Category: Purpose

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

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“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.

Don’t Give Up Too Soon. And If You’re Breathing? It’s Too Soon.

“Will you relax?  You’ve got more paranoid fantasies than Stephen King on crack.” – News Radio

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See, I win.  I don’t read him once a year, and he doesn’t read me 150 times a year.

One of my favorite stories is about Stephen King.  When he was trying to get his novel Carrie published, he sent out the copy to quite a few publishers, and was rejected again and again.  Finally, one day he got the novel back, again.  Still, the novel was as rejected as Joe Biden application to teach at an ethics seminar.

He gave up.  Disgusted, King threw the novel into the trash and went to work.  His wife, Tabitha, pulled it out of the trash.  In one version of the story I read, spaghetti sauce from the garbage had gotten on the cover of the manuscript, so Tabitha typed a new one, and encouraged Stephen to submit it one more time.  He did.

This final publisher, Doubleday©, loved Carrie.  They sent King an advance of $2,500, which he spent on a Ford® Pinto™ because he liked scary things.  But then the paperback rights netted King $200,000.  The novel and movie became hits, and paid for him to quit his job so he could focus on novel writing.  When asked what fuels his imagination, King actually said, “I have the heart of a little boy.  And I keep it in my desk drawer.”  But the real story is that King was exceptionally close to giving up.

King didn’t give up, and managed to give us some pretty interesting stories.  He probably has a net worth of $400 million or so based on his writing – all because Tabitha King pulled a manuscript out of the trash, and they sent it out to a publisher.  One more time.

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I tried to donate blood the other day, but they wanted to know whose it was.

I personally feel that King’s writing quality began to diminish significantly in 1992 along with his reduction in cocaine and alcohol consumption.  I gave up on him around 2005.  He’s like your friend that’s really only interesting when he’s wasted, like Nancy Pelosi at a press conference.

Despite this, Stephen King is undoubtedly a success story even though at this point in his life his Twitter® account looks like Jack Torrance© from The Shining™ after all work and no play have made him a dull boy.  I’m not in favor of King returning to his addictions and having someone convince him that a Democrat is president, but, you know he is 72.  How much could it hurt?

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Now, watch Stephen imagine a microwave filled with cocaine? 

The dead Danish thinker dude, Søren Kierkegaard, (English translation of Søren Kierkegaard:  “delicious pastry” – which I believe is the translation all Danish words), coined one of my favorite quotes that’s appropriate to this post:

“It is perfectly true, as the philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.”

Said in a different way, it makes sense looking backward to see how Stephen King’s success was built upon rejection.  Likely that rejection fueled him to get better, and by the time he “made it” he had been working for years to become an excellent writer.  It is also poetic that Stephen’s final success was made possible by someone who had more faith in him (Tabitha) than he did at that point.

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How much do you have to drink to imagine an alien clown in a sewer?

I first read the Kierkegaard quote in the mid-1990’s and began to understand:  the worst times in my life were the seeds for the best times in my life.  For instance:

I recall being in 8th grade at a wrestling tournament.  I weighed 145 pounds (14.5 kilograms – you just divide by 10 to convert), which in that time and place was heavyweight, or HWT.  The Mrs. and I refer to HWT as “hot water tank,” mainly because it’s amusing.  The wrestling tournament had been going all day that Saturday and on that cold February night it was dark outside – the windows that normally streamed light into the gym were pitch black, lending an air of importance.

There was a single match left:  the hot water tank championship.  It was me against (who else) another guy named John, in this case John Bishop.  Neither one of us was fat – we were both in pretty good shape.  And John Bishop was strong – very strong – he was 32 and in 8th grade.  But he slept well.

John and I went toe to toe for the entire match, each searching for an opening while being countered.  At the end of regulation, four and a half minutes of wrestling, the score was tied, 1-1.  Since this was a tournament, there would be no ties.

It was overtime.

In overtime, the three periods were short – 1 minute; 30 seconds; and 30 seconds. At the end of the second overtime period it was still 1-1, and the crowd was yelling, urging each of us on.  I had never felt such electricity at any sporting event, and here I was, caught up in the middle of it.  In that last period of overtime, in that last second before the match was done, John Bishop escaped.

I lost, 2-1.

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That was a tough match.  I still have the taste of Muppet® in my mouth.  Did you know they bleed blue?

The crowd actually came onto the mat afterwards, and there I was sitting on that same mat, exhausted.  I can still clearly recall sitting on the wrestling mat, surrounded by people congratulating John Bishop.

It was also the last match of the school year.  I had lost.  I had given it all I had, every fiber of my being, and I had lost.

My brother, John Wilder (yes, his real first name is John, just like mine) was there for the whole match.  He was in college and had spent the day in the gym watching me wrestle because he felt responsibility:  he’s the one that convinced me to try wrestling in the first place.

He sat down next to me on the pine bleachers as I unlaced my hand-me-down Adidas® wrestling shoes – his old shoes.  He put his arm around my shoulder.  He asked me to see the second place medal I had in my hand.  I gave it to him.  He looked at it, for what seemed like forever.

“You really earned this one.  John, I’ve never seen you wrestle better in my life.  I’m so proud of you.”

That moment could have been soul crushing.  It could have been a moment where I decided to give wrestling up.  Instead, that was a moment where I knew I could be better.  I knew deep inside of me, that I could do this, that this was part of who I was supposed to be.  I wasn’t crushed, I was filled with resolve.  Over the next four years I won a lot more wrestling matches than I lost, but that one loss in particular opened the door for all of the success that followed.

And the next time I wrestled John Bishop, less than a year later?  I pinned him inside of thirty seconds.

This has been a repeating pattern in my life when I look back.  Every time that I have been faced with adversity and failure, that failure was the seed for future success.  Losses in wrestling are, perhaps, among the most soul-crushing defeats a man can face.

On the mat there are only two men.  There is no place to hide.  There is no one else to blame if you lose.  It is you.  Only you.  I have seen grown men cry like they had spilled a beer when they lost a match.

As bad as losing a wrestling match is, a divorce is worse.  Even a divorce where both sides agree to part is a very difficult thing, and my divorce was no exception.  Divorces are hard.  They’re also expensive.  Why are they expensive?  They’re worth it.

But my divorce set the seed for eventually finding The Mrs., which led to The Boy and Pugsley.

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I enjoyed this movie.  It finally allowed Country Music to be complete – now the truck could leave the singer, too.

The second lesson is persistence.  In most cases, overnight success occurs after about ten years of diligent effort – thousands of hours of intense practice.  You’d assume that concert violinists, for instance, start with talent for the instrument.  You’d certainly be correct.  But what’s missing from the equation is practice.  The average world-class concert violinist practices more, not less than the average violin player.  A really good violinist still sounds like they’re strangling a cat, but maybe more slowly or something.

Talent gets you a ticket, but practice is a multiplier.  A necessary multiplier.  Einstein said his difficulties with math were much more than the average person – precisely because he was working at the far end of what was understood about mathematics at his time and place.

Finally, you still have to deal with reality.  At no point in my life would any amount of practice and study have made me a great basketball player – my skills aren’t there.  And that’s the point – when you’re going through life you’ll get clues that tell you which way to go.  The biggest clue?  Success.  Success is a guidepost – it tells you where you have relative skill.  Stephen King was continually published in pulp and nudie magazines at the time.  Not big money, but still an indication that he had ability, because everyone read Playboy© for the articles, right?

Find your successes.  Feed them.  Understand your failures and how you can use them.  Work harder than anyone else at becoming great.  And also keep in mind that one phone call, one text, one conversation in an elevator might bring it all together.

Then, in the end, you can look backward and understand.

Or just be a cranky old goat like Stephen King.

Get Woke, Go Broke: Hallmark Limited Edition

“I hope you don’t mean that.  You’d feel pretty sad if you woke up tomorrow morning and you didn’t have a family.” – Home Alone

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I’m so woke I started a Green Lives Matter chapter after watching Shrek®.

When The Boy was very small, say four years old, we’d snuggle together and watch television together on Saturday mornings.  One thing we watched on a regular basis was the Hallmark® channel.  Sometimes I’d make pancakes.  It was fun as only a Saturday with your kids can be.

Most often, we’d watch an episode of the High Chaparral® and then an older family movie – movies like Old Yeller™ or The Cat from Outer Space©.  The Boy did note that air traffic control must have been difficult in Never Neverland because of all of the fuel emergencies.  Get it?  Never land?  I kill me.

I’m too young to have seen High Chaparral™ as anything but reruns, but watching it with The Boy was great.  The plots involved good guys and bad guys – tales of honor.  Tales of family.  Tales of manly courage.  Every one of those lessons was one that I’d like to have imprinted on The Boy’s brain.  Sure, maybe I’d have a winter morning nap through The Cat from Outer Space®, but I never slept through High Chaparral©.

Okay, how could you nap after that theme music?

At this point I don’t remember if they stopped showing High Chaparral™ before or after we moved to Alaska, but I did know that in Alaska we didn’t have the Hallmark™ channel, so it didn’t matter anyway.  And it’s been a few years since Pugsley needed babysitting on a Saturday morning.

Needless to say, I have pleasant memories of the Hallmark® channel.  However, in the last week Hallmark® did the craziest thing.  First, a commercial was approved showing two women lip-locking in a commercial about weddings during a family movie where little kids might be watching.  This provoked outrage in the Traditional Religious community, and they complained to Hallmark©.  Following that outrage, Hallmark™ then pulled the commercial, and apologized for showing it.

All said and done?

No.  Within about 48 hours of pulling the commercial, Hallmark® then said they’d be fine with showing that commercial, and their earlier statement saying that they made a mistake by saying that they’d made a mistake was a mistake, so they apologized for apologizing earlier.  Then, at great expense, they redid their apology using llamas.

This was not entirely a surprise:  the CEO of the television portion of Hallmark©, William J. Abbott, said in a November 15 podcast he doesn’t personally view Christmas as a religious holiday.  He probably doesn’t consider churches religious places.  And those T-shaped things that people put on the walls and wear as necklaces?  Just art.

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I swear, with those eyes he looks like some kind of herd animal.  It’s not like he’d be easily swayed like a member of a herd of sheep . . . oh, wait.

Regardless of what you think about gay people, they comprise 1-2% of the population – add in bisexuals, (which, let’s admit it, they’d like) and you get up to 4% or so.  I’m willing to bet that a whopping 0.001% of gay women watch Hallmark®, and probably nearly 0.0000001% of gay men.  Hallmark™ has decided to appeal to a constituency that consists of about a dozen people in the United States and let them determine what commercials are on the Hallmark© channel.

Let’s face it:  regardless of how you or I feel about gay folks, they don’t watch the Hallmark® network.  They won’t watch the Hallmark© network even if it meets every one of their demands because they already have six networks specifically dedicated to gay lifestyle issues.

Why would Hallmark™ fold and apologize about apologizing for their apology?

Because Hallmark© is woke.  Christmas isn’t a religious holiday according to their CEO, silly.  It’s about mass consumption of consumer goods.  That was the real message of Christ, wasn’t it?  I think it was in the Sermon on the Mall Food Court as written in the Gospel of Commerce, 3:16 where Jesus said:  “Oh, ye who purchase goods and services in my name shall dwell in large houses with great credit forever.  Forget not, thy shipping shalt be free for all who order over $50 of these holy goods in a single shipment.  Amen.”

Hallmark© isn’t the first business to make this calculation.  It won’t be the last.

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Silicon Valley is good at getting woke, especially since aliens don’t need sleep.

I started my first boycott of a business back in 2001 or so.  The CEO of Levi Strauss™ came out against private gun ownership.  I was naïve enough that I actually wrote him an email protesting his policy.  At the time, I was a corporate home-office drone who wore Dockers® (a Levi Strauss© product) like they were yuppie heroin.  I put my money where my mouth was:  the last Levi Strauss™ product I have ever purchased was in 2001.

Another example of this illogical behavior was Star Wars®.  The final Star Wars™ movie opens today.  I won’t be purchasing a ticket.  Why?  The Force Awakens.

For the record, I have no problem against strong female characters.  Ripley® in Alien© and Aliens™.  Sarah Connor™ in Terminator©, Terminator 2®, and the very underrated Sarah Connor Chronicles™.  I could go on, but that’s enough.

Rey© in Star Wars™?  An awful character.  But a woke character.  It was so important to a Disney® executive to take Star Wars© in a feminist direction that they didn’t care about story.  They didn’t care about plot.  All they cared about was creating a woman that had no weaknesses, no struggle.  In great fiction, the entire point of the journey of a hero is to struggle and overcome weaknesses and character flaws to find virtue and victory.

Somehow, in a quest for the perfect woman, Disney® forgot Star Wars© was about watching the journey of the hero and thrilling with him (or her) as they grew.  Ripley™ grew – look at her character arc from the only two movies that character was in, Alien® and Aliens©.  Ripley™ went from a competent but flawed second officer to a woman who overcame her fear and took on a xenomorph queen using an exoskeleton loader.  Don’t know about you, but I thought that was pretty hot, even when she was Zuul.  Okay, especially when she was Zuul.

Rey™?  Rey™ was perfect from the first scene, and could use the Force© and a Light Saber© better than a person who had studied them for years the very first day she tried.  Why?  Showing any weakness from a woman is obviously misogyny and part of a patriarchal plot.  Character development?  Nah, that’s for people who aren’t woke.

What has being woke cost Disney®?  A lot of money.  The Star Wars® movies keep bringing in less and less at the box office.  And, as Aesop wisely noted – their theme park Galaxy’s Edge© at Disneyland™ cost over $1billion dollars, and, if videos I’ve seen are correct, is an enormous flop.  The longest line was at the bathroom.  I’d imagine the Disneyworld™ version won’t cost much less, so they’ve invested $2billion in a franchise that has exactly one successful element since they bought it from George Lucas:  baby Yoda®.

Probably billions in profits have been sacrificed by Disney®, all at the altar of being woke.

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If John Wick© and Kermit™ had a baby.

Other companies have done it, too.  Gillette® featured commercials that demeaned the major purchasers of its products:  men.  Nike™ decided that Colin Kaepernick was the best face that they could put forward, and ended production of shoes featuring the Betsy Ross flag because Colin thought it was racist.  Chick-Fil-A®?  Dead to me.

The Boy Scouts of America™?  Yup.  In 1973, the membership was 4.5 million boys.  In 2020, I’m betting the membership is down to 1.4 million or less, even though the population of the United States is up by 50%.  The biggest and steepest declines?  After it got woke.

One Angry Gamer has a large list of similar failures (LINK).  The list has 13 major video games that failed due to wokeness.  Movies and television?  21 examples.  And dozens of businesses, magazines, and other examples of failure.  The most amusing part of his page (which is littered with advertisements) is that it was advertising failed woke shows like Star Trek: Discovery®.  One Angry Gamer was getting money from those that were being criticized on the page.  Genius.

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Remember, not everything is a failure.  The Titanic pool is still filled!

Not every business that gets woke goes broke.  Even though they won’t get another dollar from me, Nike®, Levi Strauss©, and Gillette™ are doing fine.  They make billions in revenue.  I can’t promise Disney® won’t make another dollar off of me, since they have a scheme to annex interstellar space and charge viewers for looking up at the night sky.  But I’ll avoid giving them money every chance I get.  They might not notice on their bottom line, but I will be able to hold my head up.

So, why are companies willing to fail or at least forego billions of dollars in profit, destroy cultural narratives that have been decades in the making, and wipe out institutions that have served real virtue and objective good for over a hundred years?

It’s not their money.

But I do have good news.  I found that High Chaparral® is still being broadcast.  It’s not on Hallmark™.  But I’m pretty sure that The Boy would object to being snuggled on the couch to watch it, him being in college and all.

But he still likes pancakes.  Who doesn’t?

Oh, yeah.

Feminists.

It’s A Big World – Big Enough For Success

Certainty of death.  Small chance of success.  What are we waiting for?” – Lord of the Rings

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It’s almost as much fun as when I get the USB in on the first try.

Two pennies.

But I’ll come back to that.

One day, Aesop over at the Raconteur Report (LINK) had linked to one of my posts.  The result whenever that happens is quite a bit of traffic – the Raconteur Report is pretty popular.  I thanked him in the comments section over at his place.  His response?  Something on the order of, “No problem.  It’s a big Internet.”

His reaction was typical of every rich, confident and successful person I’ve met.  They want to help other people, and they want to see them succeed.  I think part of that is the desire for a legacy.  When you’ve already earned more money than you’ll ever spend in a lifetime (or have millions and millions of pageviews), you have to have other goals.

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Really rich people have iPhones® and both kidneys.

In my life, I’ve had the good fortune to know quite a few people that were very, very, successful.  The really rich people I knew who had built their own businesses had a surprising similarity:  they wanted to help others become successful.  Each one of them gave some of their time to do so.  They had determined that success was something not to be hoarded, but to be shared.  They wanted more people in the club, because those cigars made of $100 bills won’t smoke themselves.  At one particular career crossroads, I spent some time with one of these friends, charting a path forward (“I’m Batman,” – Batman, in Batman).

This blog is at least partially a result of discussions I had with my wealthy friend.  This first three years have gone (more or less) according to plan.  Next?  Well, after I get my underground volcano lair running and staffed with henchmen, you’ll see.  It’s hard to find good henchmen nowadays, and even harder to insure them – the actuarial tables show a high rate of workplace-related injuries when henching.

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But think of all of the pension plan savings!

My friend died not long after I started writing, and certainly before I had any lasting success.  He was an early encourager.  I had a few other business ideas, and I ran the ideas past him.  He was encouraging, but his encouragement wasn’t in order to make a buck:  his success was me being successful.  Like most good teachers, he didn’t tell me what to do, he asked questions, very good questions, like:

  • How big is your potential audience?
  • How do you connect with them?
  • Why did you lick your finger and put it in my ear?

Rich guys have figured out a secret – helping other people to be successful doesn’t make a rich person poorer.  Let me explain:

The average home swimming pool is something like 20,000 or 30,000 gallons of water.  Let’s use 30,000 gallons since I already did the math with that number.  The economy is $21.3 trillion, per year.  Let’s imagine that $21.3 trillion economy is represented by the water in the pool.  How much water represents $1,000,000?

It’s 1/5 of an ounce.  A shot of whiskey would be the equivalent of $15 million.  1/5 of an ounce is really small – let me give you another comparison.  What weighs the same as 1/5 of an ounce of water?

Two cents.  Or, as I started this post, two pennies.

You can take millions from that pool every year and no one would ever notice – like I said, this is $21.3 trillion annually.  I hate to be all cheerleader-y, but it’s true – even now we live in an era of amazing abundance.

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And they said Mittens didn’t have the common touch.

Yes, I know, the economy is awful for some people.  Certainly, we’re faced with significant structural issues that will be challenging for years to come.  But the ocean is still huge.  The opportunities out there are amazing.  Yes, it’s possible to make $1,000,000 a year.  Heck, I went on Facebook® one time, and saw some guys that graduated about when I did.  One of them had a successful restaurant.  The other?  Sold a successful business and was going to retire.

And, no, these weren’t Stephen Hawking-smart guys, heck, they didn’t even have wheelchairs.  They didn’t even have amazing, unique business ideas, one has a restaurant, the other a small manufacturing business.  They were average guys who worked very hard, and failed and failed and failed and then succeeded.

Why don’t more people make a million, or at least a few hundred thousand?  Most often, we limit ourselves.  I’ve written before that I don’t think that most people use even one tenth of their capability, and the reason for that is that they:

  • Are too cautious – they never take any risks. For many folks, this works fine.  Being a dentist has a better average payout than winning the lottery.  But, you have to live with being a dentist, dude.
  • Don’t believe in themselves – caution is one thing, but I have seen people limit themselves because they don’t believe in their own talent. And to think that Kamala Harris didn’t believe enough in her best
  • Stuck in a mindset that success only happens to other people, and that the only success they will ever have will come when other people allow it.
  • Afraid of failure – failure can be awful, debilitating, and soul crushing. Oh, wait, that’s my ex-wife, not failure.  Failure’s bad, too.
  • Afraid of effort – success starts with, and ends with, work. And having parents that have fifty million dollars.
  • Have pants filled with raw liver – men who have pants filled with raw liver have had very little influence over world events, historically.
  • Don’t have a goal – if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there. This was, from time to time, my problem.  I’d achieve a goal, and then?  Shrug and say, “What next?”

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Hey, at least she has experience.

I’ll admit, the first time one of my posts really hit big, it was featured by Remus at the Woodpile Report (LINK).  I was happy, but almost apprehensive, like a dog that finally caught a car.  What the hell do I do now?  I was ringing up more views in a day on a single post than the entire blog did in the first nine months of existence.  My apprehension:  Was it good enough?  Was there enough content on the site to keep readers?  What the hell do I do with this car?

I guess I have to add another two reasons people fail is that they are:

  • Are afraid of success – I’ve seen people self-sabotage because the very idea of succeeding scared them. Their solution?  Screw up.
  • Feel unworthy of success – likewise, people who don’t feel worthy will actively avoid situations where they are successful.

I’ve been lucky throughout most of my life to not be afraid of success, but driven to achieve it, maybe a bit too much.  My wife says this is one of my personalities.  There is easy-going Juan DeLegator, but this one she just calls The General.  The General doesn’t care what time it is.  The General doesn’t care if you’re tired.  The General wants results.  Now.  I imagine it’s just as pleasant for everyone around me as it sounds, but, honestly, I enjoy it.  Plus?  The General gets results.

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A personal hero, plus he shows up every Christmas to remind me of the true spirit of Christmas:  maneuver warfare.  The neighbors will never try to sing carols here again.

My idea is that what I accomplished yesterday was fine, but what I’m going to accomplish tomorrow better beat it.  I have worried from time to time that the best post I’ll ever write is in the past.  Then, however, I’ll put together a post that I like so much that I find it hard to go to sleep afterwards because I’m so excited about what I just wrote.  I’m sure that someone is going to laugh, or learn, or both.

It is a big Internet.  It’s also a huge economy.  And to go out and make more money is, generally, easy.

But success isn’t necessarily only measured in money.  There’s also other things.  Like food and cars and cable television:  the things that money buys.

Oh, okay, fine.  There’s also family.  And community.  And faith.  The same principles apply there, as well.

See what you made me do?  The General is not amused.  But he’s just pitching in his two cents.

34 Random Thoughts About The Economy, Money, and Jobs

“Well, Saddam owed us money.” – Arrested Development

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Maybe I should get more sleep.

It’s nearly Thanksgiving, and the next few weeks will be busy.  Now that The Boy is off at college and no longer engaged in half a dozen activities, we’re down to just having to chase Pugsley around.  Not so busy that there won’t be a full slate of posts – those are planned for the next few weeks, barring a change based on current events or me being distracted by shiny objects.

Today, though, I thought I’d change it up a bit, so here are a few random thoughts on business, economics, and wealth.

  1. The last economic crash was about a housing bubble. The next economic crash will be about our “everything” bubble where money flows faster to chase smaller and smaller returns.
  2. The biggest thing to crash after the next bubble pops will be money. It’s never fun when the value of money drops to zero, since having a little inflation is like being a little pregnant – not much happens at the beginning, but by the end everyone is yelling and screaming and covered in blood.
  3. The next economic crash will be the biggest in our lives.
  4. Or not. I’ve been wrong before.
  5. But I still think 2025 will be interesting.
  6. Most jobs don’t require thinking nowadays – they are a set of procedures and rules based on the lowest common denominator employee. The best jobs like this are at the DMV, which at least allow you to be mean and unpleasant, plus government benefits.
  7. Jobs that don’t require thinking can be paid at the lowest possible wage. If you’re lucky enough to be hired at Old MacDonald’s farm, I hope you can rise to the C-I-E-I-O position, but you’ll have to be out standing in your field.study.jpg
  8. Businesses that do things immorally don’t automatically fail because they do things immorally – many immoral and even evil businesses flourish. It’s only in the movies that the good guys always win.
  9. When I gave career advice to The Boy, I advised him to build expertise and skills in things that couldn’t be done over the Internet or by an outsourced employee working in a country where the native language consists only of vowels, grunts, and humming noises but yet has 355 terms for “waddle”.
  10. Always be worth more to your company than your company is paying you.
  11. “What have you done for me lately?” is a good and fair question from any boss.
  12. The second mouse gets the cheese in the trap. No, I’m not going first.
  13. If it’s choosing between money and honor, choose honor. The bills might be more difficult to pay, but at least you can look yourself in the mirror.  Until the power company cuts the electricity.
  14. Seriously though, choose honor.cat.jpg
  15. It’s the risk that you don’t take that you’ll regret. But you only hear successful people say that.
  16. Never build a business on what you love, since no one cares about medieval Norse poetry. Build a business on what you do that other people love and will pay for.  You’ll learn to love it.
  17. Capitalism works great to allocate spoils in an expanding market. Capitalism fails in a contracting one.  There’s nothing easy about the transition.
  18. Being short of money and optimistic about the future is better than having lots of cash and being pessimistic.rain.jpg
  19. Money can’t make you happy, but you can avoid most of life’s miseries by having a few hundred thousand dollars. Not every one of life’s miseries, but most of them.
  20. Whenever anyone says it’s not about the money, it’s really about the money.
  21. Whenever anyone says cost is no object, you can expect that statement to be proven false once the estimates arrive. Make them pay in advance.
  22. The reward for work well done is more work. This is actually a pretty good deal – we tend to buy video games built around this same premise.
  23. The rewards aren’t linear – the closer to the top, the greater the rewards. But you have to fight the big boss at the end before you retire.
  24. Great bosses are rarer than you might imagine. Most bosses are okay.  Some are awful.
  25. The worst kind of boss is a weak boss. They will praise you when you don’t deserve it and sell you out when you don’t.
  26. Teamwork makes it easy to blame someone else.
  27. In America, when two men meet, they ask “What do you do?” Too often we equate ourselves with “what we do,” while forgetting we get to choose who we are.  Unless you’re Johnny Depp, in which case you are stuck being Johnny Depp.question.jpg
  28. If you find yourself dreading the alarm clock and not wanting to go to work you go anyway. It’s your job.  If it’s too much?  Find another job or retire.
  29. True story: a friend of mine had a sister that decided to retire one day when she was about 30.  She was shocked when the checks stopped coming, she seemed to think that when you retired, the company had to keep paying you.  I think she’s a Bernie® voter now.
  30. Me? I’m trying to start thinking about retirement before my boss starts thinking about my retirement.pounds.jpg
  31. When I was first hired into a job, I heard a statistic that 70% of a typical workday for a typical employee was unproductive. I was shocked that the figure was so high.
  32. Now, after working for years, I’m shocked that the figure is so low. I tried to come up with jokes about lazy people, but they just won’t work.
  33. Meetings often happen just because they’re on the schedule. Look like you’re paying attention and don’t sleep, no matter how quickly it makes the meeting go.
  34. I had a friend who worked at the Unemployment Department who got fired. He still had to show up the next day.

Why Character Just Might Be A Better Indicator Of Marriage Stability Than What Her Butt Looks Like

“Just because you are a character doesn’t mean that you have character.” – Pulp Fiction

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When the bugman began to hate . . .

There was a time after She Who Will Not Be Named was forever banished from Stately Wilder Manor, but before I met The Mrs.  Yes, your host, the John Wilder was single.  Can you believe I didn’t beat the ladies off with a stick?  I mean, the restraining order and all . . . well . . . the less said about that the better.

There was one particular woman who had caught my attention.  One evening, I introduced her to my friend who I’ll call Jim, mainly because his name is Jim.  Oops – I think I’ve said too much.  Now everyone will know who he is.  If only Jim weren’t such a rare name!

“What did you think?” I asked Jim.

Ever the good friend, Jim said, and this is an exact quote:  “What do you two have in common besides your eyes and her butt?”

They say that for a statement to really hurt, it has to be true.  Jim had delivered the Atomic Wedgie of Truth®.  He was, of course, correct.  And you should be so lucky to have friends that will tell you the truth as bluntly and completely as Jim.  The relationship between the woman’s butt and my eyes ended soon thereafter.

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A friend of mine went to the hospital because of a wedgie – sadly, he was diagnosed with Stage 4 dorkiness.

Not only is character important in dating, it was pretty important to a company I worked for once upon a time:  I was one of the employees lucky enough to be trained in behavior-based interviewing.  The basic idea of behavior-based interviewing is that people, like the official results of Jeffery Epstein’s autopsy, don’t change very much.  Therefore, the best way to get an actual prediction of the candidate’s future behavior is to understand the candidate’s past behavior.  Then we were taught how to interview so they would share relevant situations so we could understand the candidate really well.

If the interview technique is done right, it doesn’t feel like an interview, it feels like casual conversation.

I was horrible in my first few interviews, as in scaring the candidate because he thought the company hired robotic androids that only appeared to be human.  Thankfully, there was a feedback system from the candidates, and my boss gave me some tips based on it.  He told me that it was okay to blink and breathe while conducting an interview, and that wouldn’t be perceived by the candidate as weakness.  I took a risk that he was right, and the candidates stopped shaking so much during the interviews.  I guess staring unblinkingly directly into their eyes nonstop during the interview is a bit creepy, so I allowed myself no fewer than three blinks per minute.

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I really messed up this interview.  They asked me if I was a people person.  I answered, “Yes!  I am a people!  Or is they go great with mustard a better answer?”

But if you do anything several hundred times, you can get pretty good at it unless you’re Nicholas Cage acting in a movie.  It (really) did bug the candidates that I could take notes without looking down at my notepad.  It’s not a great superpower, but I decided to keep that quirk going, since it was a sign of dominance that I could use to weed out the weak.  And I eventually ended up interviewing hundreds of new graduate applicants – heck, I even used the behavior-based interviewing techniques on The Mrs. the night we met to see if she had any of the character, um, difficulties that led to the untimely departure of She Who Will Not Be Named.

The Mrs. didn’t have those flaws.

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So, on one blind date the girl said she was a huge country fan.  Me:  “Well, I like Russia, too.”

The thing that surprised me the most was that interviewees would tell me the most incredible things – like how they’d lied to people.  How they’d stolen from their employer.  How much they felt the world was out to get them.  By the way, if you lived in Fayetteville, Arkansas in 1998 and never figured out who shaved your pig, dyed it blue, and dressed it like Dolly Parton, I think I might know the guy that did it.  Don’t worry – he told me it was mostly consensual.  Except for the perfume.

The interviewing system was based almost entirely around character.  The company I was working for considered good character the most important factor in what constituted a good employee.  More than once I heard, “You can teach a good person to do their job, but you can’t teach a bad person to be good,” from my boss.  Then he’d shake his head and look at me with a sad, defeated expression on his face.  Of course I didn’t blink.  I had to show him the respect due the alpha of the pack.

But there were employees who actually possessed good character there, too.  As an example, one employee I know was attempting to find some financial information that was relevant to his job.  Somehow in working through the company computer network he stumbled upon the check writing software.

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Thankfully the money is headed her way from that Nigerian prince. 

Yes.  My friend found the software that would have allowed him to write himself a check for $50,000,000.  No human would have seen the check – it would have been printed on company check stock, signed with a dot-matrix signature, popped in the mail, and delivered directly to my friend’s house.  The company had billions (really) in the bank.  It wouldn’t have been immediately caught.

My friend called me over and showed it to me.  It was a moment I was in awe.  This company had huge piles of money in various bank accounts.  I realized that just a few keystrokes could end up making my friend an overnight millionaire, at least until the audit found a few missing millions.  In a situation that would tempt some people, my friend calmly picked up the phone, called accounting, and let them know they had a really big problem.  And he didn’t do it from a beach in Brazil while sipping some drink that comes with an umbrella.  But not flaming.  That’s for tourists.

That’s good character.

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Climate science has taught us that science demands seriousness.

The company actually had a list of traits they were looking for.  What did they consider good character?  Humility was on the list, as was honesty and a few other things people generally think are representative of virtue, as I wrote about Kardashians, Hairy Bikinis, Elvis, Wealth, and Virtue.  There are a lot of things that change about people, but absent a significant psychological event (and sometimes not even then), their character doesn’t change.

That brings me to this statement:  the most important part of parenting is helping to build character.  I think I’ve established that character is important, so when is it important?

I think that the primary focus of parenthood is guiding children through one critical age range:  middle school, from the ages of around 11 to, say, 14.  Did you go to grade school with someone who was pretty cool, only to watch them become a complete dirtbag in high school?  I know I did, and the time that they went downhill was in middle school.

The ages of 11 to 14 are where kids are first practicing at being adults, and are in the process of crystallizing the character that will define them for the rest of their lives.  They’re understanding being really hurt and rejected for the first time, how to deal with defeat.  What love is.  What their values are.  How to deal with victory.  They’re understanding what true friendship and loyalty really is.  They’re finally (thankfully) understanding what deodorant is, though generally just a few weeks too late.

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Knowing how to relate to Pugsley is everything.

And they’re deciding if they want to reject virtue and turn to the Dark Side© evil.  Sorry, but Disney® has trademarked that phrase, along with all jokes related to mice, intellectual property abuse, and and ducks.  And, yes, I understand that some percentage, say 70%, of character is flat-out genetic in nature.  There are families of dirtbags that have been dirtbags for 100 years.  If you think about it, you’ll know who I’m talking about.

As I mentioned before, I even used the techniques I learned from interviewing in the blind date that eventually netted The Mrs.  When I finally took The Mrs. over to meet Jim and his family, Jim approved.  “You guys seem great for each other.”

Perhaps Seneca, writing back in 60 AD or so (back when your Momma was just 50 years old), said it best:

Each person acquires their own character, but their official roles are designated by chance.  You should invite some to your table because they are deserving, others because they may come to deserve it.”

When you are evaluating people to be your friend, your mate, or your employee, character is primary.  Great butts are secondary, in the end.

Get it?  Butts?  In the end?

I kill me.

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Regrets? Don’t Regret Anything, Unless You Want Me To Slap You When You Are Old.

“Nothing leaves alive.” – Dreamcatcher

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See, now Darth Vader® has no regrets.  Except for being in Episode III.

I’ve never written anything before that made me want to go to a hospice and slap a bunch of old dying people, but this particular post led me there.  I’ll explain.  It’s okay, it’ll all make sense in the end.  I’m a trained professional.

I have made many mistakes in my life.  Most of them I don’t remember – they were small and didn’t have any consequences, or at least any consequences I’ve seen yet.

Then there were some slightly larger mistakes – let’s call them medium size mistakes.  There have been consequences to these.  Again, medium-sized mistakes most often lead to medium-sized consequences.  A scar here (carve away from your thumb, not towards it), a stock gone to zero there (thanks a lot, Enron®) and one really bad car trade when I was 24 . . . medium-sized.  Medium-sized mistakes are big enough for a big sting, but whatever permanent impacts there might be aren’t immediately fatal.

The biggest ones – I won’t give a laundry list of those.  Most of those were where either passion, inexperience, a momentary lapse of character or judgement, or (worst of all) when all three contributed to a mistake.  Some mistakes lasted longer, some were short.  But all stung.  The biggest include a marriage that led to divorce, underestimating a sociopathic boss, and wearing that white dress to my little sister’s wedding.  I mean, I look fabulous in it, but some brides just have to be the center of attention.  Also a bit weird because she wasn’t really my sister.

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Staaaaaart again . . . .

To put it bluntly, I am the author of almost every problem I have.  If I didn’t cause the problem, I’m probably complicit in creating the problem or not dealing with the problem.

But I don’t regret it.  None of it.  Not the victories, certainly, and not the failures.

Why?

Life is a one-shot deal.  And life is a ratchet.  It only turns one way – we can’t take anything back.

Regret isn’t a one-shot deal, though.  If there’s anything that will burn a hole in your soul, it’s regret.  Regret never comes alone – it brings guilt along for the ride.

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My biggest fear is having a heart attack during a game of charades.

If I were to dig more deeply into those feelings – regret and guilt are just ways that fear manifests itself.  Fear of . . . what?  Regret is a fear that the consequences of your choices or actions will impact you negatively, and cannot be changed.  Here is a list of some of the common regrets from people on their deathbed (from a former palliative care nurse named Bronnie Ware, and, yes, I spelled that right – blame her parents, not me):

  1. “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
  2. “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”
  3. “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.”
  4. “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”
  5. “I wish that I had let myself be happier.”

Even a quick look at this list tells me one simple thing:  regret is for losers.  I have never seen a whinier pack of self-serving weakness since I last watched a Democratic presidential debate.  Everything, absolutely everything on this “top five” list is just, well, sad.

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Me?  I’m still holding out hope for a pyramid.

Would you like to go to your grave worrying about any of those things?  I can’t imagine doing it.  I refuse to let regret rule me.  And I refuse to let any decision I made twenty years ago rule me.  Hell, I refuse to let any decision I made last week rule me, except for choosing that convenience store egg/muffin sandwich – I don’t need to explain why.  Deal with the consequences?  Certainly.  But regret?  No.

Let’s go down the “top five” list:

Not living a life “true to yourself”?  I’ve never heard such nonsense in my life.  I was talking with a guy the other day who quit his job because his boss asked him to do something illegal.  That’s being true to yourself – he walked away without a paycheck but with his values and beliefs intact.  If you’re not being true to yourself, you’re either weak or flighty.  The good news?  Anyone who reads this blog is neither.

Wishing you hadn’t “worked so hard”?  That’s also nonsense.  A soul thrives on doing good work that matters.  Doing good work excellently is hard.  The Mrs. teaches, and works hard at it – I can see from her talking about her students, talking about the ones who learned and improved, the ones who keep coming back to her classroom to report on their lives that her work matters.  Working hard at work that matters is what makes us the best humans we can be.  If you think you worked too hard, you weren’t doing anything worth doing.  The good news?  Change now.  You have an entire lifetime to fix that mistake.

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I got fired from the calendar factory.  They get really mad when you take a day off.

Didn’t have the “courage to express my feelings”?  Wow.  This is the weakest on the list, so far.  Number one:  do you have feelings that matter?  Most feelings are stupid – and I have stupid feelings, too.  Thankfully, I’m not a five year old – I am at least twelve.  I get to examine my feelings and reject those that don’t reflect my values, my virtue, my beliefs.  I get to choose.  If I feel slighted by something silly or petty?  I get to choose to understand what a fool I’m being and ignore that feeling.  Again, if you don’t express your feelings, that’s not always a bad thing.  Your feelings are often stupid.

I’m sorry that “staying in touch with your friends” was so hard.  But it’s really not.  The people you care about, that care about you, are there.  They always have been, they always will be.  I don’t Facebook® much – why?  I call my friends, on an actual phone.  I text my friends.  Am I often the one that calls first?  Sure.  Do we develop different lives, does life pull us away for a while?  Do hundreds or thousands of miles separate us?  Maybe.  But I make quite a few phone calls.  And mostly my friends pick up. Sure, it’s true that the biggest miracle Jesus exhibited in the Bible was having 12 11 close friends (thanks, Judas) after the age of thirty – but you just need a few – a few that will have your back.  A few you can share with.

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Also, as a single guy it was easy to make friends.  Lots of girls I asked out wanted to be friends.

Seriously – number five on the list is a wish for “letting themselves be happier.”  Happy is easy (All You Will Ever Need To Read About How To Be Happy* (*Most of the Time)), being significant is hard.  It requires hard work while being true to yourself.  It requires expressing those feelings that your virtue allows to exist.  Friends?  The good ones will be with you forever, and you can restart your conversations with the slightest hint of time passing, even if you haven’t talked regularly in a decade, if they’re true friends.

I’ve never thought about going to a hospice and slapping someone, but this list made me want to do it.  I know, I know, it’s too late for them.  And this is the list of people who had regrets.  People like me?  I don’t have a single regret at this moment of my life.  Not one.  In a hospice, I hope I’d be the, “Regrets?  No.  More clam chowder, please,” guy.

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The Boy made me some fake ramen noodles this summer – it was an impasta.

To be clear – it’s not that I don’t care.  It’s not that I’m not blameless.  It’s not that I was always right.  Not one of those things is true.  But I have done the most important thing I can think of:  When I do something I regret, I’ve changed myself so that I won’t (Clintoncide, John Bolton’s Waifu, and October Market Crashes: Knock on Wood) do that thing again.  I cannot change the past.  But if I have learned, if I can help others not make the same mistakes while not repeating my own mistake?  Like an algebra teacher for the soul, I have taken something negative and turned it into something positive.  The bonus is I get to end the dreams of high school freshmen in the process.

And I’m not planning on having any regrets tomorrow.  If you have regrets?  Fix them now or recognize them for the dead weight they are and cut them loose.

The alternative?  Trust me, you don’t want to have me chasing you down in a hospice and slapping you silly.

BONUS SOUP MEME!  I made too much soup meme by accident.  Enjoy.

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Zen and the Art of Marshmallows, Delayed Gratification, Soviet Tanks, and Russian Motorcycles

“Look, the marshmallows aren’t even toasting!  They remain a comfortable sixty-eight degrees!” – The Tick

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Come on, we know that the real villain in Stranger Things™ should have been Stay Puft®.

Once upon a time when I was a five-year-old Wilder, my kindergarten teacher gave me a marshmallow.  “Johnny, if you can wait five minutes before eating that marshmallow, I’ll give you a second marshmallow, and you can enjoy them both.”  The teacher then walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.

I thought furiously.  This must be some sort of trap, with stakes that high.  I looked around for cameras.  Aha!  There they were, disguised cleverly as a new box of chalk and a pencil sharpener.  They’re monitoring me, just as I suspected.  Little did they know, I had anticipated this entire scenario when I had debriefed my friend Thomas A. Anderson* (known on the Dark Web® as Neo™) the previous day.

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Also?  Keanu never ages – he saves that for the picture in his attic.  He looked the same in kindergarten as he does today.

With effort, I slowed the beating of my heart using a technique I had learned from Master Ginsu® during the years I had spent training in Tibet to be a Fake Purse Ninja©**.  I had trained.  I was ready for this.

Very slowly and subtly I pulled a second marshmallow from the front pocket of my Tough Skins® jeans from Sears©.  I put it in my palm.  Quick as a cobra, I then reached out for the marshmallow the teacher had left, but only appeared to leave it there on the plate.  In reality, I had swapped out the marshmallow on the plate for the one I’d brought in my pocket.

In a practiced move, I pretended to pick my nose while in reality I was eating the marshmallow the teacher had left to tempt me, leaving the imposter I’d brought from home in its place.  I felt the rush of the sugars dissolving in my mouth.  Now I could finally understand what Spot was trying to tell Dick and Jane.  The fools!

But I shook my head to clear it of these deep thoughts.  I had finished my surreptitious swap just in time – I heard the footsteps in the hall outside the room, and saw the two dark shadows under the door, letting me know that the teacher was looming like a monster that had slowly slithered out of the bowels of the Earth and decided to go into elementary education.  My heart, despite all of the training began to race again.  The door knob turned.

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Who knew it was that easy?

The teacher had another marshmallow, and started to place it next to my cleverly replaced fake.  She stopped.  She picked up my marshmallow, the one that had brought from home that had been sitting in my pocket for six hours before I made the swap, and studied it.

“Oh, Johnny.  This is gross.  There is lint in this marshmallow.  And bits of string.  And, is that a BB?  This won’t do, this won’t do at all.”  Drat.  I never counted on the relative filth of my pockets giving me away.

I had been caught.  I knew that this would go in my Permanent Record.  Ruined!  And all at the age of five.  Perhaps I could salvage my defeat and defect to the Soviet Union so I could be closer to Bernie Sanders?

Before I could go to Plan B and steal an F-15E from the nearby airbase and leave the country at Mach 2.5 my teacher continued, “No, this won’t do at all.  Let me get you a fresh marshmallow.”  She left the room and came back with two clean, pristine, marshmallows.

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It also felt like this when I swapped our baby for a baby with a better jawline at the hospital just after “Pugsley” was born.  Those nurses hardly ever look away.

Success.  And she never knew what hit her, which would make this the perfect crime.  I ate the second and third marshmallows.

Maybe I overthink these situations?

Nah.

I left the school and then a helicopter exploded behind me as I got into the school bus for the trip home, because that just looks really cool.  And I didn’t even look back.

Okay, absolutely none of that was true, except the exploding helicopter.

But what is true is that a Scientist did a study where they gave a four or five-year-old a marshmallow and promised them a second marshmallow if they didn’t eat the first.  They then followed these kids for 40 years.  Yes.  40 years.  Here’s a (LINK).  Turns out that those kids that waited for the second marshmallow had higher SAT scores, were skinnier, drank less, got stoned less, generally dealt well with stress and had a lot of friends.

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The best way to win an argument with your wife is if it never happened.  Enough vodka works, too.  Does that make this the “Ketamine Maru” scenario?

To be clear:  they never gave me the marshmallow test, because I would have completely Kobayashi Maru’d*** it.  Besides, they were too busy taking knives away from me.  Yes.  In kindergarten.  That’s how you spell freedom.

The concept of the marshmallow test is that the ability to delay gratification is good, and leads to better life outcomes.  We see this all of the time – the ant and the grasshopper was a famous fable – the ants work all summer while the grasshopper goes to meth parties.  Then winter hits, the ants start to party, but the grasshopper is left all tweaked out, tapping at the window of the anthill.  The ant party then intensifies to drown out the tapping and then everyone cheers when the grasshopper finally shows the good sense to just die already.

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Ahhh, Darwinian fables.  They skipped over the part where the ants eat the grasshopper’s frozen corpse.

There is a balance that defines a struggle between now and the future.  If you’re skewed too far to the now, you can certainly bet that all of your decisions will be made without regard to the consequences.  I want the marshmallow now, dangit!  The teacher might not bring me a second marshmallow.  There might not even be a second marshmallow.  Heck, the teacher might not even come back and I’ll be stuck in this room forever.

For most of my life, I’ve lived the “marshmallow later” life.  I think the biggest example of this is that I buy life insurance.  On my life.  I use money that I could use to pay for buying a vintage Soviet T-34 tank (I found one for sale in Poland) and spend it on life insurance.  Okay, $60 a month won’t buy a vintage Soviet T-34 tank from Poland, but you get the picture.

But for the rest of this post, I’ll use (sometimes) Marshmallow to refer to future orientation, and Anti-Marshmallow to refer to “eat it now” orientation.

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It’s a project car, honey.  The guy who sold it to me swore it was one owner.

Future orientation is spending money on something that pays off ONLY IF YOU ARE DEAD.  You will never, ever in your life receive a dime from your own life insurance, unless you have a comically complicated plot to fake your own death.  Yet, if you’re like me, you pay for it so your family can have the best tier of Internet service after you die, because after all, YouTube® isn’t going to watch itself.  In my mind, life insurance is the ultimate Marshmallow test.

Preparing for disasters is another Marshmallow test (Be Prep-ared) that over 90% of your neighbors don’t do at all.  Sticking to a diet is another (The Last Weight Loss Advice You’ll Ever Need, Plus a Girl in a Bikini Drinking Water) that’s not real popular.  I will admit that I buy my share of silly crap on the Internet.  I have several hobbies worth of kits and tools and stuff ready to build when I retire, and that’s Anti-Marshmallow behavior, but the only real hassle with them is finding a great place to store them until I’ve got the time to mess with them, what with the basement being full of ants, grasshoppers, and empty ketamine argument winning bottles.

A few weeks back I made a joke, “I could either spend it on me now, or spend it on an extra box of Depends® when I’m 90.”  If one were to truly be Marshmallow, one would always pick the future comfort, over the comfort of today.  But life is a balance.  If all you do is pick the future, you become the janitor who worked 80 hour weeks for 80 years cleaning schools to leave Harvard® an extra $20 million to turn liberal rich kids into CNN® anchors.

If you become completely Anti-Marshmallow, well, you’re broke.  Those are two extremes.  Maybe this time you want Moderation?

Last week I mentioned that Moderation is for Monks, and Adam Piggott, Gentleman Adventurer added some great thoughts.  You can read it here, and you should (LINK), in fact you should be reading him daily.  Anyone who says, “Be the very best bastard that you can be,” is worth your time.

And he says moderation is good – moderation in having a cigar, and not the box.  Splitting a bottle of wine with your wife on Friday, but not on all days ending in the letter y.  And that’s Discipline, which is very Marshmallow.  But is Discipline moderate in 2019 when the motto of the Western world is if it feels good, do it?  Probably not.

But yet, there’s a time to be Marshmallow, and a time to be (at least a bit) Anti-Marshmallow.  Maybe a T-34 is overkill – I don’t live anywhere near Kursk****.  But maybe, just maybe, I should get a Ural®.  The Mrs. has already signed off on it and said “You should get that.  It looks cool.”  To Marshmallow or to not to Marshmallow.  I guess to be Marshmallow, at some point you have to eat the marshmallows.  Otherwise Harvard© will.

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I hear Elon Musk is including anti-gravity as a new Tesla® feature.  If I bought a Ural®, I’d skip the Russians and the machine gun, because the Russians would drink all my booze and then invade Colorado only to be thrown back by a plucky school Spanish club.*****

Me?  I don’t like marshmallows all that much.  Except on ‘smores®.  And then I roast mine slowly to get the full mushy goodness without it turning into something that looks like a cat caught at Hiroshima.

Which, I guess is the Marshmallow way to eat marshmallows.

 

*The Matrix.  Too bad they never made a sequel to that movie.

**Bowfinger.  If you haven’t seen it, you’re dead to me.  Yes, it’s that funny.

***Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan.  Really?  Please tell me you already knew this one.

****Sort of like Burning Man®, but for tanks. 1943.

*****Nope.  You can figure this one out.

Moderation* is for Monks (*and Ruffles)

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

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

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

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

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

I bought the book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are no shortcuts.

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

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

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

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

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