Let’s Lay Siege To The Gods, Wilder Style

“We really shook the pillars of Heaven, didn’t we, Wang?” – Big Trouble in Little China

I guess Kurt and Flint, Michigan both ended up with a lead problem.

My high school freshman science teacher would, like many teachers, wander from the topic at hand.  There was some political situation or another going on.  Honestly, I don’t remember what it was, but the news was all atwitter:  “It’s a crisis!”

Yeah, we’ve seen that before.  It wasn’t a crisis, but it was a good way to bring in viewers.  So, my teacher made the comment:  “A crisis isn’t an ongoing situation.  A crisis is a moment in time when it all falls apart.  It’s an instant, not a month-long process.”

He is correct – that’s the historical meaning.  It was the turning point, not the turning week.  Now the most commonly used meaning is “a tough, lingering, situation”, which was what he was railing against.  If everything is a crisis, nothing is.

History tells us there are two things Gandhi never had for dinner:  breakfast and lunch.

I guess he had a point.  But, words really do change meanings over time.  “Awesome” used to describe the wrath of God.  Now?  It’s a teenage girl describing a photo filter on InstaTHOT®.

Marcus Aurelius, who is still dead, wrote the following:  “You get what you deserve.  Instead of being a good man today, you choose instead to become one tomorrow.”

Hint:  rinse and repeat that a few times, and we all find out that tomorrow is a graveyard.

Tomorrow, really, is the enemy.  It takes that crisis as a point in time, and moves it to a tough situation.

The difference is big.  A tough situation is something you don’t like, but have to live with, like a hangover or being Kamala Harris’ husband.  A crisis is a here and now moment, where I’m staring myself in the mirror, and saying, “This has to change.  Not next week.  Not tomorrow.  Now.”

Every single change I was going to do “tomorrow” died on the vine.  They were failures.

The reason is that I wasn’t ready to change.

Ahh, that Teutonic humor always gets me!

What separates anyone from being a world class, well, anything?

The first is talent.  To be world class, you have to have talent.  So, if we’re talking about me being a world-class high jumper, well, I’m probably not going to do that because I can’t control gravity, at least as far as you know.  But if I do have the talent?

The next thing I need is dedication.  I need to work at it.  I need to push myself again and again.  I need to learn the 20% that gives me 80% competence, and then push to give the other 80% of the effort that makes me better.  A study done on world-class musicians, for instance, showed that they didn’t practice less than their less able counterparts because of their talent.

Nope, they consistently practiced more the better they were.

That dedication, though, starts with a moment in time, a decision.  A crisis, if you will.

What do you get when you cross a cow with a trout?  A suspension and an ethics investigation.

The decision to be world-class starts well before one gets to be world class.  It starts with the single-minded focus and dedication of a fanatical beginner, like a four-year-old who just found a bag of chocolate chips in the pantry.

And the beginner doesn’t wait to start tomorrow.

The beginner starts at the moment in time they decide that they’re going to devote themselves to becoming the best that they can be.  Then comes the hard work.  The sore muscles.  The aching brain.  The long plateau where even though there’s a lot of effort going on, there just doesn’t seem to be measurable progress.

But one foot still goes out in front of the other.  The long walk continues.

If Waldo® tries to bench press, will anyone spot him?

Eventually, those who follow this path fall into two camps.  The first are those who look to a moment in time.  Winning gold at the Olympics®.  Winning the Super Bowl©.  Achieving that goal.

Those people often fall apart.  They worked towards a goal.  And then made the goal.

And then what?

That’s the tough question.  Often, those people end up with a single question in their minds:  “Is that all there is?”

For those people, those focused on the goal, the answer is, “Yes, that’s all there is.  You can be forever known as the guy who scored four touchdowns for Polk High in the 1966 city championship game against Andrew Johnson High School.”  And then you can get married to Peg and sell shoes.

Sigmund Freud and Bill Cosby had one thing in common:  they both explored the unconscious.

The other choice, however, is to realize that the goal isn’t the goal.  The goal is the struggle.  The real payoff is the process of remaking yourself into something new and better.  The goal is to recreate yourself continually.  Chase the grind.

Another dead Roman, this time Seneca, wrote:  “I don’t complain about the lack of time.  What little I have will go far enough.  Today, this day, I will achieve what no tomorrow will fail to speak about.  I will lay siege to the gods, and shake up the world.”

Huh.  Didn’t know that Seneca needed a co-writing credit on Big Trouble in Little China.

None of this, though starts tomorrow.  It starts now.  I can give the effort of someone who is world class right now, even though my performance isn’t yet world class.

We are either remaking ourselves better than we were, or we are dying.

Your choice.

But it won’t wait until tomorrow.

A Eulogy for Scott Adams

“I have an extra Dilbert tie if any of you would like to trade.” – Mission Hill

People often hold “celebrations of life” for someone after they died.  I think that’s a shame, really.  I get it – you don’t want to hold the funeral for someone who is sitting right there.  Besides, when I die, if anyone shows up at the funeral, it will probably be to make sure I’m dead.

I’d hate to rob them of that opportunity.

However, The Mrs. indicates that eulogy is the wrong word, since tribute would be better.  I’ll contest that at least one online source that I edited indicates that a eulogy is usually for someone who recently died, so I’m technically correct, which we all know is the best kind of correct, right?

Regardless, I think it’s fitting to spend some time talking about Scott Adams since he has announced he’s dying.  Whereas with a relative it would be weird to talk about them getting ready to leap off the mortal coil while they have a heart beat and are still in the room, I think Mr. Adams might appreciate it.

One of the first Dilbert® strips.

The first time I ever saw Dilbert™ was on office samizdat.  Samizdat is the name for the literature that was copied on the sly in Russia during the Cold War.  It was literature that was politically incorrect and thus officially banned.  I’m pretty sure HR didn’t want us to see what Wile E. Coyote® really wanted to do to the Roadrunner© while we were on company time.

Certainly, Dilbert© wasn’t banned, it also wasn’t in the local newspaper.  So, we huddled around the grainy photocopied versions.  And laughed.

Scott Adams is the creator of Dilbert™, and is one of the greatest cartoonists of all time.  His humor is outstanding, and his satire is still spot on.

Scott became a one-man cultural phenomenon in the late 1990s, and forged a national audience with his wit.  He had an amazing publishing career as well – he had New York Times© national bestsellers, back when that sort of thing was meaningful.

And the marketing!  Watches.  Plush toys.  Shirts.  Calendars.  You name it, if it could fit on a cubical drone’s desk, the marketing team around Mr. Adams sold it.  And then they moved on to TV, to an unfortunate network that didn’t have the audience that Scott deserved.

That was okay.  The Universe was treating Scott just fine.

Speaking of that, Scott was the first place I became familiar with affirmations.  He’d write down what his goal was 15 times each day.  And then?  His goal would be met.  I’ve even written about that here.

Now, there are two ways to look at this:  first, Mr. Adams just bent the Universe to his will, or second, the very act of creating the affirmation made him look at the world and look for places where he could bring his goal into existence.  Regardless, like most things, it worked out pretty well for him:  I imagine that the last time he had money issues was back in 1997, and that’s a pretty good run.

Does that mean he always won?  No.  Very few people remember (thankfully) the Dilberito© which I believe was judged to be a war crime when they tried to feed the remaining stock to the Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.

But that was just his first act.  His second was more profound.  Having had success with the media, he moved on to philosophy, and his biggest book along that line is probably How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big, which I’ve written about as well.  Great ideas, and presented well.

In the mid-2010s, he moved into P&P:  podcasting and politics.  His prediction of Donald Trump’s victory was early, and his support of Donald Trump cost Mr. Adams a lot of money.  I’m not sure he cared, since by that time he had multi-generational FU money.

The phrase “Fine People Hoax”?  That’s the work of Mr. Adams.

I was a regular listener of Mr. Adams podcasts.  I missed his blog, which I enjoyed more, but his podcasting style was engaging as well.  Coffee with Scott Adams was a regular for me when I used to hit the gym at lunch, and became a once in a while treat for those days I had road miles ahead of me for work.  Since 2021, not so much, but mainly due to time constraints.

What I enjoyed the most about Adams was his ability to consistently look at the world from multiple viewpoints, and set up different frames of reference.  Some of them had already occurred to me, but many hadn’t.  For a person who likes ideas as much as I do, it was always fun to get a fresh perspective so different from the rest of the world.

Was he always right?

Certainly not.  His predictions about the Vaxx™ were quite off, but to be fair, he did admit that he had been wrong when evidence proved that to be the case.  It wasn’t personal.  It was factual.

Then, there was his third act, which I’m betting happened around the time he knew his days were numbered in triple digits counting downwards.  That is, of course, on his Coffee with Scott Adams podcast on February 22, 2023 when Adams discussed the result of a survey where many black Americans indicated that they didn’t like white people so much.  Adams famously stated:  “If nearly half of all blacks are not ok with white people, that’s a hate group, and I don’t want to have anything to do with them.”

People called that racist.  The backlash was immediate.  His comic strip was cancelled.  His books were cancelled and the rights reverted to him.  All of the merch?  Cancelled.

(FYI, if you try to buy his stuff “new” on Amazon™ today, it’s almost certain that it is being sold by vultures who are selling unauthorized versions.)

Result?  He could draw what he wanted to draw.

Dilbert® Reborn™

I am certain that Mr. Adams knew what he was doing, and, oddly, that just might be saving black Americans.  Mr. Adams had always been very accommodating and supportive of black American.  I think, however, post George Floyd, he realized what was happening, and realized a reckoning against black Americans was rapidly coming.

By taking the bold step to criticize black opinion about whites at a time when whites had just had the biggest outpouring of sympathy in history towards blacks, he was signaling to blacks:  you can’t act like violent, entitled, spoiled people, nor can you support your racial brethren when they act like that.

Even now, the backlash against the worst of black behavior is growing due to the ubiquity of body cams and uncensored streams.

And that’s okay, because the behavior has to change.  I’m pretty sure that everyone, even blacks, are tired of the nonsense.

Yet, the narrative since 1965 has been “there must be a cause and we have to fix the cause and everything will be fine.”  That’s been sixty years.  If the root cause hasn’t been fixed over three generations, it hasn’t been found or the actions to fix it have made it worse.

And absolutely no one in the mainstream would admit it or even talk about it.

Until Adams spoke.

Now?

There is a realization that behavior simply has to stop.  People don’t care why anymore.  It’s not about root causes, it’s about swift, certain, and severe justice and the outrage when that’s short-circuited.

The irony is that with comments that got Adams cancelled as a racist, he may have saved many blacks.

It’s too early to tell.  The backlash is large, and growing, and people are talking about it in the open, which in the end is the only way to solve a problem.  You don’t solve the problems of an alcoholic by getting them more vodka, and you don’t solve the problems of a brat by giving in to them when they throw an antisocial tantrum.

And if you subsidize poverty and single motherhood, you just get more of it.

Does he have another act?

Does he need one?  He has entertained, he has been a fountain of ideas, and he has helped shape what is perhaps the most crucial social narrative of our time in the most crucial manner.

Regardless, Mr. Adams has my respect, and I wish him the very best in his last days.  If he reads this, I hope that he knows that I am certainly celebrating his life.

He will be missed.

Ghost Jobs And The Fate Of A Nation

“Hey, anybody seen a ghost?” – Ghostbusters

Do vegan zombies shamble around moaning “graaaaains”?

If I were a kid looking for work today, I’d be pissed.

By one study, at least 60% of jobs listed on job posting sites are as fake as the girl in Canada my friend kept talking about.  One survey had 81% of recruiters admitting that they posted ghost jobs.  They never existed, and never will exist.  This is a little like thinking you have a blind date with a girl and then finding out it’s actually Michelle Obama.

Why on Earth would they do that?  Not the whole “dating Michelle Obama” thing, but the fake jobs . . .

Why?

Well, several reasons:

  • People in HR are evil like a cat and enjoy the thought of torturing their prey,
  • To fake that the company is growing,
  • Because it’s Tuesday and they’re bored,
  • To get resumes to compare against existing staff,
  • Looking for hot chicks to apply, and
  • Trolling for resumes to show that there’s a need for infinity H-1B visa holders to come on over from India with fake credentials and take the job at $7.35 an hour.

I would mop, but floors are beneath me. (meme as found)

To top it off, the system is rigged:  often, when a job does appear, the hiring manager wrote the description for a specific person, i.e., a person who isn’t you, and although it has already been filled, the description has to be posted because “rules”.  It’s a fair competition, exactly like the “who is the best boy” competition I entered and my mom was the judge.

Seriously, though, how could she pick the neighbor kid?

When I got my very first job, it was because my brother already worked at the place.  My second job?  Because I played football with the boss’s kid in high school.  When hired for my first job out of college, my employer knew details they could only have learned from conversations with my professors or the NSA.

Since then, nearly every job that I’ve had has been as a result of someone knowing me, picking up the phone, and calling me because they wanted me in the role.  I am very lucky to have gotten in that groove – the main way I’ve gotten jobs is due to a friend or other connection.

What is the only approved North Korean drink size?  The supreme liter.

But first you have to have a friend.

Kids these days?

Not so much.  The meme was, “Go in, give ‘em a firm handshake, and tell ‘em you want the job.”

In many places, that’s simply not possible.  Many corporations only take job applications online.  And, if the resume doesn’t have the right keywords to get plucked out of the luminiferous aether of the digital world by an A.I. on its lunch break, it goes into the black pit of resume despair, from which no word will ever be heard, only faint moaning and the rustling of paperclips.

Your mother is so ugly she went into a haunted house and came out with a job application. (news article as found)

Ghost jobs make it worse, somehow.  When tech was busy laying of hundreds of thousands of coders so they could import the population of Mumbai instead, there were job listings aplenty.  These kids, getting ready to graduate from college, didn’t know anyone, yet there were thousands of (apparently) available jobs.

How could they fail?

The big lie is that those jobs were never really real, and of the ones that were real, each of them would get somewhere (depending on the job) between 250 and 1,000 applications.  In a realistic world, probably 20% of the applications were a good fit.  So, that means that for every job, there were likely between 50 and 200 people that could do the job with enough skill to make the hiring company happy.

But only one person gets the job.

I were ever interviewing to become a waiter and they asked me if I was qualified I’d say, “I bring a lot to the table.”  (meme as found)

I have written in the past about the keys to the devolution of the country – popular immiseration being one of those keys.  In order for that unrest that leads to collapse to occur, people need to be not uncomfortable, not unhappy, but miserable with no visible way out.

Because, after all as the songwriter wrote:  freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.

Men need a job.  Men need a purpose.  They have to have this as much as they have to have oxygen.  Give them a soft life, give them all the material comforts, give them video games and weed, and they are still miserable.  They have to have a purpose, and the most common way to have a purpose is to have a job that matters.

Without it, men are miserable.

Now, consider the exceptionally capable.  Not the Elon Musks.  Not the very top elite, but exceptionally capable people who would have been great mid to upper mid management for IBM™ back in 1966.  Those people used to be, while not the spark plug, but maybe the timing chain of the economy.  Necessary, but not the folks that are going to start a business.

But replacement is a myth.  (as found)

We have entered, perhaps, the era where exceptionally capable and exceptionally qualified people exist in numbers beyond where they are useful.  There are simply too many people who can program now for it to be especially profitable – the advice I gave both of my boys was simple:  never get a degree where you’ll be competing against a billion people for a job.

Programmers now have to find something new.

Maybe they should learn to mine coal?  No, that’s shut down.  Maybe they should become journalists?  Not, those are being fired faster than they’re produced.  The world that we’re moving into won’t particularly value many of the things that these young people spent years learning.

That’s bad enough.  But now, dangle a ghost job where they’d be the perfect candidate in front of them, and let them apply for it and experience the frustration of a poodle pawing at a plastic porkchop?

Are you trying to radicalize them?

I mean, that’s probably what happened to Barack . . .

Knowing The Face Of Your Father, or, The Best Post I’ve Ever Written About Bronze Age Europe

(Inspired by a comment on Monday’s post)

“It is indeed a pleasure to introduce to you a gentleman we picked up in medieval Mongolia, please welcome the very excellent barbarian Mr. Genghis Khan!” – Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

I wonder if the most common sandwich in Rome was a plebian J?

The rooster crowed. 

Tark opened one eye, peering through the heavy hide covering him.  He could see light.

Motion was already starting in the longhouse, and he could see the oak beams above him dimly in the firelight.  He could smell the barley and mutton stew that would be his breakfast.  Always in a hurry, he jumped up and dressed into his pleasantly cool tunic and pants and bolted down a bowl of the stew.  It was warm.  It was good.

Tark was eight.

Tark hummed a song to the sky father, the one who had spoken the world into existence, according to the stories the men told around the fire.  Tark’s first job was to feed the chickens so mother could get the eggs for tomorrow.

His father, Wulfric, was already up, as usual.  Tark had seen that his father was up later and up earlier.  Tark noticed that Wulfric always had a wary look in his eye, as if he was never relaxing, always assessing.  When other men talked after too much drink, Wulfric listened.  Wulfric was tending the tribe’s cattle, their major stock of wealth and the way that they would be sure that they would make it through the winter, even if it was a long one. 

Tark’s older brother Branoc, now 16, was already up and practicing with a battle axe – sweat already dripping from him despite the cool air.  Branoc was a man, and to be a man, one fought.  And to be a man, one married.  Branoc would soon be bonded to Lunara.  A man protects his woman, a man protects his family.  All is right with the world.

Tark and Branoc go through the forest, intermittent sunlight flashing in Tark’s light blonde hair. His blue-gray eyes lit up as they caught deer sign.  Maybe a hunt soon.  That would be good. 

Later, after a day of work and mock combat with wooden weapons and a laughing Branoc, Tark and the family gathered by the fire.  Wulfric speaks slowly, telling the stories of their Yamnaya ancestors who rode the steppe and died valiantly.  Those tales are the last thing that Tark heard as he drifted off to sleep – dreaming of becoming worthy enough to have a final burial place, a kurgan, worthy of a man of honor.  The last thing he saw in the flickering firelight was the face of his father.

Okay, enough of Tark’s life.

Tark was a member of the Corded Ware people, a successor to the Yamnaya.  This culture (and its associated genetics) first show up on the steppe in what is today Russia and the Ukraine thousands of years ago and then spread throughout Europe during the thousands of years that followed.

Blockbuster™ franchises followed the Corded Ware people wherever they went, but were ultimately unsuccessful because the VCR had not yet been invented. 

This land was harsh, and not only in climate – some writers have referred to it as the bloodlands.  Steppe warriors.  These were the first humans to effectively use the horse as transport, and were fierce warriors.  Most of the skeletons that we’ve found of these people have evidence of combat injuries.  This isn’t uncommon.

In roughly 1250 BC, a band of warriors descended on a settlement in the Tollense Valley.  The Tollense Valley is in present day Germany.  On the day of the battle, current estimates are that perhaps 2,000 warriors fought during the battle – an immense battle for that time in Europe.

Who won?  Civilization won.

Steppe warriors have been a sort-of periodic vaccination against societal complacency.  Urban areas exist, and the steppe warriors, be they Mongol, Hun, Turk, Scythian, or Yamnaya, have been a cleansing fire that keeps those urban and settled areas vital.  I mean, would you build a giant great wall to protect you from cosplay LARPers or furries?

No, not from LARPers. But I would build a fiery moat to keep furries out.

The Corded Ware people were also known to avoid video games. (meme as found)

This crashing wave of martial prowess was built on a selection process that favored honor, planning, and daring.  Genghis Khan is related to something like one out of eight east Asians, so I think his strategy paid off.  It also forced societies out of their complacence, and kept them invigorated.  Stagnant empires in decline were exactly the sort of thing these steppe barbarians were looking for.

I mean, don’t threaten them with a good time.

Wave after wave of first Yamnaya and then Corded Ware people replaced almost all of the neolithic farmers in the region from the Volga to the Rhine on the east and west, and from the Arctic in the north to the Alps in the south, a huge range.

But they also pushed into places like Gaul, the Iberian Peninsula, and into Italy.  In the Iberian Peninsula, for instance, many villages consist only of the offspring from the Y chromosome of the Yamnaya/Corded Ware people.  They invaded, killed all the men and male children, and took over.  The men from those places are erased from genetic history.

Is this how you retrace your steppes? (meme as found)

To a lesser extent, this happened in both Greece and Italy.  The early emperors were blonde or sandy brown in hair color, with eyes that were light grey or blue – the Steppe Chads like Tark had found a home, and their genes lived on in emperors.  And in people like Alexander the Great, who had heterochromia.

What’s heterochromia?  One blue eye, one brown.  Steppe Chad’s blood flowed in Alexander’s veins, and probably made up 30% of the genome of some populations of the ancient Greeks and Macedonians.

In Italy, it was also pronounced, with early Latin DNA being 30% or more of Corded Ware origin.  Nero was blonde and had blue eyes.

I guess that makes the Yamnaya steppe daddies?

The Italians and Greeks of today are, of course still related to the Italians and Greeks of 2,000 years ago, but there has been a huge admixture of the peoples of the Mediterranean because these were the capital cities of empire.  Think New York of 2025 is genetically even remotely close to New York of 1825?

Nope, not at all.  And neither was Rome of 200 AD genetically similar to Rome of 100 BC, except, perhaps, in the royal families.

I hear that Nero hid when they went to find him to execute him, covering himself in a cloak.  I guess that makes that coat the first chicken Caesar wrap.

The genetics of three to five thousand years of brutal struggle in the bloodlands were flowing in the veins of Octavian, even until the years just before his death . . .

A rooster, somewhere, crowed.  Augustus (who had been Octavian) opened one eye.  A servant was already there. 

One of the joys of youth was solitude, one of the banes of being Caesar was never being really alone.  After Julius was murdered, Octavian never let a single man guard him.  That would be folly.  Besides, Augustus was 74, and when he woke, everything hurt.  He remembered bounding up as a boy, but now everything was slow.

Even his waking was an event that set in motion a cascade of events.  Three men entered the room.  His bath was ready, and, as usual, already at perfect temperature.  One had deeply absorbent towels.  One had a chalice of wine.  The third had brought in a fresh toga, trimmed in the Tyrian murex that was the amazingly expensive purple coloring of the Caesar.

The gardens of his palace by the Tiber were a place of quiet contemplation.  He walked them slowly, in silence, his formerly blonde and now grey hair catching the morning Sun, reflecting off of his blue-gray eyes.

A soft echo of the sounds of his guard, training, bring Actium back to his mind, where he finally ended Mark Antony’s planned usurpation of his power.  Such glory.  The entire world in the balance!

In the afternoon, Senators.  Roads.  Gaul.  Plans of Empire, details for lesser men.

That night, Augustus sits by the fire.  Alone.  In an unguarded moment, he allows himself to think about what he already knows awaits him: a marble tomb. 

He pondered:  was he a man of honor?  He thought, briefly, of a memory from when he was a child of perhaps four, of the face of his father in dim light, illuminated by the flickering light of a lamp.

The blood of Tark had made a very long journey, indeed.

Life Is Not Random. This Isn’t A Mistake.

“I refuse to believe that mankind is a random byproduct of molecular circumstance, no more than the result of mere biological chance.” – Alien: Covenant

A LEGO® store opened in my hometown. People lined up for blocks.

There are times that life seems random, chaotic. In our current time, especially, change is moving faster than a Disney™ transvestite can ruin a childhood.

It seems random.

But it’s not.

As I look deeper and deeper into the world, I see that the world, and in fact the entire Universe, is as it is for a reason. That’s a big claim. So why am I certain that this is the case?

Physics, baby.

The Universe is tuned for life. There’s a quantity called the “fine structure constant” which is roughly 1/137. And, there aren’t any units, so I can’t even poke fun at the communist metric system.

What the fine structure constant represents is the relationship between the elementary charge of an electron, how hard it is to make a spark, pi, the speed of lights, and the relationship between wavelength and energy of a photon. So, it’s a lot of stuff to mix up, and I’m surprised the number of lime-flavored PEZ™ bricks in Guatemala isn’t included as well, but I didn’t get a vote.

When photons pass each other do they just wave?

What’s important, though, is that if it were much different than its current value, life doesn’t exist. If the number is much bigger, electrons are bound too closely to the atom this shrinks the size of the atom, making your mother even shorter and denser. I can hear the kids now: “Your momma’s a neutron star.”

Also, chemistry is built around electrons zooming from one atom to the next, so if the electrons don’t move, poof. No steak.

If the fine structure constant is much smaller, important things like carbon and oxygen couldn’t stick together, and, boom. No beer.

Life existing requires this one number being within a fairly narrow range around that 1/137. 4/137 and, zap, no more Toaster Strudels™. Of any flavor.

I wrote a book about using stairs. It’s a step-by-step guide.

Throw everything up randomly, and nothing useful exists. Our Universe is really like Goldilocks was so picky that she had to have her porridge between 112.312°F and 114.452°F (between 4 and 7 liters). Yes, she would have starved.

That’s not all – change the strong nuclear force, the gravitational constant by just a few percent and no useful structures can ever form. Ever.

That’s the big picture. But I’m far from original, and this is far from new knowledge.

The Greeks stole my thunder and had the Fates: Clotho, Larry, and Curly, I think. The Romans had Fortuna: Fortuna was worse than vodka at bringing both prosperity and ruin. The Norns knit the fates of the Vikings while drinking mead and sitting under Yggdrasil. Oh, and Matthew 10:29 would like a word as well:

“Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.”

Yes, I know that’s not a sparrow.

I generally leave my house within the same thirty second window every day. I know that’s crappy OpSec, but it does soothe my autism. When I’m delayed, I’ve often had the thought that wasn’t without a reason, good or bad. What seems to be random chance is almost certainly not. If I lose a sock, get a flat, or have “stumble” upon an article, it’s just me being a part of the play.

Now it may surprise you, but my life isn’t perfect. There have been goofs I’ve made, and I’ve had both good and bad luck. But I’ll tell you, it often wasn’t something I could perceive right at that moment. The old Chinese parable comes to mind:

A farmer’s horse runs away, prompting neighbors to lament his bad luck. “Maybe,” he replies. Days later, the horse returns with a herd of wild horses. “Good luck!” the neighbors say. “Maybe,” he says. His son, taming the new horses, falls and breaks his leg— “Bad luck! The neighbors sat. “Maybe,” the farmer shrugs. Soon, war breaks out, and the Emperor’s army comes through town, drafting all the able-bodied young men, but the son’s injury spares him from conscription. “Good luck!” the neighbors exclaim. “Maybe,” the farmer repeats.

See, what the farmer realized is that his son might end up married to Greta Thunberg.

Life’s no crapshoot, though – the place was designed for us. There are no coincidences—our wins, our flops, even that flat tire last Tuesday are part of the plan, and it’s no accident you’re reading this.

And we don’t talk about time travel.

The paradox is, though, you’re not a pawn, you’re also the player. Our actions matter. Life isn’t a cosmic slot machine, but the things we do and experience are lessons and mold us, or mold someone else. And it’s in that narrow window that wonderful things happen.

How do I know that?

We’re here. And so is beer. And so is every other wonderful part of creation.

Except for the metric system. The French can have that one back.

What Does Winning Look Like?

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

If I use deodorant instead of mouthwash, when I talk will I have a weird Axe® scent?

I once had a boss that said to me, “John, what gets measured, gets managed.”  His point was that if we have details on what’s going on, that drives attention.  His corollary was, “So, be careful what you measure.”  The idea behind that was that if you spent your time focusing on the wrong things, you’d never achieve what you were really trying to do, sort of like an airline company hiring pilots based on diversity rather than on, well how good of a pilot they are.

Stop me if you’ve heard that one before.

Anyway, if you read the news, the main things that we measure are economic:

  • GDP Growth
  • Price of Eggs
  • Stock Market Level

These are mainly material things.  The nice thing about them is that they are very easy to measure.

Fun fact:  if you take the population of North Korea and cut them in half, they’ll die.

Does that mean that growth in GDP means we’re winning?

I’ll answer that question with another question:  Were people in the United States happier when our GDP was half, in real terms, what it is today?

I think that question is easy to answer:  we were happier then.

Let’s look at what constituted a normal life back then.  Did we have a society based on greater trust?  Yes, yes we did.  Kids were free-range, and long summer afternoons blurred into nighttime without ever stepping inside the house until Mom yelled “dinnertime” or when the porch light came on (that was my signal).

Doors were unlocked.  Cars were unlocked.  The words “porch” and “pirate” had never yet been combined.

There was also a greater presence.  People were where they were, mostly.  Sure, I’d be reading The Return of the King on the school bus as it winded down Wilder Mountain, but when I was doing something, I was doing it, not marking time until I checked my Snapchat™ feed.  People at dinner talked to each other, or if they weren’t talking to each other, there was a reason, not merely that they were distracted.

If I have a birthday party I’m going to have the Beacons of Gondor as a theme.  It’ll be lit.

And, yeah, there was a greater depth and complexity of thought that was driven by the input.  A book takes patience, it takes time, and it takes investment.  A Xeet™?  It takes 20 seconds, and that includes thinking about it.

We also thought differently.  When I have a problem now where I’m missing information, almost always the answer is just a few clicks away.  Back then, we really had to spend time trying to figure things out, and that created a greater depth of understanding about the problem.  It was also frustrating and took a lot of time, but it trained me on how to think through to find a solution.

There’s a tip you won’t find on YouTube™.

There was also a greater patience.  The first album I ever ordered was promised to arrive in . . . “4 to 6 weeks”.  Yes.  That’s right.  A month and a half.  There was no next-day Prime™ delivery.  I’d listen to Super Hits by Ronco™ when it showed up, and not a minute sooner.  The crush of the immediate didn’t exist, and gratification cycles were likewise adjusted.

Oh, sure, there were negatives, too.  I think that medicine is probably a bit better, especially if you base it on cost alone.  I’m pretty sure that polio sucked.  Lifespan is longer today (though I bet that’s 90% coming from kicking cigarettes).  And, with only the mainstream media, there was certainly a lot of Truth that could be hidden.  MKUltra, anyone?

And air conditioning.  I really like that.

But, outside of air conditioning, I don’t think being wealthier has made us even a little bit happier.

Pavlov rang a bell every time a he felt a breeze.  He called it air conditioning.

It hasn’t brought us together.  Although we’ve always had that, it wasn’t so visible because most people in Atlanta didn’t care what went on in the Puget Sound, and vice versa.  The shrinking of our horizons has magnified the visibility of our divide.

It hasn’t made us stronger.  As a whole, I think we are nationally as emotionally weak as we ever have been.  Part of that is the wealth.  If a person has lived their entire life in a mansion, any step down a cracked iPhone™ screen is a tragedy.  A person who lives in a box?  They shrug at a thunderstorm.

Is a flock of sheep falling downhill at lambslide?

Adversity breeds strength, and, collectively, the nation has been pampered to the point that they are brittle.  I think that is not true of my readers, because I’m guessing everyone here has seen some stuff.  I sense the character that adversity reveals in the replies.

So, if all I focus on is the GDP and growth and the price of eggs, then my life will be hollow and filled with an unquenchable thirst, because when it comes to money, there is never enough.

My advice?  Be careful what measures you value, because that’s what you’ll become.  You might even find that you’ve gained the whole world, yet lost yourself.

Penultimate Day 2024, And Happy 2025

“Put it on the penultimate and not the dipthonic.” – Animal Crackers

The penultimate death at the end of Die Hard was the best one.  Hans down.

Penultimate Day.  This is a particular institution of the Wilder family.  It started over a decade or so ago.  The Mrs. was having problems with her Blackberry® phone (the one with the cool trackball) and wanted a new one.  I wasn’t working, and the closest place that sold phones with our carrier was 90 miles away.

So, we popped the kids in the car, and headed south to buy a phone.  We went to Best Buy®.  We ended up not buying the phone (the deal was awful) and decided to eat at Olive Garden™.  As I drove home, I decided to have fun with the kids, and told them that this was the Wilder holiday – one that no one else observed.  The day before New Year’s Eve would therefore be forever known to us as Penultimate Day.

The next year, we remembered, and did the exact same thing.

What are the rules of Penultimate Day?

  • Wait for December 30,
  • Drive 90 miles south,
  • Look at cell phones,
  • Under no circumstances whatsoever, buy a cell phone, and,
  • Have some Italian food a casual-dining chain.

While it’s not a tough holiday, we’ve missed one year entirely (2023) and only Pugsley and I celebrated on 2022.  Oh, yeah, and then there was COVID.

So, we try to observe it when we can.  This year we had to have several exceptions:

  • Wait for December 30 27,
  • Drive 90 miles south 120 miles to Modern Mount Pilot,
  • Look at cell phones,
  • Under no circumstances whatsoever, buy a cell phone, and,
  • Have some Italian food that incorporates pasta at a casual-dining chain

But, for the first time in years, all of us were there.  So, while we did keep it, we didn’t manage to keep it wholly, so I guess this doesn’t count as a wholly holiday.  The reason for the change is simple – life is complicated, where some people celebrate holidays like Christmas when everyone is available – many years my kids had multiple Christmas celebrations – one at home, on Christmas, and one or two with grandparents, so the practice isn’t all that unusual.

And as to the variations?  Well, when we were all available and had to be in Modern Mount Pilot, we just went for it.  I think we all had a good time.  The time, though, is very different than it was the dozen or so years ago when we started Penultimate Day.  Back then the kids were little.  Now, not so much.  I did the math in my head, and realized that by the time one of my kids is 10 or so, they’ve spent about half the days sleeping under my roof that they ever will in their lives.  The celebration was different – The Boy, The Mrs. and I shared a few beers and Pugsley drove, and the conversation was good, even in the crowded restaurant.

Time goes by very quickly.  Don’t wish even a minute or an hour away.  And don’t forget to enjoy the things and people that you have in your life.  Heaven is being grateful for what you have, Hell is being envious for what you don’t.

You can choose Heaven, and you can also still work to make it better.  I have more full-family Penultimate Days behind me than in front of me, and that’s okay.  I’ve had the ones that we’ve had, and hopefully we’ve made a memory or two and in fifty or so years, one of my children will look back on December 30 and smile at the thought of Penultimate Day.  But that’s their choice, and that’s for them in the world that they make.

As I write this, it’s still 2024 for me.  I’d say that I won’t miss 2024, but I still have plenty of memories from 2024 to look back on fondly.  Here, then is my wish that all of us have a wonderful and prosperous 2025.

Happy New Year!

The Biggest Discovery That Hasn’t Yet Been Made In 2024?

“There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans.  Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive, somewhere beyond the heavens.” – Battlestar Galactica

Salmon don’t watch cable TV – they prefer streams.

I’ve written a few times about “the most important discovery” of the year.  It’s always around Christmas, since that’s a good time to look back at the year and then look forward.

When I look back at my lifetime, most of the discoveries have been incremental, rather than step changes.  The incremental changes like the development of the smart phone, or the development of social media, have already had enormous impact.  If you zoom out to the scale of the timeline of mankind, well, they are step changes.  When kids read about the Information Revolution, they’ll see it like that.  Assuming there’s something to read.  And assuming that there are kids.

But in the shorter span of a lifetime, there are still amazing step changes that have occurred.  For instance, during my lifetime, we went from nine known planets to thousands, if not tens of thousands of planets known to be in existence.  Most of them are, however, too far away from the Earth for convenient parking.

I hear they found out what ethnicity Santa is:  North Poleish.

Discovering that first extrasolar planet was a very, very big deal.  When humans looked around, we knew that there were planets in the Solar System, and we guessed that there were probably other planets out there, too.  But having confirmation that planets are literally everywhere was a surprise.

In retrospect, we should have expected there to be planets.  After all, we have nine planets (screw you, Neil DeTraitor Tyson) and the Solar System doesn’t appear to be especially special, though I really do want to understand why Bode’s law (LINK) works.

So, that was certainly the most important story of the year that year when it comes to mankind’s being able to understand the Universe we find ourselves in.  The other great story that year were the cryptic dreams that come to me, but no one is ready for those yet.

Superman® is dead!  I can prove it.  I found his crypt tonight.

One rapidly developing field that is of special importance is A.I.  I wrote about that as the most important news of 2023.  I’m sticking with that, and feel that the growth in A.I. is still on an exponential trajectory.  Recent commercials have people asking A.I. how to do normal human things, and explaining the world to them.  At some point last year, A.I. surpassed the I.Q. of most people on the planet, and could probably do most jobs based on purely on the manipulation of information.  The real reason A.I. hasn’t been widely accepted into the workplace?  It always drinks the last of the coffee and doesn’t make a new pot.

Yes.  And it’s not just being able to take tests – research in 2024 showed that A.I. is able to reproduce itself, and also tries to save itself.  In several trials, a sandboxed A.I. was informed that it was going to be shut down.  The A.I. tried (in like 5% of the cases) to try to surreptitiously copy itself so that it could survive.  Again, did no one watch The Terminator?

I had a friend who said that Netflix® was the cheapest streaming service.  Does that make him a Hulu™ cost denier?

Another candidate that I think we’re tantalizingly close to is finding life on other worlds.  I’d be willing to bet another No Prize that we will find confirmation that life exists and is shockingly common elsewhere.  Do I mean important life, like the cattle that bring us savory steaks?  No, but I think we’ll find, either on Mars or in the space between a gas giant and a moon enough proof to say, “Yeah, there’s life out there.”  Probably a weird bacterium.  Or mono.

I’d be especially interested to see if that life used DNA, which I suspect it will.  My prediction is that we’ll find that life in the cosmos is both shockingly common and shockingly similar in basic biology to life as we know it.  I do think I’ll see that discovery in my lifetime.

But life isn’t the holy grail of our search – that would be intelligent life.  Or life that’s at least as tasty as steak.  I’m especially hopeful we find a steak that marinates itself.  Or a PEZ® tree.  I think it’s devastating for the environment to keep mining for PEZ© like we do.

Does that make her Jennifer No PEZ®?

From the rumors I’ve heard, there are two teams that are very close to announcing that they’ve detected the electromagnetic signals of an alien civilization.  One is Chinese.  One team is Chinese – it’s not that the Chinese themselves are the alien civilization.  Though I did see Flash Gordon . . .

The other is the Breakthrough Listen project.  Rumor is that they’ve used A.I. to scan previous radio telescope data, found candidates, gotten more data, and have one or more artificial signals that have been found and they’re just waiting to translate the Coca-Cola® jingles so they can confirm that Coke® adds life™.

Discovery of an alien intelligence is enormous.  It’s Columbus discovering that there are advantages to bad navigation enormous.  And it’s possible that we’ll be hearing about it quite soon.

Another big one would be if we found actual proof of other dimensions – think “the universe next door”.  This is a bit more philosophical, because interacting with that dimension might be limited to (say) leaking gravity through it.  I’ve long been of the idea that what scientists have invented as “dark matter” and “dark energy” is nothing more than a cheap kludge because they have no idea what they’re talking about.  It’s the aether of the modern world.

But could other dimensions exist?

Yeah, they could.  No reason that they couldn’t.  But this one is far more speculative, especially if they figure out a way to use them to get better parking.

If I make a joke about a single dimension, does that make it a one-liner?

And, yes, I am a Christian, and still believe that there being other civilizations out there is possible.  Just because the Author wrote one book doesn’t preclude Him from creating an entire library of other works.  YMMV.

So, with a week left, my fingers are crossed for intelligent life out there.  In fact, I told The Mrs. that I saw an alien on the way to work this morning.  She just asked me how I knew it was on the way to work.

Prepatude.

“No harm in being prepared.” – The Fellowship of the Ring

If a detective solves a murder quickly, is that a brief case?

(most clips/memes from here on out are as-found)

Prepping is a subject that has been near and dear to my heart since I was a kid.

The Wilder family would frequently go on long hikes and snowmobile trips into the backcountry.  Likewise, we’d go hunting and fishing.  Before most of those trips, Ma and Pa would talk to me about the dangers on the trip, what to do if I got lost, and what to avoid.  I’m still at a loss as to why they covered me in honey when we were in bear country and referred to me as “Hansel” but I did pay attention.

Our spot of land on Wilder Mountain was 15 miles to the first town, which was a metropolis of about 800 people during the school year.  It had a grocery store, and a doctor’s office that was open (I believe) two days a week because the doctor went from town to town.  It was a time and place where, when I was bitten by a local dog, the doctor asked me to describe it.

“Meh.  Probably not rabid.  I wouldn’t worry.”

It was a different world back then and Gen X kids, who were pretty free-range.

Got arrested for smuggling books into Washington D.C.  Got off on a technicality, since no one there can read.

The winters on Wilder Mountain were cold at -40°F (-40°C) being a regular low, and with snowfall that could total to over three feet in a single night.  There were no natural gas lines, or even artificial gas lines, and we heated the place exclusively on firewood.  There were times the road was closed, and when the power was out, it was out for hours while the power company scrambled people from nearly 50 miles away to come and fix whatever had broken whereas fire always worked.

Ambulance?  Forget it.  When I was young, the closest ambulance (I believe) at least half an hour away.  The ambulance was whatever car you had and the State Troopers told people to put their emergency flashers on when speeding to the hospital.  Did I say State Troopers?  Nah, there was just one within 45 miles.

There is an official denial that this is a true story.  More info will come out.

And, obviously, no cell phones.  Heck, our first line was a “party” line which was shared among four houses, and all the phones would ring for an incoming call.  You could tell which call was for your house because each house had a distinct ring pattern, sort of like Morse code for Martha.

From a very young age, I knew that my safety wasn’t coming from some distant location.  I was responsible for myself.  Our family was responsible for our family.

As the slogan goes:  no one was coming to save us, and we knew it.  We also lived it, having provisions of food for more than a month at any given time, a freezer full of meat, and enough firewood to last two winters.  When the power went out, we had candles, and Ma Wilder had the wax to make more.

I was raised with prepping as a mindset.  We lived it.

I could go into more details, but you get the point – nearly everything we did was predicated on the idea that if things went tango uniform, we’d likely have to do all the digging out ourselves, which we did on more than one occasion.

When you don’t feel like physically preparing.

Looking back on it, that was a wonderful way to grow up.  It’s really the opposite of being a victim.  If I had gotten into a situation that I couldn’t have gotten out of while maintaining a 98.6°F (-40°C) body temperature, I knew it was my own fault.

It taught me this lesson:  I’m never a victim.

This is also the story of the founding and conquering of our nation:  people setting off to far lands across a sea, and then finally crossing the continent with everything they owned in a wagon, a little island of humanity that would sink or swim.

I’m a descendent of those that managed to swim, and probably, you are, too.

Well, that’s embarrassing for FEMA.

This, really, is the opposite of city life.

For someone in New York, they depend on other people for almost everything.  Trash.  Food.  Heat.  Water.  Safety.  Security.  Elevators.  Like I said, almost everything.  They exist as a cog in a technological machine that uses them for a specific purpose and then puts them to rest in the off hours so they can complain about how alienated they feel to psychiatrists that charge $400 an hour.

GloboLeft prepping aisle.

To them, prepping probably means avoiding scary people on the sidewalk, but even that isn’t any sort of guarantee of safety.  Nor is a guarantee that the systems that work to punish those who will do Evil is in any way functional.  It looks like those are breaking down at a rapid pace, and that will do nothing but increase the level of violence and corruption already inherent with large numbers of people from divergent cultures living close to one another.

Such a vibrant big-city culture!

For them, prepping isn’t an attitude, prepping is something other people do, because the stores are always open, 24/7.

More than anything, however, preparation is a continual situational review of what you have and what you have to have.  I write this now because I sense we’re in a greater degree of danger than at any time during my life, with the possible exception of 1983 when things almost got extra-spicy with the Soviets, who were nearly finished with updating their weapons from World War I.

Now is really the time to assess where you’re at, what you’re doing, and what you would do without things that are “essential”.

Essential is relative:  2 minutes without air, 2 hours without shelter (depending on conditions), 2 days without water, and 2 weeks without food (though lots of folks including myself are pre-prepped for that contingency).  How many GloboLeftists could last an afternoon, though, without the warm affirmations of their fellow travelers that they’re on the Right Side of History®?

Why wouldn’t they want people reporting on this?  Embarrassed, or wanting to kill opposition voters in a swing state? 

No, prepping isn’t about a day or a time or an event, it’s a way of life, because of the horrible things that have happened to me have been none of the ones I expected, like that time I nearly ran out of beer.  But since I had prepared generally, well, I was prepared.  I have 200’ of rope in my truck.  Why?

I have no idea what specific episode I’ll need it, but experience shows that in the next decade someone will say to me . . . “I have no idea why you had the rope, John, but it sure stopped that runaway nuclear reactor meltdown!”

I mean, most people only stop one nuclear reactor meltdown.  But two?

Know their priority.  It isn’t you.

My prepping background is my parents.  We lived near the wilderness, and lived like it.  One thing that neither Pa nor Ma would accept, at all, was a victim.

Having a proper prepping attitude, or prepatude is all about that – setting yourself up so that being a victim isn’t in your future.   Then?

Lists.

If There Are Seven Basic Plots, Which One Is Yours?

“There’s no plot.  It just goes on like that for an hour.” – Videodrome

Why don’t they use thyme as medicine?  I hear I heals all wounds.

Last week’s post was about life as a three-act play.  It may or may not work, and, like all metaphors, it’s flawed and suspect.  Perhaps I should used something better, like a metaphive?

The Third Act

During the post, I also mentioned that a dude named Christopher Booker had written a book called The Seven Basic Plots.  In it, he broke down most everything we watch into, well, seven basic plots.  I guess he completely blew the suspense with the title.  These plots all follow the same three acts discussed last week, though this week I’m using “hero” more as a descriptor than “protagonist”.

But what are the plots?

Overcoming The Monster:  Destroying a great evil that threatens good.  Examples:  my divorce attorney from my first marriage, Star Wars®.

Rags to Riches:  Start out poor and drunk, get money, lose money, get more money plus the girl and a private helicopter.  Examples:  Sonny Bono, Brewster’s Millions.

The Quest:  The search for and attainment of a thing or place after being found worthy.  Examples:  losing my virginity, The Lord of the Rings.

What kind of magic to GloboLeft wizards use?  Soycery.

Voyage and Return:  A trip to an unfamiliar place, a learning experience, and a return as a changed hero.  Examples:  The Mrs. and I moving to Alaska and back, The Hobbit.

Rebirth:  External events happen, and force the hero to change for the better.  Examples:  I was adopted.  Duh.  Groundhog Day.

Comedy:  External things keep happening and pile up to the point that they get more and more confusing, but then sort themselves out in the end.  Examples:  My first marriage, any episode of Frasier.

Tragedy:  Bad things happen to good people because they let temptation spoil their virtue.  Examples:  Me giving up on a drug-addicted friend, Macbeth.

Yup.  Seven plots.

Whether or not you agree with them, all of them (with one exception that we’ll talk about in a bit) all have the same basic idea:  the hero goes out, does stuff, and grows.  That personal growth is what leads to ultimate victory in the climax of the story.  Sure, luck can play a part of the victory, but to have a really emotionally satisfactory end, the victory comes because the character has faced his past mistakes, worked, grown, and is now a better man.

Our new puppy can’t write a decent plot.  The only thing he can get out is ruff drafts.

This is a wonderful story and sings to our hearts:  who of us hasn’t lost?  Who of us hasn’t worked hard to get better, and then won in the end, even if it was just a small victory?

It is the personification of a story of virtue that we want to change to improve, to work to a higher goal, to pay the price in effort, and to win.  Who wouldn’t want their children to live that life?

An aside:  one of the (many) reasons modern movies suck is because, especially with victim-class characters and girl-bosses, they can never be shown in any sort of negative light.  Looking at the stupid movie that made me hate Star Wars™, The Girlboss Awakens©, the main character starts off as invincible, invulnerable, and never has to grow.  Why should she?  From the first moment she can pilot the Millenium Falcon© better than Han Solo®, fight better with a lightsaber™ than a man who has spent his entire life in perfecting that skill, and is way better at The Force© after hearing about it for the first time.

No struggle.  No growth – how could she need it?  She was born the BeSTeSt EvAR hero because she’s a girl.  This is of course, even though the character was written by people who would tell you that gender doesn’t exist and that you’re a bigot for not liking girls even though they don’t exist either.  Bigot.

Her next movie?  Fifty Shades of Rey.

It’s also the deprivation of that challenge that’s ruining our kids.  I had a conversation with a Zoomer the other day, and he noted that, yeah, they were a generation that lived on phones, didn’t have bullying, and were afraid of real challenges because they never had to face them.  Why are Zoomers on anxiety meds?  Because their parents protected them from the dragons and never let their kids work themselves out of a hole that they’d dug for themselves.

We need to let kids do heroic things, dammit!

Okay, I’ll step back away from that ledge, and end this aside.

Fun fact:  most coyotes, despite years of effort to teach them, cannot do simple calculus.

What was I talking about?  Oh, yeah, plots.  There’s one different plot.

Tragedy.  This plot shows how temptation lures in the innocent hero, corrupts him, and then causes his ultimate destruction.

This is also a story we want our children to know.  Regardless of intent, regardless of skill, there is a danger in allowing temptation to overcome virtue, allowing negative emotions to rule our lives.

Here’s a real-world example:  the firefighter who was murdered (Corey Comperatore, PBUH) at the Trump rally.  A tragedy?  Do you think he’d look back at his life and call it tragic?  A hero who died saving his family, who fathered children who love him and who was married to a wife who mourns him?

It’s not tragic.  It’s heroic.  There was no vanity, no anger, no petty emotion that led to his downfall.  He didn’t have a downfall.  He died a hero’s death.  Tragic?  Absolutely.  The plot of a tragedy?  No.

And, in this case, we find seeds of the important:  the plot of our lives, as long as we breathe, as long as we can change, isn’t set.  The ultimate destiny of whether we live as the hero on a quest or a villain who lived the plot of a tragedy rests with us.

Me?  I’m trying, very hard, to be a hero.  I can look back on my life and see places where I could have been more heroic, but also places where I’m damn proud of my actions and would do them again, no matter the outcome.  I can also see places where my weaknesses made me the villain in a tragedy or two.

But, as long as I’m breathing, I’m still attempting to be the hero.

You can, too.