Category: Purpose

You’re Not Alone

“Théoden King stands alone.” – Lord of the Rings

GOOGLE

Google® is so biased they only ranked our Solar System one star.

Originally this was going to be an economic post (as is usual for Wednesday) about Crisis Capitalism and how this particular Crisis, like many others in the past will be used to concentrate wealth even more, perhaps with bikini graphs.  Maybe the bikinis get smaller as the economy shrinks?  At least that would bring some good out of the current crisis.  Plus I’ll always be known as “the guy who made economics interesting at last.”

That post will have to wait until next Wednesday.

What hit me today was an onslaught of news.  Not one story, but nearly every story I read was about deplatforming or attempting to silence alternative viewpoints to the conventional narrative as seen on TV.  In rapid-fire, I saw stories about deplatforming of news and opinion outlets, deplatforming of individuals and doxing (making private personal information public of non-public figures) of pre-teens(!) for thoughtcrime.

Heck, there was even a Serbian soccer player (playing soccer for an American pro soccer team) that was fired (after he was made to apologize) for comments his wife made on social media.  And his wife made those comments in Serbian.  I guess that he should have done his manly best and kept her home without access to electronic media devices?  Is the message that athletes should take away from this is that they should keep their women on a shorter leash?

Is this the Left telling men that they need to be more patriarchal and tell their women to be seen and not heard?

SERBIA

But his wife wanted to go anyway.

But the seemingly disjointed activities all had one purpose:  to make you feel alone.

The biggest story is that Zero Hedge® was cut off from Google® advertising revenue.  Since ZH™ is a for-profit company, this will hurt them.  Why was it cut off?  The story I saw indicated that it was because people commenting on the site were being less than politically correct.  And, yes, Google® has the legal right to do this, unless they did it because Zero Hedge© is transgender.

No, I don’t have examples, but these are commenters, not ZH© staff.  I jumped in to see the comment section on a typical post that I thought might be incendiary.  Would all the comments be safe to repeat at work?  No.  Have I seen worse comments on Twitter®?  Yeah, a lot worse.  I’ve seen worse commentary on Yahoo® news stories.

Zero Hedge™ has already been banned “permanently” once by Twitter©, and then reactivated.  The reason given was that Zero Hedge® had “doxed” a Chinese researcher . . . by publishing information that was already on the Wuhan Institute for Creating COVID Virology’s website.  As of now?  They’re unbanned.  Twitter© called it “an error.”

But it’s clear that they have made someone angry.

How much will it Google’s deplatforming cost Zero Hedge©?

I have no idea.

SECOND

Google® did give a four star rating to Chernobyl.  They would have given it five, but the locals ran out of fingers.

I do know that The Federalist™, another website was threatened with Google® demonetization due to comments on articles like this one (LINK).  The Federalist© just shut off comments entirely.

And that just might be the point.

Comments here are (generally) fairly unmoderated.  I think that outside of auto-moderated comments, I’ve nuked only one or two comments out of thousands during the life of this blog.  I am blessed with some of the smartest, most well read, and politest commenters on the planet.  You’re also probably the most physically attractive commenters on any website in existence, and I bet you all have impeccable armpit hygiene to boot.  But the comment section gives people a chance to talk to each other, bounce ideas off each other, and get to know each other.  It also is a little light on a dark Internet letting you know that you’re not alone.

Even the people who don’t comment benefit from the comments section.  For each person who comments, at least 100 other readers don’t comment.  But they read what you say.  And it’s important to them, and lets them know that they’re not alone, either.

Then there’s Laura Towler.

Laura is a British YouTuber® who is on the Right.  On June 6, she sent the following Tweet® and got the reply that follows it:

laura

“Chuffed” is slang that means “happy as a poodle with a pudding pop.”

This all went international.  The idea that a company would be so “brave” as to come out in favor of a group that is only supported to the tune of tens of millions of dollars by the largest tech companies and most of the largest news companies is really risky.

To boot, Yorkshire Tea© then picked on a (nearly) unknown individual citizen.  Brave, indeed – I’m sure that Laura is quite the power to be reckoned with given her 50,000 or so YouTube™ subscribers.  And Yorkshire Tea® is so small, being the biggest selling tea in Great Britain (which made 5.5 billion tea bags last year).

It’s like Coca-Cola® decided to pick on some kid going to prom.

But it led me to ask this question:  Did any of the companies that sponsor BLM even bother to go to the BLM website?

Outside of the cringing references to “comrades” and “collectivism” on the BLM website, they note that BLM wishes to:

  • “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family” and “collectively” care for one another.
  • They also want to [free themselves] “from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.”

This is not the language of a civil rights program, it’s the language of a communist front masquerading as a civil rights program.  And it’s not even Halloween yet, and I think that all of the cosplay conventions are on Coronahold.

JUICE

What’s the best way to kill communists?  Communism.

We’ve seen that at C.H.A.Z. and virtually every other protest activity that BLM is tied tightly to Antifa.  Imagine that C.H.A.Z. wasn’t six blocks being held by armed Leftists, and instead was being held by a militia from the Right.  I’d imagine we’d see National Guard Apache helicopters and the Seattle mayor calling for a neutron bomb strike to make the Hug Box of Seattle safe again.

I’m sure someone will bring up the Wildlife Refuge seizure by members of the Right in 2016.  But 26 of the occupiers of the Wildlife Refuge were charged with felonies.  Care to take bets on if the C.H.A.Z. occupiers will face any criminal charges?  Any of them?

Ms. Towler was able to handle the media storm that followed, and not apologize.  Heck, her Twitter® feed now cheekily shows “Disavowed by Yorkshire Tea©” as the lead line.  That takes style.

But Laura knew she wasn’t alone, and has weathered international condemnation.

It doesn’t stop there.

CENSOR

Russians call their website censoring the Inter-nyet.

The classic (and very boring) movie Gone With The Wind, the television shows of COPS®, Live PD™, and an episode of (the very funny) Fawlty Towers that first aired on October 24, 1975 have since been either hidden or cancelled.  Just like statues, these works of art define who we are as a people.  And removing them makes us not more, but less.

Every person who has a statue made out of him has something in common with those works of art – they have faults, especially when viewed through the lens of the 2020s.  And removing them or hiding them or tearing them down with mob violence is meant to make you feel alone.

If you’re against police corruption and militarization?  You’re not alone.

If you’re against excessive use of force by police?  You’re not alone.

If you’re against rioting and mob violence?  You’re not alone.

If you mock companies that virtue signal popular causes while avoiding tough issues like the near slave labor they use to produce goods that they offshored from American production?   You’re not alone.

If you’re against globalism and collectivism?  You’re not alone.

I’m not saying that the position of the Right is always the right position.  There are times the Right has been wrong.  But the positions of the Right aren’t based in hate – they’re based in a love of freedom, or family, or tradition, or nation, or a healthy desire to be religious.

If those things are important to you?

You’re not alone.

DRIVER

And if you suffer from paranoia, you’re not alone.  There’s someone behind you.

If you want this nonsense to stop so you can see economic graphs featuring bikinis?

You’re not alone.

Your one job? Be a good person.

“Mr. Towns, you behave as if stupidity were a virtue. Why is that?” – Flight of the Phoenix

GOOD

Well, at least someone gave this post two thumbs up.

My older brother, John Wilder (our parents were notoriously uncreative), got a job at a motel when he was in college.  His duty was to sleep in the apartment above the front desk, and if anyone wanted a room late at night, to get up out of bed and check them in.  Technically, he got paid to sleep on the job.  When I try to explain that’s what I’m doing to my employer, they seem to think it’s a violation of company rules.  They won’t even listen when I explain I won’t be sleepy on the job if I just sleep on the job.

Go figure.

One day the owner of the motel was looking for someone to do an extremely important job: sweep the parking lot every Sunday.  As I had heard of a broom, my brother put in a good word for me, and I ended up with my first official job.  As I don’t recall quitting, they might be irritated at me because I haven’t been in to work in decades.

This was a job that I was well suited for, since I was willing to work for the one-ish hour a week (on Sunday) sweeping up the parking lot.  I even had a time card, and got paid minimum wage.  So early each Sunday morning I’d get on my ten speed and bike down to the motel and sweep the parking lot.

BIKE

My bike kept trying to kill me, though.  It was a vicious cycle.

The best part wasn’t the few bucks after tax that I made, but rather sitting down with my older brother and having breakfast in the office.  I timed it so that I’d be done sweeping so we could watch a television show on TBS® together:  The Wild, Wild West.  I’m pretty sure I saw my first episode ever in that motel office.

By the time my brother and I watched it on the 12” screen in the office, The Wild, Wild West was decades old.  And yet it was better than anything on prime time television.  The Wild, Wild West, if you haven’t seen it, was Robert Conrad starring as secret agent James West in the 1870’s Western United States, complete with science fiction gadgets.

The villains were ludicrous.  One episode featured obviously rubber cobras.  And in one fight scene, Robert Conrad’s pants split wide open and they just kept filming – they were on a schedule, you know.  On top of that, the costumes resembled nothing ever worn by an actual human in any place and during any period in human history.

Silly?   Certainly.  But why was the show good enough that I planned getting up early to watch it?

It’s because the character James West (and his fellow secret agent, Artemus Gordon) were good.  West was a hero.  He was smart.  He could fight.  He had wit.  He laughed in the face of death.  And if he had a weakness, it was for a lovely lady.

JIMWEST

We’ll pretend that Will Smith took 1999 off.  There can be only one Jim West.

Why was James West’s contemporary, Captain Kirk so popular?  He was a cut from the same mold as West.

A boy needs a hero to look up to, who models virtue and strength.  And you could do much, much worse than either James West or Captain Kirk.  For some reason, the values of the networks changed, and The Wild, Wild West was cancelled (like Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies) in 1970 even though they did great in the ratings.  Hmm.

It was like there was a social agenda . . . .

As time has gone on, many of the “heroes” in movies and television are given “depth” cheaply by making them either morally weak or having the system they work for be compromised in some way.  When a hero sneaks by like Mal Reynolds on Firefly, well, the system takes care of him pretty quickly.

MAL

Captain Tightpants aims to misbehave.

Culture is, of course, upstream from politics.  Culture is in part created by those heroes we are given to worship.  Where do those heroes come from?  Well, I mentioned James West, but I recall being pretty psyched about the Founding Fathers when I was a kid.  Dad got pretty mad after the third cherry tree.

Our political reality is therefore created in part by media (now a tool of the Left) and academia (also a tool of the Left).  And now the Founding Fathers are, instead of being revered for attempting to create a whole new type of country are regularly bashed in schools.

This attempt of the Left to steer culture obscures the real message.  As a human, we have one (and only one) job.

That job is to be a good person.

It’s that easy.  We waste a lot of time and effort wondering what it is we should be doing, when the answer is laughingly simple.  You can’t control your height.  You can’t control your intelligence.  You can’t even control society.  What can you control?  Your actions and attitudes.

So, be a good person.  That’s it.

The Left tries to obscure that simple truth because it has to.  The Left doesn’t want you to be a good person.  The Left wants you to be a Leftist.  When I look at the memes from the Left, I’m astonished by two things:

  • They’re horribly unfunny, and
  • They’re based on a big wall of text.

LEFTMEME

No editing required.

The Lefty memes aren’t funny because funny requires truth.  I wrote about that recently in The Leftist War on Culture: Comedy Edition.  When truth is strangled, humor disappears which is why tyrants will kill comedians before they kill dissidents.  Humor is one of the most potent weapons of truth.

The Lefty memes have to rely on a large blocks of text because half of the meme is required to try to refute reality and re-define it.  If you’ve ever heard an actual Leftist talk, half of it is redefining terms:  boy used to mean boy, but now it’s an entire spectrum which might indicate that boy means boy on Monday, but when it’s time for the state track meet, boy means girl.  Sometimes.

If you want to watch real Olympic®-level verbal gymnastics, watch a Leftist try to define “racism” – it’s a hoot.  For bonus points, see if you can get them to read the dictionary definition.

That’s the good news.  Your job, being a good person, is so simple it’s hard for even the Left to mess up.  But I bet they could come up with a 600 word meme to describe that “good” is only “good” if it results in more Leftist votes and the abolition of private property.

I wish that I could promise to you that if you were a good person, you’d be rewarded.  That would be a lie.  Being good doesn’t guarantee a tangible reward, or even that you will succeed, or even be liked and admired in your time.

PANCAKE

I’m not sure I can promise a leprechaun will deliver them, though.

Likewise, being bad doesn’t guarantee punishment.  Heck, some research indicates that 4% of Chief Executive Officers of companies are psychopaths.  If you think long enough, you can come up with several names of people who are downright evil, but seem to be thriving.

The other bad news is that being good is hard work.  First, you have to figure out what good is.  Society isn’t necessarily a help here.  As I write this, The Boy is watching livestreaming rioting and property destruction across multiple cities.  When I try to calibrate the whole good/bad thing, I’m not sure that looting a Target® or burning a Hyundai© serves much of a purpose.

Being good isn’t about being good for today, either.  I could easily ruin a child by making life too easy, or not holding them to high standards.  Would it result in a happy child now?  Sure.  But every parent knows that short term success builds children into monsters who end up burning a Target™ or a Hyundai®.

RIOT

Brought to you by the Minnesota Vistor and Tourism Bureau.

To be good, a moral code and the courage to follow it is required.  Christianity is the one that built the West, and you could do worse – you rarely hear of Amish drive-by shootings, since everyone can hear the clip clop of the horses from pretty far away.

The Romans (Roman Virtues and Western Civilization, Complete with Monty Python) had a well-developed system of virtue thousands of years ago and spent a lot of time working to figure out how to be good – that’s pretty close to the basis of the Stoics.  Making it up your own individual code as you go can lead to rationalization and relativism.  If it feels good, it may not be good – a lot of bad things feel very good at the time.

But generally, if it feels bad, it nearly always is.

Be a good person.  Ask yourself:  WW(JW)D?  No, not John Wilder.

Jim West.

But make sure you get your sweeping done first.

The Funniest Post You’ll Read About Life and Death, Featuring Vikings.

“I understand. In death, a member of Project Mayhem has a name. His name is Robert Paulson.” – Fight Club

DIE

I don’t want to be killed by a large sneeze, though.  I don’t want people saying I bit off more than I could achoo.

As a culture, at least in the developed West, fearful of death.  We hide from it to a degree that I’m not sure most of us are aware of.  How could we be aware?  Like our browser history, we’ve spent so much time and effort hiding it from public view.

I noticed a pattern in my life.  First, when I was young, we went to funerals.  Those funerals were where we buried my grandparents.  As I got older, I started going to a lot of weddings as friends tied the knot, and funerals dropped to nearly zero.    But as I get older, I’m seeing more funerals again.  Most recently, it was for The Mrs.’ grandfather.  Her grandfather was a crew chief on B-17’s for the 8th Army Air Force.  He was buried in the same Army olive drab uniform that he’d worn in World War II.

Funerals are, and should be, a time for reflection.  When I looked a little at the big picture, in modern America most people rarely see dead people unless it’s in a hospital bed or at a funeral.  Sure, there are exceptions.  Cops, soldiers, people in medicine, and morticians see them all of the time outside of those limited settings, but those people are a pretty small percentage of the population.

funeral

When I pass away, I don’t want a fancy funeral.  One like this is fine.

I was half-watching a movie, perhaps in the 1990s, so I’m a little shy on details.  The movie was set during the Great Depression, and the husband had died.  The wife had prepared the body and it was sitting ON THE DINNER TABLE for people to come and see for the visitation.  Okay, not sitting.  But the husband’s corpse was stretched out where they ate their fried okra and possum sushi or whatever it was people ate during the Depression.

What the heck?  “Surely they didn’t really do that,” I said.  There was an older person in the room who had lived through the Depression.  He corrected me.  “Surely they did.  Funeral parlors were for rich people.  And what are you gonna do, put him on the floor?”

Wow.  I guess the old saying of “dust bunnies don’t mix with the dead” is true.

Being a product of my time, I hadn’t really thought about that at all.  Dead people?  Call a professional.  Very nice and tidy and nothing but a bill that you can pay by check or credit card.

But when you look back at life in the 1930s and before, I guess there was a reason that people had little graveyards on the farm:  they were used to dealing with death and couldn’t pass the duties required by death to someone else.  Who else was going to do it?  You couldn’t hire it out like today.  Our ancestors knew what we have now forgotten.  Just as birth starts a life, death ends it.  I heard a statistic from the CDC® that life has a nearly a 100% mortality rate.

TERM

I will say I’m in favor of the new congressional cheese support bill.  Count me as pro-volone.

Close physical contact with our dead relatives used to be the norm, not the exception.  For them, death was a part of life.  My mother-in-law was doing genealogy of her family.  For the most part, genealogy is not horribly interesting to me unless there’s a story.  Just knowing that I had a great-great-great-great grandpa called Duncan McWilder back in 1788 doesn’t tell me a lot.  Was he a scoundrel?  Why did he hop the boat to America?  Was it for better Internet?

I did jump on the Mormon database and at least someone thinks I am the great29 grandson of Harald Hardrada, who had a notoriously bad day in 1066 A.D. when he forgot to put on his armor when going up against the English.  At least Harald has a story.  After one of Harald’s vacations in Bulgaria, he got the nickname “Bulger-burner,” which is probably a lot funnier of a nickname if you’re not from Bulgaria.

HARALDY

And I hear that dead Viking Scrabble® players go to Vowel-halla.

Okay, that was a digression.  I’ll see if I can’t get off at the right exit this time.  Anyway, my mother-in-law was doing genealogy.  One particular male relative had three or four wives.  Polygamy?  No.  His wives kept dying in childbirth or from some plague that we can fix with a shot or thinking that arsenic and lead were what made makeup good, or wearing asbestos corsets and radium jewelry.  People were acquainted with death in a real and up-close manner in the Victorian era.

arsmeme

Sad clowns don’t wear arsenic makeup, they use frown-dation instead.

I think that as we isolate ourselves from death, we start to pretend that it doesn’t exist.  In some cases, people like Ray Kurzweil are attempting to figure out how to stop aging and live forever.  Failing that?  Ray is planning on being frozen into a corpse-sicle for later defrosting and infinite life.  My bet?  People will be able to live longer, but they won’t be able to live forever, because testing immortality drugs takes forever.  And everyone is doing it:  a guy outside of Wal-Mart® was selling immortality supplements, and it looked like a scam, so I called the cops.  They were aware – they arrested the guy last year, in 2000, in 1968, and even, they said, back as far as 1880.

Ray may be able to squeeze a few more years out, but I thing that physical immortality isn’t something that we’ll see.  At least not in my lifetime.  Sorry, but immortality jokes never get old.

Even though life is part of death, that doesn’t mean we have to like it.  But we don’t have to fear it, either.  Very few of us will get to choose the time and place of our death.  But we have the choice as to what we are going to do tomorrow to make this a better world – to do things that matter.

NORSING

If a Viking is reincarnated, is he Bjorn again?

Heck, if I was immortal, I’d probably never get around to doing things that matter, since there’s always another tomorrow.

Until there’s not.

Just like Harald Hardrada, there will be a time and place when we’ll die.  But Harald was a smart Viking, and he knew he wouldn’t drown.  He knew that you could lead a Norse to water, but you can’t make him sink.

So, get going.  And don’t forget your armor.

Eight Phases of Crisis: COVID-19 Edition

“You had a dishwasher box to sleep in?  I didn’t even know sleep.  It was pretty much twenty-four seven ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn.” – Deadpool

BATSLAP

One girl I dated in High School asked if she used too much makeup.  I replied, “Dunno, depends on if you are trying to kill Batman®”

“Great, now it’s the end of the world and we can’t get a new dishwasher,” The Mrs. actually said, after I finally relented that it would probably cost more to fix the dodgy old dishwasher than a new one would cost.  Plus, the old dishwasher is stainless steel, so if it were a hundred yards away, it would make quite a nice practice target.  I call that a win-win.  Besides, Amazon® actually has them in stock, so I could theoretically have one by next week.

See?  You can get quality appliances during the end of the world.

I started working from home yesterday, which was nice.  When it was lunchtime, I wasn’t hungry, but I was nice and warm so I took a nap right in my home office which is also known as the couch.  Good times.  I do have a concern – The Mrs. slapped my heinie as I walked by and said, “nice butt” so I’m thinking of bringing this up with HR.  I want to be treated as more than a sexual object.  I mean, not much more, but more.

As much as you might be interested in my derrière, I really do want to talk about COVID-19 and get to the bottom of how the issue will progress in the coming months.  While each crisis is different, they are all sort-of-predictable because in the end, people don’t change all that much, even though circumstances do.  Certainly we want to get this all behind us, in the rear view, so to speak.

Okay, I’ll stop.  Seven synonyms for the posterior in two paragraphs are quite enough.  I don’t want you to think I’m a bum.

But what is this pattern I mentioned?  Here are, as near as I can determine, Eight Stages of a Crisis™, a level at which each crisis can be evaluated compared to the other – this is my modification of work originally done by Zunin and Myers.  This is like the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief, but with the apocalypse in mind.  Why settle for one death, when you can have millions or billions on your mind?  It’s so nice and cheery.  The nice part of using this model is that you can gauge where we are in the current COVID-19 mess.

FRANZ

Who would he assassinate for a Klondike® bar?  Apparently Archduke Franz Ferdinand. 

The Warning

This is the opening stage of a crisis.  It may be short, as in 9/11, or it may be a slow-motion collapse like the gradually increasing troop buildups and mobilizations that led to World War I.  Everyone wanted to stop it, but no one was sane enough to say “no.”  The Warning before the first Civil War was literally decades in length.

In the current COVID crisis, The Warning came during and just after the December impeachment.  With the focus of the country elsewhere, who cared about the flu?  We don’t trust the media very much.  Why?  They don’t seem trustworthy.  Example:  when Trump shuts down air transport to China, CNN® says it’s racist.  When China shuts down air transport from the United States, CNN™ says it’s a wise and prudent move by China’s benevolent leadership.

In a world where CNN™ and the Chinese government have similar levels of credibility we tend to forget the ending to the story of the boy who cried wolf:  in the end, wolves really attacked.

DINOS

How did they not see this coming?

The Event

The Event is generally not long, but it can be.  It’s the Shot Heard Round the World at Lexington and Concord in the Revolutionary War.  The Event is when the rules change forever, and nothing can ever make the world go back to the way it was.  It’s the spark that lights the fire.  When people look back, everyone can see The Event.

Nothing is ever the same afterwards – The Event changes everyone that it touches, and often ends up changing systems permanently.  It is disruptive.  It may not be the reason that everything fails, it might just be a small event toppling an already unstable system.  In a crisis like 9/11, the event is obvious and instant.  COVID-19 has led to a slow-rolling avalanche across the economy.  Was it poised for a fall anyway?  Possibly.

As a longer cascade, what will be The Event that history will use to remember COVID-19?

In one of my more frightening thoughts:  what if we haven’t seen The Event yet?

DISB

I’m not sure he’s koalafied to make that decision.

Disbelief

When things have changed, and changed drastically, people refuse to believe it.  When the power is out because a tree fell on the power lines, I will walk into a room an automatically flip the light switch.  Why?  Habit, partially.  But there’s a part of my mind that is existing in Disbelief, perhaps, that doesn’t believe that the power could ever be gone.

Disbelief isn’t a coping strategy, and it’s not an attempt of the mind to protect itself, at least in a healthy person.  It’s more inertia.  You’re used to the world being a certain way, and when it isn’t, part of your mind isn’t quite ready to process it.

This might be an overreaction – COVID-19 might be no worse than the flu.  But that isn’t explained by the reactions we’ve seen so far from places that got it earlier than the United States.  Italy is locked down.  In two weeks, we will know more.  In a month, I think, we will have certainty.

PANIC

In order to calm panicked customers, Wal-Mart opened up a second register.

Panic

At some point, the mind is confronted with the new reality and forced to accept it.  But the rules are new, and unknown.  What to do?  One could take a deep breath, and review the situation and think logically or?  One could Panic.  Panic is easier, and doesn’t require a lot of thought.

Panic is the natural reaction when your brain realizes that it has done zero to prepare for the new reality.  So, what to do? Buy staples as required to build up the stockpile you’ve accumulated over time?  Or buy 550 cans of Diet Mountain Dew®?  Or just buy toilet paper, because everyone else is and you don’t know what to do or have any independent thought?   Toilet paper purchasing is Panic.

HERO

Not all heroes are able to walk.  I mean, some gained 400 lbs on the couch.

Heroism

While the Panic is ongoing, the first glimmer of Heroism starts to show.  Brave men and women working in the medical field are the first signs of Heroism.  Donald Trump talking with Al Sharpton to address the problems he sees is Heroism – realizing that there is a greater good, and that sacrifice is required.  Heroism is embodied throughout the response to the crises where a few have an opportunity to save many, and where enemies put aside squabbles for a time because it’s the right thing to do.

There was a family story – Grandma Wilder went during World War II to weld Liberty ships at the Alameda Ship Yard.  She would regularly get things sent to her from her mother who lived in the country in the middle of Flyover.  Needles were rationed in San Francisco, but not in Flyover.  Sugar was rationed in San Francisco, but not in Flyover.  Why ration needles and sugar?  To build common purpose, so even people not piloting P-51s or jumping out of landing craft at Iwo Jima could feel like they were doing their part.  To be fair, rationing was necessary in wide segments of the economy, it wasn’t a fake, but it did help bring everyone together.

Right now Heroism is going on, and we aren’t even asked to do anything more than to sit down and watch Netflix® unless we’re keeping vital industries going.  Here’s a link to Aesop’s place that shows the quiet heroism going on out there (LINK).  Read it all.

CLIFF

I read the other day that coyotes are about 10 miles an hour faster than road runners.  My entire childhood was a lie.

The Cliff

Keeping order requires energy.  Some part of the energy of the system is put into keeping order.  In a time of significant social cohesion, like World War II, the United States didn’t face The Cliff, even though virtually every other developed nation did.  Instead, the energy that the crisis took was replaced by people working together.

Most of the time in a real crisis, however, there’s The Cliff.  I wrote about it here: Seneca’s Cliff and You.

We have not fallen off The Cliff.  Is it certain that there is one?  No.  But every single leader, elected or appointed, is acting like it’s there.  I believe we will see it.  The new normal will be grow from events moving quickly.  Already at Wilder Redoubt, we’ve had nothing but home cooked meals for the last week, with a couple of store-bought sandwiches being the exception.

Will home cooked food, family dinners, and homeschooling be the legacy of COVID-19?

I expect that we’ll see The Cliff soon enough.  How deep will it go?  As I’ve mentioned before, no one knows.  The worst case is that the economy crashes through levels to Great Depression era lockup in two weeks or so.  Only 40% of Americans are able to absorb an unexpected $1,000 expense.  80% are living paycheck to paycheck, and those paychecks just stopped.

Dead.

Going first will be car payments.  The average monthly car payment is $800.  Me?  I’d sell you my daily driver for just two months of that, so expect car finance companies to seize up like an ungreased stripper pole.  But the businesses that employ those people aren’t much better off.  The best restaurant in Modern Mayberry came pretty close to closing down shop six years ago, but pulled through.  The second best restaurant didn’t survive.  There will be cascading failures as the debts owed from one business to the next go unpaid, and this won’t just be for small businesses.  I feel confident saying that several businesses with 10,000 or more employees will go bankrupt.  Overall loss to the economy?  40% of the GDP this year?

Is there a better case?  Sure.  We contain COVID-19 in a month or so, and then call it good.  We only lose 10% to 20% of our GDP this year, and government pumps five or six trillion dollars into the economy to juice it back up.  That’s the best case.  And that’s just in the United States.

I’m not kidding, that’s how deep The Cliff is.  If we’re lucky.

EMPEROR

Something, something, Dark Side®.

Disillusionment

After the fall, things suck.  We had heroes, but the time for Heroism is over.  Disillusionment sets in when things don’t snap back to normal.  Things will seem rosy, only for failure to crush hope.  The more government “helps” during this phase, the worse recovery will be.  Roosevelt “helped” so much during the Great Depression that he extended it for years.

But politicians will take drastic steps, because they can’t help themselves.  The length of time Disillusionment lasts?  Months to years.

FIX

Some re-assembly required.

Rebuilding

This is the other side of The Cliff.  Whereas, as Seneca said you go down a cliff pretty quickly, you only build up slowly.  Rebuilding the economy will take years.  If we do it right, we’ll build a stronger economy, less dependent upon foreign supply lines, that guarantees freedom while preserving the traditional values that built the wealth in the first place.

If done poorly?  The system is controlled, oppressive, and coercive.  Leaders matter, but the quality of the citizenry to fight back against the system is even more important.  Rebuilding takes years, and by my best case scenario, four to eight years.

DISHWASH

So, I guess I’ll get a jump start on rebuilding.  Dishwashers on the Internet.  Amazing.  My only problem is that there’s this lady at work who keeps making suggestive comments and touching me all the time.  Just a few minutes ago, she told me that she expects me to share a bed with her!  They always told me not to get my honey where I got my money, but what happens when you work at home?

Uncertainty, Retirement, and Immortal Lawyers

“This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.” – Fight Club

juicebox

The 13th Rule of Fight Club:  If your mom is going to drive you home after Fight Club, make sure she signs you out first.

With everything in the news right now, it’s probably a good time to talk about money and life.  There are significant uncertainties right now, and here are a few examples in no particular order:

  • Corona Virus – A big deal? It might be.  I just saw that Corona® beer had changed their name to Bubonic Plague™.
  • Nuclear Iran And Nuclear North Korea – The plus side of nuclear war is no more pop-up ads.
  • Impending Market Meltdowns – Escalators were down, while Pencils lost a few points. Paper was stationary and Diapers remained unchanged, while Toilet Paper reached a new bottom.
  • A Left Wing That Has Bad Intentions When It Gains Power – The upside is that when a Leftist walks into a bar after the Revolution, he’ll order shots all around.
  • Jack’s Raging Bile Duct – Wait, hold up?

Okay, it’s not really a bile duct.  And the guy’s name wasn’t Jack.

I was reading about a guy who just retired at about age 60.  He had saved and invested his whole life, making sure that he would have enough money to last until he was 90.  Since he had been a high-powered Wall Street guy, he did really well.  He had saved millions, so he intended to live a pretty nice retirement with lots of travel around the world.  Oh, he wanted to live in a pretty expensive town.  And, even though money isn’t everything, it kept him in touch with his children.

Then?

mario

Mario had to retire from plumbing because the Yelp® reviews all mentioned him raiding the fridge for mushrooms and stomping on any pet turtles he saw.

He was diagnosed with cancer – but a type that’s incurable.  And it’s a fairly tough type:  it’s got a 50% survival rate to make it for 5 years.  Amazingly, he was writing about what people in their fifties might do in the current investment climate.  He wasn’t writing about the fact that the remainder of his life was maybe reduced by 83% from his plans.

Me?  If I were him, I’d be spending at least some of the money that I’d saved to last me for twenty-five years of life until 90 on a very, very nice bottle of scotch.  And perhaps a cigar made from angel wings.  For dinner? Nothing special.  Maybe some surf and turf:  yeti with Loch Ness monster filets grilled over lava pulled from the center of the Earth.  I’d make sure that I used every second that I had left to me.

hannibal

No clowns though.  They taste funny.

But what if our lives were infinite, would that change anything?

I was driving down the street with The Boy and Pugsley several years ago.  We were driving home from a camping trip, and were going through a small town on a sleepy Sunday morning.  It was early enough that people hadn’t even gotten up for church yet.  As we drove I saw a sign that said, “Jim McGill, Insurance and Real Estate” and decided to make a joke, because we’re a fun family.

I pulled out my best booming operatic voice, so deep and resonant it makes Brian Blessed sound like he hasn’t yet hit puberty:

blessed

Don’t hate him because he’s beardiful.

“Jim McGill is here to help you with all of your insurance and real estate needs, as he has for a thousand years here in Cedar Ridge.

“No one has more experience than McGill, who has studied the intricacies of umbrella insurance policies for decades of the countless years of his nigh-immortal life.  McGill can also use his communion with the deep and ancient dark spirits of the Earth to find the very best property for you.  Since the dawn of single-celled life on this puny planet, there is no insurance agent or realtor who will ever get you a better deal.”

The Boy piped in: “Brought to you by the power of the Necronomicon™.”

See, I told you we’re a fun family.

immortal

Oh, I thought you said immoral.  My bad.

I was making a joke, but stumbled upon a truth.  The joke was supposed to funny because here was an immortal being, selling insurance in a small town in the Midwest.  But as I drove on, I realized a different truth:  if an immortal can’t afford to spend his life doing trivial things, why do we?

Not that there’s a problem selling insurance, or a problem with selling real estate.  I have a friend who dreams about selling real estate.  She’s going to get her license.  I think she’ll have a lot of fun with it – she likes working with people, and it’s something that’s important to her – finding the right person to sell the right house to will probably be fun and she probably won’t have to summon demons and other Satanic spirits to find a nice three bedroom on a cul-de-sac for a married couple with a baby on the way.  Probably.

For me, personally, selling real estate would be one of the punishments that would be reserved for a deep level of Hell:  lower than people who mow lawns at 8am on Saturday morning but not quite as low as Congressmen.  But I think it will really make my friend happy.

jake

He has a very special set of skills . . . .

And that’s a good reason to be a realtor – being happy by helping other people.  It’s also a good reason to sell insurance.  But never forget, doing a job is just that, doing a job.

We may not like everything we have to do at work, and we’re certainly not special snowflakes who deserve the job of our dreams just because we got a Master of Fine Arts in Paranormal Entity Identification and Eradication.  We get paid to go to work because it’s not a hobby.  Lots of times we’ll do things we’d only do if you were getting paid, like when I polished Grandma’s corns for a shiny new nickel.

It may be that the gentleman with cancer is writing for a reason – because that’s how he’s wired.  I get it – I’m writing this sentence at 4am.  But he has a choice.

There comes a time to realize that, if the basics are covered, you really do have a choice.  Money only buys a certain amount of happiness.  A new car isn’t necessary if you have one that works – no matter how old it is.  You are trading your life for money, and even if you die with a lot of money, you’re still dead.

Make sure the trade is worth it, because you’re literally trading your life for it.

Meanwhile . . . somebody go pluck an angel’s wings.

Erasing the West: Step by Step

Groucho:  Now, Columbus sailed from Spain to India, looking for a shortcut.  Chico:  Oh, you mean strawberry shortcut? – Monkey Business

columbus

Columbus sailed his ships, the Niñteñdo, the Piña Colada, and the Santa Fe to the new world and then bravely tried to repel the landing Pilgrims.  Or so I seem to remember.

Christopher Columbus was one of the first that they came for.  Columbus was easy pickings, really.

Columbus lived and died five hundred years ago, nearly as long as it seems the Democrats have been trying to get Trump out of office.  Columbus was an Italian before Italy was a nation, so getting support for Columbus isn’t all that easy.  Besides, Columbus was an Italian working for the Spanish, which I imagine involved enough hand gestures to make eye protection necessary as far away as France.

But Columbus was the first hero that they came for because he represented something that the Left hates:  Western Civilization.

In reading through several columns on why Columbus is bad, none of them focused on things that Columbus did, with the exception that he was too harsh to Spanish colonists, and some of the worst allegations were probably written by his mortal enemy, Agent Smith.  No, most of the things that the writers blame on Columbus were based on events that were a result of the clash between Western Culture and the culture that previously existed in the Americas.

None of the articles noted that the people living in the Americas at the time were far more barbaric than anything brought to them by Europe – the Aztecs and Mayans and other tribes enslaved, murdered, and exploited each other on a scale that almost puts Sesame Street® to shame.  The only real crime Columbus was guilty of was showing Europe how to get to a continent that was so technologically backward and immunologically compromised that it could be captured by half a dozen guys with swords and horses.  It was like a flock of kittens in a room full of metal-bladed box fans, except the kittens had a better chance.

sacrifice

I want to resurrect the Aztec religion and start sacrificing vegans.  That’s not a typo.

The war against Columbus isn’t about Columbus – it’s about a hatred for Western Civilization as a whole.  The war is a desire to erase culture.  Each time it occurs, it follows a similar path:

  • Choose someone who is a cultural hero, preferably a primary face of the development of Western Culture. The person should be, ideally, revered.  I mean, not as revered as me, but revered.
  • Pick the worst things that they ever did, even if their life was otherwise a paragon of virtue. Note that it’s okay if what they did was socially acceptable back in the time and place it was done – the worst thing they ever did should be the only thing used to characterize the person.  Jefferson founded a University, wrote the Declaration of Independence, and was President?  You know he got caught double parking his buggy once?
  • Never let up. Even if it comes out that (like in the case of Columbus) nearly every bad thing said about the guy was written by his mortal enemy, ignore it.  Keep vilifying him, and blame him for every single consequence of everything he ever did, even if it happened after he died.  It’s like blaming George Washington for Mount St. Helens because it erupted in the state of Washington.

One particular consequence of Columbus making his journey is that the United States exists.  Yeah, he never made it to any part of what makes up the United States today, but he showed the Europeans who finally got around to colonizing what eventually became the United States the way to get here.  Western Culture came, and expressed itself in a unique way:  American Culture.

washington

If George Washington were alive today, he would probably spend most of his time scratching at his coffin lid.

In the case of the United States today, one common claim by Leftists is that there is “no American Culture.”  I’m certain that fish don’t know that they’re swimming in water, either.  But that is certainly a lie.  American Culture doesn’t seem like it exists because it is all around us in the United States, and happens to be one of our biggest exports while also being our biggest draw.

Overall, American Culture has been responsible for creating more technology and prosperity than most cultures that have ever existed.  Has it done stupid things, things with negative consequences for millions of people around the world like set loose Adam Sandler or Bruce Springsteen?  Certainly.  But on balance, the world has been made much, much better by Western Civilization and the United States.

But the Left cannot abide by nations like the United States or, especially, Western Civilization.  Both of these stand in the way of the Left – they are structures that impede the ability of the Left to control every aspect of your life, to create a logic and history that only agrees with what the Left says.  It’s because they exist, they want to destroy them.  Very directly they want to destroy your culture.  They hold your values as obstructions.  They want to disintegrate your family so your loyalty belongs to the Left.  And they want to see you dead so that your ideas will die with you.

stalin

Stalin:  There is no “I” in team, but there is “U” in gulag.

All of that starts with values and culture.  To attack that, not only do they attack the culture of today though the infiltration of Leftist ideas (How To Spot Propaganda In 2020, Featuring Stonks) but also through the vilification of the past.  What has been attacked?

  • Statues – of Columbus, of Civil War leaders, of Lewis and Clark. They will not be done until every traditional American Hero is gone.
  • The National Anthem – Bouncy© (that’s her name, right?) and Jay C™ were at the Superbowl® on Sunday. They sat during the National Anthem to protest the unfair nation that provided Jay C© with his meager billion dollar fortune.  Heck, you can’t even raise a private navy with that pittance.
  • Borders – Chants of “No Border, No Wall, No USA at All” are fairly subtle. I just wish I could figure out what they meant.

There are steps in the cultural erosion that we’ve seen so far, and the biggest attack has been against the Idyllic Decade, the 1950’s.  The 1950’s were the last decade before everything went wrong.

limb

Followed by the Jell-O® salad course, naturally.

It’s been attempted by the media, by movies, to re-write the 1950’s, just as the attempt to tear down Columbus started.  Why attack the 1950’s?  Because it was the high point in the life of the American family.  Things were good:

  • Postwar prosperity led to nearly universal employment.
  • The wages of a single man were enough to support a family and raise children.
  • Less than three percent of children were born to single mothers.
  • Violent crime was less than half of today’s crime rate.
  • The salary gap between a high school graduate and a college graduate has tripled since 1965.
  • Boy Scout participation is half of 1950’s – and that was before the BSA folded to political correctness and saw a free-fall in membership.
  • Kiwanis membership is half of 1950’s numbers.
  • Church attendance in the 1950’s was nearly 90%. Now?  Less than 40%.

Thank heavens Netflix® subscription numbers are up, since today 41% of children are born to unmarried mothers.  Or there might be a correlation here . . . .

But what can you expect when reality is inverted in just the same way that the legacy of Columbus, skilled navigator, was inverted?

Family is now seen as bad.  Rather than being a supporting structure that helps a child learn right from wrong via loving parental support and instruction television and movies would have you believe that family is  a stifling, controlling, patriarchy that just doesn’t want you to be the individual snowflake you were meant to be.  I mean, that’s what you’d think if you got your information by watching television or movies.

cats

The best part?  No limit on cats!

And churches?  They’re evil.  They’ve gone from places where you meet and discuss and learn about God to places where you learn nothing but intolerance from sweaty red-faced pastors and priests who don’t really believe in God.  Oh, and these intolerant pastors and priests are all secretly sexually twisted, since anyone who believes in God and values must be, deep down, a deviant.

They pick the best features of the Leftists to showcase.  They pick the best features of the civilizations that Leftists created, and then claim that it really work next time, while sweeping the bodies under the rug.  They then pick the worst of their opponents and often stereotype them using their own worst tendencies.  They want you to feel guilt for the things your ancestors did, when living by the standards of the day, while feeling no guilt themselves for the direct pain caused by their actions and ideas in the world today.

But, despite hardship, Columbus had a dream.  He sailed west.

Statue or not – he was a hero.

Health Goals, Girls in Togas (and a Bikini)

“Trying is the first step toward failure.” – The Simpsons

bojack

I want to get my face on a coin – that way I achieve my goal to help make change in the world.

One thing that I’ve decided to focus on even more in 2020 is my health.  Even if I followed all of Dr. Sinclair’s advice (Living Forever, The Uncomfortable Way), I’m still getting older although my immortality is working out so far.  In some respects I think that we might be in for some very interesting times in the next few years, so being in better shape than I am now would probably be a good idea.  Besides, as Pugsley gets older, taller, and stronger if I don’t do something he’ll wake up one morning and say, “I’m going to break you, little man.”

One way to do that is to keep my life under constant review.  This isn’t new, at all.  The Romans may be dead, but I contend that Roman philosophy dating from the first century A.D. is valid today.  Heck, current American civilization looks a lot like Roman life around that time.  In reading Seneca’s Letters, I saw a conversation where he described checking into a hotel, looking down from the room at the fitness gym next door.  A little later he described that the Romans had regulations on boat speeds in particular areas.  It was like California, but only 30% of the population in Rome were slaves.

hera

Romans on diets were happy when their togas went from L to XL. 

In particular, one of my favorite philosophers of the first century was Seneca.  Seneca was a stoic, but had managed to make a considerable fortune open a chain of all-night toga laundromats.  It was there that the togas were washed with water from the sea tides.  Occasionally, a batch of this water would get too stiff from the added starch used to flatten the togas so they weren’t wrinkled.  That’s where the Roman expression, “beware the tides of starch” comes from.

Okay, but what Seneca really said was:

“I will keep constant watch over myself and will put each day up for review.  For this is what makes us evil, that none of us looks back upon our own lives.  We reflect only upon what we are about to do.  Yet, our plans for the future descend from the past.”

– Seneca

Before I read that particular passage, I had bought a little Moleskine® notebook for just that purpose.  When I said, little, I mean it.  It’s really small – just a little larger than a 3×5 notecard.  It’s small enough I can fit it in my wallet.  I bought it for a very specific purpose:  to reflect on progress towards my goals, specifically my health related goals for 2020.

keeper

Her parents even named her Annette.

Each day I write down several things:  how much and what I ate – if I ate anything (The Last Weight Loss Advice You’ll Ever Need, Plus a Girl in a Bikini Drinking Water), how much I exercised, what weights I lifted and how many repetitions, my morning and evening weight, and whether or not I felt that aliens had put pods near my house that would turn into an exact duplicate of me if I dared fall asleep.  Those are a few of the things that go into the book, though not all of the things I put down.  It doesn’t take particularly long to write it down – just two or three minutes.

I find, for me, the process of writing this data down makes it more real somehow.  And it makes me jump on the scale on days I’d rather not (like after Thanksgiving) so I can get the data.  And collecting that data and writing it down is important.  It makes me face the cold, hard objective truth and holds me accountable in an equally objective manner.

So, I record what I’ve done, and how I’ve lived as it relates to my goals.  When I’m fasting, I write about that progress.  I also record how much I’ve slept, because even though I know that sleep is no substitute for caffeine, I also know that I’m probably not sleeping enough – though I would say that the passengers in my car seem to get unreasonably angry when I try to take a short nap.  “Are you trying to kill us?” they ask.

Worrywarts.  The road is practically straight.

drool

Sometimes I wake up grumpy – other mornings I let her sleep in.

Writing those experiences and activities down also help me celebrate victories – and holds me accountable for lapses.  It also sets up a feedback loop.  Nothing makes the next lunchtime session on the treadmill more focused than seeing that I gained weight the last week.  But present me certainly doesn’t want to make life worse for future me by setting future me up for a failure.  Writing things down changes outcomes.  I certainly don’t want to write down failures.  I mean, one time someone told me I tended to blame others for my failures.  He was right.  I guess I get that from my mother.

But in reviewing the past, and in reviewing my failures, I don’t, and won’t use past failures as a club.  I don’t allow them to poison my future.  Instead, I use failure as a lever.  Since I caused the failure in the first place, more than likely I can solve it.  Unless it involves communism.  Then you’re on your own – you should have seen the red flags.

kim

I’m hoping Kim declares war on his real enemy:  Twinkies®.

I also use this time to reflect on the things I did to take me towards my goals, and the things I did that take me away from them.  It sounds overly simplistic, but most people would be far healthier if they just made several small changes each day about what they eat, how much they work out, how much sleep they get, and what is the appropriate amount to pay for a hooker in Tijuana*.  $3.50 is probably a little low.

Weakness is powerful, so having to write down every time I make an error is one way make me more powerful.  It also strengthens the cause and effect relationship between my action and the outcome.  This further makes me accountable.  Dangit.

In a sense, this is (sort of) a sequel or companion piece to Wednesday (Focus is a Key to Life and Look a Squirrel!), and ties to focus.  You can have a plan, but if you don’t collect data and don’t analyze it regularly, you’ll never focus on it – it’ll be like an objective your boss gives you and then never mentions again – it simply will never get done.

  • If you write about it, you will focus on it.
  • If you measure it, you will manage it.
  • If your ego is against it, you’ll never measure it.

gob

“I’m a failure – I can’t even fake the death of a stripper.” 

I heard an interview with Penn Gillette, the Penn part of the illusionist duo Penn and Teller.  He was talking about his recent weight loss.  He mentioned what he thought his starting weight was, but then added, “I really don’t know how much I weighed at my heaviest, no one does.”  What he was stating is that his ego wouldn’t let him step on the scale at that higher weight – he simply didn’t want to know that answer.  It wasn’t until he’d started losing weight that his ego allowed him to start measuring.

And start managing.  And start tracking.

And start winning.

*I have never been to Tijuana, but I saw a Cheech and Chong movie once where the plot involved them making a van out of marijuana in Tijuana, so I feel I have some expertise.

Status, Money, and Bad Car Jokes

“Dude, where’s my car?” – Dude, Where’s My Car?

mercedes.jpg

I wonder if her Tiffany is twisted, too?

I recall reading a story about several wives at a kid’s soccer game in Dallas.  They were comparing cars – each of them had a new Mercedes® or similar luxury car.  One of the wives, exasperated, mentioned their really wealthy friend, Martha, who drove around in an older car.  “I wish I was as rich as Martha.  Then I wouldn’t have to drive a new car.”

It’s always fascinated me that there are people who feel that they have to spend money for appearances.  The Mrs. can vouch for that – it’s because of her vocal insistence that I spend money for deodorant, which I guess is like a Mercedes™, except Old Spice© is cheaper and costs much less to insure.

I know, I know, having to spend money to impress people is not a club I want to be in, but I find it interesting nevertheless.  After all, I’m in an even more exclusive club:  guys who want to be able to buy a pickup with a stick shift, a vinyl bench seat and rubber flooring instead of carpet.  As nearly as I can tell from the domestic pickup truck market, this particular club has one member.  Me.

The world seems to have gone into a mode that is based in luxury.  A few years ago, I visited a friend, Dave.  Dave had a new pickup truck.  As we drove around on a fairly warm day, I noticed that my butt was getting . . . cold.  That’s not something that normally happens to my butt by itself.  It turns out his pickup truck didn’t have just have heated seats, it had climate controlled seats that also got cold.

elon.jpg

I’m sure it has seats that cook you at 350°F or freeze you to -40°F.

I was amused – I didn’t even know that such a thing existed.  I hadn’t had my butt chilled for my pleasure before, except for that one time in Amsterdam.  Dave, however, didn’t buy the pickup because he was showing off or because he wanted specifically to chill my butt – he bought it because he wanted it.  And he probably paid cash.

Just kidding.  Dave probably wrote a check.

I wasn’t jealous of Dave’s truck.  It wasn’t something that I’d ever buy for myself.  My current daily driver is older than Pugsley, and has nearly 180,000 miles (3,500 kilograms) on it, and only 36,000 miles (45°C) on the latest oil change.  I’m wanting to keep it until it’s driven at least one light-second, which is 186,000 miles (63 meters).  Fingers crossed.  But I’m pretty sure I won’t get my car to the Moon – that’s 226,000 miles (5 liters), and I’m nearly certain my fuel pump will die again before then, plus Allstate® won’t insure translunar travel, I mean, at least not with full coverage.

neil.jpg

I’m sorry.  I Apollo-gize.  And, yes, I know that Neil never had a sweet ride like this one.

I’m not against spending money, but I think you should spend money like Fuzzy Pink Niven (Hugo® winning author Larry Niven’s wife) spends calories:

Potato chips, candy, whipped cream, or a hot fudge sundae may involve you, your dietician, your wardrobe, and other factors. But FP’s Law implies: Don’t eat soggy potato chips, or cheap candy, or fake whipped cream, or an inferior hot fudge sundae.

I think that advice on calories applies to many areas of life.  I have a budget of money.  There are things I have to buy, and have to spend it on – The Mrs. gets rather cranky if I don’t feed her.  Beyond those necessities, with any left over, I have a choice as to what I spend it on, and when I spend it.  Where Dave chooses to spend his on a really cool pickup truck, and a collection of pinball machines, my choices are different.

But those choices are mine, just like Dave’s choices are his.

florida.jpg

My ideal truck, complete with DIY garage!

Money represents potential.  It is the potential to create, the potential to build, the potential to serve.   In many ways, it represents the potential for future choices.

Time represents the potential for future choices as well.  We choose how to spend our money as if it is limited, but we choose to spend our time as if it’s unlimited?  Money comes and goes, but my budget of time is my life, measured in minutes and seconds.  Spending my time is nothing less than spending my life.  Just like a pickup seat determines how warm or cold our butts are, how we spend our time (and who we spend our time with) determines who we are.

butthead.jpg

Is it just me or does this picture of Beto O’Rourke look just a bit off?

Knowing this, go and make your choices today.

Because my butt is warm.  (That’s supposed to be motivational.)

A Texas Church, Aesop, and the Future of Freedom

“I’m the plumber.  I’m just hanging around in case something goes wrong with her pipes.  (to audience) That’s the first time I’ve used that joke in twenty years.” – Horsefeathers

groucho.jpg

“Why a four-year-old child could understand this report.  Run out and find me a four-year-old child.  I can’t make head or tail out of it.”

In a Texas church this weekend, the worst nightmare of the Left happened.  The only thing that could have been worse for the Left would have been a video of Bernie Sanders spending his own money.  A good guy with a gun (Jack Wilson) stopped a bad guy with a gun.  Part of what made it bad for the Left:  clear video evidence showed a good guy taking down a bad guy with a single shot.  To make it even worse for the Left:  the bad guy was a killer, shooting a pair of grandfatherly looking men in a room filled with grandma and grandpa types.

It was quick.  From the time the bad guy pulled his gun to the time the bad guy ceasing to . . . be was five seconds.  Five short seconds.  This was, perhaps, a final blow for the Left.  The idea that the police, who arrived very quickly (four minutes or less) should be the only ones with guns evaporated, especially since two church members were dead within three seconds.  A very well-trained citizen saved lives – how many we’ll thankfully not know, since he acted.

Not a cop.  A citizen.

Every Leftist commenter on the web that was trying to justify gun control in the wake of this tragedy couldn’t do so without defending the shooter as being somehow justified in wanting to rob the church.  The biggest problem in the eyes of the Left, perhaps, is that the churchgoers weren’t sufficiently Christian enough to quietly line up to be shot.  Texas is probably not the state for that.

What made the difference is that the good guy was able to ignore disbelief at the situation occurring right in front of him, and was able to react.  How could Jack Wilson do this?  He didn’t know exactly what threat he was going to face.  He didn’t even know if there ever was even going to be a threat.  But yet, he trained.  Dare I say it?  He was prepped.

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Ok, Zoomer.  (For the record, I’m neither.  I just like stirring things up.)

Jack Wilson scanned the churchgoers.  He was looking for data points.  He saw them and acted.

This week, Aesop over at The Raconteur Report posted his 2019 Quincy Adams Wagstaff Lecture.  It’s here (LINK).  RTWT.  As usual, Aesop writes excellent material – not only to ponder upon, but to act upon.  There are many wonderful points in it, and here is the opening:

Wherever you’re reading this, you’ve had unmistakable evidence that things aren’t going to go all rosy.  Perhaps ever again.  Perhaps just for a long dark winter of the soul, and/or of the entire civilization. There has been more than one Dark Age period in human history, and they will happen again.  You may very well get to see this firsthand, and experience life amidst it.  Howsoever long or briefly.

You’ve had a respite of some 37 months to get your metaphysical crap together in one bag, and use the time prudently.

If you’ve squandered that lead time, woe unto you.

This post made me think, which is dangerous.  At least that’s what my therapist says.  My therapist who says I’m “mentally creative” and “reality impaired.”  Thankfully, she’s imaginary, which really lowers her billing rate.  But what that post made me think most about was:

Mindset.

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This is what would happen if my imaginary therapist talked to The Mrs.  It’s funnier if you read the whole thing in a pirate voice, really.

Aesop mentions mental readiness, and that’s key.  The last 37 months have been, to put it mildly, an indication that we are headed towards a very uncertain future as the culture around us continues to polarize, as the monetary debt we face (all over the world) continues to mount, as soccer is still taken seriously as an international sport rather than a game for attention challenged three-year-olds, and as the international stability that was so hard won with the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War dissolves.

I’m not trying to sell you on any one future, on any one fate, unless there’s money in it.  But I am trying to emphasize the start of your salvation:  your mindset.  If you believe that the world will continue in an unbroken, linear stream, I can assure you that you’re wrong.  We’ve had the precursor warnings of 9/11 and the Great Recession.  If I am correct, this decade will bring tumult of a similar, if not greater magnitude.

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Evacuate the women and children first!  Then we can solve this in silence.

You should believe this, too.  Not on a surface level.  This is a mindset.  Your daily decisions should take these future unknown and unknowable calamities into account.  Why?

Because if I’m right, and you’re prepared a week, a month, or five years before you need to be, you win.  Also?  Society wins, because the more people that are prepared, the better we come through the next crisis/shock.  If we were all prepared, a hurricane could hit the shore and the stores would still be full.  When we prepare, we manage to make sure there will be less stress on the system during an emergency.

The other way to help is with skills, and the longer the crisis, the more important those skills will be.  And, no, your experience in saving the Princess® in Super Mario Brothers™ doesn’t count.  At least my therapist says it won’t.  Real skills provide for a basic human need, like food.  During the Great Depression, people gardened and farms weren’t big factory affairs – they were much smaller Mom and Pop style farms.  Even though there was significant malnutrition, starvation deaths in the United States were minimal.

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He said his New Year’s resolution was 1920×1080.

More evidence?

One of the biggest enemies of seeing reality is seeing the world you think should be, not the world as it really is.  People look at Antifa® rioting and think, “They should be arrested.”  They aren’t.  What does that data point tell you?

The government of Virginia is threatening to take semi-automatic guns, dedicate a team to confiscating guns and the government should allow honest, law abiding citizens to exercise the right to self-protection.  But the government wants to take it away and make honest people felons.  What does that data point tell you?

Government debt today is at 106% of GDP.  During the worst of the Great Depression, debt was less than 50% of the GDP.  During the height of the Vietnam War?  Debt was less than 40%.  What does that data point tell you?

I can’t promise the cause of the next crisis.  But I can promise that it’s coming.  Cultivate the mindset.  It’s the first step.

The key is to avoid despair even though you see the world as it really is.

“I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today.  I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet.  I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.” – Marcus Aurelius Groucho Marx

I have been accused of being too cheerful from time to time throughout my life.  And I plead guilty – with a smile on my face.  Why?

First – I’m naturally an optimist.  I want to achieve the best, but I also know that there’s no fixed way the world should be.  There is just the way that the world really is today.  If I don’t let myself get upset at the difference between an ideal and reality, I sleep a lot better.  Does that mean I’m satisfied?  No.  I work with every fiber to change some things for the better, but I don’t let it wreck my life like a pink-hatted blue-haired creature of fluid gender when confronted with a person who had to ask what their gender pronouns are.

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The first two hours are rough.  Caffeine is my best morning friend.

Second – Life has been awesome for me.  I can think of a LOT of times that I thought it was ruined.  But each of those times resulted in a situation that was pretty good for me.  Am I worth $30 million dollars?  No.  But that’s probably for the better.  If I had that kind of scratch I’d probably make Elon Musk look like the model of public restraint.

Third – I’ll admit, there was a time (about a year ago) where I got a little gloomy myself. But as I looked around me, I looked at what we have done.  I realized that freedom has won here in the United States for hundreds of years against all odds.

There were 2.5 million people living in the 13 colonies in 1776.  That’s less than the population of Utah.  In that 2.5 million we had a Washington, a Franklin, a Jefferson.  Sure, Franklin in 1789 might have drank more than the state of Utah in 1989 all by himself, but there are men that are the equal to our founders, and they exist in every state.  You know they exist, too.  The tricorn hats and powdered wigs are a dead giveaway.

Always remember that there is a line.  If you look at them standing along the church pews, scanning the congregation to keep them safe, they look nice.

Heck, they are nice.  Until they cross the line.

Then they’re not nice.  Then they become good men.

So, to gently change Groucho:  The past we wish to cling to is dead.  The present that we have is generally not so bad.  And we have a future, even if we can only see it dimly now, even if its golden age is years or decades away.

Let us go and make it.

Happy Penultimate Day 2019, and the Biggest Story of 2019: Society Unravelling

“Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but it sounds damn saucy, you lucky thing!  I know some fairly liberal-minded girls, but I’ve never penultimated any of them in a solar sojourn, or for that matter, been given any Norman tongue.” – Blackadder The Third

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If we have a boogaloo, let’s hope it’s a short one.  I’ve got a dentist appointment next Thursday.

If you’re reading this on Monday, December 30, congratulations!  It’s Penultimate Day!  This is the holiday that the Wilder’s celebrate every December 30.  Why Penultimate Day?  Back on December 30, 2012, The Mrs. wanted a new cell phone.  We drove an hour and a half south to a Best Buy® (the nearest place that sold cell phones) and then didn’t buy a cell phone.  After that, we ate at Olive Garden® and drove home. 

I think this was, perhaps, the disaster foretold by the Mayans that ended their calendar in 2012.  As is inscribed in ancient Mayan on the calendar:  “When the pale people from the north can communicate no more, and instead decided to eat a tasty pasta dish, perhaps with fresh-grated Parmesan cheese (say when!), that shall be the end of time.” 

Or my translation may be off.  Regardless, we are now celebrating our seventh straight Penultimate Day, and as you read this I might be not buying a cell phone, or perhaps having some sort of bottomless salad and breadstick combination at Olive Garden©.  Olive Garden’s™ motto is “when you’re here, you’re family©,” so I borrowed $50 and decided I’d never pick up when they call and insult them behind their back.

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Remember, when you’re here, you’re part of the Olivegarchy.

You can join in on Penultimate Day, too.  Simply go to a place that cells cell phones that is south of your house.  Then, don’t buy one.  Finally:  eat Italian food.  Sure, that’s not the purist version and you might be burned at the stake later for heresy, but, you know, Italian food.

My Penultimate Day post is also the post that I use to look back on the year to talk about the biggest story of the year.  In 2017, it was the verified UFO video from the military (Penultimate Day and The Biggest Story of 2017), in 2018, it was the loss of trust in our society (Happy Penultimate Day 2018, and the Biggest Story of 2018: Societal Trust).  The 2017 link comes with a (very) short story that I wrote in a Marriott® bar.

In 2019, the main story is the unravelling of society.

The main stories in all of the news is about that unravelling this year.  And it’s not just in the United States:

  • Brexit/Boris Johnson in Great Britain.
  • Yellow Vest Protests in France.
  • Hong Kong Protests in Cleveland.
  • Impeachment.
  • Left and Right Polarity.
  • Your family at Thanksgiving.
  • AntiFa® violence in mom’s basement.
  • Popularity of Stories About Impending Civil War in the United States.

We know trouble is coming.  The topic I’ve written about that’s gotten more views than any other this year has been Civil War 2.  How divisive is society today?  In an example of whistling past the graveyard, a hypothetical future conflict has been referred to as Civil War 2:  Electric Boogaloo.  This has shortened over time to just Boogaloo.  This is, of course, is a tribute to that classic of Western cinema Breakin’ 2:  Electric Boogaloo, a 1984 film about breakdancing that I’m sure you all have seen.

Deciding that they’d like to prove my point about the unravelling of society and the Left being a bitter, humorless bunch of that make the people at the DMV look like a jovial group of partygoers, members of the Left have decided that even the term “Boogaloo” is nearly hate speech.  Yeah, I’m not surprised, either.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

William Butler Yeats wrote the above as the opening of a song for the band Iron Maiden®.  Sadly Bruce Dickenson rejected it on the grounds that all of the members of Iron Maiden© took a vote and decided that they would all be born sometime in the future when guitars were just a bit more electric but yet not too boogaloo.

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Yes, Iron Maiden did an 18 minute metal song about a poem written in 1798.  And it was glorious.

Instead, Yeats settled for using those lines for the opening of his poem The Second Coming a hundred years ago in 1919, and during this time he was writing about what he saw as an unravelling:  an unravelling of science, an unravelling of governmental structures, and an unravelling of heterogeneous communities.  He looked back at the deaths caused by the pointless World War I and its deformed stepchild – the Russian Revolution, and saw an ending of one world, and the birth of the next.

These destroyed structures were built on speed and modernity.  What did Yeats see replacing the modern world?

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Kardashians are planning on acknowledging their Wookie heritage in a new reality show.

Yeats continued with a vision as ugly as a Kardashian in a swimsuit:

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

What did Yeats see replacing the modern world?  Mysticism.  Power.  Blood.  He was right.  1919 was crappy, but the 20th Century was about to get a whole lot worse.  He concluded:

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Yup.  Creepy.  And Iron Maiden definitely should have recorded this, whether they were born or not.

Yeats’ vision is what we are living through again right now – the ending of one age, and the beginning of another.  This crisis cannot be driven by food shortages.  There is more food now than at any time in history.  It cannot be wealth – there is more individual wealth in the nations experiencing tumult than at any point in their histories.  It cannot be my hair.  My shiny scalp?  Sure.  Not my hair.

Certainly there are problems – I think that the people the Z-Man (LINK) calls the Dirt People (which almost certainly includes every reader of this blog as well as your constant writer, me) are experiencing an economy driven by and for the Cloud People (the Deep State, the Financial Elite).  Regardless of who you voted for in 2012, you knew that Mittens Romney and Barry Obama were on the same team, and it wasn’t your team.

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This might be where the Z-Man got that meme – at least it was the first thing I thought of.  And it explains sky-high real estate costs . . . .

In the end the reactions we’re seeing in society in 2019 (Trump and Brexit) are just that – reactions to a society that has gone too far Left, too fast.  Leftists never realize that all they have to do to enact their Socialist Utopia® is wait.  Instead, they smell the blood of the Right in the water and decide that it’s time to end the waiting.  Right now!  Because after making the conscious decision to borrow $375,000 for a degree in cooking, they now know that college (and those vacations to Europe on spring break!) is a right and should be free.

What do Leftist want?  Complete control.  When do they want it?  Now.  Impeachment is a technique for power and control, not enforcing the law, since at no point has anyone been able to articulate a law broken by Trump.  Nixon?  Conspiracy to commit a break-in.  Clinton?  Perjury.  Trump?  I still haven’t heard about a law that he broke that isn’t some sort of fashion or etiquette rule.

Trump is not a savior.  Trump is a symptom.  The Leftist reaction to Trump is yet another symptom.  And the inability to wait for an election that is less than a year out is yet another.

The Right is never the instigator of issues like this – there is a reason the Right is called reactionary – it reacts to the Left.  The Right just wants history to stop.  The Left wants change, and will look for any time to work for it – especially when society is functioning well.  The Left is like a wife who sees a fully functioning family, home mortgage nearly paid off, 20 years until retirement and says, “You know what?  Things are going well.  Let’s burn it all down.”

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As long as Stella gets her groove back, that’s all that’s important, am I right?

And the change the Left wants is never gradual – it is Revolution™.  The Left wants to destroy the existing social orders and replace them with Leftism.  As we’ve seen in the past (Robespierre, Stalin, Mao, Mangos and A Future That Must Not Be), Leftism always ends in a bloodbath, either as those on the Left kill everyone to the Right of them, or a cagey leader like Stalin kills all of the people to the Left of him.

This is the context we see ourselves in today.  All time high on the stock market, and all time high (excepting 1859) on the polarity seen in the United States.  We are splitting apart.

How does this end?  I think, if past trends for America have been true, there will be freedom.  America may not look like it does today – I think I’d actually bet money that it won’t.  There will be significant changes, and I think it will be very difficult for Washington D.C. to impose its will on Michigan, Montana, or Missouri if the peoples of those states are unwilling.

This is the last post of the ‘teens – my next post will be in the Tumultuous, Turbulent Twenties.  Remember folks, you heard that here first.  But you won’t hear it here last – I’m pretty sure the centre cannot hold . . . but neither will my belt, not after all of those free breadsticks.