Category: Purpose

Debt, Trench Warfare And An End Of The World Cult You Can Believe In

Had some (planned) other things come up, so one from the vaults that many of you might not have seen . . .

After World War One, the phrase, “Happy as a Hapsburg in Serbia” fell out of favor, as did the “Hair Smile” style of mustache.  Or is that Herr Smile?

I’ve already told the story about digging out of debt.  In retrospect, it seems to me that all of those stories end up sounding the same:  “I weighed six hundred pounds, my kitchen floor was covered in dirty dishes and cat food, and I had $3.7 million in debt until I found Wildernetics© and the First Church of PEZology™.  Look at me now!”

flammen

Proof that I am a reincarnated World War One soldier (Part One).  These are from a soldier’s joke newspaper, The Wiper’s (a mangling of Ypres) Times, produced for soldiers by soldiers that found an abandoned printing press.

I know my methods can solve everything, but today I had a crazy idea.  How about spending some time talking about how I got into debt in the first place?  I know that might cut into the revenue of the Wildernetics© End of the World Cult and Take-Out BarBeQue Restaurant®, but I figure you might come back for the brisket.  It’s very tender.

I’ll quit teasing.  How did I get into debt?  First a little.  Then all at once.

Let me rewind a whole marriage.  As regular readers will know, The Mrs. was not the first, but she is the final spouse.  My first marriage was an example of a series of escalating poor mutual decisions where each side seemed to lack a brief moment of sanity to back out before anyone got hurt, sort of like the run-up to World War I.  Even before Archduke Franz Ferdinand proved that .380 ACP was a useful round against Hapsburgs and their notably gelatinous bones, World War I was inevitable.  Before I said “I do” everything was in place for the trench warfare of future divorce.

ditch

Okay, I apologize for this joke.  I think it violated the Geneva Convention.

But, rewinding.  After graduating college I got married and got a starter job, which is to say I had a job that just barely paid the bills.  Nearly exactly.  In fact, after working at the job for a few months, we were exactly (most months) at zero.  We weren’t saving any money yet, but we also weren’t in the red.  Success.  My credit card limit was 10,000 . . . Siberian Lira.   This was equivalent to a whole bright and shiny quarter.  This helped me stay debt-free.

Then came the table.

optimism

Proof that I am a reincarnated World War One soldier (Part Two), this one is for James.

We had a dining room table.  It wasn’t great, and the chairs that came with it were a bit ratty – the vinyl arms had been slammed into the table often enough that it looked like a pack of rabid Chihuahuas had spent their lives sitting on the chair seats and gnawing on the arms.  I imagine them growling and chewing in unison as they sat around the table, like Viking Chihuahua rowers.  Most all of our furniture was second-hand or gifted, but the table really was the biggest eyesore.

unread

Okay, this one isn’t mine, but I couldn’t resist.

At some point, discipline broke.  I know how silly it sounds to say that now, but back then, month after month of not buying anything but actual necessities takes more discipline than Elizabeth Warren around a tribal gathering.  Eventually, I gave in.  We bought the table.  Using debt.  Back then, individual stores would give you amazing credit limits just to buy their crap.  They gave us more than enough credit to buy that table, and with the money I saved from shipping the Chihuahuas back to Denmark, I figured we’d be money ahead.

fireworks

Proof that I am a reincarnated World War One soldier (Part Three).

The table was only $500, but the difference between having no debt (outside of a mortgage) and having debt, even a small one, was a huge psychological hurdle for me.  It’s like having a doughnut when you’re doing low carb.  “I got weak had one doughnut, so I might as well have, say, 36.  And do you have any whipped cream I could just guzzle straight from the can?  I broke my diet, and don’t want to waste it.”  Pretty soon other nice-to-have things showed up, very few of which I still own today.  But I had crossed that mental barrier from peace (debt-free) to war (spend away!).  Suddenly, the credit card companies realized I had debt, and immediately wanted to lend me more money.  My credit limits tripled.

I hope that this doesn’t sound like I’m blaming The Ex.  Like Adam in the Garden of Eden, I was fully complicit.  Ultimately the debt grew faster than my wages.  This led to the idea of grad school:  I could get free tuition plus be a paid graduate assistant.  Would it work?

Sure.  There were also student loans.  Free money!  Oops.

bellgas

Okay, let’s all admit that Nachos Bellgrande® is NOT a war crime.

gas

Proof that I am a reincarnated World War One soldier (Part Four).

There were some places along the way that I could have gotten off the merry-go-round.  When I sold that first house to move for a new, post-grad school job, we’d made a stunning 40% profit in three years.  It would have more than paid off a good chunk of my student loans.  Nope, that would have made too much sense.  We did pay down a little debt and bought a new house, putting down the minimum down payment.

But most of the money was just spent.  About this time I also had one of the worst ideas I’d ever had in my life.  The Ex and I were always arguing about money, and about the thermostat – I knew that 50°F in winter and 90°F in summer were reasonable temperatures, but The Ex disagreed.  Well, if she had to pay the bills, she would certainly understand how tight money was.  Right?

No.

We had a different view of not only household temperature, but the idea that one should pay monthly bills, well, monthly.  I didn’t figure this out for three years, by which time I owed enough money to qualify as a third-world country, but one of the nice, mainly atrocity-free ones.  Mainly.

mgmeme

Taco Bell® inspired outfits?

Debt is like George Washington’s description of fire, it’s an amazing tool, but a fearful master.  My advice is to pay all of your bills in full, monthly.  I know that the people who own your debt disagree.  Why?  They want you to have debt, as much as you can pay.

I had a friend (since passed away in an accident) who I called Batman© on this blog (“I’m Batman,” – Batman, in Batman).  He had one particular investment that was worth about $12 million – a series of apartments.  He had paid the apartments off before they were even built by selling future property tax credits to other businesses.  Yeah, that kind of friend.

But he viewed his tenants as slaves (his term), who went to work daily so they could send him money every week.  I heard him use exactly that phrase to describe them.  He liked his tenants and was a good landlord.  However, he knew the score:  when they went to work each day, they went to work so they could pay him.

And Batman was a good guy and he taught kids that debt was a form of slavery of ordinary people to wealthy guys just like him, not that they always listened.

My marriage to The Ex?  That particular marriage is proof of the old Henny Youngman joke:

“Why are divorces expensive?”

“They’re worth it.”

peaceinourmeme

Yeah, divorce just STARTS the argument.

The day she moved out was one of the happiest days for both of us.

I was still digging myself out of debt when I met The Mrs.  As our relationship blossomed, I thought it was only fair to tell her of the debt that I had.

“The Soon To Be The Mrs., I have something to tell you.  You might want to sit down.”

The Soon To Be The Mrs. looked shaken.  She sat.  I told her about my debt.  She laughed.

“Is that all?  I thought you were going to tell me you’d been in prison.”

No, not prison.

But I still owed reparations payments to France.

Propaganda Attack: The Wilder Experience (Plus Bikini Ending)

“PBS, the propaganda wing of Bill and Melinda Gates.” – The Office

I used to advertise that I catered to midgets, but the market was too small.

A curious thing happened last week.  For the most part, I think most of the people who comment and interact with me are pretty much what they seem.  I’ve had a few direct messages (email and whatnot) that seemed to be right out of the “FBI funds plot paid for by FBI and planned by FBI with equipment provided by FBI” files.  I told them point-blank that I assumed anyone sending me emails of that type were FBI and . . . they stopped sending me emails.

Huh.  That was weirdly easy.

Then there are the people commenting for commercial purposes to promote their own websites.  You can always spot those – the comments have nothing to do with the post, and are often some sort of cut and paste word salad.  If those make it through the spam filter I let the comments stay up, but don’t interact with them.

 

Does anyone answer their e-mails?

Moscow Rules (no coincidences) would indicate that, at least several times, I’ve managed to irritate someone enough to knock the site off the net.  With over 1,000 days of (more or less) continuous uptime, to get knocked off twice in one month probably indicates I’ve irritated the Junior Antifa® LGBT Programmer Alliance™ enough that they script-kiddied the place.

But last week’s COVIDIOCRACY post was enough to ratchet up the attention, I guess.

I’m not sure how the comment/spam filter works.  Probably programmers howl at a moonlit sky and throw Dungeons and Dragons™ dice until they level up their dwarf.  In reality, the programmers do choose parameters of known spam and then place those comments in a bin until people like me decide if they’re real or not.

The first comment to pop up, relatively early in the post was this one:

I’ll note a few things:  the name, “labrat” was chosen to give the impression that the person is engaged in science on a regular basis.  It’s not bad, really.

The first paragraph was intended to be fawning (entertaining) but also an attempt to discredit my credentials.  In reality, I have cheerfully acknowledged every error found in the blog, but there aren’t all that many, even when I calculated the mass of anti-PEZ® required for near light-speed travel.

The idea, coupled with the name, was to convey legitimacy to them, while removing legitimacy from the post for the casual reader.

The rest of the post is a word salad that’s attempting to:

  • Toss a claim that Dr. Malone didn’t invent the mRNA vaccine. Well, he didn’t, but it looks like he had a very significant role in the development of the technology (LINK).  I’ll let others sort that out.  Is he a crackpot?  Don’t know.  Didn’t say so, either way.  Regardless, I’m sure Malone knows more than “labrat”.
  • Say that viruses mutate.
  • Indicates that new data means new approaches. Like, lockdown (what number is this, three?) and I kid you not – the CDC® just said, “two more weeks” to stop the spread.

But then, just an hour later, this comment showed up to be moderated:

It’s . . . the same post.  But now it’s “hank”, which makes me think of either Bocephus or Hank Hill:

I guess all your rowdy friends can be there on Monday Night if you don’t criticize Barak Obama.

Under a different guise, “j-lab” started commenting on random posts.  Same quotes.

Then, another one.  Why this one?  I think it was a hello from the bot-master.  On another website I called him out as being up and active during the time businesses would be open from India to the Eastern Mediterranean.  His comment, “Namaste!”

And, finally, these two from the last 12 hours.

I bet those people are fun at parties.

I backtracked the I.P. addresses from the comments.  Just to let you know, I never do that with average comments.  Frankly, I’m just not interested where most people are posting from, I’m just glad you’re here.  But I did backtrack these.  Where did the comments come from?  Atlanta, Georgia.  Canada.  Japan.

They didn’t really come from those places.  All of the comments came from a proxy.  Those locations were just where it popped out into the “trackable” Internet.  It would likely be trivial for fed.GOV to track them, but for me, that’s where the rabbit hole ends.

But it’s enough.

The end result is simple.  I write about the coming Civil War?  Yawn.  I write about forced inoculations of experimental mRNA technology that appears to have little to no actual beneficial use.  What?  What do you mean?

In the Pfizer trials, there were 15 deaths from mRNA injected folks.  There were 14 deaths in the control group.

No.

Beneficial.

Effects.

The “jab” might have horrific implications for humanity.  I’ll probably hit some nightmare-level (and very low probability events) on Friday’s post.  Again, it’s very possible that the #clotshot might only hurt a few tens of thousands of people, and not be some sort of dystopian science fiction movie backstory.  Vaccines have been pulled for much less harm than has been reasonably attributed to the mRNA shot:

Before swine flu met Jesus it was swater flu.

So why push it so hard?  I’m not sure.  Governmental power?  Pharmaceutical profits?  Covering their tracks by removing the “control group”?

Regardless, all of the power, profit, and cover-up goes away with one simple trick:

The Best Post You’ll Read About COVID This Week: COVIDIOCRACY (with bikini ending)

“Quite frankly, we have had some very reliable intelligence reports that quite a serious epidemic has broken out at Clavius, something apparently of an unknown origin. Is this in fact what has happened?” – 2001:  A Space Odyssey

I’m not against all Gene therapy.

Note 1:  none of the memes for this post are original (most all of my regular post memes are), these are “as found” on the Internet.  I don’t think that there are any major inaccuracies, but, as always, engage in critical thinking.

Note 2:  this isn’t medical or life advice.  You have to assess your own situation and make your own choices. 

I was wandering through the Internet this week when this little gem of information caught my eye:

When I caught a bacterial infection, the doctor told me I was a man of culture.

The “jab” (which is not a vaccine, more on that in a bit) had proven not to decrease the rate of infection.  Nope.  The #clotshot looks like it turns those that have taken it into super-spreaders.  They have the ability, if infected, to spread even more of the disease to other people.

Think about that for just a second:  the “vaccinated” are very likely making the “normal DNA” population less safe.  It’s a paradox.  But at least they don’t get it themselves, right?  Well, in the immortal words of Aesop:  natzsofast . . . .

So, this gives a whole new meaning to Royal Navy “carrier”.  Something tells me they should have seen this one coming.

It has become abundantly clear that the “jab” is (at best) only moderately effective.  I have had the ‘Rona.  The Mrs. tested positive for the antibodies, and when she was sick she was helpfully coughing directly on me all night.  It’s not as bad as licking a doorknob at a bathroom hobos use, but it’s close.

The symptoms for me were mild.  A bit of a coof, and a fever of around 99°F for about four hours.  For The Mrs.?  Worse, but not the sickest I’ve ever seen her.

For me, a fever of 99°F is something that happens about once a decade, at most.  I last took a sick day in 2001 or so, so I’ve generally been fairly healthy.  The flu in 2012 was much, much worse for me, but that’s only because I let it get in my lungs.  I guess it was swine flu, so I should have had some oinkment.

Blofeld:  “Mr. Bond, I’ve poisoned your glass with the measles vaccine.  Now you have autism.”  Bond:  “That’s fine, Blofeld, I’ve disassembled your doomsday device and organized the parts by size.”

CORONA is real.  But when you look at the statistics, it is a disease that simply doesn’t hurt young people.   By young, I mean less than 40.  So, when I see Internet harpies screeching that they don’t want their kids to DIE!!! because of selfish “unvaxxed”, what I see are people who probably dress their precious snowflake up in bubble wrap before they are allowed to go play in a playground that has been designed by dozens of engineers over thousands of hours to be safe in any conceivable circumstances.

And then they insist to replace the ground under the safe playground equipment with crushed rubber pellets that would safely allow Jeff Bezos to land on them if he jumped from orbit.

Oops, sorry.  Jeff Bezos hasn’t been to orbit.

But the statistics are clear:  your kid is safe, at least from COVID-19.

Never get involved with a cult of mimes.  They’re capable of unspeakable acts of violence.

Here at the end of July, 2021, though, the drumbeat of COVIDIOCRACY has reached a new high.  I was over at Phil’s place (LINK) and made a comment.  The comment was about the coming mandate to force everyone to get “the jab” or lose their government job.  This was the wife of a .GOV employee or contractor.  She asked me what she should do.  My response was simple – without knowing lots of intimate details of her life, there was no way I could answer.

When you don’t need a prion disease to have your brain turn into sponge.

Nearly immediately, my response was jumped on by a shill – obviously a paid propagandist.  It was interesting that the only hours they were posting were when it was 8:30AM in India to when it was about 6PM in India.  I’m not saying it was India.  It could have been someone really late to the office in China or really early to the office in the eastern Mediterranean.

Phil had attracted paid foreign agents to his site to pop up propaganda.  Propaganda for the “jab”.  If it were good for you, wouldn’t that be self-evident by now?

Let’s look at the huge push on the “vax”:

  • Coordinated media attacks to encourage it.
  • Pedo Joe announcing that he’s going to make Fed.GOV take the shot.
  • Coordinated attacks by shills on influential blogs and /message boards/.

Sure, you could say that it’s all about Pfizer’s® Pfrofits™, but it’s only a few measly billion that they made this quarter.  That’s not to say that Pfizer© isn’t Pcorruptly® attempting to manipulate the media:

The vaccine, though, might be dangerous.  I was talking with a friend and described it as “an untested genetic manipulation.”  He said that was too strong, and it sounded kinda crazy to say it that way.  Honestly, that was a fair criticism, and I especially appreciate those:  it’s a good friend that tells you when they think you’re nuts.  But:

My gut instinct might have been right.  DNA changes?  That can’t have any bad impacts, can it?

I guess it can.  And this is where the #clotshot becomes a crime.  Any healthy person under 40 is much more likely to die of the mRNA treatment than COVID.  There has been quite a run on heart attacks of healthy young men who were injected.

But even after this, the push for the injection is intensifying:

2

But why would you trust a government and a media that has consistently lied to you about the ‘Rona?

And they’ve completely expressed how they feel about anyone who has a different opinion:

Certainly, they’ll return your freedom to you after COVID is banished, right?

Be Goofus, not Gallant.

The Mrs. and I have discussed it.  We are not getting the #clotshot.  If this is an experiment, we’ll happily remain in the control group.  I’ve had the ‘Rona, so I identify as immune.

But, in the end, you have a choice.  You can submit to have a literally Biblical restriction on your life,

Or, you can take another track.  If enough people choose freedom, we’ll never have to worry for a minute.  You must remember – they’re more afraid of you than you should be of them.

See, it ends with a bikini!

Emotional Bank Accounts – Another Form Of Wealth

“I’m yours, Lurch.  My heart.  My soul.  My bank account.” – The Addams Family

If it’s 2% milk, what’s the other 98%?

I generally try to be an upbeat person.  I’ve got good reason to be.  So far, at least, most of the worst things in my life have led to most of the best things in my life.  And it seems the worse the initial event is, the better the final outcome.

The track record is pretty good.  I’m optimistic.  Heck, with a small thermonuclear war, who knows how good things will get for me!

Optimism is one of my personal keys to life.  And it’s key to my relationships.

One thing I’ve learned (besides the fact that cats float but don’t like it) along the way is this:  what I get out of my relationships is just like my job or any other aspect of my life.  The more that I put into the relationship, the more that I get out of the relationship.

“I have become Fluffy, Destroyer of Worlds.”

Stephen Covey called this the Emotional Bank Account®.  I put the little ® there in this case because Stephen Covey ® almost everything under the Sun.

The idea of the Emotional Bank Account™ is simple:  every relationship that you have is one where you’re either doing the things that build the relationship or doing things that cause the relationship to fade faster than Johnny Depp’s career.

A ramen noodle warehouse burned down.  Dozens of dollars in inventory were destroyed. 

This is a simple and important concept.  In my career I’ve worked in lots of different office environments and seen lots of different characters that quickly developed an overdraft situation with me:

  • The Complainer: There’s a problem with everything, in the view of a Complainer.  It’s like working with Goldilocks, but the porridge is never, ever the right temperature.  There is no topic that isn’t complained about.  Heck, if they were the manager of the Tesla® plant, they’d complain that the place smelled musky.
  • The Helpless: Helpless people simply cannot do any particular task, and need help each and every time they do it.  If you allow it, they’ll pawn off as much of the task to you as they can, each and every day.  What’s the name for a collective parasitical group of people like this?
  • The Woe-Is-Me: This is a perennial victim.  Everything in their life that’s bad?  They’re not responsible for it.  How bad is their life?  They have to shop at Wal-Martyr®.
  • The Untrustworthy: Think you’ve told them a secret?  Soon enough the entire office knows.  And untrustworthy people who use marijuana are worse.  They’re guilty of high treason.
  • The Emergency Room Doctor: Everything has to be done now – it’s all urgent.  And there’s a sense of criticality about even the most mundane tasks.  I mean, if your parachute doesn’t open, why panic?  You’ve got the rest of your life to fix it.

Those people are draining.  Don’t be one of them.  How do I know this?  Once I was going through a rough patch, and was slipping into Woe-Is-Me.  I could sense from my friends that I had ridden that pony a little too long, or maybe I needed to up my deodorant game.  I decided to stop complaining.

Then The Mrs. complained that I don’t buy her flowers.  I have no idea when she started selling them.

I decided that if I had a problem worth complaining about, I’d deal with or shut up.  Even my best friends have a max tolerance level for dealing my emotional complaints.  The Mrs. is even more direct.  When I whine, her only comment is:  “And what, exactly, are you going to do about it?”

Oddly enough, though, I found that (in most circumstances) when I’m a positive person, people like to see me around more.  They ask me for help.  They offer help.  My account balance is full.

It’s not just at work.  It’s not just my friends.  It’s my family, too.  If every interaction that I have with them is negative, people aren’t exactly happy when Pa comes home.

Hopefully, this knife joke wasn’t too edgy. 

Being a positive, productive, trustworthy person?  When times are good, it’s important.  When times aren’t good?

Maybe even more important.  And when we talk about wealth, being surrounded by good, trustworthy people is wealthy, indeed.

Cathedrals, Buzz Aldrin, And Changing The World

“You know, most people think that the name Buzz Aldrin has some huge meaning behind it.  Nope, he was afraid of bees.” – Frasier

What’s the difference between Joe Biden and Buzz Aldrin?  Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon.  Joe Biden likes kids to rub his leg hair.

I think back to the builders of the European cathedrals.  The construction of Notre Dame was started in 1163 A.D., not long after the Norman Conquest of England.  Notre Dame was finished in 1345 A.D.

182 years.  I might not even live that long, and I take vitamins and eat only a diet of meat that I hunt half-naked while armed only with stone-tipped spears.  The people in Wal-Mart® have gotten a bit tired of the spears, but it doesn’t technically violate their weapons policy.  And I use a Visa™ to pay, though they make a “eeeew” face when I pull it from my fur loincloth on a sweaty summer day.

Think about that.  NO!  Not my sweaty fur loincloth, the cathedral.  Think about the motivation that it requires to get up every morning when the thing you’re trying to accomplish won’t be done in your lifetime.  Or the lifetime of your child.  Or the lifetime of their children.

That requires motivation.  Also, I have no idea what they used for alarm clocks, and their humor-blogging infrastructure appeared to be singing marginally naughty songs about the local barmaid and complaining about how French they were and how they hoped the Germans would never invent panzers.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame sure had a twisted back story.

Motivation, though, remains key in everything you do in life, even if you’re not building a cathedral.  One motivational mistake is to aim too high.  When someone aims too high, they run the risk of being disappointed by results.

As I’ve discussed with one of my friends, he noted that research shows the most happy people in the Olympics®, overall, are the bronze medal winners.  Third place isn’t so bad.  Since I heard that the intelligence of dolphins was second only to man, that means Leftists should be happy, being in third place and all.

For the bronze medal winners, well, here they are on the world stage.  They did really well.  Were they close to winning it all?  Sure, close enough to get a bronze medal.  But, there’s the guy over there with the silver medal, so, he and another guy were better.

Most bronze medal winners can be happy that if they’d been just a little bit better, they’d have been in . . . second place.  If they’d worked a lot harder, they’d have still been only one place better.  So, third isn’t so bad.  They might even get the Junior High Marching Band to lead a parade when they get home.

The silver medal winner, though, will always have it eating on him:  what if he hadn’t skipped practice that week?  What if he had pushed a little harder in the weight room?  The silver medalist is plagued with a bushel basket of “what if’s” that will wake him up in the middle of the night.  Second place is tantalizing.  It is the story of near success, like England’s soccer team.

Helen Keller never saw a movie about pirates.  Because she’s dead.

The gold medalist?  It depends.  In many cases, Olympic™ level athletes work for two decades to get the skill and experience to win Olympic® gold, to be, literally, the best in the world at something that no one will pay them to do.

Sure winning’s great, right?  But what happens when the dog finally catches the car?  What then?

Let’s move sideways a bit more, and return to one of my favorite people in history:  Buzz Aldrin.  It will all make sense in the end.  I’m a trained professional.

Buzz was a guy who did a lot of things that were world-class.  He went to the USMA at West Point.  He was a fighter pilot who shot down commies in Korea, but still didn’t get to kill as many commies as Mao or Stalin did.  He got a doctorate from MIT on rocket navigation.

And one other thing.  What was it?

Oh, yeah.  He was the second man on the frigging Moon.

That’s really cool.  But there appears to be a downside to that.  It wasn’t a just something small and fleeting like an Olympic® gold medal, it was one of the ultimate gold medals in all of human history.

Ever.

How do you follow that up?  Get a Denny’s® Franchisee Award for cleanest bathroom in Des Moines?

I hear Santa’s bathroom is clean because he uses Comet.

Neil Armstrong figured out how to follow it up.  That man was always kind of spooky and Zen and perhaps was okay owning a Denny’s© in Des Moines, selling Moons over My Hammies™ and Rootie Tootie Fresh and Fruity® pancakes.

Buzz didn’t figure it out, probably because his work in physics and killing commies did not prepare him to make a decent pancake.  Imagine:  Buzz was 39 and there was literally no way his life hadn’t peaked.  Nothing, and I mean nothing he could ever do again would match up to what he did.

First a week passes.  Then a month passes.  Then a year passes.  The hollow feeling inside of Buzz grew.  How do you move forward?  How do you top yourself?  I mean, you could make a really great pancake, but it would have to be the best pancake in the history of pancakes.  Dang.  That still doesn’t beat being on the frigging Moon.

He was stumped.  He had fame.  He had the ability to get whatever money he wanted, more or less.

But he had peaked.

What to do?

Buzz crawled into a bottle.  Eventually, after leaving the Air Force, Buzz even spent time selling used cars.  Sure, that worked for Kurt Russell in the 1980 film, but Buzz was awful at it.

What’s the difference between a used car salesman and a COVID-Jab advocate?  The used car salesman knows when he’s lying.

As near as I can tell, Mr. Aldrin finally pulled himself out of his funk.  He finally decided his place was being an advocate for manned spaceflight, specifically to Mars.  He even helped to create a transfer orbit to make a trip to Mars the most time-effective that he could envision.  You could say that Buzz figured out the gravity of the situation.

That more than anything, I think, helped him.  Buzz found something that was so big, so important, that he knew he wasn’t going to be able to do it in his lifetime.

Mars.  A worthy goal for mankind.  A goal that is meant for brave dreamers, for people who might want to change humanity.  He had found his cathedral.

Again.  Buzz had already done it once.

Mr. Aldrin is an unusual case – one of the highest achievers in a generation of high achievers.  Many mornings I’m just glad that the alarm managed to wake me up.  But I’ve had my share of success in the business world, reaching as high as I ever really wanted to go, doing the one job I wanted to do.

When Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Mike Collins went to meet President Nixon after the Moon mission, Mike had to spend the entire time driving around the White House.

Where Buzz aimed high, perhaps I didn’t aim as high, but I still got there.

Then what?

My writing is a part of that.  Where do you go when you have whatever you want?

You find something important, and you start building.  You start building something more important than you.  I think Neil Armstrong found that when he started teaching.  Perhaps he got his satisfaction from helping the next generation learn.

I can’t be sure.  Neil didn’t really say.  He seemed happy that the attention had passed.  My Apollo-gies if I got that wrong.  And this isn’t about him, anyway.

The lesson I learned from Buzz was a simple one:  have a goal.

Find a cathedral to build.  Find something so much bigger than yourself that you’re willing to build it even though no one alive on Earth will ever see it through.  Make it something that you can care about.  Make it big enough that, at best, you can help build only part of it.

If you can find your cathedral, you will have the rarest of gifts:  you will shape the future.

Remember, not all cathedrals are made with stones, and the best ones are built in the minds of men.

Why?

Because rent is cheaper there.

The Greatest Game

“A member of an elite paramilitary organization: Eagle Scouts.” – Red Dawn

I have a friend who has a trophy wife.  It wasn’t first place.

I once had a position with a certain paramilitary organization aimed at youth who identified as were boys.  I have always raised my own children by a simple rule:  if they thought they were old enough to try something, they probably were.  A related rule was:  if I thought they were old enough, I’d make them try something.  Especially if it made my life easier.

Five-year-olds can do drywall.  I mean, through the tears, that is.

Obviously, this got mixed results.  The judgment of a ten-year-old is not as good as that of even a boy two years older.  When I asked Pugsley to warm up the car one winter evening when he was 10 or so, while sitting in the front seat he did a neutral drop at high RPM.  Right into the house.

Live and learn.  Weirdly, we managed to put the wall back into place (mostly) with a mallet.  Was I irritated he ran a car into our house?  Certainly.  But, independence has costs.

Learning is never free.

I promise to stop using police-related puns.  I’ll give them arrest.

When I later became a paramilitary organization leader to other boys in addition to mine, I found something interesting:  most parents hadn’t taught the boys even rudimentary life skills or woodcraft.  Lessons I had learned just tromping around Wilder Mountain seemed like magic to them.  It made sense.  We don’t really live in a world that values those skills.

In my first campout with the boys, one of the skills we focused on was simple:  building a fire.  To my amazement, half of the boys hadn’t done that, ever.  One of the oldest boys on the campout was around sixteen. He worked on his fire for over an hour.  In that hour, he learned a lot of ways to not start a fire.  Finally, he got it going.

Me:  “Okay, good job!  You can put it out now.”

He didn’t.  It was the first fire he’d ever made, and he stoked and babied that fire like it was the first one that mankind had ever mastered.  And, for him, that was true.  He kept that fire going for hours.

There was a fire at Goodwill® today.  No injuries, just some secondhand smoke exposure.

I learned as much from the boys as they learned from me.  In this moment I learned a real, hard fact of life.  When that boy made his first fire, he didn’t need a badge.  He didn’t need a medal.  What did he need?

Nothing.  He had struggled for an hour to make that fire.  His reward wasn’t anything outside of him.  His reward was the skill.  In a sense, that real, physical fire had started a metaphorical fire in him.

Give that a thought.  Soccer leagues give children participation trophies so their feelings aren’t hurt.  I’m not sure anyone understands the damage done by those hunks of gilt plastic.  The trophies are cheap, but the sense of entitlement created by them lasts a lifetime.

When a man makes a fire, or wins a judo match, or does something that is his and his alone, the medal isn’t the accomplishment, the medal is the acknowledgment.

A child who grows up in Montana who can ride a horse, skin an elk, and shoot a rifle straight and true doesn’t need a medal.  They don’t need outside affirmation.  They are who they are.

Arnold was a great gardener.  They called him the Germinator.

That’s the rule of the Greatest Game.  Struggle.  Learn.  Master.  Repeat.

Missing?  A trophy.  Why is it missing?  It’s simply not necessary.

We live in a culture where people don’t have to struggle.  I imagine the only meal missed in recent memory by readers here is one they chose to miss.  Food in this day may be more expensive than it was last year, but it’s still everywhere.  The calories to feed a person are plentiful.

So why are video games popular?

They’re popular because we’re wired to Struggle, Learn, Master, and Repeat.  Deep down inside, though, we know it’s only a pale shadow of the Greatest Game.

Technology has improved so much that it has interfered with the programming that is at the core of what it means to be human.  To be the best that we can be, the struggle has to be worth our time.  The game has to be worth playing.

No matter how bad you think you are, Moses was worse.  He broke all of the Commandments at once.   

I think that a lot of the dysfunction in our society stems to that – people who would have mattered to their tribe back in 200 B.C. or 1,000 A.D. are simply playing their parts in big machines.  Our technology has changed our culture.  Our culture has changed our roles in society.

These changed roles weren’t made with men in mind, they emerged from the technology.  Even 140 years ago, the typical farmer and his family often had to fabricate many if not most of the things that he depended on.  That led to independence.

The farmer was free in a way that people chained to an international financial system and a technological corporate machine aren’t.  He was free to succeed, or free to fail.

What mattered was how he played the Greatest Game.

We’re still here.  We can play the Greatest Game, because, surprisingly, it’s still out there.  Each day we have the chance:  Struggle, Learn, Master and Repeat.

Me?  I’m still learning to make a fire or two.

The 1819 Project: Restoring America

“Restoration may be possible, in two days. By the book, Admiral.” – Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khan

We can finally predict the platform that George Bush’s kids will run on.

The United States is in a bad place.  Monetarily.  Philosophically.  Morally.  It even has bad manners.

Ultimately, the systems that led us to this situation won’t lead us out.   Voting won’t save us.  The Supreme Court won’t save us.  Conservatism?

Conservatism© certainly won’t save us.  It certainly didn’t save itself, and it becomes increasingly quaint as Conservatism 2021® quietly ignores nearly every position of Conservatism 1965™, if not right out taking the exact opposite position from even a decade ago.

Conservatism® has led us to where we are today.  It’s just last year’s Leftist platform, but dressed up in a suit with a useful idiot explaining the Conservative Case for Sex Change Surgery for Toddlers.  Oh, and this should be done even if the parents disagree.  For the good of the child, you know, which they will all nod and agree, is a Conservative™ value.

Imagine if we called the Left intolerant!  That would show them!

The reason for this is the Conservatism™ is inherently a negative philosophy.  It doesn’t stand for anything, merely against (mainly) Leftist ideas.  Once those Leftist ideas gain a mainstream following?  They become a part of Conservatism®, and Conservative™ shills pretend those ideas were always part of their philosophy.

Conservatives® were always in favor of sending troops to Uganda to secure the rights of Ugandans to have gay marriage.

But Conservatism™ in 2021 is now as dead as whatever it is that lives on top of Sean Hannity’s head.  There is zero actual Conservative™ philosophy, merely a money and influence game where politicians sell their influence to the largest corporation for thirty pieces of bacon-wrapped shrimp monthly.

So conservative!

All is not lost.  Look at, for instance, gun rights.  Gun rights were presented not as, “what the Left wants, but more slowly” but instead as, “from our cold, dead hands.”  It was that level of determination that led to the “assault weapon” ban lapsing.  What started with a concealed carry movement has now led to Constitutional carry (i.e., concealed carry without a permit) in state after state.

In the year 2000, one state had Constitutional carry.  In 2021 (by my count) the number is over 21.  And gun rights is where the Right has had a similar victory recently.  In Missouri, the governor signed into law a bill that bars the police from enforcing Federal gun laws.

All of them.

Of course, the Leftist Justice Department was quick to sperg out and say, “Missouri, you can’t do that” but Missouri just kept hitting “ignore” and sending them straight to voicemail when they called again and again.  In truth, the Feds will never be able to enforce Federal law in Missouri unless they unleash the might of the American military against the people of Missouri.

The chances of that happening aren’t particularly high, plus Missouri seems entirely justified.

Amazing what a little light will show you.

Missouri is just following the pattern we’ve been seeing from States for years.  Want to sell marijuana in violation of Federal law at the State level?  Sure.  Multimillion-dollar industries can be set up in a year.  Want to exclude police from helping enforce immigration laws?  Sure.

This is just the next, logical step.

And it gave me a crazy idea.

The 1819 Project.

In 1819, the Federal government didn’t have these regulations and laws.  In 1819, the average citizen’s interaction with the Federal government would have been voting for a Representative and voting for President.  We weren’t THE United States, we were the united States.

Until the Civil War, that was fairly clear – States were sovereign entities – they didn’t gain their existence from the Federal government, the Federal government got its existence from them.

The Federal government didn’t tax individuals.  The Federal government didn’t place arbitrary restrictions on what you could do with your business, your hiring, and your land.  These simply were not Federal issues.

Could the States regulate these things?  Certainly, that’s what the Constitution said.  Did they?  I imagine they did, some of them.  Were the states free to pick and choose who voted and how and why?  Yes., they were, and without resorting to appeal to the nine black-robed justices in Washington, D.C.

It’s funny that I can write the speeches the governor of Oregon will give in the future.

Could Oregon turn itself into a communist paradise?  Sure.  But it couldn’t turn its people into serfs, and it couldn’t put up walls to keep them in.  It might be able to keep people it didn’t want out, as would any State.

Sure.  That’s freedom.  But the Commie Rot would be stuck in Oregon.  And people could leave it.  Senators wouldn’t be elected, but appointed by State legislatures.  This improves the ability of the States to fight against silly things from larger States, and makes the ratification of a treaty a real event, not a popularity contest.

Corporations?  Well, like people, they’d have a finite purpose and a finite lifetime.  If corporations have the same rights as a person, they have to die, too.  70 years might be too long.

How about 40?  Regardless, in 1819, corporations had a charter, and existed for a specific purpose and had a specific lifetime.  That changed with a Supreme Court decision (not looking it up, it’s late) in the 1880s that gave corporations an infinite lifespan.

Sounds good to me.  Every corporation should have an end date.

But the point is that we don’t fight to conserve anything.  The time has now come for a Restoration.  What do we restore?  A culture filled with freedom; a culture where the Federal government was a tiny, distant force that had the responsibility of national defense and regulation of interstate commerce.

No, not the creeping interstate commerce regulations we have today (where having a phone number constitutes evidence of participating in “interstate commerce”) but a very limited scope so Texas can’t put tariffs on goods from Oklahoma.  This leaves room for the FAA, but very little room for the FBI since 99% of Federal crimes disappear overnight because they no longer exist.  And the ATF?  Only to enforce taxes and not kill women and children with fire.

Hey, it’s not easy to brutally enforce arbitrary regulations on law-abiding citizens.

Politics is downstream of Culture.  What’s needed is a Restoration of Culture.

If it sounds like I’m making up a movement, I assure you I’m not.  The 1819 Project is well underway and has been for years.  Parents are, especially in the Leftist parts of the world, pulling their kids from government schools and putting them in religious schools or homeschooling.  Why?

The 1819 Project has already started, at best, I’m giving it a name.  It’s well underway in places like Modern Mayberry, where a kid can grow up (more or less) free.  The Feds seem to have forgotten that rural places exist, and hardcore Leftists don’t seem to want to live here unless they can get ganja and free stuff.

That can be tough to take in.  Next week we’ll start in on how he’s born to treat women badly.

Places like Missouri are going to become the norm.  I anticipate that, with the coming Troubles I see, the Federal government will become weaker and weaker.  The hallmark of a failing government is more tyranny, but the people of the united States have seen their share of what happens when they give up their guns.  Pol Pot, Mao, and Stalin have provided a clear example that gun confiscation precedes life confiscation.

Will we get back to 1819 in values?  I have no idea.

But I do know we need to be headed towards something, and not just reacting.  1819 is a good start.

The plan.

The Beauty Of The Red Pill

“Hey Samantha, don’t take the Red Pill!” – Grandma’s Boy

If my son wanted to be a fiction writer, I’d send him to college to study journalism.

Have you ever not asked a question because you already knew the answer, but were afraid to hear it?  I’m willing to bet we all have.  I try to leave occasional breadcrumbs here, especially during my Monday and Wednesday posts, but I’ve stopped short of leaving my posts in the forest near a witch’s house.  Besides, I hear Hillary has security guards.

The Truth is shocking.  Many times, the Truth isn’t pleasant.  I remember coming to one unpleasant Truth realization in college:  the college didn’t care if I did well or even if I graduated.

It hadn’t been like that in high school.  But in college?  I was just a number.  It sounds silly to me now, but back then it was quite a realization for me.  Gradually, more Truths started showing up in my life.  In many cases, I denied them as long as I could, but they eventually became inevitable.

They call this the Red Pill, after the scene in The Matrix where Keanu Reeves gets a job painting pills red.

Never let Morpheus do the cooking at a Matrix cast barbeque.  There’s a reason they call him Lawrence Fishburne.

Part of the problem with discovering Truth is that it can make you feel alone.  Much of our society is based on covering uncomfortable Truth with pretty little lies.  It has always been so, but in 2021 it’s at the very worst that it has been in the history of the United States.  People were censored a year ago for telling what are now the (generally) accepted theories about CoronaChan.

The Truth is that we still don’t know where it came from, but vary from any generally accepted truth about COVID on YouTube® and you’ll be censored.  Thankfully, YouTube™ is so committed to “truth” that they gave themselves an award for being so courageous about it.  Really – there isn’t even a punchline.

Here’s another Red Pill:  no one (and I mean no one) is coming to save you.  No one (and I mean no one) is responsible for your actions but you.  If you can’t save yourself, you’ll just have to depend on luck, which is a crappy strategy.  There is no secret cabal of government good guys like Qanon® used to put in his cryptic message board posts.  Q is not coming to save you.

I guess QANON was just another 4Chan teller.

Part of the problem with taking a Red Pill is that, once you’re finally awake and aware of how the world works, just like Ebola, you want to share it with people.  That’s a bad idea.

The unfortunately named Desiderius Erasmus Roterdamus made the silly quote, “In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” and with the new Red Pill knowledge, you want to share it far and wide.

Sadly, Desiderius, the one-eyed man is not king.

As H.G. Wells wrote, the blind people can’t see what the one-eyed dude describes.  They think him mad, and if they have a chance they’ll tie him down and remove that silly eye that keeps giving him all of those wild notions and that awful practical joke of leaving the plunger in the toilet.  People will fight nearly to the death to keep a pretty lie alive, especially when the Truth is ugly.

I wrote a check to a charity for the blind, but I’m worried they’ll never see a penny of it.

But there is opportunity for an individual once the first real Red Pill hits.  Seeking Truth becomes a habit.  And you find that Truth exists in many, many more places than you might imagine.  When I go to find Truth, I know one place I can find it very quickly.

Truth is in the Iron.

I started lifting again this week for the first time since COVID raised its head.  I was stunned at how one of my standard lifts was half – HALF – what it had been 18 months ago.

That is Truth.  The Iron is Truth.

Was it at all pleasant to find my strength had dropped that far, that fast?

Of course not.

But it is True.

I gave up on lifting cases of Pepsi® for exercise, it was just soda pressing. 

I cannot hide from the Iron.  I cannot cheat the Iron.  The only things there in the weight room are the Iron, Gravity, and Me.  The only thing that changes in that equation is me.  I can’t blame the Iron.  I can’t blame Gravity.

The Red Pill?

No one will make me physically stronger but me.  And the only way I can do that is to wrestle against Gravity with the Iron.  And, unless I am quite ill, it will always work.

And here is the hope.  Here is where the Red Pill really begins to pay dividends.

I’m the one responsible for:

  • my physical state,
  • what I eat,
  • how I react,
  • what I say,
  • what I watch,
  • how I treat others,
  • my own Virtue,
  • who I am, and
  • where my life ends up.

I’m not responsible for who loves me.  I’m not responsible for how much they love me.  Those are the output.  If I control every bit of input in my life, what happens, happens.

There is nothing, and I mean nothing more wonderful than that realization.  It goes beyond winning and losing.  It goes beyond the opinions of others.

The downside, of course, is seeing all of the pretty little lies and all of the attempted manipulation.  Even worse:  the attempts to numb minds, to distract, and to pretend that the new lie doesn’t contradict the last lie.  The stunning thing to me is how many people will flitter from one contradictory opinion to another like butterflies in the Sun, with never a thought.

When I take responsibility for myself, I am a changed person.

I was born a male, I identify as a male, but according to Stouffer’s Frozen Lasagna®, I identify as a family of four.

That doesn’t mean the battle ever ends.  The first struggle is, always, against myself.  Why am I weaker?

I had weights at home, but didn’t lift.

Why?

Well, I could make any number of excuses, but none of them matter.  I didn’t lift.  That was it.  So, my choice is simple:  will I work to get better every week, or will I be complacent with where I am?

I asked the Iron a question.  It told me the Truth.

Now, my choice is how will I answer?

I have only one answer.  Sweat.

It’s never lonely when you’ve got Truth for a companion.

Blogger Versus Evil

Jack Burton:  “Great.  Walls are probably three feet thick, welded shut from the outside, and covered with brick by now.”

Wang Chi:  “Don’t give up, Jack.”

Jack Burton:  “Okay, I won’t Wang.  Let’s just chew our way out of here.” – Big Trouble in Little China

Never make a deal to buy a guitar from the Devil.  There are always strings attached.

The Exorcist is a feel-good movie.  Well, at least it is for me.

I wanted to watch it when I was an especially wee Wilder, but for whatever reason, Ma and Pa Wilder felt that exposing a first grader to that particular film would be considered a war crime.  I don’t remember how old I was when I finally saw it, but as I recall it was rented on a VHS tape.

By the time I’d seen it, I’d already been exposed to much more brutal horror:  Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Norman Lear sitcoms.  I’ll say this about reading horror – the things I conjured in my mind while tearing through the pages of The Stand were far scarier than anything I’d ever seen in a movie.

But I made a pretty bold statement:  The Exorcist is a feel-good movie, so I guess you’re gonna make me back it up.  Thankfully, I have that not only on my authority, but on the authority of the author of The Exorcist.  William Peter Blatty summed up the reason I like horror films with this very simple quote:

“My logic was simple:  if demons are real, why not angels? If angels are real, why not souls? And if souls are real, what about your own soul?”

Blatty even described The Exorcist as his ministry – it seems he’s religious.  Who would have expected that?

What don’t demons wear hairpieces?  Because there would be Hell toupee. 

Much of what we see in the world we explain through simple materialism.  But when I read novels where the demons are mere humans, well, (with the exception of Hannibal Lechter) I’m generally let down when the Scooby Doo® ending explains away the supernatural mystery at the heart of the story.  Mr. Blatty’s quote describes exactly why.

“If demons are real, why not angels.”

Now I know that several readers are atheists.  As I’ve pointed out before, this blog is sort-of a litmus test.  People that are the kind of atheist that just hates God will generally not opt-in to reading this blog for any length of time.  I have no idea why, but they just don’t.  Actual, rational atheists that don’t turn rabid when the supernatural is discussed don’t seem to mind.

Maybe they look at it like I look at the WWE®:  they can watch it and be amused, even though they’re certain it’s not real.  They especially like it when Hulk Hogan® hits me in the head with a chair.

Where did Randy “Macho Man” Savage™ work out?  The Slim-Jim©.

Regardless, I think most readers here share the same view of Evil (or even evil) in this world.  It’s visible in the raw naked lust for power that we have seen repeated again and again from the Left.  It’s also visible in their unbridled joy at the destruction of Truth, Beauty, and Society.

The Left revels in the Lie, the inversion of Truth, the inversion of Beauty:

  • Billions of dollars in damage in Minneapolis is a “peaceful protest” while a march on the Capitol is, according to President* Biden: “The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
  • They demand, using free speech, to restrict the free speech of those that offend them.
  • The Left demands you look at what is obviously a man, and claim it to be a woman.

It’s simple, really:  everything that’s Bad is presented as good.  And everything Good?  Well, it’s Bad.  How dare you think self-restraint and hard work is virtuous?

Sniff.  “Smells like fraud.”

Let’s look at how a simple Good thing like a married man and woman having a baby is turned on its head:

  • What about the woman’s career?
  • Why not live the childfree life?
  • Why have the baby at all?
  • There are too many people on the planet already.

The last argument is especially Evil, because when the propaganda works, the headlines then sing out:  “since we’re not having enough babies, we need to import multitudes to grow our economy.”  “Meet the New Americans.”

It’s fun to use this technique on Leftists.  I can recall a Twitter® exchange with a Leftist where I Tweeted™ that I opposed immigration to the United States on the grounds that people in the United States had the highest carbon footprint, so by bringing in more people into the United States they were destroying the planet.

Brain lock ensued when they couldn’t deal with the conflict between their two opposing beliefs.  It’s fun to come up with these couplets to invert the Evil right back at them, though, in the end, there is no conversion for a True Believer outside of a gentle helicopter ride.  They have given in to the Evil.  They’ll avoid the conversation.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle:  three ways to dispose of a dead Leftist.

It is especially difficult for parents of children:  what is innocent is sexualized.  A first-grade boy isn’t old enough to decide what he should eat on a regular basis – why would the world think that he should be turned into a she?

It’s all around us, every day.  It’s sold to us in media, it’s in the news, it’s everywhere.

And it’s attacking the Values of what we all know, deep inside ourselves, to be True and Good.  That which is Good, True and Beautiful hasn’t changed within the lifetime of mankind on this planet, but when you’re confronted with people trying to sell that which is a Lie as the Truth?

You can be sure those people are Evil.

Not to say that people on the Right are immune to that – far from it.  Eaton Rapids Joe has a great little story to that effect here (LINK).

To be clear, the ultimate aim of the propaganda of Evil is simple:  to make Good people feel despair.

Why despair?  Despair is the opposite of hope.  It is the opposite of Truth.  It is the opposite of Beauty.  Despair is Evil.

And when propaganda wins?  Evil wins.

H.P. Lovecraft was tormented by doubt all of his life.  Imagine if he hadn’t slept in despair bedroom.

But that’s not what happened in The Exorcist.  Father Karras, who had lingering doubts and was on the verge of Despair, conquered it.

Because he conquered Despair, Father Karras conquered Evil.

When you feel Despair, know that’s nothing more than Evil.  And you can conquer it, too.

Yeah, I told you that The Exorcist was a feel-good story.  And I was right.

———————————————

Extra Meme and Tagline, because I made one too many:

In other news, the 2024 election will be postponed until they find the results in Biden’s desk.

Money Is Not The Only Form Of Wealth

“Well, as I said, time has no meaning here. So if you leave, you can go anywhere, any time.” – Star Trek:  Generations

What do you call a rogue sheep with a machine gun?  Lambo.

When I lived in Houston, my job was all consuming.  It’s been my theory that people move to Houston for one reason:  to work.  The climate is difficult.  The freeways are often lines of cars creeping along like Joe Biden in an elementary school.  One upside is that there can’t be a (Some) Black Lives Matter® protest because the Houston Astros© always steal their signs.

When I was a Temporary Texan, my life was consumed by work – and it was stressful work.  Each day brought a new crisis we had to solve.  It got so bad that   I left home early to avoid the traffic, so I got to work early.  I left work late to avoid the traffic, so I got home late.  A fourteen-hour day wasn’t uncommon.  I put blood, sweat, and tears into that job, so it was good that I wasn’t working at a restaurant.

The last time I went out for dinner, I asked the waiter how they prepared the chicken for frying.  “Nothing special.  We just tell them they’re going to die.”

For many weeks, I was gone every hour that baby Pugsley was awake during a weekday.  I would, however, catch up with The Mrs. when I got home.  That was a priority.  We knew what we were getting into when we made the move from Alaska.  Moving to Houston was, for us, entirely about work.  I should have known during the job interview that something was up:  they asked if I could perform under pressure, but I told them I only knew Bohemian Rhapsody.

Most (not all!) weekends I was able to keep the work at bay.  I’d sleep in on Saturday, and then we’d do something as a family.  By Saturday night I felt, “normal” but by Sunday afternoon I’d realize that I’d have to go back in to work on Monday and repeat the whole thing again.  That made me feel pretty gloomy – it felt like time was slipping away.

This was how Sunday evening felt when I worked in Houston.

One Sunday night, however, I was getting my things ready for the next day.  I was looking for my dress shoes (I was in an office that required them at that time) and couldn’t find them.  Since I always took them off at the same place, that confused me.

After looking in all the logical places, the only choice then was to look in all of the illogical places.  When you live alone, everything is pretty findable.  When you have a wife, things move around on their own.  When you have children under seven?  The toilet gets clogged with decorative clam shell soaps that The Mrs. bought.

So, when I found my shoes under Pugsley’s bed, I wasn’t really surprised.

I was, however, touched.  As near as we can figure, Pugsley had come to the conclusion that I only wore those shoes when I was gone all day.  As near as his Gerber®-addled mind could conceive, if I didn’t have the shoes, I could spend every day at home with him.

Not bad.  And I was touched.

I tried to buy running shoes the other day – but the only ones I saw were stationary.

One of the ideas of wealth is money.  And I was in Houston, like everyone else, to make money.

But there’s another idea of wealth:  time.

There are a group of people who are driven by playing that game and devote themselves exclusively to their business.  That makes sense.  The world needs people who are single-minded in wanting to change it.

Most people have read about people like Edison who never slept more than seven minutes a night and spent most of his life at work while making a fortune, and Elon Musk who famously slept in the factory to get car production worked out.  And Musk and Edison both have another thing in common:  they both got rich off of Tesla.

Meanwhile, the GPS is saying:  “Recalculating . . . recalculating . . . “

If that’s what they choose?  Fine.  The idea of spending time on their passion for business is exactly that – a choice.  Just like having a finite supply of money gives you a set of choices of what you can do in life, there is another budget – a finite number of hours.

And that is life.  Life is made up of those hours that we use.  Just as inflation eats away at the value of money, distraction eats away at the value of life.

What kind of distraction?

Well, pointless things – think Twitter® and most of Facebook™.  I was on Twitter© a while back, and found it was good at exactly one thing:  making me irritated.

I even take this aversion to not wasting the hours and minutes of my life unless it was a conscious decision to absurd levels.  For several years of my life, I ate something I didn’t like all that much for lunch because there was no line.

I hate the idea of waiting five minutes of my life when I don’t to.  This still applies even if I waste those five minutes on something unproductive.  For a long time, I avoided history – I just couldn’t see a future in it.

I’m reading a book about the history of lubricating oils and bearings.  Best non-friction book I’ve ever read.

But now society is built on creating and feeding distraction to people – the more distraction that’s consumed, the greater the profit level for these companies.  And these are not even distractions that make us feel better – but distractions that in many cases just consume time.

I’m not sure that the idea of a “balanced” life is one that exists in reality.  A human life is built up in phases.  The long languid summers of youth give up to days that are packed with all the trappings of a family and work and the fullness of life.  When my youngest, Pugsley, heads out into the world, who knows what I’ll do with the time?

Perhaps I’ll spend it finding places to hide his shoes.