Category: Purpose

The Modern World, Part I: Health And Strippers

“Learning about Cuba, and having some food.” – Fast Times at Ridgemont High

“Sir, I found the IED – Ice Cream, Eggos® and Diet Coke™.”

I had (before Vlad decided to put on the Imperial March and send the tanks down south) promised a three-post series based around a single theme.  As the name of the blog implies, this first one covers the “health” theme of the blog . . . .  Unless events in Ukraine dictate, expect parts two and three on Monday and Wednesday.

What happens when society conspires to make people . . . unhealthy?  We’ve experienced an upheaval in the traditions and previously self-imposed and society-imposed limits to behavior (behaviour is the metric spelling for you in Chairman Trudeau’s People’s Republic of Canada).

By (nearly) any measure the United States is far less healthy as a nation than it was five or six decades ago.  About only good thing we’ve seen is a lowering in heart disease and other diseases related to smoking.  That’s a bright spot.  Many of the metrics are fairly grim, though on other health statistics.  Even life expectancy, which had been increasing, is now trending downward faster than Kamala Harris at the county fair zipper pull.

So, Joe Biden sent her over to manage the Ukraine situation.  I’ll bet she’ll suck at that, too.

I’ll throw out this idea:  many of the health issues that we are facing are the product of modernity – changes in society that break with time tested traditions:

  • I can pull up numerous articles that point to how America is the fattest that it has ever been. Homer Simpson was portrayed as comically obese in the 1990s when he reached the weight of 239.  Now that qualifies him to wear medium clothes.  From the child’s section.
  • We’re also at a high point of kids being raised in broken homes, which causes health issues as well. I mean, if being in jail is a health issue.
  • Finally, we’re in many ways unhappier than ever before – opioid deaths aren’t happening because life is peachy. Kids in high school today don’t think they’ll do as well financially as their parents.  And people are looking for increasing escapes from reality.

Let’s start with weight – I’ll spend more time here since I think it’s a topic where we tend to blame people because they’re fat.  However, I am not particularly a proponent of the idea that self-control just disappeared and that’s why America decided to pack on the pounds.  Nope.  Things changed which made it much easier to pack on the Dorito® muscle.

This is exactly what AOC weighs when she has both her saddle and feedbag on.

Join me for a minute in a time machine back to the 1960s.  What did people eat?

Food.  Duh.

But what kind of food?  Food with much lower levels of processing.  For example, frozen pizzas and microwave Pizza Rolls® and Bagel Bites™ didn’t exist.  If you wanted a TV dinner, they were required to be placed in an oven for approximately sixty years and then pulled out.  I never had a 1960’s version of a TV dinner, but the photos I’ve seen made them look as attractive as Nancy Pelosi.

They were a novelty.

When I was growing up, Ma Wilder made dinner.  Sure, she bought noodles sometimes, but she also made her own, from scratch.  I can’t remember my mother ever making something from a kit.  She bought me some pizza kits about twice a year where you made your own dough because I think it amused her to watch me try to cook.

No, when Ma Wilder made mashed potatoes, she started with . . . potatoes.  Then she added milk and butter and salt.  Four ingredients.  She even made gravy from scratch.  Much of the food Ma bought didn’t have labels.  Why would you need to label a steak?  I mean, the only ingredient is:  steak.  Same with lettuce.  Same with tomatoes.  It’s . . . food.

I think I channeled Aesop for a minute there.

How many moms in 2020 have the time to cook like Ma Wilder did?  How many are, instead, thrown to work and then due to time pressures toss the kids Pop Tarts® and Tropicana™ and Kid Cuisine©?  When I was a single dad (and much stupider than today) I’ll raise my hand – I did.

So did/do a lot of people.  The food that is convenient is categorically different.  And, at least until inflation makes it nigh unaffordable, it’s now ubiquitous.  Soda pop costs less now (adjusted for inflation) than ever.  Buy it in the 2 liter (2 milligrams in metric litres) bottles and it’s amazingly cheap.  Buy the off-brand stuff and you can get it inexpensively enough that you could bathe in it.

Food is also available all the time, everywhere.  When I was a kid, there was breakfast (I always skipped it due to the high quality of my genetics) lunch at school (I nearly always skipped that because I could buy a comic instead of lunch if I saved my lunch money) and then dinner at home.  Mom may or may not have made dessert – it was generally a once a week thing.  And convenience stores are selling Snacky Cakes© at 3am.  When I was a kid, everyone was asleep at 3am.

They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  But what if there’s no fast to break?

Compare that to today?  All school food is free for all students this year.  Pugsley could have free breakfast, a free snack, a free lunch, and then a free afternoon snack if he wanted.  Every day.  And then dinner, and then a fridge filled with snacks.

The cooks at school aren’t (mostly) getting actual food ingredients to cook, either.  They’re getting highly processed foods that contain (in some cases) ingredients other than salt that were mined instead of grown.  They contain oils and chemicals that were made in facilities that would make an oil refinery blush.  Oh, wait, the “vegetable” oil is made in a refinery that uses solvent extraction and then bombards the oil with hydrogen to create a chemical reaction to make it shelf stable.

Do we wonder why we’re fat?  We’re not eating food.  And what we are eating is so available that we’re stuffing ourselves with it constantly.

Why?

Moms have to work because society says that making PowerPoints® is more important than raising kids.  Besides, it takes a village, right?  Oh, and since all the moms are working, a family can’t afford a house on just one income.  That’s, of course, if the family is intact.  Single moms and dads have even less time.

Yup.  This modern world is a winner, am I right?

I tried pole dancing once, but Kowalski didn’t like it.

That brings us to issue two:  single parents and blended families.  Do I understand that it’s sometimes required?  Yes.  I was married to someone before The Mrs., and it didn’t work because it was a mixed marriage – I was human and she . . . wasn’t.  I kid.  She might be human, but the test kept turning to smoke when her DNA was exposed to light.

Society has made divorce a go-to option.  Again, I’ve been there as a parent.

But not as a kid.

I had two parents for most of my childhood, which was awesome.  (I was adopted after the mother wolf left me on the Wilder doorstep, which was seen as a fulfillment of the Great Prophecy that I would be the one to unite the mayonnaise and mustard – the condisatz haderwich – I even survived the Everlasting Gomstopper© jabbar.) Sure, they argued.  Sure, there were problems from time to time.

I never had to worry, though, who Ma or Pa was going to bring home.

I never had to help them emotionally through a divorce.  I got to be a kid.  And when Ma said, “Wait until your father gets home,” I was damn scared.  They were united in punishment, and they would absolutely not undercut each other.

But Pa saved his blue shield for special occasions. 

If I was in trouble, I couldn’t escape the consequences.

Now?  The pathology of single parenthood is clear:

  • 43% of prison inmates grew up in a single-parent household
  • 90% of repeat juvenile arsonists live only with their mother
  • 75% of patients in drug abuse facilities came from a single-parent household
  • 63% of youth suicides are from homes without a father

I could go on and on.  Society has made divorce by women for “fun and prizes” cheap and easy.  It’s even celebrated by the “I don’t need no man” crowd.  Who suffers?  Society.  And the kids.

So, the tradition of divorce being very, very hard to get and socially undesirable seems so outdated now.  Right?

Let’s add on our final contestant for this post:  the financial pressures and collapsing economy brought out by a relentless globalization and continual change.  Careers are gone.  Gigs are in when an economy has all turned to “services” driven by cheaper labor.

In many cases, businesses are built with just the idea to use cheap labor to financialize the industry.  What’s the forty-year-old guy who used to carve gravestones going to do when the boss buys a laser engraver that does twice his work in half the time?  There’s not exactly a market for monument carvers.

At Mozart’s grave, you can watch him decompose.

Let’s also add this into the mix:  The constant streams of gratification available from infinite Internet porn to infinite Internet social apps (I hear the kids have found something called MySpace®) haven’t created the sort of real-life experiences that were common in the past.  Now, the negatives are accentuated, amplified, and immediate.  Is it a surprise that kids today are nihilistic and escapist and jaded on male-female relations?

Still, in all of this, there is room for personal responsibility.  We are each responsible for our individual outcomes.  I can’t pass the buck for my failures back to society, but I can look at the trend.  Have the people who got fat changed?  Not really.  It’s just far easier to get fat today, but still the responsibility of the individual.

Have plenty of kids from broken homes turned into champs?  Sure!  But the statistics show that parents, shockingly, matter to the outcomes.

If I pick a career that gets replaced, is that on me?  Yes, yes it is.  But how many people have picked careers where they have been replaced?  Twitter® even banned people for telling journalists (who had told coal miners, “learn to code”) to “learn to code.”  We live in a society where careers are ephemeral, coming and going faster than Nancy Pelosi’s bouts of sobriety.  And what do we do about a generation raised by computers that are programmed to be as addictive as possible without creating actual achievement?

I heard an actual journalist was recently at CNN®.  They had Security escort him out.

If I leave a kid in a candy shop politician unsupervised, it’s my fault, as well as the kid’s politician’s fault.  You just don’t leave irresponsible people where they can cause damage, even though the moral choices were made by the kid politician.

Perhaps, moving away from traditions means moving away from problems that have been solved before?

Hedonism Leads To Nihilism

“Shut up and pay attention to me, Bender.  Look, I love life and its pleasures as much as anyone here, except perhaps you, Hedonism Bot.  But we need to be shut off.  Especially you, Hedonism Bot.” – Futurama

One thing I learned in high school – always date homeless girls.  It doesn’t matter where you drop them off.

I know that lots of people had it rough in high school, that they felt that they didn’t fit in.  They felt as awkward at Whoopi Goldberg at a bris.

Not me.

I’m not bragging, really, it was just how it worked out for me.  I had a great time in class, a great time in athletics, had great friends from nearly every walk of life.  Heck, I even had hair back then.

I was also really lucky with the ladies.  Thankfully there were no small number of girls with daddy issues in town, a drive-in movie theater, and a pizza place.  Of course the pizza was not entirely necessary for a seduction, but a guy gets hungry.  Seducing girls burns up calories.

Let’s add in the last element of hedonism:  beer.

There was a bar where if you had the $5 cover charge, you were of drinking age as long as you weren’t stupid enough to wear your letter jacket.  I should know, because I got in when I was 16.  I went in with my friend’s (who was of drinking age) license.  He was four inches taller than me and was probably sixty pounds less than me.  I wasn’t fat, he was just skinny enough to fit down the barrel of a 12 gauge and not touch the sides.

I dived off the stage at an Oktoberfest party.  I went krautsurfing.

Yes.  At 16 I thought it was a good idea to sneak into a bar holding the license of someone who resembled me only in the fact that they were another human male who had blonde hair and blue eyes and in only those ways.  And that same person who barely resembled me was also walking in with me.

I had no idea what sort of ludicrous story I would tell them if they asked.  “Oh, sorry, I thought I was another person?”  No.  “Oh, when I was at his place I accidentally put his license in my wallet and hid my own license?”  Hmm.  “I was fighting with my multiple personality disorder and physically split into two people?”

Thankfully, the place was nearly empty and the bouncer never asked me for an ID, just took my $5 and stamped my hand.

I saw a drunk caveman walk home once.  It was a meanderthal.

Apparently, I made enough of an impression that night that they never once carded me, ever.  After one night, I was a regular and knew most of the people that worked there by name.  Not so amazingly, about half the people from my social circle made the same discovery, and on a random Friday night, it wasn’t unusual to see a dozen juniors and seniors in the place.  Of course in 2022, the Safety Police would probably summarily execute the owner and the staff, but this was a kinder, gentler, drunker time.

It was life on easy mode.  Plentiful girls with dubious morals.  Cheap beer.  Great success in nearly everything I tried.  I’m not saying I peaked in high school, no.  Heck, I’m not even sure that I’ve peaked yet.  But it was easy.

One thing I did was try to connect emotionally with those frolicsome fräuleins of my hometown.  That seemed (in many cases) like a lost cause.  One night while sitting under the moonlight in the Wonderful Wildermobile, between hickie sessions, I looked up at the Moon and said to my girlfriend at the time, “It’s amazing to look up at that, and think how much smaller it is than the Sun.  How much smaller the Earth is than the Sun.  It’s a fantastic Universe we live in.”

Her response?  “The Sun is larger than the Earth?  No way!!!!”

Okay, our relationship was over pretty shortly after that comment.  And that also changed me.

I bet my old girlfriend thinks Starbucks® is a currency that aliens use.

I had an epiphany.  I was living a life of hedonism.  And although I had a life of pleasure, there seemed to be a lack of meaning.  I had everything that every guy on the football team could desire.

But I felt empty.  Not dead inside, but empty.  I felt that the things I was doing were, while extremely physically pleasing, were devoid of meaning.  It was like being Hunter Biden without being a Biden, smoking crack (or meth), and getting money from anonymous donors for my retarded attempts at painting to try to influence my dad.

I’m betting that this is the first time Scotty and scotch were used to explain nihilism.

The feeling of empty was a tough one.  It helped me see how someone can go from that feeling of empty in the face of pleasure to a feeling of nihilism.  I looked up the definition of nihilism, and came up with more definitions than I had girlfriends in high school.

I’ll give this one, which I found after looking at a dozen (many contradictory) definitions on the Internet:  “as the view that nothing we do, nothing we create, nothing we love, has any meaning or value whatsoever.”  That is the one that mirrors the emptiness that I felt.

It is the inherent danger of a life that borders on the libertine.  What matters if life is so easy?

Thankfully, I’m glad I caught that as early as I did.  I can see easily of how falling down the rabbit hole of hedonism could lead to nihilism.  As I got older, I realized that, whatever definition used, nihilism is the worst of philosophies, and the worst of the human condition.

Even though the Universe is large, and there have been countless years since the start, and, perhaps, countless years until the heat death of the Universe, we matter.

What happens in this world does matter.  We have meaning.  And fighting the good fight for Good over Evil does matter.  Life and meaning are built not in the pleasure, but in the struggle to be better, to do more, to be more, and to add value because we were here.  Those are the stories worth telling – they are the ones that will be sung around campfires in 100 years.

I hope Aaron Burr didn’t name his son Tim.  It would have been awkward to look for him if he ever got lost in a forest.

Never give up, because what we do here matters.  What you do here has value.  Even as we stare at the vastness of a Universe that no one can comprehend, it matters that we are here.  And it matters what we create.

And our love?  It perhaps has the greatest value of all, though it is rarely found in the bottom of a glass of beer, unless there’s a live band.

Did I mention they had live bands at the bar?

Fasting: Why Not?

“Your brain, for example, is so minute, Baldrick, that if a hungry cannibal cracked your head open there wouldn’t be enough inside to cover a small water biscuit.” – Black Adder Goes Forth

Cows don’t make sounds after they run out of milk.  Udder silence.

One of the main battles that the United States is losing is to . . . fat.

There are plenty of reasons for this.  The first is that we have a culture where billions of dollars are made by corporations to sell stuff.  What stuff?  Stuff that tastes good.  I don’t fault them for that – they’re responding to incentives.  People want nachos covered in cheese and steak and sour cream and . . . dang, now I’m hungry.

That’s one reason.  The other is that we live in a culture that’s obsessed with food.  “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” say people whose paychecks are tied to everyone eating breakfast.  And, meals are more than just consuming calories – they’re also social occasions.  People get together to feast – not about the food, but about the sharing, or close-quarters combat as it’s known at our house.

And you thought I was going to ask what he wants on his omelet.  Easy.  One with everything.

There are also some amazingly unhealthy ideas out in society.  One of them is “healthy at any size.”  That’s provably false, yet now we see models who wouldn’t fit in a semi.  Or a semi-trailer.  Flatbed.

I understand the idea not to bully people who are overweight, but the idea of idolizing them and holding this condition out to be virtuous is damaging.

Losing weight is, though, astonishingly simple to do.  As the math shows, simply eat less than what your body burns.  Simple as.

The problem is that requires willpower.  And the other problem is that food today is often very calorically dense:  a single McDonalds milkshake can have as much as 700 calories.

So, nothing but problems, right?

Muslims won’t go to McDonalds® anymore.  The go to Burka King™ now.

No, not at all.  There are many solutions.  When I was younger, all I had to do was amp up the exercise and I could drop weight amazingly quickly.  Now that my knees seem to be coated internally with sandpaper after that first mile, that solution is a bit more difficult.

One thing that works very well for me is something a bit more radical:  not eating.  It’s amazing, because this particular diet costs nothing.  There are no pills or powders to buy.  There is no special club to join.  Just don’t eat.

For how long, twenty minutes?

No.  There are several strategies.  One is just eating one meal a day – the nerds call this OMAD.  Only eat once a day.  And, honestly, that has always worked just fine for me, and was a pretty easy habit to get into.  I don’t lose weight just eating one meal a day, but I don’t gain it, either.

And the meal isn’t breakfast.

And who made this?  Where’s the bacon?

There is an even more radical idea – actual fasting, for days at a time.  Now, I’m not a doctor, but there are actual doctors who recommend this.  Jason Fung is one.  Fung’s story is a simple one.  He had diabetics showing up for treatment due to failing kidneys.  Fung is a kidney specialist.

They told Fung that the only thing to do for these folks was to help them along.  They’d die (eventually) from the complications due to diabetes.  Fung rejected that, and started experimenting with fasting.  And, of course, all of his patients drink all of the water, coffee, or tea that they want.

It worked.  He actually increased positive outcomes for his patients.  Again, I’m not a doctor and if you want to consider this, well, don’t say “the internet humorist seemed to think it was a good idea.”  No.  You go see a doctor or whatever it is you do to make medical decisions.

Last time I was in the hospital it was because I was confused about what the Dyson© Ball™ cleaner was for.

Me?  I stumbled upon this a few years ago.  It works for me, pretty well when I keep up with it.  For me, what I do to lose weight is just not eat between, say, Sunday and Friday.  I will tell you that if you’re not eating for 140 or so straight hours, you tend to notice it.

Oddly, the feeling I feel is mostly not hunger, but rather the idea that I should be eating.  And when I’m fasting if The Mrs. cooks up something especially tasty that smells wonderful, it does make me really, really want to eat.

Am I completely willpowerful?  No.  I do “cheat” during the fast.  Pickles have (for instance) nearly zero calories, and are salty.  When I’m not eating, I’m not getting electrolytes (which, I hear, plants crave) and so salty pickles solve two problems at once.

Business lunch?  How about a side salad that’s just lettuce and tomato?  Vinegar or mustard as a dressing turns that into about . . . 20 calories.  I really don’t sweat it on a fast day if I consume less than 100 calories.  And, if I break that (I haven’t so far) I don’t consider it a loss – I just pick back up and keep going.

My ex-wife was so bad that she’d make a cannibal order the house salad.

This month (so far) I’ve done three fasts:  one was four days, one was five and a half, and the one I’m on right now is (as I write this) 128 hours on the way to at least 140.  From personal experience, the first day is the easiest, the second day is the worst, and after that they’re okay.  I stop when I do to eat with family on Friday and Saturday.

So, yeah, fasting means not eating.  And it sucks.  But there are bonuses at the end.

The first time I ever did an extended fast I ended it with a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup.  That soup was the best I’ve ever had in my life.  The second bonus is that my stomach shrinks over five days.  It takes only a small amount of food to make me feel full.  Finish a steak dinner?  Nope.  Can’t do it.  Just not enough room.

Of course, there’s also the other benefit – the scale.

And with the experience I’ve gained new perspectives.  Whenever I see a story on the news about, “Local man stuck in car for three days, survived on Taco Bell® Fire Sauce™ packets,” I know that’s a joke.  The average person in the United States is already walking around with decades of Taco Bell© already strapped to their bodies.

Taco Bell® is like DNA.  Just four ingredients combine to make infinite combinations.

When it comes to prepping, the same lesson applies.  Whenever I see lists of things to go into bug-out bags, I always see food listed.  After fasting, I know the truth – unless there’s a medical condition that requires food, it can safely be skipped in almost every bug-out bag, unless it’s planned for use for over a week.

So, nationally we have a problem.  The answer is simple:  stop eating so much.  For me, though, I’ll be the happiest man in the county around dinner time tomorrow.

Joe Biden’s Early Christmas Gift To The Right

“Well, you know, anything could happen. You could get run over, pickpocketed, . . . fall down a manhole, bump into people, murdered . . . imagine that. Or even just ridiculed.” – Flight of the Conchords

Bruce Lee had a son other than Brandon.  This son was a famous vegetarian:  Brock.

I’m betting that most of you saw the vidya of Alzheimer in Chief Brandon Biden taking a call from a parent about the tracking of Santa by NORAD.  At the end of the call, the parent says “Merry Christmas, and let’s go Brandon.”  You can watch it here (LINK).

Biden responds with an enthusiastic, “Let’s go Brandon!  I agree!”  The look on Jill’s face is priceless, like she had just eaten a tuna fish sandwich that had been fermenting under Joe’s butt for six days.  I know that Jill told the Secret Service to not let Joe sit on them that long, but to quote Joe, “They’re just so creamy and feel so good and cool on my buttocks and make my skin so supple.”

Immediately, the Leftist Twittersphere™ erupted with all of the impotent rage of a six-year-old that’s not allowed to sit at the grownup table during Christmas dinner.  A classic response is from the harpy known as Sarah Reese Jones.  Here is her Tweet™, which I have not seen on her Twitter© feed, and may have been deleted because it was so insipidly stupid.  I’ve seen it elsewhere, but if Sarah asks me to pull it down because it’s fake, I will.  She made plenty of other comments that are still up there that I can pull from.

Sarah would make her Tweets® longer, but she ran out of character.

The salt to be mined from Leftist tears could make anyone a millionaire, and it looks like Sarah needs it.  Whereas I have no idea if she’s had “work” done on her face, it looks like it has a higher composite chemical content than the re-entry surfaces on an Elon Musk spacecraft.

Yes, it’s a personal attack.  I sort of feel bad because I think my readership is higher than hers.  I know I look a lot less like Steven Tyler’s illegitimate child.

Why did the Leftists react so strongly to these bad jokes?  I know that my readers react to my bad jokes like Hawaiians:  A low ha.

I know that there are several things that drove instant hate to this exchange:

  1. It exposed the media’s attempt to cover up the way people felt. Let’s remember where “Let’s go Brandon” started – with a television host attempting to cover up a crowd of thousands of people saying “f**k Joe Biden.”  The clumsy cover-up caught fire, precisely because it was one of the most blatant lies of the year, outside of “Biden won the election.”
  2. It exposed that this never happened to Trump. The media routinely had him under a microscope, looking for every single thing that could be used against them.  In one instance, hundreds of stories showed up in the mainstream media that . . . Trump got one more scoop of ice cream than everyone else got.
  3. It exposed that Biden is either so insulated or so mentally lost in the fog of someone who probably could no longer qualify for a driver’s license that he would actually repeat a phrase that meant, “f**k me.” Either of these things is figurative poison for a politician.

NBC© did a pilot for a sitcom about Abe Lincoln, shot before a live audience.

  1. It exposed Biden to yet more mockery. This is right out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.  It’s Item 5:  “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”
  2. The Left hates it when their playbook is used against them. They have to defuse it at any cost.  So, they either bury it (this segment is, I hear, already cut out of the transcript and official video) or attack it because it’s (according to them) inappropriate.
  3. The Left doesn’t actually even like Biden. He’s just the only guy that they could keep hidden until the 2020 general election, drawing crowds of dozens to Trump’s crowds of thousands.  He was the gluten-free, peanut-free, bread of the Left.  It may be made from sawdust, but at least it doesn’t offend anyone.

The irony was palpable:  the same people that had made a (not so) huge balloon made of Trump in a diaper were all twisted up about a phrase that no child would understand.  Of course, the tombstone for the Right (in the very unlikely chance we lose) will say “Imagine if it were reversed.”

To make this clear:  we don’t care because they don’t care.  The games that they play are just that, games.  The rules for civility are long gone.

To be fair, the biggest inflection point is either hot pants Clinton’s impeachment for perjury (which you could squarely blame on the GOP©) or George W’s election victory.  Both of those enraged the Left in a way that they’re not over today.   – they felt they had been robbed of their glorious forever lock on the halls of power, despite the fact that W had more in common with the Left than JFK ever did.  Me?  I think Alinsky killed them – and the Left has been playing for keeps.

Looks like someone made a measurement error when ordering the balloon that would “ToTaLLy oWn TrUmPz!”

“Let’s go, Brandon” had probably run its course.  It had gone on for months, and eventually, every joke (like Joe) gets old.  This probably gave it another month or three.  But it doesn’t end here.  There is more to come, and that’s what we must never, ever give up on.  We must mercilessly ridicule the Left at every chance.

Why?

  • First, they hate it, they cannot stand it, it makes them stupid with rage.
  • Second, it’s fun.
  • Third? The Left has to react.  And when they do, regardless of what they’ve taken over in society, the mass of the people will understand the foolishness we face.  They are power.  Speak Truth to them.  Ridicule them.  Have fun with it.

Sometimes, they do all the work for you.

Oh, and one more thing:

Let’s go, Brandon.

Christmas – It’s Not About The Money

“It’s not the money, it’s just all the stuff.” – The Jerk

What do Musk and Edison have in common? They both got rich off of Tesla.

Wednesday is normally a day where we talk about wealth, economics, money, currency, and the state of the economy. But, it’s nearly Christmas, so I thought I’d take this time to give a different take on wealth. And no, it’s not Joe Biden appearing in a Marvel® movie where his superpower is to make vast amounts of wealth disappear, because he can do that on, oh, every Tuesday.

Don’t get me wrong. I love prices. Prices are a great way to allocate things in such a way that the most people win. I have my pile of cash and get to buy (within that limit) the things that make me the most happy. Does everyone want a really cool sports car? No, some people don’t want them at all.

Personally, I’d love to have a cool sports car, but I’d much rather not have a mortgage. So, I make choices. And then cry silently in my pillow at night because I’m dead inside because I decided I didn’t get that Mustang®.

Othello always would visit Sauron through the Moor Door.

Regardless, choices mean that I’m in control. I mean, if I chose to study theology and then move to Colorado after I graduated? My choices mean I could become a high priest. I am free to choose and try to optimize my life based on my resources, talents, and luck.

Combine that with a system of (more or less) private property, and the system allows for the sum of millions of individual actions as people try to maximize their happiness. This provides incentives to work to buy steak. Or starve. But owning property provides incentives to create wealth. So, in striving to get enough money to buy a Lambo® and a vapid trophy wife in a functional economy, a businessman works to create the most joy for his customers.

Boom. People who have never met, and will never meet, work together to create a complex economy. This economy translates information based on prices, and is fueled by incentives, and private property.

And yet . . .

What’s the fastest thing in the universe? Nic Cage accepting a movie role.

As much as I love this system, I have to mention again, this system exists to serve men. It does not exist for men to serve it. There is a richer experience of life than only the pursuit of profit.

Also, this system is one that optimizes without regard to morality or virtue. On more than one occasion I have heard a Wall Street billionaire exclaim, “this isn’t Boy (or Boy-Girl, or Trans, in 2021, I guess) Scouts®.”

That was a direct rejection of morality and virtue.

The result of that type of thinking?

If it’s legal and can pull money out of someone’s pocket, Wall Street will do it. If heroin were legal for sale, Wall Street would be looking to invest in the e-Heroin® mobile App. They’d sell underage . . . well, you get the picture. Heck, Wall Street would sell ghosts as supernatural slaves if they thought it wouldn’t come back to haunt them.

When money is their god, they will do anything to get it. Wall Street will do anything legal. The black market, we know, will do anything illegal, as long as they get paid. Wall Street and the black market have essentially the same morals. And, like Satan, Wall Street just has better lawyers and lobbyists.

If there is a fault in the system, that is it.

I hear Charlie Brown was suspended from school. Some kid was allergic to Peanuts™.

And Christmas is one of the best times to point that out. Christmas is a holiday that has been morphed over time into one that, if we were to go by commercials alone, was based only on the mass consumption of stuff.

I won’t go into the deep history of Christmas. It’s long and more complicated than the math that Nancy Pelosi uses to charge her vodka back to taxpayers. But the short version is that the Winter Solstice was a great place to put a festival if you were going to convince the Germans and the Vikings that this new Christianity thing would work out okay for them. To make it work, Christmas had to be a party.

And it was. And it is. Over time, though, the party aspect of Christmas changed to a focus on family and generosity, which seems to be well matched to the holiday’s stated purpose. The meaning of Christmas then, is giving, not getting.

Certainly, there’s a certain magic in the eyes of a young child being surprised when the gifts under the tree far exceed anything she could imagine. The delight in a boy’s eyes when he sees the BB gun that will probably shoot his eye out?

Priceless.

I pitched a movie to Alec. He shot it down.

That’s the magic of the giving. The Mrs. and I, however, are old enough that we like the peace and family aspect of Christmas far more than the “stuff” aspect. I’ve given her the same gift for Christmas for the last five years (hint: it’s expensive scotch). She enjoys it. The Mrs. generally gets me something small. I like the keychain fob that she got me a year ago, “Be careful, handsome, I love you” better than something large, or an expensive scotch I won’t drink because it’s too expensive.

This year, The Boy and Pugsley have also (I think!) surpassed the greed aspect of Christmas. It’s not so much about the gifts they get. Heck, it’s not so much about the gifts they give, either. It’s about waking up on Christmas Eve, getting together and sharing the few gifts we have for each other, having a nice dinner, and then . . . relaxing together.

Together. And for me, that’s the biggest gift.

It’s that spirit that makes me look forward to Christmas. We’ve long been a “Christmas Eve” gift giving family, because it defuses the emotions associated with gift giving and leads to a very quiet and family-based Christmas Day. Plus no one wants to get up early if the presents are all already opened.

That’s the opposite, really, of the advertising that pelts us on a regular basis. The ads are all based on more and bigger. Time to give your loved one a $75,473 car with a big red bow, because nothing says love more than massive consumption.

Die Hard is not a Christmas movie. It’s a Christmas Eve movie.

Just like in most of our lives, we have choices. We can live the choice and have the Christmas that the media wants to sell us which is a holiday based almost entirely on creating the most economic activity possible.

Or? We can enjoy our family, and choose to place emphasis on giving, and choose to understand that the Nativity itself was the greatest gift that could be given. Even if you aren’t a Christian, understanding the promise of redemption in that gift of a child to mankind is one of supreme optimism.

That optimism is based firmly not in economics, since it promises exactly zero economic prosperity. No, this gift is not money – it was a gift based on virtue and morality.

I love prices, and incentives, and the creation of wealth. But there are things that are more important than money. You know, things like all the stuff . . . .

Dead Romans Agree: Don’t Let The Small Stuff Bother You

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

I hear that Marcus’ wife was a perfect X.

Mike, the proprietor over at Cold Fury (LINK), is going through a very difficult time.  Big Country has set up a gofundme for him here (LINK).  Much more information at the gofundme site.

Now to the post . . .

I woke up this morning just irritated.  No particular reason.  In all fairness, it was entirely an internal feeling, and I imagine most people never noticed.  I was nice and polite to nearly everyone I interacted with.  And why not?  None of them were my ex-wife.

I wasn’t irritated with them, I was just irritated.  There were no issues.  I wasn’t in pain.  No one around me was in particular trouble.  Thankfully I’m not an electrician – people might dislike me not being positive at work.

As I thought about it, what was irritating me?  I couldn’t quite put a finger on it.  There was no rational reason at all.  During a conversation tonight, though, I had a reason to quote Marcus Aurelius:

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

Not mine, but I couldn’t resist.

Sure, Marcus Aurelius’ kid was an utter tool, but when you become Caesar at 18, well, it might tend to go to your head – think of Commodus as Miley Cyrus, 180 A.D.  Back to Marcus, though.  Marcus genuinely did his best for the Roman Empire.  As near as I can tell, Marcus was a pretty good leader.

And that little quote above wasn’t written for you and me.  It was written for Marcus, by Marcus.  He was reminding himself that the external things in the world had only the power he gave them.  He was giving himself a pep talk.

Marcus Aurelius was right.  In the conversation I was having tonight, the person was very upset (most of you don’t know the person, though specific readers in California and Indiana do – hi guys!).  The reason she was upset?  Nothing rational at all.  So I quoted a dead Roman emperor.

Who says that Stoics aren’t compassionate?

Did it help?  I don’t know.  I’m beginning to see a pattern where crying people don’t stop crying when I quote dead Roman emperors.  I’m beginning to see why the kids call The Mrs. when they want actual human sympathy.

My irritation (I think) came from the same place.  Nowhere.  I felt fine (except for my right knee which is much better now) and the day generally went fairly well.  I realized that the advice I gave was meant just as much for me as for the person I was talking to.  I was just being irritated because I let myself be irritated.

Once I was done and realized I didn’t have to be irritated?

My hands disappeared today, but I can’t really point my finger at what caused it.

My irritation disappeared.  I know that the way I feel is (generally) my choice.  I can choose how I feel:  salty, Wednesday, or even drunk.  The only reason that I’m not happy every morning is if I choose not to be happy on some particular morning.

Are there actual reasons why I might have different feelings?  Sure.  If I had mental problems (other than an unseemly affection for awful jokes and a desire to consciously be able to make my fingernails grow absurdly fast) that might be a reason to have a feeling other than what I choose.

Don’t know.  I do know that there are people with actual mental problems.  There’s proof:  some people actually voted for Biden.  But, going back to Marcus, that’s not external.  Being sick or goofy enough to vote for Biden isn’t external.

Marcus Aurelius might have voted for Biden – Marcus is dead, after all.

Physical pain also is an internal source that can destroy moods.  I once (for a few months) had sciatica.  I was irritable enough every morning to chew nails and spit bullets.  Then I discovered that I could work out for a few hours on an elliptical trainer to make the pain go away.  A week later?

I was fine.  My irritation vanished along with my sciatica, never (hopefully) to return.

That was nearly 15 years ago.  Sure, I’ve felt pain since then, but most of it was the good pain from a hard workout.  Heck, most days the worst thing that happened was the crisp morning breeze running through my back hair.

My mood depends on me.  My attitude depends on me.

Does that mean that I can’t see the actual situation we’re in?  Of course not.  I see a nation tearing itself apart.  It’s worse:  it’s not just a nation, Western Civilization seems to be happily thrashing about as it marches down a path to extinction.

Is that good?

Of course not.

Does it mean that I should walk around every day being sad?

Of course not.  I am doing, I assure you, everything I can think of to stave off that darkness.  I mean, those memes won’t make themselves.

Never buy a sculpture of Bonnie Tyler.  Every now and then it falls apart.

And I am doing it cheerfully.  I laugh every day.  I smile because I know that most of the things that I worry about can have no power over me unless I give them that power.

Make your choices, and understand that while you might wake up irritated – it’s your choice if you wish to stay in that mood for a minute or an hour.

Me?  I like being happy, so I choose that, even in moments where it might not be appropriate.  I might even need to stop high-fiving people at funerals.

So, I got started late typing this after a day I chose to just be irritated.  And, I’m going to choose to end now.

With a smile on my face.  Go and have a great day.  Most of the time, having a great day is just a choice.

Choose wisely.

Black Friday: 2021

“Oh, and remember, next Friday is Hawaiian shirt day. So, you know, if you want to, go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans.” – Idiocracy

When I was a kid, I thought, “This little piggy went to market,” meant the pig went shopping.  He did not.

Thanksgiving is over, sadly.  We had a great one here.  We had eight for dinner, and five under the roof when nightfall hit.  Of course, Stately Wilder Mansion has room for more, but this was a good number.  After dinner, we played games and enjoyed being with each other until things got rough – I was put in jail and nearly stabbed while I was in there.  The family takes Monopoly® pretty seriously.

Other than that, it was a peaceful night.  That is why I love Thanksgiving.  It’s a space where (around Modern Mayberry) only one store was open today, and that store was only open for a few hours.  Not that it mattered – we had everything required for dinner.  I thought we were low on cream, so I sent Pugsley to the store on Wednesday.  He brought home nonfat half-and-half.

At least he tried.  Nonfat half-and-half?  That’s like PEZ®-free PEZ™.

Thankfully, The Mrs. already had cream, and we had plenty for the mashed potatoes.

But now it’s time for the Friday after Thanksgiving:  Black Friday.

My activities in Black Friday in recent years have mainly been related to not leaving the house.  I really love spending time with my family, but spending time with strangers standing in line to buy things I don’t really need?

What’s the best place to find a man who has no arms and no legs?  Where you left him.

That’s not my idea of fun.  I don’t like shopping, even for shrubs – plant shopping always leaves me bushed.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t look down on people looking to get a bargain on Black Friday.  I’ve been fortunate enough in the last two decades of my life that the main shortage in my life isn’t money, it’s time.  For those that are experiencing an acute lack of money, well, I can sympathize.  To be a few dollars short is tough.  Marrying my first wife was like winning the lottery:  five years later I was broke.

I’ve been there.

At one time in my life, I was running at the ragged edge.  Every dollar that came into my life had a home – it was already spent.  That was okay, but it limited my choices.  One time I was needing to pay dues to play rugby with the local club, but I was raising two children with help only from my friends.  The dues were $75.  I didn’t have a spare $75.

So, I had decided I couldn’t play.  The next day?   A check for $200 showed up (that I had no idea was even owed to me) in the mail.  Huh.

I guess I could play (prop), after all.

Why are Jedi® so bad at rugby?  Because there is no try.

Regardless I’ve known a life where a spare $20 made the difference in a month.  This helps me to understand those that stand in line for deals at Black Friday without looking down on them.  Those people are looking to do the best that they can for their family – they’re trading their time to make the lives of their family better, just as everyone who has a job and sells 40 or 60 hours of their life every week does.

The part of Black Friday that has always bothered me, though, isn’t the searching for bargains.  The part of Black Friday that bothers me is the willingness of people to abandon rules of civil behavior so they can get $10 off on a toaster that they’ll use once in the next year.

Oh, sure, I love toast enough to keep mine in a cage – then I can say it is bread in captivity.  But I don’t love toast enough to engage in wanton violence for cheap consumer goods.  I have standards.  It would have to at least be moderately priced consumer goods for me to riot for them.

The violence, though, are a signal that the cohesion that made society function so well during most of my life is breaking down.  I already know that economy is broken.  I think that here, in 2021, the economy is broken more than at any time in my life.  That’s the good news.

I got one federal stimulus check on Saint Patrick’s Day.  Must be the luck of the IRS.

Why is that good news?  Even though it will undoubtedly be difficult and tough, the way forward always brings with it the promise of a new rebirth.  This rebirth isn’t unprecedented – at more than one time in history have the eternal guideposts of truth, beauty, and virtue faded.

But they keep coming back.  Truth may become dim under the tyranny of oppressors, but the fact that it is being oppressed doesn’t make it any less True.  Again, I believe in absolute Truth.  I didn’t say that I had it, but I know it exists.  One plus one is two – it is never any other number.  If you start at the physical, very quickly there are many examples that prove that Truth isn’t relative.

Likewise, beauty.  We know what it is, because we see it.  The curve and texture and color of a rose petal is elegant.  It is something that is beautiful.  You can, no doubt, come up with many similar examples.  Beauty, though difficult to quantify, is nearly always something that people can agree on.

And virtue?  For thousands of years we have known what virtue is.  It shows itself in the action and grace of those that walk with it.

TOAST

I keep the toaster on the lowest setting.  I am black toast intolerant.

I have spent paragraphs and posts talking about truth, beauty, and virtue.  Why?  Because truth, beauty and virtue matter.  They are timeless and ageless.  They will endure.

Humanity cannot be long isolated from them.  We keep finding them, again and again, not because we are clever, but because they are eternal concepts.

Demoralization? No. Remoralization.

“Hold them back! Do not give in to fear! Stand to your posts! Fight!” – LOTR, Return of the King

Chuck Norris threw a boomerang.  It’s afraid to come back.

It’s Friday.  Thankfully.

On Monday and Wednesday, we have heavy topics.  On Friday?  It used to be health focused.  But then after a year or so I had most of my health topics (things I wanted to say) completed.  Sure, more will show up over time, but most of health is either really, really simple or so blisteringly complex that it’s not solvable.

That’s why on Friday (in most recent posts) I have had the ability to focus on:  remoralization.

Life has a known beginning.  It has a known ending.  For religious folks there is a promise of a lot more.

Demoralization is simple:  the idea is to make you feel that you’ve lost.  Put into context, demoralization is fear.  The idea is to make you afraid.  And what does fear do?  Fear sells products.  Fear sells politicians.  Fear sells.  Heck, even suicide bombers have a fear:  dying alone.

When I look at a scene like this, I expect that a coyote and a roadrunner were involved.

Fear is also the basis of almost every negative action.  The proof of this is left to the reader, as many of my textbooks in college said.  My proof is this:  whenever I’ve acted in a manner that was in some way against my values, I can look back and see those actions were based in fear.

Sure, I’d like to place myself in the category of fearless, but I’m human.  Or at least I can pass for human in dim light, according to The Mrs.  But as I looked back and realized that nearly every action I had ever taken that I regretted was due to fear, I decided to get rid of fear.  Thankfully overcoming my fear of escalators was a one-step program.

Does just deciding to not be afraid anymore work?

Well, mostly.  Fear is (amazingly) just another choice.  I discovered I don’t have to feel fear at all.  The decision was simple – I stopped focusing on outcomes.  If I worked every minute at my best, and worked according to my values, well, if it turned out wrong?  It turned out wrong.  Heck, I’m even slowly getting over my fear of speedbumps.

What do you call a chicken crossing the road with no legs?  A speedbump.

I discovered something weird.  People hate it when you’re not afraid.  People want you to focus on fear, especially bosses.  I had one conversation where my boss said, “John, do you realize that (my great, great, great grandboss) would be upset about that?”

My response was simple, “Well, I’d love to tell them my story.  Have them call me.”

His response was, “Whoa!  Why did you bring them (great, great, great grandboss) into it?”

Me:  “I didn’t.  You did.”

Strangely, that implied threat . . . disappeared.  And was never used again.

As I said, people hate that.  Especially bosses.

My boss asked me to make fewer mistakes at work.  That means I get to come in later!

Another example was when I was working at a company that was experiencing significant financial difficulty.  My boss came up to me, and said, “John, do you know what kind of difficulty this company is facing?  How can you walk around so happy all the time?”

Weirdly, I have never understood how being unhappy and worrying about impending doom has helped, well, anyone.  I explained that to my boss.  I told him I would try to appear less happy around the office.  And, while I make a lot of jokes in my posts, this isn’t one.  This really happened.

I really had a boss upset with me for having too good of an attitude.  Go figure.

Being happy is a weird superpower.

It makes people uncomfortable.  A salesman makes a joke that, “Hey, I bet you’re overworked and underpaid,” and when I respond, “No, the work is fairly interesting and I’m satisfied with my compensation,” the look I get is priceless.

I love my couch, it makes me feel regal.  I am “Sofa King” happy!

I also look at most of my choices like I look at a menu.  It’s a choice of something good or something better.  “Do I want the ribeye or do I want the . . . of course I want the ribeye.”  Seriously, if there’s steak on the menu, all of the other pages are wasted.

To be honest, this superpower wasn’t because I was born on a far-distant planet named Krypton® that orbited a red star.  Even though that’s true (I told you I was adopted but wasn’t too specific for, well, reasons) the reason I came to this Truth was the way that I think nearly everyone comes to Truth:  the long, dark night of the soul.

As I have found it, this is the Truth.  There is no aspect of character that comes without scars.  This may be personal, but in my life I recall a very simple pattern:

  • Something awful happens. It may or may not be related to my actions.  Often it is not.
  • There is a decision for me to make. It is a moral decision.
  • I think about it. Often (if time allows) I consult people I trust – people of moral character.
  • I take action.

The important bullet point is the last one.  And when I decided to do whatever was right, regardless of the consequences?

Freedom ensued.  When I stopped focusing on the outcome, and started focusing on what is good, True, and beautiful?  I stopped caring about the outcome.  When I became the embodiment of those things?

I ceased being myself.  I was working for a higher purpose.  The phrase, “let the chips fall where they may” comes to mind.   Oddly, the more I act in accordance with my principles, the better the (average) outcome is.  Not that I care.

I’m disappointed.  I went into the restaurant restroom and waited for hours.  Despite the sign, no employees came to wash my hands.

This is freedom, acting upon principles, regardless of outcome.  The secret is a simple one:  each of us is capable of doing this.  It’s a choice.

Freedom isn’t a document.  Freedom isn’t what someone gives us.  Freedom is what we take.  Freedom is a choice.  And the most good and True freedom is acting upon moral principles.

And then?  Not caring what happens.

There is a word for that.  Courage.

So, there’s a choice, and it’s a choice we face every day.  Courage or fear.

When you give in to fear, you have that stain for life.  Courage?  It outlives us all.

The better news?  We all have the seeds of courage inside of us.

The very best news?

We can all let those seeds grow.

Recharge Yourself.

“They recharge? I just keep buying new phones.” – House, M.D.

It’s cool everyone in the world charges their phones with an American Bee. Oh, wait, they call it a USB.

Some things just wear me out faster than the inseam of Oprah’s pants.

Thankfully, some things just make me feel as excited as the Autopsy Club at open Mike night.

Things that wear me out are, thankfully, not so common. Besides, if I listed those, I’d just be whining. Besides, it’s a lot more fun to focus on the positive when I can.

Here are a sampling of things that recharge me:

Learning new things.

The older I get, the more I realize that my ironclad knowledge of youth was . . . wrong.

Not virtue, mind you. What is true and virtuous hasn’t changed. The lessons of morality from my youth from parents and grandparents have been constant guides. So, not that.

But how many things were skipped in history? What’s left to learn in science? Amazing amounts. Heck, I was shocked about some of the things I learned about electricity.

That’s one tough cut of meat.

Writing a post that I like.

When I write a post where I felt that the beginning, middle, and end all work and mesh seamlessly together with the bad jokes and memes? I’m in heaven. I hit the “go” button on the software to schedule the post, and then hit the comments. If it’s a particularly late night, that’s the worst, because I’m excited about what I wrote, but it’s two hours before the alarm goes off.

I took my goldfish to the vet. “He’s having seizures.” The vet responded, “He looks fine to me.” “Sure,” I said, “but wait until I get him out of the bowl.”

It’s worth it even though the two most common synonyms for unemployed are “writer” and “blogger”. One thing to note: some of the posts that I personally like the best aren’t the ones that get the most traction. That’s okay. I’m still learning (see the first point).

Teaching someone something new to them.

When I, with ten minutes and a few hundred words, can change the world view of someone, I cherish that moment. It’s all well and good to go through my daily life just doing my thing, but when I have the opportunity to change the way a human mind works and sees the Universe, forever?

That’s the best. Doing my own thing, I’m limited. The surest way to multiply my impact is to share ideas. I’ll die. If the ideas I taught live on and spread after that?

I still win.

Coming home and sitting down in my chair.

I have a chair upstairs. It’s a nice, soft brown chair, next to a coffee table stacked with too many books. I walk in after a day away, pop my book bag on the floor, and ease down into the chair. From there, I can go anywhere. Most often, The Mrs. will curl up on the couch and we’ll talk about the day. Or if she’s not there? I’ll sit and read. Or sit and sleep. Or . . . whatever.

I told my son that if he’s got a paralyzed girlfriend to take her wheelchair if she wanted to break up. She’ll come crawling back.

Getting up and drinking coffee in my chair in the dark morning in an empty house after everyone but me has headed away.

There is something peaceful about sitting in the chair before the chaos of the day begins. I often turn off all of the lights and sit in a still, quiet house, reading about what happened while I slept. I look at my watch and follow the time until it’s time to go.

A crisp autumn day.

Winter is my favorite time of the year because I love the weather, the colder the better. An autumn day is nice, too. The heat of summer has burned off. The potential for a cool autumn day is endless. Work outside? Sure. Open the windows and paint a room? Sure. Weld up the mailbox supports? Can do. An autumn day gives a last look before winter.

Autumn days are filled with infinite possibility. I guess that makes me a Fall Guy. I got that nickname through the school of hard equinox.

One out of our four cats.

We had one cat, and it is an awful cat. Last November, The Mrs. and Pugsley conspired to bring home a second. I was against it. My reasoning was that atheists own more cats than Christians. Pugsley countered that it’s illegal to own Christians.

But about the cat? Sadly, I was wrong. That cat is a pretty good cat. I like it.

The two cats that showed up afterward? I’ll pass, thank you, and they can stay outside unless the apocalypse comes and we need extra flavor for the ramen.

But I like that one cat quite a bit.

I have the reflexes of a cat. Remember, a dead cat is still a cat.

A full Saturday afternoon reading a good book.

A few weeks ago it was cool during the week, but hot on the weekend. I grabbed a book around 9AM and started reading. I read through the morning (stopping for lunch) and then read until I took a nap.

That was nice. I hadn’t done it in years. There’s a magic in getting lost in a world, letting it open up in your mind. One boss of mine said that, “Books are the only way that one human can talk to another through time.” He was right. But I make it a point to never read a braille horror book – I can always feel when something is coming.

Sleeping in on Saturday but still being the first up.

The stillness of the house in the morning brings possibility. What will happen next? Who will the next person to walk down the hall be?

My friend kisses his wife goodbye every morning. The Mrs. asked me, “Why don’t you do that?” It’s a good question, but I don’t even know my friend’s wife that well.

As I look through the list, there’s a pattern: I seek new knowledge so I can share it. I look for stillness so I can create thoughts, and then put them into action. While I love taking action and making things happen in the real world, I like to think that the knowledge I pick up along the way and share might make any action I take look, over time, quite small.

What charges you up?

Friday: Things I’m Thankful For

“He’s like the hard-working, grateful employee we never had. Wish he would wear underwear, though.” – Bob’s Burgers

I don’t need coffee to wake up, I wake up to drink coffee.

It’s Friday.  Time for a happy post.  We’ll need one, because (brace yourselves) I think Monday’s post is going to be grimmer than a crab bake with Paris Hilton or father’s day with Woody Allen.

But we have today.  And when I am feeling down, a step back to realize and think about what I’m grateful for always brightens my day like a big old gravitationally contained spherical continual thermonuclear explosion.

Here goes.

  • I am thankful for you, readers near and far. I’m happy for the one-time visitors, and happy for the faithful weekly visitors to Modern Mayberry.  I had written thousands of words in a journal before I ever put a single word down on a blog.  This is better, and it’s because of you.
  • I am thankful for the really great fried potatoes The Mrs. made last night. They were very crispy on the outside, yet buttery-smooth on the inside.  A dash of ketchup to taste?

I couldn’t find the thingy that peels the potatoes so I asked Pugsley.  It turns out she’d gone off to the store.

  • I am thankful for the people that I have a chance to impact in meatspace. Hmm, that’s poorly worded, it makes it sound like I’m as bad a driver as a blind Antifa® member late to get his estrogen shots.  Let me rephrase:  I’m happy to help people in real life.  Times are tough, and they’re even tougher when people are tools on purpose, so if I can make someone’s life a little better?    Many times all it takes is real empathy and a single word.
  • I’m thankful that Pugsley forgot to take the trash out to the curb this week, so I can needle him about it (playfully) all week. Seriously, though, I’m really thankful because I haven’t had to remind him in the last six months, and he’s only missed trash day twice.
  • I’m thankful that The Boy will be down from Big State University this weekend. It’s always nice to have him around.
  • I’m thankful that sunny-side eggs taste so good. And I’m thankful that the crisp taste of a fresh tomato exploding as I bite into a cool slice on a hot day exists.  I’m grateful for the knowledge that a tomato is a fruit, and the wisdom to not put it on fruit salad.
  • I’m thankful The Mrs. We have saved each other from being very horrible spouses for other people.  After being married so long we’re like good lawyers:  we never ask a question we don’t already know the answer to.

I hear that insane people are driving trains in Mexico.  I guess they have loco-motives.

  • I’m thankful that I have had the good fortune to have had great bosses in most of my jobs. A good boss covers your back.  A great boss pulls more out of you than you ever knew you had.  One boss made the mistake of telling me to have a good day, because then I went home.
  • I’m thankful for being granted the maturity to (mostly) know when I was wrong, and to look at those times not as a personal attack, but as a hint on ways to get better.
  • I’m thankful for books. One of those great bosses that I had said, “Books are the only real way that you can talk to the greatest minds in history.”  He and I got along very well.
  • I’m thankful for the troubles I’ve had in life. Most of those troubles were like the chisel of a sculptor – they knocked off bits of me that I didn’t need, and left me better after the trouble passed.  As dead Danish dude Søren Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”  After I learned this lesson, every time in life I encountered difficulty, I asked myself:  “What am I supposed to learn from this?”  Life got way better after I realized that what started out as a difficulty could be the greatest gift ever.

The French donated the Statue of Liberty to the United States because they had no use for a statue with only one hand up.

  • I am thankful for fuzzy slippers in winter, electric fans in summer, and good cigars all year round. Protip:  if you look up “how to light a cigar” on the Internet, you will get 80 million matches.
  • I am thankful for the innocence I had. I am thankful for the experiences that removed it.
  • I am thankful for the valor of strong men who have defined bravery and given us heroes and heroic stories to the ages. I am stronger because of Leonidas.  I am stronger because of Seneca.  I am stronger because of a certain carpenter who lived and died and rose again some 2,000 years ago.
  • I am thankful for history, and the ability to gather vast amounts of scholarship to understand the past in ways that would have been impossible for all but the most dedicated scholars until recently. What do the “good parts” of American history and common sense have in common?  They’re both being wiped from existence.
  • I am thankful for PEZ®, because now I can honestly say that I’m the man who developed the PEZ®/Anti-PEZ™ space drive (PEZ Spaceship Secrets).
  • I am thankful that the heat of summer has given way to the cool nights of autumn. I won’t miss summer.
  • I am thankful for the way a perfect ride on a motorcycle feels as the gears shift smoothly upward under full acceleration, which, for a moment, is like riding the wind.
  • I am thankful for a hot cup of coffee on a cool fall morning, on the deck, with a book, a breeze, and nothing else in the world to do.

Pugsley called me, “Severely ignorant.”  I said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  • I am thankful for the things I don’t know.
  • I am thankful for one of our cats, not so much for the rest of them. Of course, the cat I like is the cat I wanted least.
  • I am thankful for all of my children – each of them in their own way.
  • I am thankful for a night of good sleep, and a morning where I have something exciting that pulls my head from the pillow. The Mrs. likes to lightly rub my back while I sleep, which is an amazing expression of gentleness. Unless you’re in prison.
  • I am thankful for work.
  • I am also thankful for time off.
  • I am thankful for the way my shirt smells the day after a campfire. It’s not uncommon for people to die in campfires – I mean, it’s not common, either.  I guess it’s medium rare.

What are you thankful for?