Category: Health

The Winter Solstice, Hardship, Cthulhu, and You

“You know, that for almost the entire history of Western Civilization this month has been a holy time. The Druids, winter solstice, Hanukkah, the Romans converted Saturnalia into Christmas.” – Millennium (TV Series)

longwilder

Funny, X Wife said that every day with me was the longest day.  Tiebreaker?

December 21st is the Winter Solstice.  In the Northern Hemisphere (where I keep all my stuff) that means it will be the shortest day of the year, and the longest night.  In the Southern Hemisphere on the Solstice, I believe that means there are fairly reasonable prices on quality, sturdy footwear.  Or maybe the Wiccans sacrifice the town elders to credit card companies.  I’m not sure, the documentary was blurry, I don’t speak Paraguayan and they wouldn’t remove the blindfold all the way.

There seems to be another holiday coming up . . . St. Zeno’s Day on December 26th!

Just kidding.  I’ll have a Christmas post on Monday.  But St. Zeno’s Day really is on December 26th.  And not the St. Zeno that was brutally dismembered because he was so popular, the other one, who died peacefully in his sleep.  Focus groups tell me not to use “brutally dismembered” because it doesn’t test well for humor value.  So, the one who wasn’t “brutally dismembered.”

mcr

Christmas?  I’m a fan.

But the 21st is also notable because it’s the (traditional) feast time of the northern peoples of the world, and you can see multiple cultures built physical devices to track the solstice, places like Newgrange in Ireland, Stonehenge in England and the High Bank Works at Chillicothe in North America.

And, my house.

Yes.  My house.  I didn’t build my house aligned to the solstice, but whoever originally did managed to do so, either intentionally or by dumb luck.  Since my house is parallel to the road, I’m thinking it was just dumb luck.  But on the shortest day of the year, we end up having the most direct sunlight streaming in through our front window, warming the house, and in the summer the opposite result – although well lit, we get little direct sunlight.  The advantages of this are lower heating and cooling bills, all of which (likely) are a result of an accident of geometry.  Or at least that’s what I tell the Druids that start chanting at sunrise every year in my backyard.  Stupid Druids.  Please don’t tell them that Cthulhu is who we bought the place from.

lordcthulhu

But the solstice doesn’t represent the coldest part of the winter.  The coldest part is yet to come as the Arctic air blasts down from the north in January and February.  And before it gets cold, the choice had to be made:  feed all of your cattle through the winter, or have a really big drunken party and a bonfire after turning a few of the cattle into ribeyes?

Yup.  Party.  And the older name for it is “jul” which eventually became the words “Yule” and “jolly.”  Must have been some pretty legendary parties, like when Teddy Roosevelt partied with Led Zeppelin at Wellesley.  Hillary still talks about that one.

eggnog

Mmm, eggnog.  Can there be something worse for you?  Yes, regret.  Enjoy your eggnog.

But the grim circumstances remain.  It’s going to get colder soon.  That last feast is the final preparation for the coming hardships of winter.  People who aren’t used to the north (and New York is roughly the same latitude as the south of France, so most of the United States isn’t north at all) think it’s the dark that gets to you.  It isn’t.  It’s the brutally cold days that follow the solstice.  When we lived in Fairbanks we noticed that people did fine during the dark periods of winter.  But when spring was around the corner, that’s when the odd stories of people going a bit nutso would show up in the paper, and the wives who had spent 20 happy years in Fairbanks would look at their husbands and declare, “I’m leaving.  I’m not leaving you, but I’m leaving here.  You can come with me if you want to.”

Winter is about deprivation and hardship, which might just be the greatest teacher:

“They are not spoiled by luxury, soft and weak (relatively speaking, obviously).  They are learned in deprivation and hardship.” – James Dakin at Bison Prepper, 11/9/18 (LINK).

But those hardships were their friend.

  • They had to plan. And they had to plan months and years ahead.  There is simply no getting through a winter at -30°F (-651°C) without a plan.  They didn’t have the option of going to a supermarket and getting fresh strawberries in the middle of winter.  Or, well, anything in the middle of winter, except maybe some poor caribou that forgot to duck.
  • They had to learn to be nice. There was no getting through winter alone.  There was safety in the group.  So, in order to stay alive through the winter, they’d better be able to create and maintain good relationships with not only their neighbors, but also the people in their family – they were certainly going to be seeing a lot of them during the winter.  Also?  They never knew who they would need to ask for a favor.  As in “Olaf, Sven got lippy at dinner.  Where can we hide the body?”
  • They had to be patient. Eat all the food in month one?  Month two would be difficult.  Eat the seeds you were planning on planting in spring?    I guess you just get to starve next winter.  Patience pays – not now, but later.

Outside of having all of that ribeye, and the big fire, why party?

Well, the solstice marks the day that the Sun stops moving south.  There’s even an instant (if you had the proper equipment) that you could observe the Sun standing still in the sky, not moving north nor south, that’s technically the solstice.  But you can see, using relatively simple tools (like Stonehenge), the same thing over the course of a day.  The Sun will move north again, and the days will get longer.  And it is that moment that the celebration of hope begins, not for the winter that has been vanquished, but for the winter that will bring us hardship and make us stronger.

Because what better gift is there than being stronger?

Thankfully, there’ll soon be an app for your iPhone® to tell you when to celebrate the solstice.  Stupid Druids.

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Why Are You Mad At Your Computer? It Doesn’t Care. Plus: A Deeply Meaningful Poem

“They would’ve learned to wear skins, adopted stoic mannerisms, learned the bow and the lance.” – Star Trek

hardwood

Okay, it was really only one color.  But it was a LOT of ink.  Staining and painting.  Stainting?

I rarely saw Pop Wilder mad at any living human being, at least I rarely saw him mad after I reached the age of ten.  And I assure you that I deserved it every single time he was mad at me – drawing on the hardwood floor in ink under my bed wasn’t a particularly popular move – especially since Ma and Pop only discovered it the night before we were supposed to be out of the house so that the new owners could move in.

Oops.

Perhaps his even temper with people was learned.  After being in banking for decades (and having me around for years), I imagine he’d seen everything, including frogs swimming in the World War I helmet his father wore.  It might be that he believed the worst of people, and that way when they weren’t horrible, they pleasantly surprised him, and when he found ink on his hardwood floor and the family photo album soaking in the bathroom sink (I promise I had a good reason)?  Or spray painted the fender of his brand-new car?  Well, that was to be expected.

So, Pop Wilder was a mild and even tempered man and perhaps even a saint for not killing me.  The one exception to him getting angry was that he would get mad at . . . things.  Chainsaws.  Cars.  Snow machines.  The blinking light on his VCR.  In fact, the only time I ever heard him drop the f-bomb was when he was referring to his computer.  He said it not long after I’d introduced him to the future The Mrs., and in her presence.  “It’s . . . it’s all f****d up.”  Honoring Pop Wilder’s tone and frustration make it a form of punctuation in our house when things have just gone completely wrong but in a comical and hopeless manner.

But what I do know is this:  the computer didn’t care.

fbomb

Ahh, the United States Swear Force in action.

Dead Roman Marcus Aurelius nailed it when he wrote, “Pray to change yourself, not your circumstances.”  Marcus wasn’t referring to what was in his control.  Being an Emperor of Rome, Marcus could control a lot of things, but that’s not what frustrated him.  No, Marcus was referring to those things he couldn’t control.  Marcus was going to grow old and die, and he couldn’t change that.  Marcus would be resurrected as shoe salesman in Savannah, and he couldn’t change that, either.  Marcus wanted to change himself so he took those things that he couldn’t control and not react to them.  Why complain about gravity?

stonehead

Marcus Aurelius, with a hipster beard before it was cool.

The computer doesn’t care that you’re mad at it.  The computer won’t change if you speak harshly to it, though I hear Bezos is working on a computer that will buy random things from Amazon® that it knows you won’t like, just to spite you if you’re mean to it.  Honestly, most people don’t care if you’re mad at them, either.  The real secret is, however, that most things simply do not matter on any sort of cosmic scale.  I even wrote you, dear Internet, a poem about that:

The Unblinking Stars

The stars looked down.
When Julius Caesar was born, they looked down.
When Caesar defeated the Gaul, they looked down.
When Caesar died, they looked down.

For every man, for every empire.
The stars looked down.
Unblinking.

When continents split, and then recombined.
The stars looked down.
Nearly eternal.

At every time, at ever place,
Every ambition, every love.
Every betrayal.  Every loyalty.
The stars looked down.

Looking up at them, seeing into eternity.
I gasp.  I wonder.  I check the router.
Oh, good.  The Internet’s back up.
I wonder what just happened on Twitter?

spacekeys

I think that what sets us up to become angry about a situation is contained entirely within ourselves – there’s a way that we think the world should be, and when the world refuses to be that way, we get angry.  And the world doesn’t completely conform to anyone’s hopes and dreams.  From time to time, even I end up comparing my life to someone else’s life.  But I do this particularly awful thing:  I compare what they’re best at, to my accomplishments in the same arena.  Let’s take the business guy I knew.  He had tens of millions of dollars, a house in the mountains, and even a vintage fighter airplane.  I don’t have tens of millions of dollars, a house in the mountains, or any airplane that’s not a model kit that I made when I was a kid.

There’s a lot to envy, isn’t there?  I even think he had a pretty good marriage and smart kids.

Oh, and he’s dead.  And he died in a really dramatic fashion that probably left his widow with nearly no money after the lawsuit and attorney’s fees.  So if I’m going to be envious, I have to be envious of the whole person, not some small aspect of their lives.  It’s a big world and someone, somewhere has it all better than you.  They’re smarter than you, slimmer than you, with a really close, cool family.

And I’m okay with that, too.

One thing that helped me through my own personal envy was . . . cars.  When I lived in Houston, there were really nice cars everywhere.  And by nice, I mean cars that are worth more than my house.  I felt envy.  Then I thought about the car payment that they had to make (I read somewhere that most Mercedes® on the road are not paid for – they’re for show).  That made my four-year-old dad-four door car that I’d bought used seem a LOT better than the Mercedes® driven by the 27 year-old at the stop light next to me.

bitcoin

If you’re a billionaire crime-fighting superhero that found an amulet that gives you super powers but also covers your body in reptilian scales while flying screaming skulls follow you around?  I suppose it’s okay if you buy yourself something nice every once in a while.

To recap:

  • The situation doesn’t care. Don’t get mad at it, especially if it’s beyond your control.
  • Most things really don’t matter – don’t get hung up on the trivia of now.
  • If you won’t remember it next year? It’s probably meaningless.  Don’t sweat it.
  • Don’t compare yourself to others, unless they’re clearly awful in everything compared to you. Then gloat.
  • Expect that your children will destroy thousands and thousands of dollars of your property and at least a dozen priceless, irreplaceable heirlooms. And burn the counter with hot macaroni.  And write on the bathroom walls.  And . . . oh, wait, those were my kids . . .

Wait, what?  I’m Pop Wilder now.  When did that happen?

The Funniest Post You Will EVER Read About Genetic Engineering, Now Available in Cream or Roll-On

“Right, then!  I do the best I can for you, the bloody best, to set up your sniveling, snotty-nosed kid the way you want, and all I get in return for pouring fifteen years of research into the bloody boring composition of the bloody damn DNA molecule is a pair of pathetic twits, who, when confronted with bloody stats start a pathetic wiffle-waffle.  Right now, Mr. and Mrs. Stolwry, you have a perfect, beautiful specimen of a stocky, blond-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned, quilted, male shrimp-head welder, with pods.  Now, what more do you bloody want?  Frankly, it makes me sick!  Why don’t you go have your child naturally?” – Eric Idle on Saturday Night Live (1976) – I can’t embed the video but it’s here (LINK) and hilarious.

betteronpaper

Now you know why chicken wings are getting bigger.  If only it would make its own sauce.  I bet it does, in the Twilight Zone©!

We are at the beginning of a new age of humanity, and maybe even an entirely new type of humanity.  The first humans have been born where sections of their DNA (the genetic information that defines most everything of what they are) have been replaced with new information.  It’s exactly like someone recutting Toy Story® using dialogue from Fight Club™.  Oh, someone did that?  I do live in the best possible timeline:

It’s only two minutes: give it a watch, please.  My therapist says I need to share things.  But the first rule is that we shouldn’t talk about it.  Thankfully, I’m typing instead of talking.

But in this case, the genetic information that defines a living human being was cut out and replaced with new information.  And the human is an actual living human.

How did they do it?

Tiny scissors.  Really small ones.  And itty-bitty pieces of Scotch® tape.  Okay, they actually used a technique called “CRISPR”, which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.  But for all you care it could stand for Clever Reindeer Intentionally Shooting Panda Rifles.  It doesn’t matter.  Let’s pretend it’s really tiny scissors and itty-bitty pieces of Scotch™ tape.

CRISPR allows editing of the DNA strand by using segments of DNA to match up with and replace the parts of the DNA that we don’t like.  And even though DNA is comprised of lots of molecules, in reality DNA is just information like pages in a book, or dialogue in a movie except if you try to replace passages in your book with DNA all you get is a mess and sticky fingers from turning the DNA soaked pages.  But back to the DNA:  some of the information on the DNA appears to be actual junk – it may not mean anything – but the rest of the information defines your height, weight, hair color, maximum intelligence, ability to play guitar, affinity for bacon, and, well, ability to write real good word thoughts (PLOT POINT!).

Editing the DNA with CRISPR allows the editing of new pages into a book, and even the individual letters in the book.  But better not end up leaving out the wrong word:

wickedbible

This Bible was printed in 1631 and is known as the “Wicked Bible.”  If anyone actually followed the instructions, there was probably oodles of amateur DNA transfer.  Hopefully not on the pages.

CRISPR can be used to edit mushroom DNA.  Or cow DNA.  Or . . . human DNA.  And now two human girls have been born and inserted into their DNA is the resistance to AIDS.

The first time I ran into the concept of genetic engineering was when I was a kid, watching Star Trek®.  When I was a kid, it was a law that every other show on television was a repeat of Star Trek™.  The idea of one episode, Space Seed, was that a group of genetically enhanced (mentally and physically) supermen led a war.  When they lost the war, they were shot into space in suspended animation.  Because prison was too complicated, I guess.  The leader?  Khan Noonian Singh, played in scenery-chewing fashion by Ricardo Montalban.

khan

Even Kirk is skittish about genetic engineering.

Any measurable human trait or combination of human traits from DNA can now be changed.  And almost every human trait is genetic in nature.  I know this from experience.  As much as you might think that I was conceived of during an immaculate conception witnessed only by the angels and attended by a gaggle of singing heifers in bloomers, well, that was not exactly the case, no matter what I tell my kids.  It was sweaty teenagers.  But I digress.  I’m adopted, but in the weird way where I’m actually related to the family that adopted me.  I couldn’t even get “unwanted abandoned child” right.  Such a failure.

Anyway, for every moment of my life until I was 35, I had zero contact with my biological father.  Zero.  None.  Nada.  Zilch.  Empty set.  And zero contact with any of his relatives.  Complete isolation from that side of my personal biodiversity.  But I had been told his name.  Then, one night under some assistance from a bit of Coors Light® I did an Internet search and . . . called a number.  He wasn’t there, but a week later we talked.  And it was unusual.

If you’ve read this blog, you know that I have a rather strange set of interests.  One day, jokes about fizzy toots, the next day political analysis, then genetic engineering.  But when I called my biological father it was odd – there was almost no subject that either of us brought up that the other hadn’t researched.  Oh, and he’s a writer (THIS WAS THE PLOT POINT PAYOFF).  Please don’t get me wrong, in no way do I want to imply that I feel anything but the strongest loyalty to the family that raised me, but I could see the similarities so much that I made up a really clever original phrase:  “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”  I’m glad that when they rebuild the last remaining Internet server after the Nacho Cheese War of 2331™, that I’m certain to be credited with my wonderful, original phrase.

But your grandma who didn’t like that little tramp you were dating was right:  genetics matter.

CRISPR puts the tools to optimize human traits in the hands of . . . humans.  Sure, we’ve been doing the amateur kind of genetic engineering for, well, ever.  And it’s resulted in some pretty interesting people, like, say, you.  Our genetic engineers were our mothers and fathers.  Men have broad shoulders because women like broad shoulders.  Women have . . . well, we’ll skip that for now.  Don’t want to say the wrong thing and have everyone think I’m a boob.

3boob

Beware of 12 year olds with the ability to create genetic modifications.

Who gets to play with CRISPR first?  The rich.  Specifically rich Chinese people.  Yes, regulations exist in China, but the regulations exist to protect the State, not the people, silly.  The only reason the Party would restrict rich kids from having SuperBabies 3000® is if the Party feels the technology is too powerful and keeps it for itself.

Make no mistake, this is an incredibly powerful technology, like alcohol on prom night.  I think that the Chinese elite will start snipping and tucking DNA so that their children are smarter.  Taller.  Stronger.  More confident.  Better nose hair, you know, the kind you can braid.  If you’re a billionaire, why not?  The Party will be fine with that, since it gives them the ability to see what the technology does.  I mean, understanding the complicated interactions between DNA molecules is tougher than dancing a polka striptease with a gopher.  And we all know what that’s like.

khan2

Khan we fix your DNA?  Yes we Khan! 

Can you imagine being the master of this technology?  You can eliminate undesirable human traits, such as enjoying Taylor Swift® music entirely from your gene pool.  You can, if you are the Party, create the perfect Chuck Norris-like soldier.  A 9 foot tall (37 meters) basketball player.  The most loyal citizens.

If you are willing to sacrifice and experiment to quickly understand what the interactions are between multiple genetic changes and patient enough to await the results, you’ll quickly lead the world in a technology whose limits we can barely perceive.  And in a state controlled by a central Party, well, soon enough we could see a split so wide in human ability that humanity might look more like a colony of insects with different classes of humans genetically modified to follow their role as drone, soldier, queen, scientist, and blogger than the normal wild and feral band of humans we’re used to.  They’d be farther apart than Morlock© and Eloi™.

timemachine

H.G. Wells couldn’t have imagined that 800,000 years of human evolution could be done in an afternoon in an uncomfortably warm doctor’s office. But he also couldn’t imagine that Leonardo DiCaprio would ever win an Oscar®.

In China in a few years embryonic DNA modifications might become as common as vaccination in the United States.  Once the DNA gets into the gene pool of the country, it will stay there.  Perhaps in two or three generations China will have citizens that are entirely immune to some sort of biological agent that just, whoops, “accidentally” gets released to depopulate the planet and leave it free for China.

Shhh, but I think the Chinese have already measured Africa to see if all of their stuff would fit.

But in a twist resulting from an interaction between a snip that removed unsightly ear hair and a tuck that allowed all men to grow mustaches as full and perfect as the one Burt Reynolds had in Sharky’s Machine©, the remaining citizens develop an insatiable desire for eating humans.  What an ending!  Then Rod Serling can come out, smoking, with a good moral to the story.  Yay!

plagues

Okay – I love comments, and would love to have more, so don’t make me change your DNA so you’re chattier.  And don’t forget – you can just subscribe to this in the box above, and I’ll show up at least three times a week in your inbox.  Which won’t break it, unless you have a weak, girlie-man inbox.  And I won’t send or sell your address, ever.

The Funniest and Most Meaningful Black Friday Post . . . Ever.  Now 50% off, Today Only.

“It’s Black Friday, the day when ordinary house moms turn into vicious bargain hunting animals, blinded by low prices, and eager to get the Christmas shopping done early.  If this was a zoo I’d say run for you lives, but this is Buy More!” – Chuck

fiztoot

Mabel’s family was upset with her on the drive home.  They used Apple® products and didn’t have Windows™.  (I’m sorry for that joke, but by way of explanation I’m a father.)

Like many people, I try to avoid the stores on Black Friday.  If I were a mullet wearing geezer with my toga full of elf chum (please don’t ask me to draw a picture of that, I’m not even sure what elf chum is, and now that I’ve written it I feel vaguely dirty), I’d say Black Friday is maybe the one real American holiday that most people agree on.  Christmas is great, but when was the last time a group of people attempted to choke each other to death to get a gift-wrapped package of underwear on Christmas?  Never.  But put a 50%-off tag on socks with a pattern of Iron Man® smoking a bong with Donald Duck™ on them?  Heck, I’d drop kick a calico kitten through a box fan for a bargain like that!  Sure, we have great holidays like Fourth of July, but nobody ever died in a riot for 2 for 1 fireworks.

Bargains!  Free stuff!  Perhaps that’s the new slogan of the United States – Free Stuff!  And don’t forget that buying stuff is easier than actual salvation or real effort to be a better person.  And even if you don’t like toast – that toaster is only $5.  You can learn to love toast.

Perhaps Black Friday not only our true holiday, it is perhaps our true religious holiday.

zombie

You can tell that these zombies aren’t leftists – they don’t appear to be lecturing anyone.

I’m not going to make fun of people who are short of cash and frugal and truly need the items that they buy, but that only accounts for a small percentage of purchasers on Black Friday.  As Americans, we have been conditioned to shop.  Until we drop.  And don’t let Debt stand in your way.  And I use the word “we” for a reason – I’ve done it, too.  No, I would sooner investigate my hotel room with a black light and then still stay there than go in a store the day after Thanksgiving.  But I do have the Internet.  And I’ve bought stupid stuff:

  • Dog Waxer – rechargeable! Never let your unwaxed dog embarrass you again.
  • Solar Powered Night Light – Works best on a sunny day.
  • Internet-Connected Underwear – With your app, you can check the temperature and humidity.
  • Night Vision Scope for Caulk Gun – Now you can apply your caulk, even in the dark.
  • Crossword Puzzle Book for Dogs – Just as it says.

So, yes, I’ve bought my share of stupid crap, which made me ask the question:  why do we buy useless crap at all?

  • Impulse: I see shiny things.  I must have them.  The depths of the brain, that part that grunts instead of talking and that never uses underarm deodorant that drives this fascination.  Just give it meat, scotch, and women and the impulses will go away.
  • Herd Mentality: I will fight you to the death for the toaster that puts the fuzzy face of Bob Ross on toast!  They actually make a toaster that does this and I am hoping that the Discovery Channel® has a series coming where people fight to the death for consumer items.  Makes me feel so, well, Roman.  Humans want to have the things that other humans have, which is why so many ex-wives exist.  I’ll just stop right there.

bob ross

What a happy little toaster!

  • Makes You Feel Better: Shopping really works to make you feel better – it gives you a sense of accomplishment.  No matter how hard your day was, and what tasks you face, there is a 100% chance that you can buy something and it will make you feel a little bit better.  It gives you that sense of control, no matter how poor your decisions were today, you can find a breakfast cereal or, say, 436 pairs of shoes.  You can make a choice and follow through.  People even have a name for this type of shopping – “Retail Therapy.”

therapist

The nice thing about Retail Therapy?  It costs about the same as real therapy, and you can still hate your mother when you’re done shopping for those 436 pairs of shoes.  So you have hatred and shoes left.  I call that a win-win.

Why not shop until you drop?  You can.  If it’s not a problem:

  • Well, if you’re going into debt for power tools just to chase the kids around with (a circular saw works well as long as you have enough extension cord) or sacrificing your ability to retire just so you can have a “Hello Kitty®” ashtray, it’s a problem.
  • If you have boxes of stuff you’ve never opened inside of other boxes of stuff you’ve never opened, it’s either a problem or a movie premise for Leonardo DiCaprio© for a movie called Inshopsion. There is a rule, however, that DVDs starring Burt Reynolds™ do NOT count in this category, so don’t even ask.

If you really need something to complete you, shopping isn’t it.  It’s short term, and only lasts until you’ve bought the next thing.  And the more crap you buy, the more confusion you bring into your life – sooner or later you have to spend more time managing the crap than it is worth.  Again, I know this from experience – my own.  And I still can’t find that spare kidney I bought on Kidney-Bay® on Black Friday back in 2012.  Maybe it moved back to the original owner.

How do you cut back?  Thankfully, the solutions are simple:

  • Replace shopping with something that’s a real achievement. Blogging for thousands of wonderful readers who have wonderful hygiene, immaculate mullets, and stunning good looks counts.  You know, as an example.
  • Look for real competition in the world. I mean, soccer was invented by European beatnik nudist jugglers to provide something to do while their berets dried and they drank cappuccino.  But, yes, even soccer will do.  Find something.
  • Bored? Learn to not be bored.  Take up chainsaw juggling.  European beatniks do it all the time between cigarettes and poetry readings.
  • One of the things we don’t thing about too much when we think about shopping is time. And time, my friends, is all we have, each day that ticks away is lost forever.  Plan your time to be and do something real.

We have to shop.  We have to buy things.  But as the Roman philosopher Seneca said, any over used virtue becomes a vice.  Or was that Captain Kirk?  I’ll go check my 12 disc collection of Star Trek:  The Original Series Commemorative 32nd Anniversary Edition Complete with Pink Tribble Box Set.  I got it on Black Friday in 2009 on sale for $24.99.  It might be here over behind the Original Smokey and the Bandit 2 jacket.  Who knew that Burt Reynolds was exactly my height, but only weighed 155 pounds?  Thing doesn’t even fit around the shoulders.

smokeybanditjacket

Eastbound and Down.

Bonus:  Deliverance interview between Burt and Johnny.

Okay – I love comments, and would love to have more, so don’t be shy.  Or I will dropkick another kitten through a box fan.  And don’t forget – you can just subscribe to this in the box above, and I’ll show up at least three times a week in your inbox.  Which won’t break it.  And I won’t send or sell your address, ever.

Smoking, Orphans, and the French

“Yes.  Give him his cigarettes.  It won’t be the nicotine that kills you, Mr. Bond.” – You Only Live Twice

orphanadopted

An early but failed attempt at a cigarette advertisement as they ran out of orphans too quickly.

Heart attacks were unknown before 1900 – probably because 97% of people before 1900 died in surprise buffalo stampedes and dysentery on the Oregon Trail®.

the-oregon-trail

But I recently learned something that fascinated me.  Heart disease has plummeted during the last fifty years.  Here’s the graph.  I found it here (LINK), with a h/t to Mangun (LINK):

heart

So, heart disease is plummeting.  But I thought we were getting fatter?

nchoverweight

Not good.  There’s a lot of Oreos® and regret in that graph . . . .

According to the NIH, we are getting fatter.  But we’ve (more or less) eliminated heart disease as a cause of death.  Huh?  I would have thought that heart disease would have increased during that time period abetted by a high-fructose corn syrup diet, increasingly sedentary lifestyle, Netflix®, the Internet, and reliance on every modern convenience.  Oh, wait, that’s just me.

Not saying being fat is healthy – it’s linked to a large number of issues including very large pants.  But not so much heart disease.  So what changed between 1900 (effectively zero heart disease) and 1965 (when heart disease peaked) and today?

Cigarettes (graph is from the CDC).

cdcsmoking

Sure people smoked before 1900.  Mark Twain smoked the equivalent of the population of Honduras in cigars every day.  And people smoked pipes, often while cultivating manly mustaches that looked like creatures from an H.G. Wells novel.  But cigarettes?  Not so much, as cigarettes were French, and even back in 1900 no one liked the French.  54 cigarettes per year per person were smoked in the United States in 1900.  In 1965, the peak year for heart attacks was also the peak year for cigarette smoking, when Americans smoked 4,259 cigarettes per person, per year.  And they looked so very cool, except for the heart attacks.  And the berets.

ripper

Also, Watson, an amazing fact:  Kermit The Frog has the same middle name as Jack The Ripper.  Not a coincidence I think . . . the game is afoot!  Let’s catch a Muppet® murderer!

The difference between cigars (or pipes) and cigarettes is that no sane person inhales pipe or cigar smoke.  Again, not saying that either of those things are particularly healthy, but it appears that pulling the chemicals from combusting tobacco into your lungs is a bad thing.  I mean, not as bad as being an orphan, but bad.

orphans

Also, can an orphan eat legally in a family-style restaurant?

Could it be other things, like statins?  Nope – they were late to the party, and there are significant debates about if they’re good for you at all.  Aspirin may be a factor in the lowered death rates, but it really seems like smoking cigarettes . . . might be bad for you.

As usual, I am compelled by my lawyer to tell you I’m not a doctor, and that pesky court order requires me to tell you that I’m not allowed around pumpkin pie when there’s lighter fluid nearby, but my conclusion is probably pretty innocuous:  don’t smoke cigarettes, unless you want to die early of a sudden heart attack and save more Social Security money for me.

Readers Write: Early Retirement, Health Care, Canada, and Averting A Ben Affleck Marathon

Ricky:  Boys, what is up with me getting shot with three darts, and it didn’t even affect me?  I must be like a superhero or something.

Julian:  Maybe you’ve got so much dope in your system, you’re immune, Rick.

– Trailer Park Boys

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See, your health care dollars are being spent on useless signs!  An outrage!

It’s always nice to get feedback about the column in a letter that doesn’t begin with an anatomical impossibility.  I mean, how would my head even have gotten in there in the first place?  And what does my mother have to do with anything?  But, I thought this would be a great chance to take a few excerpts from the letter and mix with other communications I’ve had to revisit the topics of early retirement and health care from last week (Early Retirement: Things to Consider (cough Health Care cough)).

Comments in quotes are from my friend.  Comments in [brackets] are from me.  Comments in purple are a figment of your imagination.  You should talk to someone or cut back on the recreational stuff.

“So, I laughed when I read this post yesterday.  I’ve been spinning off after reading the NY Times article on the FIRE movement and Mr. Money Mustache and others – and wondered if you knew about them… of course you did!”

Yes.  John Wilder knows everything that a mortal man can know, with the exception of how to properly mud and tape drywall.  That’s magician/wizard-level skill.

“Since I’m new to MMM [Mr. Money Mustache – link to him here-JW] and others in the FIRE [Financially Independent, Retiring Early] community I was curious and excited, and then realized that I’ve known versions of people like this since my youth [but] they just seemed like weirdos at my parent’s church who recycled aluminum foil from pot luck dinners, rode tandem bikes to church, the husband hired himself out as a handyman outside his day job, and rode his bike to job site with his old timey tool box, etc.  They seemed cheap, not enlightened, but it looks like they were on to something!”

If you’re going to be rich, a good thing to be is . . . invisibly rich.  No private plane.  No flashy cars.  Just the satisfaction of knowing that you actually own the ’04 Ford™ Taurus© in the driveway of the nice but modest house.  And this avoidance of spectacle also tends to reinforce the concept of not being a slave to your desires or needs for consumer products.  Except for drones – you need a drone – life is not worth living without a drone.

I recall living in Houston and sitting at the stoplight in my three year old Ford® that I got for $12,000 (cash) next to a $180,000 Mercedes® SLWhateverX, and thinking . . . mine is paid for.  I don’t know if theirs was (my bet is that it wasn’t) but I knew that mine was.  And that I got to live with the lack of stress associated with no payments on a car.  I felt this way when I was driving $2000 Chevy™ Lumina©, too.

“While many [Early Retirement folks] got their start in higher paying professions like software engineering or investment banking, and then consciously live on 30-40% or less of their income, it does seem like a movement geared to minimalist millennials with few obligations.  I can live on 60% of my pay without dipping into savings, but much less isn’t possible with obligations of a relatively cheap [Expensive Home Area] mortgage, frequent trips to [Home Area], living in a 65 year old house, and maxing out 401K contributions.”

Yes.  Agreed – at various stages of my life I’ve been down to my last $50 in the checking account – with a pretty hefty negative net worth.  And, yes, obligations cost money.  But almost all of the obligations we take on are (outside of death, child support, alimony, and taxes – but I repeat myself) voluntary servitude.  And it’s okay, as long as you realize that the servitude was entered into . . . voluntarily.  Unless there was tequila involved and she looked pretty after enough of it.  Thankfully, since 2005 or so, I’ve been on the other end of it (wealth, not tequila goggles), but in large part that was due to severing that voluntary servitude, either through paying down debt (student loans) or not getting into debt (new cars).

“[Specific Investment Stuff] Plus, I like what I do and where I live.  [More Specific Investment Stuff].”

This is the most important line in the letter.  If you love what you do, and like where you live, why would you even consider retiring early?  Financial independence is nice, but if you’re gonna keep working because you want to and can save a nice chunk of cash while fully funding a 401K, why bother hurrying it?

“[More Specific Investment Stuff and Personal Stuff] So how to build wealth when you still have obligations and don’t feel confident on putting your money to work in the market, or buying real estate in distant locations, etc.?”

Cash is a long term loser – but it sounds like you’re funding your 401K to nearly the max.  I’m not going to get into specific investment advice on the post (okay, ammunition, PEZ® and panty hose are always winners) but the first part of wealth is reduction in need.  Just like the most expensive food in the fridge is the food you throw out, the biggest wealth destroyer is stuff you don’t ever use.  Like that stupid drone.

And, as for wealth?  [Spoiler Alert] If we don’t fix health care, our financial system will implode (more below).  Oops.  Does that make me a Debbie Downer?  If so, do I have expanded restroom options?

“And then you hit the big nail on the head . . . “

Naturally.

“Health care.  Our system is a mess and many 30-somethings are choosing to go without coverage in order to save more.  That’s not an option at my age either, and I wonder how the FIRE folks living on the extreme cheap lifestyle will cope when they hit their 40’s and beyond as insurance rises beyond affordability.”

He ended with a note that certain countries seemed to like government-run health care.

To be as clear as I can be using the English language:  Like a Bush/Stalin lovechild, our hybridized system of health care combines the worst parts of rent-seeking crony capitalism and nanny-state big government socialism.

Let’s take the parts everyone likes:  Everyone must be treated at an emergency room regardless of ability to pay, government subsidies, and no pre-existing conditions.

Sure, everyone likes this!  Sounds compassionate (with other people’s money)!  Heck, if I were irresponsible, I’d like it, too.

But it sets up the system where emergency rooms are clogged with people with minor conditions because they can get free treatment.  It’s okay.  The people who actually pay bills to the hospitals can pay for them, too, right?  So, they pay for their care and the care of others.  But then they’re taxed so that they can pay for insurance for others.  And if there are no pre-existing conditions on health insurance, heck, don’t sign up until you get really sick or old, thus making insurance for people (like me) who have had it their entire lives amazingly expensive.  But it’s okay, the CIGNA health insurance company went from a high $20’s stock when Obamacare passed to a stock that is worth $200 today, a 600% to 700% increase.  Obamacare really stuck it to insurance companies.

No.  Insurance companies wrote Obamacare.  And don’t get me started on hospitals or prescription drug manufacturers.  While pretending to be a portion of the capitalist system, they really aren’t – they make use of government power to make rules that would be blatantly illegal for any other business.  Imagine a taking your car into the auto mechanic and getting a bill of $500 for a $5 belt.  Or a bill from a consulting mechanic who just walked by and asked if the car was doing okay.  And then drive off with the original problem not solved, and then bill your for your Taurus® giving birth to a Kia™, when everyone knows that a Taurus© identifies as male.

I don’t like socialism, but it appears we’ve socialized the responsibility while making the responsible pay with little to no benefit while corporate profits explode.

How does Canada do it?

In my YouTube® feed a video popped up about Canadian healthcare.  In it, a video pundit named Steven Crowder went to Canada and tried to obtain treatment (with his Canadian friend) for a variety of minor ailments.  No dice.  Hours waiting, and nada.  This is a similar story that I’d heard from others, so I thought I’d ask a friend who is Actually Canadian and eats nothing but back bacon while drinking Molson® and Moosehead™.

She loves their system.  Her mom had cancer, and got prompt treatments.  They even picked her mom up and dropped her off from her chemotherapy sessions.  And I hear if you’ve had a heart attack the system works very well.  And the care is good.

breakingcanada

This explains why the only good television from Canada is Trailer Park Boys.

But my friend also talked through the darker side that Crowder talked about – long waits – months for minor surgery like fixing a bum knee.  A full day to get a prescription for an ear infection.  Every system has a mechanism for rationing.  In a true capitalist system, it’s money.  In a socialist system, it’s something else.  In Canada?  Minor pain and time.  But like a year of minor pain – sort of like being forced to watch nothing but Ben Affleck movies for a solid year.

Are taxes higher?  Sure.  It isn’t a pure socialist system, and I haven’t dug into the darkest side, but socialized medicine eventually (as resources dwindle) becomes a game where resources are rationed more aggressively.  Except for the leaders – they still exempt for themselves the best of everything.

Canada’s system does have a safety valve – you can go to private clinics, too.  And pay cash to avoid the Affleckathon.

All of the above still sucks.  But it’s still better than the thing we have today.

But is there a capitalist solution?  Yeah.

I won’t go through the details, but Karl Denninger (LINK) has put together the “most” free-market alternative to our current system.  It doesn’t do like I would (letting folks die in the street is a big incentive to get insurance and drive costs down, plus it would mean much shorter lines at the checkout at WalMart®) but, would manage to save the financial system of the United States if implemented.  What would we lose?  High profits for insurance companies.  Huge numbers of bureaucrats.  High drug costs.  High insurance costs.

Do you lose exemptions for pre-existing conditions?  Yup.  But if you have insurance and have less than a 60 day lapse, those pre-existing conditions remain covered like they were in 2004.

It’s a good system, and necessary.  Because if we don’t fix healthcare?  It’s not gonna kill us.

It’s going to wreck the entire financial system of the United States, as I write about here (More Budget Doom, The Rolling Stones, an End Date, and an Unlikely Version of Thunderstruck).

So, no biggie.

The Paradox of High Standards: Making You Happy or Killing You?

“I don’t suppose you’d find it up to the standards of your outings. More conversation and somewhat less petty theft and getting hit with pool cues.” – Firefly

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It’s important to have standards – like licking and sticking standards.  Stick to your guns!

I was watching Tony Robbins™ over a year ago while working out at the gym.  I like to watch videos when I do the cardio machines – it seems to make the time pass more quickly.  I’m not sure that’s a good idea since (at least subjectively) that makes my life shorter.  Perhaps I should fill my underwear with sand before I get on the treadmill – that might make it seem a little lot longer. But I digress.  Going from memory, Robbins® was talking about if you wanted to change your life, you had to raise your standards.

What is the result of a change in standards?  Well, if Robbins© is right, changing your standards changes the way you view the world.  And if you raise your standards, well, you’ve changed your life for the better, right?

No.

You’ve changed your life for the better if you’ve raised your standards and changed your behavior in such a manner that you are moving to meet those standards.  If you change your standards of, say, your new pants size?  And your new standard is a 32” waist (451 meters)?  Great idea!  But you don’t change your daily habit of 86 Krispy Kreme® delicious glazed donuts?  What has your new awesome changed standard given you?

Nothing.

Wait, worse than nothing.

Frustration.  Which leads to death.  Okay, after decades.  But it still leads to death.

With all apologies to Mr. Robbins® (the host body) and the symbiotes/parasites that are his amazingly immaculate hair (no actual human has hair like that, so I expect that his hair is a separate living entity, perhaps responsible in some psychic way for his charisma), changing standards without changing actions just breeds a sense of impotence, anger, discontent, and, when present in relationships?  Divorce or an end to friendship.

High Standards + Poor Execution = Sadder Than Johnny Depp’s Bank Account

Let me give an example:

Let’s say I have a standard that includes having a spotless bathroom.  One where you could eat chateaubriand off the tiles (and had an Alexa® speaker that told you what chateaubriand was) with the Queen and she’d be excited to come back for dessert.  A bathroom where the towels were laundered by angels in heaven with unicorn blood as the soap.  I mean a really clean bathroom.  Really clean.

Okay.  I now have this standard.  Cool.

But I hate cleaning, and I’m not really good at it.

So my standard is a really clean bathroom.  But The Mrs. has to clean it.

Sadly, The Mrs. is neither an indentured servant nor someone who is easily cowed.  Did you think I’d marry a weasel-woman?  Nah, could have had dozens of those.  I need a woman with fire in her eyes!

But if I expect The Mrs. to clean the bathroom to my “dinner with the Queen” standard?  Never going to happen.  And the result?

I’d be angry at The Mrs., for something she never promised nor intended to do.  If this continued through other aspects of our relationship?

We wouldn’t have a relationship.

And I understand that.  If we expect more than the other can or will give?  We don’t have a relationship.  But some standards really are important.  How can you tell which ones?

When it comes to standards:

  • What standards are you willing to fight for? Real fighting, not Twitter® or online petitions.
  • What standards do you actually control? If you don’t control it, how will it happen?
  • What is the consequence of the standard not being met? If nothing, then . . . what?

Focus on standards with consequences that have meaning to you.  That you control.

You do control your pants size.  Are you willing to fight for it?  Does it have consequences?

The questions above really do have consequences:  if you spend your life being upset about things you don’t control, and that you can’t change, and that don’t impact your life?

Even the stupid dead Romans had this one figured out:

“Today I escaped anxiety.  No!  I discarded it because it was within me in my own perceptions, not outside of me.” — Marcus Aurelius (stupid dead Roman)

I guess Tony Robbins© is just not fit for a toga.  And his hair would a little tiny toga, which would be cute, but really, really creepy.

Early Retirement: Things to Consider (cough Health Care cough)

“But they make wonderful patients:  they have excellent health insurance and they never get better.” – Frasier

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Fairbanks Memorial – they didn’t charge extra for ice.

Although I’ve discussed Early Retirement before here (Frugality, Financial Samurai, Mr. Money Mustache, and Early Retirement Extreme) I thought that it would be good to revisit the topic, primarily because I have a spreadsheet.

What kind of spreadsheet?  A crystal ball spreadsheet, one that predicts the future, all the way until 2081 when the ice sheets have melted and the dinosaurs have returned.  I’ve maintained this spreadsheet since 2014 or so, and it’s been very accurate for predicting my net worth over the course of four years.  I used it to decide (once upon a time) whether or not to quit one job and move to another.  Spoiler:  I didn’t move jobs.

The real reason I didn’t change jobs was fairly simple:  the spreadsheet told me that within three years I would have enough money that if I decided to chuck it all and get a job as say, a school teacher for a few years, I could continue to live the dissolute lifestyle awash in PEZ®, long essays, and regret to which I had become accustomed with no changes.  But there is a faction that sees a more radical idea:  just retire early.  They even have an acronym for it:  FIRE – Financially Independent, Retiring Early.

One of the biggest advocates of that is still Mr. Money Mustache.  MMM as he is affectionately known to his “Mustachians” retired several years ago, and has been blogging about it since.  His blog is exceptionally popular (LINK).  One secret of MMM is that he, by choice, has created a lifestyle of voluntary low-spending, i.e., he’s cheap.  By cheap?  His family has only one car, which they rarely use.  Mainly he uses a bicycle to go where he needs to go.

This is a fascinating idea.  You gain financial independence not by having the biggest pile of cash, but by having the smallest pile of needs.

For example:

I have a stack of books that is literally over 12 feet (143 meters) tall of books that I’m planning to read.  They’re stacked up by my bedside.  They’re stacked up on a bookcase near the bathroom.  They’re stacked up on my dresser.  And I get several new ones every month to replace the ones I finish reading.  And this doesn’t account for my library, which houses a collection of thousands of titles on every subject from tanning a hide to hiding a tan.  When we moved from Alaska to Texas, the movers set a company record for number of boxes packed in one day AND amount of weight packed in one day.  Reason?  Books.

Mr. Money Mustache would (probably) say:  “Why are you spending money on books?  There’s a library not two miles from your house that has a decent collection, and if they don’t have the book you want they can get it through interlibrary loan.  You could even get your fat butt on your bike and go down there to get a book and lose some weight in the process.”

He’s just that kind of party-pooper, but that would also impact my love of gadgets and gizmos that, ultimately, aren’t worth the time and money that I spend on them . . . except the drone, which is really, really cool.  Everyone needs a drone, right?

But let’s look at the major categories of spending and consider them through the soup-stained Mustachian paradigm.  Each of these topics could be a blog post by itself (and some have) but we’ll skim them today:

Mortgage: 

Don’t have one.  You probably have more house than you need, which causes you to spend more on heating and cooling than you would need to if you had a house of human proportion.  Pay it off so you’re not paying interest to a bank and can keep the money yourself.  But you still have to pay taxes and I’d still suggest you have insurance on the place, since it protects you in several different ways, especially from certain lawsuits that could dig deeply into your cash.

Home Location: 

Why live in an area that causes you to have to spend a lot of money?  Why live in an area (if you’re still working) that causes you to drive lots of miles to a job, which eats up both money in commuting cost and your life in drive time?  I know!  Location!

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This was an awesome location.  Wonder why we sold it?  Oh, yeah, piles of money.

Cell Phones: 

Why have a big data “full everything” when you can have a phone that costs less than $40 a month that gives you some data as well as more talking than anyone actually does on a cell phone?  And the need for the newest iPhone©?  Probably not so much.

Satellite/Cable Television: 

We have satellite television, along with a DVR box that records television shows so we don’t have to spend time watching them.  But let’s look at television . . . do we need a subscription to DirecTV® and Netflix™?  The number of things that I watch on satellite is dwindling – Silicon Valley™, Game of Thrones©, Better Call Saul™, The Last Ship®, sure I watch those when they’re on.  But most of the year, they’re not on.  And I can get most things on Netflix™ or Amazon®.  Do I even need satellite or cable anymore?

Landline: 

When I was a kid and the phone rang, I’d jump off the couch, and run to the receiver to pick it up.  It was an event!  Now, in a day where communication follows you to every crevice of your life, when the phone rings, we rarely even pick it up unless the phone announces that it’s Grandma.  Wondering why we even have one . . . oh, yeah.  Grandma.  And the phone is free with the Internet.

Food: 

Food is big business.  And an even bigger scandal.  How much food do we buy that we end up never eating?  Since we have teenage boys in the house, the answer is “very little.”  It’s been my saying (for forever) that the most expensive food that you buy is food that you don’t eat.

The second-most expensive?  Restaurant food, especially fast food.  I can buy three pounds of delicious ribeye steak for about $30.  Dinner for our family at Taco Bell™ (remember that we have teenagers) costs about $40.  Full disclosure, I account for a chunk of that $40 myself, but steak is so much better than a Nachos Bell Grande®.  And I can buy six pounds of ribeye for $60.  And we can eat for several meals on that, versus one trip to a nice restaurant, which would cost about $120-$180, including tip.  I maintain that I can eat better food more cheaply if I prepare it at home myself.  And by myself, I mean (except for grilling) The Mrs.  And as for high-priced Internet meal kits?  Wal-Mart® is our meal kit.

Cars:  

Mr. Money Mustache suggests having one or zero of these.  And he has a huge financial point.  Cars depreciate, so they’re crappy investments.  Cars require taxes and licensing and insurance cost annually, so even if you own one, keeping it around so you can drive it costs you annually.  And my family has an “N+1” philosophy about cars, where “N” is the number of licensed drivers.  Why?  We drive used cars, and they need maintenance at a higher rate than brand-new cars.  So we have a spare.  If we were retired?  One car would probably be enough (assuming we didn’t have the teenage boys in the house).  And, yes, a car is required for the rural area that we live in – you really couldn’t bike your  ten year old kid to a wrestling tournament (in winter) that’s 100 miles away . . . so we’d need at least one car.

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I’m hoping this one is paid for.

Home Maintenance:

If you own a home, something will break.  At my house, that seems to happen weekly, and it’s more than me having my 19th nervous breakdown.  Some things get fixed when I get around to it, like when one Wilder child broke the bannister.  It sounds like I’m blaming the kid, but I’m really not – if the bannister had been put together correctly in the first place (or fixed better than I did when last I fixed it) then it wouldn’t have broken in the first place.  This bannister got broken, oh, six years ago.  It still swings loosely.  I’ve never even been close to being motivated enough to fix it.  But when the air conditioner pan rusted out and started leaking condensed water onto the bathroom carpet?  Yeah.  Fixed in 12 hours.

And I estimate that immediate repairs (not fixing the place up) that are required to make the place habitable are probably about 1% of the home value each year.  If you’re handy and can do it yourself?  So much the better.  When the hot tub “brain board” fried?  I consulted with a hot tub repair guy and swapped it out myself – saving about $200 in the process.  When the flame rollout sensor on the furnace went out in winter?

I paid to have that done, since the consequences of screwing that up involved mortality via explosion or asphyxiation if I screwed it up.  $25 part, $50 in labor, and fixed that afternoon.  My rule is:  if it doesn’t require real expertise and can’t kill anyone?  Sure, I’ll try that.  I’ve saved thousands by doing that – but I think (after putting two complete roofs on and fixing two others), I’m done roofing.  Enough roofing.

Medical Insurance:

Medical insurance is the biggest variable to deal with for anyone attempting to retire early.  I will say this gently:  the health care system in the United States is the most unholy mixture of the worst parts of socialism and near-monopoly capitalism on the planet Earth, and that’s the planet that has the Department of Motor Vehicles AND school cafeteria lunches.  How is it messed up?  On the socialist side:  A hospital is forced to treat anyone who shows up.  Anyone.  By definition, if you don’t have any money, all the hospital can do is send you bills and not take the money you don’t have.  So, your incentive?  To go to the emergency room whenever you get a sniffle, so everybody who has insurance can pay for you.

On the evil capitalist side?  Hospitals don’t have to let you know what they’re billing you, or why.  Your ability to even remotely influence your bill is nearly zero.  From Karl Denninger’s post on how to fix healthcare – emphasis in original (LINK):  “. . .  the practice of charging someone $100,000 for scorpion antivenom in Arizona when the same drug from the same company is $200 for the same quantity 40 miles to the south and across the Mexican border.”  Denninger’s post has a list of similar issues – and common sense solutions that we’ll never undertake.  Why?  Look at the stock prices of the drug companies and the insurance companies.  Who would want to mess that party up?

MMM discusses his vexation with insurance in a pretty good post here (LINK).  Since I’m working at a job and have crappy insurance from them, I’ve not scouted the market too much – but my last look at the market mirrors MMM’s.  But in addition to the horrible composition

But up until you are ready for Medicare (and until your spouse is, too, which is a consideration for me, having married a younger – but still legal in most states! – woman) you’ll have this risk.  Medical insurance costs are estimated to rise between 15% and 30% next year.  And 7% thereafter.  Said simply, medical costs can’t continue to increase at that rate.  And when something can’t continue?  It won’t.  The system will break.  Insurance companies will go bankrupt, as every body . . . walks away.  When people can’t pay for insurance, they won’t.

But if you’re retired, have insurance while you can until the system breaks.  After that?  The rules will change again.  This will happen even if you are working.

So what does it all mean?

Retiring early has risks, but, so does life.  One thing I’ve seen is we certainly don’t know what’s around the corner.  If you could retire early and found out later you had a terminal disease, wouldn’t it be great if you retired early?  No.  You’d still be dead.  Seriously.  Dead is dead.

Retire early only if you don’t find what you’re doing fun.  If you’re having a blast at work and it has meaning to you, keep doing it until you die.  Why retire from a dream job?

I mean, who else would watch Johnny Depp’s finances for him?  By the way, what’s the best way to clean the money after having a money bath?

Asking for a friend.

Health and Journalism . . . But You Already Know the Answers

“Listen to what I’m telling you. You go find a doctor. Get me Dr. Kildare. Get me Dr. Livingston. Get me Dr. Frankenstein. Just get me a doctor! Go where the – go where the doctors hang out.” – The Cannonball Run

burt

Eastbound and down . . . .

This week there were some amazing health care headlines:

  • Four Year Old Nearly Dies After Trying On Shoes Without Socks
  • Kratom Tea Left Teen with Brain Damage
  • Fran Drescher talks about Cannabis
  • Vanilla Ice Trapped on Quarantine Plane
  • New Miracle Cigar and Brandy Diet Found in Winston Churchill’s Notes

Sadly, I only made up one of those headlines.  I’ll leave it to you to guess which one.

But that’s the problem with health news nowadays:  much of it (if not all) is either poorly understood by the journalist, completely useless to the average reader, only news because a celebrity says it, or versions “cat chases dog” – stories of medical occurrences so rare that winning the lottery is more likely than your kid putting a shoe on without a sock and getting sepsis.  Humanity, for most of its existence, didn’t even have crude footwear like Roman sandals, but rather had to make due with inferior shoes like Nikes®.

Most popular news on health could be put in People© magazine or a comic book (but I repeat myself) and it would carry the same sort of impact.  I could even sit and conjure headlines that you’ll be seeing in the next year with what they won’t tell you in parenthesis:

  • Cancer Cure Shows Great Promise (In Curing Rats)
  • New Diet Pill Reduces Weight by 30% (But Will Turn Your Heart Into Jell-O® Pudding)
  • Sleeping Important For Health (Buy Your Boss Still Gets Mad When You Do It At Your Desk)
  • Eggs Now Good For You (Because Cholesterol in Eggs Isn’t What’s in Your Veins)
  • Mother Upset Because Child Got Really Sick Because of Illness Caught on a Beach (That 10,000,000 Other Kids Didn’t Get)
  • Some Game of Thrones® Actress Lost 50 Pounds (Due to Bulimia)

I know that health journalists like these kinds of stories because they have to write 16 stories a week or they’ll be replaced by JOURNOTRON 2000™.  JOURNOTRON 2000™ only consumes half the coffee that the journalist does, and only asks for increased wages once every year, rather than whine about it weekly.  And, what says “Pulitzer Prize©” like being the guy who figures out that Vanilla Ice was stuck on a quarantined plane with a bunch of virus-laden foreigners?  That’s hard-hitting health news that people NEED to see.

But why do people like to read the stories of how new Princess Whatsername® has had warts burned off her forehead since getting married to Prince Gingerhair?  Or how that maybe if they only ate skinless Pacific salmon that they could lose weight and have fewer forehead warts?

Health is funny.  People like to hide from their health.  Heck, people like to hide from the truth.

The truth about health is stunningly simple.

  1. Get exercise. Lift weights.
  2. Don’t eat too much, especially sugar. ESPECIALLY high fructose corn syrup.
  3. Butter is awesome.
  4. Don’t drink too much. Just enough to be happy, not enough so that drinking makes you miserable.   “A pleasure too often becomes a punishment.”
  5. If you weigh too much, eat less.
  6. You probably shouldn’t smoke cigarettes. Cigars are much better for you.
  7. Get enough sleep so you feel happy when the alarm goes off.
  8. Have a job that’s good enough so you feel happy when the alarm goes off.
  9. Deal with your family in such a way that you feel happy when the alarm goes off.
  10. Have a goal so you want to get out of bed when the alarm goes off.
  11. Be significant. In some way.  Build on that.
  12. Be important to someone. Build on that.
  13. Belong somewhere. Build on that.
  14. Don’t spend so that finances are a stress on your life.
  15. Remember to buy yourself something stupid that makes you happy once in a while. (Not too often.)
  16. Build a small, elite fighting training center in Southeast Asia and create about 1000 henchmen. Brainwash them into undying loyalty – I mean these guys should jump in front of a bullet to save your life.  You’ll need them when you take over Bangladesh.  Not that I could figure out why you’d want to take over Bangladesh . . .
  17. Set your expectations low so that what you expect doesn’t make you mad and disappointed every day.
  18. Set your expectations high so that you can achieve more than you ever thought you could.
  19. Understand that the last two points disagree. Deal with it.  You have to get by that or you can’t do anything.
  20. Vitamins are good, probably. If you have money and can buy them, research them and buy a few.  If you can’t, buy cheap ones like vitamin C.  It can’t hurt you and might help.   I’ll probably do another vitamin post in the near future.
  21. Almost anything can be a weapon. If you’re in an unexpected fight, fight for your life.  Be aware of your situation.  Practice something that gives you an edge in self-defense.  Practice it regularly.
  22. Don’t get strung out about the normal risks of life. There are 13,000 or so middle schools (grades 6, 7, and 8) in the United States.  So, there are about 60,000 total coaches.  30,000 of them lost this week.  They deal with that.  You should, too.  You won’t win every game.  Some of your risks won’t pay out.
  23. You can choose to be a victim or not. Make a decision.  Choice is yours.  But if you leave yourself in a position to be a victim?  Remember, you chose it.

But, strangely, these twenty-three points don’t make headlines.  Why?  I didn’t have to tell them to you.  You knew them already.

So do them.

Or don’t.  But don’t tell me you don’t know them.  You know, every morning, if you’re doing them or not.

Does anyone have a good contact in Southeast Asia for a henchmen training service?

Asking for a friend.

Read This Blog or I’ll Shoot This Car and You’ll Feel Guilty Forever

“You have learned to bury your guilt with anger.  I will teach you to confront it, and to face the truth.  You know how to fight six men.  We can teach you how to engage six hundred.  You know how to disappear.  We can teach you to become truly invisible.” – Batman Begins (The good 2005 one, not the earlier crap.)

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If you don’t read this blog, I’ll shoot this car.  Then wouldn’t you feel guilty?

I sat staring at the ceiling in the darkened apartment, the lights from the parking lot casting shadows on the walls.  I couldn’t sleep.  I tossed and turned.  Finally, I resorted to reading.  I’d read every night until I literally fell asleep with a book in my hand.  I remembered, in particular, reading a big, heavy hardcover at the time, one that was about 1053 pages long.

I was being eaten alive inside.  I was wracked with guilt.

What was I scared of?

Well, I hadn’t finished my master’s degree yet, but I had moved halfway across the country and started a new job.  No one was asking me about my degree, but I knew that dreaded moment was coming soon.  “So, John Wilder, where’s your degree?  We need to see a copy.”

This was impossible.  My thesis wasn’t even written yet.  And I had moved halfway across the United States and taken a new job.

My torture continued.  Outside of the lack of sleep, the guilt from knowing that I hadn’t finished my degree sent a chill down my spine (or is it up my spine?) every time I thought about it.  At work.  Shopping.  Waxing my moose statue.  Finally, after a week or so of this torture, I went in to my boss, who was only five or so years older than me.  We started off talking about the work I was doing.  At the end I brought up the degree.

John Wilder:  “Oh, and one other thing, I’m not quite done with my master’s yet, I still need to finish and defend my thesis.”

Boss:  “Whatever.  I’m not even sure the company cares.  In fact, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.  We hired you, not a degree.”

And that was that.

In that moment all the fear left me, and I felt silly for worrying about it, and even sillier for keeping it bottled up inside of me, eating away at me like a Kardashian at an all-you-can-eat waffle and cream cheese covered bacon buffet.  Sometimes that horrible truth you have bottle up inside of you . . . is no problem at all.

This has been the norm in my life:  if I confronted the problem, or was honest about it upfront, the problem (most times) went away.  And when the problem didn’t go away, fixing it because I was honest and upfront was easier than the times (in the past) that I’d waited to confront the issue.

Guilt is a cousin to Worry, and not the good kind of cousin that brings a twelve-pack to your backyard barbeque and then offers to watch your kids so you and the wife can go have a dinner out.  No.  Guilt is a bad cousin that shows up at 3am, kicks your dog, and eats that steak leftover you have in the fridge while talking with its mouth full and smelling vaguely like a wooden barroom floor near a Marine base.  But Guilt and Worry are related.

Worry is paying for the future problems you might have, whereas Guilt is worrying about the repercussions from past actions.  Let’s be real:  I wasn’t worried so much about not having the degree (I did finish it a year later) but was really worried about having moved halfway across the country only to be fired and become economically destitute – a warning sign for future people to say, “don’t be like that idiot.”  I had done the deed.  Or in this case not done it.  My question was what would happen once I’d been found out.

And most of the time your imagination can create future consequences far scarier than they ever would be in normal reality.  Unfortunately, I’m an imaginative guy.  I can go from getting a “C” in a college class to getting kicked out of school to living in a squalid drug den and smelling like Johnny Depp in about three steps.

The choices (if you don’t want to eat yourself up alive inside) are simple:  confront the guilt, or, better yet?

Don’t do things that make you feel guilty.

Duh.