Health – Page 26 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Moderation* is for Monks (*and Ruffles)

“Xerxes dispatches his monsters from half the world away. They’re clumsy beasts, and the piled Persian dead are slippery.” – 300

That may be a slippery slope. But it’s a tasty slippery slope.

When I was about 19, I was browsing around a new bookstore that had just opened in the college town where I went to school. The bookstore had an inventory of about sixteen books, and lasted just about that sixteen weeks before it went out of business. They did, however, have one book out of the sixteen that caught my eye. I picked it up – The Notebooks of Lazarus Long by Robert Heinlein. It was beautifully illustrated. I flipped randomly through it, and as I recall one of the first quotations I found was:

“Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.”

When I was in college, I used toothpaste for spackle because I didn’t know spackle existed – not a square foot of wall in my house wasn’t covered in paneling. Live and learn, though my dorm room smelled minty-fresh when I checked out.

I bought the book.

Several of the quotes from that book have been mentioned before in previous posts by your ‘umble ‘ost, especially:

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

The age of 19 is a powerful time to introduce ideas to a mind – new ones tend to burn in deeply, especially those that resonate with your belief system.

But, “Moderation is for monks”? What do I do with that? Is that a formula for hedonism, a nerdy version of YOLO or The Lie of Living Your Best Life (now including cookies)? Taken entirely out of context, it could be interpreted to mean just that. Party on!

I can’t even remotely support that interpretation, however. When taken into proper context, specifically with the second quote, it means nothing of the sort. You can’t be a human that’s capable of doing half of those things on the list if you’re not a person of substance, a person who has devoted their life to learning and service, or John Wick.

John Wick kills about 77 people in the first movie because he’s sad they killed his dog, which is more than I’ve killed all year. I guess that’s just how Keanu grieves.

Moderation may be for monks, but Heinlein wasn’t telling us to party. He was telling us that we only get one shot at life, so we have to live it to the fullest. He’s telling us that there’s danger in compromise. Here’s another quote that gets us closer, from Karate Kid:

Daniel-san, must talk. Walk on road, hmm? Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later, get squish just like grape. Here, karate, same thing. Either you karate do “yes”, or karate do “no”. You karate do “guess so”, just like grape. Understand?

Thankfully Mr. Miyagi wasn’t from Sweden – then he’d only know Ikea®-do.

There’s a danger to compromise. The path to freedom as practiced by the Founding Fathers® isn’t a path of tolerance to deviation. The path to freedom is rigorous. It requires honest and probing self-analysis. Once the self-analysis is done, the solution immediately presents itself. For a real solution, the truth is required – lies are comforting, but never lead to solutions.

Taking an inventory of where your reality is versus where your standards are is important. We all fall short of our standards from time to time, but if you do it long enough, falling short becomes your new standard. The only solution, and I mean only solution is to avoid moderation. If you’ve failed, the “moderate” behavior that got you there isn’t the “moderate” behavior that will get you out of the situation.

Just as the path to freedom doesn’t include tolerance for tyranny, the path to good health doesn’t include tolerance for Snickers® bars every fifteen minutes. On the flip side, going for a half-hour without downing the bag of Ruffles® on the table doesn’t solve your health problems – it’s only the very smallest of steps.

There are no shortcuts.

Okay, tubing down that waterfall might be a short cut. Not a positive one, mind you . . .

For me, avoiding moderation is key – your mileage may vary. But from what I’ve seen, most people who quit smoking, quit smoking. They don’t slow down – they stop. It’s a radical choice. I’ll share my problem a problem that this girl I knew (she’s from Canada, you wouldn’t know her) had. I started out with the keto diet (several years ago) and started getting great success. I was in a time and place where it was possible to follow the diet exactly. After a while, I started reading that people took a day off. So I took a day off.

A day became a day and the previous evening. Which became Friday evening to Saturday evening. Which became Friday until Monday morning. Yes, I’m admitting that I allowed the slippery slope in that girl from Canada allowed the slippery slope in.

Thankfully we’re all out of Ruffles® and chewing gum tonight.

For me, moderation didn’t work on that diet – moderation led to failure, and that’s what Heinlein was talking about. If you have a goal, don’t pursue it half-heartedly – pursue it with everything you have. Moderation really is for monks.

Kids, Parents, and Happiness (Plus Orphan Jokes)

“Yeah, but I don’t think anybody would adopt me at this advanced development stage that I’m in.” – The Red Green Show

That’s not true. But I do know that the favorite beer of orphans is Fosters®.

My brother was an only child*. I kid. But he was the only kid in the house when I showed up. And by showed up, I mean when I was adopted – I was, I think, four years old at the time. Of course, this was after the whole virgin birth thing and then being found as a three day old baby by the headwaters of the Odense River in Denmark by Pharaoh’s Mom. But I was just too much for Denmark to handle. And too much for Head Start to handle – they kicked me out (really).

I actually remember the day I first called my adoptive mother “Mom.” As I recall, it was in some utterly mundane sentence, such as “Okay, Mom,” just after the court finalized the adoption. I can even remember my tension while waiting to see how she would react. Would she be upset and cry? Would a whirling orchestral theme surround us as she took me in her arms and wept with joy to have a new son? Would she . . . tell me not to call her Mom?

None of those things happened. She just said, “Alright,” and continued as if I had called her Mom a hundred thousand times before and that me calling her Mom was the most normal thing in the world for four year old John Wilder to do.

Mom probably picked the right reaction since we were so poor that we couldn’t afford a live-in orchestra at our house. I often wondered, was Ma Wilder as tense about that moment as I was? I know she was tense a year later when she was explaining to the doctor over the phone that I ate all of her birth control pills. Man, that was the nastiest tasting candy ever. But the pills had a side effect – I’ve never been pregnant, which I hear is a thing guys can do now.

One day I was asked by a stranger if I was adopted. Me: “Yes, what gave me away?” Stranger: “Your parents.”

The advantage of being an outsider dropped into a fully functioning family is that I was able to see a set of customs that were new to me, like having regular meals. The ordinary day-to-day web of family life was there to see, but it was also there to be disturbed and observed by the alien dropped in the midst of the ranch-style Area 51.

Families have customs, even when they don’t know that they do. One of the first customs I noticed was when I went to bed, the last thing anyone in the house said to me was, “see you tomorrow.”

For some reason, four or five year-old me found that an odd thing to say. It wasn’t good night. It wasn’t good bye. “See you tomorrow.” I found it oddly comforting, a promise that I really would see them tomorrow. That may sound odd to you, but it’s a thing that I really thought about as I stared up at the ceiling from my bed. It was, I thought, the nicest thing anyone could have said.

The original line wasn’t “I’ll be back,” it was “See you tomorrow.” Everyone in the test audience just said, “awwww.”

“See you tomorrow.” Perhaps it was the impermanence that I’d experienced in my life up until then – being adopted represented at least the fourth major living arrangement change I’d experienced since I was born – but the simple stability implied in those words made me happy as I snuggled under the covers on a warm winter night.

Please don’t think that I ever felt alienated by my adopted family, but it was certainly recognized that I was an alien – a shock of blond hair and freckles in a family of brunettes. It was like I was the actor hired to punch up a sitcom and dropped into the season 12 opening episode with no backstory. Again, I was always treated as a regular cast member, and not a recurring guest star.

My family loved me ferociously, and showed it on a regular basis – not only did Pop Wilder give me his name, he also sat and watched every football practice, came to every varsity football game and nearly every varsity wrestling match, and sacrificed years of his life worrying about me.

Kids need families. Even odd kids like me.

And kids help families.

I’m still the odd one, but that’s okay – sometimes I discover new things – such as not liking the taste of raw fish heads.

A recent study out of Europe (LINK), where I thought even saying the words “family” or “child” was considered a hate crime found that married couples with kids were happier than married couples without kids. But there was a catch – the kids needed to have moved out of the house for the parents to be happier.

Why is that?

As a parent who has one kid in the house and some already gone, I can understand that. Raising a kid is tough:

It’s long hours when they’re sick.
It’s home surgery that brings to mind a Civil War surgeon performing an amputation.
It’s being covered in vomit that smells like formula while watching a parade on a 95°F day.
It’s getting a call that they backed the pickup into the lunch lady’s car. Parked car. Not moving parked car. In broad daylight.
It’s learning how to yell loudly enough so they can hear you explain why you’re choking them.

Seven year old kids don’t think it’s funny AT ALL when you tell them that you’re going to have to amputate their arm when they complain about a splinter.

But those are the dark sides. There are the positive sides:

Seeing your child go from C’s to A’s because they finally figured it out.
Seeing your kid finally “get it” and perform better than they ever thought they could at a sport.
Watching them solve a problem – by themselves.
Getting a text from them on a random day – just because they wanted to send you a text.
Seeing them become competent at being an adult.
Hearing them tell you that, “I’m doing it, and it’s none of your business,” when they make a decision.
Having them pick a very nice nursing home for you because you love them so very, very, very much. (I’m hoping they’re reading this when I’m 103 and drooling.)

The research indicated** childless people are happier than people with kids. Until the kids move out. Then the people with kids are happier. From the list above, I can see that. From my perspective, children are like incredibly cute parasites until about age 9. They cost a lot of money, they take up a huge amount of time, and they’re less intelligent than a basset hound who agreed to be on Dancing with the Stars.

Sure, some big headaches come as kids get older. And around middle school is when the final battle for their soul takes place. From experience, with my daughters it was one type of battle (“you’re ruining my life”). With boys it is quite another (“I was supposed to do what?”). None of the battles are easy, but they represent the last stage, the last opportunity for a major influence. After that, it’s nothing but minor course corrections until they move out.

I love Pugsley, who is the last chick in our nest. But I derive a lot of satisfaction from the Wilders who are out in the world – I love seeing them change and grow. I love seeing them accomplish things. And I love late night calls where they ask for earnest advice. I certainly may have given Alia S. Wilder a bit of a hard time in The Lie of Living Your Best Life (now including cookies) and Financial Advisers, Christianity, and Elon Musk’s Hair, but she has displayed a great independence, and has owned her mistakes without blaming others.

But in one way the study is wrong. Tonight, when Pugsley went to bed, he said, “See you tomorrow.” I won’t hear that after he moves out, and I’ll miss that beautiful sentiment. But it will also be their responsibility when they (or their kids) back into the parked lunch lady car.

*For all of you wondering why my brother’s name is also John Wilder? Is it a joke? No, he and I have, in real life, the same first name: John. Really. The adoption explains it. John was born before me, so he had the name first. I was old enough that they weren’t exactly gonna start calling me by a whole different name after my fourth living arrangement in four years. Heck, that might have messed me up enough so I would have gotten a doctorate in social sciences. Thankfully, they already called my brother John by his middle name (Velociraptor, or his nickname “Screech”) before I showed up.

This was in the library at my house – I found it one day, and my parents claimed to have no idea where it came from. Perhaps it was left on the shelf by the Lady of the Lake™ to prepare me for my writing career as John Wilder so I could save the United States? Or maybe they forgot when they got it, since the book was over 25 years old when I found it. One of the two. I’m betting on the Aquatic Tart®.

**Research in social sciences is a problem that we face in society as a whole. It appears that social science research is better than flipping a quarter, but not a lot better than flipping a coin. Where scientists tried to duplicate the findings of a social science study, they could only do it about 65% of the time. Sure, that’s slightly better than just guessing, and probably what you would expect with people who kept going to college so they could get a doctorate instead of following their true calling in the food service industry and then figured out how to use government grant money for gluten free locovore vegan tacos while they study how the patriarchy influenced and controlled t-shirt design in 1978. Don’t forget, these stories are also reported by journalism school graduates. Journalism school is for rich kids who aren’t smart enough to qualify to get into Yale Law® or even Maria’s Authentic Taqueria and Law School®.

All You Will Ever Need To Read About How To Be Happy* (*Most of the Time)

“Happy premise number three: even though I feel like I might ignite, I probably won’t.” – Bowfinger

This is a common phrase when something goes wrong around Stately Wilder Mansion™. After the cussing is over, I mean.

I’m travelling for business again this week. The upside to business travel is that it allows me to break my normal routine. I almost feel guilty. Almost. The work this week is light, and my travel has been fun, the food has been great, and the work I am doing has given me a lot of new ideas to think about, and I like that. My toenails also seem to grow faster when I’m on the road but might be imagination. Or, maybe it’s my feet shrinking?

The other advantage being on the road is that it breaks routines. In this case, I found myself eating at the bar at Applechilies®. Eating at the bar makes sense when you’re travelling alone: it seems a bit less pathetic, and you can talk to the bartender if it’s not too busy on a Tuesday night by Interstate 3.14 in Upper Midwestia. This night, the bartender was a young lady of about 22, I’m guessing. We talked a bit. As often happens to me when I meet a stranger, (I have no idea why) pretty soon she was pouring out her entire life story. Seriously.

For the record, as far as you know I only had one drink.

I’ll skip the really wild parts, since the point relevant to this post is that she had dropped out of college.

“That’s fine, and you shouldn’t go to college just to go to college. What is it that you want to do, though?” That question seemed to be really tough for her. And it is a big question, but as I’ve noted again and again, people fail most often because they don’t act on their dreams, not because they can’t achieve them.

After some considerable thought, she answered. “I guess . . . I guess I just want to be happy.”

“Happy? Is that all? Happy is the easiest thing,” I replied.

And it is. Being happy is so easy to achieve it is almost trivial. Note: being happy every minute of every day is impossible. Bad things happen. Professors put your computer program up on the screen to show what not to do. Your pants split at the crotch during a presentation. You walk into a glass door going to a party with people you just met and you get McDonald’s® Hot Mustard© sauce all over the door in a big yellow blob about chest high. Oh, did I say you? Those were all me. And the computer program did do what I intended it to do, though I was surprised it did bring down a mainframe. I guess infinite loops are powerful things.

Remember, no matter what they say, failure is an option.

Warning: this advice probably won’t work for people who are clinically depressed because their brain chemistry is all messed up. That’s wiring that this advice probably won’t fix – they need to see a doctor.

But I learned to be happy when I was relatively young. It’s wickedly effective. As an example, one company I was working for was experiencing huge financial difficulties. Everyone was working to make sure the business stayed open. I was, too, but I wasn’t letting it get me down. I had a new son (The Boy) and was pretty happy at home even though the bank account wasn’t all that full.

Yes, this was on my performance review. “Employee is too optimistic and believes that the business will ultimately succeed if we work hard and solve our problems.”

In my performance review I was docked for being too happy. Apparently being angry and pissed off increases profitability? Spoiler, the company survived. Bonus points? It’s at least partially due to some changes I made – while I was in a good mood. I don’t know if they still have the “don’t be happy at work” policy.

But being happy is simple. In order (more or less) here’s what works for me.

Be close to someone – like physically close. Touching them close. Or get a pet. It’s hard for me to have a bad day when I know that someone loves me. People are herd animals (those that aren’t bears) and physical touch works wonders at making people happy. No sex with the pets, no matter how much they’re asking for it.
Have a friend you can call when something good happens to you. For bonus points, have a friend you can call when something awful happens to you – that’s rough, because only a good friend is willing to share in the bad things that happen. If you don’t have friends? Make some. I know that some people say that Jesus’ biggest miracle was having a dozen close friends after the age of 30, but it is possible. And these need to be friends in real life. FaceBook® friends are nice, but it helps to have physically known the friend for the friendship to be solid.
Exercise. Do something: Walk on the treadmill. Go for a run. Lift weights. Run through a cave being chased by a giant stone bowling ball. I’m fairly fanatical about working out every lunch hour to the point I’m a jerk about not skipping it for (nearly) anything – it really improves the quality of my day. There are times I come back from working out and feel awesome and happy for no reason at all. The harder I worked out, the better I feel.
Eat right. Avoid carbs – they screw with your emotions, especially in quantity. Don’t eat too much. Yes, I’m still fasting on a weekly basis, and some of my happiest days are while I’m fasting. Besides vegans, who is sad when they’re eating a steak? Eat steak. If you’re a vegan, pretend it’s a bacon, since bacon comes from plants, right? Meat may be murder, but it’s tasty murder that makes you feel good. But I have learned if The Mrs. is eating ice cream straight from the carton to NOT ask how she’s doing.
If you are sad, don’t drink alcohol. It’s a depressant. I refuse to drink on those rare days I’m sad. It helps. You can’t find happiness at the bottom of a beer bottle, because who’s happy when they run out of beer?
Get enough sleep. I advise people to sleep as consistently as possible, especially if they have problems getting to sleep. If you can’t sleep consistent hours, at least get enough sleep even if it’s not the same sleep every night. Since I blog after work, and often after everyone at home has gone to bed, this is the rule where I’m the biggest hypocrite.
As much as possible, avoid crappy people. Sure, everybody has a bad day and needs to share. That’s okay. But if you’re constantly complaining about bad news to your friends? Expect that they won’t pick up when you call, so try to give more than you take.
As much as possible, feel good for other people that have done well. I worked with a guy who put up a bulletin board with stories about how much the CEO of our company made. He called it the “Wall of Shame” since he didn’t think the CEO was worth that much. Me? I want the CEO to make a lot of money, that way my check looks smaller the rent for the place he rents for his mistress.
As much as possible, avoid envy. See above. If something good happens to someone, feel genuine joy for them, even if it didn’t happen to you. Envy is a wasted emotion.
As much as possible, when bad thoughts slip into your brain – sad ones, mean ones, anything Hillary Clinton would think – get them out. Think of something positive, like the fact that you don’t have to drink alone because your cats are alcoholics, or that you can be the person to put the “fun” back in funeral.
Keep things in perspective. Most things you do aren’t memorable to other people, and most mistakes you make will be forgotten in a week, unless you were the guy running the test at Chernobyl, then people just won’t shut up about it.

But you could claim that you were late to work because of a flock of wild teacup poodles.

Scott Adams, of Dilbert® fame has a very similar list – I know because after I talked to the bartender and decided to write this post, he did a video on . . . being happy. He’s in the video below discussing it. Adams is much more of the “people are sacks of chemicals” and he uses that model to make sure that he’s maximizing the brain chemicals that show up when you’re happy. It works for him and he does it without ever attempting to control his thoughts. But if you are someone who drains him of happy because you’re a complete tool? He’ll cut you out of his life. Since he’s a multi-millionaire and more-or-less self-employed, he can do it.

Me? If Ted is a tool at work and I need the job? I have to deal with Ted. Though, honestly I’ve only ever worked with one guy named Ted, and he was super to work with and one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Unlike Scott, I don’t go for the “sacks of chemicals” theory. They do make a difference, but mind matters, too, at least for me. The one time in my life I was profoundly unhappy, I learned to manage my mind first, while finding all the other little tips and tricks of “sacks of chemicals” management more or less independently of Mr. Adams.

I think this was from the pilot of that new series, Breaking Bras®. And you can’t make a mask like that without silicone . . . .

And that’s it. Those are the secrets. Nothing mystical, nothing difficult.

Again, I’m not happy every second of every day, but when I follow just over half the steps above, I’m happy 95% of the day. I have it good. There’s no reason to not enjoy being me.

For 80% of people reading this, happiness is easy. So, choose happiness if you want it, unless there’s a workplace policy at your office, too. In that case? Become a loner, drunk, vegan insomniac that spends your free time at Antifa® meetings. And have another doughnut.

Only 3% of Your Decisions Matter, or, Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There!

“We’re very lucky in the band in that we have two visionaries, David and Nigel. They’re like poets, like Shelley and Byron. They’re two distinct types of visionaries, it’s like fire and ice, basically. I feel my role in the band is to be somewhere in the middle of that, kind of like lukewarm water.” – This is Spinal Tap

Oh, I don’t need alcohol to make bad decisions. But it doesn’t hurt. Just ask Tiger Woods.

Life is filled with events. Some of them are predictable, some not. But I generally break the events that will influence the course of my life into three categories because I’m sitting in a meeting and it kind of looks like I’m actually working when I take blog notes:

Certainties

Certainties are just as shown on the label – things that are certain to happen. These are one extreme of the spectrum, for instance unless a race of aliens is intent on destroying humanity so that Bono™ doesn’t escape the Earth and infect the galaxy and drops a Moon-size batch of anti-matter into the Sun causing a solar flare that extinguishes life, the Sun will come up tomorrow. Notice I didn’t say that the race of aliens was evil, in fact it seems entirely logical and rational and a good choice – Bono© as a trade for the rest of humanity. Other examples of certainty:

Death.
Taxes.
Someone saying “Death and Taxes” when they write about certainties (at least every year since Christopher Bullock first wrote the phrase in 1716 in Ye Olde Bloge Poste on the Worlde Wilde Web).
Gravity. Like Bono®, it also sucks.
Celebrities flying in private jets to protest global warming.

Impossibilities

Impossibilities are things that cannot happen in this Universe. Okay, it’s not a creative title, like calling your dog “dog” and your cat “cat” – and we both know people who have done just that.

The number of things that I thought were impossible were nearly zero when I was under age five or so. Starships were only 20 years in the future. I would own a tank. And I’d marry Miss Roberts, my first grade teacher. About the time I went to high school, the number of Impossible things started to climb. I think this happens when you start experiencing disappointments in life, like the Space Shuttle. I mean, why did humanity spend so much time trying to get to space with a ship that had the glide ratio of a brick?

I think my Impossibles peaked in my thirties. After a divorce and NOT winning a MacArthur© Grant for my incredible ability to sleep on the couch while the kids watched Saturday morning cartoons, my view of what was possible shrank. But as I grew older, I kept seeing the same pattern – if people tried things, they often achieved them. There are, however, things that are really Impossible. What are some Impossible things?

A Beatles® reunion. A living Beatles™ reunion.
The molecules of Leonardo Dicaprio spontaneously rearranging themselves to form something useful, like a ham sandwich or a beer.
A good, new Star Wars® movie will be made during my lifetime.

Is it me, or have John and George lost weight?

I think one of the really neat things about being human is the curiosity and creativity that allows us to think of things that could never, ever happen, like Johnny Depp learning to read. It’s a great day to be alive!

Things That Might Happen

Most things in life are neither Certain nor Impossible. They fall into that grey area of possibility that makes life interesting. I find it fascinating that so much of life consists of these contrasts – in between the chaos of fire Venus and the stasis of icy Mars lies, well, us. The other day I heard an astronomer state if you take average star weight and the weight of an atom, you end up at about 50 kilograms©, whatever that is. But the average human weighs . . . 62 kilograms®. It’s almost like this place was made for us.

Hmmm.

Anyway, while not everything interesting happens in the middle, most interesting things happen in the middle. But, in the interest of continuing to subcategorize, I see two types of events in that sweet middle region:

A. Events You Can’t Influence

Sometimes, whatever’s going to happen is beyond your control. Despite what you want or any action you might take, the outcome will be the same. You can’t change a thing. Call it fate. It’s not certain that the event will happen, mind you, it’s just that you can’t control it. Some examples are:

How much Oprah will weigh tomorrow morning.
Collapse of the global financial system.
Whether Ilhan Omar will join the Hair Club for Men.

Baldness – I hear it’s more common if your family interbreeds too often . . . oh. Sorry. H/T WRSA (LINK).

So, this is a record – my first back-to-back meme. Is that not MacArthur Grant® worthy?

B. Things you can influence or control

Here is where it gets interesting. In my option (and in my experience) most people can control more about their lives than they want to admit. Personally, it’s scary how many things that I’ve tried to do in my life that I’ve accomplished, which makes me wonder if I haven’t aimed too low. I’ve recently changed one of my goals to be horribly unrealistic (learn how to make a tasty pizza, or at least buy a tasty pizza) so I’ll keep you updated on the progress on that stretch goal.

But what sorts of things can you control?

Your weight.
If you shower.
If you smoke.
Your psychic power to make Taylor Swift love you using only your mind.
If you go broke.

Now, I didn’t say you have total control of your life, but some actions you take (not decisions you make, mind you, but actions that you take) can influence most things about your life, including how you die and when you die.

But even as beautifully written as the preceding was, it’s not the where the post is going to end up. The point I’m getting to is, how many events that occur in your life, choices that you make, should you really worry about.

I’m thinking about 3% or less.

From my vantage point, most things don’t matter. Examples?

Yellow or blue Post-It™ notes?
Romaine or iceberg lettuce?
Tom Brady’s 2015 clone or Tom Brady’s 2018 clone.

Most decisions that you make simply do not matter at all. My personal difficulty is that I sometimes don’t process a decision like that. I want to make the right decision so I’ll spend time researching and learning online about a purchase I’m going to make . . . of something I’ll use exactly once and then toss into a closet. Heck, as an example tonight I’ve spent about half an hour trying to decide between one type of laptop and another. Does it matter?

Probably not.

What I did with the flowchart was just start with a random decision or event. Does it matter? I pulled out Pareto’s rule, and off the bat, 80% of decisions in your life . . . don’t matter at all. Paper or plastic. .556 or .762. Drilling a hole in your head or spending time with five year old children.

That means that 20% of the events matter. Cool. How many can your actions influence? I’m betting 80% of that 20%. That’s a huge number and from my experience it seems about right. You’re rarely a complete victim. That’s 16% left.

Is it the effort worth it. I came up with . . . 80% of the time, no. The time and effort to manage every event, even just 16% of them, is a lot. You have to let some things go, since even if it matters, it’s not worth your time to influence everything around you.

The math is simple. 97% of decisions in life you should make with either no care or minor care. They just don’t matter. The good news is that means if you manage and select the decision you make, you can live, more or less, the life you want by only dealing with 3%.

Why? I find that things we think are important, that society tells us are important decisions or important actions are not. Here’s what I’ve found:

We bought Stately Wilder Manor© about a decade ago. The Mrs. was living in Houston, and the house that we’d fallen in love with had cheated on us and was purchased by two doctors. I was working outside of Houston, but we still needed a place to live, because we were going to move. I kept looking. I found a house. Given that (then) the market was hot, I put in an offer. The Mrs. had never even seen the house until the day we moved in.

How do you get the dead hooker smell out of carpet? Asking for a friend.

The last care I bought was a replacement for The Mrs.’ MUV (Mrs. Utility Vehicle). I was passing through a large city in Midwestia, stopped off at a car lot, and bought a car. They delivered it to Modern Mayberry the next day. Again, The Mrs. hadn’t driven or seen the new car.

Okay, it’s not that bad. But while The Boy was driving it some woodland critter ran straight into the side of it. The dent does not look hooker related.

Within relatively broad parameters, most decisions, even decisions that society says are “big” decisions, don’t matter. Which house we got didn’t matter all that much, we just needed a house. Admittedly we are horrible neighbors, so it’s best if there are no pesky homeowner associations.

And I wasn’t like that on the first house I bought. We must have seen dozens of houses over months until we found . . . the one. The first car I bought, I agonized over the decision. Until I found . . . the one.

Strangely, I didn’t spend nearly enough time selecting my first wife she who will not be named and that had a much larger impact than any house or car ever could to my life. There’s a joke in here about test driving and rentals, but I’m just gonna skip it.

It’s all the aftermarket add-ons that get you.

The point is not that I was young and stupid, although I really was young and stupid.

The point is: Don’t worry. Plan? Sure. Prepare? Absolutely. But like Pop Wilder always said, “Don’t pay interest on money you haven’t borrowed yet, son.”

97% of actions you take . . . don’t matter. Don’t sweat them. And don’t spend a second worrying about things you can’t change or influence.

But on those things you can? Strike hard, like the fist of an angry god. Never give up. You can move mountains that way. Feel motivated? Good!

Now go out and get it done! Oh, it’s Friday?

Kick back and get it done Monday.

Okay, I did once upon a time pretend my toy Thompson submachine gun was a phaser®. Once.

Red Flag Laws, or, How To Repeal The Second Amendment Soviet-Style Without A Pesky Vote

“Now, you see all these red flags? Trouble spots. Southeastern Asia. The Caribbean. The Congo. I’ll give you one guess as to who’s responsible.” – Doctor Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine

I look much better after I’ve had a cup of coffee. And after I’ve found my axe.

I know that you, gentle reader, have thoughts about guns that are probably pretty similar to mine, so I’d like to take you on a short walk through history, specifically the history of politics and psychiatry. I promise, it will make more sense than the lyrics to the Manfred Mann song Blinded by the Light. What the hell is a go-cart Mozart, and why is he checking out the weather chart, anyway?

The history of psychiatry is tied directly to the political.

I have seen a person suffering from schizophrenia to such a degree that they were sure that MTV® video stars were stealing songs directly from their brain and that they were also a surgeon who regularly performed operations on world leaders and stored their organs in the freezer for safe keeping.

If no one has ever told you that there are human organs belonging to world leaders in their fridge in a completely matter-of-fact “would you like a glass of water” voice, well, all I can tell you is that my first thought was one of complete disbelief that I had heard them right. Yes, I asked for them to repeat that statement. Twice.

I walked over and checked their freezer. Thankfully the only things in it were some frozen pizzas and ancient ice cubes. I assure you I was talking to their shrink that afternoon and they were involuntarily committed by 5PM. They were helped, and after being put on some appropriately industrial levels of anti-psychotic medication, did okay enough to be released back into the wild. As long as they stayed on their meds.

I know that there are actually crazy people that really need help.

But I also know this: psychiatry is still the most politically abused medical profession.

Okay, if Depp isn’t crazy, why does he keep starring in movies like this?

Examples of political abuse of psychiatry? There are many. When I mentioned this topic to The Mrs., she immediately said, “the Soviet Union.” And that’s the example I thought of first, too. The Soviets systematically used diagnosis of psychological disorders such as “philosophical intoxication” and “sluggish schizophrenia” to put people who didn’t like Marxism into mental institutions. And, no, those diagnoses aren’t lame jokes – those were really Soviet-era diagnoses.

How many were caught up in the psychological gulags?

We really don’t know since those records are still secret, but in 1978 at least 4.5 million Soviet citizens were listed as having mental health problems. In 1988, perhaps thinking that they might face their own version of Soviet Nuremburg Trials for Crimes Against Humanity, Soviet leaders had over 800,000 thousand patients removed from the list of the mentally ill. Paperwork error, surely?

Okay, with all those red flags, how did they not see the collapse of communism coming?

Did the Soviets condemn thousands with false diagnosis? Nearly certainly. Hundreds of thousands? Very likely.

Millions?

Probably. Think of it, millions of people falsely diagnosed with a mental illness due to political beliefs and sent to asylums and work camps. Certainly some were executed.

The Soviets allowed ownership of smoothbore weapons for hunting. Except when they didn’t. Which was most of the time. Oh, and the definition of sweet summer child is: a person who doesn’t know the hardships of winter, often used when someone has no experience with a particular (stressful) thing, which may describe a generation that rhymes with perennial.

Okay, it was just the Soviet Union, right?

No. Cuba did the same thing. There is evidence that China is still doing it, and likely on scale similar to that of the Soviet Union. Thankfully the World Psychiatric Association took the lead in investigations. Oh, they didn’t? The World Psychiatric Association pretty much ignored it and said that people associated with Falun Gong are nuts and that putting them in asylums run by the state security apparatus (not the medical directorate) was perfectly normal?

One flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest . . . and if you haven’t see the movie, you should, it’s a lighthearted comedy and perfect for a first date.

Okay, that’s just China. Thankfully this would never happen in the United States.

Oh, it did?

Sure. In the 1920’s dissidents (like one who protested the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti) were put into asylums. In the 1960’s members of the American Psychological Association smeared presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in the press by diagnosing him. But that wasn’t political, right?

Thankfully it isn’t happening now.

Oh, in 2012 a whistleblower with the NYPD was railroaded on mental health? Ouch. But New York is corrupt.

It would never happen based on political motives, right?

Dinesh D’Souza, author and filmmaker on the Right was convicted of a crime based on giving too much money to a political campaign. He admitted he was wrong. The Federal Judge involved in the case sentenced D’Souza not only to prison, he sentenced D’Souza to years of mental health counselling despite a licensed psychologist saying that D’Souza was just fine mentally.

So, yes. Psychiatry is a political weapon. It’s not like the Left has sentenced political opponents to chemotherapy, but I hear that they’re working on it.

Yes, this is a common sense way to use psychiatry!

This corrupt branch of medicine is the background of the Red Flag Laws.

The idea is that we’ll create laws to remove rights from people without due process, with the presumption that individuals should lose a right guaranteed by the Constitution®. A single accuser, with no evidence can result in gun confiscation to a law-abiding citizen. Sadly this already happens – people with contested domestic restraining orders (a standard tactic in divorces nowadays) lose their rights, although I’ve heard of people fighting these orders and winning – at least there is a pretense at due process.

The claim that the ability to strip people of rights won’t be abused is laughable. In every country that’s been infected by psychiatry, it has been twisted to meet political ends. Yes, there are crazy people. I’ve seen one as I related above. And, if you did a brain scan, there is a physical basis for schizophrenia. It’s real. It is a medical condition. But remember, these are the same psychiatrists that would diagnose me as nuts if I believed I was be five years older than I really am, but are perfectly fine with children younger than the age of five claiming they are a different sex than their genetics have made them.

Po-tay-to, Po-gender reassignment surgery for children is normal-to.

Furthermore, the medical profession as a whole is maybe a bit, well, mental*. In one study it was claimed that 50% of female doctors could be diagnosed with a mental disease. I wonder again why my ex didn’t take up medicine? (*Aesop LINK excluded, unless pimp-slapping in the comments section is classified as a mental disorder.)

Oh, and psychologists have nearly the highest rates of suicide of any profession. Yes, any profession, including the people who make balloon animals in Mauschwitz Disneyland® for chubby children with hands sticky from chocolate ice cream. Perfectly stable. And this is also the same profession whose international governing body (WPA) was just fine with political repression in the name of psychiatry.

Besides being oppressive, the Red Flag laws would not have helped in latest shootings – these people lawfully and legally got their rifles. But they will form the basis for taking away guns for . . .

Conspiracy Theories – Believing anything other than the Official Narrative® will become a basis for exclusion of lawful firearms ownership, despite the fact that throughout history, many conspiracy theories have been proven true. Google® MKULTRA. That happened. But the FBI® is now warning that you are a danger if you don’t believe the Official Narrative©.
Antisocial Behavior – Ever not want to hang around people? You’re antisocial, and that’s dangerous, citizen. No AR for you!
Websites Visited – Going to unapproved sites? Thinking unapproved thoughts? Glockblock™!
Comments Made When You Were 16 – Wow, did you really say that maybe the Crusades weren’t all bad? No pew-pew for you, hater.
Not Believing in the Easter Bunny Socialism – Well, I think I covered that above.

The irony is this will have the impact of keeping people away from mental health professionals. This will keep people from seeking help when they’re a little depressed, because the consequences of having a “health record” might prevent them from future opportunity – the only safe way to live life would be to stay away from health professionals – and not answer certain questions your M.D. might have for you with a polite BFYTW when asked why you’re not answering. Oh, but that probably puts you on the antisocial list.

Texas may or may not be your cup of tea, but they certainly got some things right once upon a time.

Psychiatry is on pretty iffy ground in many cases already. As an experiment, a group of doctors sent people to a psychiatrist with one symptom – they heard a voice. No other symptom. They were perfectly normal, mentally healthy people. In one case, the person was committed to a mental health facility (as I recall) for several weeks with zero symptoms. I tried to look it up, but, surprise, most Google® searches right now link commitment to . . . violence. Even that’s not a comfortable thought.

Soviet mental health nurse. Not shown: tenth guard, who is now an inmate.

The single scariest thing to me is watching a human mind erode – what was once a rational human disappears. It’s what makes (to me) zombies scary. They look like humans. They used to be a normal human. But that rational human being is now gone, replaced by someone who has no real tie to reality while the external form remains.

I realize that there is a time and a place for psychiatric care.

But psychiatrists are already owned by the Left. The Left sees you as crazy already. The Left views your dissent from their agenda as a mental disorder, one punishable by death, if need be.

I’ll leave the last word to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who is really pictured above while in the gulag: “I’ll take Solzhenitsyn on Gun Control for $1000, Alex. Oh, look – the Daily Double®!”

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: what would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? [They] would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If . . . if . . . we didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation . . . . We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Defeating My Biggest Enemy: Me, Complete with Hairy Kardashians and Video Games.

“I noticed earlier the hyperdrive motivator has been damaged. It’s impossible to go to lightspeed!” – The Empire Strikes Back™

Nah, I got an A. Got a perfect score on the final, plus I got to watch C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate during winter break.

Ever think you could accomplish more? You can. Read on. It’s okay, I’m a trained professional.

When I was in college I took a course called Probability and Statistics, or as we referred to it at the time, Sadistics. During one lecture the instructor told the class a story about how a graduate student working on his Ph.D. was late to a class – so late that he’d missed the start of the lecture. The student saw two math problems on the blackboard. Thinking they were homework problems, he copied them down, and spent the weekend working on them. They were a little harder than usual, but he managed to finish them.

On Monday he returned to class, and showed the instructor his results. Turns out that the problems weren’t homework: these were two unproven theorems in statistics; unproven theorems that George Dantzig (the student) finished because he had no idea that they were too hard for him to do.

In Dantzig’s own words:

“A year later, when I began to worry about a thesis topic, [his teacher] just shrugged and told me to wrap the two problems up in a binder and he would accept them as my thesis.”

At least he didn’t have to shag the professor, baby.

That’s a pretty good story, especially because it’s true and a great example of how much you can achieve when you’re too stupid to know that what you’re doing is impossible. It’s also a very good story to tell the boss the next time you’re late for a meeting at work, because his reaction will likely allow you time for independent exploration of all the employment opportunities this great nation has to offer.

So how do people sabotage themselves so they don’t achieve all that they could? How do they turn themselves into their own worst enemy? Today I’ll present three reasons. There are more, but what do I look like, a budget Tony Robbins?

I was wondering why that seminar only cost $14.98.

I think the worst is negative inner dialogue.

Ever make a mistake? Ever beat yourself up about it? Yeah, me too. But what I noticed is that when I beat myself up, I used to say things to myself that were meaner than any person had ever said to me in real life. Notice I said “used to” – I simply don’t put up with it any more. When I sense that inner beat down coming, I just shut it down.

If your best friend who has your best interests at heart wouldn’t say it to you, why would you say it to yourself?

Recently I read about a research study that indicated that you had more impact when motivating yourself if you encouraged yourself in the third person. Saying to yourself, “You’ve got this, John,” is much more powerful than, “I can do this.” Why? I have my guesses – it’s probably that you don’t want to fail when you’ve got some other person involved, so you dig that much deeper.

If that’s the case, how much more damaging is beating yourself up verbally in the third person? “I’m stupid,” versus “you’re stupid.” Think about it – and I advise you not to put up with your nonsense. Shut it down.

Yes, this happened.

Negative inner dialogue doesn’t help me, especially since whatever mistake I made was generally not even noticed by others. I hate to break this to you, but outside of your family, you’re less important than you think. People don’t notice the things you do all that much, and if they do? They don’t remember.

That may seem like a downer, but it’s really the opposite. It’s freedom, and another reason not to beat yourself up.

Next on the list? Belief that your goal is impossible.

Well, it isn’t possible, until you actually do it. Nobody had solved Dantzig’s theorems until he solved them. Heck, the Kardashians are too dumb to know they shouldn’t have hundreds of millions of dollars despite an utter lack anything resembling talent or a redeeming feature. Oh, unless you count their copious amounts of body hair. And I wouldn’t advise that you count their body hair, since that would take far too long. Plus? You’d get Kardashian grease all over you.

This is right before the hair covers them entirely in a protective cocoon so they can become giant genderless moth people.

I’ll note that nearly every time I was given an assignment that seemed impossible at work, I managed to crack the problem. What was off was my definition of impossible. I eventually ended up working for a boss that pushed me even farther. Nine times out of ten, he gambled and won. The tenth time? They fired him. Don’t feel bad for him – his severance package was about $2 million.

Finally, there’s not giving it all you’ve got.

This one is insidious. Here’s my example: in my career (the one that pays the bills, not this one) I’ve accomplished most things that I’ve ever wanted to do and have a whole batch of odd stories that I’ll maybe get around to telling someday. Does this mean that I aimed too low, that I didn’t push hard enough? Nah, I don’t think so. I’ve seen what some of the people at the top had to do to get there, and I like sleeping well.

It’s tough at the top. Everything is a tradeoff.

But here I can push myself, and sleep well. So, I write. I give that all that I’ve got, especially once I understood that I’d never get better unless I really pushed myself. And I can see results. I had a post that related to one I’d written back in 2017 that I was thinking of linking to. I pulled up the old post. I read it.

What made me happiest about the old post is: I’m better now than I was in 2017 – a lot better. How much better will I be if I keep pushing it, keep focusing on it for 20 hours a week for another decade? I have no idea. But we’ll see.

But I had my own George Dantzig moment before I ever heard his story:

I was in high school and a friend came over to my place. He and I sat down to play some video games, since we didn’t have a car. He went first. Normally on my first guy I’d score 10,000 or so. But my friend scored 50,000. I was amazed – I had no idea it was possible. So, my first guy up? 50,000 points. This was my best score ever.

I know – it looks exactly like a scene from The Empire Strikes Back©. But, trust me, this is really a video game.

What had been missing was belief. Seeing my friend play with no higher a skill level than I had do five times better than my best ever score flipped a switch. I believed. I could perform better than I ever thought possible.

But right now, it’s time:

Time to believe in yourself. Time to believe that your goal is possible. Time to work harder.

Go on, you’ve got this.

Stonewall Jackson, Patton, Wrecked Cars and Dealing with Fear

“Yes, well, I imagine if it were fear, my eyes would be wider.” – Serenity

Sadly, I’m a Sagittarius and my name’s not Morris or this could have been comedy gold.

I had a Ford® Taurus©. Yes, that’s an admission of guilt. Even worse? It was a pale-lime green. I imagine someone in marketing called the color “seafoam”, but if the sea has foam that color, it’s probably in a congealed blob off the coast of China and consists of anti-freeze, extra kidneys, and despair. After 150,000 miles the Taurus© died on impact with a pickup whose driver decided stop signs were optional on Tuesdays. But the other driver made up for wrecking my car by not having insurance, so there was that benefit.

As I recall, there were three buttons on the dash of the Taurus® to program the display. Since I am a man, reading the manual was out of the question. The display had the option to show various things – it had a compass mode, a thermometer, and a countdown timer to show the number of days until Obama left office. I only knew it had a compass mode because when I bought it (used) it had the compass on. After I changed the battery, it reverted back to the “Only this many days until Obama is gone” mode.

I wanted it to show the thermometer.

Clearly it never gets hot in summer, so it must be global warming.

I had no idea how to change modes – since the manual was only two feet away in the glove compartment, it might as well have been in Mongolia, and not the easy to reach parts of Mongolia. I reached my hand out to start mashing the buttons with all of the skill of a baboon wearing a pink tutu attempting to clear a paper jam while making double-sided color copies at Kinkos®. I hesitated. What if I ended up turning the car’s language into French? Would I have to wear a beret and learn to smoke cigarettes while being nihilistic?

Then I started to panic. Being French was awful, but what would happen if I accidently turned the car’s units into metric? I don’t even know how to drink in metric. Is sixteen a lot of kilometers of beer to drink? How many metric days until Christmas? How many milliliters of cheeseburger do I order at Sonic®? Perish the thought of being French and metric. That’s how we got Canada, after all. Sure, the Canadians look like us, but that’s how they infiltrate.

Sure, they look polite. But just try to dissect one to see if it’s an alien from outer space and they get darn grumpy.

The thought then hit me – I’ve spent literally my entire life tearing stuff apart to see what was inside, and then trying to put it back together. That’s been my mode since, much to Pa Wilder’s dismay, I discovered screwdrivers. If I wasn’t tearing stuff apart, I was experimenting in other ways. Sometimes the result wasn’t that great, like the time in fifth grade when I took a letter opener and put it across both prongs of an electrical plug.

An electrical plug that was plugged into the wall.

Oops.

Immediately there was a big spark, smoke, the smell of ozone, splattering molten metal, and then complete darkness in my room. I knew where the breakers were, and went to flip mine back on. I’m pretty sure Ma Wilder smelled the ozone, but didn’t say anything since my bedroom wasn’t actively on fire.

I’ve done stupider things. Some of them even when I was sober.

So, there I was sitting in my car. Once I was brave enough to slam a letter opener between into an active electrical circuit, and now I was hesitant to push some buttons.

What? I came to my senses. It’s just a car.

I pushed buttons, didn’t turn French, and even better, just like the Apollo program, I avoided having to use the metric system entirely. And I got rid of the hesitation.

What led to the hesitation?

Fear. It’ll creep up on you, first in small ways, and then in large if you don’t fight it every time it shows up.

General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson said, “Never take counsel of your fears.” And Jackson didn’t – he even got his nickname by being famously fearless at Bull Run when he rushed his troops to fill a gap in the line. “Look, men, there is Jackson standing like a stone wall!” Not a bad way to get a nickname.

Stonewall understood that fear was his most potent enemy. Well, fear and that musket ball his own troops accidently shot him with.

For the record, he didn’t ever have a microbrew or a nonfat anything.

So, why is fear so bad? What’s wrong with a little fear?

That’s simple: fear is at the root of every significant problem in the world. Period. I understand that’s a pretty bold statement. Can I back it up? Sure.

Let’s take envy. It’s at the root of lots of bad things, like Leftism which is almost entirely based on envy. What causes envy?

Insecurity. Think Elon Musk feels envy? Probably not, and I could name a dozens of people who don’t feel envy. They’re not envious because they’re not insecure. They don’t feel uncertainty, anxiety, or self-doubt. All of these emotions are based in fear and lead to envy.

That’s the same with every other negative emotion – anger, shame, et cetera. It’s just another face of fear. And evil things come from evil emotion (and Disney®), not from rational calculation.

Frank Herbert got it right, writing about a rite in his novel Dune:

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

If Dune® had sandcatworms, would the spice be in the hairballs?

Okay, Herbert is a bit flowery. But the concept is right. Fear robs you, decision by decision, of your entire life. And fear is used to manipulate you. Today I was reading Google® News™ and counted 38 major stories on the main page. Here’s my analysis:

3 of the stories were mildly amusing or interesting.
2 of them were potentially useful to me – they were stories I could use to make myself better, depending upon my situation.
8 were useful only to manipulate and titillate readers through fear.
25 were utterly useless.

I read the amusing stories. I read one of the useful stories – the other didn’t apply right at the moment. I’ll admit, I got caught and read one or two of the useless stories. I skipped the fear manipulation stories. Fear is a tool that can be used against you, but only if it makes you forget your values. There should be no news, no story that can make you waiver from your values.

What’s the cure for fear?

Action. Press the button. Ask the girl out. Lift the weight. Press the button in your car. Successful or not, you will have overcome your fear. You will be stronger. You will have less fear the next time – the only way to escape your fear, is to go through your fear. And fighting fears when they’re small (like resetting a car dashboard) is easier than waiting until they grow to the size where they eat away your life like vintage Elvis© on a peanut butter and bacon cheeseburger.

Is fear useless? No. Fear can be used. Fear should be used.

General George S. Patton, riffing off of Stonewall, said:

“The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine. When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead.”

Fun fact: General Patton is tired of your whiney crap.

So, maybe Patton is saying I shouldn’t fear the metric French, but maybe I should stop the whole “turning a letter opener into a bedroom arc welder” because, in the words of Robert A. Heinlein:

“Stupidity cannot be cured. Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death. There is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.”

The Lie of Living Your Best Life (now including cookies)

“Smoking marijuana, eating Cheetos® and masturbating does not constitute plans in my book.” – Breaking Bad

In a constantly downward spiral, Kermit finally found the downside in living his best life.

A few weeks ago my daughter, Alia S. Wilder was in town. We were in the middle of preparing dinner of steak, steak, and more steak for the grill when I saw Alia diving face first into a plate of cookies.

When she came up for air I asked innocently, “I thought you were on the keto diet?”

I did notice a mood change when I was on the keto diet: I got tired of cheese and my only joy in life consisted of watching television shows about murder.

“No, she said, “I’m living my best life.” I could even hear the italics in her voice. It’s amazing how well font choice carries in my kitchen. I think it’s the tile.

John Wilder: “Umm, what exactly does ‘my best life’ mean?” I thought I could tell by context, but I wanted to give her a chance to explain.

Alia S. Wilder: “It’s living your life by being who you are naturally. It’s doing what you want.”

I slowly shook my head. That’s exactly what I thought it was. Cue volcano erupting:

One of the nice things about being a parent is that you can be honest with your children when they are being utterly foolish. This was one of those times.

My first words were: “You know this is going to go into the blog, right?”

Is this why they hold the neighborhood block party when we leave for vacation?

I then started a tirade. As this was the second time that I’d met her boyfriend, you’d think I’d hold back to give a good impression that I was a nice, genteel father who wears cardigan sweaters and puts on loafers and talks to hand puppets as if they were real. You’d be wrong, and I tried the hand puppet thing, but one of my personalities thought it was creepy. No, Mr. Rogers© wasn’t here that night. I let loose with a full broadside worthy of Nelson’s fleet at Trafalgar.

I was a horrible pirate captain. They told me, “The cannon be ready,” and I responded “are.”

“You realize that’s the single stupidest piece of advice you’ve ever been given, right?” I continued, not even having gotten warmed up yet. “It’s the advice a teenager thinks up in the shower and then considers it a deep thought because, well they’re a teenager in middle school, and middle school age children are the single stupidest subspecies ever set loose on planet Earth.” I paused for breath. You need decent lung capacity if you’re going to go into full rage enhanced by spittle.

I continued. “Why is it stupid? Because people are awful. You’re awful. I’m awful. We have to work each minute to NOT do what we’d like, because what we’d like to do, if left only to our own desires is . . . also awful. You, me, every single one of us.”

I could feel the full rolling boil starting.

“Living my best life is the strategy of a three year old that wants to eat an entire box of Oreos® at one sitting and then lie about it and blame the poodle. Living my best life combines all of the worst ideas of abandoning duty, honor, and responsibility in only four words: ‘living my best life.’ Oh, I decided not to work today. I’m living my best life. I decided that I would rather spend my money on avocado-flavored non-fat organic vaping juice rather than baby formula. I’m living my best life. I don’t care if I offended you, I have to speak my truth when living my best life. Oh, I’m sorry Western Civilization, we can’t go back to the Moon and advance the human race to the stars because I’m busy shopping. I’m living my best life.”

What came to my mind during this tirade conversation were the words of the dead French scientist, mathematician, religious philosopher and part-time Uber driver Blaise Pascal:

“Man’s greatness comes from knowing that he is wretched: a tree does not know it is wretched. Thus, it is wretched to know that one is wretched, but there is greatness in knowing that one is wretched.”

In this quote when Pascal wrote “wretched,” he meant, “of inferior quality; bad.”

Follow your nose, it always knows. Specifically all about pressure, mathematics, and designing a computer by the age of 19, in 17^th Century France.

Pascal didn’t think mankind was naturally awful, he knew that mankind was naturally awful: prideful, selfish, lustful, mean, and greedy. I’m not sure how Pascal got that idea, maybe he was picked on about nose size when he was in middle school. But he was correct. We’re inferior. But our greatness comes not from that obvious inferior quality, it comes from knowing that you’re awful; and then not being awful.

If we know that we’re awful, we can do something about it. If we think that being awful is okay, that we can live our best life, then it’s an excuse to be awful. In fact, it’s worse than that. Aleister Crowley wrote, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,” which has been appropriated by the Church of Satan® and correctly interpreted to mean . . . do whatever you want to do.

Apparently living your best life allows you to dress like Dr. Evil on a regular basis.

One particular website (not gonna given ‘em a link, they’re the first one listed when you Google® “living my best life”) has a list, which includes the following gems of personally corrosive advice on how to live your best life (note, my comments are in italics):

Do what you want – let your inner three year old make all your decisions.
Speak your truth – not the truth, your truth since hearing the actual, real truth from other people might make you sad.
Practice sacred self-love – and everyone should celebrate you for your sacred self-love, since you deserve to live your best life because you suffered so much because of your (INSERT VICTIM STATUS QUALIFICATION HERE).

Not all of the advice on the website was horrible, but most of it was shallower than the gene pool that produced Johnny Depp your typical congressman.

So, under this philosophy, if I’m fat, the problem isn’t that I’m fat and should have fewer cookies: the problem is the world is fataphobic.
If I think I’m a cat, the problem isn’t that I’m delusional: the problem is that the world is transspeciesphobic.
If I think that being an American has nothing to do with the values and norms of the last 300 years: the problem is your problem for being tied to the past.

When the cookies ran out, the monster came out.

So, in summary, living your best life is nothing more than permission to be the very worst person you can be. All that being said, Alia S. Wilder really does make some tasty cookies.

Inspiration, Attitude, and Funeral Jokes

“I’m simply seeking to inspire mankind to all that is intended.” – Constantine

See the lengths I will go to in order to deliver top-quality humor three times a week?

Sometimes you find treasures in odd places. Back in 2007, I was working a nightmare job. The days were hectic, filled with emergency after emergency, wailing, and general disarray. And then I had to commute to work. Okay, home life was generally pretty good, but work really was a nightmare. One positive thing I did, though, was clip and print things that I found to be inspiring. No, not a lot of clippings like I’d finally found the missing connection between the Rothschild family and why there are no purple M&M’s®. No, when I found these quotes there were just a few – maybe less than a dozen.

Here’s one of the quotes I found in the clippings:

“If you have a guy with all the survival training in the world who has a negative attitude and a guy who doesn’t have a clue but has a positive attitude, I guarantee you that the guy with a positive attitude is coming out of the woods alive. Simple as that.” – Gordon Smith, Retired Green Beret Command Sergeant Major

Training, preparation, skill and Ruffles® are all wonderful things. I recommend them all, especially if they are cheddar-flavored. The quote above, however, exactly mirrors my own feelings and experience. Stated bluntly:

Attitude matters.

I don’t have that tie, though, and haven’t worn one regularly since ‘08.

I’m a long time reader of Scott Adams dating back into the mid-1990’s. He’s most famous for Dilbert, but he has written books and blogged for decades about everything from management to life skills to persuasion. Daily, Scott Adams writes his goals 15 times (LINK). Why 15? I don’t know. But Adams has reported that it produces amazing results for him, and he’s lived a pretty amazing life. It might also have something to do with him being a genius who works really hard and tries lots of things. Nah. He must be a beneficiary of the structural capitalist patriarchy and the reason people love Dilbert is only due to white privilege. That explains everything, if you’re in Congress.

How the goal writing produces results is probably unimportant – in my opinion the most likely idea is that if you’re focused on a goal, you’ll notice connections, clues or opportunities that would normally pass you by. The focus on the goal, the attitude that you can achieve something great changes the way you look at every aspect of your day. I know that when I believe I can succeed, I seem to keep finding ways to actually make it happen.

It might seem that it’s magic, writing down what you want 15 times a day and having coincidences show up that lead you to your goal. But, perhaps, the magic is just in you – seeing farther and deeper than you normally would is the magic. Having a goal changes you. Having the attitude that you can achieve your goal changes you so you can see the path more clearly.

As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right.”

I guess it wasn’t just college papers Creepy Joe plagiarized . . .

We’ve all been around negative people. I’ve had to work with them. I’ve had to manage them, and once I even had to work for one – he was my first supervisor after I graduated college. There was nothing that was good that ever happened to or around him. He’d had a leg injury and was now stuck at a desk job when he really, really hated desk jobs. Enter: happy, enthusiastic, wisecracking, young college graduate (still with hair at that time). I think he wanted to tie me up in a burlap sack weighted down with stones and toss me in the pond behind the office. Frankly, I can see why.

This clip is super short, and from the Clint Eastwood movie Kelly’s Heroes. Haven’t seen Kelly’s Heroes? You have your weekend assignment – it’s from back when movies were fun and not remakes.

Negative People:

Exhaust me.
Don’t accomplish much.
Take the last cup of coffee without making more.
Tend to make themselves a victim of whatever happened to them.
Infect the entire team with negativity and sometimes herpes.
Seem to get energy from talking about their pain and how the world is unfair to them.
Shoot down bad ideas. And good ideas. Any ideas, really.
Find a dark cloud in every silver lining.

I had a professor in college who had one piece of advice for me: “Keep smiling, John.” I took his advice. For most of my life, I’ve kept smiling. Even on bad days at work, I’ve kept a good attitude because most of the time, circumstances don’t care if you’re mad at them. The circumstances continue to exist just the same.

Not everyone agrees with me. On one particular job I actually received feedback that I was too cheerful. I guess being a mortician isn’t a job for everyone.

Okay, I’ve never worked as a mortician, but one of my bosses really did tell me I was too cheerful. But if I could be a mortician that hired Terminators®? I wouldn’t call that a dead-end job.

In most things in life I expect good outcomes, and generally I get them. That’s not unique to me. Throughout the history of humanity most times and most days have been good. Has there been war as long as we can look back into history? Yes. We’ve been fighting each other even before we were fully human. I imagine, though, we’ve been telling each other fart jokes for just as long. The human race has watched sunsets over the Arctic, the Serengeti, and the Atlantic and had pretty good days. An iPhone® isn’t required, but without an endless stream of Disney® live-action remakes, is life really worth living?

Nah, I like making them.

I won’t say that on my worst day there was a bright spot. The worst day of my life just sucked from 2pm until I finally fell asleep in bed. Honestly, it wasn’t much better the next day, but there were a few bright spots showed up. And more the next. And every day since then has been better than that day.

I mentioned magic above, and magic also happens on my worst days. Every one of my very bad days was the start of the time when my life started to get better, and it seemed the worse it was, the better it would eventually be. My best times have come from my worst times. One example was my divorce. The reality is that no matter how bad the marriage was, divorce is difficult. But as difficult as it was, it was the start of the next phase in my life, my marriage to The Mrs.

The longer, and the deeper the dark night of the soul, the bigger the positive that’s eventually come out of it for me.

If I ever were to get involved with the funeral industry, I’d tie the shoelaces of the deceased together in the coffin. That way if we ever had a zombie apocalypse, it would be hilarious. See, I even made zombies cheerful.

I spend time thinking about the future, and about dark possibilities not so much because I’m a gloomy guy sitting in the basement – but because it’s fun. However, in thinking about those possibilities I am prepared, at least a little more, for the uncertainty of the future. I’m cheerful, but I can see reality and know that there is danger ahead.

As I read the news I see a specter of a dark foe bent on creating a world that few of us want to see, one built out of fear and control. It’s even scarier because that foe wants you and I to think that it’s winning, so we will give up and it can win by default. Don’t. As long as people long for freedom, as long as we have each other and a dream of a better day where mankind keeps reaching for the stars, we have light. But in this time of seeming darkness, even a small light burns brightly.

If I were to give advice this Friday it’s this: be of good cheer. Be a spark in the darkness to help others. Understand that, until the last moment of your life, you have the ability to change the world for the better, to help create that better future for all of us.

Charity, The Terminator, and Flat Tires

“What kind of cruel charity charges orphans $500 to eat dinner?” – News Radio

The Mrs. seems rather narrow-minded about certain donations.

Before Pop Wilder passed away, I would go to visit him on a regular basis. After graduating from college, almost all of my trips and time off from work (when we didn’t stay home) was spent visiting Pop at our ancestral homeland in the mountains around Zorro Falls. I called the trips to go visit Pop “Obili-cations” because I felt obligated to go to see him on my vacations. Sure, I had a choice on how to spend those 10 days of vacation a year, but I also knew that the number of hours I’d ever get to spend with him were like the collective I.Q. of Congress: finite and rapidly shrinking.

To me, these trips were important. I figured* that I had spent over 99% of the hours I’d ever spend with Pop already. I had 1% or less of those hours left. These hours were precious and few. Given that perspective, I didn’t really mind spending every vacation day going to see him up at Zorro Falls. Now that I’m a father, I’m very glad I made those trips since it now gives me the excuse to guilt my own children into doing the same thing.

While we visited, I’d often go to church with Pop on Sunday mornings. Pop had lived within thirty miles of Zorro Falls his entire life. This church we’d go to was the same small church where we went when I was a child. It was the same church where, as a five year old, I had colored Jesus’ face bright purple during Sunday School one Sunday morning.

Sunday School Teacher, leaning to look at my coloring page: “Johnny, you know that Jesus wasn’t really purple, right?”

Young Johnny Wilder: “He’s God. He can be any color he wants to be.” I never even bothered to look up at her. I was busy coloring the Apostle Matthew’s skin in silver, having finished with Jesus. It was only years later that I realized that Matthew had been a Terminator™ sent back from the future to stop Jesus from giving birth to John Conner®. Now, at last, the Bible made sense!

Sunday School Teacher had no response to my stunningly brilliant “purple Jesus” logic, but did tell Ma Wilder. Ma Wilder got years of mileage out of that story, though I wish she wouldn’t have told it to the guys on my wrestling team.

But back to the story: I was on an obli-cation, and I met Pop at his place and went to the church with him. We sat down in the pew right up front since Pop claimed that the artillery during his European vacation in the 1940’s hadn’t been particularly good for his hearing. Sissy.

The Pastor began his sermon. Now, I always really liked that Pastor – he had been friends with the family for years. He had officiated at Ma Wilder’s funeral. The topic of his sermon that day was charity.

I am a strong believer in charity. I think that there are few things that are better for the human soul than giving freely of one’s time or money to help another worthy person. Maybe Ruffles® or Ding-Dongs© are close, but they’re still not quite as good as charity.

I look back on my life and feel really good about the times I was able to help someone. I recall stopping at a convenience store while travelling for business. I was looking for a book store, because I’d just finished the novel I was reading. The clerk told me that, “This is Chicago, nearest book store is . . . twenty miles that way, at the mall.” He then did something unusual. He looked me in the eye, and pointed at a tiny redhead, maybe 19, standing by a car in the rain, very out of place in the mean streets of south Chicago. “She needs your help, man.”

Unlike a vegan, I can change a flat tire.

Her tire was flat. She was trying to go to meet her fiancé at the airport. He was coming home from Iraq that night.

“Can you help me?”

I changed her tire in the rain. She didn’t have an umbrella, but she did have a poster board that she held over me while I changed the tire. As I tightened up the last lug nut, I stood up. “Okay, you’re good to go.”

“How much do I owe you?”

“No, ma’am. That’s not why I did it. Go see your fiancé.”

I still feel good when I tell that story. And I’m not telling it to brag – any person reading this blog could have and would have done the same – I’m no more virtuous than any of you. But I am happy that I was there that night, to help that young girl get to the gate and throw her arms around her man as he came back from combat. The act of charity probably helped me more than it helped her – I know I remember it, but I’d bet she doesn’t. The fairy tale ended with her at the gate. The supporting characters (me, for instance) were lost in the arms of her man, details that won’t make the final version of the story she has told her children.

Which is how it should be.

Anyway, I agreed with the pastor when talked about charity. Helping people is good. But then the pastor continued, “And let us pray that Congress will act to give money to these poor people.”

He lost me right there.

Is it just me or does Jesus look a lot like Bruce Springsteen? I guess he is The Boss, after all.

I know that it’s probably a sin to be really, really pissed off in church, but there I was, in the second row, angry. And it’s probably a double-secret sin to be really, really pissed off at the Pastor. Thankfully, the church had just had a new roof installed so I was shielded from immediate lightning strikes from on high. And, if I’m being honest with you Internet, if a “stray” lightning bolt was going to hit me, it would have hit me far sooner than that day – being irritated with a Pastor is probably pretty low on my list of sinful behavior. Thankfully, Christianity has forgiveness embedded into it, because I certainly need it.

But why did I get so angry at the nice Pastor? Charity, when done by an individual is enriching. It helps both parties. It helps me. It helps tiny redheads with flat tires. It is an act that transcends – a willing gift to someone who will never be able to repay the gift to the giver.

Charity, when done by the government breeds resentment on those taxed. If they don’t want to participate in this charity, men with guns will come and take them to prison. Government forced charity breeds resentment of that very charity.

Billions, trillions? Doesn’t matter. It’s just other people’s money.

Government charity also breeds resentment by the recipient. Why didn’t they get more free stuff? It leads to bad incentives – why work when you’d lose the government benefits? The final straw is it destroys the dignity and independence of those that receive it. And if the program is set up poorly, it actually provides a disincentive for people to get or remain married. Government charity is certainly worse on the recipient than on the (unwilling) giver even though both of them come to hate the systems.

True charity makes two winners, government charity just manages to create anger and division. Government charity is the epitome of a program designed by Democrats – it takes a great goal (we all like the concept of charity) and turns it into a bureaucratic mess enforceable only through coercion and penalty.

If it stopped there with just that mess, it might be survivable.

Government has now opened these incentives to any person who can cross our border. Get across, and get free healthcare. Free food. Free housing. Need a cell phone? A ticket to Des Moines? We can help. Approximately four billion people would like to live in the United States because their countries suck. They can’t get nearly as much free stuff, and they’ve heard of the economic miracle of the United States.

Charity is like working – it’s great when other people do it!

This version of “charity” has created a group of millions of angry, unwilling donors, while at the same time creating millions of resentful, angry recipients. Thankfully, there is no reason we can’t have a billion resentful, angry recipients living in the United States tomorrow.

Sounds like another successful government program. Yay!

*By my spreadsheet, I had spent half the time I was ever going to spend with Pop Wilder by the age of eight. By the time I went off to college, I had spent about 94% of the hours I would ever spend with Pop. If I had moved back to the same town, or gone into the family business of firewood polishing together, obviously that would have been a different story. I’m only trying to note that these hours with family are precious, and are gone much faster than you might imagine. Feel free to use this to make your children feel guilty.

For your coloring enjoyment. Or colouring in Canada, eh.