself with a Double Whopper©.  Yes, with cheese.

I’m going to make a pretty bold statement:  I can fix every one of the issues above with one simple trick that doesn’t involve Marx, Lenin, or Castro.

Just stop eating.  Fast.  Not fast as in “quickly” but fast as in fasting:  not eating.

That’s it.

  • No books.
  • No seminars.
  • No cash payments to TV promoters.
  • No special food to buy.
  • No 1-800 phone numbers.
  • No special Internet offers.
  • No counting calories.
  • No communist dictators.

Thus, there’s very little profit opportunity in a business like this.  A cynical person might point out that the diet industry in the United States is worth about $70 billion every year, and the cost of being overweight rings in a tab of (my guess, based on decade-old numbers) of nearly half a trillion dollars in health care costs.  That cynical person might also note that it’s certainly not in the interests of people who are making hundreds of billions of dollars because a problem exists to actually fix that problem.

But imagine:  Just not eating . . . would save the United States $70 billion, and that’s just for starters.  It would also save a lot of money on food.  But more on that later.

fastingmeditation

When people say “listen to your body” I wonder if they’re schizophrenic or puppeteers, since those are the only people I know who talk to a body part.

Let’s talk about something more interesting:  me.  I wanted to wait to write this post until I had some pretty significant results – I wrote once before about fasting, and it was going well then.  How about now?

  • I’ve lost more than 20% of my body weight since January 1, 2019.
  • I feel great.
  • The average weight loss is about 1.5% a week.
  • The weight loss is consistent.
  • The weight loss is maintained.
  • I have to shorten my belt every week or two.
  • The ghost of Stalin is wondering how I did it.

Again, I’d say that fasting costs nothing, but that wouldn’t be true.  Fasting has saved me lots and lots of money, which will become apparent when I describe how I’m doing it below.

One other thing – I gave up drinking alcohol (beer, wine, etc.) as my weight loss progresses with the exception of two major milestones.  I figured that, besides motivation, giving up alcohol during my weight loss would be good because alcohol is the source of at least two things:  empty calories and bad decisions.  Besides, you can’t sit around on the back deck with a Budweiser® and claim you’re fasting.  Well, you can, but you’d be using Senate-level honesty.

So what exactly did I do?  I stop eating Saturday night most weeks.  Then I eat again from Friday at lunch until Saturday night.  In any given week, my window to eat is about 36 hours long.

Does it require willpower?  Yeah.  But it’s not a frightening level of willpower where I have to face the gom-jabbar or anything.  I think the biggest change for me has been breaking the conditioning of “you have to eat” that’s pretty prevalent.  I’ll listen to people saying “you have to eat” when I’m wearing size 32 jeans.  Until then?  Nope.

gomwilder

I know that the two of you who got this laughed.

Did I drink anything?  Sure.  Water.  Tea.  Coffee.  Club soda.  No diet soda – I’ve read that it stimulates and insulin response, and that’s the exact opposite of what we wanted.  Besides, I think diet soda tastes like I imagine antifreeze tastes.  Your mileage may vary.

So no eating anything?  Okay, I’ll come clean.  The first few weeks I had breath mints, but then I read the label and did the math and now I don’t have them at all unless I have a business meeting and don’t want to have bad breath that can melt a conference table.  Sugar free doesn’t mean calorie free.  I also brush my teeth twice as often.

I also cheat with dill pickles.  At 10 to 20 calories per day, it wasn’t much, and the pickles replaced salt I sweated out while exercising.  Yes, every day that I could get to the gym at lunch I would exercise.  It did two things – it burned a few extra calories, but after a workout I’m never hungry, so the afternoons are hunger free.

What is a typical week like?

Sunday is always great.  Generally no hunger at all.  Generally no food at all, either.  Not even the pickles I cheat with.

fastingdinner

And cleanup is a breeze!

Monday is normally pretty good.  I might have five calories of pickles.  Or ten.

Tuesday is the toughest day.  I believe what’s happening here is that my liver is all out of glycogen, a sugar that is stored in the liver for emergency use.  Any food in my digestive system is long gone.  That means that on Tuesday the body has to switch over to using fat.  By Tuesday night I’m feeling pretty good.  My energy levels are actually higher on Tuesday night than Tuesday morning.  Tuesday is the only day I feel really hungry.  The rest of the time, when I think I’m hungry, I’m really just . . . conditioned to be eating.  When I really sit back and examine if I’m hungry, the answer is almost always “no.”  Except on Tuesday.

You guessed it – if I get horribly hungry I have a few small dill pickles.

Wednesday and Thursday look pretty much the same as each other – my energy levels are up even though I’ve gone 72+ hours without any food.  There’s a strong focus and mental acuity that seems to emerge about this point.  It’s entirely likely that this account’s for Shakespeare’s quote from Julius Caesar, “Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look.”  I have no idea if Cassius ate pickles.

Thursday about midnight (when I’m writing this blog) I often go upstairs and cook some broth and/or have some cheese.  Total calories are about 40 (about the same as eight mints) but it seems to make sense to have this as a gentle kick-start for the digestive system.  The of all food I’ve consumed during the fast would probably be less than 100 calories, and certainly less than 200 calories, and almost never any sugar.  It’s like I’m a fashion model, but without the cocaine!

fastingbikini

Mmmmm, water.

Friday is FOOD DAY!  I’ll eat at lunch – say 11:30 or so, though one particular Friday I was feeling so good that I skipped going to lunch right away and pushed it off entirely until nearly 2pm.  My longest fast is about five and a half days.  I might go longer, just for grins, but five and a half days a week is worth a weekly weight loss of more than 1.5% of my body weight every week.

The weight loss is wonderful, but the other payoff is significant:  on Friday, the food is amazing.  The taste of crisp lettuce and tomato on a burger . . . gives me shivers.  The Chick-Fil-A® nuggets become a banquet.  One Friday I had tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich with bacon.  No king ever had such wondrous flavors hit his palate.  One of the reasons I’ve grown to love fasting is that food tastes so much better.  I guarantee you that after going 100 hours without food, you will enjoy and savor food more than you ever have in your life.

waterglass

Did you notice the big lunch buffet behind the lunch?

Food (mainly) tastes better, more flavorful, richer.  That is, food that is closest to being “natural” – processed junk is not appealing on day five of a fast.  One Friday I had a concession stand pretzel with concession stand cheese for lunch.  I threw half of it away – the pretzel tasted like paste and the cheese like a chemical byproduct meant to poison some of the horrible fist-sized spiders that only live in Australia.  I never would have imagined throwing food away after not eating for five days, but then again, I never would have pictured not eating for 134 hours.

The other effect I notice at the end of a fast is that my stomach is small.  I simply cannot eat as much as I used to eat.  I’m often full before I can finish a “normal” portion size at the local restaurant.  And if I try to eat three “normal” meals?  I get uncomfortably full.

So what do I eat during the 36 hours?  Anything I want to.  No limits on portions or content, with the previously mentioned exception of the wine and beer.  Why no wine and beer?  As I mentioned, there are a lot of bad decisions in those bottles, but also because I love a good glass of wine with a steak or a beer while I’m at the barbeque grill.  These are motivation for success.  It’s that simple.

closers

It’s also breakfast, the most important meme of the day.

I know that this diet might sound extreme, but I’ll counter that our current culture is probably a LOT more extreme than this diet.  Where in history has mankind had such a surplus of food?  There is no point in history that we’ve been as heavy as we are today, and that’s more extreme than fasting.  But let’s rewind:

A mammoth hunter back in 20,000 B.C. couldn’t jump into his Fred Flintstone® car and go down to the 7-11© to pick up a Slurpee™ when he was hungry.  Instead he’d carve into the mammoth that he and Ug got the previous week.  Oops, they ate it all.  Now they couldn’t exactly go down to Mammoth-Mart© and pick up some steaks, they had to go find one.  That might mean days of hunting, and it might mean that Fred and Ug might have to focus on the hunt.

One thing that’s for sure, the body would want to provide them with energy but not eat into the muscle needed for hunting.  Thus it would pull high-quality energy from the source created just for that purpose – fat.  Fat serves a very useful purpose in animals – future energy storage for times when it’s needed.

Metabolic slowdown has been observed to be much more of an issue with reduced calorie diets – your body understands that there’s food, but just not as much as it would like.  It reacts by lowering temperature and going into a semi-hibernation.  But when the body has no food?  Energy is actually required, so it provides it as needed.  It’s often that my best and most energetic workout of the week is on Thursday after fasting for over 100 hours.

mammoth

Gym fees were waived if the mammoth stomped on you.

Do I have to workout while fasting?  No, many people don’t.  But every calorie burned in a workout while I’m in a fasted state is a calorie of fat.  So if you do a 500 calorie workout five days in a fasted state, that’s 2500 calories.  Of fat.  A pound of fat is 3600 calories, so you’ve burned about 0.7 pound (500,000 kilograms) of fat for a fairly short workout.  Add that up?  In ten weeks that’s 7 pounds (3.2 grams).  Not bad – there are entire diets that don’t provide that kind of predictable success that I’ve experienced with just one aspect of my new lifestyle.

Yes, lifestyle.  When I started, my goal was to get to a weight that I had not too long after college.  Now?  My new final goal is to get back to my college weight.  I can see that fasting some duration each week (One day?  Three days?  I’m not sure.) will be a part of maintaining that goal weight – and it won’t be a burden, I actually like fasting after having done it.  It’s obvious to me that the things I tried before didn’t work because they weren’t simple.

This is simple.

DrEvilFasting

Okay, Dr. Evil may not be a real doctor.

Fasting is also something that Dr. Fung (LINK) has said he’s used to cure (yes, cure) type II diabetic patients.  As a kidney doctor, he got to see patients that had progressed pretty far toward death.  Dr. Fung noted that he was pretty frustrated being told that the only thing that he could do was make these patients comfortable until they died.  There was no cure.

Fung didn’t accept that.  Type II diabetes is a disease that’s related to lifestyle.  It’s really part of a bigger condition known as metabolic syndrome.  He began treating his patients with fasting.  The farther gone they were, the longer the fasts – in some cases 14 days.  He noted (and many subsequent studies have confirmed this) that fasting made them better.  It increased insulin sensitivity, and that was huge.

Insulin plays many roles in the human body – I believe I recall doctors had found at least 40 regulatory influences from insulin, but I can’t find that article right now, but did find a full dozen important things it does.  But (if you have a functioning pancreas) two important features are that it allows your body to admit sugar to cells for use.  That’s important.  But in type II diabetes a resistance is formed and more and more insulin has to be released to transport the sugar into the cell.

Uh-oh.

Insulin also signals your body to build and store fat.  So you’re using sugar poorly, but also being signaled to store more fat.  Thus?  Your metabolism is screwed up and your body wants to make more fat out of the sugar in your system.  So Dr. Fung came up with the idea to just stop type II diabetics from eating.  And it worked like a charm.

People are alive today because Dr. Fung had this idea.  Let that sink in.

Am I saying that it can cure you?  Dr. Fung thinks so.  But he also cautions that certain diabetic medications can be dangerous and need close monitoring so you don’t die, or something.  Blah blah blah.

vapesulin

I hear they’re going to start vaping Cheetos® soon.

But I’m not on any medications, so this seemed like a slam dunk.  I even spent $30 for a cheap-o blood sugar monitor to see if there was anything that would show up.  Nah.  Boring, which just means that my liver and pancreas are doing the things they’re supposed to do.

But the other meters in the house, the scale and my belt have certainly been heading in the right direction.

The other thing I’ve noticed is that I’ve saved a lot of money.  When you only have two lunches and two dinners a week, you don’t spend as much on groceries and hardly anything on restaurants.  Also, the fam doesn’t tend to go out to dinner when I’m fasting.  I’m certainly okay with going out, but I think they feel guilty.  So there’s that money saved, too.  Oh, and the wine and beer.  Not buying any of that saves money.  And we all know that mixing Amazon® and beer lead to purchases of solar string lights and ceramic garden gnomes because “those might look good on the deck.”  The worst part is trying to explain to The Mrs. exactly what I was thinking . . .

I am not exaggerating when I say that I have saved thousands of dollars by fasting.

This will likely be the last post on fasting until I’ve reached my primary goal and learned what I have to do to stay there, forever.  And I’ll only post that if it’s interesting.

In addition to the Doctor Fung reference, the sub-Reddit on fasting is a wealth of information – mainly good information, but you should do your own research:

Here’s a link to the Reddit on fasting: /Fasting

Here’s a link to a Reddit thread showing my results aren’t unique:  Reddit /Fasting Dude

Here’s a link to about a guy who fasted for over a year:  Scottish Fasting Dude

 

At Our Wits’ End Review Part II: I.Q. and the Fate of Civilization (Hint, It’s Idiocracy)

“As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point.  Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits.  Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent.  But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction.  A dumbing down.  How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence.  With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.” – Idiocracy

idiocracy2

The pictures from this post are mainly from Idiocracy©, which you should watch before it’s an actual documentary.

This is the second part of the review of the book At Our Wits’ End.  The first part can be found here at At Our Wits’ End Review Part The First:  Increasing Intelligence and Civilization.  Again, I recommend the book, and the link is below.  As of this writing I don’t get any compensation if you buy it here.  Buy it anyway.  It’s an important book.

When last we left Western Civilization, we’d reached the smartest point ever in history.  Isaac Newton was an example of the genius produced at this time in history.  Dutton and Woodley have data to suggest that 1750 was the peak of intelligence for Western Civilization.

Is there any evidence for this?

Certainly.

Life in 1770 was fairly comparable to life in 1470.  Given three hundred years, things hadn’t changed much at all.  But by 1804, life was dramatically different.  The Industrial Revolution® was a product of the accumulated intellectual capital of the preceding five hundred years and it changed everything.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution©, natural selection occurred in society through the culling of the poor via disease and poverty along with the execution/prison death for about 2% of the stupider males.  This led to the population getting smarter.  But the Industrial Revolution© created an economic abundance in the West like never seen before.  Surplus food and goods were now available in society.  Medicine improved and kept the weak children of rich people alive.

famtree.jpg

Ahh, selection in progress.

Medicine also kept more of the children of poor people and poor single mothers alive.  As established previously,

  • Poor impulse control is correlated with lower I.Q.,
  • Single motherhood is correlated with lower I.Q.,
  • Less overall wealth is correlated with lower I.Q., and
  • Having more children is correlated with lower I.Q.

Again, none of these predict the behavior in individuals.  The friend I have with the greatest number of children has a very high I.Q.  There are several very smart people I know that don’t have a lot of money.  And anyone under the influence of testosterone and being 18 has really crappy impulse control.  I will also remind everyone being rich doesn’t mean you’re virtuous.  Neither does being smart. But in group behavior, the correlations above are well documented.

Dutton and Woodley note that they’re not the first ones to see the inherent problems with the removal of natural selection in a wealthy society.  Benedict Morel, named after a mushroom, observed this problem in 1857 between surrenders in France.  Francis Galton wrote in 1865 that “Civilization preserves weakly lives that would have perished in barbarous lands.”  Ouch.

But it’s true.  As of this week, every member of our family wears glasses as Pugsley was the last to leave the “good eyes” club.  And The Mrs. developed type I diabetes when she was 12.  Prior to the 1920’s this was a near immediate death sentence.  However, since insulin was isolated and entered the market in the 1930’s, she’s alive and had kids, namely Pugsley and The Boy.  Her genes would never have reproduced without the Industrial Revolution™.

hiq.jpg

Spoiler alert:  they’re never going to be ready.

Charles Darwin wrote an entire book on the problem:  The Descent of Man.  It really wasn’t a light “summer at the beach” read as it described humanity getting progressively . . . worse.  Smarter people use contraception more (remember, the prohibition against birth control went away as religious beliefs changed).  And lower I.Q. people not only have more children, they actively desire more children.

Further factors that have developed as society absorbed the wealth of the great capitalist expansion include the development of a welfare state.  That’s a problem if you want smart people around.  Welfare states support and encourage single mothers (lower I.Q.) to have more children and ensures that those children survive.  Dutton and Woodley also note that data suggests that welfare may encourage those who are also low in “personality factors” (agreeableness and conscientiousness) to have more children.  What does that lead to?  A population that is more impulsive, paranoid, apathetic and aggressive.  By coincidence these traits are also associated with lower I.Q.

So, numbers increase on the lower end of the I.Q. scale.  What about on the upper end?  Are smart people are having lots of babies?  No.  Opening high value careers up to intelligent women causes them to have fewer babies.  Higher I.Q. people also use birth control more frequently, and actually desire to have smaller families.  So not only are lower I.Q. people having more lower I.Q. babies, smarter people are having fewer high I.Q. children.

brawn2

But at least they have what plants crave!

Having a wealthy society also increases the desire for people from less wealthy countries to immigrate to the rich countries.  As we shown in the previous post (I.Q. – uh- What is it good for? Absolutely Everything. Say it again.), less wealth generally correlates to lower societal I.Q.  Does this translate to real-world outcomes?  Yes.  Dutton and Woodley cite Danish studies that show the average Dane I.Q. to be around 100.  However, the I.Q. of non-Western immigrants is roughly 86 in Denmark.  Immigrants certainly aren’t making Denmark smarter.

futuretown

To think, you could live in a paradise like this . . . .

Since intelligence is 0.80 correlated with genetics, they and their children actually can’t make Denmark smarter.  This result would indicate that wealth, quality of life, and ability to self-govern would decrease in countries facing high immigration, while crime would increase.  As a completely unrelated note, the United States has more immigrants than any country on Earth, with 40% of the population (How the Constitution Dies) now being either first generation or born of a foreign mother.

But What About The Flynn Effect?

The Flynn Effect refers to a general rise in IQ scores between 1930 and 1980, noted by a guy named (drum roll) Flynn, James Flynn – he’ll take his data shaken, not stirred.  For whatever reason I.Q. scores seemed to be increasing.  However, Dutton and Woodley explain that the Flynn effect is most likely environmental in nature (i.e., better nutrition) and not genetic.

Apparently the I.Q. test sub-scores that show improvement tend to favor very specific areas of intelligence, namely those areas that are environmentally influenced.  There is a parallel with height, they point out:  in 1900, average height in Great Britain was 5’6”.  In 1970 it was 5’10”.  But growth has been in leg length (which is more correlated with environmental factors) versus torso length (which is more genetic).  People are taller due to nutrition.

Additionally, schools train more for abstract thought than they would have in a mostly agrarian society, which would have been the norm throughout the West in 1930.  Country schoolhouses didn’t need to teach logic puzzles, since they were focused on traditional subjects.  Now children are drilled in the kinds of questions that are used on I.Q. tests – and if you practice, you do get better even if you’re not smarter.  On some I.Q. tests administered to youth, they’re not considered to be valid if the child had the test in the past year, so practicing the kinds of questions on the test will likely improve scores.

The bad news is that evidence suggests that the Flynn effect has stopped around somewhere around the year 2000 and is now headed downward.  Reaction times (a proxy for intelligence) have dropped.  Reaction times aren’t as closely correlated with I.Q. as many of the other things we’ve talked about, but they are directly measurable.  It may be a bad ruler, but it’s a ruler that we can use to compare across time.

Also confirming the I.Q. drop is work done by Augustine Kong, a Chinese researcher at the University of Iceland studied genetic components known to increase I.Q.  They’re declining.  The average Icelander born in 1990 wasn’t as smart as one born in 1910, and the genetics aren’t there to support an increasing I.Q.  The opposite appears to be happening.

Dutton and Woodley conclude that based on the metrics they reviewed, the “average” Englishman of 1850 would be in the top 15% of intelligence today in England.  Oops.  And apparently all tests surveyed indicate declining I.Q.  That’s a problem:  if average intelligence is declining, and intelligence is a bell curve, there will be fewer geniuses and a smaller “smart fraction” that is able to put run and hold together a technologically advanced society.  Or build a SR-71 Blackbird.  Or a Saturn V rocket.

Just like a bad horror movie, it keeps getting worse.  The very temperament of genius is changing – from stereotypical genius – a very driven, self and work-preoccupied Einstein to Todd from corporate:  intelligent, socially skilled, agreeable, and conscientious.  Thankfully the genius “Todd” will provide us really detailed policy manuals and snappy PowerPoints® instead of that useless groundbreaking physics.

Creativity is correlated with I.Q. but only up to an I.Q. of 120.  As a further confirmation, creativity scores have declined, therefore . . . expect less Monty Python® on TV and more “Ow, My Balls©.”

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And people say that there’s nothing good on TV.

On the bright side, the murder rate is down.  Why would that be so?  Murder, violence and impulsive behavior is correlated with lower I.Q.  Dutton and Woodley theorize that the environment that creates violence is down – given a robust welfare system it’s less likely that financial pressures or social pressures are as high.  You kid won’t be starving to death as they stuff their face full of Cheetos® while they sit on the couch playing X-Box™, and since obesity is up, killing people is such hard work, anyway.

Why do Civilizations Rise and Fall?

Like your mother-in-law, early civilizations have a low I.Q. – they’re dangerous places to be.  But over time group selection pressures intensify, the people become highly religious and ethnocentric – the hill people want to kill and eat the valley people, and vice-versa, and everybody wants to kill the group whose god makes them wear purple.  The nice thing about strong religion and ethnocentric behavior is it allows your group to compete well.

If your religion is good enough, and if you get enough selection for I.Q., you just might end up with a baby civilization on your hands.  Once I.Q. increases, conditions get better.  An elite is formed, and, since they have nothing better to do, they begin to question all of the social traditions that made civilization smart and wealthy.

The elite begins to compete on who can be more altruistic and ethnocentrism (favoring your own people) becomes badthink.  All of the values and norms that created the civilization are despised and thrown out.  Society begins to decline.  “. . . extreme views . . . eventually become the norm.”

Resources are then taken from those that are more capable and given to those that are less capable, which is called fairness since all people are equal, right?  I.Q. drops.  Innovation drops.

Then?  The elite is purged, and the civilization collapses.  The authors anticipate the following response, that:  “. . . it doesn’t work precisely with some obscure civilization or other; or demand that we respond to an infinite regress of every unlikely possible alternative explanation . . . .”  Yeah, even academics get denial.

whitehouse2

Okay, maybe it won’t take that long.

Does This Explain Past History with Other Civilizations?

Sure.

  • Ancient Greece.
  • Islamic Civilization. 64% of important Islamic scientists lived before 1250.  100% of them lived before 1750.
  • China.  It came very close to its own industrial revolution.
  • The Roman Empire.  Why didn’t Rome (as awesome as it was) have an industrial revolution?  Contraception and abortion were approved of.  Higher IQ women generally had fewer children, and this collapsed Rome prior to that great leap that would have led to Maximus™ brand Ocelot Bitez® and Roman tanks.  Man, I wish we would have had Roman tanks.

What About Western Civilization?

Western Civilization has followed the same cycle, but with this important difference:  Christianity had a taboo against contraception and abortion which kept higher I.Q. women having children.  The Spring of Western Civilization was from 1000 to 1500.  During this time, it was highly religious and highly ethnocentric, just like the model.

The Summer lasted from 1500 to the Industrial Revolution©.  This period was more rational, questioning, and the Renaissance brought culture and art to the forefront.

Autumn – Industrial Revolution™ to last Tuesday.  We find ourselves with the elite questioning society.  The ideas and thoughts that the civilization is capable of are reaching their highest level as we harvest the fruit of hundreds of years of human advancement.

We may be in Winter or close to it.  The hallmark of winter is a declining I.Q. as the less intelligent spew out children like a society-destroying genetic AR-15.  Culturally, Winter is characterized by the reproduction of good ideas from the past rather than coming up with new ones.  Multiculturalism and Marxism are “anti-rational” and “their adoption should show how far g (I.Q.) has fallen.”  Dutton and Woodley quote Charles Murray with the phrase that describes the era – “The feeling that the story has run out.”

The authors are not certain we are there, but feel that it’s worth noting that things don’t look very good.

Thanks, guys.

Are There Solutions?

I’ll leave you to read the book for those alternatives.  I’ll summarize it by noting that the solutions provided are not easy choices, and unlikely to be implemented in any democracy.  I.Q. drop is caused by our society and values, and won’t be undone by a society with our values.  The authors further suggest that maybe we should spend some time saving our knowledge so it’s easier for the next group through.

Dark.

I still recommend the book.  I also recommend Dr. Dutton’s YouTube® work.  I’ve linked to a good one down below.  Next week I should have the transcription done of my interview of him, and it’ll shine a bit more light on these conclusions.

Procrastination and Learning How to Finish Thi

“He’s finishing his senior thesis.  Pigman is trying to prove the Caine-Hackman theory.  No matter what time it is, 24 hours a day, you can find a Michael Caine or Gene Hackman movie playing on TV.” – PCU

blankthesis

My solution when I hit a writer’s block on my thesis was to just do something else for three years.

The Mrs. and I both have master’s degrees, but the way that we went about getting them was different for each of us.  I finished my master’s before she and I met.  The Mrs. finished hers while preggers with The Boy after we’d been married a few years.  When The Mrs. went to grad school, she wrote, finished, and defended her thesis (A Comparative Study in Restraint and Self-Control:  How I Avoid Strangling John Wilder) before she was even finished with her coursework.  I was astonished.  Before we had met, I had finished my master’s degree.  But mine went something like this:

  • Year one – do courses.
  • Year two – do courses. Finish courses.
  • Year three – get a job.
  • Year four – write, finish, defend thesis.

Yeah.  The stupid way to do it.

But getting a master’s degree was an easy decision.  Both of us had our grad school tuition and a salary paid for by being graduate assistants.  The education was free, heck, being a graduate assistant paid more than most adjunct professors make today.

What, exactly does a graduate assistant do?  One day my friends and I (when we were undergraduates) were drinking and watching a documentary of a scientist who was determining how fish swim.  Yes, your tax dollars paid for this study.  Anyway, the fish was placed in a tank with a grid, and a high speed camera was suspended over the tank.  But they put the fish in the tank and it . . . didn’t swim.

Solution?  They put an electrode up the fish’s butt and shocked it to make it swim on command.  I swear I’m not making this up.  My friends and l laughed – who, exactly had the job of inserting the electrode?  Our conclusion:  graduate assistants.  Eventually we concocted scenarios where we would apply for funding and study the way that graduate assistants exited swimming pools filled with alligators when dropped in.  The funding would include all the important aspects of science – gin, a swimming pool, and appropriate patio furniture.  Oh, and graduate assistants.

The Mrs.’ degree involved no fishes, electrodes, alligators or even liquor (she was preggers) – in fact she taught freshmen undergraduates, which might be even less fun than the whole “inserting an electrode up a fish butt thing.”  But in my case I got a job before finishing my thesis.  As a result, I ended up having to keep registering part time for two more years until my thesis (Thermodynamic and Structural Analysis of PEZ®-Based Building Components For Use in Containing a Robotic Elvis®) was complete.  My employer didn’t really care when or even if I finished my master’s, so it was all on me.

roboelvis

Thanks to 173dVietVet for rare historical pictures of Robot Elvis after he broke free from the PEZ® containment structure.

So I procrastinated in finishing my thesis – I had a day job, money was coming in, and nobody cared.  Except me.  Eventually I just started writing the thesis one late night.  After finally completing it, defending it, and having my degree awarded, I ended up burning every paper, note, copy, and floppy disc associated with the thesis.  It felt good.  Really good.  I put the pages on the fire one at a time.

But why did burning the thesis feel so good?  I was done.  Complete.  Finished.  And I had done it only for me.  And it was a good way to get rid of the evidence.

mercury

I may have made some mistakes in my thesis.  Minor ones.

This is the same reason it feels good to finish my taxes every year on April 14th:  I am ending my procrastination with success even though I can’t just burn it when I’m done.  I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who procrastinates on doing their taxes, or even on tasks that are much easier.  I’m not late doing most things (like my thesis), I’m on time.  Just on time.

So why do we do it?  By “we” I mean the 20% of people who procrastinate.  As near as I can tell, there are several answers.

One person I worked with, Willie, procrastinated at work because he was bored.  He is one of the most intelligent and creative people I’ve ever known, and as such, generally lived his own life on his own terms – one time he experimented with not wearing shoes around the office.

That idea went about as well as you might expect.

While we were co-workers I’d noticed a pattern with Willie.  He’d spend time at work fairly frivolously, goofing around within the limits of what was acceptable.  Breaking his computer by deleting files and fixing it, that sort of thing – it looks like you’re working even when you’re just playing.

Then out of the blue, he’d work nearly nonstop at a furious pace on real, actual work.

John Wilder:  “Why do you do that, Willie?”

“I guess I’m bored.  I like to wait until I don’t think I’ll have enough time to get the work done before the deadline, and then I’ll do it all at once.”  Willie was seeking the thrill of the deadline, and the challenge of performing the work.  Wasn’t the work itself challenging?  No, not for Willie.

thesismotiv

My thesis advisor was encouraging. 

Willie’s strategy has merit.  I say this because I’ve done it, too.  I also noticed a pattern:  80% of the work I was assigned (Pareto and the 80/20 Rule Explain Wealth) wasn’t important, and would get cancelled prior to the deadline.  Willie noticed this, too.  Most things our bosses wanted us to do (in a professional role) just aren’t important and if we didn’t do them, no one cares because the work wasn’t important.  I’ve generally found that the higher up in the organization that the work originated, the less important the work is.

To compound the problem, most middle managers have no idea which things are important, or even why something is important.  Often it’s a case where the CEO wants coffee and the middle managers begin a strategy to buy South America.  Thankfully the CEO didn’t ask for Belgian waffles – they’ve been invaded enough in the last 100 years and I think the Germans already have it reserved for the next time they decide to invade France.

Procrastination in this case above produces two good things:

  • Time to Goof Around
  • Working Only on Things That Matter

My thesis clearly doesn’t fall into this case.  I know that procrastination pays off now while work on my thesis pays off later, but the net goofing around in my life is the same so that doesn’t help me – it just makes life more painful for future John.  And the thesis clearly matters if I want to get my master’s degree.

What else could cause the procrastination?  Some people avoid doing things because they fear failure.  Some avoid it because they fear success.  I’m not immune to this – as this blog got some big hits one day last year after a post was featured on The Woodpile Report (it’s here), I know that I felt a slight bit of apprehension.  “Crap.  People are actually reading this now.  That’s responsibility.”  But my thesis didn’t fall into that category, either.  I wasn’t going to be more or less successful.  Not one of my employers has cared since I got it.  Not a single employer.

It was for me.

thesisdare

I did get tired of people asking me about my thesis.  Maybe I was a little touchy.

Other people just think too hard about the plan of action – there’s just too much data.  I have been in job situations where there’s so very much work to do that I’ve felt overwhelmed.  And when you feel overwhelmed, sometimes you just stare blankly at the desk while the 200 items you have to do today roam around in your mind like Germans in Belgium.  What’s always helped me in those moments was to write a list and start doing something.  Anything.  Generally in an hour or less it’s sorted out.  In rare occasions it’s 45 straight 12-hour days.  But forceful action in a state of confusion, even if it’s not the right action, is better than inaction.

Sometimes there’s too much information – there are too many factors and the logic portion of the brain is overloaded and it’s hard to make a decision.  The Boy is having that problem now.  He’s narrowed his college choices down to two.  If I were to make an analogy, it would be like having the opportunity to have a nearly free red Camry® or a nearly free blue Camry™.  Yes, they’re both the same car.  But to The Boy it’s the biggest decision he’s yet made.  Or, the biggest decision he’s going to make this year, whenever he gets around to it – which had better be in the next two weeks.

My thesis didn’t fit in those categories, either.  I knew (more or less) exactly what I needed to do.

bsthesis

Maybe in hindsight my thesis wasn’t that great.

But I’ve had zero negative health consequences from (not yet) doing my taxes.  And none of the explanations above are why I haven’t yet done my taxes, or I procrastinated in doing my thesis.  The answer is far simpler.

I’m lazy.

But I have the patience to wait for that grant money for the liquor, alligators, pool, patio furniture and graduate assistants.  That would be a thesis I could be proud of!

Entropy, The End of The Universe, Heroes, and Struggle

“The Federation has taught you that conflict should not exist.  But without struggle, you would not know who you truly are.  Struggle made us strong.” – Star Trek Beyond

universe

Some people think the Universe will last forever.  Silly people.  We’ll only have stars for the next 100,000,000,000,000 years or so.

The Universe is built on multiple simple principles that interact in ways that make Elvis™, PEZ®, and mayonnaise covered garden gnomes all possible.  A light coating of mayo will do – we’re not crazy here at Stately Wilder Manor®.  One of those simple principles is that as time passes, disorder in the Universe increases.  This tendency towards disorder is called entropy, and it’s not just a good idea – it’s the law:  the second law of thermodynamics.  The nice thing about this law is you can’t break it, so there’s no need for Thermodynamics Police and Judge Judy can’t preside in Physics Court®.

A way to think about this inexorable drive toward disorder is to imagine that the Universe is a campfire – one that you can’t add wood to.  At the beginning it’s a great blaze, because you were an idiot and used gasoline to start the fire and burned off your eyebrows.  As the blaze burns, it consumes the wood.  After a time there is nothing left but coals, which glow dimly for hours.  The current most accepted theory (but not the only one) is that the Universe started with a sudden quantum instability, more commonly known as the Big Bang®.

In the beginning (see what I did there?) the Universe experienced the greatest amount of potential energy it will ever see.  The Universe is that blazing gasoline-soaked campfire.  Since that moment in time, the amount of energy available in the Universe decreases continually.  Like a fire, it burns hot at the beginning.  That’s where we are, it’s still hot out there.  The embers will glow as the last available energy in the Universe is slowly turned into a starless thin vapor nearing absolute zero, much like Marvel® movies without Iron Man©.

entropy

Entropy – now maintenance free!

This tendency toward lower overall energy and thus overall lower order is called entropy.

It’s important to note that entropy always increases in a closed system – like when you store a decapitated human head in a Yeti® cooler – who hasn’t had that problem?  The Earth, thankfully, isn’t a closed system.  It has a wonderful thermonuclear reactor pumping energy down from millions of miles away, every day.  To put it in perspective, the Earth only receives one billionth of the energy that the Sun puts out daily, like you only received one billionth of your mother’s love, since the rest of it was reserved for chardonnay and “Daytime Daddy.”

Why isn’t the Earth a closed system?

The Sun allows us to have surplus energy, and thus order on Earth.  With the exception of nuclear reactors, all energy on Earth is solar.  Wind is caused by differential heating of the atmosphere.  Rain is caused by solar evaporation of water.  Even oil is millions of years of trapped sunlight, helpfully stored by God in gas stations.  Nuclear fuel used in our current reactors (and the core of the Earth) was forged in the heart of a star.  Not Nicholas Cage®.  Maybe Johnny Depp™.

This energy is responsible for other things, too.  Salt deposits.  Sand dunes.  And life.

So disorder is increasing across the Universe every day.  And not only in the galaxy, but in your house.  In your carpet.  In your body.  In that Yeti© cooler.

But we know these things for certain.  Without energy:

  • Your house will someday be a wreck.
  • Your carpet should have been replaced Reagan left office. Brown shag is . . . 1980.
  • Your body will die.

Until you die, you have to have standards.  You have to hold the line.

You have to fight for the glorious tomorrow over the whispering of losing your will and relaxing today.

Life is hard.  Life is a struggle.  If you are lucky, you can struggle for mighty things, good things, virtuous things.  Hopefully with a healthy body and maybe a hardwood floor.

But I’ll let you in on a little secret:

We all lose in the end.  Entropy will win.  Entropy always wins.

The struggle is the goal.

Regardless of where you are, this is your golden age, your moment – it’s the only one you have.  When you were six you knew this.  What you read, what you watched – what was thrilling, who were your heroes?  People who went to work at a bank?  No.

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In ancient Sparta, apparently they did Cross-Fit® but didn’t talk about it.  They were advanced!

Your heroes were people who struggled, who fought.  Winning was preferable, but the struggle was enough.  A defiant loss like the Spartans at Thermopylae or the Texans at the Alamo is, perhaps, an even stronger example of virtue.

There are plenty of things in life that are worth fighting for, worth struggling for.  What are you going to do with your life?

braveheart

Grandpa McWilder didn’t wear a kilt.  He was an overalls kinda guy.

You have two choices.

You can waste your life.  Or you can struggle.  Do you have the discipline to embrace the struggle?

All the cool kids are doing it.

pulp

At least struggle with a rifle cartridge if you’re gonna fight aliens.

Dune, Moods, Wrestling, and a Way of Life

“Look at the symptoms:  temperamental behavior, mood swings, facial hair.  Uh oh, Dad, I think you have menopause.” – That 70’s Show

cover

There ended up being roughly 732 books in the Dune series.  I stopped after book four, which was one book too many.

In our basement we have a wrestling mat.  It would be unusual if we had a wrestling mat and dismembered mannequin parts strewn around the room and baby doll heads covered with blood red paint, but we don’t.  The Mrs. and I decided we need to leave some projects for after the kids go to college.  So we use the wrestling mat for the more conventional purpose of practicing wrestling.  Both Pugsley and The Boy enjoy it, and so do I.  Pugsley has expressed an interest in winning a lot of wrestling matches, so he fairly enthusiastically led us to doing independent wrestling practice at home so he could improve.

One night it was time to practice.  The Boy was ready.  I was ready.  But Pugsley said, “I’m not in the mood.”

The Boy turned pale.  He knew what was coming next – the kraken was about to be unleashed.  I did a quick Internet search.  I then looked up from my laptop screen and quoted the following:

“Mood?  What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises — no matter the mood!  Mood’s a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset [JW: a musical instrument].  It’s not for fighting.” – Frank Herbert, Dune

gurneymood

If you’re not in the mood, make it so.

The lecture he got that followed that quote exceeded the amount of time that we would have practiced.  It’s the same lecture The Boy had gotten several years earlier, and he joined in to poke his brother with verbal barbs as well.  You may call it bullying, we call it raising children with values.  Maybe we should have stopped before we gave him a swirly?

The context of the quote is from the novel Dune which has spawned one bad movie (the early 1980’s version) and one underfunded movie (the early 2000’s version).  In the novel, young Paul Atreides is the son of a space Duke somewhere in the far future after humanity has spread through the stars.  Paul has the benefit of being royal, so he has a rather rigorous curriculum of everything from math, physics, and gender studies to small arms combat.  Just kidding.  Study math and physics.  Ha!  Studying math and physics is a sucker game:  study those things and you’ll have to pay taxes.

dunecat

This would have been a better plot than the early 80’s film.

Like all boys, Paul was looking for a day off.  His combat arms teacher, Gurney Halleck, rightly told him the truth:  when trouble is brewing or there is work to be done, the Universe does not care about your mood.

Like all boys, Pugsley was looking to push and see just how far he could get away with slacking.  The answer was simple:  he couldn’t.  He had made a commitment to his brother, to me, but most importantly to himself.  But sometimes, like all boys, he needed a reminder from his father that duty comes before mood.  So, he got the big speech.  I quote books, I quoted Patton, I quoted my father, I quoted Mr. Rogers®, and I noted that I hadn’t taken an unplanned sick day since before he was born.  Call in to the boss on a Tuesday morning with a sore throat?  No.

wrestlingmood

If you’re not familiar with wrestling, the guy in purple is like France at the start of World War II.

As an adult you have to do a lot of things that you don’t enjoy.  You have to go to work when you know it’s going to suck.  You have to take your punishment when you know you’ve done wrong.  You have to pay your bills.  You have to work out.  You have to meet the commitments you made, no matter how painful.

Keeping your word to other people is how the world sees that you have good character.  Keeping your word to yourself is the sign of real integrity.  Some days you don’t want to hit the weights.  You don’t want to go to work.  You don’t want to go to school.  You don’t want to go to practice.  You don’t want to meet that pesky General Grant at Wilmer’s place in Appomattox.

Boo hoo.

leemood

I heard you don’t have to lose the war if you’re not in the mood to lose the war.  Also, is it just me or does it look like they’re playing Battleship® on paper?

When you start failing to keep the commitments that you made to yourself, you’ll stop keeping your commitment to others.  What matters is turning on the alarm clock, and getting out of bed when it rings or beeps or whatever it does.  Every day.

You don’t need seminars.  Or pep talks.  Or motivational posters.  Or Tony Robbins and his weirdly white teeth (I swear that man has the grin of someone who likes to eat things that are small and squirming because they’re still living) and a $2000 seminar.

You need discipline.  Discipline is better than motivation any day.

Why do you need discipline?

discipline

Kevin Bacon understands.

Because motivated is a mood.

But disciplined is a way of life.

Weed . . . maybe not so good for you.

“Feller told me one time they got a weed down here and they call it loco weed.  When the horses and cows eat it they get wilder than all get out.” – Bonanza

reefer

Like this meow meme meow?

I used to be in favor of marijuana legalization.  The basis for my thoughts went something like this:  it’s your own body, so go ahead and put anything you want in it – it doesn’t ruin my day.  Add to that, if the criminals are running the marijuana business, we’re just funding the criminals with the profits.  If alcohol prohibition funded the Mafia so it’s still giving us problems nearly 90 years after their source of profits ended, we’ve probably funded the Cartels so that they’ll still exist when NASA restarts manned spaceflight for the United States sometime in the year 3224.

Criminals liked marijuana being illegal.

Politicians liked marijuana being illegal.

Anytime criminals and politicians agreed on anything, I figured it would be better to be on the other side of that equation.  And it’s just weed, right?  Stoners are happy folks, and probably actually do drive a lot better than anyone after a six pack and have plumper, pinker livers.

As a non-participant in marijuana culture (except for the occasional Cheech and Chong movie) my exposure had consisted of the two or so times I’d given it a try in the VERY distant past.  Like having hair after 30, marijuana was something that just never had impacted my life.  Weed was just weed, right?

Wrong.

potpie

What are Chong’s three favorite things?  Chicken pot pie.

I was listening to the radio around the year 2000, however, and a radio doctor (he specialized in AM and radios transitioning to FM) came on and said, “Guys, you have to realize – the marijuana today isn’t the same thing as marijuana from the 1960’s and 1970’s.  The new strains have been bred so that they are much, much more potent and have much higher levels of THC (the stuff that gets you high) than weed from back in the day.”  As a non-toker, it didn’t really matter to me, but I found the fact fascinating.  I filed it away, mainly to use in dad-related conversations when I talk to The Boy and Pugsley about not doing weed.

In my weird family (as noted before, my brother’s name is John Wilder, as well) one member (it would be too complicated and ultimately pointless to explain the relationship, needless to say we have a lot of the same DNA) of our family was . . . baked.  We’ll call her Jean Wilder, so we can have John, John, and Jean.

I was exceedingly young when Jean, who was thirtysomething at the time, came to live with us.  I might have been four or so.  It was obvious even to me at the tender age of four that Jean’s elevator was stuck somewhere near floor 13 – often she would sit in a chair, smoking cigarettes, staring blankly off into the corner of the room above and to the left of the 15” black and white television before laughing at something that no one else could see or hear.  Sure, this is common behavior today, but since this was before cellphones, this behavior was considered unusual.

rickism

More proof that weed is safe.

I asked Great-Grandma McWilder why Jean was so goofy, and Great-Grandma McWilder looked to the left and looked to the right as if to check if invisible elves were monitoring her in the kitchen (this was before Alexa®) and then whispered to me “dope.”

Sure, you guys might think she was talking about me.  And I’ll agree – most four-year-olds are pretty dopey.  But in this case, dope was what Great-Grandma McWilder called any illicit recreational substance.  Having been born in approximately 1732, Great-Grandma McWilder’s knowledge of illicit substances consisted of the illegal gin and untaxed cigars that I think Great-Grandpa McWilder sold at his “pool hall” during prohibition.  Or maybe he just read his bible all day?

Anyway, Great-Grandma McWilder whispered “dope” because at that time families felt a thing called “shame” for the misbehavior of their members.  I think “shame” has since been replaced with ribbons that say “participation” on it.

“What’s dope?” I asked innocently, because at that time in my life I actually was innocent.

She sighed.  It’s difficult when you have to explain to a four-year-old what illegal drugs were.  I don’t remember her exact words, but I got the idea that it was like aspirin, but very bad for you in that they hurt your mind.  She didn’t have to explain much more.  I had seen Jean.

As I grew older, I found out more about Jean.  She had been very smart as a child, but willful.  Her spacey and other-worldly behavior didn’t change as the calendar pages flipped, however.  As my school gave my class more and more details about the drugs we shouldn’t be taking including lots of instructions about how we shouldn’t take them, pre-teen me guessed that Jean had probably taken LSD (not to be confused with LDS) and the experience had changed her.  Forever.

stonedhenge

By the time I got to my teens, I asked Jean about her past drug use.  She said that the only drug she’d ever tried had been marijuana.  Back then, I figured she was lying.  Certainly grass didn’t cause the delusions and hallucinations I had observed, right?   Harmless weed wouldn’t have convinced Jean that Madonna® had stolen the songs from her notebook (this was what Jean believed).  Ganja wouldn’t have made Jean phone in a missing person report to the sheriff on ME because a shadowy cabal of evil doctors (I’m not making this up) had kidnapped me, even though I was off in the college dorms safe and sound at the time?  Reefer wouldn’t do that, right?

PAT SAJAK

Well, not so fast, Pat Sajak.

A recent study came out this week and showed that instances of psychosis were three times higher in areas where you could get strong weed.  And psychosis explained every symptom that Jean had.  Jean was very nice, very sweet, and a danger only to herself.  She self-medicated with nicotine – she was never without a smoke – but anti-psychotics seemed to work much better.

But trends are troubling – weed THC content has doubled in the last 10 years.  But Jean toked up long before then.  What happened to her?  Some mutant weed?  A lot of weed?  I have no idea.  I’m not a doctor.  Jean did live a long, happy, though not particularly useful life, and I’m certain wouldn’t be offended by this post.

weed

Okay, I guess this is my final conclusion.

There appears to be some evidence that marijuana and some marijuana derivatives are useful for things like seizures, overcoming chemotherapy side effects, and playing Red Dead Redemption™ and Fallout® in Mom’s basement.  Again, I’m not a doctor, but I will be warning my kids that marijuana is certainly more dangerous than is commonly accepted and should be avoided at all costs for recreation.  It’s just not worth the risk of, well, being psychotic for the rest of your life.  Plus I’m going to make them get tattoos that say “legal doesn’t mean moral” on their foreheads if I ever catch them lighting up a doobie.

If only there was a way to stop drug use while not funneling money to the cartels.

Oh, wait . . . virtue?

Nah, I must be thinking of something else . . . .

The Ides of March, Bad Drawings, and Why I Write

“All right, why did the soothsayer tell Caesar to beware the Ides of March?  Who wants to take a stab?” – Daria

byebye

Now this is a tough day at the office.

The Ides of March is today (if you’re reading in real-time) – and it’s been showing up a lot this year in coincidences – even a warning in a comment on this blog! – so I thought I’d write about the historical implications of the Ides of March on the career of the most beloved humor writer in American history.

Me.  Hopefully nobody brings up that Mark Twain poseur again.

Historically, the Ides of March was a Roman time for settling debts, and boy did the Roman Senate settle one in 44 B.C., which was the subject of my first long-form humor attempt.  In seventh grade, my history teacher showed us films.  As an adult, I’m thinking that history teachers show films due to hangovers (it’s dark, quiet, and they don’t have to lecture or even be awake as they sleep the scotch off in second period), but my utterly innocent seventh grade self didn’t make that connection.  And make no mistake – this was in the era before video tapes had taken over, so when we watched a film, it was a real reel, sprocket, and stuttering film noise affair projected onto a portable screen smaller than the average computer monitor at the DMV.

project

This device was wonderful – regardless of the subject, you could coast that day in school.

The film in question was about Julius Caesar, and I do think we watched it around the actual Ides of March.  I don’t recall a lot about the film, but I do recall this – Caesar was assassinated.  And not assassinated in any sort of short, quick, reasonable way.  No.  Caesar was stabbed in full cinematic glory dozens and dozens and dozens of times.  But it wasn’t graphic – it was G-rated.  Consequently the assassination was, in my estimation, was pretty close to the scene with the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail©.  Man, could Caesar take punishment – no wonder he was in charge!  And it went on, and on, and on, and on.

This is the second best fight scene in movie history, without question.  It was also available on PBS® when I was growing up, and proved the old adage:  PBS© – good only for Monty Python™ and Doctor Who©.

So I wrote about Caesar’s assassination.  I created the one and only issue of The Roman Times.  The lead story of The Roman Times was about Julius Caesar.  I think I could nearly do the artwork and story from The Roman Times verbatim.  Let me give it a try:

Today’s news from Rome:  Caesar stabbed, shot, poked, prodded, speared, impaled, jabbed, skewered, perforated, and bayoneted MMLXVI times.  Doctors say he would have survived, however he did also have quite a nasty infected splinter and wasn’t wearing clean underwear, much to his mother’s disappointment.

bikini

Okay, I was kinda shocked when I found out that the Romans had bikinis.  Not only did they have bikinis, they had a swimsuit mosaic edition of Gladiators Illustrated®.

It’s more of a thesaurus approach at humor than my current subtle use of bikini jokes.  But I feel confident that if Julius Caesar would have known that a seventh grader would be laughing about his assassination 2000 years later, well, he could have died happy rather than screaming and bleeding because of the 23 stab wounds.  Yup.  We know it was 23 stab wounds because Caesar also had the first documented autopsy that we know of.  To make it all official, the Roman Senate held hearings and after reviewing all of the evidence discovered that Julius Caesar’s assassination was all the work of a single assassin, Longinus Harvey Oswald, who stabbed twice from the sixth floor of the Roman School Scroll Depositorium.

art

Artist’s conception, as nearly as I can recall my seventh grade drawing – that thing behind him is supposed to be a bear trap.  Apologies to real artists like Steve (LINK).

The end result of all of this Ides of March musing is that I’ve been writing funny things for most of my life.  And this is Friday, and Friday means a health post.  So what does a dead Julius Caesar and schoolboy drivel have to do with health?

I write because it makes me happy.  I think I’ve mentioned before – when I’ve written a good post, one I like, I am happy.  It’s hard to sleep.  I know that sounds silly, especially since, if I finish the post early I’ll have four or five hours of sleep, and if I get distracted and research ancient Roman bikinis and then somehow end up researching the history of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force the post runs late I might only have two or three hours of sleep that night.

But it still excites me to do good work.  And I recall that I was giddy when I was in seventh grade, putting together The Roman Times.  I enjoyed it so much I put together a sequel:  The Medieval Times, although I’m quite sure that I spelled Medieval wrong and I think the lead story was about some knight getting stabbed, poked, speared . . . et cetera.  Why does writing humor give me a sense of fulfillment?  I think for several reasons – I get a chance to learn and research new things, often with a purpose.  I love new ideas, new thoughts, and probably the best thing is when you laugh out loud.

No, not a generalized you.  You, dear reader.  I write this for me, but also for you, because I know that someplace out there this post made someone’s day better.

But not Caesar.  His Ides of March was pretty rough.  But at least his fame will live on through my glorious art, because otherwise people might forget all about him.

Dealing With Children In The Idiot Zone

“They are contemptuous of authority, convinced that they are superior. Typical adolescent behavior, for any species.” – Star Trek:  Voyager

piggy

Okay, I couldn’t resist that one.  If I were a lawyer I’d never pass a bar.

The Mrs. used to watch several reality shows, one of which was Intervention.  If you hadn’t seen it, a drug or alcohol addict is followed around for several days by a film crew.  Why they let them follow them around while they drink (in one case) five liters of vodka a day, every day, is a mystery.  My bet is that they don’t make many good decisions, so inviting a camera crew to watch and record as their personal misery unfolds is just another bad day, just another bad decision.

I have never felt like less of an addict after watching that show.  To put it mildly, those people had problems.

intervention

Now I see where Intervention got the idea.

At the end of each episode, family members and friends ambush the addict with an intervention, where people who love the addict gang up on them in a room and offer a choice:  go to rehab or get cut out of their lives.  Most chose rehab.  On the follow ups, most of the rehabs failed.

intervention2

I have to be fair.

After a while it became clear – the stories weren’t all the same, but each one rhymed with the others.  And I noticed one particular facet of almost all of the stories that was the same:  intense trauma of some type on the addict when they were between the ages of 11 and 14, which I call by its scientific name:  The Idiot Zone.  Again and again horrible things happened.  Parents divorced.  A parent died.  Something else that was dramatic happened.

I have theories about most everything, and my theory on this one is that middle school kids are awful, horrible people, probably the worst people on Earth, which makes me wish that we could just abandon them in a forest for four years.

Why does the Idiot Zone exist?  Middle-schoolers have developed feelings.  They have learned to be mean.  They just haven’t learned either empathy or how to be nice.  If I were to pick a crucial age range for character development (and development of virtue!) I’d pick ages 11 to 14.  Having a parent to model for character is crucial.

always be ugly

Screw this test up as a parent, and you’ve lost your last major chance to influence them.  After that, you lessen as an influence every day.

Everybody’s kids do stupid things – The Boy and Pugsley are no different.  I specifically don’t give out much information about my sons, and nearly none of it is negative because these words will live on long after they’ve moved to make their own way in the world.  That’s okay.  I make plenty of mistakes to keep the Internet entertained.

But Pugsley is now in the Idiot Zone, and he and I have been on an escalating aggression trend for several weeks.  It’s a long game, and I’m older than he is and I can hold out forever to get a win.  And I will get a win.  But today I had an idea.  I looked him in the eye when I got home from work.

“I have decided what I’m giving up for Lent, Pugsley.  I am giving up anger.  I’m not going to get mad at you for the next 38 days.  No matter what.  Like that idea?”

He nodded.

In looking up Lent and the history of fasting, I read a story of a seminary student who didn’t select what he gave up for Lent – his roommates did that for him.  I decided that was good enough for Pugsley.

“In return, you’re going to give up _______ and _______.”  You can fill in the blanks with minor character faults.  You could even do a Madlib®:  “being an idiot” and “not bathing after rolling in three week old rotting deer carcass”

road kill

Okay, they weren’t that bad, and he’s not a dog.  He rightly responded, “You know, Dad, we’re not Catholic.”

My rejoinder:  “Well, you could be.  I hear you get a pretty white dress on your confirmation.  Also, be careful.  If a Catholic bites you, you rise from the dead and become one.”  The Mrs. and I had considered becoming Catholic, but didn’t – the sheer amount of paperwork was huge, and I was told the written approval of the Pope himself would be required, given that I had previously been married to a shape-shifting she-demon.

He was obviously not amused by the confirmation dress comment and, in best adolescent form, ignored it entirely.    Pugsley is also going to Catholic school, and getting an “A” in religion so he fully understood that Lent was the period from Ash Wednesday lasting until Easter.  I continued, “Besides, giving up being a _______ and ________ would be good for you.”  And it would be good for the rest of the family, too.  Nobody likes living with a ______head.  And Pugsley has been a real royal _____head recently.

same way

I’m not sure Pugsley believed me when I said I was going to not get angry no matter what.  Consciously or subconsciously, he tried to push every one of my buttons this afternoon.  He knew very well which behaviors of his drove me nuts.  And in the span of fifteen minutes tried them all.

I didn’t get angry, not even inside.  Finally, when he saw that no matter what he did I wouldn’t react he became emotional.  He discovered it’s tough to have a fight when the other side just won’t escalate.

I’ve long felt that perhaps the only thing we entirely control as humans is the way we feel about things.  People or the government can take away my guns.  My vast fortune.  Sedation dentistry.  Stately Wilder Manor.  All those material things can be taken away.

However, no one can take away my thoughts.  I can choose not to be angry, which may also explain why I don’t listen to NPR® on the way to work.  My feelings are my choice.  Pugsley will figure that his feelings are his choice, too, and when that happens?  I’ve won.

This is a health post, what with it being Friday.  Giving up anger isn’t the only thing I’m giving up for Lent, but it’s a big one, and there are tons of health reasons why not being angry at Pugsley will make me healthier – lower stress, I won’t be hoarse from yelling, but the negative is that my home state will no longer be to exploit my blood pressure as a renewable energy resource providing 54 megawatts of power.

I am religious, but even if you aren’t, I think the practice of giving up things has value.  I rarely drive my favorite car.  Why?  Because if I drive it every day it loses its magic.  Giving up pleasures for a time makes us stronger, and makes the pleasure that much better when you finally get to experience it again.

I am so going to enjoy becoming enraged on Easter.  I might yell and scream for days.