Category: Health

It Came From 1987

“That’s good, because she’s a predator.” – Fight Club

I walked into a bar in 1987.  The bartender said, “Hey, the party is in the back.”

I had started doing these more or less in order by year.  It’s a retrospective, and it has nothing to do with box office – it’s me going through the movies of the year and picking the ones I like.  They are in no order.  One thing about these movies – 1987 seems to be a year when the videocassette was fully in bloom, and many of these movies had a much better life on VCR than they did at the local movie theater.

Again, these are in no particular order, but one thing struck me as I went through the list:  this is the strongest list, by far, of any year I’ve done, with amazing, inventive time.  Only two of the movies on this list are sequels:  Evil Dead II, which was a remake; and House II (which was entirely different than the original House), and both were far more comedy than horror.

Movies were better then.  Much better.

1987 might have been Peak Movie.

Outrageous Fortune:  Yes, Bette Midler is annoying, but so is Shelley Long, and both are hilarious in this movie about actresses who get involved in a spy caper.  This movie marks the movie regeneration of George Carlin, whose career had been sitting in a dumpster until this.

Mannequin:  Kim Cattrall really can’t act.  Andrew McCarthy’s main acting skill was his hair.  It didn’t really matter in this amazingly stupid movie about a mannequin that comes to life only with Andrew McCarthy is alone with it.  That’s it.  Silly.  Stupid.  Cheap to make.  And fun.

If your wife was a one-legged mannequin, could you stand her?

Lethal Weapon:  Shane Black was the writer of this movie (more about him later) and it cost $15 million to make and hauled in $120 million before VHS revenues.  It was the origin of buddy cop movies and was from the time when Gary Busey made money by acting, and not acting strange and before Mel discovered tequila.  Helmets on motorcycles, kids.  Helmets.

Evil Dead II:  It’s not really a sequel, it’s a re-make of Evil Dead.  The horror levels are fairly low, and the special effects are really quite good given the $75 budget they were working with.  To describe this movie?  Lovecraft meets the Three Stooges® and Bruce Campbell with a chainsaw hand.

Raising Arizona:  The cover to this movie sucked, but I had seen nearly everything else in the video store, so I popped down my $2.00 to rent it (Be Kind, Rewind!) and cracked a cold one in front of the TV.  Wow.  I was not expecting that.  The Coen Brothers did a great job making a comedy about kidnapping children through the eyes of a convenience store robber.  By the end of the credits, I was hooked, and the last line made perfect sense.  No studio would take a chance on a movie like this today, because it doesn’t make fun of families.

The Secret of My Success:  A smart kid just pretends to be an executive and makes the company successful instead of doing the mailroom job they hired him for?  Micheal J. Fox was born for this role.  He was witty and quick, and Helen Slater was totes adorbs.  Did the movie change my life?  Yes.  I used this idea to start working at a company without being hired and it resulted in a hostile takeover, but thankfully I got probation and can still own firearms.

I never asked A.I. to put in “East Asians” but I guess it decided that Chicago gangs in the 1930s were ruled by Fu Manchu?

The Untouchables:  David Mamet’s first writing credit from this list, and Brian De Palma?  Amazing work.  The big bad guy was Capone, the good guy was Eliot Ness.  Inexplicably, Sean Connery was tossed in, because he needed something to do because he wasn’t making Highlander.  Historically accurate?  Of course not.  Wrap up the whole, big story in two hours?  Yup, including baseball bat management techniques.

I just asked for ponies.

Predator:  I was driving along on a cool night, when I decided to stop at a drive-in movie theater.  Yeah, those existed once upon a time.  The title of the movie looked sketchy, but Arnie was in it, so, maybe it wouldn’t suck.  OH MY!  It was one of those great times when I was shocked by how utterly perfect the movie was in every respect.  Accurate?  No.  Perfect?  Yes.  From the opening credit to the nuclear explosion, it was a perfect movie.  Shane Black, proving he’s a perfect human, didn’t write it, but played a one of Dutch’s guys.  A perfect movie.

Spaceballs:  A silly movie, but I saw it in 70mm, back when theaters used film.  70mm is probably not necessary for a Mel Brooks comedy, but, hey.

Oh, my, what sort of cannibalistic ritual did the A.I. plan for Kevin?

Adventures in Babysitting:  Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first:  I am no longer dating Elisabeth Shue.  She’s much older than I am, and I decided the relationship would never work.  Also, I hope to meet her one day.  The director, Chris Columbus, didn’t have enough to do after discovering Hispaniola, so he decided to take up movies, with some small success in movies you may not have heard of, like this one and Home Alone.

If only the cop was Elvis.

RoboCop:  Cop lives.  Cop gets shot.  GloboLeft ruins a city on purpose to get Power and Profits®.  Cop gets reanimated into a robot.  Cop falls in love.  I’m having a hard time determining if this isn’t a documentary.  Regardless, it stars Peter Weller, who got bored with acting and decided to become a college professor – RoboProf.  Seriously, he’s a professor, and probably the second coolest academic on the planet.

Summer School:  Nothing could make me not love this very stupid movie.  Mark Harmon is a loser teacher who has to teach summer school to a group of loser kids.  There’s a dog.  Harmon falls in love with Kirstie Alley before she became the size of a refrigerator.  Odd note:  I have talked to a person who gave me first person testimony that Kirstie Alley was *at least* a decade older than official sources claim.

More accurate than you might guess.

No Way Out:  Sean Young was really hot in this movie, so hot that the crazy might have been worth it.  Kevin Costner continued his domination of 1987 with this second big movie of 1987.  It was a great movie.  Spoiler alert:  You’d never guess that Will Patton was actually Godzilla®.

House II:  The Second Story:  As I said above, House and House II have zero in common except that both were covered by building codes.  There is nothing at all logical about this movie, and it is about as scary as the Building Code Commission Agenda.  It’s silly.  It’s fun.  It’s nothing that Hollywood would make today.

Amazon Women on the Moon:  Another rental.  I had no idea what I was in for.  As a kid growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, late night television was great because 5th graders can’t get dates legally because they can’t drive.  This is a very, very underrated movie.  On a $5,000,000 budget, it produced a box of candy cigarettes and some shiny stones as revenue.  Why?  Gosh, manslaughter charges against the director (on another movie) for starters.  Watch the part “Son of the Invisible Man” for amazing chuckles.

Now with 100% more PEZ®.

Real Men:  John Belushi died, so the world left us with Jim.  Jim?  Not so bad in movies like this.  Is it serious?  NO!  It’s a 1980s comedy with John Ritter.

The Princess Bride:  An utter classic in every respect, as long as you can ignore that Rob Reiner and Mandy Patinkin (huge GloboLeftElite) were involved.  It cost $16 million.  Box office was $31 million.  Cultural impact?  Huge.  Much bigger than that amount.  I read the book (got it from those little book order things that they gave out at school) before the movie came out.  We need more giants in film.

“As you wish . . . ” and I wish there was more Elvis.

House of Games:  David Mamet’s second spot on the list.  Mamet is actually (sort of?) on the TradRight now.  Annnnnnyway . . . this movie is about conmen and con games.  I saw this one on HBO® or Skinemax® and was surprised at the tight plotting and especially liked Joe Mantegna’s acting, even if his name is too long and has too many vowels.

Prince of Darkness:  One of John Carpenter’s Apocalypse Trio.  This movie involves alternate dimensions and the Ultimate Evil all rolled into one, complete with Susan the radiologist (glasses) and Alice Cooper.  It is a horror movie, so if you don’t like those, it’s a skip.  Carpenter at his best.

Arnold needs to pump some iron . . . looking like a girly man.

The Running Man:  I thought this movie was pretty schlocky when I originally watched it back in the day.  Sure, it was fun.  Then I rewatched it with one of my boys and he said, “Dad, this movie is amazing!  Why don’t they make them like this now?”  Indeed.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles:  John Hughes, Steve Martin, and John Candy make THE Thanksgiving movie.  ‘nuff said.

Overboard:  Kurt Russell as a down-on-his-luck widowed carpenter who convinces amnesiac rich heiress Goldie Hawn that she needs to do the laundry and make the chicken tenders in order to reach mini-golf nirvana.  Amazing.

How good was 1987?  I skipped Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket.  Why?  It was a downer.

1987 was filled with riches compared to the corporate, soulless, paint-by-the-numbers stuff we see today.  What movies do you love that I left out?

Purpose, Calculus, and the “Why” of Life

“As you will find in multivariable calculus, there are often a number of solutions for any given problem.” – A Beautiful Mind

When you take a calculus test, make sure you don’t sit between identical twins – you’ll never be able to differentiate between them.

Often as I go through my daily life, I have to step back and ask the question, “Why?”

“Why” is a really important question, but Sir Isaac Newton was focused in his science on “What”.

Newton figured out (to the best of available information and measurements possible at the time) a very large amount of the “What”.  His equations of motion and gravity are really, really accurate, right up until the point where very large speeds (think how quickly illegals pass over our “border”) or very large masses (think your mother) change the game.  Newton’s rules allow us to predict the orbits of most of the planets with precision.

This is all based on based on 1690’s tech, which your mother would have been familiar with.

He also designed a second Pink Floyd album cover that day, after he set his roommate on fire.

Gottfried Leibniz, though, was really focused on the “Why” question even though he and Newton discovered calculus about the same time.

For Newton, the “Why” was a given.  Newton spent more time in study of the Bible than he did in study of nature or of economics (Newton was the Grand Baron of the Mint, or some such, and was really in favor of executing counterfeiters and people who clipped coins.

Like I always say, for every problem there is a very simple solution.

Leibniz wanted to go further and understand why gravity existed.  Ultimately, that was a question that he couldn’t solve with the measurements available at that time, and we still really don’t have a good idea for the “why” of many basic features of the reality that allows us to make and enjoy PEZ™, watch movies, or sit in a hot tub.

Yeah, things like “time”, “inertia”, “why everyone likes Italian food”, and “why we are even here in the first place”.  Those are things that are, so far, beyond the ability of physics and science in general to explain.

And that’s okay.

What kind of chicken did Leibniz order?  He always Gottfried.

When I look at my own life, I often wonder “why” about a ton of different issues.  I really believe that I’m fortunate in many ways that I really can’t understand the “why” of.  I remember when teachers would tell me that my kids were smart, well, I’d feel proud.

Now?  I realize that I had (almost) no impact on that, at all.  They were born with it – as Rush Limbaugh (PBUH) used to note that he had “talent on loan from God.”  When I first heard that, I thought it was braggadocio, but then realized that Rush was acknowledging that his way with words and skill at communicating, even his sense of humor were nothing for him to be personally proud of – they were on loan from God.

I get it now.

The events of our lives are like that, too.  Some are random, and some have a deeper meaning that either is immediately apparent or is apparent at some future point in time.  The random ones are just that, random.  It doesn’t generally matter (much) if a leaf falls on the east side or the west side of my house – I can ignore them perfectly well on either side.  It’s meaningless.

When a BMW® owner learns to drive, what car do they generally switch to?

But I’ve observed that little delays in my life, the “where did I put my keys” moments that slow me up getting out the door have several times saved me from getting into accidents.  A small thing?

Certainly.  But there are bigger ones that happen, too, things that are so unlikely to happen that they are effectively miracles – those have occurred far too frequently in my life for me to ignore.  Yes, once you’ve lived through 10,000 or more days, 5,000 or more commutes, some unlikely stuff is going to happen.

But we all know the bigger coincidences when we see them – the events that occurred in our lives that, looking backward, were either omens or led to situations we never expected.

This leads, ultimately, to a contradiction in my life there is John Wilder who:

  • Tries to prepare all of the important things so that everything is covered, and tries to live a virtuous and Godly life,

And,

  • Sees the outcome of the planning slowing turning into a colossal mess and the attempts at being virtuous leading to negative personal outcomes and says, “Meh, whatever.”

It’s true – virtue and grace don’t guarantee economic success – soulless creatures like George Soros prowl the world like a Lovecraftian Monster, using their money to spread chaos and disrupt cultural traditions dating back thousands of years.  And he’s rich.  If Soros has even a single positive virtue, I have yet to hear of it.

Kamala got chosen as VEEP for her race and gender instead of for providing sexual favors – which might make it the proudest moment of her life.

There is a scene from that great classic of cinema, BASEketball, where the main character (Joe Cooper) has reached rock bottom, he’s been abandoned by his childhood friend, his girlfriend is filled with contempt for him and he’s being publicly vilified.

His boyhood friend, however, has gotten everything:   public acclaim, money, and gets into a hot tub with a Playboy® playmate (they used to be girls).

Spoiler:  Joe Cooper sticks to the path of virtue, and in the end, everything is returned to him.

That’s the way that, as humans, we want to see life work out, so the good guys win.

What happened to the Russian who told a joke about Stalin?  I don’t know, either.

But it doesn’t always do that, and that’s okay – Soros will be rich until he leaves that money (along with control of dozens of Evil Foundations) to his son.  I can’t change that, and I won’t be upset about it.  It just is.

In the end, I’ll try to be like both Leibniz and Newton.  Like Leibniz, I’ll work as hard as I can to try to understand the “why”, but like Newton, if I don’t get there, I’m good with that.

I mean, they were okay with your mom, so you should cut them some slack.

Christmas 2023 – Looking Back

“It’s like Christmas at the Kennedy Compound.” – The Simpson’s Movie

What happens if you hallucinate and see a psychologist?

I was going to write a story about one of my Christmas experiences, but instead I thought I’d write about more than just one.  Since my only boss at this blog is you, dear reader, I thought you wouldn’t mind.

So, for this Christmas, I’ll share some of the Christmas memories I have of my family while growing up.  Why?  Because those Christmas memories are the strongest in the young, but our understanding of Christmas as well as our experience of Christmas changes as we age.

The very first Christmas memory I recall as a child was of sneaking out of my bedroom, late at night on Christmas Eve.  As an adopted child, I might have been looking for firearms or an exit so I could exit if these adoptive parents wanted me to do chores or something.  Or not.  I was four.  Long after everyone had gone to bed, filled with excitement, I got up and headed towards the fireplace where I had been told Santa would be dropping off presents.  I recall seeing Santa, putting presents in the stockings, his back to me.  Or it might have been an alien.  I was four, so it was probably just a dream.  Or maybe Ma and Pa Wilder put something extra in my eggnog so I “slept well”.

That would have been an uncomfortable parent-teacher conference for them, “Hey, he’s thirty and in the fourth grade, but he sleeps well.”

Jeff Bezos doesn’t sleep naked – he sleeps with pajamazon.

The next year, when I was five, I recall that there were presents under the tree.  Of course, I was drawn to them like the Colorado Supreme Court is drawn to crack cocaine.  Being five and having the coordination of Joe Biden biking, I stepped right one of the presents that was meant for me.  The result?  My foot tore right through the wrapping paper, revealing to me what the gift from Uncle McWilder was. It was awesome:  a tool belt, complete with real tools including a flashlight, screwdriver, and metal pliers.  Immediately, I imagined putting the belt on and helping Pa Wilder fix things, like the sink.

Our sink had never been broken to my knowledge, but if it ever did break, I had a pair of real metal pliers and all the tools a five-year-old could imagine would be necessary to fix a sink.

We never did fix a sink, though I believe I did an unsanctioned fieldstrip of an Electrolux™ vacuum cleaner.  Note:  I still have the pliers.

I once bought a three-foot long ruler at a yard sale.

I don’t recall a particular present from first grade, but I do recall sitting at dinner.  Being an idiot, I announced to Ma and Pa Wilder (who I think had stopped drugging my food by now) that there was no Santa.  My brother, John Wilder, kicked me savagely under the table.

“Ow!  Why did you do that???”

“You idiot, now they won’t give us presents for our stockings!”

I’ve written about second grade before, here:

A Wilder Story, or, The BB Gun, The Black Bear, The Soviets, and Me

In third grade, we had moved to Wilder Mountain.  We were in a very small place while the rest of Stately Wilder Manor was still being constructed.  Ma Wilder decided to make wine, which involved really good, thick balloons.

My brother John and I decided to play a strange version of volleyball using one of the really thick wine balloons over the small pine tree Ma Wilder had made since we were living in a house the size of Hunter Biden’s sense of morality.  Good times.

In fourth grade my brother John Wilder was proven wrong, as my parents really went all out filling our socks.  In addition to several G.I. Joes®, my brother and I got wind up cars that, when they hit something, all of their body panels flew off.  I had no idea that kind of toy existed.  What was best?  The surprise.

What crayon is in charge of answering the phone?  Yellow.

In fifth grade my parents had said we weren’t going to get any presents.  It was part of a deal – they were going to buy some new snowmobiles, and because of the expense, those would be our Christmas presents.  To be fair I was fine with that – a snowmobile is just awesome.  But, my parents lied, and on Christmas Day we found lots and lots of presents under the tree.  What were they?  Boardgames, galore.  Everything from Mousetrap® to Clue™ to giant checkers.

The present I remember most from sixth grade was one from my brother – he got me the cassette version of Alice Cooper’s album, Alice Cooper Goes to Hell.  An odd Christmas present?  Sure.  But I’ll never cry.

Welcome to my lunchline . . .

Seventh grade brought probably one of the most peaceful Christmas Days from my youth.  I recall on Christmas Day quietly doing a Star Wars™ jigsaw puzzle.  If ever there was a day where there wasn’t a single problem, no strife, nothing but a completely happy time spent with my family growing up, this was the day.

The biggest present I recall for Christmas in my eighth grade year was a Nerf® football, which my brother and I promptly took and threw in the driveway for hours on an unseasonably warm Christmas Day.

As a freshman, my brother and I were out shopping for Christmas presents for Ma and Pa Wilder.  One gift I saw was a towel.  It wasn’t just any towel, but one that had metal snaps and the Everlast® logo.  It looked like boxer’s trunks when you wrapped it around your waist.  This was the era of Rocky™, and I told my brother, “Man, that’s cool.”

He said, “Yes, it is.  I like it, and I’m buying it, for me.”  I was only slightly disappointed, since he had the money, and I didn’t.  Imagine my surprise on Christmas morning when I unwrapped his present to me and found . . . the towel.

I named my pet rock “Rocky” – not because it’s a rocky, but because it has trouble speaking.

When I was a sophomore, all the varsity wrestlers shaved our heads.  Why?  I have no idea.  We were in high school.  Ma Wilder took great amusement in this, and, for Christmas, she made me a knit hat in my high school colors.  The hat was ludicrously long, and perfect in every way.

My junior year was the last year that my brother was with us before he got married, so, in a sense, it was the last, close family Christmas.  Pa Wilder could see the nerd in me, and my present that year was an HP-15C programmable calculator that used reverse Polish notation (RPN).  Back then, HP™ had no equal.

My senior year, I recall that Pa Wilder gave me a metal puzzle – one that he had given all of his friends that year.  Made of brass, it wasn’t a hard puzzle, but I still have it, a memory of the last Christmas before college.

Going through this, it’s interesting (to me, at least) to see the changes over time as I moved from greedy excitement to looking for meaning and peace.  This year?  Not sure I’m getting a present at all, and I’m certain I don’t need one.  I’m also not sure if there’s going to be a Monday post, I’ll give myself permission to skip it if we’re having a good time here at Stately Wilder Manor.

I hope your Christmas is a wonderful one, and brings you peace and meaning as well.

Thanksgiving 2023: PEZ, Garfield, and Lab-Grown Poodle

“Look, sit down, all right.  It ain’t cool being no jive turkey so close to Thanksgiving.” – Trading Places

(All memes A.I. today)

Turkeys can be thankful – they never have to worry about buying Christmas presents.

I’ve mentioned before, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  Most of the time it’s four or more days off for me, long enough not to be rushed.  It’s also a holiday that doesn’t have the desperation of Christmas, nor the somber elation of Easter.  Thanksgiving is peaceful for me.

Although I like to do this fairly often, at this time of year, I do like to sit back and think about the things that I’m thankful for.  It’s a long list, so, here it goes the Thanksgiving 2023 version:

I’m thankful for Pa and Ma Wilder, who took me in and then didn’t drown me.  I was an awful child.  How bad?  I caused more damage to our house than the First Gulf War.  To be fair, the First Gulf War didn’t really do much damage to our house.

If we’re not careful, Iraq may have to invade us to make sure our elections are free of corruption.

I’m thankful to my big brother, John Wilder, who pushed me into things that I needed to do, things that weren’t comfortable to me that helped me face difficulty and learn to overcome it.  I also threw up all over his school clothes one year.  Not sure how you get vomit out of a leather belt.

I’m thankful for Joe Biden, because there’s never been an easier, more corrupt, or more incompetent president to mock.  Joe has single-handedly turned more Zoomers to the Right than any living man.

I’m thankful for winter, because no matter how cold it gets I can still put on more clothes.  In the summer, there is a limit to how much clothing I can take off, or at least that’s what the police tell me.

I’m thankful for hot coffee on a cold winter morning when it’s silent as the snow keeps falling.

I’m thankful for PEZ®.  Because it’s PEZ™.

The Abyss, it speaks through Garfield®.  Odie™?  Not so much.

I’m thankful for each morning.  I hate mornings, but they’re better than the alternative.  Oh, wait, I like afternoons.  Sadly, everyone gets cross when I sleep into the afternoon.

I’m thankful that I have so few moments in life that are truly awful, and knowing that I can get over them because the world is actually a pretty great place, and I always know that there’s someone I can talk to, if I need to.  Thankfully, I don’t have many feelings like you humans er, nevermind.

I’m thankful for firearms.  They cause a lot of damage in the wrong hands, I’ll admit.  But they cause even more damage when they’re only in the hands of the government.  So if the government wants to have a gun-free world, they can disarm first.

I’m thankful for cats and dogs, but sorry cows taste so good.  Cows look like they might be good bros and fun to hang with, but, sorry.  They’re just too tasty.

I’m sorry, but how else will I create cowlamari?

I’m thankful for my close family, {The Mrs., kids).  For whatever reason, most of them seem to put up with me, or at least haven’t filed restraining orders.

I’m thankful that you, reader, come here on a regular basis to share your ideas with me.  I’m hopeful you get a chuckle or two.

I’m thankful for the taste of a turkey sandwich the day after Thanksgiving.  Toasted bread, mayo, turkey, mustard, some salt and pepper are enough.  Add in some lettuce and tomato if you have them, but they’re not required.

I’m very thankful for the time I have, and just wish there were more hours in a day.  As I grow older, I know the most precious of all things is our time and attention.  Of course, if I hadn’t eaten in a month or so, I’d probably be even more thankful for a gnawed pork chop bone.  But sitting here, right now?  It’s time.

In the future, will the Chinese be satisfied with lab-grown poodle?

I’m thankful to live in the time and place that I do.  I’m sure the past was wonderful, and I’m sure the future will be wonderful.  But, you know, there’s a problem with both of those.  My stuff is all here, and I’m not even sure how to pack for 1850 or 2432, I mean, what’s the weather like?

Lastly (and firstly), I’m thankful to the Creator.  It has been a weird ride so far, but enjoyable.  I’m sure I’ll figure out the “why” part in the end.  As Soren Kierkegard said, we can only understand the past from the vantage point of the future.  But he said it in Danish, so he probably sounded like the Swedish Chef® when he said it.

If the Swedish Chef™ is actually Danish, does that make him an artificial Swedener?

I hope that your Thanksgiving is peaceful, joyful, and that you are surrounded by those that love you, or at least by PEZ™ dispensers from another cosmic realm that may eat your soul.  Whichever you prefer.

What did I miss?  What are you thankful for?

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 17th 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.