Health – Page 4 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Think Movies Suck Now? You’re Right.

“Freedom costs a buck-oh-five.” – Team America: World Police

I’ve lost to a computer at chess, but never at kickboxing.

I write about movies (and books) sometimes because they are important – very important. They are a part of the myths and backstory that defines a people and a country. Part of this entertainment is (often) a reflection of who we think we are, or who we aspire to be – those are the characters and stories that endure and grow over time.

Comedies certainly have their place, as well. Comedies can be rooted to universal truths that are (more or less) unchanging with time, think greed, yappy women, and farting. Yes. The oldest recorded joke in history that we have yet discovered is a (not very good) fart joke.

Why can’t you make fun of Steve Jobs dying? It’s not PC.

Part of comedy, especially movie comedy, is the unexpected. For that to happen, most of the time someone is the object of the joke – the person who is being made fun of. In comedy in the 1970s, that person was almost always a white male, and almost always was the father and was almost always on the Right.

Why?

Feminism. Comedy of the 1970s and onward was almost always written from the Leftist perspective. Think Archie Bunker, who ended up being popular in spite of them trying to make him a buffoon. Who had the first flush of the terlit on television? Archie. To make fun of white men who were on the Right.

Another tip: don’t use the toilet brush as a microphone when you sing in the shower.

Heck, when I was in junior high and wondering why the only funny things were Leftist (I was on the Right, even then). Then I read P.J. O’Rourke, and understood that it was more than possible, it was far, far funnier than Leftist humor ever imagined it could be.

The Right is funnier because the Right has Truth on its side.

For a long time, movies have been propaganda of one type or another. Top Gun? There’s a reason that the Navy spent millions to help make the movie – they approved the script.

There have been wild cards – people who make fun of everyone and everything – think Airplane. One that really pushed the boundaries was Team America: World Police. South Park used to be funny, back when the stories were about the kids. When the stories started to be about the adults? Less funny.

But Team America: World Police was something else. It made fun of jingoistic movies while at the same time gutting hard-Left, virtue signaling idiot actors like Sean Penn, Janeane Garofalo, Alec Baldwin, Michael Moore, Danny Glover, and Tim Robbins. They were all part of the Film Actors Guild, or F.A.G.

Yes. They went there. They also made fun of AIDS and homosexuals. And Moslems. And movies like Top Gun. The rumors are that the studio approved it because it was so politically incorrect, and might be cheap because it was made with puppets instead of actors.

I’m glad COVID didn’t come from a Chinese bear. Then we’d have had a pandademic.

Needless to say, making a movie that makes fun of any protected group is no longer allowed. Why are comedies dead? Because it gets really old, really fast, when the only person you can make fun of is the same person who buys all the movie tickets: heterosexual white Christian men who have XY chromosomes. You know, “literally Hitler”.

Comedy is now unfunny, mostly. Please feel free to leave exceptions in the comments. And movies as a whole are borderline unwatchable. Part of the collapse of the box office (and small theaters) was COVID. The other part is that movies suck.

The reason that movies suck is that they’re now just blatant propaganda, start to finish. The latest Marvel® movie, The Marvels™ is a commercial failure, and a box office flop. The studio is blaming the usual suspects: the actor’s strike, superhero fatigue, white supremacy, anti-feminism.

That’s easy.

Harder to face is that their stupid movie sucks.

This was even in his speeches . . . remember him saying, “Let me be clear”?

Why does it suck? It’s about women that don’t need no man. Oh, and couples who have kids don’t want to spend money to have their kids watch Gay Buzz Lightyear™ and ask questions about why Buzz© has two mommies. That’s it.

Who is the primary consumer of superhero movies? White men. Who is the primary consumer of movies for children? People capable of making children, which, for every year in the history of mankind before 2020, were known as “men” and “women”.

Yes, white men like to look at attractive women in skintight costumes, but only the most Leftist is willing to sit and watch a movie that makes fun of them and marginalizes them.

Why does Marvel© (and Disney™) lose money? Because they forgot who buys the tickets.

Men.

I’ve gotten to the point that, unless I’ve heard about a movie, if it was made in the last four years, it’s a hard pass, even if it looks interesting. The movies started going south in, say, 2018. My take is that was a reaction to Trump. It so triggered nearly everyone who writes or acts in a movie that all they wanted to do was attack a relatively Centrist guy who just happened to be President.

What do your get if you take an entire human digestive tract and lay it out on a football field? Arrested.

The reaction led to . . . crap. Every Leftist simply had to get their message out that trans was the new normal and white men were awful and stupid and that NASA stuff on the Moon was a fluke. Oh, they tried to take credit for that, too. Because white guys, you know, can’t do math.

I also noticed it with books. I was a lifelong reader of science fiction – I loved the ideas. Then, around 2010, I started to notice that the books in Barnes and Noble® mainly . . . sucked. I thought it was me. I thought I was old and jaded. But, nope, I read some of the old stuff and it was still great.

Science fiction was destroyed by The Narrative, too. The people who picked the books that made it to the shelves only picked Leftist crap filled with weak people who hated themselves and hated everything True, Beautiful, and Good. In this breakup, it wasn’t me, it was them.

They came for comics and killed them. They came for books and killed them. Lastly, they came for movies, and killed them. Every book and every movie has a message, and most are propaganda of some sort or another, for good or bad. Propaganda to get kids to brush their teeth? That’s good.

But propaganda to turn them into self-loathing transexuals? That’s 100% against the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.

This was the 2022 “woman” of the year. Guess guys do everything better.

Watch what goes into your mind. Watch what goes into the minds of your children. Help them to aspire to be noble and virtuous and strong. Help them to understand that jokes about yappy, farting women have been funny for 4,000 years, and will be funny for as long as women fart.

There are still good books out there. There are still good movies, though they are uncommon, since the rot is very, very deep. But freedom?

It still costs a buck-o-five.

Forgiveness: It’s Not Just For Breakfast Anymore

“But when you forgive, you love.” – Into the Wild

Dogs go to Heaven, cats go to Purrgatory.

Each and every person has been wronged. Everyone, but the degree differs for everyone. Me? I have approximately three people on my “you’re so morally repugnant that I wouldn’t set them on fire if I were peeing on them” category. Or did I get that wrong. Whatever. In my entire life, only three people. I’m pretty sure two will drop off the list fairly soon, but it really takes a lot to get on that list.

But at least one of those people I’m fairly certain hasn’t thought of me in a few years. Yet, for a while I would wake up in the middle of the night and be angry at how I’d been wronged. There’s nothing worse than being mad an awake at 3 A.M., with the possible exception of having to watch Amy Schumer pretend to do comedy.

So, what did I do?

I let it go, for several reasons. First, I’ve seen that karma is real and doesn’t have a sense of humor. Almost everyone who has wronged me in the past has come to great difficulties that my attorney advises me to tell you that I had nothing to do with, and that, besides, I was out of town that weekend.

The Irish gunslinger killed five people with one shot. His name? Rick O’Shea.

I have to learn to get past my old grievances. It’s not for them, you see, it’s for me. That grief that the person caused me is done. Heck, they might not even know that they caused it in the first place. In most cases, the people who wrong us don’t care about us, at all. It’s less than personal.

In general, when I share your problems, it helps me.

Grievances don’t count.

Grievances aren’t one of those problems. I don’t know about you, but when a person is constantly bringing me down about things that happened years ago, the evil John Wilder that lives in my head often screams, “LET IT GO! Who is this complaining helping?”

I’m giving up drinking for a month. Oops, wrong punctuation. I’m giving up. Drinking for a month.

Generally, no one. Yes, when a wound is raw, it’s fair to have others share the burden. But after a while, complaining about it makes it easy to stay stuck in the pain.

That’s why I try to not complain. Fix a problem? Yes. Complain about something I can’t fix? No. Complaining makes me a victim. Now, there’s a person who wronged me, and I put myself in the place of a helpless victim.

Tell me again how this is winning?

So, this is one I choke down and don’t share. In reality, it helps me. First, people don’t run away or throw themselves into woodchippers when I walk up to avoid hearing me whine. Second, it removes the subject from my mind, and eventually removes the power over me.

If I started a zoo I’d want to have at least a panda, a grizzly, and a polar bear. That’s my bear minimum.

The Mrs. and I have talked about the power of forgiveness. The last time we talked, I was on the favor of, “Nah, they don’t deserve it.” The Mrs. was relatively constant, however, and I’ve rethought it. Forgiveness isn’t for them, it’s for me.

The rationale for this is simple: every time that I think of a tool who wronged me, it results in me being angry. Who is the only person who should create that emotion? Me.

Yes, there are times I enjoy being angry. It’s like taking a shower in chocolate syrup, sure it’s fun once in a while, but I wouldn’t want to make a habit of it, mainly because of the yeast. But once in a while?

Sure.

Never be angry at lazy people. It’s not like they did anything.

I have, in the last month, consciously let myself get angry because it felt good. But forgiveness allows me to get angry when I want to, and not every second of every day and be the emotional puppet of some other person, or worse, some event.

Yeah. An event. To be clear, if I stub my toe in the dark of night on the couch while going to get more vodka some water, does the couch care?

No. The couch doesn’t care. Events don’t care – they just are. Being mad at events is has a similar impact to being mad at Tuesday. Just like that damn, lazy couch, Tuesday doesn’t care. It just is. Being mad at something in the past is understandable, but it doesn’t make any sense.

I can be mad about (spins wheel) the Franco-Prussian War, but, well, why? If I am mad at a situation the way to review it is to understand if I can change it or not. If I can’t change it, it’s merely a fact, like Tuesday or those damn raisins that keep existing no matter how much I hate their wrinkly expressions taunting me in my dreams.

According to an online survey, 0% of people are Amish.

If there’s a lesson from the past event, I pick it up. If there’s something I decide I need to change, I change. If I wouldn’t do anything different, well, what then?

Being upset or angry is okay, but I’ve learned I have to let it go or it’ll eat me up inside, wreck my sleep, and make a situation I’m obviously not happy about worse.

I’ll leave vengeance on people that wronged me to the Manager, since He does that far better than I ever could. If it’s a situation or event and there’s nothing I can do, I have to let the Manager take care of that, too. I mean, that’s why He has a job, right?

Don’t avoid difficulty in your life, but don’t take negative situations or people that you can’t control and turn them into situations or people that control you, since I’m officially telling you that you don’t have to pee on them if they’re on fire, I mean, firemen don’t even do that.

Shaving, Emotions, And Having A Good Day

“I have gold. What can I buy with gratitude?” – Game of Thrones

I’d tell you a joke about a broken pencil, but there’s no point.

I was in a meeting with a guy that I worked with. We were discussing a project and an everyday task that one of the employees would have to do. “Well, that shouldn’t be controversial. It’ll take, what, a minute for someone to do that every day?” It would have taken something like $50,000 to automate the function, and people would still have to check that the automation was working.

He responded, “John, that’s how you and I think. It’s part of our jobs, right? But I know these guys. They’re gonna fight this with all the power of Oprah Winfrey fighting Whoopi Goldberg to get the last piece of cheesecake on Earth. To you and me, it’s a minute of our day. No problem. To them? These are people who get up in the morning and think, ‘What, do you mean I have to shave? Every day? For the rest of my life?’”

He was right. We still didn’t spend the money, thankfully.

This comment about shaving . . . every day . . . for the rest of my life . . . always cracks me up. There is a category of people that are eternally and forever upset about everything, and get upset about every aspect of life, even (and maybe especially) for things they had no control over.

Those people? I avoid them as much as possible, and I’d rather spend a day chewing aluminum foil or having someone take a cheese grater to my spinal column (the bone part, not the fleshy bits).

Then The Mrs. asked me why I lost the whisk. I told her, “It beats me.”

Instead, I’ve just started a simple experiment to control my own mood. The first part of the day, I try, even before the toothbrush hits my teeth, to think about the things that I’m grateful for.

This is not the first time that I thought about feelings the first thing in the morning. That would have been in sex ed in high school, which I took because I needed something first hour and the teacher was so mellow, I don’t think he left any pot unsmoked in the 1960s.

One exercise that he asked us to do was to think about our feelings and make a (I kid you not) feeling wheel the first thing in the morning. As a man, I only have a small number of feelings available to me: salty, drunk, hungry, cold, and sleepy are the three that come to mind.

Newton walks into a bar. Or did the bar walk into Newton?

Other guys on the wrestling team in the class with me would, I kid you not, copy my answers for their feeling wheel. The other reason I didn’t have much to write is because I was 17. The only way I ever felt for every day of my 17^th year on Earth was AWESOME! Being 17 rocked. Gratitude? What was that, I was too busy enjoying life and feeling awesome every day.

Now I’m no longer 17. I find that, for no reason at all, something hurts every morning when I get up. I look in the mirror and can see I’m definitely not 17, at least after my eyes focus, but thankfully the mirror is blurry because I haven’t put my glasses on yet.

I could choose (and I see many people who do this) to feel a little grumpy. To be clear, I did notice that I was waking up grumpy recently. And I thought is this fun? Do I enjoy this?

No, no I do not.

If it’s not enjoyable to me, and it doesn’t serve any purpose, then why am I doing it?

I read that someone in New York City gets stabbed every 43 seconds. Poor guy.

So that’s why I started the experiment. I would, from the first moment that I got up avoid thinking about:

Things I wasn’t looking forward to that day.
Things that make me mad.
Situations that I couldn’t control.
How warm the bed was and how cold the room was.

Instead, I decided, I would think about something that made me happy or something that I was grateful for. It didn’t have to be a big thing – the way that the coffee was going to taste, for instance, or the idea that I was going to get ready for the day faster than usual, or a song I liked that I could play while I brushed my teeth.

I also learned that you should never brush your teeth with your left hand. A toothbrush works much better.

Instead of being mad, I would focus on something that made me want to get out of bed, something to look forward to, no matter how small. Maybe today I could do just a little more than I did yesterday, or serve just a little more than I did yesterday, or be just a little bit better than yesterday. It’s possible, right?

Immediately, my mood was better. Oh, I certainly wasn’t skipping down the hall, but I was not in the mood to complain, in fact, I was feeling happy about things that

I would think about something that made me want to get out of bed.

Oh, sure, the chaos of thoughts about things I had to do would come, but I could push those off until after I had a cup of coffee. Each day I have is a unique day, and the biggest variable is how I deal with it.

If someone gave me a dollar for every time I didn’t understand what was going on, I’d be like, “Hey, why are you giving me all these dollars?”

As I’ve mentioned before, I get to choose how I feel, and I get to choose how I react. In this world, sometimes those are the only things fully under our control. So, if I have to choose?

Today, I chose to be grateful. And, it felt pretty good. Maybe sometime I’ll choose to be grumpy, or angry, or mad.

But not today.

And the good news about having a beard? I didn’t have to shave today, either.

Great News: Everything’s Going Wrong!

“If we can stop him, we shall prevent the collapse of Western civilization. No pressure.” – Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

How many contractors does it take to screw in a light bulb? I’ll let you know when I get one to call me back.

Many times we look at a mess, and think, “Well, that’s just so broken that nothing, nothing will ever be okay again.” That would describe my first marriage. I don’t write more about that bad marriages because bad marriages aren’t all that interesting unless it’s in Florida and involves an alligator, meth, and a Clinton. Besides, it’s over.

So, did it really matter?

In my case, yes.

When I sat back after it was all concluded, one of the things that I did was really think about it, and try to figure out what (if anything) that I had done wrong in the marriage. On hindsight, there was plenty that I did wrong. Though I’d love to blame it all on her since , I certainly played my part. In the end, I knew I’d never find anyone like my ex-wife again. Of course, that was my goal.

There I was, recently divorced, in debt, underwater on my house, and with a stack of bills that were immediately due. It was the worst place I’d ever been in my life, with the exception of being married to my ex. Why are divorces expensive? They’re worth it.

Do divorcing stoners get joint custody?

I realize now that this wasn’t as bad as I thought it was then, but back then it looked like a jet had crashed into my life.

What did I do?

I put one foot in front of the other, met The Mrs., paid off my bills (that took four years), had first one kid and then another, and sold the house right as the housing boom was taking off. None of this was predictable to me at the time of the divorce.

But this isn’t about me.

What kind of eel hits your eye like a big pizza pie? That’s a moray.

When you look at, say, Japan in 1945, it was almost worse than my divorce. Almost. The land had been nuked, bombed, and about 4%, nearly one out of twenty, of the Japanese population had been killed in the war. Their industry had been devastated; their army dismantled, their anime undrawn.

So, they gave up.

No, just kidding. They didn’t give up. They buckled down and became the economic growth story, leading the world in the production of quality cars and electronics by the early 1970s, just a little over a generation after the end of the war and the devastation.

You could not have predicted that Japan would have been so successful that by the late 1980s people were expecting it to have an economy that many felt would soon be larger than the economy of the United States. Luckily, the Japanese discovered mascot suits, and have settled back into being one of the largest, most functional, highest standard of living places in the world who is also a bit crazy.

Why did U-Boats in World War II have dogs as mascots? So they could have a sub woofer.

The point remains – you cannot guess the end by the beginning.

As I look around the world now, I see a world that is filled with conflict, some of which is horrifying. Some of the conflict threatens to change the entire world balance of power. Some of the cataclysmic changes we’ve seen in society have ripped apart the basis for stability of the atom of society – the family and have created new structures that are actively against every virtue and celebrate their opposites.

All of that is true. And yet, I still am optimistic. Why? Because, when I look back through history, we’ve driven to the cliff, again and again and even tried to jump off. When the Roman Empire fell because of many of the same things ailing Western Civilization today, the game wasn’t over. Europe rebounded and eventually (after a lot of struggle) reached heights that had never been seen before in the history of mankind. The setback of the fall of the Roman Empire had been the catalyst for the rebirth of Europe.

Was everything the same?

No. But the foundations for a stable society that can create wealth, freedom, and exemplify virtue haven’t changed since civilization itself was formed. These things are necessary. Humans have changed since civilization started, but the basic things that motivate us and keep us going when it’s cold and dark out haven’t: the things that give us hope are family, religion, and the will to create – something far more than just the will to survive – amoeba and Leftists can do that.

These things don’t include so much of what we see being indoctrinated into the culture today, things that are anti-child, anti-family, and anti-life. These are now being celebrated as virtues, and it’s devastating and causes civilization to unravel.

Surely that burning oil could have created a full tank?

This unravelling, however, will end up being the basis of something new and wonderful: although all great civilizations rhyme, they don’t have to look exactly the same. I really believe that, perhaps, the greatest and most golden age of humanity may be before us, rather than behind us.

You really can’t see it now in a world that’s falling apart because of the absolute inversion of values, but I assure you, it’s there. We will win. Deep down, Kipling knew it over 100 years ago when he penned The Gods of the Copybook Headings (which I’ll trot out once more, full poem below).

We cannot lose because those values that make civilization worth living have nothing to do with the cultural change being forced down our throats. The irony is that, by weakening our culture they bring their defeat closer to them, faster. Hormone treatment of children has not, is not, and will never be a way to create a stable society. It is, in fact, a way to create a crushed number of people that are so broken and confused inside that there is no way that they can create any sort of civilization.

No, everything is breaking apart, and it will lead, inevitably, to the next stage, which is going to be wonderful, though the route won’t be easy. Be of good cheer. I’ll put it in better hands than mine to point out what’s coming:

The Gods of the Copybook Headings, by Rudyard Kipling

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Naughty Girls And Inner Peace: A Short Guidebook

“Okay, Wang, let’s just chew our way out.” – Big Trouble in Little China

Who wears a red suit and knows if you’ve been naughty or nice? The Spanish Inquisition. Bet you weren’t expecting that.

It’s Friday. So why not be happy?

In truth, being happy is one of the easiest things to do, most of the time. You just do it. It’s literally as easy as just telling yourself, “I’m happy now.”

I know that there are difficult things going on in the world, and on days that aren’t Friday I spend a lot of time writing about them, because I like to do my best to try to get the Truth out. I firmly believe that some things are utterly predictable in life, like what happens when Democrats get to count votes.

If I drop a glass from five feet above my ceramic tile floor in the kitchen, 999 times out of 1,000 it’s going to break. It doesn’t take psychic powers to tell me that.

I’m horrible at predicting the future. I guess you could call me a non-prophet.

But I certainly can’t tell you where all of the pieces are going to go, and I can’t tell you what shape each piece will be in. I can only guess.

Most of the things that are going on in the world are like that falling glass, and most of the questions we have are how is it going to break. Yeah, $34 trillion in debt is unsustainable – some people work a whole year and don’t make that much. How will I do? I really don’t know.

I can, maybe, make some changes that make the crack up a little better for me. Maybe not – there’s a lot of things that can happen, since, as Yogi Berra said, “Prediction is hard, especially about the future.”

So, when I’ve done the thinks that I think I can do, and it’s the end of the day, I turn it off. I don’t fret. I don’t worry about the things I can’t control. Unlike a Clinton, I let life happen.

Suicide hotline put my uncle on hold, just left him hanging.

In the words of the youth, I “touch grass”, which is the phrase of those hep cats who caution that we can make ourselves crazy by losing touch with those things around us, like nature. I good walk on a cool autumn day as the Sun starts to become dimmer with its march towards winter is . . . awesome.

We have the choice, each day as to how we’re going to feel about the day.

Most of the time that I’m feeling glum, it’s not at all about what has happened, instead it’s about what might happen. In the words of Mark Twain, “Worrying is paying interest on a debt you might not even owe.”

In that case, I know the answer to “What Color Is Your Parachute” – that would be red.

I can think of a million things that can go wrong before lunch, if I let myself. I prefer not to get wrapped up in that sort of thought, so I try to limit my worries to things that it might be good to worry about, things like, “Is there another beer in the beer fridge?”

It is, generally, easy to just take a step back and smile. Even if I’m out of beer, it doesn’t mean that life is bad.

Most often, I get upset when I find that life isn’t doing what I want it to do. This happens much more than I’d like, obviously. I don’t give up, but I also want to keep focused on a simple idea – life happens the way it happens. I can do my best to alter outcomes here and there (which is part of the reason that I write) but in the end I have to understand and make peace with the idea that, although I certainly won’t go gently onto that goodnight, I can learn to make peace with it.

If you can’t win the Nobel Peace Prize, might as well try for the Darwin Award.

The other thing I’ve had to come to grips with, is often my plans sorta suck. If everything had gone the way I wanted it to go, in most cases it would have been horrible for me. As much as I plan, my plans fail to see the things that have helped me grow as a person and become better.

I don’t think that if every plan I made would have come true that I would be as happy as I am now. I certainly wouldn’t have accomplished as much.

In the end, I’m not content. I’m not satisfied. And I’m always trying to get better.

But I can be happy, too.

Maybe The Kids Are Alright?

“We’re a generation of men raised by women. I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer we need.” – Fight Club

The French love my generation. They say it has a certain Gen X sais quoi.

I can see what’s going on, I really can. To be fair, there are dozens of things, each day that I see that are signs of The Change. In many ways, The Change has been coming for decades, and has hit us harder than old age has hit Madonna.

Many of the changes we’ve seen are negative. I generally write about them on Mondays and Wednesdays. But Fridays? No. Because despite of all of the negatives that I see, I am as certain as the outcome of a vote if a Leftist is counting it that we will win.

What does winning mean? Well, it doesn’t mean that things will go back to “the way they were” – whatever that was. We won’t see that because those times are gone. The new good times will be different in many ways. Some I can guess because they’re inevitable, and some I can’t even fathom.

No, winning means a place for freedom and families and the things we associate with virtue. It doesn’t mean endless wealth, and it doesn’t mean endless amusement.

Why is Michael Jackson bad at bowling? He’s dead.

The big reason that this cannot last is because the current trend is the most unnatural and unstable in the history of humanity, with a few potential exceptions here and there that only lasted for a few decades.

This instability is in our favor. We can already see that the current boys in high school are fed up with Leftism and everything Woke. They’re done with it. They see that Leftism is poison. They’re rejecting it.

One reason is simple – it’s in the nature of youth to rebel. And, the Leftists having won so many battles are now The Man. They’re the ones the boys are rebelling against, and it’s glorious. The Leftists thought that when they took over and had the ability to control what went in the minds, that was the end of the story.

Yet, the Leftists still think they’re rebels working against the system when they manifestly are the system. The boys in school can see that, and they react accordingly, completely making those Leftists spitting out the propaganda go crazy. The Leftists are like like that guy who is in his forties and still is wearing his letter jacket because he wants the kids to think he’s cool. Now, based on every picture I’ve seen of every Leftist, the word “cool” isn’t remotely the first word I’d use to describe them. It’s not in the top 100. In reality, they fall somewhere lower than “turd stooge”.

The Three Stooges can do anything. They have Moementum.

This turns off the boys. Now, the girls are another subject altogether because the feminist imperative to teach the gospel of avoiding consequences of actions at all costs seems to resonate with them. In the turmoil to come, it’s the views of the boys that will matter the most.

The youth has also seen the fruits of Peak Leftism and are disgusted by it. Just like Gen X was shaped by the time they grew up in, being latchkey kids that learned from an early age to be independent, Gen Z is learning lessons about not trusting the government.

Their pivotal moment (so far) was the insane combination of COVID plus the Fentanyl Floyd riots. They see that their concept of “equal justice for all” has been tainted by racial politics to twist a system where punishment is based not on the crimes committed, but rather by the victim status of the alleged criminal.

Over three years, drug free!

How will that manifest? I think it will manifest in a deep distrust of the justice system, and I think that it will lead to, ahem, extrajudicial endings to criminal cases.

They’re also viewing the world and seeing it fall apart with cops that are prevented from arresting mobs looting stores week after week. As I believe white Gen Xers were propagandized to be the least racist generation in the history of humanity, I believe that white Gen Z kids will view race the same way black Gen Z kids will, with huge distrust.

The next thing in the mix is what hasn’t happened yet – the economic changes that are due. Just as there is a distrust being built up in the justice and governmental systems, there will be a distrust of money being created out of nothing. The system is going to, very soon, fail them in a spectacular way.

The economic changes will change them. We’ll still be able to send billions to the Ukraine, but it won’t matter because a billion won’t buy a Happy Meal®.

In the Ukraine it’s called corruption. In the United States we don’t talk about it.

Gen X was cynical. Gen Z will likely be a force of nature. If they aren’t the hard men, Gen Alpha will be. We’re that close, folks.

The pendulum is swinging back, and will swing back with a vengeance. We really have reached Peak Woke or Peak Clown World (honk honk!) and it’s here. I’ll see the start of The Change, but likely won’t live to see the next Golden Age.

That’s okay. I know it will be back, and I know this – there will be free men living on this world as long as there are men living on this world. There are ups and downs, but nothing is finished, this isn’t over.

We will win because we are strong. And we will win because for thousands of years we’ve been winning, and that won’t stop anytime soon, no matter how dark it looks outside right now.

Enjoy your day. It’s dark out, but the ending to this story will be glorious.

Opinions. A Small Book Review. Bad Jokes.

“That’s right. And if I think that Kirk is a Denebian slime devil, well, that’s my opinion, too.” – Star Trek, TOS

I’ve found that telling pizza jokes is all in the delivery.

Opinions.

Marcus Aurelius (dead stoic guy with a crappy son) said, “It never ceases to amaze me: we love ourselves more than we love other people, yet care more about their opinion than our own.”

I was talking with a friend about opinions today. Which opinions matter?

Well, if a toddler had an opinion, I’d generally disregard it because, like Joe Biden, they poop themselves and can barely string a coherent sentence together, even if you spot them a verb.

Toddler opinions generally don’t matter to me. And I never feel bad making fun of toddlers because, just like students in Baltimore government schools, toddlers can’t read.

Are chubby babies heavy infantry?

Okay, toddlers are out. Not that toddlers are always wrong, even they can see that I’m bald, for instance. Bald, however, is not an opinion. But try explaining that to a toddler, those drooling idiots with their Cheerio® encrusted fingers.

When I hear an opinion, I generally don’t accept it at face value. I try to filter it.

First, does it matter? Most people have opinions about most things. And most of those opinions don’t matter, really, to anyone. I don’t care about what anyone’s favorite color is. When The Mrs. wanted to paint my study, I didn’t really care about what color The Mrs. picked, as long as it’s not purple – I hate purple more than blue and red combined.

I don’t, however, let The Mrs. pick my cigars. My opinion on them matters, really, only to me and the company that I buy them from. I mean, when I looked up “how to light a cigar” on a search engine, I got 70 million matches. I might be interested in your opinion on good cigars, and might even try one, but it won’t change my world.

Can a cigar box? No, but a tin can.

The second filter is whether I can do anything about the opinion. If it passes the first filter, of “it matters” then I ask if I can do anything about it. This is a bigger question – I do have opinions on things I can’t do anything about. But as I go through life, I’m finding that often I have the ability to do things I never thought possible, like live in a country at the edge of civil and nuclear war with a president that has a dementia patient meth addicted son. So, there’s that.

I often find that, when I really try, that things I thought impossible were, in reality, really not that hard if I put my mind to it and dedicate myself to them. Of course, to really dedicate myself, then I face the risk of failure. Failing is tough, but it’s worth it on something that really matters.

I wonder why Ma Wilder always said “Embrace failure,” when she gave me hugs.

So those are the two big filters on whether an opinion matters to me.

The other opinions are opinions about me. I’d like to say that the opinions of people about me don’t matter, but I’d be a liar. I actually enjoy it when I troll people Leftists on X™ and they start frothing at the mouth. I guess you could call X© my troll booth.

I keep seeing Cthulhu memes, but I’m disappointed because all I ever see are the Old Ones.

But when people I respect share that opinion, well, I listen. And I run it through the filters.

This was a short one, and it’s also time to mention I just finished reading Hans Schantz’s latest book, The Wise of Heart. Full disclosure, I did get a review copy. I enjoyed it, as I have the other works of Mr. Schantz – especially the first book of his trilogy, The Hidden Truth.

This particular book was fully funded on Kickstarter®. When Kickstarter™ found out that it was a take on Leftist sex politics that didn’t follow the Leftist line, they kicked Hans off. He was fully funded (and then some) on FundMyComic©. Reminder – the people who run most tech companies hate you. Anyway, if you want, you can buy it at Amazon© (LINK) or other places. I get no compensation either way.

Like I said, I enjoyed it. But that’s my opinion.

The Kids Aren’t Alright: Mental Health

“Who is Poppy Adams? After graduating Harvard Business School, Adams was briefly held for serious mental health issues before disappearing without a trace.” – Kingsman: The Golden Circle

Every day I tell my family I’m going out for a jog and then I don’t. It’s my longest running joke.

FYI – minimal humor and memes in today’s post due to subject matter – it just didn’t fit.

We’ve driven the kids nuts.

I don’t necessarily mean you or I, but the change in society has caused a great decline in the mental health of the kids. It really started showing up in 2009 or so, when the emergency room visits for kids started a sharp uptrend. The kids (ages 10-19) were going to the hospital due to self-harm spiked by over 60% in a single decade.

For girls it was worse – it spiked nearly 100% – doubling in that time period. The rates of depression doubled in that time frame as well.

What I’ve seen when I talk to kids is that many, many of them have huge anxiety issues. Many are on psychoactive drugs. Many are visiting therapists regularly.

I look back to when I was that age, and I’m not sure I knew even a single Gen X kid who was seeing a shrink. I’m sure that it wouldn’t have been something they’d have shared, but it was a school, so that would have gotten around. Also, as far as I know, there was only one girl on any medication, and as I recall there had been some significant family tragedy.

Suicide? Only one kid tried it in the decade I spent in that age group. And I knew a lot of kids. But, to be fair, something like 30% of kids with mental health issues drop out of school so I never would have seen them. However, the numbers really do show that this is certainly the most mentally ill generation in the history of the country.

What’s changed?

Luxuries are available today that would have boggled the minds of my generation when we were growing up. Kids today can talk to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Listen to any song. Watch concerts of their favorite bands. Yet, with all the information, connection, and amusement available, something is horribly wrong.

My first guess at a major factor is a simple one – the iPhone™ came out in 2007. Given two years for smart phones to become more or less everywhere among the teen set, that correlates pretty well to the start of the increase in mental issues.

The designers of social media and games aren’t stupid – they absolutely manipulate the way the apps work to make the user addicted. “Someone read my FaceGram© or InstaSpace® and liked it! I’ll go check and see who it was! I Tweeted®, er X’d™. Did someone repost it?” The system is designed to make sure there are small, frequent doses of dopamine kicked out by whatever is in the human brain that kicks out dopamine.

This shorter-term focus, the smaller “bite size” ideas make something that was typical decades ago, like reading a book, seem like forever. Not being able to tune out and relax can’t be good.

Social media also has another insidious function – it is designed so people show off only the glamorous and nice things that happen to them. Who spends a lot of time posting about their pain, and sorrow? In the end, it makes a certain segment of the population feel that everyone is doing great except for them. Me? With my friends we spend as much time talking about the rough bits in our life as we do the great things.

Online friendships are also shallower, so the real bonding that kids get when they’re on adventures is lost. Add in that porn of the vilest types is available to most any kid with a phone? How are they not messed up in ways that no other generation has ever been?

2009 was also the dawn of Obama. Obama started defending traditional marriage and ended in full Pride® mode. Gender confusion wasn’t really something that was very big when I was growing up, except for Dee Snider. Now people are talking about transitioning toddlers, and somehow these people are being taken seriously and not being strung up on telephone poles.

To be sure, not all kids are a mess, but enough are that there’s a very big problem – I’ve seen one statistic that 44% of high school students feel persistent sadness or hopelessness. That’s a big number – I do think that, perhaps, the kids see some of the same things coming that we do – I do know they look at the economy and think, perhaps correctly, that they’ll never do as well as their parents.

I’m not sure how to fix those millions of kids that have already passed through their teens and are now in their 20s. From the outside, the one thing I’ve seen with most psychiatrists/psychologists is that they never really cure their patients, they just keep coming back, week after week to pay for the therapist’s BMW®. And I’m exceptionally skeptical of many psychoactive drugs. Yes, I know that some of them work very, very well for certain conditions with a physical cause.

What now?

The solutions to preventing a lot of these issues in the first place are fairly simple, but a big step for many:

Religion gives life a greater meaning. I’m pretty sure it’s not a coincidence that as church attendance declines, mental health problems increase.
Be involved.
Technology control (i.e., limit the damn phones), especially for young girls who seem to be more impacted.
Remove the gender confusion – homeschooling or a decent religious school would be good options.
Make sure they learn skills that allow them to be useful. Start small, and build up. Don’t coddle them or walk them through every step. Make them work for it.
Make sure the boys are involved in sports, especially if they don’t want to be. Get girls involved in something like 4-H or the church youth club.

The Zoomers (Gen Z) have had a tough time of it, and this will be another factor (along with their horribly messed up dating and sex lives) that is already impacting the economy.

Let’s not screw up another generation.

Wilder’s Cures for Male Loneliness

“Here’s to swimmin’ with bow-legged women.” – Jaws

If you’re lonely you could buy some stocks. Then you’d have some company.

In July, the New York Times® ran a story titled, Is the Cure to Male Loneliness Out on the Pickleball Court? It wasn’t particularly political, and I think I can summarize it in just a few words: “If you’re a dude, have a few friends. The best friends are those that share some sort of common interest with you. Friends make you happy.” Writer Michelle Cottle strung those three sentences out into several hundred words of mainly forgettable fluff that would be obvious to anyone with an I.Q. higher than a Phoenix, Arizona winter temperature. In centigrade.

The real joy of this particular story, however, was the unleashing of memes. The picture that accompanied the article, however was, shall we say, regrettable. It’s above, showing a man (I think, it’s 2023, so who can even define a man in 2023) with massive, fat tears containing enough water to keep California going through a megadrought. I think he might be crying because he hates pickleball, or maybe because he can’t afford a shirt with sleeves.

I have so many orb memes.

Regardless, the /Internet/ reacted predictably to the picture, and created a list of memes that would make all those sages pondering orbs proud. I saved a few of them, just for you in the hopes that you, dear reader, might find your key to cure your loneliness. If you’re like me, you don’t have feelings other than cold, salty, and drunk, so I haven’t figured out what the whole “lonely” thing is.

Anyway, here are the memes, as found, with some annotation.

I think that drinking with Quint and killing sharks is definitely going to solve any issues with loneliness.

Curling? Not so much.

Now being in a Roman Legion? That’s the stuff! Hiking every day! Just avoid Germany.

It’s weird that the Turks mispronounce “Constantinople” as “Istanbul”.

I, for one am always happy when I’m at Chili’s. It is the booze.

I’ve never tried it, but, what could it hurt?

Now this looks inviting. I think termites like saloons, because they like the bar tender.

I wonder if he’ll be a crying-on-the-inside NPC?

Can confirm, this is fun until the cops show up.

Is the Wendigo related to the Whodigo, or the Wheredigo, or the Whatdigo?

Who can be lonely interacting with 400’ tall anime girls?

Travolta and Cage walk into a bar. Bartender says, “Why the wrong face?”

Lovecraft walked into a bar, and the rest is too humorous to even describe.

Ever notice that you never see Walken and Buscemi in the same place? Discuss.

Hell yeah, brother!

Well, even Hunter gets lonely.

I guess it didn’t work for Kaepernick.

But it might have worked out for Kaepernick’s dad.

Sometimes, it’s the simple things.

Or many simple things.

What’s a little psychosis between friends?

If I tried that, I’d be grounded.

Well, back to giant women . . .

And who doesn’t need another synthesizer?

Is there more to life?

Yes, yes there is.

Thankfully, my job will let me work as many hours as I want to.

There might be one other option?

The Invisible Recession

“1000 points of light . . . recession bad, recovery good . . . I think I’ve got that.” – The Naked Gun 2 ½: The Smell of Fear

Inflation has really started to bite here in Modern Mayberry. I’m not sure about the Big Cities, but I’ve begun to notice it around here. Today at lunch I made a trip to McDonald’s®. It’s rare, most of the time (if I eat lunch at all) I eat at home. It’s more convenient, and I really, really hate lines, but this was a late lunch and I could drive straight to the window. But hey, for me, it’s the McChicken®.

The prices at McDonald’s® have gotten silly. Whereas there used to be enough value in a Big Mac™ to make one of them (occasionally) worth it, it’s just not the case nowadays. I didn’t spend too much time pondering the price on any of the burgers, since I could get nearly a pound of steak for the price of the average burger-fries-drink combos. But again, for me, it’s the McChicken™.

What a fun, cool, happening place, if you can get 3-for-free!

Why are people not going out?

The prices are silly.

I think (and I might be wrong) that our local McDonald’s™ just has to match the prices that are (more or less) nationally set by some sweaty accountant in Chicago wearing a Grimace™ costume and questioning the life choices that led him to have to report every day to Stacy, who is forced to wear a Hamburgler© costume. I can’t see the labor around Modern Mayberry costing nearly as much as in a bigger city. The food, I would imagine, costs exactly the same as in the bigger cities.

The result? I’ve noticed that the lines are much shorter at the local fast-food restaurants, even at peak hours. One of the regional chains hasn’t raised their prices, since all of their restaurants are just scattered around Upper Lower Midwestia and they don’t have to worry about the price of a Quarter Pounder™ in Manhattan. Their lines are the longest in town, so I follow Yogi Berra’s advice, “Nobody goes there anymore, that place is too crowded.”

Since COVID, my favorite local restaurant has closed. It was a bona fide restaurant, great service, great food. Supply chain issues coupled with labor oddities and lower business slowly torpedoed them. They liquidated before they lost a lot of money – they saw what was coming and wanted to go out on their terms.

I’ve been told that McDonald’s™ was sued once for bugs in their food. They won the case – no one on the jury believed they used any natural ingredients.

And our world got a little bit smaller, so we now have dinner somewhere else. It’s cheaper, but I notice that both of the places that we normally go aren’t very busy anymore. And the waitresses that work there aren’t changing jobs anymore – the good ones are keeping their jobs now. Something tells me they’re a little harder to get now.

So, if you’re counting restaurants and the people who work there (and those that used to own them) Modern Mayberry definitely has fewer restaurants. The revenue in the town might be the same, but there are (my guess) 20% fewer customers.

This is the invisible recession.

I always carry some McDonald’s® fries when I walk the dogs in winter. Fries go great with chilly dogs.

It’s invisible because I’d imagine that, even though McDonald’s® is (visually) selling less McFood©, they’re charging more. So, higher prices times lower volume is probably about even. But the value created to the consumer is far, far less even though revenues might be neutral. Unless you count eating healthier food than McDonald’s™ makes as value. Heck, Ronald has killed more people than Pennywise.

I suspect this is going on everywhere. Wages are certainly not keeping up with daily expenses, and those who are less fortunate haven’t had raises that have kept up with inflation. And why should employers pay more? In a recent month, a net 1.2 million jobs were “created” but 600,000 Americans lost their jobs. They were replaced by immigrants (illegal or legal).

Thankfully, corporate profits were saved!

It’s better than when he ran the farm using Artificial Intelligence and had to reboot it all before the power outage – AI, AI, Oh.

Interest rates are up, and I expect they will continue to go up because there is no semblance of any fiscal adulthood in Washington, D.C. on either side of the ball. The Democrat mantra of “spend more” is always followed by the Republican response of, “Well, okay, but not quite that much” as the dance of the destruction of the currency continues.

I hope I’m wrong, but this is based on the bet that politicians will continue to be weak and craven, and that 2024 is an election year. What do politicians like during an election year? A good economy with low inflation. Failing that, politicians like distractions and spreading money out like AOC on a Saturday night. If you can’t make a good economy, fake one.

More money floating around means . . . more inflation. But if wages aren’t going up because there’s a massive influx of illegals?

Just more misery, especially for those at the lower end of the pay scale. All of the typical Leftist voting blocks will be rewarded, of course. The standard Leftie professor at the average Leftie college (but I mostly repeat myself) will get raises because the Left takes care of itself and funds itself. The Left believes in the state and uses it as a propaganda and funding arm. Why do drama programs get special federal funds?

Because they vote Left.

I guess the finale was shot before a live audience.

But real Americans that aren’t tied into the ecosystem of government gimmes are seeing their difficulties multiply. Me? I’ll still mainly skip McDonald’s© and save a few bucks and have more steaks and fewer fries. But the invisible recession is already here, at least in Modern Mayberry.

But, hey, for me? It’s the McChicken™.